If this had happened a hundred years ago there would be a mysterious mirror involved, one bought in a dusty shop with an enigmatic owner.
But this all started in the summer of 2012 and there was nothing strange going on.
Not at first.
I had recently graduated and was looking for work. This was not a situation I had expected to find myself in.
I had thought I was going to be head hunted while I was still at university and have a seriously well-paid position with all the benefits waiting for me.
This had happened to some of my classmates, and I’d congratulated them through gritted teeth then checked my messages again, and again.
But there was nothing.
I finished sitting my exams and my results came in, and still no one had approached me.
My pride was dented, and my grades were not as good as I had hoped either, but I still believed in myself.
I knew I had what it took to be a soar-away success as a tech entrepreneur.
My plan had not changed despite the bump in the road. I was going to start out as a company man, develop industry contacts, then branch out on my own.
Sitting at my laptop browsing through job adverts, but not yet seeing the one that was right for me, I spent a lot of time daydreaming.
I was a CEO. A billionaire even though I was not yet thirty. I was giving a talk that was being livestreamed across the world. I was being driven in a stretch limousine to the airport where my private jet was waiting to take me to one of my many holiday homes. Where I would enjoy a candlelit dinner with a supermodel.
That was the life ahead of me. I just needed a break.
One afternoon, after hours of browsing and imagining, I decided I needed some fresh air.
I was back in my hometown. While I’d been away at university, I had not stayed in touch with any of my old school friends. My ambitions came first.
But I thought it would be nice to look up someone I used to be close to. Just for a bit of r and r.
I strolled along familiar sidewalks, thinking how some things would never change. And I soon slipped into a new daydream about the street I was walking down being renamed after me in honour of my achievements.
By the time I reached my destination there was a tickertape parade being planned in my fantasy. I smiled to myself and focused back in on reality.
Jack had been good fun to hang out with back when we were both teenagers. He’d left school, started working and moved into his own place. He’d had plans of his own, which he’d told me about: to open a garage, servicing regular cars to pay the bills while he worked on classic cars on the side. One day, the classics would be all he did.
I wasn’t sure if I’d find him at home and if I didn’t it would be no big deal.
I pressed on the intercom.
A hoarse voice answered. Whoever it was sounded dreadful. I asked for Jack, and was buzzed in.
Five minutes later I was standing in the middle of chaos. Pizza boxes, burger and ice cream cartons and empty bottles of beer – a lot of empty bottles of beer – were strewn about the room. Sitting on a stained and battered sofa at the heart of this mess was my old friend Jack.
He was grinning and kept saying how good it was to see me.
Despite being in slob central I felt the same way.
After hunting for and failing to find any beer that had not been opened and necked, Jack suggested we go out for a cold one.
I thought that a drink would be fun. But just one.
Sometime around midnight we were staggering down the road laughing and propping each other up.
I wasn’t sure, but I thought we had been asked to leave at least two bars, I may or may not have had a gorgeous woman’s mobile number written in lipstick on my forehead, and there was what looked like puke on Jack’s t-shirt.
The next day I woke up around noon, in my bed, with no idea how I had got there. Apart from a sore head, I was the happiest I’d been for a while.
All the pressure I’d been putting myself under about not being snapped up by an employer felt to have been lifted.
I opened up my laptop and decided that looking for work could take a back seat. If no companies wanted to take me on yet, that was their loss. I would skip the first couple of stages of my career plan and go straight to making a splash on my own.
I was immediately brimming with ideas. They must have been brewing inside me while I fretted over other things, I figured. Such was the nature of genius.
I’d been working solidly for hours when my phone went. It was Jack. He’d woken up and was ravenous for breakfast.
I didn’t point out that it was almost evening and the breakfast boat had long since sailed because I realised I was starving.
We met up in a bar, after Jack had sent a follow up text suggesting hair of the dog with our meal would be ideal. And he was on his second beer by the time I arrived. I happily ordered one for myself.
I do remember arriving home this time. It was just going light and I was soaking wet after falling in the river from which we had been trying to tickle trout.
