Dreamer upon the board
There is an argument for saying that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with free will.[1]
One could argue with a cookie, and it would work well enough, for cookies are tasty things, but there is typically little terribly momentous about a cookie. Or one could argue with a story - place a dreamer upon the board and call her Protagonist, give her a grand destiny that she could choose or not to fulfil, and see what she does.
So the dreamer considers, loiters for awhile in the celestial lobby of the universe, looking around, making up her mind. She listens to the whispers of the stars and the songs of the living and in time she hatches her Mad Plan, a plan that had been with her from the start but that was entirely up to her just what to actually do with it. Once decided, however, the plan is out, set in motion, and the only thing for it is to see it through, for now it simply is. The plan is true, even if she still has almost no idea what the details might entail.
And the plan is decided.
The gods know. They must, according to the man outside the pastry shop who mutters at length about the apotheosis of cheese, for the Cheese God knows all, for the Cheese God must know all, for He is the Cheese God, among other gods.[2] Surely at least some of them know it all. So if they do know it all, these gods, then they'll have known it all all along, because all includes the outcome of Protagonist's plan, and her destiny, and her dog. All, really, is everything. It's all part of everything, and it always was.
So the gods will have known all along. Even before the dreamer Protagonist was placed upon the board, they knew. Before she made her plan and chose to step into the world proper and go through with it, they knew she would. But since they already knew, and they could not have been wrong,[3] there was no choice for the dreamer to have not made the plan she did, for her to have not gone through with it. Indeed, because the plan effectively preceded her, it could not even be truly said to be her Mad Plan, but merely a plan she was given.
But the dreamer, and even the god sitting next to her whom she would call sister, is not from this universe. How could
I know things you do not, she says. And the one sitting next to me, she knows even more. But it wasn't her plan either, for how could it be? She wasn't even alive when it was born. She still doesn't even know who she is, the dreamer doesn't say.
