You ever spend $5,000 on a backpack? I have. Worth every penny. It’s stylish canvas with leather-reinforced corners and double-stitched nylon seams. Tough as hell and holds four textbooks, a laptop, sandwich bag, and all the random junk that accumulates during a college student’s day. I had an embroiderer attach one of those cloth nametapes the military uses, which not only gives it a nice accent, but reminds people who I am in case they forget and can only see my backpack for some reason. It’s also the local anchor point for a semi-sentient, multi-dimensional wormhole that scans billions of alternate universes, many of which are a bit further along time’s arrow than ours, and every morning it automatically fills itself with a single item that I will need at some point during the day. Like, last week, it had a packet of wet-wipes when I woke up, and sure enough at lunch I spilled grape juice all over my hands, leaving them a sticky, sugary mess. The wet-wipes were exactly what I needed. Thanks, wormhole! $5,000 well spent. I opened the backpack when I woke up this morning, just like always. First thing I do. There was a gun inside. [hr] Let’s be clear about something: [i]I don’t know the first thing about guns.[/i] I’ve never shot one in my life. Never wanted to. After the initial shock faded, I reached out and gingerly lifted the weapon. It was heavy, much heavier than I expected, and painted solid black. Tiny letters stamped on the side named it a Beretta M96 and warned me to read the manual before use. I checked the backpack. There was no manual. “Okay,” I put the gun down and pressed my palms against my temples. “This is fine.” One of the favorite tales of the ancient Greeks was King Oedipus. Oedipus’s father, King Laius, heard a prophesy that his son would grow up to slay him. To avoid this, he abandoned his infant son to die. But shepherds found the boy, and raised him, and in time Oedipus grew and went out into the world, and on the roads he one day encountered his father the king, and not knowing him slew him in a quarrel. Thus, by Laius’s own actions the fate he sought to avoid came to pass. It’s weird the things you learn when you have a semi-sentient wormhole backpack. My Google search history has some crazy shit in it. Anyway, all this is to say I already know what you’re thinking. [i]Just stay home. Skip class, and you’ll miss whatever crazy thing that was going to happen that your backpack thought you needed a gun for.[/i] But that’s what Laius would do. He thought he was smarter than fate. If I stayed home, it just meant the backpack thought I’d need the gun here instead of out there. Would that be any better? Good question. I thought about it long and hard while hunched over the toilet, hyperventilating and trying not to be sick. [i]I need a gun today.[/i] The thought burned like flare in my mind. I tried to imagine all the harmless reasons a computer science undergrad at Arizona State University might need a gun on a Tuesday. That lasted a few seconds. Then I started thinking about all the realistic, [i]shooty[/i] reasons a college student might need a gun. Then I threw up. I rinsed my mouth and went back to the backpack. There was nothing else inside -- not even a concealed carry permit. But then, the backpack could only ever give me one item, and apparently the wormhole controlling it figured I’d rather have a gun and no permit than a permit and no gun. Fuck, why couldn’t it just have given me a bus ticket to Flagstaff? Answer: because a bus ticket out of town wouldn’t be as useful. I hunched over, breathing hard, trying not to pass out. I thought of my grandfather, who fought in Europe during the war. Was this how he felt, the night before battle? Did he cradle his rifle, pondering all the events that led him to that moment, waiting in a foxhole, unable to sleep, dreading the dawn? Was it reassuring to him, knowing why he had a gun? Why he [i]needed[/i] it? I could only wish for such certainty. I slipped my textbooks into the backpack, nestling them around the weapon, concealing it from casual observation. I was not King Laius. I walked out the door.