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that. You can go back in time and talk yourself out of winning a million and
a half dollars, but the resultant world is not one where you didn't win a
million and a half dollars; it's a world where you talked yourself out of
it. See the difference?
It's subtle but it's important.
Think of an artist drawing a picture. But he's using indelible ink and
he doesn't have an eraser. If he wants to make a change, he has to paint
over a line with white. The line hasn't ceased to exist; it's just been
painted over and a new line drawn on top.
On the surface, it doesn't seem to make much difference. The finished
picture will look the same whether the artist uses an eraser or a gallon of
white paint, but it's important to the artist. He's aware of the process he
used to obtain the final result and it affects his consciousness. He's aware
of all the lines and drawings beneath the final one, the layer upon layer of
images, each one not quite the one all those discarded pieces; they haven't
ceased to exist, they've just been painted out of view. Subjectively, time
travel is like that.
I can lay down one timeline and then go back and do things differently
the second time around. I can go back a third time and talk myself out of
something, and I can go back a fourth time and change it yet again. And in
the end, the timestream is exactly what I've made it it is the cumulative
product of my changes. The closest I can get to the original is to go back
and talk myself out of something. It won't be the same world, but the
difference will be undetectable. The difference will be in me. I like the
artist with his painting will be conscious of all the other alternatives
that did exist, do exist, and can exist again.
The world I came from is like my innocence. I can never recapture it.
At best, I can only simulate it. , You can't be a virgin twice.
(Not that I would, of course. Virginity seems like a nice state of
existence only to a virgin, only to someone who doesn't know any better.
From this side of the fence, it seems like such a waste. I remember my first
time, and how I had reacted: Why, this was nothing to be scared of at all in
fact, it's wonderful! Why had I taken so long to discover it? Afterward, all
the time beforehand looked so ... empty.)
According to the timebelt instructions, what I had done by altering the
situation the second time around was called tangling. Mine had been a simple
tangle, easily unraveled, but there was no limit to how complex a tangle
could be. You can tie as many knots in a ball of yarn as you like.
There really isn't any reason to unravel tangles (according to the
instructions) because they usually take care of themselves; but the special
cautions advise against letting a tangle get too complex because of the
cumulative effects that might occur. You might suddenly find that you've
changed your world beyond all recognition and possibly beyond your ability
to live in, let alone excise.
Excising is what you do when you bounce back and talk yourself out of
something when you go back and undo a mistake. Like winning too much at the
races. (How about that? I'd been tangling and excising and I hadn't even
known it.)
The belt explained the impossibility of paradoxes this way: If there
was only one timestream, then paradoxes would be possible and time travel
would have to be impossible. But every time you make a change in the
timestream, no matter how slight, you are actually shifting to an alternate
timestream. As far as you are concerned, though, it's the only timestream,
because you can't get back to the original one.
So when you use the timebelt, you aren't really jumping through time,
that's the illusion; what you're actually doing is leaving one timestream
and jumping to maybe even creating another. The second one is identical to
the one you just left, including all of the changes you made in it up to the
instant of your appearance. At that moment, simply by the fact of your
existence in it, the second timestream becomes a different timestream. You
are the difference.
When you travel backward in time, you're creating that second universe
at an earlier moment. It will develop in exactly the same way as the
universe you just left, unless you act to alter that development.
That the process is perceived as time travel is only an illusion,
because the process is subjective. But because it's subjective, it really
doesn't make any difference, does it? It's just as good as the real thing.
Better, even; because nothing is permanent; nothing is irrevocable.
The past is the future. The future is the past. There's no difference
between the two and either can be changed. I'm flashing across a series of
alternate worlds, creating and destroying a new one every time I bounce. The
universe is infinite.
And so are the possibilities of my life.
* * *
I am Dan. And I am Don.
And sometimes I am Dean, and Dino, and Dion, and Dana. And more . . .
There's a poker game going on in my apartment. It starts on June 24,
1975. I don't know when it ends. Every time one of me gets tired, there's
another one showing up to take his place. The game is a twenty-fourhour
marathon. I know it lasts at least a week; on July 2,1 peeked in and saw
several versions of myself some in their mid-twenties still grimly playing.
Okay. So I like poker.
Every time I'm in the mood, I know where there's an empty chair. And
when. Congenial people too. I know theyТll never cheat.
I may have to get a larger apartment though. Five rooms is not enough.
(I need more room for the pool table.)
Strange things keep happening no, not strange
things, things that I've learned not to question. For instance, once I
saw Uncle Jim he looked surprised and vanished almost immediately. It
startled me too. I was just getting used to the idea of his death. I hadn't
realized that he would have been using the timebelt too. (But why not? It
was his before it was mine.)
Another time I heard strange noises from the bedroom. When I peeked in,
there was Don in bed with well, whoever it was, she was covered by a
blanket; I couldn't see. He just looked at me with a silly expression, not
the slightest bit embarrassed, so I shrugged and closed the door. And the
noises began again. I'm not questioning it at all. I'll find out.
Eventually.
Mostly I've been concentrating on making money. Don and I (and later,
Danny and I) have made a number of excursions into the past, as well as the
future. Some of our investments go back as far as 1850 (railroads, coal,
steel). 1875 (Bell Telephone). 1905 (automobiles, rubber, oil, motion
pictures). 1910 (airlines, heavy industry, steel again). 1920 (radio,
insurance companies, chemicals, drugs). 1929 (I picked up some real bargains
here. More steel. Business machines. More radio, more airlines. More
automobiles). 1940 (companies that would someday be involved in computers,
television, and the aerospace industry). 1950 (Polaroid and Xerox and
Disney). 1960 (More Boeing stock, some land in Florida especially around
Orlando). Turned out that 1975 was a good year for bargains too. It was a
little too early to buy stock in something called Apple, but I could buy IBM
and Sony and MCA shares. Oh, and Don said I should also pick up some stock
in 20th Century Fox. There was a nifty little movie coming up in 1977 that
would make a bit of money.
Down through the decades, I bought a little here, a little there not
enough to change the shape of the world, but enough to supply me with a
comfortable lifelong fortune. It was a little tricky setting up an
investment firm to manage it, but it was worth the effort. When I got back
to 1975, I found I was worth one hundred and forty-three million dollars.
Hmm.
Actually, the number was meaningless. I was worth
a hell of a lot more. It turned out I owned an investment
monopoly worth several billion dollars, or let's say I controlled it.
What I owned was the holding company that held the holding companies. By the
numbers, its value was only one hundred and forty-three million, but I could
put my hands on a lot more than that if I wanted. What it meant was that I
had unlimited credit.
Hell! If I wanted to, I could own the country! The world!
Believe it or not, I didn't want to.
I'd lost interest in the money. It was just so much numbers. Useless
except as a tool to manipulate my environment, and I had a much better tool
for that.
Those frequent trips to the past had whetted my appetite. I had seen
New York grow like a living creature, the city had swelled and soared; her
cast-iron facades had become concrete; her marble towers gave way to
glass-sided slabs and soaring monoliths. And beyond that, she became
something enchanted: a fantasy of light and color. Oh, the someday beauty of
her!
I became intrigued with history
I went back to see the burning of the Hindenburg. I was there when the
great zeppelin shriveled in flame and an excited announcer babbled into his
microphone.
I was there when Lindbergh took off and I was there again when he
landed. The little airplane seemed so frail.
I was there when another airplane smacked into the
Х Empire State Building, shattering glass and concrete and tumbling to
the horrified street below. It was unreal.
I saw the Wright brothers' first flight. That was unreal too.
And I know what happened to Judge Crater.
I saw the blastoff of Apollo II. It was the loudest sound I've ever
heard.
And I witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't
dramatic at all; it was sad and clumsy. I was there (via timeskim) at Custer
s last stand.
I witnessed the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. (The
guy who was supposed to pound in the gold spike slipped and fell in the
mud.)
I've seen the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake.
I was at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (How far we
have come since then. . . .) I saw the burning of Atlanta.
And I've seen the original uncut versions of D. W. Griffith's
Intolerance and Merian C. Cooper's King Kong and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I was there the day the Liberty Bell cracked.
And I saw the fall of the Alamo.
I witnessed the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack.
I attended a band concert conducted by John Philip Sousa.
I heard Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address. I recorded it on tape.
I've seen Paul Revere's midnight ride and the
Boston Tea Party.
I've met George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
And I watched Columbus come ashore.
I saw Ben Franklin flying a kite on a rainy day.
I was there when Bell tested his first telephone.
"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
I witnessed Galileo's experiment when he
dropped two lead balls of different weights from the
tower of Pisa.
I have seen performances of plays by William Shakespeare. At the Globe
Theater in London.
I watched Leonardo da Vinci as he painted La Jac-
onde, the Mona Lisa. (I will not tell you why she smiles.)
And I watched as his rival, Michelangelo, painted the
Sistine Chapel.
I've heard Strauss waltzes, conducted by Strauss himself.
I saw the disastrous premiere of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. And
Ravel's Bolero too.
I've heard Beethoven's symphonies as conducted by Beethoven himself.
