Mr. Fortunate
Count your luck
A cheerful man in whose presence nothing bad happens. His street has had no accident in forty years. Nobody has asked where the bad luck goes.
- Code
- VN-095
- Kind
- person
- Where it is met
- urban
- Scale
- human
- Leaves you with
- dread
What it looks like, and what it does
A smiling man in a yellow raincoat on a sunlit pavement. Around him a perfect ordinary day: dropped ice creams caught, a cyclist swerving to safety. Behind him a long shadow, thicker than the sun explains.
Walks to the shops each morning. Is warm, easy and quick to help. Does not take credit for anything.
What is known
Barnaby Merriweather lives on Kestrel Road, which has recorded no road, fire or medical emergency in forty years. The surgery reports no admissions from the street.
Neighbours consider themselves lucky. Statisticians in the next district note a corresponding excess of misfortune, exactly proportionate and wholly without cause.
What it can do
- Prevents accidents and misfortune in his immediate vicinity
- Is always at the right place at the right time
Where it stops
- Cannot prevent misfortune that has already been displaced
- Is not himself protected by it
An encounter
Bao plotted the injury data of two districts on a single graph. One flat, one rising, the sum constant. She walked Kestrel Road on a sunny morning and was greeted by a man in a yellow raincoat who asked after her health. She said she was fine. He said, “Splendid.” She had never been so uneasy.
Bao Ling, statistician, Kestrel Road and the district across the river, Twelve years of casualty data
What is established, and what is only said
- established: Casualty rates in the two districts are inversely correlated at -0.93 across twelve years.
- rumor: That he knows. That he gives to charities in the other district.
- interpretation: Luck may not be a thing one can give without taking from somewhere. He may be the first to have been honest about it.
Still unresolved
The district with the excess has never been visited by him. It lies across the river. Its figures rise each year.
Where it has been recorded
- Kestrel Road (confirmed) — Recorded by Bao Ling, statistician.
Connected entities
- The Landlord of Tenth Street — Both are pleasant men whose service to one set of neighbours is paid for by another. Neither raises his voice.