Author’s Note: This is the second part of a series about Joseph’s adventure in a warehouse of orbs that contain possible futures for him. Catch up by reading Part 1
The boys spend most of the morning picking up different glass balls. Tim’s futures typically looked bleak to Joseph. Whenever he expected something exciting to happen the older version of Tim seemed to pick the most boring thing in Joseph’s eyes. When there was a chance to act extraordinarily for a girl Tim typically chose the option that included spending the most amount of money to impress her.
In one strange orange globe, he saw Tim’s future-self yelling at a younger man. They were both dressed in suits, the kind of outfits his dad wore to work. Tim yelled so much in that orb that the young man ended up crying. When it was over Tim offered the sphere to Joseph. “You want to see if you like it?”
“No thanks,” Joseph replied. His father had told him to avoid any purpose that had a suit. “Did you like it?”
Tim shrugged, “It wasn’t that bad. I think the other person in it was pretty dumb. I’m sure they deserved it. And I looked like I was pretty successful in it.” He made a note of the orb’s location on his piece of paper. “I might get that one I don’t know. Have you found any you might like?”
Joseph shook his head, “No they’ve all been interesting, but none of them are what I’ve been looking for.”
“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” Tim asked in a tone that made Joseph feel like he was doing something wrong.
“I guess I just want a purpose that makes others happy and maybe be successful and rich.”
“These orbs don’t show you how you affect others. They only show your future,” Tim said in his explanatory tone that was so common to Joseph by now. Tim’s parents and siblings had explained a lot about this process to him. All Joseph knew going into the day was that he should pick something that he could live with for his whole life. And even that advice hadn’t been enough to help.
Tim set down the orb and then spotted a new light blue sphere and plucked it off the shelf. When Tim looked at it, he saw an older version that was very busy and worried about numbers on a computer for some reason. Many people came into the older Tim’s office, and some left happy while others left sad. Tim wore a suit and seemed to have a lot of money, a nice office and some fancy technology on his desk.
“Wow, this is weird. Usually, people that are this successful aren’t on a shelf this low. You might like it.” Tim said after the scene cleared.
Joseph took the ball from the boy and looked at it. The light blue tint deepened, and he watched the future version of himself in the mist. He was in an office similar to Tim’s. However, there were some differences. Joseph’s desk was smaller than Tim’s, and there was less technology on it. Instead of technology, there were pictures of people. A few pictures had the older Joseph in them others had older versions of his parents and one in the center of them had a photo of a girl who looked to be the same age as Joseph was now.
As the scene played on people entered his office. Unlike Tim’s future they all left happy. Joseph seemed to be giving hard news to some of them, but they all took it positively and thanked Joseph in the end.
T
he strangest part of all was that Joseph wasn’t wearing a suit like Tim. He wore shorts and a collared T-Shirt like the ones his mom made him wear when they visited his grandma. After all the people left Joseph leaned back in his chair and picked up the phone. He gave someone a call and when the call was over older Joseph got up smiling, turned off the lights in the small office and left. The scene faded into a light blue mist after that.
“Weird,” Tim said when it was over. “I didn’t call anyone. I wondered who you called.”
“I don’t know,” Joseph answered with a shrugged. But considering his mood when he left whoever he had contacted must have been a person Joseph cared about a lot.
“Did you notice that I met with more people than you?” Tim asked.
“No not particularly.” He decided not to point out that more people left his office happy than Tim’s future had. Joseph had learned that this wasn’t something Tim cared about. He made a note of the location and followed Tim to the next aisle.
They were now towards the end of the store. There were only a few aisles left. Joseph and Tim still hadn’t found any purposes that jumped out to them. They picked up some balls here or there, but most of them were generic. Over the past few hours, Joseph had learned that each purpose was unique in its own way, but a lot of them seemed to be similar to others.
He was tired of trying to spot the minor differences and just wanted the purpose that he showed up for. A future where Joseph could focus on making a lot of people happy and where he could be rich and famous.
They got down an aisle and watched three futures where both of the boys wound up in suits. Each time Tim interacted with a lot of people and seemed very wealthy. In each sphere, Joseph looked at he interacted with very few people but, they always left the interaction a lot happier.
Joseph became bored with the spheres that were on his level of the shelves. So he gazed higher up to the shelves above. Unlike the ones he and Tim had been playing with these didn’t all turn on when he stared at them. Joseph stared at three or four in a row before he finally found one that worked for him, but what he finally saw was the perfect orb for him.