And Mozart. And Bach. (I've seen the Beatles too.)
And the beheading of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More.
I've seen the signing of the Magna Carta.
I have visited Imperial Rome. Nero and Tiberius and Julius Caesar
himself. Cleopatra was ugly.
And ancient Greece. The sacking of Troy was more than a myth.
I have witnessed performances of plays by Sopho-
cles and watched as Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle
taught Alexander. I saw Socrates drink the cup of
hemlock.
I have witnessed the crucifixion of one Jesus of
Nazareth. He looked so sad.
And more.
I have seen dinosaurs. I have seen the thunder lizards walk the Earth.
The Brontosaurus, the Stegosaurus, and Triceratops and the Tyrannosaurus
Rex, the most fearsome monster ever to stalk the world.
I have seen the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of Pompeii.
I have seen the explosion of Krakatoa.
I watched an asteroid plunge from the sky and shatter a giant crater in
what would someday be Arizona.
I've witnessed the death of Hiroshima by atomic fire.
I've timeskimmed from the far distant past and watched as the Colorado
River carved out the Grand Canyon a living, twisting snake of water cutting
away the rock.
And more.
I've been to the year 2001 and beyond. I've been to the moon.
I've walked its surface in a flimsy spacesuit and held its dust in my
hands. I've seen the Earth rise above the Lunar Apennines.
I've visited Tranquillity Base and flashing back to the past, I watched
the Eagle land. I saw Neil Armstrong come ashore.
And more.
I've been to Mars. I've been to the great hotels that orbit Jupiter and
I've seen the rings of Saturn. I've timeskimmed from the far past to the far
future. I have seen Creation.
I have seen how Entropy ravages everything.
From Great Bang to Great Bang the existence of
the Earth is less than a blink; the death of the sun by
nova, almost unnoticeable.
I've seen the future of mankind
I like to think I understand, but I know that I don't.
The future of the human race is as alien and incomprehensible to me as
the year 1975 would be to a man of Charlemagne's era. But wondrous it is
indeed, and filled with marvelous things.
There is nothing that I cannot witness
but there is little that I can participate in.
I am limited. By my language, by my appearance, by my skin color, and
my height.
I am limited to life in a span of history maybe two hundred years in
each direction. Beyond that, the languages are difficult: the meanings have
altered, the pronunciations and usages too complex to decipher. With effort,
perhaps, I can communicate; but the farther I go from 1975, the harder it is
to make myself understood.
And there are other differences. In the past, I am
too tall. The farther back I travel, the shorter everybody
becomes. And the farther forward I go, the taller. In the
not-too-distant future, I am too short humanity's evolution is upward.
And there are still other differences. Disturbing ones.
There are places where my skin is the wrong color, or my eyes the wrong
shape. And there is one time in the future when I am the wrong sex.
There are places where people's faces are different.
I can witness.
I cannot participate.
But witnessing is enough: I have seen more of history than any other
human being. I have timeskimmed and timestopped and my journeys have been
voyages of mystery and adventure.
There is much that I don't understand. There are things that are
incomprehensible to one who is not of the era and the culture.
But still the proper study of humanity is humanity itself.
History is not just old news.
It's people. It's the ebb and flow of life. It's the sound of bells and
horns, the stamp of boots in the street, the flapping of banners in the
wind, the smell of smoke and flowers. It's bread and trains and newspapers.
It's the acrid smell of the herd, and the press of the crowd. It's surprise
and glory and fear. It's confusion, panic, and disaster
and above all, history is triumphl
It is the triumph of individuals creating, designing, building,
changing, challenging never quitting. It is the continual victory of the
intellect over the animal; the unquenchable vitality of life! Passion
overwhelms despair and humanity goes on; sometimes seething, sometimes
dirty, sometimes even unspeakably evil.
But always despite the setbacks the direction is always upward.
If I must taste the bitterness, it is worth it; because I have also
shared the dreams.
And the promise.
I have seen its fulfillment.
I know the truth and the destiny of the human race.
It is a proud and lonely thing to be a man.
* * *
This part, I think, may be the hardest to record.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that it happen, but it has caused me to
do some serious thinking. About myself. About Dan. About Don.
When Uncle Jim died, I thought my life would be changed, and I worried
about the directions it might take. When I thought I had eliminated myself
by a timebelt paradox, I realized how much I feared dying I realized how
much I needed to be Dan to my Don and Don to my Dan.
But this
this makes me question the shape of my whole life.
What am I? Who am I?
What am I doing to myself?
Have I made a wrong decision? Am I moving in a strange and terrible
direction?
I wish I knew.
It started when? Yesterday evening? Time is
funny when you don't live it linearly. When I get tired, I
sleep, I flip forward or backward to the nearest nighttime
and climb into bed.
If I'm not tired, and itТs night, I flash to day and go to the beach.
Or I jump to winter and go skiing. I stay as long as I want, or as short as
I want. I stay for weeks or only a few minutes. I'm not a slave to the clock
nor even to the seasons.
What I mean is, I'm no longer living in a straight line.
I bounce back and forth through the days like a temporal Ping-Pong
ball. I don't even know how old I am anymore. I think I've passed my
twentieth birthday, but I'm not sure.
It's strange. . . .
Time used to be a flowing river. I sailed down it and watched the
shores sweep past: here, a warm summer evening, ice tinkling in lemonade
glasses; there, a cool fall morning, dead leaves crunching underfoot and my
breath in frosty puffs. Time was a slowly shifting panorama along the river
bank. I was a leaf in the water. I was carried helplessly along, a victim of
the current.
Now I'm out of the river and standing on the bank. I am the motion and
time is the observer. No longer a victim, I am the cause. All of time is
laid out before me like a table, no longer a moving entity, but a vast and
mutable landscape. I can leap to any point on it at will. Would I like a
nice summer day? Yes, there's a pleasant one. Am I in the mood for a fall
morning? Ah, that's nice. I don't have to wait for the river to carry me to
a place where I might be able to find that moment I can go exactly to it.
No moment can ever escape me. I've chased twi-
light and captured dawn. I've conquered day and tamed
the night. I can live as I choose because I am the master
of time.
I laugh to think of it. Time is an everlasting smorgasbord and I am the
gourmet, picking here, choosing there, discarding this unnecessary bit of
tripe and taking an extra piece of filet instead.
But even this temporal mobility, no matter how unlimited it is, does
not keep me from arbitrarily dividing things into "day" and "night." It must
be a human thing to want to divide eternity into bite-sized chunks. It's
easier to digest. So no matter how many jumps I make, anything that happened
before my last sleep happened "yesterday," and everything since I woke up
(and until I go to sleep again) is part of my "today." Some of my "todays"
have spanned a thousand years. And "tomorrow" comes not with the dawn, but
with my next awakening.
I think I'm still on a twenty-four-hour life cycle, but I can't be
sure. If I add a few extra hours to my "day" so as to enjoy the beach a
little longer, I find my body tends to obey the local time, not mine.
Perhaps humanity is unconsciously geared to the sun. At least, it seems that
way. I don't get tired until after the world gets dark. (But like I said
before, I'm not sure how old I am anymore. I've lost track.)
Anyway. What I'm getting to is that this happened "yesterday."
Don and I were listening to Beethoven. (The origi-
nal Beethoven. I had gotten a recorder from 2050, a multichannel device
capable of greater fidelity than anything known in 1975, and had taped all
eleven of the master's symphonies. Yes. All eleven.)
We had spent the day swimming skinny-dipping
actually (it's strange to watch your own nude body from a distance),
and now we were resting up before dinner. I have this mansion in the hills
overlooking the San Fernando Valley; the view is spectacular. All fields and
orchards. Even the bedroom has a picture window.
It was dusk. The sun was just dipping behind the hills to the west. It
was large and orange through the haze. Don had turned on the stereo and
collapsed exhaustedly on the bed (a king-size water bed) without even
toweling off.
I didn't think anything of it. I was tired too. I made an attempt to
dry myself off, then lay down beside him. (I'd gotten into a very bad habit
with Don with Dan with myself. I'd discovered I didn't like being alone.
Even when I sleep, I need the assurance of knowing there's somebody next to
me. So more and more I found myself climbing into bed with one or more
versions of myself. Sometimes there's a lot of horseplay and giggling. What
did I want? Did I know? Is that why I did it? It extends to other things
too. I won't swim alone. And several times we've showered together,
ostensibly so we could scrub each other's back.)
We were both stretched out naked on the water
bed, just staring at the ceiling and listening to the Pastoral
Symphony, that part near the beginning where it goes "pah-rump-pah-pah,
rump-pah-pah . . ." (You know, where Disney's joyous trumpets announce a
cascade of happy unicorns.)
It was a good tiredness. Languorous. I was floating oh so pleasantly
and the light show on the ceiling was swirling in red and pink and purple,
shifting to blue and white.
I'd been getting strange vibrations from Don all day.
