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Titanic. Soon we shall see if all the hype is true. It is also being called the ‘Ship of Dreams.’ I am afraid with the way things are going that my dreams will sink hard by the time we reach New York.”
     
    “How much did you write today? Is it really that bad?”
     
    Beckett stopped walking. “It wasn’t bad. It was quite good, actually. It was just…strange.”
     
    “Your writing was strange?”
     
    “Not exactly. Do you remember the man with the turban who sold me the book?”
     
    Warren nodded. “He said something mysterious, like ‘the book has special powers.’”
     
    “More precisely he said the book had the power to change lives. I watched a little boy teasing his sister, acting like he was going to throw her doll overboard. This is what I wrote.” He opened the book and showed the passage to Warren.
     
    “And?”
     
    “That’s exactly what happened.”
     
    Warren laughed. “Coincidence.”
     
    “Maybe, maybe not.”
     
    Warren said, “We could test your theory. Write me into the story. Write something that happens to me and if it really occurs as you wrote it, we’ll know.”
     
    “Is that crazy?”
     
    “Maybe, but at least when nothing happens you can forget the man in the turban and keep writing.”
     
     It was cold on deck and they went back inside. Beckett went to his cabin and tried to think of a clever way to write Warren into the story.
     
    I can’t really believe that I am doing this, he thought, but he knew that to put his mind at rest and allow him to keep writing, he had no choice. In the end, he just made him the close friend of the main character who he happened to discover was on the same boat.
     
    Now…something that could actually happen to his fictional Warren and the real Warren…that was harder. Before he fell asleep, Beckett finally wrote a hasty passage.
     
    Warren woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. He pocketed a deck of playing cards and went to his friend’s room. When the door opened he asked “Care for a couple of hands of rummy?”
     
    Beckett closed the book and closed his eyes. He fell asleep still dressed in his evening clothes.
     
                                   *******
     
    He was sleeping soundly when he heard the knock at the door. It couldn’t possibly be Warren, he thought as he got off the bed and went to open the door.
     
    “I couldn’t sleep,” Warren said. “Care for a couple of hands of rummy? Just like when we were in school?”
     
    Beckett hauled him into the room. “I’ll play but first you need to read what I wrote earlier.”
     
    He opened the book to where Warren came into the story. Warren read it, then looked up in surprise.
     
    “It can’t be you…or the book. You were just remembering how we used stay up all night playing cards in boarding school.”
     
    “Subconsciously I might have been thinking about it. But I wasn’t, not when I was writing. Were you thinking about playing cards?”
     
    “No, actually I was sound asleep almost as soon as we got back from our walk. Then I suddenly woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep and I decided to see if you were up for a couple of hands of cards.”
     
    They sat at the table in one corner of the cabin, and Beckett laid the book open on the table. “You used almost the exact same words that I wrote. How is that possible?”
     
    Warren insisted, “Because I’ve said the same thing a dozen times before in the middle of the night. I was joking when I told you to write me into your story.”
     
    “And yet I did…and you did what the character in the book did.”
     
    “Stop it,” Warren said. “I don’t want to think about this. There is no way you, or your book can control real people.”
     
    “You’re right. Deal the cards.” He closed the book and tossed it on the bed.
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    M argaret Toilben Brown, known to everyone as