Yes, the universe IS out to get you

This is a weird true story that just happened so I think I'd better write it down while it's fresh. I think it's proof that the universe is messing with me. Read it and you'll see.
About a week back a friend of mine lent me a book - the Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain.
I was keen to check it out, because I'd read Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and liked them.
"There's this one short story, near the end," said my friend. "It'll blow your mind. It's the ending that's crazy.
There's just no other way to end it. You'll see."
It had been a weird night when I got the book. A discussion about assorted stuff had turned into talking about the
meaning of life, the universe and everything. And quantum physics. I don't know any quantum physics - I just know about them, and like what I've heard. My friend, on the other hand, actually knows stuff - he's done quantum physics at uni - so it was enlightening.
The discussion eventually ended up at books - stuff we'd read, stuff we hadn't. We talked things as disparate as Douglas Adams and Dante's Inferno. Sometime around now the subject of the Mark Twain story came up.
I took it home and to Auckland with me. I didn't read any of it - I was busy with another book. Then, this morning, it was raining, I got up late, and I didn't want ride my bike into town to do magazine work.
I decided to read the story over breakfast. Procrastination. Kind of.
The story was called "The Mysterious Stranger." There's no way I can write this story without providing a plot summary of some kind. It goes a bit like this; there is a kid in a medieaval Austrian village where they're still firmly stuck in the Middle Ages. Him and his mates meet an angel called Satan. (Not Satan satan, but it may as well be. It's complicated.) This angel has the power to do pretty much anything. He is interested in humans in much the same way as scientists are interested in bacteria. He sets about messing with their lives in ways that seem to the humans in the know to be positively barbaric, but are to him neutral, because he can't tell good from evil. He doesn't much care for humans, seeing us as below the level of animals, and derides morality as a farce. He also takes the boys on instantaneous trips around Earth explaining the human condition. The boys he meets in the village beg him, as he's essentially omnipotent, to change the lives of the villagers for the better. Satan, seeing no reason not to, does - usually by killing them of making them insane.
One of the cool ideas is Satan can only alter their lives along the lines of probability, and can see their futures extrapolated from events in their past. The smallest event in the life of one person changes their future. Satan, who is apparently outside of time, does this all the time. Why is never really explained, but the best reason seems to be "because he can."
Then the story ends. How? Well, it's crazy. And there's just no other way it can end. Read it yourself. You can check it out here.
Now, about half-way through the story - before I got to the bit about life and choice being just one big chain of unalterable circumstance - I nearly rode into town. It had stopped raining, and I had plenty of work to do. But I didn't go. Because I wanted to finish the story.
So I read on, and got to the bit about choices, coincidence, chaos and circumstance. I've read this kind of stuff before, but it still blew my mind.
I finished the story, wondering how my life would have been unalterably different if I'd left half an hour earlier. But I hadn't. Argh, mental mouse-wheel!
I got to the office, and within five minutes, the editor goes:
"Hey Josh, have you read any Mark Twain?"
I swear, I knew where it was going before he said anything else.
"I read a story by him this morning," I said. Or something similar. And the editor types in a web address and brings up a video on YouTube. Inevitably, maybe, the video is part of a claymation series called "The Adventures of Mark Twain. The one he's showing me is called "Satan Visits the Children."
It's the same story I'd read that morning. The stripped down, animated version. If anything, it was creepier than the written story was.
I told the editor the full story. He was mildly impressed. I'm still wondering what to make of it. If anything.