The Future Maker

The Future Maker

A Short Story

by

Johnnie Atherton

He was the Future Maker. For whatever price you were willing to pay,
he would construct a Future of precise possibilities. A stainless steel
and crystal Future for the ambitious, a summer blue lake of tears for
the melancholy, or a simple, smooth textured Future of
tranquillity.
He worked alone at the top of a modest hill and wove his Futures from
what he observed. He dissected desires, unfolded dreams and moulded
them with inspiration into the fabric of time itself. Few were ever
disappointed with his work, for the result gave inevitability to the
course of their lives, but an inevitability which was emotionally
perfect, tuned to the individual's own dream world and not to the
grossness of material life.
He was the Future Maker, but had despair as his constant companion and
ambition his greatest tormentor. No matter how gifted he was or how
skilled he had become, there was one Future that evaded him. He was
unable to devise the joy of love - neither for himself or another. He
had employed affection and friendship as part of his grander themes,
and once had constructed a Future of unrepentant lust for one of his
more undiscerning clients. Yet even that emotion had left him
unfulfilled.
He would spend long hours seated outside his home, gazing across the
grassy slopes beneath him. Ceaselessly, he would try to grasp the
fleeting touch of lovers, the open smiles and the soft whispers, but
always the true essence of the emotion eluded him. He himself had never
experienced the brush of cool lips or the warmth of a gentle breath
upon his cheek. His pleasures had always been cerebral. To him, his
work was the ultimate expression of the mind. Observation and analysis
were surely two of the greatest pleasures. Yet, he wondered and
despaired.
Gradually his work began to lose its lustre. Its sheer impossible
beauty, which had set him so far ahead of his contemporaries, began to
show slight but noticeable imperfections. His appreciation of
complexity became dulled, and Futures, which should have been
masterpieces of interwoven fantasies of expectation, became mundane
inevitabilities. Consequently, fewer people came to him for their
dreams to be transformed into certainty. Eventually ?. they were no
more.
The winding path through the whispering birch trees gave way to the
encroaching grass, until only a thin line of dark soil gave any
indication of the road to his door. A desolate and lonely creature, he
contemplated his own Future and disliked what he saw; an endless
desert, devoid of love, with the thorns of his failure besetting him on
every side. It was therefore time to attend to himself. His own Future
would be his final act.
It was Amber and Gold. It contained elements of nostalgia, with the
touch of pity, but essentially consisted of longing and hope. Unseen by
the world, he poured into its construction the untold years of other
people's experiences and his own yearning and ambition for
fulfilment.
Gradually, he felt the skills he feared were lost returning with fresh
vigour. As each day passed, his confidence grew. He could once more
feel the thrill of his youth, when to twist the fabric of time was the
simplest of chores, and a second was an unending eternity. He still
needed that elusive whisp of love, and he obtained it in the only way
he knew; he recalled previous Futures he had created. He added a
mother's tenderness, from a long forgotten memory, and then the bond
between true friends.
His Future began to take on the aspects of his greatest works. It
touched the soul with compassion and the waking mind with wonder. Each
day he toiled, hardly stopping for rest, and each day he felt close to
his dream. He added the dappled forest light and the warmth of a
remembered summer; the flight of a moth and the smile of a child.
Slowly, but with an inevitability born of his devoted skills, his
Future took shape. Firefly flecks of light winked in and out of the air
before him. A glisten of frost sang like the tinkle of far recalled
bells above the roof of his home. Then, one evening, shortly before
sunset, he took the last rays of the dying sun and threaded them into
the final strands of his creation. He grasped his Future.
Time stopped. The sun hung suspended, one second above the distant
sea, while the river at the base of the hill ceased its murmur. He was
at one with his Future, glowing radiantly within its reflected Amber
and Gold. Within the multitude of intersecting, and almost iridescent
lines, circles and whorls of emotional fire, he revelled in the
silence; the freedom from toil. Urgent whisps of hope gently tugged the
edge of his mind. His gaze followed the stretch of grassland sweeping
to the river. Slowly and with deliberation, he walked down the remnants
of the old path, reflecting as he had done many times before on his
