She looked at him and said, "No."

He didn't get it — not for half a second. She thought he might try to throw her behind a bush, try to rape her. Emotions ran through him: offense at the suggestion — he was Howie's cousin, after all! And a sadness, too: a regret for what it must be to be a woman, constantly on the lookout, always afraid, always checking for escape routes.

Jake had shrugged a little, and had walked away, so stunned that he couldn't think of anything else to say. Clouds had rolled in shortly after that, obscuring the stars.

"Oh," Jake said, to Carly; he could think of no other response to her lie about Bob.

Carly moved her shoulders. "Sorry. A woman has to be careful."

He hadn't been thinking about settling down — but… but… what a gift! Here she was, a beautiful, intelligent woman, working in the same field he was in, and the certain knowledge that they'd still be together, and still be happy, two decades hence.

"What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?" asked Jake.

"I think I'll call in sick," Carly said.

He rearranged himself on the bed, facing her.

Dimitrios Procopides sat on the mess-covered couch, and stared at the wall. He'd been thinking about this ever since his brother Theo's visit two days ago. That thousands — maybe even millions — were contemplating the same thing didn't make it easier for him.

It would be such a simple thing to do: he'd bought the sleeping pills over the counter, and he'd had no trouble finding information on the World Wide Web about how big a dose of this particular brand would be required to insure fatality. For someone who weighed seventy-five kilos, as Dimitrios did, seventeen pills might be enough, and twenty-two would surely do the trick, but thirty would likely induce vomiting, defeating the purpose.

Yes, he could make it happen. And it would be painless — just falling into a deep sleep that would last forever.

But there was a Catch-22 — one of the few American novels he'd read had introduced him to that concept. By committing suicide — he wasn't afraid to think the word — he could prove that his future wasn't predestined; after all, in not just his own vision, but in that of the restaurant manager, he was alive twenty years hence. So, if he killed himself today — if he swallowed the pills right now — he'd demonstrate conclusively that the future wasn't fixed. But it would be like Pyrrhus's defeats of the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum, the kind of victory that still bears his name, a victory at a horrible cost. For if he could commit suicide, then the future that had so depressed him was not inevitable — but, of course, he'd no longer be around to pursue his dream.

There were lesser ways, perhaps, to test the reality of the future. He could pluck out an eye, cut off an arm, get a tattoo on his face — anything that would make his appearance permanently different from what others had seen of him in their visions.

But no. That wouldn't work.

It wouldn't work because none of those things were permanent. A tattoo could be removed; an arm could be replaced with a prosthetic; a glass eye could be fitted in the vacated socket.

No: he couldn't have a glass eye; in his own vision of that damnable restaurant he'd had normal stereoscopic sight. So, plucking out an eye would be a convincing test of whether the future was immutable.

Except…

Except they were making advances in prosthetics and genetics all the time. Who was to say that two decades down the road they wouldn't be able to clone him a new eye, or a new arm? And who was to say that he would refuse such a thing, a chance to overcome the damage caused by an impetuous act in his youth?

His brother Theo desperately wanted to believe that the future was not fixed. But Theo's partner — that tall guy, the Canadian — what's his name? Simcoe, that was it. Simcoe said the exact opposite — Dim had seen him on TV, making his case for the future being carved in stone.

And if the future was carved in stone — if Dim was never going to make it as a writer — then he really did not want to go on. Words were his only love, his only passion — and, if he were honest, his only talent. He was lousy at math (how hard it had been to follow Theo through the same schools, with teachers expecting him to share his older brother's talent!), he couldn't play sports, he couldn't sing, he couldn't draw, computers defeated him.

Of course, if he really was going to be miserable in the future, he could kill himself then.

But apparently he had not.

Of course not. Days and weeks slip by easily enough; one doesn't necessarily notice that one's life isn't moving forward, isn't progressing, isn't becoming what you'd always dreamed it would be.

No, it would be easy to end up living like that — the empty life he saw in his vision — if you let it sneak up on you, day after dreary day.

But he'd been given a gift, an insight. That Simcoe fellow had spoken of life as an already exposed film — but the projectionist had put the wrong reel on the projector, and it had been two minutes before he'd realized his mistake. There'd been a jump cut, a sharp transition from today to a distant tomorrow, and then back again. That perspective was different from life just unrolling one frame after another. He could see now, with clarity, that the life ahead of him wasn't one that he wanted — that, in a very real sense, as he served up moussaka and set saganaki ablaze, he was already dead.

Dim looked at the bottle of pills again. Yes, countless others, all over the world, were doubtless contemplating their futures, wondering if, now that they knew what tomorrow held, it was worth going on.

If even one of them actually did it — actually took his or her own life — surely that would prove the future was mutable. Doubtless this thought had occurred to others, as well. Doubtless many were waiting for someone else to do it first — waiting for the reports that would surely flood the nets: "Man seen by others in 2030 found dead." "Suicide proves future is fluid."

Dim picked up the amber-colored plastic bottle again, rolling it back and forth, hearing the pills clatter over one another inside it.

It would be so easy to take off the lid, pressing it into his palm — he did that now — and twisting, defeating the safety mechanism, letting the pills spill out.

What color were they? he wondered. Crazy, that: he was thinking of taking his own life, and yet had no idea what color the potential instrument of his demise was. He removed the lid. There was some cotton, but not enough to hold the pills immobile. He pulled the batting out.

Well, I'll be—

The pills were green. Who would have thought that? Green pills; a green death.

He tipped the bottle, tapped its base until a pill fell out into his hand. It had a crease down its middle, where the pressure of a thumbnail could presumably cleave it in two for a smaller dose.

But he didn't want a small dose.

There was bottled water at hand; he'd gotten it without fizz — in contrast to his usual preference — lest the carbonation interfere with the action of the pills. He popped the pill in his mouth. He'd half-expected a lime or mint flavor, but it had no flavor at all. A thin coating covered the tablet — the kind you got on premium aspirin. He lifted the water bottle and took a swig. The film did its job; the pill slid smoothly down his throat.

He tipped the pill bottle again, tapped out three more of the green tablets, popped all three into his mouth, and chased them with a large gulp of mineral water.

That was four; the maximum adult dose, marked on the bottle, was two tablets, and there was a warning about avoiding use on consecutive nights.

Three had gone down easily enough at a single gulp. He put a new trio in his palm, dropped them into his mouth, and took another swig of water.