The Man Who Folded Himself (10 page)

I was right that paradoxes were impossible, but I was wrong in thinking that the timestream had to be protected from them. After all, they were impossible. It wouldn't have mattered whether I had given Danny a check or not; changes in the timestream are cumulative, not variable.

What this means is that you can change the past as many times as you want. You can't eliminate yourself. I could go back in time nineteen years and strangle myself in my crib, but I wouldn't cease to exist. (I'd have a dead baby on my hands though. . . . )

Look, you can change the future, right? The future is exactly the same as the past, only it hasn't happened yet. You haven't perceived it. The real difference between the two—the only difference—is your point of view. If the future can be altered, so can the past.

Every change you make is cumulative; it goes on top of every other change you've already made, and every change you add later will go on top of 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 has just been painted over and a new line drawn on top.

On the surface, it doesn't appear 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 still 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, 2005. 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-four-hour marathon. I know it lasts at least a week; on July 2, I 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 they'll 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 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, they were both covered by the blanket, I couldn't tell. 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 (heavy industry, steel again), 1920 (radio, insurance companies, chemicals, drugs, airlines), 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 we also picked up some stock in 20th Century Fox.

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 2005, 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 many 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. Two remarkable towers. 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 two more airplanes flew into the World Trade Towers, shattering glass and steel and sanity in a horrifying inferno.

I saw the Wright brothers' first flight.

And I know what happened to Judge Crater. And Jimmy Hoffa.

I saw the blastoff of Apollo 11. 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....)

And I've seen the original uncut versions of D.W. Griffith's
Intolerance
and Merian C. Cooper's
King Kong
and Stanley Kubrick's
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 Merrimac.

I attended a band concert conducted 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 Joconde
, 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 was the disastrous première of Stravinsky's
Rite 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 Sophocles and watched as Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander. I saw Socrates drink a cup of hemlock.

I have witnessed the crucifixion of one Jesus of Nazareth. He looked so sad.