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achieve.”
    â€œWithout him you’d never have turned out so well.”
    â€œHAS ME NUMBER THREE BEEN THROWN AWAY?”
    Indridi looked disbelievingly at his parents, who smiled and carried on kneading the dough for his marzipan cake.
    â€œDon’t look at us like that. You wouldn’t have been so successful without constant motivation from number three.”
    â€œWe can’t be forever using fairies or bogeyman to get children to do better, can we now?” asked his father, searching for something on the table. “Pass me the icing sugar, love.”
    Indridi tore open the freezer door and snatched out a frozen green tube.
    â€œWhat’s this then? Isn’t this Me number three?”
    His father roared with laughter. “No! That’s a green popsicle.”
    â€œAn Ice Breaker,” added his mother.
    Indridi’s mother and father got up and began to break-dance around the kitchen while the world spun before Indridi’s eyes. He had never really quarrelled with his parents. Now he felt as if he should have screamed and raged, but his upbringing had been so successful that he could do neither. He was simply not made that way, and when it came down to it he felt his life had been perfectly okay. His future lay ahead. His parents continued break-dancing and he could do nothing about it. He burst out laughing and joined in.
    â€œWe were only teasing,” said his mother.
    â€œYou really fooled me,” said Indridi, break-dancing.
    Indridi lay awake that night. All his life he had been so petrified of number three that he hadn’t even rebelled as a teenager. He had often crept into the kitchen in the dead of night and felt tempted to defrost number three but had always chickened out at the last moment.
    He had never had a reason to be a difficult teenager as such. Relations were generally harmonious in his home; he was allowed to stay out as late as his friends, and he had everything he wanted given to him on a plate. All doors were open to him. But now all the neglected possibilities ran through his mind. “I should have gone abroad as an exchange student, I should have sailed to South America with LoveDeath, I should have tried going to sea and getting into fights at port, I should have kissed Gugga when she offered me the chance, I should have thought about the future and finished high school quicker by studying during the summers, but then of course I’d have had to give up South America and the trawlers and Gugga . . .”
    He felt confused; there were so many possibilities that his head was ready to explode. He connected himself to REGRET and asked: “What would have happened if I’d sailed to South America with LoveDeath instead of attending my senior year of school?”
    The answer came straight back: “You would have died.”
    â€œGood,” said Indridi, and a weight was lifted from him. “I’m glad I didn’t go on a cruise with LoveDeath.”
    â€œDo you want to know more?”
    â€œNo, thanks. It’s a good thing I finished high school. Otherwise I’d have died.”
    REGRET enabled people to put their past in order and get to grips with new circumstances. The world followed certain laws. If a stone was dropped from a height of fifteen feet it was possible to work out the speed at which it would land, so it was also possible to work out what would have happened if Indridi’s 160 pounds had turned right and not left at a given moment in the past, the domino effect it would have had on everything else in the world, what would have happened afterward, and so on. REGRET could work it out. It was LoveStar’s brainchild. People needed only to call REGRET or send an email and the world was worked out in advance and the answer came right back. The remarkable thing about REGRET was that it didn’t matter how often people asked: What would have happened if . . . ? The answer was