Phil Weiner never seemed like the kind of man who would crow about his achievements, but when he sat in his usual place at our table, he immediately held up the front page of the morning newspaper and beamed impressively over the crease.  I had no idea what my reaction should be, since he had never before assaulted me with newsprint; I stared at his greasy cowlick, then at his eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses.

"What?" I said, shrugging.

"Look at the headline," he said, more nasally than usual.

I squinted in the florescent light at the first lead.  "Attorney General indicted for email scam."

"The one below that."

I squinted more thoroughly.

"Scientists discover cause of global warming."

"You see!"

"See what?"

"It's exactly as I said yesterday," he said excitedly, perhaps more excitedly than his milquetoast appearance could sustain.  "Exactly as I predicted.  Here, read the story."

I accepted the much-handled section and folded it appropriately as I rescued my coffee from certain tepidity.  I sipped and read, and sure enough, the story recounted how scientists had proven beyond any human doubt that the recent trend towards global warming was caused by gases expelled by whales.  A ten-year study of patrolling naval submarines provided the indisputable data.  The story concluded with the suggestion that, if the world was to be rescued from certain destruction, the immediate extinction of every known cetacean species was certainly in order.

I laid the paper on the table by my toast.

"Well?"  Weiner asked.  "Isn't that exactly what I was saying yesterday morning?"

I sat back in my chair, trying to recall the gist of the previous morning's conversation.  Such a thing should have been relatively simple, since we were both of sound mind and not yet quite breaching the age of suffering memories.  But, to tell the truth, when Weiner talked at length, I usually only listened half-heartedly; which is not to say that Phil Weiner was a bore, but he could talk a blue-streak, and we had been having breakfast together in the building's coffee shop nearly every morning for the last five years.  Weiner had said much, and I had forgotten as much.  Still, I did seem to recall him saying something rather stupid about whales --

"Is that what you were talking about yesterday?"

"Of course," he said, obviously perturbed.  He adjusted his tie self-consciously, perhaps realizing that his enthusiasm had passed uncomfortably into unabridged glee, and settled back into his seat.  "Weren't you listening?"

"Mostly," I said diplomatically.  "Except when I wasn't."

"That's typical of your dismissive nature," he said.  "A man presages a monumental scientific breakthrough and you dismiss his genius for a jelly roll."

"I remember enough," I said, trying to placate him.  We were both of the same ilk; nondescript bachelors in our late thirties who worked in the labyrinthine anonymity of the largest insurance company in the east.  Doomed, I should say, to work for the largest insurance company in the east.  Though the health coverage was second to none (you can never be too certain that your pointless life might needlessly end too soon).  And I didn't want to alienate one of my only friends.  Still, one can never share enough of the bitterness of such a pointless life --

"Then you realize what an insight I had."

"I'll grant you insight."

"Isn't it amazing, though?" he said, leaning forward over his bagel.

"A perfect coincidence."

"I suppose," he said, sitting back again, now that the adrenalin rush of his announcement had met its natural end.  Weiner was a man who subscribed to a hundred different journals, ranging from the supernatural to the utterly scientific, a rabid reader, and I was the fortunate recipient of his ongoing bibliographic enlightenment.  But I felt sorry for him in a way; this one coincidence had been an exemplary experience for him, and now that it was over, so too was his moment in the sun.  He stared at his bagel and frowned.

I sighed, and against my better judgment said in a strained voice, "Aside from gassy whales, what other theories do you have about the world?"

Weiner brightened immediately.

"Well," he said, the enthusiasm building once again, "I was thinking just last night about the flying saucer phenomenon."

"The what?"

"Flying saucers.  You know, UFOs."

"What about them?"

"Well, I've been studying them for years, and I've come to the undeniable conclusion that they're nothing more than an as yet undiscovered species of bioluminescent pigeon."

"Beg pardon?"

He leaned forward again, slapping at his cowlick and grinning.  "A species of bioluminescent pigeon!"

"And what about all the alleged abduction cases?"

