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

I’d been fooled once by the illusion of the duplicated check, but this time the check had been
duplicated! And if I could duplicate the check, then couldn’t I have duplicated myself?
There was another side to it too.
I’d already eliminated two possible futures: the one where I’d worn slacks and a sweater and the one
where I’d won a million and a half dollars.
As far as I knew, both of those Dons had ceased to exist along with their futures. Neither seemed to be
still around.
And if I could eliminate them—
• what was to keep some other Dan from eliminating
me?
Perhaps even now—
* * *
No. There must be something I was misunderstanding. Danny drove. He babbled incessantly; he was
like a schoolgirl. But I wasn’t listening anyway. I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts.
I knew there was an answer.
There had to be.
For one thing, paradoxes were supposed to be impossible. Oh, sure, I know—time travel makes the
most horrendous of paradoxes possible, even probable; but that’s just not so. A paradox would be a
violation of the laws of nature. By definition, they’re the laws of nature. And inviolable.
Therefore, paradoxes are impossible.
Because if paradoxes were possible, then time travel would have to be impossible—otherwise, we’d
have people killing their grandfathers right and left. We’d have people seducing their mothers or
kidnapping their fathers. We’d have time travelers killing the inventors of time machines. We’d have
all manner of anachronisms and flukes, and the laws of nature would be violated in so many different
ways, it would take the invention of a whole new science to catalog them all. But time travel was
possible. I had proved it myself So paradoxes were impossible.
It sounded all very neat when I explained it to myself that way. Paradoxes had to be impossible;
therefore, they were. Everything could be worked out logically—
Then, dammit, why couldn’t I work this one out? If this wasn’t a paradox, it was still way ahead of
whatever was in second place.
* * *
All right. Let’s assume that paradoxes are impossible—then where do I go from here?
The checks, for instance. Obviously, Danny’s check was the good one, the one we would have to cash
in order to collect our winnings. But the question was how? Should I take it forward with me into the
future? But then what would Danny have to show himself when he was Don? (Of course, I hadn’t
made a point of comparing the checks this time around, had I?) But if I left it here in the past, how
would I get it in the future? My check shouldn’t exist. It was from a canceled world. Danny’s check
was the only valid one here because I had done things differently from the way they had originally
occurred. If I had done things the way Don had done, I would have had the “duplicate” of Danny’s
check.
But I hadn’t. I had tampered with the timestream and didn’t have a valid check at all. And that meant—
• that I was a canceled check too.
Because whatever I did now, this Danny—when he