David Trichel

Predictions

Today started just like any other day of the week. I got up, took a bath, got dressed and headed off to work. Something felt different about today though. Like that feeling you get when you smell a distinctive smell and it reminds you of a place you've been in the past. I didn't think much about it. I just jumped in the car and headed off to work. On the way, I noticed that I needed gas. So I stopped by my favorite store on the way. I figured I would pick up a Powerball ticket while I was there. Everyone at work was talking about how big the jackpot has risen to and I know the odds of winning is crazy but my dad always said “People who don't buy a ticket have the worst odds of winning it”. After I finished pumping gas I noticed something odd when I went to put the gas nozzle back. It didn't want to go back in correctly. Something was jammed up in the hole where the nozzle goes. I reached in there and pulled out this tiny little black book. It was small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. I thumbed through it quickly as I was walking in the store to grab my ticket and I noticed it was about six pages of QR codes. It struck me as odd for a second but I put it in my pocket and hurried up because I was running late for work. With paperwork piled up on my desk, I knew It was going to be a long work day. During my lunch break I went and grabbed a coke from the vending machine. I reached in my pocket for money and pulled out that tiny little black book. I went back to my desk and scanned the first QR code. My mind was thinking that it was probably a link to someone social media page but it sent me to a strange sports gambling webpage that showed wins and losses of the games for that week. As I looked carefully at the website and the games posted, I noticed that it had the wrong teams playing against each other. That's when I noticed the dates of the games. Every game was dated twenty three years in the future to the exact day as today, September 15. Confused I scan the next code on the next page. This one sent me to a specific auction item on Ebay. The item was a baseball card of a player I didn't recognize. The item sold for thousands of dollars and I noticed that the sold date was eleven years in the future to the day. As I keep scanning the codes, it took me to different websites. One was a link to a stock market website. One was a horse racing website showing results of the races. One was an art gallery site for sold paintings. When I scanned the last code. It sent me to a link that showed my obituary. It was dated thirty years in the future to the same day as today. Just like the rest of them. At this point I was freaking out on the inside but I needed to stay calm so I wouldn't alarm other employees at my job. I couldn't understand what it was all about. I had bits of excitement that was quickly absorbed by panic attacks coursing through my body. I thought I might have something that was predicting the future. I was imagining how much money I could make from all of the predictions. I also was worried about the time I had left time to live, if it was true. That's when I noticed my Powerball ticket laying on my desk and the numbers on the ticket matched the number of years in the future for each code. Twenty three, eleven, twelve, twenty, thirty one and thirty seven. When I got home that night, I waited in nervousness to see what numbers came out. My jaw dropped to the floor when I hit every number. But I didn't match the last number. The red Powerball. I didn't care because I just won a million dollars! I was so excited! I could not believe what was happening to me. After the excitement calmed down, I wondered why I didn't get the last number for the jackpot. So I went to go grab the book out of my car and it wasn't there. I looked everywhere for the book but I couldn't find it. When I got to work the next day, the IT Department already erased everyone's computer to upgrade the company's networking software. So I couldn't bring any of the websites back up. That'll when I remembered that I wrote down a few predictions on a note pad when I originally went to each site.