I wasn't sure why. (Or perhaps I hadn't wanted to admit ) He kept
looking at me oddly. His glance kept meeting mine and he seemed to be
smiling about some inner secret, but he wouldn't say what it was. He touched
me a lot too. There had been a lot of clowning around in the pool, and once
I thought he had been about to (I must have sensed it earlier, I must have;
but I must have also been refusing to recognize it.)
The symphony had reached that point where it sug-
gests wild dancing, with several false stops, when a soft
pop! in the air made me look up. Another Don. I had
long since gotten used to various versions of myself ma-
terializing and disappearing at random. But I sat up any-
way.
He looked troubled. And tired.
"Which one of you is Dan?" he said. He looked at
me. "You are, aren't you?"
I nodded.
Don, beside me, raised up on one elbow, sending ripples through the
bed, but his gaze was veiled. Don II looked at him but stepped toward me. He
was holding a sheaf of papers I recognized it as my, no, his diary; that is,
his version of my diary.
"I want to excise something," he said.
"What?"
"That is, I think I want to excise it. I'm not sure "
He looked at me. He sat down on the bed, and for a moment I thought he
was close to tears. He was trembling. "Look, I don't know if this this thing
is good or bad or what. Maybe the terms are meaningless. I just don't know.
I'm not sure if I should tell you to avoid this or whether I should let you
make your own decision." He looked at both of us. "I can't talk about it. I
mean, I can't talk about it to you because you wouldn't understand. Not yet.
That's why I have to do it this way. Here's my diary. Read it, Dan. Then you
decide for yourself if if that's what you want. I mean, it's the only way.
You shouldn't stumble into this. You should either go into it with your eyes
open and be aware of what you're doing, or you should reject it because
you're aware of its possibility. Either way, it's going to change your our
life."
He was very upset, and that made me very concerned. I reached out and
touched his arm. He flinched and pulled away. "Tell me what it is " I said.
He shook his head adamantly. "Just read the diary."
"I will," I promised. "But stay here until I do, so you can talk to me
about it."
"No, I can't. I tried that once and we ended up
doing exactly what I came back to stop. I mean, I mustn't
be here if you're to make your own choice." And he popped out of
existence. Back to his own future my future perhaps? I won't know till I get
there.
I picked up the papers and paged through them.
The early parts were identical to mine, even up to the point where Don
and I were listening to Beethoven, stretched out on the water bed
* * *
What I'm trying to get at is that it started almost accidently.
Don rubbed himself abstractedly and then stretched and rolled over on
his stomach. He reached over and grabbed a pillow above my head. "You want
one?" I nodded. He fluffed it and shoved it under my head, then grabbed
another one for himself. He didn't roll away; instead, he sighed and let his
arm fall across my chest.
Absentmindedly I reached up and stroked his arm. In response, he gave
me a casual hug.
And then he was looking at me and our eyes were locked in another of
those glances. He was mysterious. I was curious. His smile was bottomless.
"What is it?" I asked.
In answer, he slid himself upward and kissed me.
Just a kiss. Quick, affectionate and loaded with desire.
He pulled back and looked at me, still smiling, watching my reaction.
I was confused. Because I had accepted it. I had let
him kiss me as if it were a totally natural thing for him to
do. I hadn't questioned it at all. His eyes were shining,
and I studied them carefully. He lowered his face to
mine again. . . .
This time the kiss was longer. Much longer.
And he didn't just kiss me. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to
him.
And I helped.
We stretched out side by side, facing each other on the water bed. We
put our arms around each other. And we kissed.
I realized I liked it.
I liked it.
"Don," I managed to gasp, "We shouldn't "
He studied me. "But you want to, don't you?"
And I knew he was right.
"Yes, but " His face was so open, his eyes were so deep. "But it's
wrong "
"Is it? Why is it?"
"Because it's not right "
"Is it any worse than masturbation? You masturbated yesterday, Danny, I
know. Because I did too. You were alone in the house, but you're never alone
from yourself."
"I I but masturbation isn't I mean, that's "
"Danny " He silenced me with a finger across my
lips. "I want to give you pleasure, I want to give you me,
You have your arms around me. You have your hands on me. You like what
you feel, I know you do."
And he was right. I did like it. I did enjoy it.
He was so sure of himself.
"Just relax, Danny," he whispered. "Just relax." He kissed me again and
I kissed him back.
* * *
I've done it twice now. I've been seduced and I've seduced myself. Or
maybe I should say, after Don seduced me, I seduced Danny.
I'm filled with the joy of discovery. A sense of sharing. My relations
with Don with Dan have taken on a new intensity. There is a lot more
touching, a lot more laughter, a lot more . . . intimacy.
I look forward to tonight and yet, I also hold myself back. The
anticipation is delightful. Tonight, tonight . . . (I begin to understand
emotion. Now I know why there are love songs. I touch the button on my belt.
I fly to meet myself.)
* * *
So this is love.
The giving. The taking.
The abandonment of roles. The opening of the self.
And the resultant sensuality of it all. The delight. The laughing joy.
Were I to describe in clinical detail for some unknown reader those
things that we have actually done, the intensity and pleasure would not come
through. The joy would be filtered out. The written paragraphs would be
grotesque. Perverse.
Because love cannot be discussed objectively.
It is a subjective thing. You must be immersed in it to understand it.
The things that Danny and I (Don and
I) have done, we've done them out of curiosity and delight and sharing.
Not compulsion. Delight.
And joyous sexuality. We are discovering our bodies. We are discovering
each other. We are children with a magnificent new toy. Yes, sex is a toy
for grownups.
To describe the things we have been doing would deprive them of their
special intimacy and magic. We do them because they feel good. We do them
because in this way we make each other feel good. We do it out of love.
Is this love?
It must be. Why didn't I do this sooner?
* * *
And yet, I wonder what I am doing.
A vague sense of wrongness pervades my life. I find myself looking over
my shoulder a lot Who's watching me? Who's judging my days?
Is it wrong?
I don't know.
There is no one I can talk to about it, not even myself. Every Don I
know every Dan is caught up in the same whirlpool. None of us is any closer
to the truth. We are all confused.
I'm alone for the first time in days.
It makes no difference. I'm still talking to myself.
I wish some Don from the future would come back to advise me but even
that's a useless wish. Any Don who did come back would only be trying to
shape me toward his goals, regardless of mine.
(I did meet one once. I don't know if it was intentional or accidental.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe older; there were tiny lines at
the corners of his eyes. He was a little darker and a lot heavier than me.
He said, "You look troubled, Danny. Would you like to talk about it?" I said
yes, but when we sat down on the couch, he put his arm around my shoulders
and tried to pull me close. I fled into yesterday Is that my future? Am I
condemning myself to a life of that?)
(Is condemning even the right word? There are
times when I am lying in Danny's arms when I am so
happy I want to shout. I want to run out in the middle of
the street and scream as loud as I can with the over-
whelming joy of how happy I am. There are times when I
am with Don that I break down and cry with happiness.
We both cry with happiness. The emotion is too much to contain. There
are times when it is very good and I am happier than I have ever been in my
life. Is that condemnation?)
(Must I list all those moments which I would never excise? The times we
went nude swimming on a California beach centuries before the first man came
to this continent. The night when six of us, naked and giggling, discovered
what an orgy really was. [I've been to that orgy four times now does that
mean I have to visit it twice more? I hope so.] I had not realized what
pleasure could be )
But when I think about it logically, I know that its wrong. I mean, I
think it's wrong. I'm not sure. I've never had to question it before.
Man was made to mate with woman. Man was not made to mate with man.
But does that mean man must not mate with man?
No matter how many arguments I marshal against
it, I am still outvoted by one overwhelming argument for
it.
It's pleasurable. I like it.
So I rationalize. I tell myself that it's simply a complex form of
masturbation. I know it. This is something more. I respond to Dan as if he
were another person, as if he were not myself. I am both husband and wife,
and I like both roles.
Oh my God what have I done to myself?
What have I done?
Rationalization cannot hide the truth. How can anything that has given
me such happiness leave me so unhappy?
Please. Someone. Help.
* * *
I put the pages down and looked at Don. The mood of the moment had
abruptly evaporated. "You've read this, haven't you?"
He wouldn't meet my gaze; he simply nodded.
I narrowed my eyes in sudden suspicion. "How far ahead of me are you?"
I asked. "One day? Two days? A week? How much of my future do you know?"
He shook his head. "Not much. A little less than a day."
"I'm your yesterday?"
He nodded.
"You know what we were about to do?" I held up the papers meaningfully.
He nodded again.
"We would have done it if he hadn't stopped us,
wouldn't we?"
"Yes," said Don. "In fact, I was just about to "
He stopped, refused to finish the sentence.
I thought about that for a moment. "Then you know if we are going to I
mean, you know if we did it." He said, "I know." His voice was almost a
whisper.
Something about the way he said it made me look at him. "We did didn't
we?"
"Yes."
Abruptly, I was finding it hard to talk. He tried to look at me, but I
wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Dan," he said. "You don't understand. You won't understand until
you're me."
"We don't have to do it," I said. "Both of us have free will. Either of
us can change the future. I could say no. And you even though you have your
memory of doing it, you could still refuse to do it again. You could change
the past. If you wanted to."
