"Super new and awesome WHATIF2008 machine! Have you ever wondered what would your life be like if that special girl wouldn't have dumped you, if you had scored better with those SATs? Have you ever wondered what would your life be like if you had made different that big decision?
Well Waist Yourlaif has brought the new WHATIF2008 machine! you just make a few adjustments about your name, age and the number of cats you've had and then the machine takes you back to all your life showing you whatever would have happened if you had done something different! You heard right! Any moment of your life!"
Marcus had to heard no more about this magical instrument, they had him with the SATs part. He grabbed the phone and dialed to the number on screen, he maxed his credit card. And then he just sited on the couch waiting, as he had always done. After some weeks of waiting he was about to call again when he heard the door bell.
Riiing Riiing Riiing
So he ran to the door, still in his pajamas and opened.
"Oh, it's you again..." he said, loosing all the enthusiasm gained in the last couple of seconds
"We are the girl scouts sir! And we came to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity" they were interrupted
"Seriously Kim, Kelly and Kaley, i have no idea why you girls keep coming." said Marcus while almost closing the door
"Those are not our names sir, and we had never came to your house. But we came to offer you some candy bars" they were interrupted again
"Why don't you make yourselves a favor and go sell your shit-tasting zero-calories bars to your sweet grandmas? Oh yes...you can't 'cause they're all DEAD!" he yelled, making Shelby, Gina and Fiona burst into tears
And finally getting rid of the pests in a kinder way than used, Marcus went back to his sit. After a fe more hours he remembered he was waiting for his super WHAT IF machine. And when he was about to call again, the door bell rang.
riiing
"coming... you better don't be three underage munchikins selling shitty bars" he jingled, in his everything but melodious voice
As he opened there was just his guy standing there, clearly tired of all the delivers of the day. They guy was holding a little black box and a release form
"You have to sign here, and here" the delivery guy said, pointing at the form that looked more like a lifetime contract
"Right, right, so... where is the machine?" Marcus asked, expecting a huge wooden box with lots of stamps of all the places it had to be before delivering it to the public in general.
To be honest, he expected a whole crew carrying it and even an interview, being him the number five buyer (according to the operator a couple of week ago). But that was fine, he guessed.
"This is it" said the delivery guy, showing the tiny black box he held in his arm. It was quiet little in fact. Lots less than what Marcus had expected, after all a five weeks shipping owed to be kind of spectacular.
"Are you sure this is it? Isn't that like the instructions booklet or something?" Marcus was very disappointed, but he was too impressed to yell at the delivery guy, and was too overwhelmed to come up with some smart insult.
"Yes sir, enjoy it" said the delivery guy, with some weird expression that tried to be a smile. So he walked away with the forms signed, leaving the man all alone at his entrance door, staring at the tiny package.
After a few minutes, Marcus found out that for some reason, staring at the box didn't make it bigger. So he entered to his house, trying to convince himself that size was not what matters, just as a few years ago when his girlfriend dumped him for the same reason. Staring at things won't make them bigger.
After the disappointment he finally concluded to open the box, perhaps it was an apology form the company to explain that such delay was due to the improvement of the machine, and that there would be no charge. But instead he found a huge paper diagram, which he took away form the box as ant other person treats a handbook. But there was nothing in there, so he turned the box upside down, tore the whole thing apart ad then. After looking again to the huge booklet, he saw a little cellphone-kind of like device.
He tried to remember, but in the infomercial they never showed the so called machine once, they did show how could you adapt it to your T.V, to your surround system, to the car and even to the mp3 player. But they never showed the machine.
"when it comes to electronics, the smaller the better right?" he thought "Obviously a japanese idea to feel better about themselves" and he laughed at his own joke
But after trying to understand a half of the things that the diagram showed, he gave up. He would call the company. But after searching some kind of number in the booklet he just found the serial number, and the box pieces didn't helped any better.
After so much disappointment in a row, he did what he always did in moments of stress, he opened a six pack. And in between the beer drinking and the nachos making he finally found the english section in the booklet, which was of no more help. Because a few hours ago, he hadn't noticed he was trying to read portuguese instead of english, which now looked like a bit of chinese anf french. But that didn't mattered, he fell asleep as soon as he got to the third line into the introduction of the product.
And the following days were just about the man against the machine, an epic battle that ended with the man having to make use of the language in numerous ways, making the discovery that cellphone-like thingy was the container of the WHATIF2008, which made the whole thing a bit more weirder. Which led to the man realizing how to plug it into the screen.
Then after introducing all his information (including the name of her great great grandmother's cat) he turned the thing on. And by thing I mean a mini chip like thing that could be hardly read "WHATIF 2008". Then, after turning it on the screen went black and it made a pop.
Marcus then read over and over again the booklet on what step was next, or what were some commonly made mistakes, and since his face was not turning blue or his house was on fire, none of above applied. It was actually quiet frustrating, all what he went trough and now nothing.
"What a piece of crap, what if I just set on fire the corporation who made this, I'm sure they would then be a little more helpful right?" he said to himself in that ironic sense of humor he just got.
But next thing he knew, the screen showed a micro video of him right in that spot, then in a fast motion sequence it showed him taking a flight to Tokyo/ moving around the city/ watching the corporation's building in front of him/ getting into the pipes system/ setting on fire all/ big explosion/ dead. The sequence lasted about thirty seconds, but Marcus got it like if it had been a two hours long film.
