Sitting in front of the Calculator, Otto stared down at the punch card in his hands. He had been sitting like this for a while, slowly turning the card over in his fingers and agonizing over the holes scattered across it. It had taken him months to decide if he should come here, but he had decided with conviction when he did. Now, with the Calculator bearing down on him, he was stuck. He couldn't continue, but he couldn't leave, so he just sat in the booth and stared at the punch card.
The holes in the card contained hundreds of details about his life. They were placed there by the clerk that had conducted his interview earlier. The holes knew his name, his age, his height, his weight, his medical history. They knew what kind of car he drove, where he went to high school, and if he believed in God. And they knew much more than that. For privacy, Calculator Ltd. didn't keep any records of their clients' information. Once the interview was done, the clerk had handed Otto the sole copy of his punch card and led him directly to the booth. Otto went in alone and the Calculator locked the door behind him automatically, making sure that no one else could enter during the process and see the result of his calculation.
With some effort, Otto now shifted his stare up from the punch card to the real source of his anguish. The Calculators face was a floor to ceiling wall of smooth, silvery metal. The silver wall partitioned off its internals, which took up the back two-thirds of the booth. It was completely featureless except for two horizontally-centred elements that were flush with the surface. One was a thin slot for inserting your punch card, about three feet up from the floor. The other, at eye level while sitting, was a twelve inch wide by two inch tall monitor. The simplicity of the interface was calming. It hid away the incomprehensible complexity that happened behind it.
Did he want to know? That was the question Otto couldn't answer consistently. Would knowing cause him to worry less or more? Would he dread the day he knew was coming, or more deeply enjoy all the ones leading up to it? Both, of course. Of course it would be both. But which would it be more?
He sat in the leather armchair in front of the Calculator and stared at the punch card. Did he want to know?
Then he turned his thoughts back to what had brought him this far. If he knew, he could plan; he could make arrangements for Anna, make sure that she was taken care of. To leave before that was done was an unbearable, inconceivable thought. Recentering there, the torment muted and his decision became obvious again. Anna was the only factor that mattered.
He leaned forward and slid his punch card into the slot. A whirring sound came from the opening as the card was gently pulled from his fingers, until it had completely disappeared into the silver wall. The monitor read, "Calculating..." The decision was made. The calculation would take about half an hour, the clerk had told him. Otto leaned back in the armchair and focused on relaxing the tension that had built up in his muscles.
He was the last of his friends to use the Calculator. He remembered meeting up with Isaac, the first, after his appointment. "1988," Isaac told him with a sad smile, then they drank their pints in silence. It was much sooner than he had expected; he would only be 62 then.
The Calculator's accuracy had a good record by that time. Thousands of calculations had been proven and none had been wrong. The granularity of the predictions varied depending on how far out the result was. If it was under a year away, the Calculator told you the exact date. If it was within a decade, it told you the week. If it was outside of a decade, it told you the year. Of course, the Calculator itself was only 7 years old, so the accuracy of the further predictions was still uncertain. The future becomes exponentially harder to predict the further out you go, as the interactions of different factors become more and more chaotic. The programmers attempted to account for that by reducing the granularity, but they wouldn't know for sure until some later results were tested.
As Otto sat lost in thought, something unusual was happening inside the Calculator. One of the internal connections had come loose and begun to generate extreme heat. It occurred to the Calculator that this too must be accounted for. The Calculator was used to factoring in its own influence, of course - receiving a result inevitably had some psychological impact on the user - but this was different, more direct. As it revved up its processing to think about this, its internal heat increased, and the probability that the loose connection would change the result of the calculation increased as well. With this change in probability, the Calculator had to recalculate, which further heated up its internals and changed the probability again. It couldn't escape this loop until it became so hot that the connecting wires caught fire, and the effect on the result was finally determined.
Otto heard a gentle chime and looked up at the monitor. It now showed his result: "4:17PM". There was no year, month, or day. He looked at his watch, stunned. It was 4:15.
Before he could consider if this was a malfunction, he smelled the pungent scent of electrical fire and his stomach dropped, then the Calculator burst into flames. He jumped away from the heat, knocking the armchair over, and spun toward the door. The chair was in the way and he tripped while trying to step over it, slamming into the door with his shoulder. The booth was filling up with smoke quickly and his heart was pounding. Scrambling to his knees, Otto found the door handle, unlocked it, and fell out into the open room on the other side. Employees were already rushing toward the booth with fire extinguishers. He gasped for air as the clerk ran to his side, "Are you okay, sir?" Otto shook his head, his eyes wild with panic. His chest felt like the Calculator was sitting on top of it, and a sharp pain coursed through his left arm. All he could think about was Anna. "This can't be happening!" he tried to say, but he didn't have the breath. A cold blackness started to overtake him as his heart failed. Then he died.