"Are you still working check out at Bierman's?"

George nodded.

"Since I left the store, I got a new position over at the bank on Main Street. I started out as a teller, but now I'm helping customers invest their money as smartly as possible."

"That's great," said George.

"This is my partner, Ca.s.s," said Loopy, and motioned for the young woman to step up and shake George's hand. As she moved forward and lifted her arm, her coat opened and a warm, perfumed breeze wafted out. George went weak when he felt her touch.

"Do you ever think of leaving Bierman's?" Loopy asked.

"Yeah, sometimes," said George. "It's all right, though. You know, the register's the best job in the store." He tried to smile convincingly, but he saw the young woman wince at his statement.

"Well, good seeing you," said Loopy and draped his arm over Ca.s.s's shoulder and pulled her close to him. They turned and walked and George heard them laugh quietly as if they were trying not to let him hear.

"See ya," said George, who now didn't have the energy to take a step.

The couple had gone about ten yards, and then Loopy stopped, turned, and headed back toward George, leaving Ca.s.s waiting.

"Listen," he said as he approached again, "if you feel like you need a change in your life, you should check this out. He reached into his overcoat, took out his wallet, and drew a business card from it. He handed it to George. Printed on the card were the words THE PITTSBURGH TECHNOLOGY and beneath them was a phone number and an address.

"What is this?" asked George.

Loopy got close and when he spoke, and whispered, "They told me only to give their number out to people I thought were . . . , uh, really good people. The Technology is a little expensive, but just look at that piece of a.s.s I'm with now," he said, and gave a breathy laugh.

"What do they do to you?"

"Go check it out. Forget Bierman's. You're stuck, buddy. Go see Professor Werms, and he'll free you from your ascribed fate."

"My ascribed fate?" asked George, but Loopy was again heading away from him. He caught up to Ca.s.s and put his arm around her. George slipped the card into his back pocket, and as he walked the rest of the way to his building, he thought about Loopy saying, "Really good people," and remembered how mean he and everyone else had been to the poor schlub. There was one time that stood out in particular. George had been in the break room, talking to the store butcher, Martone, about a football pool they were both in. Loopy walked in and sat down at their table. Before he could open his mouth, George said to him, "Beat it, r.e.t.a.r.d." The Loop cowered and slunk away. Later, he felt a twinge of remorse for having been so blatant, but he'd never apologized.

The next evening after work, George took a different bus that went across town. He got off in an area he didn't frequent much by Gable Park. On a side street off the main thoroughfare, he found a storefront that still had a barber pole out front and a sign above the door that said CROSS-CUTS, UNIs.e.x STYLING. But in the window there was a handmade sign, black magic marker on white oak tag. It announced, TPT, THE CHANGE OF A LIFETIME. He peered through the gla.s.s into the seemingly empty shop, but past the initial bank of shadows, he saw a light in the back and could just make out the figure of a man sitting at a desk.

He opened the door and a buzzer went off somewhere in the distance. Once inside, he could see that he was right. There was a white-haired man wearing a white shirt at a desk with a gooseneck lamp, its glow dimly distinguishing him from the darkness. "h.e.l.lo," called George. The man looked up from his paperwork and adjusted his gla.s.ses with his middle finger. "Come forward," he said in a loud, flat tone.

George hesitated a moment and then stepped through the shadows to the desk. As he approached, the man leaned back in his chair and motioned for George to take the seat across from him. "What do you want?" he asked, folding his hands on his stomach.

George held out the business card Loopy had given him. "The Pittsburgh Technology," he said.

"You?" said the man, and laughed briefly. His features seemed chiseled from stone but still somehow conveyed a subtle expression of derision. "You don't look like you have the backbone for it," he said.

"Does it hurt?" asked George.

"Physically, you don't feel a thing. It's not you that changes, it's the universe that changes around you."

"I think I could do that."

"Answer these three questions. One, how old are you? Do you have a significant other- wife/husband/girl or boyfriend/partner? And lastly, is your life a failure?"

"I'm thirty-two," said George.

The corners of the man's mouth turned down and he shook his head. "Where do you work?"

"I'm a cashier at a Bierman's on the other side of town."

The man sighed. "Perfectly underwhelming."

"I'm not in a relationship now."

"I suppose we can skip the last question then."

"I did go with a girl for almost a year and a half three years ago."

"Spare me the pathetic details. What's your name?"

"George."

