Destiny II

Let me tell you a story about destiny. 
It started off really weird. Just your regular day. Early rise. Long run to clear the damn head. Silly breakfast before eat fast eat. Last meal for 24  hours. Was headed out to catch the drop to work when it happened. Saw a door to my right I'd never seen before. Weird. The cab driver was honking like his pension depended on it. But I had to take a minute to figure out this door. Never saw it, really?

Well curiosity killed the cat. But given my life, I take my chances. Too dark to see anything, so I walked in. Just the one step. Because then I fell. For just about as long as I'd lived. Or so it felt. Landed in a glass capsule. With a  15 person audience. In weird clothes. Minimal but uber stylish. Like we had got over our stupid hangups, and clothes we're just covering as much as they should.

And they got to business immediately. I was pulled out and stood up. And told it was all a big mistake. The portal had appeared due to a technical glitch. I must head back.

Will do, I say, but at least tell me what the hell is happening. Alrightey then. They start.

It is the same world, same place. But it is post apocalyptic. We've learnt to value our resources and human life. So as a prophet had advised, everyone was subject to a coming of age ritual, if we may call it so.

At the opportune moment, you would be shown your future, your destiny, to enable you to work with the destiny in mind. What better way  to motivate an action than a guaranteed outcome. You would power past the little glitches, and get up everytime you fell. Everyone would hence be able to achieve greatness and the world would achieve greatness as a result of the cumulative greatness.

There was a catch as always. The futures were previewed. The ones which were judged to be unfavorable, were rooted out of the time line. The owners of the unsightly future were banished to a parallel setup, on a different planet. Wiped from every memory, and their own memory replaced with a convenient backstory. It was self sustaining, and kept out the under achievers.

It became evident to me which lot I'd been in.

Then I was apologized to. Saying it was a rather unfortunate phase in the history of the world. But what was done was done and had to be left that way. So I must head back.

It was all a dream as far as I was concerned, so, that I had been discarded by society at large didn't bother me too much. But why a seemingly fabulous plan didn't really pan out as expected was bothering me.

It turns out that the promise of a bright future makes as many people complacent as it makes hard working. And even in the lot who are hard working, there is a predetermined cap on what they can achieve, since the targets are already set. No reaching for the stars. All in all, the world of out castes was doing as well if not better. And as the inevitable happened and the secrecy around the promised future deal wore off, a huge public uproar ousted the men in charge, and things went back to normal...

So much for that eh ?

Well I was promptly shipped back, memory intact and found myself mid step walking towards the cab. I stumbled, but caught my step again, and took my regular place in the cab.

Hey, just because I'm free to reach for the stars, doesn't mean I have to.