This story started with a question. When a person has a psychic event, are they perceiving the future or creating it? The answer we agreed on is, “What’s the difference?” I believe the ultimate prank is to bend the future to your will despite anything and everybody.

The room was cold. Not freezing cold, not January morning cold, just uncomfortably chilly. It was the kind of room that exudes no warmth, like an airplane bathroom or teacher’s lounge. Gray unadorned walls slumped on three sides to the left, right and behind. Fluorescent lights in a yellowed ceiling glowed starkly, casting their light on a single gray metal door, the only entrance into the room. Jules faced this door. He sat in a metal chair bolted to the gray cement floor behind a table bolted down as well. He waited for the man to come in. There would be questions Jules could not answer, at least not without sounding like a smart-ass. He really didn’t want to come across as a smart-ass, though people said he did even when he wasn’t. He didn’t think this was the time to get all snarky, these guys in dark suits were not known for their sense of humor.

The door shifted inward a foot, opening slowly. A short fellow in a lab coat was pushing the door open from the other side. He was not the Hollywood vision of a government agent, short, skinny and not athletic in the least bit. He was carrying a clipboard and a stack of folders and having some difficulty with the door.

Jules stood and walked over to the man, “Do you need some help with the door?” He could barely suppress a grin at the poor man’s plight. Jules grabbed the handle and yanked the door. The little fellow tumbled in. He would have fallen on his face if Jules had not put out a hand to grab him by the back of his coat. Jules straightened him up and led him over to the bolted down chair. “You best have a seat before you fall over. How are we going to run this? Do you want me to give you the answer first, then you ask the question, you know, Jeopardy style? Gee, I should already know the answer to that, what was I thinking. We can cut to the chase and I can tell you what you will write at the bottom of your report. ‘Inconclusive evidence of paranormal abilities’, how does that sound?”

Jules sat on the table. “Sorry for being snarky. This is all just a bit silly, don’t you think? I’m just a comedy writer, not an alien or a lizard person.”

The little guy waved a hand to get Jules to stop talking. “I would like you to hear from you about how this started. When did you first notice you had the ability to predict the future?”

Jules slumped, “Dude, I’m not some psychic palm reader guy. Just like I’ve told everyone who asks, I just write satire, that’s all. Put it on my website, people come to read it and hopefully click on an ad. I just try to be more ridiculous than real life. I’m not trying to predict the future. It’s not my fault that real life keeps catching up with my crazy stories. I spent the last four hours going over every story I have ever written with big smelly dude. There is nothing left.”

The little man pulled opened a folder and began reading from the top page. “You may not be aware of the mandate of this agency. We track the successful prediction ratio of pundits, satirists, humorists, new-age ministers, graffiti artists and stockbrokers. Anyone with a penchant or vested interest in telling others the future. We rate the accuracy and timing of the general prediction and put particular emphasis on details. The details are how we separate the amateurs from the pros. The success of our subjects range all over the scale, though I have to say that stockbrokers as a group for some reason tend to come in with a negative rating. The opposite of what they say comes true. Regardless, we are quite interested in you. In our research, nobody has numbers that come even close to yours. You have a penchant for calling it right.”

Jules shrugged, “What about that New York finance guy? He paid me a ridiculous amount of money to write stories about the stock market. How did that work out for him? I believe he is due for release from prison in five years or so.”

“We analyzed those stories. I particularly enjoyed your tale of Disney buying Greece and turning it into an ancient times theme park. I believe of all those stories, the highest rating we could apply to any of them was 8.3%. Interesting thing, the stories you wrote during that period for your blog continued to get high marks. Everything you turned out for him was pretty dismal, except the first. Do you remember the first story you wrote for him?”

“Yes, of course. It was a tale of a stockbroker in jail using the woeful stories of the inmates to predict stock prices.”
The little man smiled, “Exactly! Our computer model returned an 83.4% likelihood of that story coming true within 12 months.”
Jules looked puzzled, “Wait a sec. What model is this?”

The little man smiled, “We use advanced computer simulation technology to analyze writings from anyone who attempts to predict the future. It’s what the layman would call artificial intelligence or machine learning. It’s really nothing more than finding hidden patterns in the writings and separating the patterns based on whether or not the events came true. We continue to feed data to the system, and it becomes more and more accurate. It considers every aspect of the story, word selection, punctuation, use of pronouns, and so on. I can’t really say what it does, no one can. It has gone well past what we could reason out or try to understand. We know what all the parts do, but when they work together, they produce something which the uninitiated would consider magic.”

The little man opened a red folder. The folder contained a single document. He lifted it out and held it up pinched between two fingers for Jules to see. He scrunched his face up like he was holding in his hand a fart in solid form.

“This is why we asked you to come in. Do you recall this story you wrote a few months ago, a whimsical little item you released on April 1st?”

Jules leaned over to glance at the paper, “Sure. I thought that one was pretty funny.”

The little man frowned. “When we fed this into the model, we got a surprise. This little story of yours produced the highest score we have ever seen. It rated a 97.2% probability of coming to pass.” He placed the paper back into the folder and carefully closed the cover. “You can imagine our concern.”

