“My Name is Nathan Carpenter and this document details my life from August 2007 to this present day, August 17th, 2022.”

Nathan stopped writing. Fish had told him to briefly list all the important facts and details of his life from August 2007 to the present time. Addresses he has lived at and relationships he has established during the last 15 years. It felt odd writing down the account of his life from the last 15 years, aware that some incidents may well be wiped off clean and deleted completely. It was a daunting thought.

In August 2007 I was 12 years old and was in my first year at the Jefferson Junior High School. I had three significant friends. Jake Miller and Tomas Alvarado, known as Tommy who both went to Jefferson High, and Evariste Ryba who was at Elementary school with me. After Jefferson High, I went to the University of Colorado, Boulder and studied Business administration and management before getting my bachelor’s degree in 2017. I started working for Xcel Energy as soon as I left College and have been working for them ever since. I started out as a marketing assistant and worked my way up to my current position, which is Market Research Analyst. I drive a two-year-old Toyota RAV4 Hybrid. The color is described as Silver Sky Metallic, It was my single biggest purchase at the time and cost me over $30,000. My Previous car was a 7-year-old Mitsubishi Mirage. I’m still paying for the RAV. During college, I lived in a Student house in Boulder, 4965 Meredith Way, which I shared with two other students, Dan Smith and Mateo (Matty) Garcia. After College, I moved into a small rented apartment in Sterling Heights, just off Reservoir Road in Greeley.

Nathan paused. Was there any need to add more details from his early life? He didn’t think so.

I met Carys Richards On December 3rd 2017. It was a party on a houseboat at Boyd Lake Marina. Boyd Lake is a gorgeous 1,700 surface-acre lake located in Loveland, which seemed strangely and ironically appropriate to me as I met the love of my life that very night. We started dating and on February 14th, 2018 we moved in together at 622, 24th Street, Greeley. Just North of the Garden City district. It was a Rent-to-own agreement with the option of buying before the lease runs out. We took out that option two years ago. We have been living together ever since. Carys told me about her Mum, Laura and how she had been the victim of a random shooting in Greeley on August 8th 2007. She was shot by a passing car just outside the coffee shop called The Corner cafe. This happened about 9am as she went to collect coffee and pastries. Carys is a talented Ceramics Artist and graduated from the Alfred University—New York State College of Ceramics. She likes music and often listens to Coldplay and has an odd partiality for the Korean band BTS, which she frequently listens to in her car. She loves spicy food and especially Indian cuisine, and we visited Kerala in Southern India on a glorious holiday 2 years ago. She doesn’t eat red meat but will eat chicken and fish. She is an occasional drinker but never touches spirits and would prefer a fruity white wine, always super cold. She loves all animals but especially dogs and has a fondness for Dachshunds as her Grandmother had one when she was young called “Lola”

Facts! That is what Fish told him to write. Just facts. This was harder than he thought it would be. Carys had been a pivotal part of his life for the last 5 years, and it felt strangely disloyal writing it all down on paper so that he could show Fish who she was and what she meant to him. The idea that he could come back and be a stranger to her was unimaginable, and he felt miserable and dejected at just the thought. He tried to pull himself together. If things went badly wrong, there was always the reset. One thing that was irrefutable was that he couldn’t live without her. He tried to think. Facts.

