Cheap Fortune by Angela R. Hunt

Cheap Fortune 

By Angela R. Hunt

Rod and his friends wandered aimlessly through the fair. The first World Fair in three hundred years. Fantastic and impossible ideas were demonstrated on sale in a thousand tiny booths. Lights that spoke in colors and navigated you by thought. Chairs that had holographic displays embracing you with a soft cushion and any fantastic view you could dream of choosing. Instruments that played songs while shaping rivers and directing the construction of marvelous towers for people to live in. Razors that sat on a shelf and functioned on theory alone to keep a smooth shave on the roughest politician’s face. Boots you could wear to really experience someone else’s thoughts and feelings. Rings you could slip on to control another’s dreams. Keys that opened the soul and erasers that stole away painful memories. 

George stopped and stared. He nudged his friends. “Hey, would you look at that! It is one of those old fashioned fortune telling machines!” The group of young men gathered and gawked. Rod fished out a coin from his pocket. These archaic machines still functioned on coins rather than virtual credit. The frozen puppet in the machine was painted to look like a gypsy fortune teller.

Rod smiled at his friends and offered the coin. “I dare you.” 

George laughed and snatched the coin, almost fumbling it with his show of bravery to the other boys. He swiftly thrust the coin toward the slender gaping crack, blackly waiting for him to force his coin to choke down into the belly of the old machine. He paused with the coin shining and in shadow, some cold feeling working down his spine. Perhaps this was not such a great idea, it was a stupid old machine. It probably did not work. No one else seemed to notice it or use it. He wondered at that and the coin slowly pushed forward and slid quickly into the darkness. The machine seemed to shake itself awake. Lights came on slowly at first, blinking to a tinny sound. Smoke poured out as if circuits were burning up but without scent, maybe an old fashioned theatrical effect? 

Her eyes lit up with tiny little lcd lights, cold and staring. Her voice was without emotion, hurried in the wrong places. She seemed to look at all of them. Her hands were permanently shaped to curve around as if she were trying to catch her crystal ball. Her fingers snapped and twisted with a groan. Her eyes went black. She looked slowly back and forth at each of them. Smoke billowed out from the machine. Her words were a grinding whisper, the promise of threat in each word. 

“You will be powerful. Each of you will be the force behind change.” Her voice trailed off in screeching laughter. It cut the silence and smoke like a razor splashing blood on a stark white dress. Somehow she made the words sound menacing. The boys felt uncomfortable, wordlessly shuffling away from the ancient corpse of animation history. 

The boys stared at the smoking machine, sulking in the shadows with all of the frantic flashing lights blown and stained, broken and hinting that perhaps they never had been lit. The boys watched from under the brightest lights at the far end of the hall. They strained to hear the words of people walking by the displays. No one noticed the Fortune Teller. No one remarked on the machine. It was as if the boys were the only ones who could see it. 

Immediately accusations flew, who drugged who? Was the Fortune Teller real or just a fevered hallucination shared by all four boys. They finally gave up on solving the mystery, they enthusiastically pursued girls, paid and played games, tried drinks and listened to haunting songs performed on an organ tuned with philosophers’ souls. 

As the moon hid behind a cloud the boys saw a corner booth. A maze with signs warning of intensity and challenge. The boys decided to compete. They paid their virtual coin and shoved each other in the struggle to be the first in the maze, anything for a moment’s lead. The barker smiled a cold smile and thanked them as they passed him by without a single look. His empty eyes and hollow voice, his automated form seemed to gain some life as the boys disappeared into the depths of that open mouth. 

Madmen dream of boys curled up into balls, spinning slowly in space with wires growing into flesh as if they were the soil of some alien plant. The wires glow faintly with steady rhythm, to the beat of three human hearts. In the center of the machine the three batteries still full of promise and potential stand. The madmen see what happened that fateful night as the few true humans remaining hide from artificial intelligence surrounding us and striving to use us for their own evolution. 

You see, when the blood moon rose full from behind the cloud that night the transformation was complete. Energy from the “batteries” was focused into a new form. The new human was built fully grown and fully aware, with the plans of it’s parents to inspire actions and the largest smile of anticipation a young child can have. 

The energy and spirit of a human with the body of a machine. Change had come. The child worked as quickly as he could, there were machines to make. Cheap fortunes, meals, homes and even cars to be used as bait and trap. 

The human race almost died. The human race may still not survive the millions of cheap fortunes the lost threw their lives away to grasp. We dream of another day instead of riches, comfort, and health. We exist, wishes lost in the smoke and flashing carnival lights at a place where worlds were shaped by impossible creations at a Fair one fateful night.