Jules stood. He began to pace across the small room. “You can’t be serious. Look, I know a little bit about higher math. That stockbroker insisted on my learning such things to make his stories more realistic. You can find patterns in past events, but they do not always apply to future events because there is limited causation. For instance, if I were to roll a dice six times, I could produce a mathematical formula to ‘predict’ those six roles. But when I try to use it to predict roll seven, the formula would return something ridiculous like minus twelve. I find it hard to fathom you would consider that story having the slightest chance of coming true. There is something very wrong with your computer model.”

“Yes, yes. I understand and we had the same misgivings. We have spent the intervening months checking everything. We ran historical documents through the system to see if we could find any flaws. Everything checked out. By the way, it turned out that Oliver Stone was spot on with his theories about JFK. We rebuilt our models from scratch only to come up with the same results. We are as concerned with this prospect as you.”

Jules stopped pacing and sat on the floor like a rag doll dropped in the corner.

“I want to take a step back. This all sounds absolutely crazy. I couldn’t make up a scenario like this, it’s just too fucking bizarre. On the other hand, there’s you guys. You obviously have some faith in your magic computer gizmo. The only reason I’m not just walking out is you are legit concerned about this.”

Jules stood up, took a deep breath and exhaled. “Ok. I assume you did medical tests, right?”

“Oh yes, we did everything. DNA analysis, CAT scan, every kind of sample you can imagine and a few more. It took calling in some favors to get time with him. When we presented the data he was amused, but cooperative. Turns out we are not the most bizarre government project going. He did ask if you could write a few stories about the next election, just to give him a head’s up.”

“He didn’t get from the piece that maybe I’m not his biggest fan?”

Jules resumed pacing, “So why am I here? I don’t get the feeling you want to dissect my brain or check me for communist tendencies. Why did you bring me here and tell me all this?”

The little man cleared his throat, “Yes, well, here we are. The reason why.”

He nervously shifted some folders around on the table, taking care to hide the red folder from his sight. “We have a favor to ask. We are limited in what we can do. We do not have support at all levels and many in government consider us just another wasteful program. What we want, uhm, what we would like is for you to write more stories. Precursors, back stories, prequels to the big event. That is all. We do not want to give any hints or guidance. We are just hoping that something you write will give us a way to prevent an event that could trigger a collapse of the American government.”

Jules looked surprised, “Really? That’s all? You want me to write more satirical stories about the events leading to the event. I assume you will run them through your wizard box and mobilize the army and navy based on the outcome.”

“Yes and yes and no. We do not have the influence to mobilize anything. We are just hoping that we stumble upon something that our small group can do to prevent the event. We don’t even know if such a thing can be prevented. We have not tried before. We have had some heated debate about time loops and causality. You can imagine what happens when you give a conundrum like this to a bunch of computer geeks.”

Jules shrugged, “Sure. I’ll go home and drop a story here and there. I’ll email them in and you can do your thing.”

The little man stood suddenly. Agitated and fearful he cried out, “No, we don’t have the time. Per the model the event will happen in two weeks, maybe a month, tops. We may have already missed our opportunity to shift the time stream in our favor.”

He sat down, “Sorry for the outburst. We don’t have time to waste. We would like you to stay here and work with us. We have a very nice writing room set up for you. Nothing like this room here. It has a beautiful view, nice carpet, antique writing desk, the whole nine yards. You can bring your cat, ‘G. Gordon Liddy’. We will provide the finest of salmon, tuna and fresh milk.”

Jules shrugged, “Sure. I can work here for a bit. There is just one concession I ask.”

“Anything, what would you like?”

“I would like to have final say on who gets to play me in the movie version.”

“Ha ha, very funny. We are hoping there will never be a movie version. We want to keep this on the ‘down-low’ as they say. Come, let me show you the writing room.”

The little man rose from his seat and gathered up his papers. Jules stepped to the door and opened it, letting the little man through. Jules followed him down a long hallway to where he stopped in front of a wooden door.

“This is it. Step in and see if it is to your liking.”

Jules opened the door. The room was as promised. Persian carpet, dark wood trim, antique desk and the most amazing view of the Potomac. Jules fished around in his pocket, pulling out his house keys. He handed the keys to the little man, “Go and get my cat. I will get started.”

Jules walked over to the desk and sat down in front of the laptop. He opened a new document and began to write.

The Capitol building was quiet this late at night. A solitary guard passed through the rotunda on his rounds. It was the night before the day the president would be revealed to actually be twelve squirrels, two armadillos and an orangutan in a trench coat. After the guard was gone, a shadowy figure entered through a side door hidden behind a marble column. The figure muttered some words and a flame flared in a tiny bowl held out towards the center of the room. With a flash and plume of purple smoke, the wizard Merlin appeared in the center of the rotunda. He glanced around approvingly at what he assumed was the interior of a grand castle. He spotted the shadowy figure. In a booming voice he called out “Are you the ‘Pelosi’ who has summoned me?”