He was a nondescript man of about middle age. Dressed in dark blue pants, a light blue dress shirt, and black loafers, he could have been just about anyone in the downtown area going to or from his place of work. He carried a black briefcase that looked like it could have come right off the screen of a spy movie. It was a dull black, but the silver latches with combination locks fairly sparkled when the sun's rays caught them just right. If he had been wearing a tie, anyone would have taken him for an attorney. Then again, maybe not. He walked almost aimlessly down the sidewalk, allowing his eyes to drift here and there, taking in each person, car, or building as if they hadn't been there just a moment before...or that they might not be there a minute from now.
He made his way to Broadway and then turned left, heading toward the center of downtown. If there had seemed no purpose to his walking before, it was there now as he began moving with purpose toward the courthouse complex that determined the immediate fate of hundreds of men and women each day. Outside the courthouse complex, at the clean, white stairs, the man stopped. A line had formed out front of people waiting for security screening to go in. The man stepped to the side of the line. At the edge of the steps was a marble planter area that was about three feet high at the bottom of the stairs and level with the sidewalk at the top. He sat down on the wall, placing his briefcase on the ground next to him. His eyes wandered over the people in line. Some were obviously attorneys, dressed in business suits, skirts, pants, hundred-dollar shirts, and carrying leather attaché cases as they checked their smartphones. Others appeared to be curious observers, reporters, jurors, potential jurors, and those who were coming to be judged.
It wasn't too long before one of the guards standing outside the doors noticed him. With his hands on his weapons belt he walked over.
"No loitering here, buddy," the large man, both in height and girth, said in his gruff, authoritarian voice.
The man looked up at the guard. Beneath his neatly combed dark hair, his blue eyes seemed to sparkle.
"I'm waiting for someone," he replied, his voice a soothing tenor.
"Who?" the guard demanded.
"Two people actually," the man answered back in his soft voice. "One of them is an attorney. The other is not."
"Let's have some ID," the guard said sternly.
The man's blue eyes seemed to flash dangerously in the morning sun even though his facial expression never wavered.
"Have you ever considered," the man said even more softly, "how our lives can be forever altered by one tiny decision? A woman chooses one college over another and as a result meets the man who will help her achieve all her life's goals. A man decides not to have one more drink at a bar, instead choosing to go home. His car stalls on a railroad track and in the time he didn't spend at the bar he's able to find someone to help him push it off the tracks before a freight train comes along and kills him. A teenager wants to take the perfect selfie on a cliff's edge. He slips and his friends try to save him. He's saved, but one of his friends falls and dies. He has to live the rest of his life with guilt. One moment, one choice. Or a security guard tries to hassle a man waiting patiently for someone to come along. What's his future going to be? The possibilities can boggle the mind," the man finished, and though his voice never grew loud, the menace in it was clear and loud.
"Are you threatening me?" the guard said, taking a step forward. "You want to spend the next 12 hours in a holding cell for being an asshole? You think I can't make it happen?"
"What I think doesn't really matter. What is your decision? The choice is yours."
The guard stared at the man. There was a moment when it looked like he was going to reach for his handcuffs, then another thought seemed to go through his mind.
"Don't let me see you here in an hour," the guard mumbled, stalking back to his place outside the courthouse entrance.
The man didn't respond. He simply turned his attention back to the line of people waiting to enter.
About an hour later the man suddenly stood up and walked toward the front of the line. He stopped next to a woman dressed in a navy blue skirt and blazer with a cream-colored blouse. She was holding a brown, soft-sided briefcase.
"Lisa Daniels," the man said as he came up to her.
It wasn't a question.
The woman, Lisa Daniels, turned suddenly, taken aback by the sudden appearance of the man.
"Yes," she said hesitatingly. "Who are you?"
"You may call me Leonard. I am here to offer you two choices."
Lisa looked at this man who called himself Leonard. He was perhaps six feet tall, closer to thin than muscular, and about average in every other way. Except for his eyes. They were an electric shade of blue.
"Who are you with?" she asked.
"This is your first choice. As such I can offer it to you with a little more information than usual," he said, the look on his face somewhat earnest. "You can come with me and hear my offer for your second choice, or you can continue on your way to Court 17. I must warn you, however, that if you attempt to go to Court 17, you will not return. That choice will lead to your death."
"What? How? What's going to happen?"
"I am not at liberty to divulge that answer to you. And I only have approximately 10 more seconds to offer you the choice or let you go on your way. Will you come with me?"
"This is my first solo case," she said. "I can't just leave."
Leonard said nothing. He turned as if to go.
"Wait! Are you certain?"
Leonard turned back around.
"I am always certain," he answered simply.
Lisa looked at the courthouse complex. She was next in line to enter. She looked back at Leonard who was turning to go again.
