The Stochastic Man

22

Everyone has the gift,Carvajal said to me. Very few know how to use it. And he had talked of a time when I would be able to see things myself. Not if, but when.

Was he planning to awaken the gift in me?

The idea terrified and thrilled me. To look into the future, to be free of the buffeting of the random and the unexpected, to move beyond the vaporous imprecisions of the stochastic method into absolute certainty — oh, yes, yes, yes, how wondrous, but how frightening! To swing open that dark door, to peer down the track of time at the wonders and mysteries lying in wait -

A miner was leaving his home for his work,

When he heard his little child scream.

He went to the side of the little girl’s bed,

She said, Daddy, I’ve had such a dream.

Frightening because I knew I might see something I didn’t want to see, and it might drain and shatter me as Carvajal apparently had been drained and shattered by knowledge of his death. Wondrous because to see meant escape from the chaos of the unknown, it meant attainment at last of that fully structured, fully determined life toward which I had yearned since abandoning my adolescent nihilism for the philosophy of causality.

Please, Daddy, don’t go to the mines today.

For dreams have so often come true.

My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away.

For I never could live without you.

But if Carvajal did indeed know some way of bringing the vision to life in me, I vowed I would handle it differently, not letting it make a shriveled recluse out of me, not bowing passively to the decrees of some invisible playwright, not accepting puppethood as Carvajal had done. No, I would use the gift in an active way, I would employ it to shape and direct the flow of history, I would take advantage of my special knowledge to guide and direct and alter, insofar as I was able, the pattern of human events.

Oh, I dreamed that the mines were all flaming with fire. And the men all fought for their lives. Just then the scene changed and the mouth of the mine was covered with sweethearts and wives.

According to Carvajal such shaping and directing was impossible. Impossible for him, perhaps; but would I be bound by his limitations? Even if the future is fixed and unchangeable, knowledge of it could still be put to use to cushion blows, to redirect energies, to create new patterns out of the wreckage of the old. I would try. Teach me to see, Carvajal, and let me try!

Oh, Daddy, don’t work in the mines today.

For dreams have so often come true.

My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away.

For I never could live without you.