I glimpsed a few seconds into the future today. Yet my time traveling abilities did not help me to change the inevitable.
I was running a bath and sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper (the place that most time traveling adventures begin). I looked at the bath filling up and then spotted my Nintendo DS sitting on the side (I like to play Scrabble in the bath or when I am on the toilet, so the machine often resides there). Suddenly I was struck with a terrible thought that this might be a precarious place to put the game and what if some idiot nudged it into the water, it would be ruined. I have had an experience before when a book place on the side of the bath
has committed suicide while I was out of the room, but that was doubtless because I had left it open at the place I'd got to which had made it unstable, whilst an unopened Nintendo would need some idiot to actually knock it into the bath. The game has been in that same position 100 times before and I'd never worried about knocking it into the bath. In fact the fact that is is electronic and expensive always means I take great care of it when it's near water. But I felt a little wave of nausea as I imagined it sinking into the bubble bath that was growing gradually beside me. That must be something I never let happen. You'd think that being aware of any potential danger would have made it very unlikely that it would happen. But I had seen the future and God has mapped out our lives already and there is nothing we can do to stop them.
Because five seconds later I decided the bath as full enough and went to turn off the taps. I put my paper on the side of the bath, on top of the Nintendo and fiddled with the hot and cold faucets. But for some reason I was momentarily confused about which way was on and which was off for both taps. I manipulated them for a couple of seconds and then absent mindedly picked up my paper and in the process of confusion and lack of concentration somehow sent the Gameboy sliding from the porcelain, down into the depths of the bubbly swamp beneath it. Just as I had foreseen. I felt the nausea I had expected, along with an extra feeling of utter disbelief that the thing I had just thought about had come to pass. But there was no time for wonderment at my own Nostradarmian powers. I had to try and rescue the device before too much damage was done. As if only three seconds of total submergment would do less harm than five.
I pulled out the sorry looking game , with soapy water dripping from its ever port and orifice. I was not massively hopeful that I'd be able to play Scrabble on it, but was now cross with myself for having foreseen a potential disaster and then perversely allowed it to be immediately played out. Plus if, as seemed likely, the machine was ruined, then it was going to be a costly error. Either I'd have to buy another one, or I wouldn't be able to play my beloved Scrabble again.
I put the Nintendo on the cold radiator, positioned in a way that I hoped would let all the water drip out. I wondered if I should leave it for a few hours before I tested it, but could not resist the temptation to look. It flickered a little as I turned it on, the top screen had some brightness behind it, but the bottom one was dark. The top screen spasmed and flashed, but then went out. I tried it a few more times. The same kind of thing happened. I realised my only hope was to leave it overnight and pray to the God that had mapped out this whole thing to ask him to make the thing work. But why would he suddenly change his map now just cos I had asked him to? And if he did, then it would have a massive eventual knock on to the rest of his map. If it's all mapped out in advance, then God can't make any alterations based on prayers or the rest of the map is fucked.
If my Nintendo mends itself, when the map says it's going to be fucked, then I wouldn't buy the new Nintendo that I was scheduled to buy, someone else would buy it and the shopkeeper I was to buy it from wouldn't have slightly less money and then everyone involved with those people would have their lives subtly changed and those subtle changes would magnify over time into major ones - what for example if I was mapped down to be run over on my way out of the shop after buying the new game. Suddenly I am not in the shop, the driver of the car does not hit anyone, the ambulance crew do not get called out, I go on living, you keep reading my continuing blog. The map God put together 6000 years ago when he created the world is quickly massively inaccurate and within days is just totally wrong.
So I decided not to pray to God and basically criticise the map that He has gone to the trouble of creating and just hope that He made the decision for my Nintendo to dry out and work again. In a sense it's a bit insulting to pray to Him at all. But then again He did put it in the map that you would or wouldn't pray to Him, so in a sense it's entirely His own fault.
