Eidolon
Prologue: Patterns
People like to think they’re complicated, but they’re not. Not as individuals, and not as a group. They’re just complex. “But those are synonyms!” I hear you shout. How wrong you are; let me educate you. If something is complicated, it’s hard to understand. Quantum mechanics can become quite complicated, or general relativity. But when something is complex, that just means it’s made of many smaller parts, and those parts may not be difficult to understand at all. So let’s return to my musings on people: their behavior is influenced by many factors, and when you put them together, those factors compound... but they’re quite simple to understand. And predict. At least, they are to me.
So who am I? My name is unimportant, so you can call me Eidolon. Or just Eddie, if that makes you feel more comfortable (assuming you’re one of the 5,326,343 Western people who will read this story). I was born with a quite remarkable aptitude for finding and understanding patterns. Have you heard of the butterfly effect? That a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in the United States? That’s nonsense. Weather patterns are not chaotic enough to be significantly altered by a butterfly. However, if that butterfly were to fly into the face of a bicyclist, and he were to run into a pedestrian, and the pedestrian were to break her leg... then that pedestrian might need to stay in the hospital, and call her family in the US to send money. And her American-living family would then not have enough money for that fancy party they planned on throwing, so they’d cancel it, leaving a friend-of-a-friend from work stuck home alone. And so he’d be home when the postal service worker knocked at his door to deliver a package. They’d chat for a bit, and at some point in the next few years, after one thing leads to another, they’d get married.
So you see, a butterfly can’t cause a hurricane in the US, but it can cause a marriage, if it flies in just the right direction. So if someone—say, a strange man named Eidolon—were to scare the butterfly off, shoo it towards the cycling lane... I think even you can understand where this is going now. This is how I see the world, how I see everything. For the longest time, I considered myself a strict observer, studying the world to learn its machinations. I restricted myself to a vow of complete non-interference, thinking it immoral to manipulate others. But then I realized something: I’m not manipulating them. They are the ones who are letting themselves become slaves to the patterns. All I’m doing is changing the patterns. Can I really be blamed for the marriage of an office worker and a package delivery woman just because I swatted a butterfly? It’s not like I’m controlling their minds. Not really. Their minds are already fully controlled by circumstances, I’m just acting as a guide.
So why, then, am I writing this? Maybe it’s because I know that someone reading this will spark a chain of events, leading to an outcome of my design. Maybe I’m power-mad like that. Or maybe I’m trying to warn everyone how incredibly easy it is to dictate their behavior without them even knowing. Or maybe... just maybe... I have an urge to talk about things that no one can ever know, so an anonymous piece of “fiction” is the perfect way to do it. Which explanation do you prefer? 67% of readers will choose the first; 30% will choose the second. Only 2.6% of you will think I have no ulterior motives. The other 0.4% will believe I have a motive I’m not telling you, the suspicious skeptics. Funny how those numbers work out. But maybe if I relate some of my experiences in more specific detail, those numbers can change. I guess we’ll find out when I finish writing this. So let’s begin...
Chapter I: Viral Vids, Viral Love
James Royce sat at his desk, staring at his computer, but not really seeing anything. He wished he could be lost in thought, but really, he was just exhausted. It was an overly tired kind of exhaustion, where he was too tired to sleep—a phrase that never made sense to him, yet he felt it all the same. So instead, he was scrolling through his social media feed, hoping for something interesting to catch his eye. Cat video. Cat video. Dog video. Random meme. Baby video—well, that might be cute. He loved dogs, but he loved cute babies even more. One day he wanted to be a father, but the timing wouldn’t be right for that for many years, he knew. Still, maybe a cute baby video would mitigate some of his boredom, and that would help him sleep. So he clicked on the video titled “ADORABLE BABY LISTENS TO POP MUSIC! SO CUTE!” and hit play. Watching the three-month-old bouncing up and down, seemingly dancing to that song by One Way Jose, did cheer him up. And besides, though he’d never admit it, he actually liked One Way Jose’s music. He closed the video, climbed into bed, and drifted off to sleep within minutes.
Back up. A week earlier, a woman named Jessica had been driving home with her three-month-old baby in the back seat of her car. As a new song by One Way Jose came on the radio, she noticed her little bundle of joy bouncing around in the back, and thought it was adorable. But she thought nothing of it, and changed the station. Her baby stopped bouncing. She put the song back on, and as you can guess, her baby bounced again. Oh, that is SO cute! she thought. My family needs to see this! So she quickly pulled over the car and began recording her darling “dancing”. She sent it in a message to her entire family. The next day, her cousin had uploaded the video to YouTube. By the next week, it had gone viral, and was spread over social media to so many people that Jessica had no idea who most of them were. She certainly had never heard of anyone named James Royce...
Back up again. Twenty minutes before Jessica discovered the key to her baby’s stardom, a man named Eidolon had called into a radio station and requested “That great new One Way Jose song”...
Okay, you can fast-forward again. So James Royce fell asleep after watching Jessica’s baby. So what? The key, though, isn’t the baby; it’s the song. As James slept, his brain tried to organize everything he’d seen that day. Since the song was fresh in his mind, his brain assumed it must be important, so it kept it at the front of his thoughts throughout the night. When he awoke, he found himself singing the song idly, but thought nothing of it. Maybe if he’d known all the lyrics, he could have finished the song and gotten it out of his head... but he didn’t. So he couldn’t.
