The Man Who Folded Himself (14 page)

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 my younger self, “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.

I said, “I think he wanted to be caught. We got him at a point where he was still conscious of what was happening to himself.”

“If he ever does get his hands on another timebelt,” Danny asked, “He could come back and rescue himself, couldn't he?”

I nodded. “That's partly why it was so hard to trap him. We had to get him into a timeline where he had no foreknowledge of where he was going, otherwise he would have jumped ahead to help himself against us. We wouldn't even have known about him if he hadn't kept coming farther and farther back into the past; one of us must have eventually recognized what was happening and gone for treatment, then come after this one who was still rampaging around. That's when I was called in to help. We had to deny him any chance to look into his own future until we could get the belt off him. The fact that he hasn't been rescued yet is a pretty good sign that this is the end of the line for this variant.”

Danny grinned. “Well, just the fact that we're standing here talking about it proves that.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I'm from a line where they caught it in me before it got this far. I never went through that.” I pointed at the glass. “You, you're a variant too. You're from even earlier. Neither of us is in there. He could be incurable—and if that's the case, then he has to stay in there. Forever. He—and I mean all of us—has to be either completely safe, or the timebelt must be held beyond his reach. The consequences—” I didn't have to finish the sentence.

Danny bit his lip. “You're right, of course. It's just that I don't like seeing him there.”

“It's for his own good,” I said. “More important, it's for our good. If time travel is the ultimate personal freedom, then it's also the ultimate personal responsibility.”

“I guess so,” he said, and turned away from the glass.

I didn't add anything to that and we left the hospital for the last time.

Today I destroyed the career of an archaeologist. Accidentally. I didn't mean to do it. A fellow named John Shannonhouse. A chair at Columbia. He reported some very perplexing recent discoveries. And half-jokingly referred to them as “very convincing evidence of a practical joker with a time machine.” It was the half that wasn't joking that concerned me.

The “recent discoveries” he referred to were some rather unfortunate anachronisms. Things I should have paid more attention to. Things I left in the past. Things that someone left in the past.

I thought I'd been more careful, but apparently I wasn't. Or one of me wasn't. One of the Pompeiian artifacts in the British Museum has definitely been identified as a fossilized Coca-Cola bottle from the Atlanta, Georgia, bottling plant.

It's possible I did it. I was there for three days prior to the eruption of Vesuvius. I don't remember leaving the Coke bottle, but if it's there, then I must have. Unless some other version of me has been there since and left it there—

That is possible. The more I bounce around time, the more versions of me there are; many of us seem to be overlapping, but I have observed Dans and Dons doing things that I never have or never will—at least I don't intend to—so if they exist in this timeline, they must be other versions, just “passing through.”

Either they're around to react to me, or I'm supposed to react to them. Or both. Certain fluxes must keep occurring, I guess—I assume there are mathematical formulae for expressing them, but I'm no mathematician—which necessitate two or more versions of myself coming into contact: such as the Don who came back through time to warn me against winning three million dollars at the race track on May 20.