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

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off any number of themselves. But when the last version dies, that’s where the belt stops. There’s no one in that timeline who can read the directions. A timebelt either stays close to home, or it stops being used. Should anyone attempt to use the belt, they’ll probably eliminate themselves. You can’t learn time-tracking by trial and error. It’s crude, but effective. It’s an automatic way of eliminating extreme variations of the homeline. Just what the homeline is, though, I’ll never know. I’ve come so far in the ten or more years I’ve been using the belt that I’m not sure I even remember where I started. I wish I could talk to Uncle Jim about it, but I can’t. He’s not in this timeline. Too late I went looking for him, but he wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was, I’ve made so many changes, but something I did must have excised him. I don’t know what to undo to find him. I’ve removed myself from my last real contact with—with what? Reality? I’ve never been so lonely in my life. * * * Maybe I’m lost in time. It’s a fact, I don’t know where I am. I went looking for Uncle Jim and couldn’t find him. When I realized that I must have accidentally excised him (probably by one of my “revisions” in this world), I went looking for myself. If I caught myself on May 19, 1975, when I was given the timebelt, perhaps I could keep myself from editing out my uncle. But I wasn’t there either. I do not exist in this timeline. There is no Daniel Eakins here, nor any evidence to indicate that he ever existed. In this world I have no more past than I did in the Jesus-less world. I have no origins. And no future either. If I cannot find younger versions of myself, perhaps there are older versions—but if there are, where are they? I have met no one in this timeline, at least no one whom I have not become within a few days. Where is my future? The house has never seemed so empty. The poker game is deserted, the pool table is empty, the bedroom lies unused. The stereo is silent, the swimming pool is still, and I feel like a ghost walking through a dead city. The crowds of me have vanished. My past has been excised, and I have no future. Am I soon to die in this timeline? Or do I just desert it? Is that why I’m no longer here? (Am I hiding from myself—why doesn’t a Don come back to help me?) If this timeline is a dead end, then where am I going? I wish I had my Uncle Jim. I wish I had my Don. Or even my Dan. Sweet Dan . . . I’ve never been so scared. Don, if you read this, please help me. * * * I must be logical about this. One of two things has happened—is about to happen. The me I am about to become has obviously
found a new timeline. Either he doesn’t want to come back to this one, or he is unable to. Perhaps he has made some change that he can’t undo. Perhaps he doesn’t even know what that change is. Is it a change in the world timeline? Has he created a universe where Aristotle never existed? Or did he accidentally kill Pope Sextus the Fifth? Maybe it was something subtle, like stepping on a spider ... or fathering a child who shouldn’t have been. Whatever it was, has the Daniel Eakins I am about to be lost himself in some strange and alien timeline? I keep remembering the timeline where Jesus never lived—am I to be lost in a world like that? Or is the change something else? Is it in me instead? Am I about to make some drastic alteration in my personality? Something I can’t excise? Something I won’t want to excise? Something I am unable to excise? What if I turn myself into a paraplegic? Or a mongoloid idiot, incapable of understanding? Or—am I on the verge of killing myself? Or worse? For the first time since I was given the timebelt, I am unable to see the future—my own personal future—and it scares me. Now I know what those other people feel. The ones who aren’t me. * * * Suppose—just suppose—that I wanted to meet another version of myself: I travel through time and there I am, an earlier or later Dan. I can stay as long as I want and without any obligation to relive the time from the other side. After all, we’re really two different people. Really. The first time I used the timebelt I met Don. Then I had thought that there was only one of me and that the seeming existence of two of us was just an illusion. Now I know that was wrong. There’s an infinite number of me, and the existence of one is an illusion. An illusion? Yes, but the illusion is as real to me and my subjective point of view as the illusion of travel through time. I still feel like me. As far as I’m concerned, I’m real. I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think. And so do all others. Now. How do I go about meeting one of them? One of those other versions of myself, one of the separate versions? Not one who is simply me at some other part of my subjective life—as so many of the Dons and Dans are—but a Daniel Eakins who has gone off in some entirely different direction. How would I meet him? The problem is one of communication. How do I let him know that I want to meet him? How do I get a message across the timelines? Well, let’s see . . . I could put something in the timebelt itself, a date and location perhaps, then substitute it into Uncle Jim’s package . . . No. That part of my past no longer exists in this world. I excised it—remember? Well, then, how about if I left a message far in the past . . . No, that wouldn’t work. Look at the trouble the Coke bottle almost got me into. Where would I leave it where only I would discover it? How would I—how would he—know where to look for it? How could I even be sure of its enduring for the several thousand years it might have to? (Besides, I’m not sure it would exist in any of the timelines that branched off before I got myself into this dead end. Changes in the timestream are supposed to be cumulative, not retroactive.)
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 and 12: A time machine? In a belt? Ridiculo
Page 13 and 14: eadout panel was easy enough to und
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: individual is going to realize that
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

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

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