Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

the water, and here I am now in my truck's cab, the scribbler of Ambleside Beach.
* * *
It's an hour later and I'm still sitting in the truck.
I wish I could be as innocent as I was at six, the way I felt just briefly while talking with Demi, but that's
childish. I wish humans were better than we are, but we're not. I wish I knew how bad I could become. I
wish I could get a printout that showed me exactly how susceptible I was to a long list of sins. Gluttony:
23 percent susceptible. Envy: 68 percent susceptible. Lust: 94 percent susceptible. That kind of thing.
Oh God, it's religion all over again; it's my father's corrosive bile percolating through my soil and tickling
my taproot. Be as pious as you want, people are slime, or, as my father might say, we're all slime in the
eyes of God. It's the same thing. And even if you decided to fight the evil, to attain goodness or religious
ecstasy, not much really changes. You're still stuck being you, and you was pretty much decided long
before you started asking these questions.
Maybe clones are the way out of all of this. If Reg is against them, that means they're probably a good
idea. And as a clone, you pop off the assembly line with an owner's manual written by the previous you -
a manual as helpful as the one that accompanies a 1999 VW Jetta. Imagine all the crap this would save
you - the wasted time, the hopeless dreams. I'm going to really think about this: an owner's manual for
me.
* * *
It's midnight. I cut short my evening with my barfly construction buddies. We shot a few buckets of balls
at the Park Royal driving range, then had a few beers, but I just couldn't bring myself to continue. Writing
this document has taken a firm grip of me.
Here's an overview of what happened after the Delbrook Massacre.
The fact that I'd never met the three gun wielders didn't seem to matter. In published transcripts of
interviews with the police, on the morning of the event I was "agitated." I walked "cavalierly" out of chem
class without so much as a nod to the teacher. I was seen having an "emotional confrontation" with
Cheryl. I "assaulted, drew blood from, and gave a concussion to" Matt Gursky from Youth Alive! I also
assaulted Mr. Kroger "with seeming forethought," and I "seemingly knew to enter the cafeteria just after
Cheryl Anway had been shot."
I think the public was desperate for cause and effect. At first glance, I suppose I'd probably be
suspicious of me, too, and I'm pretty sure it was my father's bizarre reaction to the news that got police to
thinking about me - from a hero to a suspect. Whatever the cause, the morning after the shootings I saw
my yearbook photo on the front of the paper with the headlinemastermind?
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