The Destiny Principle: A Project Spellcheck Short Story
According to Fatherist scripture, the universe unleashed from the Almighty’s Star was sculpted to fit the design of his destiny. From the greatest astral body to the loneliest iota, everything has a destiny, a reason, a “why,” for everything it was, is, and eventually shall be.
Truthfully, I know little and care nothing about the assumptions of the religious. Mine was never a faith of constellations or angels, but one of dirt and blood that defied any notion of preordainment found in the forsaken fouls of Pyre City’s shantytown district.
Back then, I believed that my destiny was mine alone to decide. So long as I had the will, I could do whatever I wanted and become whoever I wanted to be. Many were the futures I dreamt, but each one of them shared one factor: the world knowing that I existed—and being all the better for it.
It was shameful, how naïve I was, but a child is not to be blamed for being childish, and I recognize the factors that brought me to such delusion. Still, clinging to so sweet a dream meant the truth would scorch me all the more painfully.
In mere minutes, I lost everything. My home, my friends, any feeling in my arms, any sense of hope—all of it was pried away from me in a cruel inferno. Even after I was given a second chance by some potion brewer, I still could not escape the endless storm of whys rattling inside my head. Why was I betrayed by the only family I knew? Why couldn’t I have seen it coming? Why did no one else even come to try and save me except for one stir-crazy stranger? The questions were endless, and the answers were invisible.
After restoring my arms with allegedly forbidden arts, the potion brewer decided I would stay and work for her as her assistant. Helping her concoct potions and “agents,” as she liked to call her more lethal products, I learned and found renewed purpose through chemistry, magic, and arcane practices. While none of those ever got me an inch closer to resolving the questions that plagued me, they did lead me to far more reality-grounded questions that could distract me for a time. Questions like “Why is a toothrat’s tooth the key ingredient in mouthwash?” “Why does mixing it with crulture mucus and swarmsnake venom in an oversized pot create an adhesive able to melt rock and bone?” “Why can ink carefully slathered onto the tip of pointed majusite reanimate dead flesh and bind it to one’s thoughts?”
Now, those were questions with answers. Simple answers. Consistent answers. Discoverable, demonstrable answers, bound decisively to matters of logic.
A mixture of two ingredients will react the exact same way it reacted a hundred times before and will react a hundred times after. If the same combination yields a differing result, even down to the most insignificant factors, such deviance is the fault of the chemist, environmental factors, or miscalculations. In science and magic, there is no such thing as random luck: each and every outcome is the result of precise design, if not by some “Fatherlord,” then by the universe itself or some other progenitor force.
It was only upon realizing this plain and simple truth that I was struck by the greatest revelation of my life: if ingredients in precise conditions would repeat the same reaction a hundred times, then so would one being in precise situations repeat the same future. For the first time in my life, I finally surrendered myself to the truth: destiny was very real, and it was something that not only permeated all facets of our life, but extended well beyond our capability to truly influence it.
I called my discovery the Destiny Principle: the understanding that when all factors of any person’s life—his biology, his environment, his relationships, his hardships, and all the minutiae in between his past and present—are known, his reaction to every ounce of a circumstance, as well as how it would affect him from that moment forward, are a matter of efficient calculations. In turn, one could also understand how a person’s actions will influence the people, places, and things within its sphere of influence, and perhaps even the person itself. Through such a lens of comprehension, the world can be seen as the sprawling web of causes and effects that it is, and one can realize that we are but helpless flies at the mercy of its unescapable silk.
Should I be able to unearth even a fractional understanding of the equation behind this principle, the foresight it would offer would be near-flawless. Every variable would be accounted for, every event would be foreseeable, and every person, no matter how secretive or deceptively unassuming, would be predictable. I would have the power to calculate destiny itself, and not a single unanswerable question would torment me any longer.
Foolish would I be, however, to believe that knowledge of the Destiny Principle meant liberation from it. Even the very words I scribble upon these tattered papers are bound by the same forces that bind all things to their course. Such awareness does not scare me, nor does it deter me. Instead, it brings me comfort, knowing that there is a rhythm to the world’s chaos to decipher.
My plan is not to use this knowledge to drown myself in nihilism nor attempt to become some dwarf god. There are other matters to attend to, and this knowledge is more a tool for the journey than the crown of the destination. From this, I have but one hope: that, at the end of all things, I can face him and finally understand why.