The Germinator

I preferred working the back of the aircraft. At flight’s end I didn’t have to buh-bye 250 times and could just walk up the aisle looking for magazines and stuff. A lost and found check before the cleaners came on was part of the flight attendant job. But mostly I just did it for magazines.

​On a Vegas flight you always got an interesting haul: Soldier of Fortune, Vogue, Guns and Ammo, Vanity Fair. A GQ really made my day. After that particular flight I found the latest copy of People (Richard Gere - 1999’s Sexiest Man Alive) and a little black book. It wasn’t my first little book find. I’d found a backpacker’s Kashmir journal in a miniature ring binder, a teen girl’s diary with a tiny lock pickable with a paper clip, and once a cheap dollar store contact book wherein some chauvinist roué’s collected women’s phone number and rated them for their intimate skills. But this little black book had a certain old school quality, like something in which Hemingway might keep his notes. I sensed immediately its contents were significant.

​I checked the flyleaf for contact information. The airline took few pains to return items for which no one came looking. I’d call people or mail them back their notebooks (after reading them, of course). There’s a special thrill about reading someone’s personal notebook. Leafing quickly through this one I found it contained a nerd’s treasure of numbers like Cold War code keys and lists like:

1. Win Elon Musk carbon capture challenge 2021: Plant 20 trillion trees.

2. Trawl oceans for plastic building material for concrete filler in 3D printed housing.

3. Moratorium on air travel until full conversion to hydrogen gel engines

4. Counter Koch Think Tanks with truth and sane tax policy

5. Promote anti trust regulation for break up of social media platforms

I wasn’t sure what an Elon Musk was, it sounded like a cologne, but the carbon capture thing seemed obvious. As for converting aviation to hydrogen gel, WTF ?

Other lists included weird lists like:

1. Megabucks. Caesar’s, June 1, 4:27 pm

2. El Gordo

3. Mega Millions

4. The Big Game

5. Lotto 6/49

These OCD lists were… interesting. I slipped the book into the pocket of my uniform trench.

Driving home I popped in the latest Moby CD. Getting on the highway the motor of my 1989 Lebaron convertible coughed. The gas gauge was on the red E. I needed gas right quick. I drove slow to save gas and pulled off at the next off ramp to fill up. As I paid for the gas the cashier asked: “Want a ticket for tonight’s Lotto ?” I noticed the green Lotto 6/49 machine. Something clicked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Quick pick or your own numbers ?

“I got numbers,” I said. She pointed to where the lottery forms and miniature pencils were kept. I pulled out the little black book and filled out the lotto form with the numbers corresponding Lotto 6/49 numbers from the little book.

“Okay. Twenty bucks for the gas … a buck for the ticket.”

I went home with gas in the tank and a fresh lottery ticket.

Nicky’s flight got in later. I could get in a drink and a nap before picking her up. If the stars aligned she wouldn’t be too tired and I’d get lucky.

​​​***

​Nicky shook me gently awake.

​“Got any smokes ?” she asked. Nicky needed a smoke with her morning coffee, or else. Normally I kept a carton in the freezer but my last three flights had been turnarounds and I couldn’t buy duty free.

​“Nope. Sorry.”

​“Ok. I’m going to the store. Wanna coffee ?”

​“Ya !” I reached for my wallet. “Hey, mind checking this ticket for me ?”

​Nicky took the ticket and left. I fell asleep again. Then the phone rang. I reached over for it. It was Nicky, real excited: “Oh my God. You’re won’t believe this ! You won like twenty grand.”

​Nicky loved practical jokes. Sometimes while I watched TV, she’d drop an ice cube down the back of my shirt. She found it hilarious when scalding water made me scream as she flushed the toilet while I showered.

​“Yeah right.” I said.

​“No. Seriously. Your ticket won big. Come down here. I told the guy it wasn’t my ticket and now he won’t give it back to me.”

​“Nicky if this is a trick I swear…”

​“No trick. Get down here. You won second prize !”

​I pulled on the jeans and T-shirt I was wearing the night before then flip flopped down the block to the corner store. I fully expected to be received with a great big “Psych !” from Nicky when I got there. But secretly I was also already spending the twenty Gs in my head. I’d buy some of those hot dot.com stocks. I’d lay in some Y2K supplies. I’d get my brakes fixed. When Nicky saw me walk into the store she ran over to me and jumped me hugging me with her arms and legs.

I carried her to the lottery machine, and Jimmy, the Korean store guy asked: “This your ticket ?”

​“Yup. It’s mine.”

​He ran the ticket through the lottery machine. Lights flashed and it played a happy electronic tune like Legend of Zelda.

​“Congratulations. You got 5 numbers and the bonus number right. You win twenty thousand five hundred and twenty three dollars and ninety two cents !”

​I whooped. No way that Nicky could have get Jimmy in on a joke like this. A lottery concession was a serious matter for a corner store. And Jimmy was a Tae Kwon Do black belt and a Korean Presbyterian. As serious as they come.

