You can read it right here, or over on Scribd. My advice to all aspiring artists is to eat raw pig meat so your fever dreams bring you much inspiration. (Obviously this story won’t make any sense as it is based on a dream.) Like Autopilot, the story is mostly stream of thought. Enjoy:

Will’s Choice
Casey Lange
(Every name, date, location and plot point was taken directly from a dream.)

Will had a choice to make, but it wasn’t going to be an easy one. He was sitting in a Coffee shop, trying to decide whether or not to order coffee. Although he was able to decide for himself, the actual decision would always be left up to chance. He took a die out of his right pocket; everyone in New York had one, “A new age,” the mayor said.

“To celebrate the new year of 1950, we have decided that all decisions should be left to chance. You shall all receive a six sided die, which will be needed to make decisions. How you interpret the numbers is up to you, and hopefully order will come about from this action.”

This announcement really bothered Will, because he enjoyed having free will. It seemed like such an essential part of being human. The ability to make choices. Now that they had been stripped away from him, in a way, life had become easier. He no longer had to worry about saying or doing the wrong thing. There was no right or wrong, only chance. However, Will was not one to leave things to chance, and today he was going to fix that. He had to make a choice, but it wouldn’t be an easy one. He wanted to order a cup of coffee. So he Threw the die on the counter. Four – even.

“Can I please have a cappuccino?” He asked the barista, who took out his die and threw it. Two – even.
“Coming right up, sir,” he responded, and walked over to the coffee grinder. Will rolled his die again, this time to decide whether or not to look at television. Two – even. His head turned and he could see a live news report that had something to do with the Empire State Building. Will didn’t really care for it until he heard the words “Big Ben” mentioned. Apparently the building was renamed through an unfortunate dice throw by the mayor. Will thought about looking away, but decided not to take the chance.

Mental calculations were okay, because obviously if you had to roll your dice to think, the ability to roll the dice would require a mental calculation, which would cause a paradox. Will knows the universe tries to avoid paradoxes. That was all well and good, but if people had to choose to choose, they would all become vegetables. No mind, no nothing. They would fall the ground and slowly die. Although they could take solace in the fact that they would feel no pain because there was no mind to feel it, they would also be horrified in the fact they wouldn’t see it coming.

Time would just stop for them. Not only that, their consciousness would simply cease to exist. Will heard the all familiar sound of a die hitting a hard surface before bouncing around and ultimately settling. The barista came over to Will and presented him with his coffee. Will now has to decide whether or not to thank to barista, and if he should address him by name and whether or not to drink the coffee in the first place. Three possible outcomes. Due to the nature of the die, which Will considered calling “The  Device,” a situation with more than two outcomes works differently. For three outcomes, the numbers one, two and three will result in success of at least one Outcome. A situation with four possible outcomes would require the die to land on one through four, etc.

His head was still turned, but he could see the coffee in his peripheral vision, as well as where the die might land. He threw it and it landed on five – odd. This bothered Will, as now he wouldn’t be able to drink the coffee. You cannot throw the die more than once for the same thing hoping for a better result; it’s like wishing for more wishes. That’s why Will’s choice would be so hard to make. This, like many other things was discovered the hard way. The mayor announced that the dice program was a terrible idea a few days ago.

He announced, “Fellow New Yorkers, I realize we can no longer go on like this, I shall throw my die in order to see whether we keep going forever, or stop.” On live television he threw his die and it landed on a three – odd. That’s when everyone realized they were stuck in this endless loop. Choice had no longer become relevant.

Unfortunately the dice only allowed for a maximum of six possible outcomes. Everyone was still in the process of trying to circumvent this. Perhaps God also plays with dice, despite what Einstein might think. Will thought. He knew the everyday world is governed by classical mechanics, and that is completely deterministic. The question posed is why we use probabilities, in this case, throwing dice. Will guessed it was a simple case of lack of knowledge. You never know exactly how the dice was thrown, what the imperfections on the table are, and so on.

Will knew that in theory, if he knew all that, he could predict exactly what number would come up each time, and use that knowledge to get and do whatever he wanted. He did not know these things, as no one would. Surely there were ways to exploit the dice. Could it perhaps be used to grant super powers, or even travel through time? Could it bend the laws of physics and create alternate universes? Will had never tried these things, nor had he seen any reports of it being documented. Will sighed, it was time for him to make a choice, and it wouldn’t be an easy one.

He had figured out a way to cheat the system and wondered if anyone else had as well. As long as one person in New York gets this right, order would eventually be restored. Will had to decide whether or not to throw the second, loaded die he had in his left pocket. Potentially all of human existence hung on this one single choice. He threw his unloaded die, while his head was still turned to the television. Almost in slow motion, the dice settled down. Four – even. Will silently cheered in his head.

He would be the bringer of order, of change, of free choice. He took out the loaded die from his left pocket and paused for a moment. He knew that what he was about to do wouldn’t work with a normal die. As there was a fifty percent chance that it wouldn’t work, which would cause the thrower to no longer be bound by the die, and thus, unable to make any more decisions, before turning into a vegetable. The die may also be soul bound to the next person to pick it up, as this is what happened to Will, but it wouldn’t make it so you could make twelve decisions or even throw a die for the same thing twice. It was just another one to carry around with you. On the flip side, were the dice to land correctly, this process would be unnecessary. It was time to throw the die. Will had to decide as to whether or not he would get his free will back. That was the choice.

But Will was not one to leave things to chance. He threw the loaded die, which landed on a six – even. Will felt it immediately, as he looked away from the television and back to his coffee, which he now drank with ease. He got up, thanked the barista and walked out of the shop. He would now grant others free will by rolling that loaded die for each of them, as they would then do to others by placing their die in an oven for a few minutes, with six being at the top. That’s how you make a loaded die. Like a virus, this would spread until everyone got their free will restored. The more people who figure this out the better. Will had made his choice, and it was a relatively easy one.