"That's the bizarre part of the theory!  The chemical that causes bioluminescence in the birds exudes fumes that cause hallucinations."

"About being abducted by flying saucers?"

"The fumes affect a specific part of the brain that creates just that illusion."

"Pigeons," I said, staring at the last of my coffee.  Now I remembered why I hadn't been listening very closely when he was droning on about the whales.  I looked at him again, smiling painfully.  "Well, my friend, just remember that every theory you have doesn't have to necessarily find itself on the front page of the newspaper."

##

And yet the very next day, as I sat frowning at the cup of Indian black tea I had settled for in lieu of the coffee machine being disengaged that morning, I shifted my eyes to the headline of the newspaper I had firmly clutched in my grip and shook my head.  Phil had been correct.  I studied the headline once more:

FLOCKS OF GLOWING PIGEONS SIGHTED ABOVE LOCAL SWAMP -- ISOLATED FARMERS MAKE CONTACT WITH SHOTGUNS.

In a related story, several teenagers who'd been necking in cars parked at the outskirts of said swamp reported sighting swarms of UFOs after encountering the glowing pigeons.  I reached for my tea and took a first bitter sip as Phil bounded into the breakroom.

"I see you've run across that little ditty about the pigeons who mistook themselves for fireflies."

I nodded and continued to read as he took a seat.  "Apparently, the birds had been taking baths in swap water that's been contaminated with toxic waste.  They had more chemicals inside them than your average Thanksgiving roaster.  That explains the bioluminescence."

Phil nodded.  He absently tapped at the lenses of his glasses while making designs with the moisture from the rings left by my coffee, I mean, tea cup.  He stared at one of the designs that resembled nothing so much as the schematic for a proton accelerator.  "It doesn’t explain that I was right about the pigeons.  Again."

"When had you been right about the pigeons the first time?"

He glared at me.  The action looked particularly foolish through his bottle bottom classes.  "You know what I mean.  I was right about another outlandishly ridiculous prediction."

"I thought the pigeon thing was just a harmless observation."

He shook his head, probably wondering why I was blind to the fact that he, Phil Weiner, had prognosticated upon two disparate and astronomically unlikely events.  He confirmed my suspicions with his next words.

"I predicted the future!"

"Nonsense," I told him, folding the paper and dumping the offending tea, cup and all, in the wastebasket to my side.  "No one can predict the future."

"I did more than that!"  Phil leaning in conspiratorially and tugged at my collar.  "You know the thing about the pigeons?"

I nodded, pulling my shirt free and smoothing myself.  "What of it?  Look, so you coincidentally made another accurate guess --"

"I made it up," he told me.  His pupils suddenly constricted to the size of pinheads.  "I made the whole thing up, and it came true."

##

We waited until everyone had left for the day before we gathered together in his office to resume our conversation.  Of course, in the insurance game, no one ever really completely goes home for the day, so there were a few of our night owls still hanging around when we got together again.  I had been working at a fever pitch, both to drown out the thoughts I was involuntarily experiencing after Phil's revelation, and because my supervisor had promised to free me from the worry of ongoing employment if I didn't get my percentages up that week.

Phil didn't look so good when he motioned for me to join him in his office.  His face had lost much of its color.  His clothes were rumpled beyond good taste.  His hair was torn and ragged.  His eyes had huge red rings around them.  His office was a mess of file stacks and bundles of newspapers, magazines, computer printouts, and empty Chinese takeout boxes.  Which is pretty much how Phil and his office normally look, but what was with the Chinese food?  Phil was a strict Thai man.

He told me to sit.  As I relaxed into the leather chair, he huddled behind a tower of faxed and regarded me.  "It's happened again."

"You found more hairs in the sink this morning?"

He slammed his hand down on his desk.  Paperclips jumped and rattled.  "I was sitting in my office, talking to a client, trying to get him to buy burial service drainage and flood insurance, when the thought popped into my head."

"And pray tell, what thought was that?"

