Freedom, or something like it.

“They’re called Free Radicals.”

“What?” Patrick responded, incredulously.

“Oh, come on! Haven’t you been listening?” questioned an exasperated Luke. “Free Radicals. People who shouldn’t be alive.”

Patrick began to reevaluate his relationship to Luke for what felt like the fifteenth time that hour. Why did he keep in contact with this guy? Or rather, why did he let this guy keep in contact with him? Luke was the type of guy who would rather IM someone over calling—he was out of shape, and an obvious couch potato. Luke was not a man with a social life outside of a virtual one.

“Free Radicals… I think you’ll have to explain this to me again,” muttered Patrick, still not knowing why he just didn’t get rid of IM—he didn’t think Luke even had his phone number, if he just got rid of it, he’d never have to talk to Luke again.

“Fine! Listen this time, will you?” Luke replied with a certain amount of false exasperation—he loved surprising Patrick and also liked it when someone was actually listening to what he was saying. “Free Radicals are people who should not be alive. They are alive but are outside the forces of destiny because the time for their planned death has passed.”

“And the two of us are supposed to be Free Radicals…”

“Well… Actually, I am not one… Not yet, anyways. But I show a lot of the character traits. You are one, though, definitely.”

“How do you know that?”

“You were a C-Section, right? At the last minute, after your mom had been in labor for a full thirty hours and two weeks late. You did your best not to be born, but because of medical advancements, your fated death was avoided and now you are a Free Radical.”

Patrick looked at Luke: his mind a blank. How could this bizarre couch potato look Patrick in the eye and accuse him of his life being inappropriate or wrong in someway? If anyone’s life was inappropriate, it was Luke’s. His strongest muscles were the one’s in his forearms, exercised by the incessant games he constantly played. Luke wore thick glasses, since his sight seemed to deteriorate increasingly (Patrick was convinced) by the intense staring at a computer or a television screen. He often had bad breath, or oily hair, or ugly scruff (not the neatly trimmed scruff that Patrick donned). Luke was ridiculous.

Patrick knew he was above such stupid speculation. He was not an overly successful businessman, but he was decent at his job and earned a pay that matched. He did not have a wife or family or even girlfriend, but he knew this was because he was earning some money on which a family might be very comfortable and he did not want to rush into such relationships only to find one day that his wife ran off with “Dr. Johnson” down the street because he offered her a better allowance. Patrick went to the gym regularly and saw the girls check him out—he used their gazing as confirmation of an attractive physique rather than his irrational fear of having worn his gym shorts inside-out. He was invited to all of the office functions; people sent him cards on his birthday and other major holidays. His absence was consistently noticed by his peers when he was sick or out of town. Once, when he had broken an ankle falling off a curb, he found himself in a hospital room for a couple of days and got flowers from the receptionist with a big card signed by all of the occupants of the neighboring cubicles. There was nothing remotely wrong or quirky or anything about his life—except when sometimes he felt a little redundant, watching all of the other versions of him at the gym or at work or taking their lunch break in the park. Why did he let Luke talk him into meeting for lunch?

“A lot of people were C-Sections,” said Patrick.

“Yeah, I know. As technology has gotten better at keeping people alive, the more Free Radicals there are. There weren’t as many, obviously, before things like sanitation or penicillin. Society has made an ever increasing effort to keep its individuals alive, thus increasing the number of people outside of Fate.”

Patrick thought for a moment, “Why did you say you weren’t one yet?”

Luke seemed pleased, “Well, people can become Free Radicals, too. Like when someone recovers from a devastating disease or freak accident. Or if they get resuscitated after their heart stops.”

“So you’re going to recover from a devastating disease?” said Patrick unconvinced.

“I don’t know,” said Luke. “I think something like that will happen, though. I do show Free Radical traits…”

Patrick knew that Luke wanted him to ask what these traits were. He briefly considered trying to change the subject or ask a different question, but he was not currently interested in making that kind of effort. Luke was not worth any effort.

“So, what are the traits of Free Radicals?” asked Patrick, praying that Luke wouldn’t count them off of his fingers.

Up went his pointer: “Well, a disposition to an extreme of luck—either good or bad. Just not the normal balance.” Middle: “A hard time reconciling one’s place in society.” Ring: “Irrational desires to start over from birth.” Pinky: “A pension to over-think events and situations.” Thumb: “The list goes on…”

“All of that just sounds like people who take the time to evaluate their lives.”