“She likes watching TV in her pyjamas, even early evening. She loves Disneyland but isn’t keen on roller coasters. She cooks a mean Chilli con carne with lentils. Her favorite color is yellow, and she loves reading historical novels, and her favorite author is Phillipa Gregory. She is kind and hates confrontation, but will stand up for herself if she feels she is being intimidated. She plays tennis badly but enjoys it anyway. She was 10 years old when she lost her Mum and still feels the loss. She never knew her father, who was a musician, and he never saw her again after her first birthday. His name was Michael, and apparently, he is living somewhere on the East Coast with a wife and a child. The relationship between him and Laura was brief, and the pregnancy was unwelcome to say the least. He was seemingly infuriated when Laura told him she was going to keep her baby. He walked away and despite one unsuccessful attempt to contact him when Carys was 2 years old, he remained absent and non-existent in her life even after the loss of her mother. Carys was particularly indebted to her mother for the way she single-handedly bought Carys up without any help. Carys never felt lonely or unwanted or especially an encumbrance, despite the obvious difficulties Laura must have encountered. She built a life for them both and had a good job, and she often called Carys her angel and described her as a gift or a godsend. Carys was loved and the loss of her mother was a tragedy and so traumatic that she can still feel the sorrow and grief today. It was life-changing and Carys was left in the care of her Grandmother, who did her best with a 10-year-old girl who couldn’t really cope with the loss of her mum and the one constant person in her life. It is to her credit that she managed to find a passion and turned that passion into a career. Ceramic art became the release mechanism that helped her finally overcome the traumatic loss of her mother. Today Carys is happy and fulfilled and successful.

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Nathan stopped writing and read back the words he had written. He thought it was enough. He felt a little exposed, writing down his feelings in particular. It occurred to him that Carys might become just another stranger tomorrow. She might live in a world where Nathan didn’t exist. It then dawned on him that Carys might have a serious boyfriend in her new world or, god forbid, even a husband and a child. It was an ominous thought and perturbing. Here he was relying on destiny and fate, but maybe Fish was right. What determines the course of our lives? Is it fate? Are our life paths predetermined by a higher power? Or is it choices? Are we the masters of our own destinies in a random universe? Maybe destiny needed some luck too. Was it bravery or stupidity to rely on fate and fortune? Perhaps it was destiny and fate that saw Laura killed by an indiscriminate bullet that fateful day in 2007. Nathan liked to think that lives are a combination of Fate and Choice! We all like to think that when we meet the love of our lives it had already been written in the stars, but he felt very vulnerable and wasn’t comfortable playing with destiny. Doubt and misgivings are treacherous adversaries, and he tried to eliminate them from his mind, but they were cunning little opponents, and he knew they were hiding somewhere in his subconscious. He remembered watching a documentary with Carys a few months ago about an Englishman who decided to sell everything he owned, his house, his car, all his belongings, and then took the entire sum over to Las Vegas and placed one bet on the roulette table. Everything on either Red or Black. It was a fascinating documentary and whilst watching emotions switched from absurd, insane stupidity to admiration. It was gripping TV, and he remembered that the man had made a special deal with one casino in Las Vegas to place a single bet, all filmed for a reality TV program. His whole worth in financial terms came down to about $300,000. Nathan now knew exactly what the Englishman was going through emotionally. He was gambling everything. Red or Black? It was insane, and he felt genuinely nauseous. He recalled the documentary again, and both he and Carys watched in awe and with extreme trepidation as the roulette wheel started to spin. The Englishman was allowed one bet. All in! He recollected that he eventually placed his special chip on Red and the wheel kept turning, and the little white ball raced around the circle before hopping across the ruts and settling firmly on one number. Nathan couldn’t remember what the number was, he just remembered the Englishman watching his life roll around the wheel and waiting for fate to decide if Red was the right choice. Nathan knew that he would find sleep difficult and was prepared for a restless night. He had arranged to meet Fish in the morning at the center at 8 O’clock. He still found it difficult to comprehend that he would be traveling back in time to August 8th, 2007. His thoughts returned to the documentary and the nervous punter, anxiously waiting for the white ball to finally settle on a number. Everything the Englishman owned depended on where the ball landed. It was excruciating to observe, and the documentary deliberately prolonged the tension with close-ups of the roulette wheel and the white ball bouncing from red to black and then back to red again. The ball finally settled on a number and Nathan just couldn’t remember what the number was, but really it was of little consequence and completely insignificant. The only thing that Nathan did remember was that the color was black.