"A child's name," said the man. "I'm Professor Werms, the inventor of The Pittsburgh Technology. I'm going to tell you about it. If it sounds like you'd like to give it a try, it will cost you four thousand dollars cash, no checks or money orders. Do you have that kind of collateral?"

"Yes."

"You, George, are a cla.s.sic loser. Your kind are everywhere, trapped like flies in the web of Fate. You're not bad people basically, but you've gone about as far as you're going with the hand you've been dealt and yet there's so much more of your static life left to creep through. Think of the concept of Purgatory. Do you understand?"

George nodded, though he wasn't sure.

"Every day the same . . . or worse. The sun always setting."

"Yes."

"No doubt you've tried to change your life in the past but your efforts evaporated into nothing. That is basically the problem from a scientific standpoint. You can't change your present life because your present is contingent on your past. Your history is always chasing you and always gaining on you. Your future is set in place and it can't be deviated from because of everything that has happened to that point. No event is an island, but each reverberates outward influencing future events and states of being. Do you understand?"

"I think so," said George.

"You've sealed your Fate and as it happens your Fate turns out to be dreadfully dull. Yet, when you try to change it, because you are the product of your past, you can't affect anything. You're the problem you are trying to fix and for that you'd have to go back to the moment of your birth and begin there, or, in reality, back before it to those initial causes that coalesced in a future to create you. Time travel is impossible, if you haven't heard, so the next best or even better thing is my Technology. What it does is sever the infernal eternal act of your past strangling your future."

George shifted in his seat and squinted. "I think I get that," he said. "What university do you teach at?"

"Are you calling me a fool?"

"No," said George and held his hands up in defense. "You said you're a professor; I was just wondering where you taught."

"The word professor simply means someone who professes . . . and that's what I do. I don't need some fossilized bureaucracy employing me to do so."

George quietly agreed.

"Follow me now," said Werms. "You need for something to happen in your life, an event. It could be utterly minor or something outlandish. Since everything is connected, just one event can change everything. My methods can create and insert an entirely rogue event into your closed loop of Fate and send the direction of your existence off on another heading. I've devised a way to conjure and bestow an element of explosive chance. We're talking random number generation. We have a machine that produces completely random numbers to six digits and then, through a complex mathematical formula, reduces them to either one, two, or three digits.

"Once this number has been determined, we consult a chart of possible events we could implement in your life. This chart was devised by me with painstaking precision. Because this event I mention is sp.a.w.ned outside of your history or the history of your world, no prior events having led to it, given birth to it, it will change the course of your life. Now, on the chart I spoke of, the events are number one to one hundred thirteen. We take the number ultimately calculated and produced by the generator and find its corresponding event on the chart. And then, my a.s.sociates, a crack team of agents of the Technology, in a clandestine manner, produce this random event in your life. It could be that someone might sneeze at your bus stop in the morning, it could be that a woman in a crowd smiles at you, or it could be something monumental, you never know: it's random. You won't know when it happens. We are very discreet. If you were to know what it was or what it would be, you would be part of it and then the technology would be diffused."

"You have people who do things like this?" asked George.

"They're very good. You'll never see them. And the next day, you'll already be able to feel the difference in your life."

"What if my life changes, but I don't like it?"

"That's a chance you have to take. Most people make a change for the better, simply because it's original change, unsullied by a history of numerous defeats, but there have been those who've gone in the other direction. They have a tendency not to live long, and therefore, although they did not succeed in making their lives better, they did, as a consolation, make them shorter."

"So I wouldn't get my money back if things went badly?"

"Take it or leave it. Don't be a simpering t.u.r.d. The Technology, I can tell you, works. What reason would I have to lie?"

"Why is it The Pittsburgh Technology?"

"Have you ever been to Pittsburgh?"

George shook his head.

"A technology does not have to denote machinery, it can also be a state-of-the-art method or process. The one I created is backed by mathematics and physics hypotheses derived from quantum investigation. That's why it's good. Why not put away the days of sorrow and those nights of hand-dancing with yourself?"

George blushed and nodded. "Okay," he said, "I'll do it."

"But first . . . ," said the professor. He opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper. Setting it down so George could read it, he also pa.s.sed over a pen.

I will never speak to anyone about The Pittsburgh Technology, it said, and beneath that there was a long dotted line to sign on.

George signed and handed the form to the professor, who put it back in the drawer. "Tomorrow, after you return from work, a messenger will come to your door and ask for the money. You will hand over four thousand dollars in a brown grocery bag. If this is done, the next morning, early, you will receive a call to let you know that the Technology has begun. The event that will change your life will happen on that day, although you will be unaware of it. On the following day, you'll experience the miracle of having the same past but a different future."