“Yeah! I know. I think those people are either Free Radicals or will become so.”

Patrick considered. At this point he had two options, he could continue the conversation with true participation or just nod and say how interesting. He evaluated the pros of both options. Really participating would maybe give him an opportunity to show Luke how sorry his ideas were, if he could prove that the whole “free radical” thing was a joke. Not participating would limit his interaction with Luke…

Patrick evaluated the cons of both options. Actual participation would suggest he cared about Luke’s ideas—which was not a wholly bad thing, but would possibly indicate he actually liked Luke and didn’t consider himself above Luke’s company (which he felt would be against the standards of the his cubicle neighbors). Not participating would mean he was still stuck here having to listen to Luke and be bored. Patrick hated being bored around other people.

“Alright. So say Free Radicals are outside of Fate’s influence, does that mean they can do whatever they want?”

“No and yes. They have consequences to their actions like everyone else, it is just that their actions have a tendency to have a seemingly deeper than usual impact.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know those YouTube videos of the huge crowds of people making moving images from holding up certain colored cloths or shirts?”

“Yeah…”

“All of those people are supposed to be there, they are society acting in its fated course. A Free Radical comes along and decides to participate, then his extra number would provide a more convincing span of color: there would be even less space from one swatch of color to the next. However, if the Free Radical is stuck somewhere in the midst of this great society and decides not to participate, his lack of color would create a big gap, and the movement of the people around him would be greatly inhibited. He’d be a sore spot.”

“What about the regular people? Do they not get a choice in participating?”

“No. Their fate is determined and no one wants anything outside of their fate.”

“So all Free Radicals want to be dead?”

“Well, I don’t think so… I think it would vary for Free Radicals. The ones who choose to participate would be extra grateful for life, while the ones who don’t participate would think that such activities were pointless and wish it was different without understanding why wishing it were different doesn’t make anything change.”

“Does that mean that all slackers and rebels are Free Radicals?”

“Oh, no. Society needs slackers and rebels just as much as it needs go-getters and pop-culture freaks. It’s that whole yin-yang thing. You need one to have the other and keep each other in check.”

“Oh,” Patrick thought for a moment. How could someone be a non-participating Free Radical in the slacker spectrum? “So, if I fall into the slacker category, and choose not to participate, would I then accidentally participate? Since I’m not really a slacker? Does that make sense?”

“Well, it makes sense, but I don’t think it’s a valid question.” Luke sat back in his chair, chewing on his bottom lip. “I think that a Free Radical doesn’t necessarily choose his position in society. I think they just get stuck somewhere truly random. A Free Radical stuck among slackers would probably find himself participating in slacker-like behavior without meaning to or thinking about it. Only his questions about participating in life would reach deeper than the normal slacker. And when a normal slacker says that it is useless to follow society’s arbitrary rules, a Free Radical would realize that not following those arbitrary rules would be equally arbitrary.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense… If the Free Radical then pointed this out to the other slackers, they would be forced to deepen their beliefs in uselessness of participation, whether their participation is in not participating in conventional society.”

“Yeah, or at least the seemingly ‘uselessness of participation.’”

Patrick sat back and considered Luke. He wondered how this had come up in Luke’s life, if some chat room had revealed it to him or some bizarre webpage devoted to useless information. But Patrick knew he wouldn’t ask where it came from; he liked the concept of Free Radicals—especially since he was one, apparently—and he didn’t want the theory to be diminished by its possibly questionable origin. Especially because he was afraid it sounded silly in an overreaching conspiracy theory sort of way. But being a Free Radical would be a good excuse for his lack of desire for anything. Patrick had no ambition. He did everything just because everyone else did it. He didn’t really care about anything. For a while now, he had been putting off his lack of interest in life on his lack of family—but he had done the same thing in college blaming a lack of a job, and in high school blaming not being in college. Patrick kept waiting for the finish line—the definite achievement in something just so he knew it wasn’t entirely futile. It never came though.

“Do you think it’s worth participating, Luke?”

“I don’t know. In theory, I am participating because I’m not a Free Radical—I can’t go against Fate. But I don’t think anyone can actually know whether or not it was worth participating. We are still too small, even if we are outside of Fate’s grip, Fate is still bigger than we are.”

“Do you think suicides are Free Radicals?”

