"Hey, buddy!" a voice called. "You okay?"

My eyes fluttered open. The first thing I saw was an Austin P.D. badge. I hoped the homeless man—I really should get his name, had fled.

"What happened?" I tried to say. Blood and spit sloshed from my mouth, and I think I actually said, "Washmph Blashpeth."

He seemed to have gotten the message. "You were on that bus when it blew up. Steven here pulled you free. Probably saved your life."

I looked at Steven and let my head fall back down. He was the homeless man that bound me. There had to be a less painful way to get someone's name.

I sat in the ambulance and watched Steven talk to the cops. For a man who claimed to hate the police, he was sure having a good time. Several reporters pressed against the police barricade, and the onlookers were starting to pile up.

"You're good to go," the EMT said.

I stood and shook the woman's hand. "Thanks, how's the kid?"

She lowered her head. "He—He didn't make it."

I surveyed the wreckage. I could see the woman I dragged to safety kneeling over small body, crying. The coroner tried to move her, but she wouldn't budge. I walked to her.

"I'm so sorry," I said.

She looked up at me. "You should have saved him, not me."

"Ma'am," the coroner said. "I need to take him away."

"No!" she wailed. "I need to stay with him."

This mess was the price paid for Steven's health and the cost of my new power. "What's your name?" I asked.

"Beth," she sobbed. "Beth Hannah

I knelt down beside her. “What was his name?”

"Kevin.”

I pulled out a business card. "Take this. If you need anything, please contact me."

When she took the card, I walked away. I expected to be stopped by the police, but no one even noticed my leaving. The night's events had frayed my nerves. I was tired, and I had work early in the morning. And the last thing I wanted was to go to bed.

I let my feet take me where they wanted and wasn't surprised when I found myself at Town Lake. Growing up in Austin, I spent most of my summers here. I think they renamed it, but to me, it would always be Town Lake. I sat on the bank and watched the dark water flow downstream.

The homeless infested the area this time of night. Small tents made of tarp, second-hand clothing, and other, cast off, detritus littered the shore. The cops tried to clean them out but to no avail. I didn't mind them, though. Hell, everyone needed somewhere to sleep.

I watched the sunrise's reflection in the water. The constant churning of chance marred its surface. I realized with some horror that, at some point, I'd seen my last real sunrise and hadn't even known it.

A man and boy walked to the bank carrying fishing poles. I watched them cast a few times. The father cast upstream, letting his lure flow with the current—the boy cast seemingly at random. With saintly patience, the man instructed his son.

I spotted the life cord of a bass nestled in a hollow on the far bank. Several smaller fish swam nearby, their cords bright, but dotted with specks of black.

I looked at the two people fishing and focused on the chances of them catching anything. The swirls of opportunity shifted, and I could see the information I wanted clearly. They weren't going to catch anything, it seemed. I looked at the bass and focused on the chance of anyone landing it today. Again, the swirls shifted, highlighting the possibilities. It wasn't going to happen.

"You should cast over there," I told the boy, pointing to a nondescript section of water.

"Thanks," the boy said,

I focused again on the bass. The chances of being caught skyrocketed. I turned to the boy. His chances of landing the fish increased by the same proportion. For good measure, I focused on the smaller fish. Their chances of surviving also went up. It was all connected.

The boy yelled. His small pole bent double, and his father hollered encouragement. Did Kevin have a father that would have taught him to fish someday? I watched the battle between the boy and the fish.

Despite how my thoughts kept turning to Kevin, the sight of the poor father desperately trying to help his son land that bass made me smile. His screams alternated between encouraging and remonstrating. As for the kid, he wasn't listening to a thing the man said. He jerked his pole this way and that, smiling the whole time.

I focused on the two combatants. With every maneuver, the thread of chance altered. It would be in the boy's favor at one moment, then the bass's the next. Underneath those ever-changing probabilities lay a single thread. It was white near the middle but turned gray toward either end. I somehow knew that was the overall chance of the boy landing the fish. It didn't look promising. The white was heavily favoring the bass.

The decisive moment would come soon, and I turned my attention to the smaller fish. Numerous black flecks marred their life cords. I heard the kid moan and the father holler. The life cords of two of the fish went nearly black only a moment before the exhausted bass gulped them up. The rest of the smaller fish's life cords lost almost all of their black as they swam away.

I focused on the bass and wondered what the chances of it leaving the area within the next day were. It didn't seem like it was going anywhere. I then focused on if it would stay around for a week. The tendrils went misty and indistinct. I then thought about whether it would hang around for two days.

The tendrils were still hazy, but if I were a betting man, I would wager that bass would be here. Trying to see three days into the future produced the same result as a week had.

I walked up to the distraught father and thoroughly happy boy. "I bet if you come back tomorrow with a better rod, you'll catch that thing. I've seen other people hook it, so I think it just kinda hangs around here."

The boy smiled at me. He was already tying a new lure onto his line.

"Not like that, Jake," the father said. "You gotta spin it around the tag end, or the knot'll slip." He looked up at me. "Thanks, it was his mom's idea to get him this stupid little rod. It's so cute," he finished, mocking his wife's tone.

"Well," I said, "that was a good fight, even on such a dinky pole."

"Genie," I heard in my head.

I felt an irresistible pull and knew I was about to be teleported away. "Watch that knot," I said.

Just as the boy and his father looked down, I blinked out of existence.