He stretched out a hand. "It's up to you. ..."
"No," I shook my head. "You're the one who makes the decisions. I'm
Danny, you're Don. Besides, you've already you've already done it. You know
what it's like. You know if it will... be good, or if we should . . . avoid
it. I don't know, Don; that's why I have to trust you." I looked at him. "Do
we do it?"
Hesitation. He touched my arm. "You want to, don't you?Ф
After a moment I nodded. "Yes. I want to see what it's like. I I love
you."
"I want to do it too."
"Is it all right, though?" I held my voice low. "I mean, remember how
troubled Don looked?" "Danny, all I remember is how happy we were."
I looked at him. There was a tear shining on his cheek.
It was enough. I pressed against him. And we both held on tight.
* * *
I put the papers down and looked at Don. "I had a feeling we were
heading toward it," I said.
He nodded. "Yes." And then he smiled. "At least, now it's out in the
open."
I met his gaze. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. ..."
"Think about it," he said. "It can't happen until Danny is ready. Any
Don can try to seduce him, but unless Danny wants it to, it won't happen."
"So it's really me who's doing the seducing, isn't it?"
Don grinned. He rolled over on his back and spread his arms in
invitation. "I'm ready."
So was I. I moved into them and kissed him.
And wondered why previous versions of myself had been so afraid.
I wanted to do it. Wasn't that reason enough?
* * *
Evolution, of course.
I had provided a hostile environment for those of me with doubts about
their sexuality. They had excised themselves out of existence.
Leaving only me. With no doubts at all.
Survival of the fittest?
More likely, survival of the horniest.
I know who I am. I know what I want.
And I'm very happy.
If I'm not, I know what I can do about it.
* * *
As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away!
Hughes Mearns
The Psychoed
* * *
only, the little man was me.
I keep running into versions of myself who have come back from the
future to tell me to be sure to do something or not to do something. Like,
do not fly American Airlines Flight 191 from O'Hare to LAX on such and such
a date. (It's a DC-10 and the engine falls off.) Or, do not go faster than
seventy miles per hour on the freeway today. (The highway patrol is having
radar checks.) Things like that.
I used to wonder about all those other Dans and Dons even though I knew
they weren't, it still seemed like they were eliminating themselves. They're
not, but it seems that way.
What it is, of course, is that I am the cumulative effect of all their
changes. I that is, my consciousness have never gone back to excise
anything. At least I have no memory of ever having done so.
If they didn't exist to warn me, then I wouldn't have been warned and I
would have made the mistake they would have warned me against, realized it
was a mistake and gone back to warn myself. Hence, / am the result of an
inevitable sequence of variables and choices.
But that precludes the concept of free will. And everything I do proves
again that I have the ultimate free will I don't have to be responsible for
any of my actions because I can erase them any time. But does the erasure of
certain choices always lead to a particular one, or is it just that that
particular one is the one most suitable for this version of me? Is it my
destiny to be homosexual and some other Danny's destiny to not be . . . ?
The real test of it, I guess, would be to try and excise some little
incident and see what happens see what happens to me. If it turns out I can
remember excising it, then that would prove that I have free will.
If not if I find I've talked myself out of something else then I'm
running along a rut, like a clockwork mechanism, doomed to play out my
programmed actions for some unseen cosmic audience, all the time believing
that I have some control over those actions. The test
* * *
was simple. And I passed it.
I simply went back to May 21, 1975, and talked myself out of going to
the races. ("Here todays paper," I said. "Go to the races yesterday." Danny
was startled, of course, and he must have thought me a little crazy, but he
agreed not to go to the races on May 21.)
So. I had excised my first trip to the track. In this world I hadn't
made it at all.
Just to double-check, I drove out to the race track. Right. I wasn't
there. (An interesting thing happened though. In the fourth race, Harass
didn't bump Tumbleweed and wasn't disqualified. If I had been there to bet,
I would have lost everything or would I? The Don I might have been might
have foreseen that too. But why had that part of the past been changed? What
had happened? Something I must have done on one of my other trips must have
affected the race.)
But I'd proved it to my own satisfaction. I had free will.
I had all of my memories of the past the way I had lived it, yet I had
excised part of it out of existence. I hadn't eliminated myself and I hadn't
had any of my memory magically erased. I remembered the act of excising.
There might have been differences perhaps even should have been
differences in my world when I flashed forward again. Perhaps the mansion
should have disappeared, or perhaps my fortune should have been larger or
smaller; but both were unchanged. If there were any differences, they would
have to be minor. I didn't go looking for them.
The reason?
The mansion had been built in 1968, a good seven years before Danny had
been given the timebelt. (I had done that on purpose.) Because it had
already existed in 1975, it was beyond his (our? my?) reach to undo unless
he went back to 1967. The same applied to my financial empire. It should be
beyond the reach of any of my casual changes.
Of course, from a subjective point of view, neither the mansion nor the
money existed until after I'd gotten the timebelt but time travel is only
subjective to the traveler, not the timestream. Each time I'd made a change
in the timestream, it was like a new layer to the painting. The whole thing
was affected. Any change made before May 21, 1975, would be part of Danny's
world when he got the timebelt. Unless he later on went back and excised it
in a later version of the timestream. And if he did, it still wouldn't
affect me at all. It would be his version of the timestream and he would be
a different person from me, with different memories and different desires.
Just as there were alternate universes, there were also alternate Dannys.
My house already existed. My investments in the past were also firmly
in existence. He could not erase them by refusing to initiate them, he would
only be creating a new timestream of his own, one that would be separate
from mine.
In effect, by altering my personal past, I am excising
a piece of it, but I'm not destroying the continuity of this
timestream. I'm only destroying my own continuity
except that I'm not, because I still have my memories.
Confusing? Yes, I have to keep reminding myself not to think in terms
of only one timestream. I am not traveling in time. I am creating new
universes. Alternate universes each one identical to the one I just left up
to the moment of my insertion into it. From that instant on, my existence in
it causes it to take a new shape. A shape I can choose in fact, I must
choose; because the timestream will be changed merely by my sudden presence
in it, I must make every effort to exercise control in order to prevent
known sequences of events from becoming unknown sequences.
This applies to my own life too. I am not one person. I am many people,
all stemming from the same root. Some of the other Dans and Dons I meet are
greatly variant from me, others are identical. Some will repeat actions that
I have done, and I will repeat the actions of others. We perceive this as a
doubling back of our subjective timelines. It doesn't matter, I am me, I
react to it all. I act on it all.
From this, I've learned two things.
The first is that I do have free will.
With all that implies. If I am a homosexual, then I am that way by
choice. Should it please me to know that? Or should it disturb me? I don't
know I'm the me who likes it too much to excise. So I guess that's the
answer, isn't it?
And that's the second thing I've learned that every
time I travel into the past, I am excising. I am erasing the
past that was and creating a new one instead. I didn't
need to excise my first trip to the races to prove that I
had free will I'd already proved it the first time I was
Don, when I'd worn a windbreaker instead of a sweater.
Every time I excise, I'm not erasing a world. I'm only creating a new
one for myself.
For myself meaning, this me.
Because every time I excise, I am also creating versions that are not
me.
There are Daniel Eakinses who are totally different people than I am.
The Danny that I told not to go to the races he'll go off into a
timestream of his own creation; he'll have different memories, and
eventually, different needs and desires. His resultant timestreams may be
similar to mine, or, just as likely, they'll be different. And if he can be
different from me
then there are an infinite number of Dannys who are different from me.
Somewhere there exist all the possible variations of all the possible
people I could be.
I could by any of them but I cannot be all.
I can only be one of the variations. I will be the variation of myself
that pleases me the most. And that suggests
that my free will may be only an illusion, after all.
If there are an infinite number of Dans, then each one thinks he is
choosing his own course. But that isn't so. Each one is only playing out his
preordained instructions excising, altering, and designing his timestream to
fit his psychological template and following his emotional programming to
its illogical extreme . . .
* * *
But if each of us is happiest in the universe he builds for himself,
does it matter?
Does it really matter if there's no such thing as free will?
* * *
It bothers me this me.
I need to know that there is some important reason for my existence.
There must be something special about me.
* * *
I will find the answer!
* * *
Yes. Of course.
* * *
I know what my mission is. I know who I am.
I should have realized it when the timebelt was first given to me.
I am destined to rule the universe.
I am God.
* * *
But I must never let them find out, or they will try to kill me.
* * *
I think I will kill them first.
* * *
If I ever get out of this room, I will kill them all!
* * *
I made a point of cautioning Danny, "I don't know if he can be cured.
But I am sure we can never trust him with a timebelt again. I think we'll
have to be very careful to see that he doesn't get out. A paranoid
schizophrenic running amok through time could be disastrous not only for the
rest of the world, but for us as well."
Danny was thoughtful as he peered through the one-way glass. "It's
lucky that we caught him in time." His voice caught on the last word; I
think I know he was a little shaken at seeing the drooling maniac he might
have become. I hadn't gotten used to the sight either.
a half dollars, but the resultant world is not one where you didn't win a
million and a half dollars; it's a world where you talked yourself out of
it. See the difference?
