Free The Future for Curious People: A Novel by Gregory Sherl Page A

way; my face is slightly injected. Binter has rubbed off so hard on me that I look like an aged sorority girl.
    And beside me, there’s someone else. Not Jason Binter at all. There’s a man wearing . . . a white knee-length sundress? I can’t really make out his face, but I see that he’s handsome, maybe even honest-looking. Could it be a paper gown? Is this some escaped mental patient? My future self turns, away from the reflection, to the man himself, but he’s gone.
    My future self rubs her eyes. This is a strange mall. She runs to catch up with Jason. Who is she? Do people make us who we are or is every future possibility just different pieces of the same self ?
    The screen goes to snow, and I actually whisper a thank-you.
    But this blank screen is my least favorite part of the day. Some would say the future never ends because it hasn’t happened yet, but that’s bullshit. They’ve obviously never sat in this chair.
    Dr. Chin pops in after a few seconds. “How’d it go?”
    “I can cross him off the list.” I swipe an imaginary pen through the air. “Jason Binter, gone. See, so easy.” There’s a feeling of relief that I’ve narrowed down the possible futures that endlessly splinter out in front of myself. I’m pruning, and eventually there will be one future in front of me—obvious and clear and knowable.
    “This is your fourth time in two weeks, and you’re not following the healthiest pattern.”
    It’s actually my fifth time, but I don’t correct him. “What pattern?”
    “Usually clients get exasperated, completely fed up. Heartbroken. They’re ready to storm out of here if they haven’t already. You, on the other hand, seem excited. Almost renewed by each failure.”
    “Well, there are three billion men out there, I think—ballpark figure.”
    He squints. “It might be better if this is your last appointment.”
    “That seems like a bad business model,” I joke, but inside I feel a rise of panic.
    “There’ve been cases of this,” he says. “Studies done.”
    “Of this ? What’s this ?”
    “We call them—we call you—the Obsessives.”
    I want to laugh, tell him it sounds kind of badass, something out of a S. E. Hinton novel. Or maybe from a Broadway musical: Th e Obsessives —we’ll sing before we cut you, but we’ll cut you bad, bad I tell you. “Do we get name tags, a tattoo for every failed envisioning?” I try to smile, but he’s not buying. “Look, I’m curious, sure, but hardly obsessive.”
    Dr. Chin rubs his neck—the front first, working his way to the back, under the collar of his dress shirt. I feel like I’m doing something wrong. “We could argue semantics all day, but your insurance only covers so much. Plus, you shouldn’t get in any deeper.”
    “You make it sound like a cult.”
    “It might be worse,” he says. His hand is still rubbing the back of his neck. “There’s no Kool-Aid at the end.”
    “What is at the end?”
    “Trust me, it’s not pretty. The future, the desire to know it and feel it—that desire can swallow you whole.”
    “Look, I’m a nice, well-adjusted girl,” I say, and everything’s relative. “Worst-case scenario, I just run out of men.”
    “Do you have a career goal? I mean, is there something else you’d like to do with yourself ?”
    “Are you insinuating that I’m just boy crazy?”
    “We do get a lot of that here.”
    “I’m a feminist.”
    “I’m not sure what that means anymore.”
    “I love my job and . . .” And what? And I was born in a generation where girls should be ambitious and men shouldn’t matter. I’m of a generation of girls pushed into science and math, encouraged to play violent video games to subvert stereotypes, a generation fast outpacing boys in college entrance and graduation stats. A generation of women for whom men are optional, unnecessary, purely decorative. Still, I want a real love. I believe love matters. I want it to matter and to be true and to build a family with