The-Man-Who-Folded-Himself-David-Gerrold

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Ultra-Long Range Special Cautions Infinity Dangers Entropy Awareness Timeskimming— Short Range Long Range Ultra-Long Range Timestop— Uses of the Timestop Stopping the Present Stopping the Past Stopping the Future Special Cautions on the Use of the Timestop Multiple Jumps— Programming Usage Cautions and Protections on Multiple Jumps Emergency Jumps— Returns Timestops Timeskims Height and Motion Compensations (moving vehicles and temporary heights) Other Compensations (ordinary and specific use) General Cautions Summary ACCLIMATIZATIONS Cultures Determinations Languages Clothing Shelter Currency Living Patterns and Customs Religions and Taboos Health Protocols Timestop Determinations Additional Acclimatizations Cautions ARTIFACTING Transporting Special Cases Cautions I was beginning to feel a little dazed—of course this couldn’t be for real. It couldn’t be. . . . I sat down on the couch and began reading the directions in detail. They were easy to understand. There was a great deal about the principles of operation and the variety of uses, but I just skimmed that. The
eadout panel was easy enough to understand. The top row of numbers was the time now; the second row was the distance you wished to travel away from it, either forward or back; and the third row was the moment to which you were traveling, your target. The fourth row was the moment of your last jump —that is, when the belt had last come from. (Later I found that it could also be the date of the next jump if you had preprogrammed for it. Or it could be a date held in storage—one that you could keep permanently set up and jump to at a moment’s decision.) The letters F and B on the right side, of course, stood for Forward and Back. The letters J and T on the left side stood for Jump and Target. The lights in the center of the panel had several functions; mostly they indicated the belt’s programming. In each corner of the readout was a lettered square. These were references to four buttons on the face of the buckle itself. (I closed he buckle and looked—there weren’t any obvious buttons, but in each corner was an area that seemed to depress with a slight click.) CLR stood for Clear, HOL meant Hold, RET was Return, and ACT was Activate. Each button had to be pressed twice in rapid succession to function; that way you wouldn’t accidentally change any of your settings or send yourself off on an unintended jaunt, CLR was meant to clear the belt of all previous instructions and settings. HOL would hold any date in storage indefinitely, or call it out again. RET would send you back to the moment of your last jump, or to any date locked in by HOL. ACT would do just that—act. Whatever instructions had been programmed into the belt, nothing would happen until ACT was pressed. Twice. There were more instructions. There was something called Timestop and something else called Timeskim. According to the instructions, each was an interrupted time jump resulting in a controlled out-of-phase relationship with the real-time universe. Because the rate of phase congruency could be controlled, so could the perceived rate of the timestream. What that meant was that I could view events like a motion picture film. I could speed it up and see things happening at an ultra-fast rate via the Timeskim, or I could slow them down—I could even freeze them altogether with the Timestop. The Timeskim was necessary to allow you to maintain your bearings over a long-range jump; you could skim through time instead of jumping directly. The movement of people and animals would be a blur, but you would be able to avoid materializing inside of a building that hadn’t been there before. The Timestop was intended to help you get your bearings after you arrived, but before you reinserted yourself into the timestream, especially if you were looking for a particular moment. With everything seemingly frozen solid, you could find an unobserved place to appear, or you could remain an unseen observer of the Timestopped still life. Or you could Timeskim at the real-time rate without being a part of real-world events, again an unseen observer. I guessed that the Timestop and Timeskim were necessary for traveling to unfamiliar eras—especially dangerous ones. There were other functions too, complex things that I didn’t understand yet. I decided to leave them alone for a while. For instance, Entropy Awareness left me a bit leery. I concentrated on the keyboard instead. If I was going to use this thing, I’d better know how to program it. The top two buttons controlled Jump and Target, Forward and Back. The second row of six controlled any six digits of the date; the third row of three was for programming—they determined the settings of the second and fourth rows. The fourth row had six buttons; used in combination with the third row, they determined ways of using the belt. Maybe more. Each of the buttons on the keyboard was multifunctional. What it controlled, and how, was determined by which other buttons it was used in combination with. Clearly this timebelt was not a simple device. There was a lot to learn.
Page 1 and 2: The Man Who Folded Himself David Ge
Page 3 and 4: I hadn’t seen Uncle Jim in months
Page 5 and 6: Five hundred dollars a week “spen
Page 7 and 8: Different—? Without Uncle Jim, ho
Page 9 and 10: I wondered—could you put that muc
Page 11: A time machine? In a belt? Ridiculo
Page 15 and 16: Rich—? The word lost all meaning
Page 17 and 18: which one you’re going to choose?
Page 19 and 20: it I began to realize it was a one-
Page 21 and 22: Here was this person, Don, sitting
Page 23 and 24: I was both pleased and annoyed. Ple
Page 25 and 26: “You have to spend money to make
Page 27 and 28: Was he waiting for me in tomorrow?
Page 29 and 30: ecame Don and went back in time—w
Page 31 and 32: The world I came from is like my in
Page 33 and 34: enchanted: a fantasy of light and c
Page 35 and 36: in the future when I am the wrong s
Page 37 and 38: We were both stretched out naked on
Page 39 and 40: So this is love. The giving. The ta
Page 41 and 42: It was enough. I pressed against hi
Page 43 and 44: identical to the one I just left up
Page 45 and 46: Today President Robert F. Kennedy a
Page 47 and 48: individual is going to realize that
Page 49 and 50: found a new timeline. Either he doe
Page 51 and 52: I parked my ‘76 ‘Vette at the c
Page 53 and 54: what I was shaped like under those
Page 55 and 56: And suddenly I was crying. Crying,
Page 57 and 58: * * * The baby proves something tha
Page 59 and 60: * * * Oh God, I feel alone. * * * G
Page 61 and 62: Her smell is there, but faint. I dr
Page 63 and 64:
will be the last day she’ll spend
Page 65 and 66:
was just before I met Diane—when
Page 67 and 68:
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I
Page 69 and 70:
stand above his crib and just watch
Page 71 and 72:
Dear Danny, Time travel is not immo
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The-Man-Who-Folded-Himself-David-Gerrold

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