increasing isolation, until finally he stood erect on the water's
edge.
Why did he not feel at peace? His Future was still visible, glowing
majestically around him. But why did it not become part of him?
Stretching away in front of him, the frozen ribbon of the river and the
wheeling terns, now pasted on and immobile sky, told him he had created
his Future. Somehow, it was imperfect.
His unease grew to alarm as he heard the unmistakable sound of running
water. The river was moving again, sluggishly at first, but with
gathering momentum. He sensed, rather than saw, his Future withdrawing
from him. He groped blindly for the hope, but felt it melt into
indifference. The agony of failure sounded its hollow laughter in his
mind, while the swirling waters of the river mocked him at his
feet.
Why?
His Future lay to one side, still Amber and Gold, but remote; an alien
thing. He could see it was the finest work he had ever created,
exquisite in form and time, yet totally unacceptable of himself.
Why?
Where had the calculations gone so disastrously wrong? He frantically
reworked the emotional constants. There was the mother's love, the
child's love! There was the tenderness he felt for the whole of
creation! Were the time co-ordinates so wrong? No! With that much
desire over so many long, long years it should have worked! It had
not??.!
He sank to his knees, despairingly clutching at the soft soil of the
bank. The cool grass pressed wetly on his forehead. Was he to be denied
his greatest goal - his own Future - when he had created so much for so
many? He felt the earth cling to him as if wanting to accept him into
its uncritical substance.
He was totally unprepared for the voice above him.
"What is that?"
He stiffened, then gradually raised himself and turned to see a woman
standing several yards away. She was looking inquiringly at his Future,
lying softly glowing to his left. His astonishment and a growing sense
of embarrassment at first robbed him of the power to reply. The
intrusion, at this time, compounded his sense of loss. He felt exposed,
vulnerable and somehow in poor control of himself. The solidity and
enduring sanity of the ground on which he lay was somehow far more
preferable to human contact at that moment. It was only when she
repeated the question that he was able to answer her, somewhat
brokenly.
"What can you see?"
"This beautiful??. Somewhere," she said, slowly circling his
Future.
"But you should not be able to see that!" he exclaimed, partly in
disbelief that anyone could see another person's Future, and partly
because of a sense of annoyance that another should intrude upon such a
private matter. He watched warily as the woman continued to circle his
Future, now and then putting out her hand to hesitantly touch its
glistening surface. She appeared to be in a dream state. As she
circled, a smile then a frown, then a far away look, as if she was
seeing beyond the surface to some far distant place. She gave a slight
shiver, turned and moved towards him.
He could not understand why this action disturbed him She seemed
pleasant, certainly not beautiful, and in no way threatening, yet he
had a sense of disquiet, of unease. He rose to his feet and
involuntarily took a step backwards. She was now no more than an arm's
length away. She looked directly at him, and he was struck by the sheer
depth of feeling in her eyes, dusted with a sparkle of silver upon
brown.
"You can't see that," he repeated, immediately feeling foolish for the
repetition and the denial of the obvious. To retrieve the situation,
and more than a little intrigued, he went on, "What exactly do you
see?"
She lowered her head. In a barely audible voice she said, "A dream. So
many years of longing that it hurts to hear its desperate, lonely call.
So much compassion, yet a world of humour and affection. It is a world
I would not have believed could exist. A creation of pure joy, but
unconsummated?."
She faltered and turned away. He could see that she was crying. Her
tears seemed to complement his own anguish, and her pain became his.
Without knowing why, he reached out and gently held her shoulders. Her
hair brushed his face.
He flinched, not from the brief contact, but from the overwhelming
surge of joy as his Future, unbidden, sprang back into his whole being.
This was not a simple joining as before, but a total fusion with his
intellect. He ecstatically reached out for his Future, now radiating on
unknown emotional wavebands. It vibrated! It sang! He felt its caress
enfold him and the woman he held in his arms. The infinite voids of his
mind felt the touch of love ?.. and more.
A low voice came to him through the mists of happiness.
"It is my Future too. You created our love yet to be."
The two figures stood motionless, intertwined in Amber and Gold, until
the evening became their past.