It's subtle but it's important.
Think of an artist drawing a picture. But he's using indelible ink and
he doesn't have an eraser. If he wants to make a change, he has to paint
over a line with white. The line hasn't ceased to exist; it's just been
painted over and a new line drawn on top.
On the surface, it doesn't seem to make much difference. The finished
picture will look the same whether the artist uses an eraser or a gallon of
white paint, but it's important to the artist. He's aware of the process he
used to obtain the final result and it affects his consciousness. He's aware
of all the lines and drawings beneath the final one, the layer upon layer of
images, each one not quite the one all those discarded pieces; they haven't
ceased to exist, they've just been painted out of view. Subjectively, time
travel is like that.
I can lay down one timeline and then go back and do things differently
the second time around. I can go back a third time and talk myself out of
something, and I can go back a fourth time and change it yet again. And in
the end, the timestream is exactly what I've made it it is the cumulative
product of my changes. The closest I can get to the original is to go back
and talk myself out of something. It won't be the same world, but the
difference will be undetectable. The difference will be in me. I like the
artist with his painting will be conscious of all the other alternatives
that did exist, do exist, and can exist again.
The world I came from is like my innocence. I can never recapture it.
At best, I can only simulate it. , You can't be a virgin twice.
(Not that I would, of course. Virginity seems like a nice state of
existence only to a virgin, only to someone who doesn't know any better.
From this side of the fence, it seems like such a waste. I remember my first
time, and how I had reacted: Why, this was nothing to be scared of at all in
fact, it's wonderful! Why had I taken so long to discover it? Afterward, all
the time beforehand looked so ... empty.)
According to the timebelt instructions, what I had done by altering the
situation the second time around was called tangling. Mine had been a simple
tangle, easily unraveled, but there was no limit to how complex a tangle
could be. You can tie as many knots in a ball of yarn as you like.
There really isn't any reason to unravel tangles (according to the
instructions) because they usually take care of themselves; but the special
cautions advise against letting a tangle get too complex because of the
cumulative effects that might occur. You might suddenly find that you've
changed your world beyond all recognition and possibly beyond your ability
to live in, let alone excise.
Excising is what you do when you bounce back and talk yourself out of
something when you go back and undo a mistake. Like winning too much at the
races. (How about that? I'd been tangling and excising and I hadn't even
known it.)
The belt explained the impossibility of paradoxes this way: If there
was only one timestream, then paradoxes would be possible and time travel
would have to be impossible. But every time you make a change in the
timestream, no matter how slight, you are actually shifting to an alternate
timestream. As far as you are concerned, though, it's the only timestream,
because you can't get back to the original one.
So when you use the timebelt, you aren't really jumping through time,
that's the illusion; what you're actually doing is leaving one timestream
and jumping to maybe even creating another. The second one is identical to
the one you just left, including all of the changes you made in it up to the
instant of your appearance. At that moment, simply by the fact of your
existence in it, the second timestream becomes a different timestream. You
are the difference.
When you travel backward in time, you're creating that second universe
at an earlier moment. It will develop in exactly the same way as the
universe you just left, unless you act to alter that development.
That the process is perceived as time travel is only an illusion,
because the process is subjective. But because it's subjective, it really
doesn't make any difference, does it? It's just as good as the real thing.
Better, even; because nothing is permanent; nothing is irrevocable.
The past is the future. The future is the past. There's no difference
between the two and either can be changed. I'm flashing across a series of
alternate worlds, creating and destroying a new one every time I bounce. The
universe is infinite.
And so are the possibilities of my life.
* * *
I am Dan. And I am Don.
And sometimes I am Dean, and Dino, and Dion, and Dana. And more . . .
There's a poker game going on in my apartment. It starts on June 24,
1975. I don't know when it ends. Every time one of me gets tired, there's
another one showing up to take his place. The game is a twenty-fourhour
marathon. I know it lasts at least a week; on July 2,1 peeked in and saw
several versions of myself some in their mid-twenties still grimly playing.
Okay. So I like poker.
Every time I'm in the mood, I know where there's an empty chair. And
when. Congenial people too. I know theyТll never cheat.
I may have to get a larger apartment though. Five rooms is not enough.
(I need more room for the pool table.)
Strange things keep happening no, not strange
things, things that I've learned not to question. For instance, once I
saw Uncle Jim he looked surprised and vanished almost immediately. It
startled me too. I was just getting used to the idea of his death. I hadn't
realized that he would have been using the timebelt too. (But why not? It
was his before it was mine.)
Another time I heard strange noises from the bedroom. When I peeked in,
there was Don in bed with well, whoever it was, she was covered by a
blanket; I couldn't see. He just looked at me with a silly expression, not
the slightest bit embarrassed, so I shrugged and closed the door. And the
noises began again. I'm not questioning it at all. I'll find out.
Eventually.
Mostly I've been concentrating on making money. Don and I (and later,
Danny and I) have made a number of excursions into the past, as well as the
future. Some of our investments go back as far as 1850 (railroads, coal,
steel). 1875 (Bell Telephone). 1905 (automobiles, rubber, oil, motion
pictures). 1910 (airlines, heavy industry, steel again). 1920 (radio,
insurance companies, chemicals, drugs). 1929 (I picked up some real bargains
here. More steel. Business machines. More radio, more airlines. More
automobiles). 1940 (companies that would someday be involved in computers,
television, and the aerospace industry). 1950 (Polaroid and Xerox and
Disney). 1960 (More Boeing stock, some land in Florida especially around
Orlando). Turned out that 1975 was a good year for bargains too. It was a
little too early to buy stock in something called Apple, but I could buy IBM
and Sony and MCA shares. Oh, and Don said I should also pick up some stock
in 20th Century Fox. There was a nifty little movie coming up in 1977 that
would make a bit of money.
Down through the decades, I bought a little here, a little there not
enough to change the shape of the world, but enough to supply me with a
comfortable lifelong fortune. It was a little tricky setting up an
investment firm to manage it, but it was worth the effort. When I got back
to 1975, I found I was worth one hundred and forty-three million dollars.
Hmm.
Actually, the number was meaningless. I was worth
a hell of a lot more. It turned out I owned an investment
monopoly worth several billion dollars, or let's say I controlled it.
What I owned was the holding company that held the holding companies. By the
numbers, its value was only one hundred and forty-three million, but I could
put my hands on a lot more than that if I wanted. What it meant was that I
had unlimited credit.
Hell! If I wanted to, I could own the country! The world!
Believe it or not, I didn't want to.
I'd lost interest in the money. It was just so much numbers. Useless
except as a tool to manipulate my environment, and I had a much better tool
for that.
Those frequent trips to the past had whetted my appetite. I had seen
New York grow like a living creature, the city had swelled and soared; her
cast-iron facades had become concrete; her marble towers gave way to
glass-sided slabs and soaring monoliths. And beyond that, she became
something enchanted: a fantasy of light and color. Oh, the someday beauty of
her!
I became intrigued with history
I went back to see the burning of the Hindenburg. I was there when the
great zeppelin shriveled in flame and an excited announcer babbled into his
microphone.
I was there when Lindbergh took off and I was there again when he
landed. The little airplane seemed so frail.
I was there when another airplane smacked into the
Х Empire State Building, shattering glass and concrete and tumbling to
the horrified street below. It was unreal.
I saw the Wright brothers' first flight. That was unreal too.
And I know what happened to Judge Crater.
I saw the blastoff of Apollo II. It was the loudest sound I've ever
heard.
And I witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't
dramatic at all; it was sad and clumsy. I was there (via timeskim) at Custer
s last stand.
I witnessed the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. (The
guy who was supposed to pound in the gold spike slipped and fell in the
mud.)
I've seen the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake.
I was at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (How far we
have come since then. . . .) I saw the burning of Atlanta.
And I've seen the original uncut versions of D. W. Griffith's
Intolerance and Merian C. Cooper's King Kong and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I was there the day the Liberty Bell cracked.
And I saw the fall of the Alamo.
I witnessed the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack.
I attended a band concert conducted by John Philip Sousa.
I heard Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address. I recorded it on tape.
I've seen Paul Revere's midnight ride and the
Boston Tea Party.
I've met George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
And I watched Columbus come ashore.
I saw Ben Franklin flying a kite on a rainy day.
I was there when Bell tested his first telephone.
"Mr. Watson, come here. I want you."
I witnessed Galileo's experiment when he
dropped two lead balls of different weights from the
tower of Pisa.
I have seen performances of plays by William Shakespeare. At the Globe
Theater in London.
I watched Leonardo da Vinci as he painted La Jac-
onde, the Mona Lisa. (I will not tell you why she smiles.)
And I watched as his rival, Michelangelo, painted the
Sistine Chapel.
I've heard Strauss waltzes, conducted by Strauss himself.
I saw the disastrous premiere of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. And
Ravel's Bolero too.
I've heard Beethoven's symphonies as conducted by Beethoven himself.
