A Rare and Unusual Birthday Gift:

A Life Tune Up with the Mysterious Architect

“The Architect will see you now.”

My father had brought me to the Architect for my fortieth birthday. He said that this strange little man had discovered the secrets of the ancient art of life planning. He came into possession of an esoteric device that could help him to look into all of the potential futures of any person. He had unlocked the secrets to plotting out a life leading an individual automatically onto the best possible path for their future.

At first, I was reluctant. I had questions: What if I changed my mind? And, why should I trust this Architect? Didn’t it remove the element of surprise in life? Something about it seemed off to me. My intuition told me it was wrong.

My father then told me a story of something that happened to me when I was three years old. I was a sickly child with a weak immune system. By the age of three, I had already been hospitalized twice with life-threatening illnesses.

My father took me, against my mothers wishes, to the Architect 37 years ago. I searched my memory but couldn’t find any trace of having met the strange little man and his contraption before. My dad said he took me there to stop my pain and suffering. Unbeknownst to me, and without my consent, my life had already been altered. How and in what way, I didn’t know.

I was tired and tired of arguing with my dad. After I was told that I had already had the last 34 years of my life altered by the Architect and his contraption, I figured my intuition must have been wrong about it being off somehow. That’s when the Architect himself emerged from his office.

He greeted me very warmly like an old friend he hadn’t seen in a long time. He stood a full 4 feet tall with a protruding nose, and spiky disheveled hair. He was wearing a white lab coat. He asked for my review of the first 37 years of my life. I said I didn’t want to complain, but. He interrupted me there.

“You should have seen what I was working with.” He continued, “You, my friend, were not dealt what I’d call a winning hand. I did what I could with what I had to work with.”

He pulled out a few notes he had scribbled in my file 37 years ago.

“See? See? Look here.” He pointed at an elaborate diagram with geometric symbols and notes in what appeared to be hieroglyphs all scribbled in pencil in my client file.

He could tell that I couldn’t interpret what I was looking at.

“Do you remember being in the hospital when you were 5 years old?”

“No,” I replied.

“That’s because you weren’t.” He slapped his long index finger on the file, pointing to a section of the diagram where three lines intersected.

“That’s where I saved you from another severe illness,” he said self-satisfied.

“See here, at thirteen?” he asked moving his finger along the diagram to another intersection of lines.

“Yes, what’s that?” I asked.

“That’s when you didn’t break your leg,” he replied.

He closed my client file and placed it on the desk at reception.

The strange little man turned to me, throwing his arms open as wide as he could, embracing the lower half of my body in a hug. At 4 feet tall, his head rested on my stomach as he hugged me.

“See? I’m your friend. You have nothing to worry about. I have only the best of intentions for you. You are one of my special projects. I rarely get to work on someone so young. I promise I’ll take the best of care with you.”

I felt bad thinking about my original paranoia and suspicions. If what this little man is doing is really evil, I couldn’t see how. I agreed to the procedure my father had got for me: A Life Tune Up, tweaking the work the Architect had performed on me when I was three years old, directing my life path.

I convinced myself that I could use less stress in my life. Knowing that the best possible future would be in store for me would certainly go a long way towards relieving my stress.

I took an anxious breath and followed the Architect who took me by the hand as he led me back to the room which held the contraption.

I almost tripped over the thing as I walked into the room. I didn’t know what to expect when I saw it, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It was constructed of translucent wood. Constructed is actually a misleading description. It looked as though an entire tree had been painted with a coat of invisibility paint and the Architect’s office had been built around it.

The contraption was actually a crystalline translucent tree. It looked ghostly, as if it existed half in this world and half in another. This room it was located in had four walls, but no ceiling and no floor. It was open to the air above. The tree looked as though it extended upwards into the darkness. I couldn’t determine its height.

Its roots went into the ground. Several larger older roots stretched out along the ground. One limb looked as though it had been carved perfectly to resemble a bed.

A couple cages hung from its limbs. What looked like giant fireflies flew about in the cages.

“Meet my assistants,” the Architect said, extending his arm towards one of the cages.

The doors opened and the glowing creatures flew out, one landing on the limb that looked like a bed in front of me, the second landed on my shoulder.

Seeing the confusion in my face, the Architect simply replied, “Fairies,” to my unasked question.

“Do they talk?” I asked.

