There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?'. When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.

After Y2K the end of the world had become a cliché. But who was I to talk, a brooding underdog avenger along against an empire of evil, out to right a grave injustice. Everything was subjective. There were only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a clichéwhen it's happening to you.