FATE!

This is a simple, fictitious story, an account of the way I believe fate possibly operates

Apparently, 13 billion years ago, there was the ‘big bang’. Matter formed at a phenomenal rate and hurtled into the new ‘space’ at almost the speed of light. Monstrous chemical, atomic and thermal actions occurred, so that one element almost immediately became another, each multiplying and splitting with stupendous speed. In the time it has taken to read this far, the new universe may have enlarged from the size of a pea to the size of 20 galaxies!

Now let’s imagine a billion years later. Amongst this broiling creation was a lump of newly formed iron, still white hot, it’s size about that of a small car, its mass immeasurable and other materials like nickel, gold and helium wrapped up in its structure like the multi-coloured streaks of foam on the top of a cup of coffee.

For a few billion years this lump wandered the still-forming universe, veering under the gravitational pull of countless other bodies, occasionally crashing into one, so that pieces broke off and went their separate ways. The lump also cooled during this time, the outside became pockmarked from collisions and it developed a powdery grey appearance as various changes affected it. After nearly 13 billion years of travelling through space at thousands of kilometres an hour, the lump reduced in size to about that of a football. It was in fact nearing the end of its amazing journey and heading straight towards an insignificant star, in an insignificant part of the universe. The small star had a family of nine planets, and it would take the lump of iron another thirty-six years to get there.

At about this time John Pitman was being born.

He was the son of working-class people, living in Bristol, where his father was a printer and his mother helped prepare meals for the pupils at the local school. She and her husband had ambitions for the boy and almost every spare pound they made was set aside to pay for his future education. John was a bright child and did well at primary school, especially when, at the age of 11, he earned a scholarship to one of the best schools in Bristol, famous for turning out quality university candidates.

When he reached 16, John took some important exams, which thrilled his parents when he passed with flying colours, resulting in acceptance at Oxford, where he again did well, working hard at the law degree he was working towards.

Five years later, one of the large legal firms in London snapped him up and he started earning considerable sums of money. He sent nearly half of it to his parents and lived frugally by himself in a small but very well set up flat in London’s West End.

This was life John enjoyed, until, when he was just 30, he met beautiful Annabelle and they were soon married, settling down to the easy existence of the young and wealthy!

Over the next six years or so the couple’s lives were pretty idyllic, with plenty of money, plenty of friends, a great home and two lovely children. John progressed in the legal firm and became a partner, and Annabelle was very active in the Red Cross and the Freemasons’ Hospital, an organisation of which John was now a member; in fact he was due to become Master of his Lodge within the next year, just after his 36th birthday. Life just couldn’t be better for the young couple.

Then fate took a hand…

Three days after his 36th birthday, John was walking along the Strand, returning from lunch with some colleagues, at precisely the same time that the lump of iron, now about the size of a football entered the earth’s atmosphere, still travelling at thousands of miles an hour. It heated violently under the friction of the air and its outer surface began to vaporise, the lump quickly getting even smaller as it hurtled towards a point on the earth’s surface, a point that happened to be half way along the Strand, in London! The lump, or as we should now call it, the meteor, slowed more in the thicker air until it was only travelling at several hundred miles an hour and this allowed it to cool down again, until it returned almost to the grey colour it had been for the past few billion years. Its trip through earth’s atmosphere had only taken two minutes, whereas John’s walk from the end of the street had used up at least six, but those two times were precisely right to place both the meteor and John at the same spot in the Strand at exactly the same time.

John of course, knew nothing of what happened, the meteor struck him like a bullet in the top of his head, smashing his brain as it passed through and leaving his body just above the knee of his left leg, to fall with a dull clang to the footpath, before poor, dead John could even start to fall there himself.

So ended the 13-billion-year odyssey of the lump of iron, during which enormous time, it had always been aiming unerringly for John’s head, even before Earth itself existed!

And that my friends, is what I believe fate is all about!

Do you agree with Brian? Do you believe that fate is set in stone or that you can change your life’s direction? Tell us below.