The Trickster Diaries/Chapter 82

Jones sits on the window side of the table at In & Out Burger, leans forward a little and says: “Just think, if you hadn’t cancelled your doctor appointment, your doctor wouldn’t have left work early, gone out to dinner with his wife, died in a car crash.”
Me: Yeah. It occurred to me.
Jones: Just that tiny non-action nudged the wheel enough to alter their fates forever, in dramatic fashion.
Me: Where does that fall, I wonder — determinism? Free will? Somewhere in between?
Jones: Not sure, amigo. But… dying together like that, instantaneously, a happily married couple for 40+ years — not such a bad way to go, really.
Me: That’s a… cheerful way of seeing it.
Jones: That decision — that 20 second phone call you made setting events in motion, causing the wheel to wobble ever so slightly — potentially saved them from far worse futures: dementia, lung cancer, grief, despair, loneliness…

Remote stare past Jones out window with underwater audio then… POP! — you’re floating sideways, again, at night, over lush jungle
and terraced hillsides,
altitude increasing.
Her skirt brushes against your calf.