The sun occasionally glinted off the storefront windows as Paul walked along Broad Street in Manhattan on this blustery mid-December day, on his way to his job at Champs Gourmet Deli. He hardly noticed the aggravation of the spikes of light in his eyes, or the random flakes of snow that fell intermittently, as his mind was brooding on the plight of his finances. His wife of two years and his young daughter were barely making ends meet with the pay from this job, but it was all the work that he could find. His wife, Paula, made a little money on the side watching other people's children, but what they had was never enough. He wished that he could provide her the life she deserved but could not find a way.
It was inevitable that being so distracted, he bumped solidly into another pedestrian who was carrying a load of packages wrapped in Christmas paper and bows. Brightly colored boxes went everywhere as the stranger stumbled and Paul caught onto his arm, steading both himself and the stranger.
"I'm so sorry," Paul said. "I don't know where my head was. Are you OK?"
The stranger, a man of fifty-something years, was too startled at first to reply. Stooping to retrieve his packages, he finally said, "No problem young man. Life goes on."
"Let's get these packages," Paul offered.
Paul hastened to help recover the boxes strewn on the sidewalk. When all were once more safely in the man's arms, he turned and continued on his way as though nothing had occurred. Paul watched him go for a moment and then started to go on himself when he noticed a coin on the sidewalk. It was about the size of a half-dollar, which you rarely see these days, and he was certain that it had not been there when they were picking up the boxes. Thinking that the stranger must have dropped it, he quickly grabbed it and turned to try to return it to the stranger, but the man was nowhere to be seen on the near empty sidewalk.
Glancing at the strange coin in his hand, and strange it was with unusual symbols and a foreign language on one side and on the other a short saying of some kind, with a square hole in the middle, he decided that there was no way to return it to its rightful owner. Sliding the coin into a pocket of his jeans, he continued on his way to work.
At work that day, Paul was very busy. Life in a deli is a constant hum of taking orders, making sandwiches and such, then off to the next customer. During his breaks though, his mind returned to the strange coin he had picked up. One side had the strange symbols 変自変幸 across the top, with the unknown words 'Summa Tuarum Electionum Es' curved along the bottom, while the other side had the words 'Sleep with this coin under your pillow at night and your dreams may come true.' in stylized script letters. All in all, a very confusing find, which he could not stop thinking about.
That evening after he had returned home from work, he showed the coin to Paula. She was an English Major in college before she had to drop out during her pregnancy with Peter, their son. Maybe she could make something of it.
"The symbols look Asian, and the words look Latin," she said after turning the coin in her fingers a few times. "It was pretty common in China to put a hole in the center of coins a long time ago, so they could be strung on strings."
Retrieving a book from her small shelf in the bedroom, she continued, "I have no idea what the Chinese might say, but I should be able to find the meaning of the Latin in this dictionary."
Fitting actions to words, she leafed through the Latin-English Dictionary and very soon found the words that she sought, writing them on a piece of paper as she did. Summa = All, Tuarum = You, Electionum = Choices, Es = Are. Fiddling with the words for a moment to gain a sense of their grammar, she eventually wrote out, You Are The Sum of Your Choices.
"Well, that's a deep thought," Paul said laughing as he and Paula reviewed the results of her investigation.
"Yeah," Paula agreed. "I imagine the Chinese is somewhat the same," as she laid the coin on the small table that served as a nightstand by their bed.
* * *
That night, Paul could not seem to get to sleep. His thoughts kept returning to the incident with the stranger on the street, morphing into wilder and wilder scenes of colored boxes flying everywhere and the two of them chasing them as the wind pushed them down the sidewalk and into the street. Every time he glanced at the bedside clock to validate that the night was slipping away, his gaze fell on the coin beside the clock on the table. It almost seemed to pulse with a dim glow to his tired eyes.
Finally, he could take the distraction no longer and reached out to grab the coin from the table. It seemed a little bit warm, which was odd. He tried to open the small drawer on the table to put it away so the glow would not bother him, but the drawer seemed stuck. In frustration, he just pushed it under his pillow to get it out of sight. Without the dim light to bother him, he did seem to fall asleep in short order.
His night was not to get any easier though. He started having the most vivid dreams that he had ever had.
During the first dream, he was young again, just out of high school, out to make his way in the world. Everything seemed so possible back then. He had always wanted to be a pilot or a sailor and travel the world.
The dream became strange. A glowing figure appeared that he certainly had not known back then. The figure, a young woman dressed in an airline flight attendants' uniform, smiled at him, but did not say anything. She would occasionally wave a hand in the direction of some scene from his past, and smile kindly, but made no sound. Except for this strangeness, the dream was pleasing, although it left a nostalgic yearning behind as it started to fade.
After a while, another dream came along, as dreams often do. This time, the dream seemed to be set in the present. He was having a day trip with his family. Little Peter was enjoying running on the grass at Central Park. As he held Paula's hand, following the exuberant youngster, Paul's thoughts did not seem to be on the adventure of the day, but rather on the memory that bills were coming due and he just was not making enough money at his job. If only he had learned a profession, he could have made more money.
Paul felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw another glowing person, a man this time, who said, "I am Messenger Gerald. You probably will not remember meeting me in your dreams but do try to remember to enjoy what you have in life. Your time is short and will be over far too quickly to waste!" There was a glint of light, as off a shiny object, and the glowing figure was gone.
