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

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