And Mozart. And Bach. (I've seen the Beatles too.)
And the beheading of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More.
I've seen the signing of the Magna Carta.
I have visited Imperial Rome. Nero and Tiberius and Julius Caesar
himself. Cleopatra was ugly.
And ancient Greece. The sacking of Troy was more than a myth.
I have witnessed performances of plays by Sopho-
cles and watched as Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle
taught Alexander. I saw Socrates drink the cup of
hemlock.
I have witnessed the crucifixion of one Jesus of
Nazareth. He looked so sad.
And more.
I have seen dinosaurs. I have seen the thunder lizards walk the Earth.
The Brontosaurus, the Stegosaurus, and Triceratops and the Tyrannosaurus
Rex, the most fearsome monster ever to stalk the world.
I have seen the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of Pompeii.
I have seen the explosion of Krakatoa.
I watched an asteroid plunge from the sky and shatter a giant crater in
what would someday be Arizona.
I've witnessed the death of Hiroshima by atomic fire.
I've timeskimmed from the far distant past and watched as the Colorado
River carved out the Grand Canyon a living, twisting snake of water cutting
away the rock.
And more.
I've been to the year 2001 and beyond. I've been to the moon.
I've walked its surface in a flimsy spacesuit and held its dust in my
hands. I've seen the Earth rise above the Lunar Apennines.
I've visited Tranquillity Base and flashing back to the past, I watched
the Eagle land. I saw Neil Armstrong come ashore.
And more.
I've been to Mars. I've been to the great hotels that orbit Jupiter and
I've seen the rings of Saturn. I've timeskimmed from the far past to the far
future. I have seen Creation.
I have seen how Entropy ravages everything.
From Great Bang to Great Bang the existence of
the Earth is less than a blink; the death of the sun by
nova, almost unnoticeable.
I've seen the future of mankind
I like to think I understand, but I know that I don't.
The future of the human race is as alien and incomprehensible to me as
the year 1975 would be to a man of Charlemagne's era. But wondrous it is
indeed, and filled with marvelous things.
There is nothing that I cannot witness
but there is little that I can participate in.
I am limited. By my language, by my appearance, by my skin color, and
my height.
I am limited to life in a span of history maybe two hundred years in
each direction. Beyond that, the languages are difficult: the meanings have
altered, the pronunciations and usages too complex to decipher. With effort,
perhaps, I can communicate; but the farther I go from 1975, the harder it is
to make myself understood.
And there are other differences. In the past, I am
too tall. The farther back I travel, the shorter everybody
becomes. And the farther forward I go, the taller. In the
not-too-distant future, I am too short humanity's evolution is upward.
And there are still other differences. Disturbing ones.
There are places where my skin is the wrong color, or my eyes the wrong
shape. And there is one time in the future when I am the wrong sex.
There are places where people's faces are different.
I can witness.
I cannot participate.
But witnessing is enough: I have seen more of history than any other
human being. I have timeskimmed and timestopped and my journeys have been
voyages of mystery and adventure.
There is much that I don't understand. There are things that are
incomprehensible to one who is not of the era and the culture.
But still the proper study of humanity is humanity itself.
History is not just old news.
It's people. It's the ebb and flow of life. It's the sound of bells and
horns, the stamp of boots in the street, the flapping of banners in the
wind, the smell of smoke and flowers. It's bread and trains and newspapers.
It's the acrid smell of the herd, and the press of the crowd. It's surprise
and glory and fear. It's confusion, panic, and disaster
and above all, history is triumphl
It is the triumph of individuals creating, designing, building,
changing, challenging never quitting. It is the continual victory of the
intellect over the animal; the unquenchable vitality of life! Passion
overwhelms despair and humanity goes on; sometimes seething, sometimes
dirty, sometimes even unspeakably evil.
But always despite the setbacks the direction is always upward.
If I must taste the bitterness, it is worth it; because I have also
shared the dreams.
And the promise.
I have seen its fulfillment.
I know the truth and the destiny of the human race.
It is a proud and lonely thing to be a man.
* * *
This part, I think, may be the hardest to record.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that it happen, but it has caused me to
do some serious thinking. About myself. About Dan. About Don.
When Uncle Jim died, I thought my life would be changed, and I worried
about the directions it might take. When I thought I had eliminated myself
by a timebelt paradox, I realized how much I feared dying I realized how
much I needed to be Dan to my Don and Don to my Dan.
But this
this makes me question the shape of my whole life.
What am I? Who am I?
What am I doing to myself?
Have I made a wrong decision? Am I moving in a strange and terrible
direction?
I wish I knew.
It started when? Yesterday evening? Time is
funny when you don't live it linearly. When I get tired, I
sleep, I flip forward or backward to the nearest nighttime
and climb into bed.
If I'm not tired, and itТs night, I flash to day and go to the beach.
Or I jump to winter and go skiing. I stay as long as I want, or as short as
I want. I stay for weeks or only a few minutes. I'm not a slave to the clock
nor even to the seasons.
What I mean is, I'm no longer living in a straight line.
I bounce back and forth through the days like a temporal Ping-Pong
ball. I don't even know how old I am anymore. I think I've passed my
twentieth birthday, but I'm not sure.
It's strange. . . .
Time used to be a flowing river. I sailed down it and watched the
shores sweep past: here, a warm summer evening, ice tinkling in lemonade
glasses; there, a cool fall morning, dead leaves crunching underfoot and my
breath in frosty puffs. Time was a slowly shifting panorama along the river
bank. I was a leaf in the water. I was carried helplessly along, a victim of
the current.
Now I'm out of the river and standing on the bank. I am the motion and
time is the observer. No longer a victim, I am the cause. All of time is
laid out before me like a table, no longer a moving entity, but a vast and
mutable landscape. I can leap to any point on it at will. Would I like a
nice summer day? Yes, there's a pleasant one. Am I in the mood for a fall
morning? Ah, that's nice. I don't have to wait for the river to carry me to
a place where I might be able to find that moment I can go exactly to it.
No moment can ever escape me. I've chased twi-
light and captured dawn. I've conquered day and tamed
the night. I can live as I choose because I am the master
of time.
I laugh to think of it. Time is an everlasting smorgasbord and I am the
gourmet, picking here, choosing there, discarding this unnecessary bit of
tripe and taking an extra piece of filet instead.
But even this temporal mobility, no matter how unlimited it is, does
not keep me from arbitrarily dividing things into "day" and "night." It must
be a human thing to want to divide eternity into bite-sized chunks. It's
easier to digest. So no matter how many jumps I make, anything that happened
before my last sleep happened "yesterday," and everything since I woke up
(and until I go to sleep again) is part of my "today." Some of my "todays"
have spanned a thousand years. And "tomorrow" comes not with the dawn, but
with my next awakening.
I think I'm still on a twenty-four-hour life cycle, but I can't be
sure. If I add a few extra hours to my "day" so as to enjoy the beach a
little longer, I find my body tends to obey the local time, not mine.
Perhaps humanity is unconsciously geared to the sun. At least, it seems that
way. I don't get tired until after the world gets dark. (But like I said
before, I'm not sure how old I am anymore. I've lost track.)
Anyway. What I'm getting to is that this happened "yesterday."
Don and I were listening to Beethoven. (The origi-
nal Beethoven. I had gotten a recorder from 2050, a multichannel device
capable of greater fidelity than anything known in 1975, and had taped all
eleven of the master's symphonies. Yes. All eleven.)
We had spent the day swimming skinny-dipping
actually (it's strange to watch your own nude body from a distance),
and now we were resting up before dinner. I have this mansion in the hills
overlooking the San Fernando Valley; the view is spectacular. All fields and
orchards. Even the bedroom has a picture window.
It was dusk. The sun was just dipping behind the hills to the west. It
was large and orange through the haze. Don had turned on the stereo and
collapsed exhaustedly on the bed (a king-size water bed) without even
toweling off.
I didn't think anything of it. I was tired too. I made an attempt to
dry myself off, then lay down beside him. (I'd gotten into a very bad habit
with Don with Dan with myself. I'd discovered I didn't like being alone.
Even when I sleep, I need the assurance of knowing there's somebody next to
me. So more and more I found myself climbing into bed with one or more
versions of myself. Sometimes there's a lot of horseplay and giggling. What
did I want? Did I know? Is that why I did it? It extends to other things
too. I won't swim alone. And several times we've showered together,
ostensibly so we could scrub each other's back.)
We were both stretched out naked on the water
bed, just staring at the ceiling and listening to the Pastoral
Symphony, that part near the beginning where it goes "pah-rump-pah-pah,
rump-pah-pah . . ." (You know, where Disney's joyous trumpets announce a
cascade of happy unicorns.)
It was a good tiredness. Languorous. I was floating oh so pleasantly
and the light show on the ceiling was swirling in red and pink and purple,
shifting to blue and white.
I'd been getting strange vibrations from Don all day.
