Congratulations on Learning Just How Worthless You Really Are!

The coin will slip into the slot with a satisfying snickt, and then the hands will begin to move.  Down to the surface of the counter, which will be only a few inches above the start of the glass enclosure the plastic gypsy sits within.  You’ll rest your hand on the stick just in front of where she once clasped her hands and say:

“Tell me my future.”

The gypsy will sit still for a moment, as if contemplating just how to respond to this question before blinking her plastic eyes once and opening her mouth.

“You have no future.”

You’ll wait patiently while she leaves space for a dramatic pause.  Gypsy announcements of this kind often have them, you’ll know from experience, and after such a delightfully ominous announcement, you’ll be positive that this particular gypsy has got a golden follow-up out there.  That’ll make the disappointment all the more thorough.

“Your life will be a series of uninterrupted half-measures, relationships strung together without marker or meaning.  By the time you realize just how ill conceived the path you’ve taken with your life is, you’ll be sitting there, nearing middle age, still doing data entry while your novel goes not only unpublished but unfinished, unwritten, and unread even by your own eyes.  One night, you will sit down with a bottle of wine and begin to read your own story, the story you speak about endlessly even today.  You will not read more than ten pages before you decide that writing simply isn’t for you.”

The machine will pause again here, blink twice, then continue.

“You will consider taking your own life, but you will decide that something good may come if you do not.  You will lack both the conviction and the singularity of vision to follow through with such a simple and effective plan for improving the world.  And no good will come of it: your life will end others, simply by presenting itself.  The unpleasant truth of the world will never dawn upon you, and when you die it will be alone, in a hospital, unable to recall your own name.  The only thing you’ll know, deep in your marrow, is that you have wasted your life with a thoroughness and singlemindedness that is almost impressive.”

With this the gypsy’s eyes and mouth will close.  Her hands will raise so that they touch the elbows on her alternate arm.  The lights lining her case will dim and you’ll find yourself walking away, feeling vaguely dissatisfied without knowing why.  You’ll decide not to bother getting the ice cream you came to the boardwalk for in the first place, instead opting to head straight home, eat ramen and watch Downton Abbey.   The next day, you’ll head in to work unfazed.

Congratulations on Learning Just How Worthless You Really Are!