“Come lie down here, please,” said the fairy standing in front of me said as she patted the bed.

“It’s best if you try to sleep through the procedure,” the fairy informed me as she skittered about tugging on several vines nearby as if checking to see that the tree was properly prepared to commence with the procedure.

“Is that true?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” said the fairy standing on my shoulder. “You won’t remember everything. There will still be some surprises in your life.”

“Try to relax,” said the flittering female fairy. Nearly in sync, the two fairies pulled out a vine each, wrapping one vine around my left shoulder and one around my right.

The Architect was thumbing through what looked like a record collection as the fairies prepared the tree and myself for the procedure.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“My record collection,” he replied. “I’m trying to decide what music fits the mood to play for us.”

“Ah, here we go,” he said pulling a vinyl record out of its sleeve, and placing it on a turntable I hadn’t noticed sitting on a counter near the tree.

As the needle touched the vinyl my mind was struck by concurrent soundtracks as if the record contained two or three recordings all playing at once. Like waves washing in and out, the sound of one recording would come forward while the other two receded into the background. Then slowly it would fade and the next would come into focus.

The effect on me was trance-inducing. The sounds saturated my brain, overwhelming my brain’s capacity to process all the incoming auditory signals. I fell into a semi-sleep state listening to the music.

Occasionally I could hear the voices around me discussing various potential pathways in my future. As they manipulated my body and the vines of the tree, silky lines of a web strung through the tree would respond, symbolizing the changes in my potential future, depending on which decisions were made.

They mostly tried to communicate in silence as I had requested on my intake to know as little as possible about my future. I wanted to keep some mystery in my life. I didn’t want to know everything that would happen.

I opened my eyes once to take a look at what was happening around me. I could see the two fairies zooming about, flying from vine to vine, checking the response, measuring the angles of the lines in the web.

Seeing my eyes open, the female fairy on a branch above me asked, “Do you like bicycling?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, unless you want to know that you take up bicycling in 12 years, you should close your eyes.”

A couple of giggles erupted from one of the walls. A few strange creatures had seen the contraption, the tree, being manipulated and heard the music playing, so a small curious group had gathered, sitting on one of the walls to watch the action.

The initial part of the procedure must’ve taken about two hours. The Architect and his assistants must have taken thousands of measurements.

The little man turned off the music and came to speak with me. He looked concerned.

“I need to discuss a few things with you before I lock everything into its final place,” he said.

“Sure, like what?” I replied.

“Like, when are you going to quit smoking? I believe I have a couple of options for you, but it depends on how stubborn and strong-willed you are going to be about it.”

He went on to explain to me what could happen if I resist my programmed destiny.

“Your legs will literally drag you along for the trip. They will walk without your input forcing you towards where you are supposed to be if you fall behind for some reason; like not quitting smoking in adequate time for a certain set of events to occur.

“So, I need you to be honest with me. Don’t think about your ambitio. I’ll do what I can to make sure you get your most important desires are fulfilled, but I need you to honestly assess this: Do you think you’ll be able to quit smoking by February of next year. or will you stubbornly hold out until you are forced to visit your doctor 6 months from then?”

“Uh, I don’t know. You say I won’t remember most of this.”

He checked his figures and intersecting lines noted in my chart.

“Tell you what, handsome, how about I set a reminder for you in January. It will be a Thursday. It will be raining. You will be on your way to your book club meeting at 4:15pm. You’ll be running a little late that day because of a situation with cigarettes and traffic patterns,” he explained.

“Now, remember then as you’re pulling into the parking lot, that you must quit smoking in February, otherwise some events may start to collide, causing you to drift away from your best possible destiny. If you persist in smoking, some key events may fall out of your life timeline.”

“I need you to be square with me, because if you don’t make that February deadline, you and your destiny will end up in different time zones. Your body may convulse reacting to the derailing of your life as it decouples from your best potential destiny.”

“We may have to bring you back into the shop for additional touch-up work if that happens.”

The Architect looked concerned.

“What is it?” I asked.

“If we talk too much, the odds of you remembering increase, making it more difficult for things to go smoothly. Unless you are willing to remember even more future events and get yourself to your destiny manually instead of automatically as I have planned, since you don’t want to remember this process now.”

“I’ll have to do some extra chanting to wipe your mind of this discussion, but I need to tell you something.”