The dream lasted for what seemed a long time. Details of the experience in the park were very clear; Peter climbing up the steps and trying to climb the walls of the Blockhouse, he and Paula enjoying the walk between the majestic elm trees along the long straight Mall, the picturesque lake view of the Charles Dana Discovery Center. It all seemed a perfect day, but this dream too passed into memory.
Paul tossed and turned uncomfortably as yet another dream began. This one did not seem that it would be as full of fond memories as the others. It began in a semi-dark office in a building somewhere, probably Manhattan. The room was nowhere near the ground floor, as the view out the expansive windows showed the city spread out and from quite a few floors above the street.
Alone in the room, Paul was dressed in a fine-looking suit, sitting at a large desk with very little on it. He did not know why he was there or what he was expected to do. He looked sheepishly around the room, hoping that no one could tell that he was way out of his league here, and his gaze fell upon yet another glowing figure of a man.
"I see that you have finally achieved your goal," the man said. The words were clear, but their meaning was not. Paul could not begin to determine what goal he might be speaking of.
"Who are you?" Paul finally said.
"I am Messenger Charles," the man said, and as he did so, the glow about him increased a little, and he seemed to become even more there. That was an odd thought, Paul remembered thinking. How could you be more there than you already were. Everything about this dream seemed askance.
"Where are we?" Paul questioned. "And why are we here? I don't remember having any goal."
"We are at your office, the one that you acquired with your last business deal from the previous owner," the man replied calmly and evenly. "We are here so you can see what you would become if you wanted to."
"What!" Paul said, astonished. "I could never work in an office like this!"
"You could, if you got your wish to learn how to make more money," the Messenger said.
"I don't understand," Paul said. "What wish?"
"You put the TOKEN under your pillow and dreamed the dreams. Your wish can be granted," the stranger answered. "You could make more money than you ever thought possible."
This was sounding like a better dream than he had thought.
"So, I will be successful?" Paul asked.
"You can earn plenty of money," the man said, not quite answering Paul's question, as he rose from where he had been sitting. "If you want."
"Why wouldn't I want that?" Paul asked, becoming more excited with the prospect.
The man walked over to Paul and said, "Stand up. I want to show you something."
Paul did as he was bid, and the stranger reached out and took a hold of his left hand. Instantly the scene changed to a well-furnished apartment. Paul looked about him in awe. He had never seen a place so large and with such expensive furniture. The view out the windows matched that of the office he had been in before. Everything was exactly in place and the place was very quiet, no traffic or other sounds intruding.
"This place is amazing. What is it?" Paul asked.
"It is your apartment in Hanover Square," the man said. "You moved in here a year ago."
"Wow! Who would have thought," Paul exclaimed. "I don't know what I could have done to deserve this!"
"You worked hard. You thought of nothing else. You got what you wanted," the Messenger answered.
"Paula must really love this," Paul went on.
"Oh no. I'm afraid that Paula did not come here with you," the man said in response.
"What do you mean? Why not?!" Paul said, stunned.
"You were too busy for your family. They moved on," the man said rather cryptically.
"What do you mean 'moved on'" Paul said, becoming a bit alarmed.
"You thought of nothing but your work. You never talked or spent time with Paula and Peter. They began to spend more and more time at her mother's until one day, she called and said that she would be staying there permanently," the stranger replied.
"Why?" Paul moaned. "Why would she do that?"
"You wanted success. She wanted family," the man responded. "Come, you have more to see."
The stranger grabbed Paul's hand once more and the scene changed again. Now they were standing in a room, with a small tree decorated with a few handmade ornaments and a string of popcorn. There was Paula and Peter and Paula's mother Bernice. They all seemed happy as Peter opened what appeared to be the only present in the room. He showed them all the plank of wood cut into the shape of a plane that had been inside.
"Paula!" Paul shouted, stepping toward his wife.
"They cannot see us, or hear us, I'm afraid," the stranger said.
"How can that be? We are right here!" Paul shouted back at his companion.
"We are only seeing what can be, not what is," the man said.
"I don't understand," Paul wailed. "Who are you?"
"I told you, I am Messenger Charles," the stranger replied calmly. "I help people."
"You call this help!" Paul responded irately.
"Yes," Messenger Charles said, remaining calm. "You are wishing for something that may not be what you want. I am showing you what can happen if you were to get your wish."
"You mean that none of this is real?" Paul asked.
"The future is never real, never determined," Messenger Charles said. "You are the sum of the choices that you make. What you become is what you choose to become as a result of the things that you do."
With those comments, the Messenger once more took Paul by the hand, there was a sensation of vertigo, and then Paul blinked sleepily as he raised his head from his pillow. He rolled over quickly and looked across the bed. There was his wonderful Paula, right where she was supposed to be! He whooped with delight and pounced on her.
Paul tried to tell Paula all about his dreams, but she was too overwhelmed by the rush of words to comprehend any more than that he chose love of her and their son Peter over anything else.
Authors Note:
My apologies to Charles Dickens for not doing as good a job as he did with this topic.
For those (aka most) of you who did not look up the strange symbols on the TOKEN:
To write "change self can change happiness" in kanji, you would use the following characters:
• 変 (hen) for "change"
• 自 (ji) for "self"
• 変 (hen) again for "change"
• 幸 (kou or sachi) for "happiness"
So, it would look like this: 変自変幸.