I managed to peel off most of my clothes before I fell into bed.
The days and nights that followed passed like this.
I worked on my ideas then met up with Jack. It was a great time. We laughed so much. We went pretty wild but not too far. I only remember one encounter with a police cruiser. It pulled up alongside us as we weaved our way down a road and one of the officers asked us how we were doing.
I guess they could tell we were just two young men out for a good time but harmless so they drove on.
There were some more serious moments along the way. A couple of times Jack’s frustrations with his own career came out. His plan to open his own garage had not taken off. He blamed his last boss who had fired him after claiming he was unreliable.
I had put my arm around Jack when he told me this and said how he was the most solid guy I had ever met and that I trusted him completely.
And you know what, the beer was talking here, but I also meant it.
I was about to trust Jack with something that meant everything to me.
My gateway to a dazzling future. The CEO life, the riches, the profile, the limo, the jet, the supermodel, the works!
Over the last few weeks, in the intense periods of working in-between cutting loose with Jack, I had focused in on one of my ideas. It was by far the best and I was massively excited about it. And while it was not ready to be revealed to the world, I did want to show it to someone.
And Jack was my man.
I messaged him, asking him to swing by my house before we hit the bars. He replied that he would pick up a six pack and bring it with him.
When he arrived, I pulled a second chair up in front of my laptop, then quickly downed a beer.
I was wired with excitement and the drink helped calm me down enough to provide a running commentary.
I told Jack how the first thing I would do was take a picture of my face then upload it to the programme I had written.
The programme showed as an icon in the corner of the screen while my smiling face was front and centre.
Next, I explained that I was entering my physical details, beginning with the basics, my age, height and weight. Then it was on to my medical history. Using a bit of kit I’d bought cheap online I also took and entered my blood pressure – after downing another beer to damp down a bit more of the effects of my buzzing nerves.
I kept going with details inputted about my sleep patterns, the frequency of headaches and any other physical pain or discomfort I felt, my diet and then my alcohol consumption.
I paused here before telling Jack I was being honest in entering how many units I was drinking. Not fudging any details was important for the outcome to be accurate.
The number of units was excessive, more than at any other stage in my life, and Jack did not look shocked when I typed in the number. He was probably downing the same amount, if not more.
Then I added details, scored on one to ten scales, about my emotional outlook on life.
And I was almost done.
Finally, it was time for the reveal.
I explained to Jack how the programme I had written was my magic mirror. It provided a window into the future and now it had the relevant data it could show how I would look when I was older.
This could be any number of years into the future. I went for twenty. I’d be in my forties, and still slim and good lucking. The confidence shining through my skin. There might be one or two grey hairs, the odd wrinkle, but they would improve my appearance.
I counted down to ten while Jack did a drumroll with his fingers, then pressed Enter.
The programme updated the picture of me in a matter of seconds.
I stared at it in shock.
My skin was covered in a network of broken veins. I was bloated. My eyes were bloodshot. My hair was thinning and greasy and grey. My lips were cracked and there were gaps in my smile where my teeth were missing.
I looked appalling.
By my side, I heard Jack breathe out. Then he told me in a quiet voice that no one was going to buy this programme.
My heart sank even further.
I hadn’t pinned down the commercial uses yet but was convinced these would come to me once the programme was up and working.
I had been so sure. This idea was going to be a winner and the start of my stellar career.
All of a sudden, I had a very different future.
One where I was a haggard wreck and where my best idea had proved useless.
I felt very cold. I felt sick and afraid.
Terrified at the void that had opened up before me.
This was a nightmare.
I heard Jack asking me if I wanted to go to a bar but did not reply. I did not notice him leaving. I sat there for hours. I was in a very dark place.
Eventually, I messaged Jack asking him if he was still out. I wanted to get incredibly drunk and not sober up.
Not long after I had messaged my mobile rang. It was a police officer asking me if I was a family member of Mr Williamson. I had no idea who that was at first then remembered this was Jack’s surname.
