Future Perfect Tense

The Decision Vision did not include being strapped down in an entire machine, thankfully. It was more of a metal crown covered in gizmos and wires.

I manned the console over to the side, as Nicky strapped on the headgear. It’s not like it technically needed two people, but I still wanted to be involved. I missed getting to do experiments with Nicky at my side, and so if this was going to be the very last one, I wanted us both to be a part of it.

“Phone off and five feet away,” I reminded him.

“Yes ma’am.” It was a weird feeling to see him move with calm assurance around to the other side of a metallic pylon. I hadn’t realized I still had the same basket that we used for that purpose, but he clearly expected it and he was right. He dropped his phone in with a clunk and then returned to stand next to the machine.

I carefully checked over all the readings. Despite not having been used in months, everything seemed to be in good working condition. Both the keyboard and small display for entering the relevant statement were cobbled together from leftover parts, but they both worked fine, too.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s the first question?”

“What if I dated Samantha Nichols?”

“Well, here’s free advice: you can’t take her name,” I joked. “Not unless you want to be Nicky Nichols.”

I didn’t hear a laugh, and when I glanced up, his face was pink. “Why would I take her name?”

“Sorry. I was just kidding.” 

I started typing in the first what-if:

Statement: #PRIMARYUSER dates Samantha Nichols. 

There was a lot of additional parsing logic that went into a machine like this, but since it was also operating in conjunction with Nicky’s brain waves, it could be fairly flexible with the wording. The one weird component was the #PRIMARYUSER variable, which was necessary for correct operation. At first we were trying to be formal, and used ‘Nicholas’ and that didn’t work at all. Eventually I decided that Nicky didn’t see himself as a name referent, but as a conceptual individual that I had to hardcode into existence. Which is complicated science babble, but the important thing is that it worked now.

“Ready?” I asked.

“As ready as I’m going to be.”

I pulled the lever to activate the machine, and watched as the metal crown began to glow. 

It only lasted about twenty seconds -- which I knew from prior experience to correspond with a vision about five minutes long. Enough to hopefully get a good snapshot about whether this was a good decision or not. We knew from our testing that none of these futures were certain, but they functioned well as a taste of what might come. And a sufficiently positive one would serve as a good goal to work towards.

“You still with me?” I asked, as the crown faded to dull grey again, and Nicky remained silent.

“Yeah,” he finally said, his voice kind of thick.

“What did you see?”

“Me and Samantha breaking up.”

I winced. “Ouch. You okay?”

“Well. It’s not something I want to see again the normal way through.”

“I guess that’s an answer.” My fingers nervously twitched across the machine’s control panel. “Any idea why it turned out that way?”

Nicky hesitated, but let out the kind of sigh that made me really want to give him a hug. Even if that’d be way overstepping my bounds. “From the things she said, I was withdrawing and not talking to her. From what I said, I didn’t feel like I could be the person she wanted me to be. It wasn’t— We weren’t angry at each other. But it was still a lot of emotions, and none of them good.”

I had to clench my teeth together. I wanted to say something further, but I don’t even know what it would be. That Nicky always worried about needing to be someone different when everyone just liked it when he was most comfortable and himself? That it felt like now more than ever he was forcing himself to be someone he didn’t like? 

But it wasn’t my place to say this. And all of that felt like me projecting what I wanted him to think, not listening to his actual feelings.

“What’s next,” I said tersely.

“Maybe this was a bad idea.”

I shook my head. “No, we’re in it now. Which is your next one?”

“Izzie…”

“Quit stalling.” I shot him a sharp glance, but then softened it into a grin. “Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

His shoulders slumped. “Okay. What if I dated Eleanor Perez?”

I froze. Ellie?

No wonder he didn’t want to say anything. There’s no way he could have forgotten my year-long crush on Ellie Perez, or the way it had so disastrously crashed and burned when it turned out she was intensely straight. God, even so, thinking about her still managed to make my heart beat faster. But.

Ellie had asked him out?

Good for them, I thought, while trying not to throw up. They were both great people. Like, unironically. They’d probably be great together too. God, their combined genes would mean the cutest kids, and they were both so effortlessly nice and positive people too. One picture-perfect nuclear family, coming right up.

My fingers felt numb as I typed it into the machine. 

Statement: #PRIMARYUSER dates Eleanor Perez

And then I closed my eyes and pulled the lever.

Seconds ticked by.

When I opened my eyes again, the crown was still glowing. It was almost a full minute before it went dark again, meaning the vision had been at least fifteen minutes. What did that mean? That had to mean this one was better, right?

Nicky was staring off into the middle distance. 

“How was it?” I asked, trying to keep any feelings of fragility out of my voice. This was about him, not me. Not… us.

“Ellie and I were married,” he said.

I swallowed. “Oh.”

“I was older. We had two kids.” His hand drifted up to his head. “I was… balding. Heavier than I am now.”

“Happens to the best of us,” I said as a joke that even to my ears immediately fell flat. “But that sounds pretty good? Promising?”

“I was… happy for them,” he said, even though he sounded anything but. “I loved our kids. I loved her. Genuinely.”

I couldn’t help myself. The stuff from earlier was stuck in my head, the problems Nicky had with not being able to be who Samantha wanted him to be. The way he always looked uncomfortable when he talked about himself and relationships. The haunted look on his face when I told him that yes, I liked women, but he was the exception, I promised. I could love him for him.

“Okay, so you liked them. How did you feel about yourself?” I asked. "Aside from the dad bod, I guess."

He jumped, like he had felt a static shock. He started taking off the helmet, his fingers clumsily not cooperating.

“Nicky?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I should go.”

“Nicky!”

He looked up at me, his eyes glassy and face unreadable. “Thanks, Izzie. I got my answers. I should leave you alone.”

I reached out towards him, but he backed away, setting down the helmet. I tried again to step over to him, but before I knew it, he had slipped around the other side of a large console and fled the workshop.

Had I really managed to fuck everything up again? I was unexpectedly good at that.