Fortune Cookies

I often find writing dialogue to be incredibly painful. This nugget, however, poured out of my fingers in ten minutes-ish. I'm not sure why I wrote it as straight dialogue initially, and I thought about going back in and adding dialogue tags, actions, and descriptions. But I decided to leave it as is and leave much up to the imagination of the reader. I'd love to hear what you envisioned in the scene in the comments below!

"I'm just doing what the fortune cookie said. Who am I to stand in the way of fate?"

"So if the fortune cookie told you to jump off a bridge, or rob a bank, you'd do it?"

"That's my fate."

"Wait. Since when are fortune cookies the same as fate?"

"The cookie is just a tool, how the universe communicates with you."

"So the universe gives you a heads up for what's coming, what you've earned, or whatever?"

"I guess."

"What if you don't ever eat Chinese food?"

"Then you don't get to know what's coming."

"If the fortune is really your fate, what's with the numbers? They never work for me."

"Cosmic combinations."

"What?"

"They're probably not lucky numbers here. They're more like coordinates for a place."

"That you can't get to. Cause it's not on Earth."

"I guess."

"So what's the point?"

"Information. It's all just information. A recording of places and events."

"But the events of the fortune don't happen in the place of the coordinates, right? The fortunes are your fate, your future here. On Earth. But the numbers are coordinates for something, somewhere, else."

"I guess."

"That's the third time you've said 'I guess.' Are you just making all of this up?"

"I guess. I mean, no one can know for sure what the fortunes and numbers and whatever else is stuffed in the cookies really means."

"Except the people who stuff the cookies."

"I'm pretty sure it's machines. They automatically cut the slips and lay them on dough and fold them and package them and everything. Untouched by human hands."

"Who writes the fortunes?"

"No one knows."

"Someone knows. They don't just magically appear in the fortune cookie factory."

"Maybe they do."

"Ha ha. Magic isn't real."

"Isn't it? You seem to believe in the fortunes."

"No. That's you. You're the one who blindly did the thing the cookie told you to do. I'm the one who questioned it."

"But it seems to be working out just fine. Which suggests it is exactly the thing I was meant to do. Fate. You know."

"What if my fortune cookie told me to do the opposite. To stop you from doing what you're doing. What then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Which fate wins?"

"We would both just have to fulfill our fate, what was in the cookie, and see what happened."

"So we don't get to know the effects of our fate, we just have to do the thing?"

"Yes."

"Well then, I guess I have to."

"Have to what?"

"Stop you from making a terrible mistake, no matter what the cost. That's what my cookie said. It's not my fault, it's my fate."