"Damn," she muttered as she stepped out of the line.
"This way, quickly," Leonard said, hurriedly stepping down the stairs.
Lisa walked quickly to keep up. He turned up Broadway, not turning back to look at her.
"What's the hurry?" she said, walking as quickly as she could to keep up. "Where are we going?"
He didn't answer and continued walking. At the end of the block he stepped out into the crosswalk even though the 'Don't Walk' sign was lit. A car honked at him as the driver slammed on his brakes to avoid him. Leonard didn't even flinch or look. Lisa waved an apologetic hand at the car and ran in front of it. A moment later a loud explosion came from the direction they had come. Lisa turned back in shock. There was smoke coming from the front of the courthouse building and several people were lying on the ground in various positions as if they had been thrown there haphazardly. Other people were screaming and running. Lisa turned back around and nearly ran into Leonard who had stopped and was also looking back.
"Did you do that?" she asked.
"No."
"Then you knew. You knew there was a bomb and you didn't do anything to save those people's lives."
"Yes, I knew," he answered, looking over her head. "That was not my decision to make today." He looked down at her, his eyes fairly alight with an inner fire. "My decision today was saving your life. Are you displeased?"
"Well, no. But I mean, those people. You could have saved them too."
"Not today. Yesterday maybe. Or the day before that."
She looked at him quizzically as if trying to determine what he truly meant. A police car, lights flashing and siren wailing, sped past them. A growing cacophony of sounds indicated many others were coming as well.
"Please, follow me," he said, turning to walk again.
He kept a slower pace this time, stopping about two blocks later at a small cafe. Sirens continued to fill the air around them, but he moved as if he no longer heard them. He walked up to the cashier and casually ordered two coffees and a banana nut muffin.
"Did you just come from the court?" the young man at the reigister asked.
"Yes," Leonard said as if the man had asked if the sun was shining.
"What happened? Was it a bomb?"
"Yes," Leonard answered in the same tone. "Many people's lives were changed."
The cashier was speechless, then robotically prepared the drinks. Lisa was also looking at Leonard like he had suddenly grown a second head. For his part, Leonard acted as if he did not notice and, when the coffee and muffin were presented, gave a five-dollar tip and walked to a table with Lisa, dumbfounded, following.
"I believe you like banana nut muffins?" he asked as he placed the muffin in front of her at the table.
"Yes. How did you know? Wait, who are you?"
"You may call me Leonard."
"You said that. Who are you really? How'd you know about that bomb?"
"I have given you all the answers you will get regarding me and what I know," he said a little tersely. "I am not here for myself. Comfort yourself in the knowledge that you are alive now and would otherwise have been dead. It is of no comfort to those back there, but it should be to you."
"It's not much comfort to me," Lisa muttered. "I get to live while they died?"
"The proximity of a tragedy makes it no more or less tragic except in your mind. Had you been in your office today you would not care so much nor feel that you cheated death."
"In a really sadistic sort of way I suppose you're right."
"In a realistic sort of way," he corrected. "I can only deal in what is. Except, today, for you. Today, Lisa Daniels, you get to deal with a single 'what if.'"
"As in, what if I hadn't come with you?"
"Please, drink your coffee before it gets cold," he said by way of non-answer.
Lisa reached out for her cup and saw her hand shaking. She opted instead for the muffin and broke a piece off. After she had chewed and swallowed it, she was able to pick up her coffee and take a sip. Leonard drank his while looking around as if nothing out of the ordinary could possibly be happening. Surprisingly, Lisa found herself reassured by his casual attitude.
"Okay," she said after the muffin was gone and the coffee nearly so. "What if what?"
He put down his coffee and faced her. He stared at her so hard that it was almost like a physical blow and she found herself struggling for a moment to take a breath.
"I deal in choices," he said in a soft, clear, serious voice. "We all do really. What to wear today, where to eat, when to answer an email, and so on. Most of those decisions are inconsequential. There are some, however, that change the course of our lives."
Lisa swallowed hard. His words echoed in her head.
"Most of the time," he continued, "we don't know which choice it was that made a difference. You push snooze one too many times and leave the house late. Because you're late, you miss someone who was driving erratically and would have caused an accident with your car, leaving you paralyzed. Or you hand someone some spare change without thinking about it. That little ray of hope causes them not to give up. Years later, they have a good job and a family. One of their children grows up to be a research scientist who discovers a vaccine for a rare disease. Or you refuse to lend someone a helping hand one day because you're 'too busy' or it's 'not my problem.' That person, lacking hope, becomes a drug addict, gets arrested for breaking into someone's home to get some money for their next high, and ends up in prison. Years later, on release, that person murders someone."
A voice in Lisa's head -- was it her conscience? -- was whispering that these were hypothetical situations. She wanted to believe that voice, but she found herself thinking back on recent events and seeing if any of them were familiar.
