A Future Story: An Excerpt from ‘The Origin of Doubt’
Fiction by Nathan Alling Long
This story takes place in the future, though not far in the future — just an hour or two from now. You will have finished reading this story when this story takes place. You will be up and about, getting on with your day. The story itself, if it left any impression at all, will begin to fade in your mind as a hundred other things distract you — returning to work, getting something to drink, meeting up with a friend, or figuring out what your next meal will be.
But still, you will be different than the you who is reading this story. Unlike the present you, the you of this story will have already read to the end, will already know what happens. Or maybe the you of this story decided not to finish reading and has that smug satisfaction of putting down a story that was picked up with some hope of entertainment, then concluding it was unworthy of your time.
Or it might be that there are several yous, and as you read this, you come to see that the story is really about the choices you make and don’t make, the infinite potential selves created at every moment. If so, the you in the future, the one who wins out over all the other potential yous, is like a victorious gladiator, one who has slain a hundred other ideas and possibilities, pushing you toward one particular point of view. But is that the you you want to be, the most forceful you, the most persuasive? Is that the you you want to be there in the future, a few hours from now?
As you can see, you have some choices to make, serious ones. Perhaps deciding to read this far was not the best choice. You can never unread a story, though you can always choose to read it later, or to never finish reading it. But, since this story is set in the future, it might help you make better decisions — to not read it might let you stumble forward unwisely. Unless knowing how things turn out an hour or so from now makes you overthink what you should do or not do. Oedipus comes to mind, all his efforts to avoid his fate leading to his fate.
Which is to say, you may not have a choice really, in reading this story or not. If you’ve stopped, then perhaps you were destined to stop. If you’re still here on this page, then perhaps that was always your fate. But the you of this story, which takes place after this story ends, already knows all that. A couple hours from now, that you is thinking, This is me in the future. I am now the character of that story, and I see how this is exactly how the story goes.
Which is to say, you don’t need to read on — you just need to be patient, and in an hour or two, the rest of the story will come to you. It will come to you with a singular, unique ending, which only you will know, because it is your story, and everything you’ve done and are doing now has made it turn out the way that it has.
