"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."
"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.
"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."
"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.
"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."
"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.
"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."
"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.
"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"
"Yes." I said, "I do."
"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"
"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."
"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.
"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."
"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.
"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."
"And Nina?" I asked.
"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"
"Yes." I nodded.
"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.
"The exception to the rule." I agreed.
"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."
"How so?" I wanted to know.
"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.
"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."
"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.
"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.
I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."
"Very quickly." She affirmed.
"And you?"
She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."
"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"
She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."
Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.
Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.
Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.