​“Hot Damn !” I said dancing around with Nicky still clinging to me. Jimmy frowned. Finally Nicky let go and we both started jumping around the store.

“So Jimmy. Where’s my money ?”

​​​​***

​We made an appointment at the lottery office that afternoon. I took Nicky for a nice lunch that I couldn’t have afforded yesterday and charged it to my credit card. We drank a bottle of wine with lunch that cost more than my last 3 restaurant meals. Over lunch I showed Nicky the little black book with all the numbers and lists and the line with the numbers I had played.

​“Holy crap !” She exclaimed. “There’s lots of numbers in here. We got to figure it out and try it again.”

​“Yeah. It was probably just a fluke. But imagine if it isn’t.”

​“Wait. This Megabucks entry at the Caesar’s casino. I read about that. It was last week. The biggest slot win in history. You found this on the Vegas flight ?”

​“Yeah !”

​“Too bad you got one number wrong. It could have been 18 million bucks !”

​“Wait. What ?”

​After filling in forms at the lottery office, and taking pictures with a big cheque they filled out with a dry erase maker, I got an actual cheque for the $20,523.92. It was like six months of salary and should have been a really big moment.. But eighteen million was ten times what I’d earn in my lifetime. It felt almost… disappointing. But I still had the little black book full of magic numbers, and Nicky to help me figure out how to win all these lotteries without attracting suspicion.​​

***

​Nicky, me and all our friends went to a club and partied away ten percent of my lottery winnings night one. So I wasn’t at my best next morning when the doorbell ding donged. I ignored it and the phone started ringing. I answered the phone and someone said: “You have something that belongs to me and I know you’re home. Come to the front door and give it back.”

​“What the… ?” I started but they hung up. An insistent pounding on the front door. I put the little black book under my mattress, and donned shorts to go answer the knocking. Through the peep hole I saw this little guy with a haircut like David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust holding one of those new Startac phones to his ear. He didn’t look like much of a threat so I opened the door. He was a foot shorter than I was, scrawny, pale and generally unhealthy looking. I kind of remembered him from the Vegas flight. He’d been reading Atwood’s ‘Handmaids Tale’.

​“Whassup ?”

​Little David Bowie said: “You have something I need back”

​“Don’t know what you’re talking about. How about you leave ?”

​“Look. I know you won money from numbers in my book. Keep the money and give me back the book if you know what’s good for you ?”

​I couldn’t believe he was threatening me: “Or what ?”

​“Or you will live to see your civilization collapse and this planet burn. You will end your days regretting your actions right now.”

​Interesting.

​“OK. Now I know you’re crazy. I’m going to shut this door and you go away or I call the police to take you to the psych ward.”

​He looked at his shoes and shook his head like he was preparing to address a child.

​“Look,” he said. “This will sound crazy but I’m here from the future to try and save humanity. That book is a tool I need to get the resources to do the work. I need it back.”

​I called behind me: “Hey Nicky ! You gotta hear this.”

​Nicky came up behind me wearing my Lollapalooza T: “What’s up ?”

​“This guy says he’s from the future here to save the world and he wants his notebook back.”

​Nicky’s eyes went wide.

​“Look. It’s true. I left the book on a plane. You worked that flight and found it. My detective traced you. You used numbers from the book to win the lottery. Keep one more number, but give back the book.”

​“You’re not from the future. Looks like you shop Sally Ann in the 70s. Where’s your…. like… electric boots and …mohair suit “?”

​“So did you come from the future in a cloud of lightning, like in Terminator ?” Nicky asked. She was more technically minded.

​Micro Bowie sighed: “Yeah something like that. And I couldn’t bring my handheld device because rare earth messes up the quantum field continuum. And the more the mass the greater the energy needed to project it back through time. So yeah, I’m short, and all I brought was a notebook. Now you want a future or not ?”

***

So here it is 2031 and I’m hunkered in my New Zealand bunker. Had it built before Auckland forbade foreign billionaires buying doomsday property. The weather’s sucks here, but it’s still better than almost everywhere else. Being an island, it’s easier to dodge pandemics too. I have a one acre subterranean freezer filled with frozen meat and veg. My temperature and humidity controlled warehouse is stocked with over forty tonnes of rice, flour, and beans. Nicky split after civilization collapsed. She took our second bunker on Koh Samui. My security team is now composed of Kurdish female special forces personnel .

Little Bowie (as I called him, Nicky called him “the Germinator”) trashes me regularly on TED Talks, but who cares. He hates all billionaires and it just makes him seem crazier. He went broke trying to save the world then became an academic. No one gives a rat’s ass what any scientist thinks. Elon Mask is my neighbour. We dine on occasion but never discuss how we both got quite so rich. That would be gauche. He owns almost all the satellites so our wifi bandwidth is great !

I keep the little black book in my safe. I played the numbers out long ago, but it seemed like I should keep it for posterity.

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