I wasn't sure why. (Or perhaps I hadn't wanted to admit ) He kept
looking at me oddly. His glance kept meeting mine and he seemed to be
smiling about some inner secret, but he wouldn't say what it was. He touched
me a lot too. There had been a lot of clowning around in the pool, and once
I thought he had been about to (I must have sensed it earlier, I must have;
but I must have also been refusing to recognize it.)
The symphony had reached that point where it sug-
gests wild dancing, with several false stops, when a soft
pop! in the air made me look up. Another Don. I had
long since gotten used to various versions of myself ma-
terializing and disappearing at random. But I sat up any-
way.
He looked troubled. And tired.
"Which one of you is Dan?" he said. He looked at
me. "You are, aren't you?"
I nodded.
Don, beside me, raised up on one elbow, sending ripples through the
bed, but his gaze was veiled. Don II looked at him but stepped toward me. He
was holding a sheaf of papers I recognized it as my, no, his diary; that is,
his version of my diary.
"I want to excise something," he said.
"What?"
"That is, I think I want to excise it. I'm not sure "
He looked at me. He sat down on the bed, and for a moment I thought he
was close to tears. He was trembling. "Look, I don't know if this this thing
is good or bad or what. Maybe the terms are meaningless. I just don't know.
I'm not sure if I should tell you to avoid this or whether I should let you
make your own decision." He looked at both of us. "I can't talk about it. I
mean, I can't talk about it to you because you wouldn't understand. Not yet.
That's why I have to do it this way. Here's my diary. Read it, Dan. Then you
decide for yourself if if that's what you want. I mean, it's the only way.
You shouldn't stumble into this. You should either go into it with your eyes
open and be aware of what you're doing, or you should reject it because
you're aware of its possibility. Either way, it's going to change your our
life."
He was very upset, and that made me very concerned. I reached out and
touched his arm. He flinched and pulled away. "Tell me what it is " I said.
He shook his head adamantly. "Just read the diary."
"I will," I promised. "But stay here until I do, so you can talk to me
about it."
"No, I can't. I tried that once and we ended up
doing exactly what I came back to stop. I mean, I mustn't
be here if you're to make your own choice." And he popped out of
existence. Back to his own future my future perhaps? I won't know till I get
there.
I picked up the papers and paged through them.
The early parts were identical to mine, even up to the point where Don
and I were listening to Beethoven, stretched out on the water bed
* * *
What I'm trying to get at is that it started almost accidently.
Don rubbed himself abstractedly and then stretched and rolled over on
his stomach. He reached over and grabbed a pillow above my head. "You want
one?" I nodded. He fluffed it and shoved it under my head, then grabbed
another one for himself. He didn't roll away; instead, he sighed and let his
arm fall across my chest.
Absentmindedly I reached up and stroked his arm. In response, he gave
me a casual hug.
And then he was looking at me and our eyes were locked in another of
those glances. He was mysterious. I was curious. His smile was bottomless.
"What is it?" I asked.
In answer, he slid himself upward and kissed me.
Just a kiss. Quick, affectionate and loaded with desire.
He pulled back and looked at me, still smiling, watching my reaction.
I was confused. Because I had accepted it. I had let
him kiss me as if it were a totally natural thing for him to
do. I hadn't questioned it at all. His eyes were shining,
and I studied them carefully. He lowered his face to
mine again. . . .
This time the kiss was longer. Much longer.
And he didn't just kiss me. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to
him.
And I helped.
We stretched out side by side, facing each other on the water bed. We
put our arms around each other. And we kissed.
I realized I liked it.
I liked it.
"Don," I managed to gasp, "We shouldn't "
He studied me. "But you want to, don't you?"
And I knew he was right.
"Yes, but " His face was so open, his eyes were so deep. "But it's
wrong "
"Is it? Why is it?"
"Because it's not right "
"Is it any worse than masturbation? You masturbated yesterday, Danny, I
know. Because I did too. You were alone in the house, but you're never alone
from yourself."
"I I but masturbation isn't I mean, that's "
"Danny " He silenced me with a finger across my
lips. "I want to give you pleasure, I want to give you me,
You have your arms around me. You have your hands on me. You like what
you feel, I know you do."
And he was right. I did like it. I did enjoy it.
He was so sure of himself.
"Just relax, Danny," he whispered. "Just relax." He kissed me again and
I kissed him back.
* * *
I've done it twice now. I've been seduced and I've seduced myself. Or
maybe I should say, after Don seduced me, I seduced Danny.
I'm filled with the joy of discovery. A sense of sharing. My relations
with Don with Dan have taken on a new intensity. There is a lot more
touching, a lot more laughter, a lot more . . . intimacy.
I look forward to tonight and yet, I also hold myself back. The
anticipation is delightful. Tonight, tonight . . . (I begin to understand
emotion. Now I know why there are love songs. I touch the button on my belt.
I fly to meet myself.)
* * *
So this is love.
The giving. The taking.
The abandonment of roles. The opening of the self.
And the resultant sensuality of it all. The delight. The laughing joy.
Were I to describe in clinical detail for some unknown reader those
things that we have actually done, the intensity and pleasure would not come
through. The joy would be filtered out. The written paragraphs would be
grotesque. Perverse.
Because love cannot be discussed objectively.
It is a subjective thing. You must be immersed in it to understand it.
The things that Danny and I (Don and
I) have done, we've done them out of curiosity and delight and sharing.
Not compulsion. Delight.
And joyous sexuality. We are discovering our bodies. We are discovering
each other. We are children with a magnificent new toy. Yes, sex is a toy
for grownups.
To describe the things we have been doing would deprive them of their
special intimacy and magic. We do them because they feel good. We do them
because in this way we make each other feel good. We do it out of love.
Is this love?
It must be. Why didn't I do this sooner?
* * *
And yet, I wonder what I am doing.
A vague sense of wrongness pervades my life. I find myself looking over
my shoulder a lot Who's watching me? Who's judging my days?
Is it wrong?
I don't know.
There is no one I can talk to about it, not even myself. Every Don I
know every Dan is caught up in the same whirlpool. None of us is any closer
to the truth. We are all confused.
I'm alone for the first time in days.
It makes no difference. I'm still talking to myself.
I wish some Don from the future would come back to advise me but even
that's a useless wish. Any Don who did come back would only be trying to
shape me toward his goals, regardless of mine.
(I did meet one once. I don't know if it was intentional or accidental.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe older; there were tiny lines at
the corners of his eyes. He was a little darker and a lot heavier than me.
He said, "You look troubled, Danny. Would you like to talk about it?" I said
yes, but when we sat down on the couch, he put his arm around my shoulders
and tried to pull me close. I fled into yesterday Is that my future? Am I
condemning myself to a life of that?)
(Is condemning even the right word? There are
times when I am lying in Danny's arms when I am so
happy I want to shout. I want to run out in the middle of
the street and scream as loud as I can with the over-
whelming joy of how happy I am. There are times when I
am with Don that I break down and cry with happiness.
We both cry with happiness. The emotion is too much to contain. There
are times when it is very good and I am happier than I have ever been in my
life. Is that condemnation?)
(Must I list all those moments which I would never excise? The times we
went nude swimming on a California beach centuries before the first man came
to this continent. The night when six of us, naked and giggling, discovered
what an orgy really was. [I've been to that orgy four times now does that
mean I have to visit it twice more? I hope so.] I had not realized what
pleasure could be )
But when I think about it logically, I know that its wrong. I mean, I
think it's wrong. I'm not sure. I've never had to question it before.
Man was made to mate with woman. Man was not made to mate with man.
But does that mean man must not mate with man?
No matter how many arguments I marshal against
it, I am still outvoted by one overwhelming argument for
it.
It's pleasurable. I like it.
So I rationalize. I tell myself that it's simply a complex form of
masturbation. I know it. This is something more. I respond to Dan as if he
were another person, as if he were not myself. I am both husband and wife,
and I like both roles.
Oh my God what have I done to myself?
What have I done?
Rationalization cannot hide the truth. How can anything that has given
me such happiness leave me so unhappy?
Please. Someone. Help.
* * *
I put the pages down and looked at Don. The mood of the moment had
abruptly evaporated. "You've read this, haven't you?"
He wouldn't meet my gaze; he simply nodded.
I narrowed my eyes in sudden suspicion. "How far ahead of me are you?"
I asked. "One day? Two days? A week? How much of my future do you know?"
He shook his head. "Not much. A little less than a day."
"I'm your yesterday?"
He nodded.
"You know what we were about to do?" I held up the papers meaningfully.
He nodded again.
"We would have done it if he hadn't stopped us,
wouldn't we?"
"Yes," said Don. "In fact, I was just about to "
He stopped, refused to finish the sentence.
I thought about that for a moment. "Then you know if we are going to I
mean, you know if we did it." He said, "I know." His voice was almost a
whisper.
Something about the way he said it made me look at him. "We did didn't
we?"
"Yes."
Abruptly, I was finding it hard to talk. He tried to look at me, but I
wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Dan," he said. "You don't understand. You won't understand until
you're me."
"We don't have to do it," I said. "Both of us have free will. Either of
us can change the future. I could say no. And you even though you have your
memory of doing it, you could still refuse to do it again. You could change
the past. If you wanted to."
