Have Power, Must Travel

Two identical beings stood in an impossibly white room. They gazed at a field of images, each with their head cocked at the same angle. The images played across a silver-blue pool set in an enormous, tilted basin. The left being’s slender finger touched an image in the bowl, sending a ripple through the remaining pictures.

In a crisp voice, the being stated, “That is what we need.”

The other made a precision turn of 180 degrees, placed a hand on an identical visionary basin with different images, and responded, “Are you sure this is not the final piece?”

“We do not deal in surety. We deal in probability. A surety is an illusion.”

The beings silently agreed and returned to the first basin.

A young man and woman were staring at each other, the way beings have been staring at each other since the beginning of most species. The guy pushed the girl’s hair back and wrapped his arms around her. Both were breathing heavily in anticipation of what was to come, their lips less than an inch from touching. This would be their first kiss.

“Do you think she will regret it?” one asked the other.

The other did something resembling a shrug. “Given that she seems to regret everything, probability suggests that is likely.”

“Yes, such a predictable species. They fail to discern what should be regretted, what should be appreciated, and what should be forgotten. And don’t get me started on their abysmal questioning skills. They never, ever ask the right questions.”

“Yes, but sometimes, although very rarely, they do have the right answers.”

The two beings were meddlers. They meddled far and wide, and all the while they told themselves a remarkable lie: that they did not interfere with the strings that bind the universe. They preferred other words for it. Guidance. Correction. A slight adjustment of the odds. Like most meddlers, they were certain their actions were right, and just, and for the greater good.

On occasion, when events slipped beyond what they had calculated, they would concede that a line had perhaps been crossed. Sometimes this was enough to turn them from a path they should never have started down. At other times it produced a correction so severe that it created more problems than it solved.

Yet, like most beings afflicted with this nature, they could never be entirely rid of it. They could be profoundly perceptive about the inner workings of others, and of whole societies. But their own character remained a mystery to them. They were a story that kept going but never grew. They had watched countless species make this same mistake, and had noted it each time with interest.

That a reckoning might one day come did not occur to them. The probability that they could be truly wrong was not one they had ever calculated. They had never seen the need. In all their long watching, the ones who were wrong had always been someone else.