I said he was my brother, which he wasn’t by law or blood, but that summer that was what he meant to me.
The officer told me that he had been killed in a road accident.
He’d been driving under the influence. Over the days that followed I got very angry with him about this. I cried as well for the first time since I was a child.
His funeral took place on a beautiful day in late August. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
My only smart shirt was tight around my neck, and I felt a bit faint as Jack’s coffin was carried into church. I did not know his family but I recognised some of his friends as people I had been to school with as well.
One was a woman I had once had a crush on. I was too shy to even speak to her at the time.
She must have noticed me noticing her because after the service she came over to say hello.
We didn’t speak for long and I did not think about her after she had left.
I went home and felt sad and lost.
I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, just sat there – until someone knocked on the door. I didn’t respond. I wanted whoever it was to go away.
Then there was a tapping on the window.
I glanced over. It was the woman from the funeral, my old school crush. She gave me a little wave, smiled hopefully. I dragged myself to my feet and went to let her in.
That was the moment my life started again.
It was very different than before.
Over the course of the next twelve months, I got a job, working in IT support for a large firm of accountants. I joined a gym and started being very careful about what I put into my body. There was no fried food, no sugar or salt. And I stopped drinking alcohol.
It wasn’t easy. I even dreamt about eating cheeseburgers layered with bacon and slathered in onions, all washed down with a pitcher of beer.
But I persevered.
I was no longer naive. My dreams of a brilliant career as a tech entrepreneur had been shattered the first time I used my programme, and the fragility of health and life had been bitterly exposed.
I gave up my dreams and I grew up. Belatedly, I guess, but better late than never.
Eighteen months after Jack died, I got engaged. It was to a friend of my old school crush. I wasn’t head over heels in love but the thought of being with her felt right.
Then life kept happening. I got promoted at work, which was good, but the people I was now managing were difficult to deal with at times.
My wife and I had a baby, which was a joy and a constant worry. Nothing prepares you for being a parent, I say that with my hand on my heart.
I got life insurance, and I wrote a will before I was thirty. As I signed it my mind flashed back to believing how I’d be a billionaire before I was thirty, and I did smile, but I felt kind of sad at the same time.
A second child came along and my monthly HP payments and direct debits seemed to breed as well.
I had my first migraine.
And ten years passed, somehow.
This morning I had a row with my wife. They’ve been happening more and more lately. I wish they wouldn’t but the anger flares up inside me and before I know it, we’re sniping at each other, and I’m left with a dull pain behind my eyes.
I do yoga every day now but that did not help relax me this time, and I did not feel like my bowl of sugar free bran with fat free milk. I started it, but its tastelessness jarred.
I felt frustrated and needed something to pick me up. Alcohol was still not part of my life, so a drink was out of the question.
So, what could I do?
Something occurred to me.
Hopefully, it would give me the boost I needed.
Feeling a bit guilty, almost like I was indulging in a bad habit from the past, I went up to the spare room and found my old laptop. I’d packed it away years ago and had a latest slimline model now.
I powered up the laptop and was pleasantly surprised when it started.
Then I took a I took a picture of my face and uploaded it to the programme I’d created all those years ago.
In retrospect I knew it had not even been particularly original, and there were now apps that I could have downloaded easily.
But it was my creation, and I was in the mood to give it a whirl one more time.
I carefully entered the details required. Every snippet about my lifestyle. I was scrupulously honest.
Then I took a deep breath.
I was looking forward to this.
To seeing what I would look like in twenty years. A responsible man in his fifties. There’d be none of the damage caused by alcohol or junk food. My skin would look good with no broken veins. I would be slim and fit. I would have an air of wisdom.
I pressed Enter.
The picture updated.
A cold chill settled onto my skin and bile rose up into the back of my mouth.
I looked at the screen in horror and saw what the stresses and strains of the life I had chosen would do to me.
The price of abandoning my dreams.
I saw my rotted face, my rictus grin, the cavities where my eyes had been.
I saw how I would look in my grave.