“Go ahead.” I said impatiently. My concern was also growing.

“It’s this friend that you have now. You can only have this friend for a few more months. If he drags you away from your new exercise schedule on a particular Sunday afternoon, it may ruin your whole timeline.”

“What? How? What do you mean?” My concern was growing. Was I walking that fine of a line with my life choices?

“It’s everything. First, it starts with a car accident, then you lose your job, the timeline closes for you to find love, you descend into a life of drugs, unemployment and depression. It’s just this one Sunday that is giving me trouble. I’ve got the quarter million dollar salary set up just fine. Your house is actually much nicer than what you said you wanted. I figured you will have the money, so you could afford it. I was going to surprise you. Your lover is a wonderful, beautiful man with whom you share a storybook life. If only,” he paused.

“If only what?!” my voice was breaking.

“If only it weren’t for that one Sunday. I mean, you don’t even like this friend that much now.”

“Who is it?” I couldn’t take the suspense any longer.

“Oh, I can’t tell you that. If I tell you, this whole potential timeline falls apart, and I’ll have to go with the timeline where you move to Virginia. That one is not as good a life as the one I’d like to give you.”

“Okay. I think I know what I have to do. Lie down, close your eyes and try to sleep,” he said.

I lay back down on the bed. The Architect pulled out a wooden box with several screws sticking out from it.

“I need to put this on your leg. Stay still, and don’t ask.”

He put the music back on.

I closed my eyes tight as he slid the wooden box onto my leg, tightening the screws in place.

I tranced out again listening to the music. It began to sound more ominous. Three were a couple of instruments I couldn’t recognize, playing as I drifted between sleep and wakefulness.

Then, I heard a familiar voice singing, “La Bamba” from the outside of the Architect’s workshop near one of the walls. The door opened and I heard the voice of my friend Juan speaking with the receptionist.

“Is he in?” Juan asked.

“He? Who”? the receptionist responded feigning ignorance.

“You know who. Is he busy? I’m going in.” Juan said.

He opened the door to the room where I was clamped and roped to the bed of the contraption.

He didn’t seem phased at all by what must have been a peculiar scene.

“Hello, Archie!” Juan said reaching out to hug the Architect.

“Juan, what are you doing here?”

“I heard the music from outside and figured you must be working so I thought I’d stop by and see what you’ve got going on,” Juan answered.

“Oh, who’s this?” Juan continued. “Hey, buddy! What ‘cha doing there? Oh, you don’t need all this crap, come on.” Juan loosened the wooden clamp holding my leg in place and threw back the vines securing my shoulders.

“No! What are you doing?! Stop that!” commanded the little man.

“He don’t need all this shit, Archie. I’m taking him home.”

The Architect stood in stunned silence. The fairies flittered back to their cage, shutting the doors behind them. The strange creatures which had gathered on the wall, dispersed.

Juan helped me to my feet and let me lean on him as I limped out of the workshop, my arm around Juan’s shoulder for support.

“He’ll be back here tomorrow, Juan,” the Architect said ominously. “He’s never had to live with freewill.”

“No, I don’t think so. He’ll be fine without you.” Juan said.

Still dazed and confused, I turned to Juan asking, “What is going on?”

“Never mind that for now, let’s just get out of here,” said Juan.

We briskly walked out of the workshop together, and up the street before the fake smile and falsely friendly voice Juan had put on for the Architect, faded away. The true depth of worry he must’ve felt in the workshop began to show on his face as we reached safety, putting some distance between the workshop and ourselves.

Juan walked me up to an entrance of what appeared to be an abandoned subway station. There was a woman there waiting for us.

“You can take him from here.” Juan told the woman.

Turning to me, he asked, “How did you get here?”

I thought back to when my father and I sat in the waiting room at the workshop. I couldn’t remember the moments before that. I didn’t recall my father and I meeting anywhere. I didn’t remember us driving to the workshop. I didn’t recall having any plans to meet him that day.

“Where am I?” I asked Juan.

“You’re in Hell. Now, go home.” He nodded to the woman to take me inside.

Before Juan darted off, I asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got some more business to attend to. I’ll be fine. Go with Beth here. You’re safe now.”

Beth walked me inside the subway station.

I turned to her and asked, “Does this mean I don’t know what’s going to happen in my future?”

“None of us do,” she answered.