Destiny Uncertain

"Destiny Uncertain" by Rog Phillips is a science fiction story set in a strange world, where a machine decides the fate of people. It centers on Lin Grant, who survives a car crash and realizes someone, or something, is writing everyone's destinies, with life and death controlled by burning pieces of paper. After barely surviving an accident that should have killed him, Lin finds a paper that says he and another person, Dorothy Lake, will die in the crash. He teams up with Dorothy and a high-stakes chase ensues with a shadowy figure named Hugo Fairchild, who wants the paper back to control fate. It's a tale of how two people fight against what's supposed to happen, testing if they can change their grim futures and exploring if anything is really set in stone.