John Menick

From Lem’s sci-fi detective novel, The Investigation:

The little game has always fascinated Gregory when he was nineteen. He used to stand in the middle of a crowd without knowing until the last minute whether or not he’d board an approaching train, waiting for some kind of internal sign or act of the will to tell him what to do. “No matter what I won’t move from this spot,” he would sometimes swear to himself, then would jump on just as the doors were shutting. Other times he would tell himself severely, “I’ll take the next train,” and instead would find himself entering the one standing right before him. The very concept of chance had fascinated Gregory when he was younger, and through self-analysis and research he had tried to study it s workings in his own personality, though without any results, to be sure.