He stretched out a hand. "It's up to you. ..."
"No," I shook my head. "You're the one who makes the decisions. I'm
Danny, you're Don. Besides, you've already you've already done it. You know
what it's like. You know if it will... be good, or if we should . . . avoid
it. I don't know, Don; that's why I have to trust you." I looked at him. "Do
we do it?"
Hesitation. He touched my arm. "You want to, don't you?Ф
After a moment I nodded. "Yes. I want to see what it's like. I I love
you."
"I want to do it too."
"Is it all right, though?" I held my voice low. "I mean, remember how
troubled Don looked?" "Danny, all I remember is how happy we were."
I looked at him. There was a tear shining on his cheek.
It was enough. I pressed against him. And we both held on tight.
* * *
I put the papers down and looked at Don. "I had a feeling we were
heading toward it," I said.
He nodded. "Yes." And then he smiled. "At least, now it's out in the
open."
I met his gaze. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. ..."
"Think about it," he said. "It can't happen until Danny is ready. Any
Don can try to seduce him, but unless Danny wants it to, it won't happen."
"So it's really me who's doing the seducing, isn't it?"
Don grinned. He rolled over on his back and spread his arms in
invitation. "I'm ready."
So was I. I moved into them and kissed him.
And wondered why previous versions of myself had been so afraid.
I wanted to do it. Wasn't that reason enough?
* * *
Evolution, of course.
I had provided a hostile environment for those of me with doubts about
their sexuality. They had excised themselves out of existence.
Leaving only me. With no doubts at all.
Survival of the fittest?
More likely, survival of the horniest.
I know who I am. I know what I want.
And I'm very happy.
If I'm not, I know what I can do about it.
* * *
As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away!
Hughes Mearns
The Psychoed
* * *
only, the little man was me.
I keep running into versions of myself who have come back from the
future to tell me to be sure to do something or not to do something. Like,
do not fly American Airlines Flight 191 from O'Hare to LAX on such and such
a date. (It's a DC-10 and the engine falls off.) Or, do not go faster than
seventy miles per hour on the freeway today. (The highway patrol is having
radar checks.) Things like that.
I used to wonder about all those other Dans and Dons even though I knew
they weren't, it still seemed like they were eliminating themselves. They're
not, but it seems that way.
What it is, of course, is that I am the cumulative effect of all their
changes. I that is, my consciousness have never gone back to excise
anything. At least I have no memory of ever having done so.
If they didn't exist to warn me, then I wouldn't have been warned and I
would have made the mistake they would have warned me against, realized it
was a mistake and gone back to warn myself. Hence, / am the result of an
inevitable sequence of variables and choices.
But that precludes the concept of free will. And everything I do proves
again that I have the ultimate free will I don't have to be responsible for
any of my actions because I can erase them any time. But does the erasure of
certain choices always lead to a particular one, or is it just that that
particular one is the one most suitable for this version of me? Is it my
destiny to be homosexual and some other Danny's destiny to not be . . . ?
The real test of it, I guess, would be to try and excise some little
incident and see what happens see what happens to me. If it turns out I can
remember excising it, then that would prove that I have free will.
If not if I find I've talked myself out of something else then I'm
running along a rut, like a clockwork mechanism, doomed to play out my
programmed actions for some unseen cosmic audience, all the time believing
that I have some control over those actions. The test
* * *
was simple. And I passed it.
I simply went back to May 21, 1975, and talked myself out of going to
the races. ("Here todays paper," I said. "Go to the races yesterday." Danny
was startled, of course, and he must have thought me a little crazy, but he
agreed not to go to the races on May 21.)
So. I had excised my first trip to the track. In this world I hadn't
made it at all.
Just to double-check, I drove out to the race track. Right. I wasn't
there. (An interesting thing happened though. In the fourth race, Harass
didn't bump Tumbleweed and wasn't disqualified. If I had been there to bet,
I would have lost everything or would I? The Don I might have been might
have foreseen that too. But why had that part of the past been changed? What
had happened? Something I must have done on one of my other trips must have
affected the race.)
But I'd proved it to my own satisfaction. I had free will.
I had all of my memories of the past the way I had lived it, yet I had
excised part of it out of existence. I hadn't eliminated myself and I hadn't
had any of my memory magically erased. I remembered the act of excising.
There might have been differences perhaps even should have been
differences in my world when I flashed forward again. Perhaps the mansion
should have disappeared, or perhaps my fortune should have been larger or
smaller; but both were unchanged. If there were any differences, they would
have to be minor. I didn't go looking for them.
The reason?
The mansion had been built in 1968, a good seven years before Danny had
been given the timebelt. (I had done that on purpose.) Because it had
already existed in 1975, it was beyond his (our? my?) reach to undo unless
he went back to 1967. The same applied to my financial empire. It should be
beyond the reach of any of my casual changes.
Of course, from a subjective point of view, neither the mansion nor the
money existed until after I'd gotten the timebelt but time travel is only
subjective to the traveler, not the timestream. Each time I'd made a change
in the timestream, it was like a new layer to the painting. The whole thing
was affected. Any change made before May 21, 1975, would be part of Danny's
world when he got the timebelt. Unless he later on went back and excised it
in a later version of the timestream. And if he did, it still wouldn't
affect me at all. It would be his version of the timestream and he would be
a different person from me, with different memories and different desires.
Just as there were alternate universes, there were also alternate Dannys.
My house already existed. My investments in the past were also firmly
in existence. He could not erase them by refusing to initiate them, he would
only be creating a new timestream of his own, one that would be separate
from mine.
In effect, by altering my personal past, I am excising
a piece of it, but I'm not destroying the continuity of this
timestream. I'm only destroying my own continuity
except that I'm not, because I still have my memories.
Confusing? Yes, I have to keep reminding myself not to think in terms
of only one timestream. I am not traveling in time. I am creating new
universes. Alternate universes each one identical to the one I just left up
to the moment of my insertion into it. From that instant on, my existence in
it causes it to take a new shape. A shape I can choose in fact, I must
choose; because the timestream will be changed merely by my sudden presence
in it, I must make every effort to exercise control in order to prevent
known sequences of events from becoming unknown sequences.
This applies to my own life too. I am not one person. I am many people,
all stemming from the same root. Some of the other Dans and Dons I meet are
greatly variant from me, others are identical. Some will repeat actions that
I have done, and I will repeat the actions of others. We perceive this as a
doubling back of our subjective timelines. It doesn't matter, I am me, I
react to it all. I act on it all.
From this, I've learned two things.
The first is that I do have free will.
With all that implies. If I am a homosexual, then I am that way by
choice. Should it please me to know that? Or should it disturb me? I don't
know I'm the me who likes it too much to excise. So I guess that's the
answer, isn't it?
And that's the second thing I've learned that every
time I travel into the past, I am excising. I am erasing the
past that was and creating a new one instead. I didn't
need to excise my first trip to the races to prove that I
had free will I'd already proved it the first time I was
Don, when I'd worn a windbreaker instead of a sweater.
Every time I excise, I'm not erasing a world. I'm only creating a new
one for myself.
For myself meaning, this me.
Because every time I excise, I am also creating versions that are not
me.
There are Daniel Eakinses who are totally different people than I am.
The Danny that I told not to go to the races he'll go off into a
timestream of his own creation; he'll have different memories, and
eventually, different needs and desires. His resultant timestreams may be
similar to mine, or, just as likely, they'll be different. And if he can be
different from me
then there are an infinite number of Dannys who are different from me.
Somewhere there exist all the possible variations of all the possible
people I could be.
I could by any of them but I cannot be all.
I can only be one of the variations. I will be the variation of myself
that pleases me the most. And that suggests
that my free will may be only an illusion, after all.
If there are an infinite number of Dans, then each one thinks he is
choosing his own course. But that isn't so. Each one is only playing out his
preordained instructions excising, altering, and designing his timestream to
fit his psychological template and following his emotional programming to
its illogical extreme . . .
* * *
But if each of us is happiest in the universe he builds for himself,
does it matter?
Does it really matter if there's no such thing as free will?
* * *
It bothers me this me.
I need to know that there is some important reason for my existence.
There must be something special about me.
* * *
I will find the answer!
* * *
Yes. Of course.
* * *
I know what my mission is. I know who I am.
I should have realized it when the timebelt was first given to me.
I am destined to rule the universe.
I am God.
* * *
But I must never let them find out, or they will try to kill me.
* * *
I think I will kill them first.
* * *
If I ever get out of this room, I will kill them all!
* * *
I made a point of cautioning Danny, "I don't know if he can be cured.
But I am sure we can never trust him with a timebelt again. I think we'll
have to be very careful to see that he doesn't get out. A paranoid
schizophrenic running amok through time could be disastrous not only for the
rest of the world, but for us as well."
Danny was thoughtful as he peered through the one-way glass. "It's
lucky that we caught him in time." His voice caught on the last word; I
think I know he was a little shaken at seeing the drooling maniac he might
have become. I hadn't gotten used to the sight either.