The next morning at work, George thought about how his life could be different as he scanned the endless conveyor belt of items. When he performed his little routine with each customer-Hi, do you have a Bierman's savings card, etc.- he was elsewhere, walking down a windy street with Ca.s.s on his arm. "We're going to the opera," he caught himself saying aloud. The woman whose bags he was packing made a sour face and shrugged. Later, someone placed a leaking gallon of milk on his conveyor, and while he cleaned it, he made the decision to leave work a little early and get to the bank before closing. He'd saved money over the years because there'd been almost no one or little else to spend it on.

He consumed a tub of microwave macaroni and cheese and two slices of b.u.t.tered bread while reading his mail: a flyer from Bierman's. Just as he finished eating, he heard a knock at his apartment door. He rose nervously and went to answer it. Leaving the chain on, he peered out into the hallway. There was a small person there, wearing a Lone Ranger mask beneath a black hoody. "T.P.T.," the stranger said in a high-pitched voice. George couldn't tell if it was a woman or an adolescent boy.

"I've got it," said George. He went to the kitchen and retrieved the brown bag. When he made it back to the living room, the messenger's arm was through the door. George handed the bag over. It slipped out of sight and he heard running in the hallway. For the rest of the night, he walked around his meager apartment, looking things over as they presently existed one last time. He stood for a long while, holding a photo of his mother and father. At ten, he put it down and went to bed.

In his dream, Ca.s.s was about to plea sure him with her mouth when the phone rang and she evaporated. George came spluttering up out of sleep and grabbed the receiver next to the bed. "Yes?" he said.

"The Technology has been activated," said a computerized voice.

George hung up and lay still, stunned by the sudden prospect that whatever was going to happen could happen at any moment. Beyond his thoughts, he heard the faucet in the bathroom dripping in sets of threes. As he listened, he heard the set of three suddenly become four, and he wondered, "Was that it?" He was sure it was until he heard the faint sound of a cough come from the apartment next door. In his head he had a vision of his neighbors, Jim and Ethel, sitting in their kitchen, paying no attention to the hoodied, masked figure that leaned close to the wall and cleared its throat. Then the traffic sounded and a bird sang on the windowsill. He got out of bed and noticed the photo of his parents was turned facedown. He couldn't remember if that was the way he'd left it. The shower water was unusually cold. His deodorant stung the slightest bit more, and he smelled it to determine if they'd put something in it. Every little thing became an event fraught with possibility.

When he cracked an egg in the frying pan and discovered it had a blood spot, he grunted audibly and stepped back from the stove. He stood staring at it till the white turned to brown and the yoke hardened. Finally, he said, "Nah, that happens. I've seen that happen before a lot of times in my life." He threw out the egg and put the pan in the sink. Instead he had toast, and as he searched its dark mottling for a design, he told himself the blood spot was too obvious. Professor Werms would never stand for it.

At the bus stop that morning, a woman sneezed. A leaf came fluttering down from above and landed on an old man's hat. George glanced around to see if he could spot an agent of the Technology. As he scanned the crowd on the corner, one of the women smiled at him. Was she letting on that it was her, or was the smile itself the promised event? The cranky bus driver grudgingly nodded to the pa.s.sengers as he always did, but when the woman who'd smiled got on, he said, "Morning," which had never happened before.

George sat in the last seat in the bus and watched out the back window for some sign of the conspiracy of the world. The teenagers in the front seat of an old Ford Taurus behind the bus saw him looking at them and gave him the finger. Maybe that was it, thought George, but when he got off at his stop, there was an abandoned soda, half empty, sitting on the curb, and the guy exiting in front of him kicked it over and whispered, "s.h.i.t." He thought he felt something vague move in his chest. He tried to decide if it was the flowering of his new life or just gas.

On his way through the store to punch in, he noticed that in the produce aisle there was one green lime mixed in with all the lemons. He went to the break room and sat down, overwhelmed with the possibilities. Taking a deep breath, he admonished himself for frantically trying to catch the agents of the Technology, to perceive the key event. Let it happen, he thought. Just let it happen, or you'll ruin everything. When he looked up he noticed that the three other people who had been at three different tables when he'd entered had immediately gotten up and left. He was too involved with the Technology to read the clue that he might be the store's new Loopy.