"Sometimes," Leonard continued, "we know. Sometimes we look back and know that a decision we made at that one moment changed everything for us. And we regret it. We spend minutes, hours, days, wondering if we had gone left instead of right, zigged instead of zagged, what would our life be like today. Today, Lisa Daniels, I am going to offer you a choice that most people never get. I'm going to give you a chance to change your life."
"How?" she asked skeptically. "No one can change the past. And no one knows the future."
He smiled, but it had no warmth to it.
He reached down and picked up his briefcase. He spun the combination locks and then pressed the buttons to release the latches. He opened it just enough to reach inside. He pulled out a manila file folder and closed the briefcase, pushing down the latches and moving the combination locks. He handed her the folder as he placed the briefcase back on the ground.
"Do I open this?" Lisa asked, her hands trembling once more. "What is it?"
"Inside there are three sheets of paper," Leonard said. "One of them is blank. That is the choice for you to simply stand up and walk away. The other two describe an event in your life at a specific date and time where you made a life-altering decision. If you choose, simply tell me which one you would like to change."
"You're kidding, right? This can't be real. You're telling me I can choose to change something in my past? That's not possible," she finished with a guffaw.
He neither smiled nor spoke. Lisa's disbelieving smile faded. Her hands were shaking so much that it took her three tries to open the folder. When she finally did, two of the pages fell to the ground. She picked them up.
"Oh my god," she said as she read one of them.
The date was a day in her sophomore year of high school. Two friends of hers had talked about joining the cheerleading squad. They had talked about it all day, alternately making fun of cheerleaders and then being envious of them. In the end, Lisa had decided not to join. Her two friends had gone along with her decision, though she had always felt they regretted it and had held it against her.
The second date was from her freshman year in college. She'd been invited to rush for a sorority. There was a welcome party that night for potential rushes. She had gone. At the party she had drunk too much and gotten sick. She had vomited three times on her way back to her dorm room. When she had finally made it to her bed, she had slept through her morning classes. It had caused her to miss a key midterm and she had ended up having to drop that class to avoid a failing grade. She'd then had to take the class over during the summer so she could graduate in four years.
"These changed my life?" she asked after reading them. "These are the most important moments in my past?"
"This is what lies before you," he began, and again his eyes bored into her with inhuman intensity. "Place two of the sheets back into the folder, leaving out the one you are choosing."
"And then what? Poof! I go back to live my life all over again from this?"
He didn't answer.
"This is some sort of joke, right? I mean, no one can do what you're saying."
"Failure to make a decision will result in a decision being made for you," he said gravely. "I can offer you this one warning and this one piece of advice. Whatever you choose, there is no going back and you will never see me again. You will have no memory of this moment or of the life you have lived to this point. You will only have the experience of the life you chose with whatever occurs in it. The good moments, bad moments, and everything in between. Now, you must make your decision."
"What if I don't choose? What if I just sit here?"
"That is a choice," he answered, pointing at the blank page.
She looked back at the two papers. The voice started speaking in her head again. She was fine with the person she was. Her experiences had made her the person she was today. To change the experiences would change the person she was. She had often thought about what life would have been like had she been a cheerleader. She would have been more popular. She would have had special privileges within school. And what if she hadn't had to take that class during the summer? She had missed out on a trip that some of her friends had taken to Europe that summer. How could that hurt her to have had that experience? Wouldn't she be better off for it? And yet...
"This one," she answered.
Leonard reached over and placed the two other sheets of paper in the folder.
"Goodbye, Lisa Daniels," he said, standing up. "We will not meet again."
Lisa was about to say something when suddenly she vanished. The sheet of paper began to move in a breeze, but a female hand slapped it down on the table. The woman who was there now picked it up and looked at it. She was tall with medium brown skin and black curly hair.
"This is not a comfortable life for her," the woman said in a deep, rich voice.
As if to illustrate her point, she opened the briefcase -- without bothering with the combination locks -- and pulled from it a thin piece of paper that looked like a yarn sample display. Hanging from the paper were perhaps a couple dozen thick threads of various colors. Some of them were tangled in complicated loops and knots while a few hung limp and undisturbed. Some of them were shorter and some longer.
Leonard reached up and carefully took the strands from her, placing them back in the briefcase and spinning the locks.
"Nothing is certain," Leonard said crisply.
The woman gave a small, wry smile.
"Is it worth it, Leonard?"
"What would you do to save more than a dozen lives?" he asked back, indicating the courthouse complex down the street where bodies were strewn on the sidewalk and emergency vehicles crowded the streets.
"The greater good? That's callous."
"I don't believe in the greater good, Makesha. You know that."
"There were other ways."
"No, not for what I want," he answered with a glint in his eyes.