“You know, I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know…”

“I don’t,” Patrick decided after a moment. “I don’t think that they can be. A Free Radical is someone who is forced to stay alive—like say I was supposed to die at birth, I was forced to stay alive for seemingly no reason, yet I do have reason to be alive, maybe more than most people…”

Luke looked confused and interested, “How do you mean?”

“Fate is the reason other people are alive, right?”

Luke nodded.

“The reason a Free Radical is alive is because someone else decided to keep them alive. In my case it was my mother and her doctors. I have visible people to thank for my life. Fate is too big of a concept and too vague to fully appreciate, but a group of doctors… I can appreciate doctors. And their efforts to save my life would probably instill some deeper sense of the necessity of survival in me.”

“I suppose so…” Luke looked a little surprised at the sudden enthusiasm Patrick was putting into the discussion.

“It would make me naturally more willing to keep from breaking my mother’s heart by my death because her efforts to keep me alive when I shouldn’t be were successful.”

“But that seems wrong,” said Luke, “that means you are living for another person, not yourself.”

“Well, it would be wrong, I guess.” A thought hit Patrick: “It would be wrong, because normal people have Fate to thank for their lives while Free Radicals have individuals to thank. Fate is a vague enough concept that, within it, a person can actually live for himself. Living for the individuals that saved the Free Radical would put him outside of Fate, but make everything he did more physical, less abstract, because he was living because of something physical. So maybe on the surface, a Free Radical has more impact, but his impact would be limited to this life. He would be a very bright but short-lived star, because Fate presumably extends beyond this world…”

“So you’re saying that since the Free Radical is stuck in this world, any part his death might have had in Fate (Fate being a purpose not only in but continuing beyond this world) is ruined and thus that impact in the ‘Greater Plan’ is limited to this world.”

“Yeah! I think…”

“So it would be a huge impact on this world by our perspective, but maybe a lesser one than those people who are under Fate on the whole.”

“More like a seemingly huge impact… Presuming that each individual’s impact is equivalent on some level, here and hereafter, then a Free Radical would be using his quota here rather than hereafter.”

“Huh. That is an interesting twist.” Luke looked at Patrick with obvious respect.

Patrick looked back, not really seeing Luke. He was concentrating on the thought that was coming up slowly from the back of his brain. It wasn’t a good thought, he knew. Suddenly he looked at Luke rather horrified by the thought that had just come clear.

“What?” said Luke, intensely curious about Patrick’s expression. This was why he liked Patrick—every once in a while it felt like they were about to figure out the meaning of life, the deepest secret of everything. And Luke just knew that the next moment Patrick would say something that would shift the foundations of the earth and of being, itself.

“What does that mean for people on life-support?”

Luke stared back blankly—this was not the revelation he was expecting. “That would mean we were robbing them of any role in Fate, here or hereafter.”

“Man, what a waste,” said Patrick, shaking his head.

“Yeah, that’s pretty disturbing.”

Patrick looked around the café for a bit. He was thinking of that form people sign saying that they would not want to be kept on life support and wondered where he could find one.

Luke looked a Patrick. He wondered why he bothered hanging out with this cookie-cutter. That feeling of shifting the foundations of being itself had yet to come to fruition. Luke wondered if it ever would. He didn’t think that a verb should be solid enough to never shift in light of a situation, yet everything was. Reality felt flimsy in that light.

“Why do you think humans started creating Free Radicals?” Luke asked.

Patrick looked at him. “What?”

“Well, why do you think humans started creating Free Radicals?”

“You think they did it on purpose?”

Luke stared at him. “Yes. They saved your life on purpose, didn’t they?”

“But that was just saving a life. That doesn’t mean they purposely created me to be a Free Radical.”

“But maybe they did. Maybe medicine and all of that came up because they were trying to beat Fate.”

Patrick thought about this. Patrick was confused. “You mean that doctors are attempting to beat Fate?”

“Well, yes, essentially. Doctors do their best to save lives that now we can keep bodies alive even when the brain is dead—like those life-support patients. Doesn’t that seem like they’re fighting Fate?”

Patrick blinked, “I suppose…”

“Do you think they’ll win eventually?”

“Is it possible to beat Fate? Maybe thinking you can and trying to beat Fate is actually fated…”

“That’s a cop-out,” complained Luke. “You can’t argue against that. And you can’t prove it.”

“Maybe that means it’s true, then.”