He had so much to do that day, but it was all boring errands. Go to the post office, where he couldn’t even flirt with the postal worker because he knew she’d married some guy recently (who may have been a friend-of-a-friend of a Chinese-American family...). Get his car washed. Buy some groceries. As he checked out at the grocery store, though, he unknowingly walked into a chain of events that would change his life.
“That’ll be $42.65,” stated the beautiful cashier matter-of-factly. Her name was Tricia, and James had a major crush on her. But when you’re 27, “crushes” seem like such high school drama, and she was so out of his league that he never bothered to act on it. So he kept his mouth shut and never said more to her than basic small talk.
As he fished out the 65 cents change from his pocket, James unconsciously began whistling a certain tune. “Oh, wow, you’re a fan of One Way Jose?” Tricia asked.
“Well, I, uh...” He knew that, as an adult, he shouldn’t be embarrassed about the kind of music he liked. But that band was always associated with teen girls, which made him insecure about it.
“I LOVE them! I’m going to their concert on Friday!”
“Oh, uh... that’s really cool,” James replied with a smile.
“Yeah! I have two tickets... I was going to go with my friend, but she can’t make it.”
Back up. Three days earlier, a young woman named Daisy was minding her own business when she got a call from her father. “Your mom is in the hospital. Please come ASAP.” She dropped everything and rushed to the local hospital, where her mother was declared comatose. She texted her friend Tricia: “Can’t make it to the concert this week. Mom’s in the hospital. Talk later.”
Back up. Four hours before Daisy got that call, her mother, thirty miles away, was walking her dog. Out of nowhere, a cat ran across the street, and the dog chased after it. The woman rushed after the dog, trying to keep it out of the road, and was hit by a car. In all the chaos, no one noticed that the man who was driving the car was also the one who had released a cat into the street, and no one stopped to find out his name was, of course, Eidolon.
Before you start thinking I’m a psychopath, I’m really not. Daisy’s mother would come out of the coma exactly one day after the concert, and she’d recover quickly. So no one was really hurt.
Fast-forward. “So... if you’re a fan of One Way Jose, and I have an extra ticket to their concert... want to come with me? It sucks going to a concert alone.”
“What? Me? Some random customer?” James was flattered, but shocked. No way would he ever imagine someone as gorgeous as Tricia would ask him out, even platonically.
“Oh, please,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “You’re in the store like three times a week. You practically live here, and we’ve spoken so much that you’re almost a friend.”
“Well, that makes me feel ‘almost’ special,” James joked. Tricia laughed, which he took as a good sign. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. I’ll come to the concert with you.”
“Great!” Tricia tore off a bit of receipt paper and grabbed a pen. “This is my number. Call me tomorrow and I’ll give you the details of the concert. You know, the address and time and seat number and all that.”
During the concert, a strange, drunken man spilled his drink all over Tricia’s blouse. It wasn’t me this time, I swear... though I of course knew it would happen. She was quite upset, and James, being the gentleman that he is, offered her his jacket to cover up. When the concert ended, Tricia lingered with James in the stadium’s parking lot for a bit of a post-gig chat. “So, uh... thanks. For the jacket. I guess I should give that back now.”
“Nah,” he said. “Then everyone will see your messed up shirt. Keep it for tonight, and just bring it back to my place when you get a chance.”
“But I don’t know where you live,” she said coyly.
“I guess you’ll just have to call and find out, then.” James was feeling unusually confident. He would never flirt like this with anyone, especially not someone like Tricia. But Tricia was the one who’d asked him out, and Tricia was the one who’d accepted the jacket. And plus, Tricia was the one who was lingering behind to talk to him about this. Women don’t do that if they’re not into you, right?
She did call, and she did come to his place the next day to return the jacket. She thanked him again, only this time, she did so with a kiss. And then with an unzipping of pants. And then with a removal of shirts, ironically enough. You see where this is going. They made love several times that day. And yes, it was definitely “making love”: they had quickly formed a connection that night at the concert, bonded over boy band music and drunken accidents (as you do), and now they were just sealing the deal. She came over a few times the next week, and came quite a few times more. Soon, they were calling each other “boyfriend and girlfriend”. Sadly, their relationship would only last about 7 months, but during that time, they got each other off so much that really, it’s hard to call it a loss.
And all because a man had requested a boy band’s song on the radio. A relationship would never have bloomed... a bond would never have been formed... and exactly 174 orgasms would never have happened... if I hadn’t done what I did. So you may ask yourself now: “why would he do this?” Maybe I just like seeing people happy. Or maybe I just get off on the power of what I do. Or maybe, just maybe, I get off on imagining other people getting off. Though can it really be called “imagining” when the patterns are so clear? Sure, I can only be 98.5% sure what Tricia’s orgasm face looks like, but I can be 100% sure what her tits looked like through her wet blouse, because I was there in the crowd when it happened. And yes, I only know with about 95% confidence that Tricia rode James cowgirl style an average of three times a week, and what that felt like for him, but honestly? 95% is enough. Because that’s just how good she looks. So is that why I do it? Because I’m a pervert? Or did I only emphasize the sexual qualities because of the theme of the archive to which I’m submitting my tale? Do I have ulterior motives, and what are they? Have the numbers changed?
I know the answer to all those questions. But if you want to know them, too, perhaps you should try looking harder... at the patterns.