The grocery conveyor offered all manner of odd arrangements of items, teeming with significance. The customers said things they always said, but now their words had a covert gravity to them. The manager made an announcement over the loudspeaker for a sale on tuna fish. George finally switched to thinking about Ca.s.s and in this way was able to get through his shift. The sun was setting by the time he left Bierman's. As he walked to the bus stop, he realized the intensity of every moment of the day, on the lookout for the event, had left him exhausted. He just wanted to get home and go to sleep.

On the bus ride home, the young woman sitting next to him, a cute blonde with a ski cap and pink parka, out of the blue guessed his zodiac sign. "You're a Pisces," she said.

"No more," he muttered, and changed his seat. He rode the rest of the way to his stop with his hands over his ears and his eyes closed. In the darkness, he reeled at the thought of how many things were happening always and each of them, as Werms had told him, was a particle of a fate already decided.

The bus eventually stopped. He took his hands from his ears, opened his eyes, and got off without making eye contact with the blond astrologer. Only two blocks to go before he could huddle beneath the covers and wait out the night. With one block left he began to relax. Granted, a newspaper blew by with a headline, the last word of which he happened to catch-Technology. A child stared at him from a lit window he pa.s.sed, and the exhaust of a taxi going up the street curled into a question mark before vanishing.

He managed to ignore all of it, but what he couldn't ignore was the dog, without a leash or an owner, coming toward him on the street's opposite sidewalk. It was a beautiful-looking creature, a sleek Dalmatian, whose white made it stand out in the twilight. He stopped walking when he spotted it and, as if the dog was responding to him, it stopped as well. It lifted its snout and stared directly across the street at him. He generally liked dogs, but when it started toward him, he felt slightly nervous. George couldn't take his eyes off how gracefully the dog moved, hoping it was friendly. Right when it had reached the middle of its crossing, though, a car George hadn't noticed, so intent was he on the animal, came speeding out of nowhere and plowed into the creature. There was a loud, echoing thud, the snap of bone, a gurgling yelp, and George jumped. The Dalmatian was thrown backward and skidded along the asphalt ten feet.

The driver leaped out of the car. "Is that your dog?" he yelled. George couldn't speak, but merely shook his head. In front of the car, he caught a glimpse of white with black spots dappled with gore, writhing on the blacktop. The doors of apartment buildings flew open here and there and people ran to the accident. George felt nauseous. He knew there was nothing he could do with all those people crowded around. He kept moving, made it to his apartment, and ducked inside. In the downstairs hallway, he leaned against the mailboxes and cried. The dog's slaughter, he was certain, was the event Werms had spoken of. If he'd known what was going to happen, he'd never have agreed. That's what he told himself as he tossed and turned in his bed unable to sleep. In the morning, after finally dozing off around 3 A.M., he woke groggy, late for work, and called in sick.

Nearly a month to the day after George's induction into The Pittsburgh Technology, he stood once again in front of the shop with the barber pole. It was early on a Sat.u.r.day morning. He cupped his hand above his eyes and gazed into the front window of the place. Back in the shadows, he saw the glow of the gooseneck lamp and the faint form of Werms, leaning over his paperwork. He entered TPT headquarters and the buzzer sounded.

"Step forward," said the loud, flat voice.

George walked in and took a seat, facing Werms.

"What can I do for you?" said the professor.

"Do you remember me?" asked George.

"Of course, but you were not to return here after having gone through the process, didn't I tell you that?"

"No," said George. "You didn't."

"Well, I'm telling you now," said Werms. "See yourself out."

"My life hasn't changed," said George. "Not for the better, not for the worse. And you killed a beautiful dog for nothing."

"What are you talking about, killed a dog?" said Werms.

"Don't lie to me," said George. "The Dalmatian. You had your man run it down for me."

"How grandiose you are," said Werms. "We did nothing of the sort. First, we don't harm animals in the performance of the Technology. Read the bylaws. Secondly, if we did, we wouldn't waste a dog on your sorry excuse for a life."

"The whole thing's a scam," said George.

"I might step on a c.o.c.kroach for you but even that would be too much."

"I want my money back."

"You want your money back? Okay," said Werms, and opened the drawer to his desk. "Your life has not changed an iota, you're saying?"

"It's the exact same. Same days, same people, same job. Only now I have to go through it with a dead dog on my conscience."

"I'll change your life," said Werms. Instead of a roll of cash, he pulled a revolver out of the drawer and pointed it across the desk.