Being amazed by the power of it he started asking silly questions
What if I had been the most popular kid on high school?
lots of friends/ parties/ alcohol and drugs/ he having lots of sex/ car accident/ dead.
What if my mother had let me have a dog for my 10th birthday?
happy moments/ becomes a better kid/ dog dies/ keeps memories/ makes bigger effort in school/ gets 1800 on SATs/ goes to Brown/ becomes successful lawyer/ marries/perfect family/ happy moments/ end.
"I'm sure talking to mom next Sunday to bitch around more about not letting me have Spike..." he said out loud, fascinated with the power of the thing. And for a couple of days he kept asking about the what if's of his life. He found out that if he had chose coke instead of sprite back in elementary, bullies would have bullied him less, he also learned that if he had married that philipino girl on college, he would have ended up being a writer.
But as the weeks went on, his questions about stupid decisions in his life were coming to their end. And he noticed that for some reason the WHATIF2008 machine had became sticky, and a little bit bigger, but of course it was just perception, how is a machine going to grow? But he also started to realize more things, he could ask stuff that had nothing to do with him, and soon he became half aware of the possibilities of this.
What if Colombus's boat had drowned in the middle of the sea before arriving to America?
more ships are sent/ discovered by a French/ all colonized by France/ All America speaking french
What if President Lincoln hadn't been shot in the Ford theater?
life of Lincoln goes on/ makes stupid administration mistakes/ brings the country to a semi crisis/ leaves huge evidence discovered on the XX century, that he in fact was gay/ commotion caused around the country/ patriotic chaos.
What if Jesus Christ was never born?
Samael Christ is considered a messiah/ is killed in a common way/ politics take his cause to gain power/ his faith is spread/ Christianity is made/ fanatic people do stupid things
And so and so, he started seeing how would the world be if the story would have been completely different, and he saw some terrifying thins, he also saw that other things would have been completely the same. Mainly because that which he thought was the cause of things, wasn't as it happens in history. As time passed by, he grew more conscious of all the possibilities that that magical machine had, soon he started asking bigger questions.
What if the meteorite that extinguished dinosaurs had never hit Earth?
dinosaurs evolve into smaller shapes/ mammals evolve to be smaller too/reptiles spread in many different types/ one type suffers a great deal of change/ that certain type becomes aware of more things/ new reptiles become smart/ those reptiles worship a God.
What if we were all born bisexual?
men marrying women and men. women marrying women and men/ polygamy/ slower growth of population/ awareness of the problems caused by overpopulation/ birth control/ no extreme poverty.
What if all people were born with the same ethnicity traits?
people being differenced by their hair color/ discrimination/ majority of brunettes discriminating blonds and read heads/ slaughter/ fight for rights.
The time passed and Marcus hadn't noticed it had been months since he hadn't came out of his house. And apparently, the WHATIF wouldn't get off his hand, it was like sticked. Plus, for some reason, it looked bigger now. He and his was were a mess, and his life as well. But he was very much intrigued of how would things go on if only something had been different. His questions kept getting deeper and the WHATIF2008 kept answering, always in fast motion sequences.
One bad day of October, Marcus's electricity went down, due to a storm, or the fact that he hadn't paid it in four months now. The fact was that the WHATIF2008 ran out of batteries, and then it just turned off in the middle of a question. He was shocked, how could it went off just when he was about to reveal the mysteries of the universe?
He decided to wait until the electricity came back, but something in his logic told him it wouldn't. So he stood up from his couch for the first time in a long time, with the WHATIF2008 stil sticked to his and, and now it seriously looked big, he compared it to the size of the cellphone-case thingy, and it was bigger now.
He went out for a while, of the living room. And walked around the house, observing how it clearly needed some cleaning, it even looked abandoned. The old pizzas were piling in a corner, the trash was all around the house. He did heard more than one rat.
For his amazement, when he went to his door and opened it, it was daylight. And he thought he hadn't seen it probably because he used to watch the screen on the dark so he wouldn't be interrupted for that silly light that comes from above.
He decided that a good walk around the neighborhood would be fine, after all, he had lost count of how much time he had been in there after the first couple of months. And aparently, the whole street was plagued with old people, where once lived the Hendersons (a newlywed couple) now lived a couple of old people in their late sixties. It was outrageous, he noticed the same in a lot of other houses. All of the sudden the people had moved out, and then old gigs had moved instead of them.
Worried about how many months he had spent with the WHATIF, Marcus asked some old man who was on his porch.
"Excuse me? sir, do you know by any chance the people who lived here before you?" he asked
"I couldn't, you see, I built this house" said the old man
"Right..." he said "Old wacko needs his pills" he thought
"Hey, you should have checked that lump in your hand, it sure looks big" said the concerned old man
"It's nothing.." Marcus said "Do you know by any chance today's date?"
"Sure, It's October the second of 2059" said the old man
"two thousand and nine" corrected Marcus "You mean two thousand and nine"
"No, no I don't" said the old man, a little scared now. So as quickly as he could, he went inside his house
And there he stood Marcus Fisher, watching at the now integrated to his arm WHATIF2008, bought in the year in the name. Realizing that all those what if's took a hell of a time, and that he could ask "What if I hadn't bought this and I had went on with my life?" and he could've surely seen it, but he would never live it.
[Don't day dream about a hundred posts, do them]
By I'm the penguin
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