"What is cell phones caused sudden blindness in drivers concurrently utilizing them and going over sixty miles an hour in their vehicles?"

I had to admit that took the wind out of me.  I sat on the edge of the seat and asked, "Does it?"

"It does now," he said.  He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out a slim remote control and snapped on the television set affixed to the far wall.  We sat and watched various scenes of highway, freeway and causeway carnage as he flipped through ten or fifteen channels.  One channel had focused on a close-up of a still beeping phone lying next to the median of some freeway.  Phil snapped off the screen and threw the remote across the room.

"What have I become?  What horrible power do I now possess?  What will be the terrible outcome of this strange power of mine?"

"How'd you get it?" I interrupted.

Phil swept his hands over the mass of data before him.  "I was working on a large survey project," he told me, visibly puffing in front of my eyes.  "Something that's been a personal pet project of mine, very hush-hush, on the Q.T. for my eyes only."

"The thing about being able to quantify every possible future event in the lives of everyone on the planet and reduce it to a series of hand gestures?"

I watched the air deflate out of him.  "Yes, something like that.  Anyway, I'd been amassing all this disparate data, cramming it into my mind, trying to get my brain wrapped around it, when at some point a few days ago, it suddenly all made sense."

"You were able to comprehend all those individual possibilities and probabilities at once?"

"But I couldn't hold onto it.  It was as if everything that I'd finally gotten control of suddenly vanished."

I sat and rubbed at the edges of my chin.  Phil stared at me through his reddened raccoon eyes.  Finally I said, "I think I understand what happened."

"What?"

"You had too much knowledge, too much understanding for your conscious mind to comprehend, for more than a moment, and so your brain did the only thing it could.  It shifted this enormous overload into your unconscious mind."

Phil nodded, the light getting brighter deep within his eyes.  He stood up.  "I see.  Of course! My unconscious mind has no control over this mass of possibilities.  But it's become powerful enough to allow an errant thought, no matter how ridiculous, to become reality.  For instance, if I were to suddenly think that the engines of all modern aircraft were to suddenly turn into meringue --"

Before I could do anything to stop the thought, we heard the high-pitched screaming sound of metal fill the air around us.  I rushed to the window and tore down the blinds to see a sky full of jets and airplanes plummeting to the ground.  There was no time to suggest that Phil imagine that said ground was made of cushioning foam or safety nets of some kind.  The aircrafts dropped to their doom.

I turned away from the window and regarded Phil.  He sat on the edge of his desk, his eyes shrunken orbs buried deep in his skull.  I noticed that said skull seemed to have become a bit deformed, being now three times its original size.  Probably to accommodate the new abilities he seemed to possess.  Phil stared at my suddenly, and a thin, creepy smile broke out on his lips.

"I am the absolute ruler of reality," he said.  Bubbles popped from the corners of his mouth.  "I can make anything happen just by thinking of it."

"I wonder," I said, scratching at my chin and chucking.  "I wonder about that."

Phil reached out a hand and grabbed hold of me.  "What?  What have you thought of?  Is there some limitation I missed?  I command you to tell me, you loathsome toad.  I mean, my dear friend."

Calling upon every ounce of my insurance skills, especially the ones that makes a client think you aren't the least bit interested in something you really want him to be interested in, I said, "I was wondering if you could increase your power by, say, a hundred times or more?"

"That's it?" he released his hold on me.  "That's simple!  And I should have thought about that myself!  Okay, what is my power was instantly increased by a hundred times?"

I took the opportunity to leap for the safety of the other side of the desk.  Phil must have realized what I had been about when he felt the sudden increase in the growth of his head.  He turned to me while he was still able to move his massively increased dome and shouted.

"What if you became--"

But at that instant, Phil's head became history, blowing out the window, shattering the glass, and coating the walls of his office.  Papers and files flew everywhere.  Amid the debris of exploded glass and exploded Phil, I rose and regarded the messy remains of my former associate and friend.

"I thought something like that might happen," I remarked.