Once day a man and his wife discovered a beautiful machine on a bench that looked like a set of sunglasses. On its inside were engraved the words ‘Tell me what would you want’. The sunglasses responded to requests by displaying a time, precise location and word to say.
What they had discovered was a mysterious device that calculated the first cause to a chain-reaction of fantastically unlikely events.
Following the machine’s instructions, the couple spoke a request then make their way to a busy intersection and at the nominated time said the word.
Out of sight, a passerby heard the word, was cast back to a cherished memory, stumbled into an oncoming stranger who in trying to regain his balance caused pizza to propel from its owner’s hand onto the feet of the couple.
They were awestruck.
The next day they requested grander things. It set off a tapestry of delicately connected events. Within days they had a beautiful car. Then jewellery. Then a house. And through extraordinary luck (or so others believed) they won a fortune.
But soon riches grew unsatisfying and the couple’s appetite turned to long faded childhood dreams.
In a short time, the fantastically improbable became certain.
He gained fame as history’s unlikeliest sporting champion, renowned for audacious feats and an unsurpassable winning streak.
She made yodeling popular with young people everywhere.
Together they grew immensely wealthy and revered. But having unlocked the key to unlikely certainty and all they’d ever wished for, a stale mist settled on their lives.
The couple lamented their empty and certain success along with the machine that had given all they wanted. So, with a final request they told the machine to help them forget they had ever found it.
Now having no knowledge of the cause of their amazing triumphs, the couple basked in the glory of their remarkable achievements.
And out of sight, the glasses dropped, soon to be found by a young boy as they had been done to a thousand people before and a thousand to come.