Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship by Jean Johnson Page A

So are your predictions really just probabilities, when they’re going to come true anyway?”
    Ia shook her head. “Like I said, that story ruined the tropes for everyone. It isn’t inevitable. Fate is just what you’re
handed
. What you
do
with it is your Destiny even if you choose to do nothing. If Oedipus’s parents had chosen to do nothing about the Oracle’s warning, kept him in the family and raised him, he probably wouldn’t have slain his father because he would have grown up knowing and respecting the man. And even if he did, most Humans don’t grow up developing sexual feelings for a mother they know and love as their mother. Even then, as an orphan not knowing anything, Oedipus could have not slain the man who turned out to be his father. He could have been careful not to slay
anyone
in case that person turned out to be his father in disguise.”
    “But doesn’t that confirm the loop of inevitabilities?” Roghetti pressed. He gestured for them to continue moving toward the officers’ barracks, where Ia’s field gear had been stowed.
    Rolling her eyes, Ia sought for a way to make him understand. “Okay . . . imagine you have a fortune cookie in your hands.”
    “A fortune cookie?” he asked, arching one dark brow.
    “Yes, a fortune cookie,” Ia repeated. “And you open it up to read the piece of paper inside. On that piece of paper you see the message, ‘The fortune in this cookie is not true.’
Bang!
You have a paradox,” she stated, snapping her fingers in accompaniment. “Because if the fortune is true, then the words state that it is
un
true, but if the fortune is a lie, then the words are wrong and fortune is
not
a lie. There’s your paradox.
But.
”
    “. . . But?” Roghetti inquired when she paused for dramatic emphasis.
    Ia shrugged and spread her hands. “But, the universe
isn’t
destroyed by it. You are not caught up in a paradox. You aren’t trapped in a causality loop or a bubble of illogic, because . . . you just aren’t. It’s just words on a page.” Opening the door to the complex of crate-like tents, she gestured him inside. “The same thing goes for time travel. Yes, you
could
destroy your own grandfather, but then he wouldn’t be your grandfather. Not because that would make you disappear, but because someone else would have stepped in to fill up that space, and your life would have rearranged itself to give you motivation to kill the guy who would have and should have been.
    “Another way of looking at it is like this tangle of tents. You want to get to the command center, so you do have to open a door, but you don’t
have
to always take the same door or path to get there. The job still gets done. You read the fortune in the fortune cookie, but you’re not trapped in a logic loop of illogic.” Ia opened another door in the series of container- and fabric-tents, gesturing for Roghetti to go first. She followed in his wake. “You can eat the cookie, toss the paper, and move on. Or you can eat the
paper
, toss the cookie, and move on. Eat both, toss both, find someone to hand them to . . . The cookie’s job is done: it has delivered you a fortune.
    “The key is to remember that what you do with the fortune you’ve been handed is
not
bound irrevocably to that fortune,” Ia stated. “
My
abilities are simply a case of being able to see the shortest, easiest path to the heart of this complex for each person coming in from whatever angle of approach they might have. I can tell you how to get to the center in the most efficient manner possible from wherever you might be standing. I can also turn blue in the face telling you . . . but if you choose not to follow, there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it without picking you up and dragging you there. Which I don’t have time to do.
    “All I can do is remind people that if they don’t follow my instructions, a
lot
of people will be inconvenienced,” she told him, stopping outside the door to