Gleister's world was a pretty good place. There were always a lot of girls around, asking, "Hey, man, is this Katmandu?" A big rock candy mountain appeared, and a pibil tree, and the congestion cleared up around the synapses affording a view all the way to the lemon factory.
As the limestone rock remarked, "Maybe it ain't reality, but it'll just have to do until the real thing comes along."
So it was with a definite sense of regret that Gleister saw one morning, emblazoned across the sky, the words: "Th-th-th-th that's all, folks!" Quickly he said goodbye to the limestone rock, now revealed as an anti-Gleisterian particle, and to the girls, who were in actuality anima-Gleisterian wave forms. Then he held his breath, quite unnecessarily, for the brief transition that followed.
Gleister Main Line Sequence plus Multiple Time Track Conjunctions:
Gleister surfaced in a large, dusty, crowded auditorium located (as he learned later) in the Crich-Kridarin foothills near the ruins of Norfolk. It was some 234 years before the accession of the Emperor Mingus.
There were perhaps a hundred men in the auditorium. Most of them looked like Gleister. This was only reasonable, since all of them were Gleister.
Charlie Gleister learned that these people were trying to hold a meeting, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Obviously, they needed someone to act as chairman: but how can you have a chairman without first having an organization to elect him with? And how can you have an organization without a chairman to be elected by it? It was a perplexing problem, especially for the Gleister line, which had never been strong on social studies.
Everyone turned to Charlie Gleister, who, as the newest arrival, might have some ideas on the subject.
"Well," Charlie said, "I read once that among the Flathead Indians, the tallest brave was usually chosen to lead the war party or the hunting party or whatever there was to do. Or maybe it was among the Shoshones."
All the Gleisters nodded in vigorous agreement. They had all known that, of course; they just hadn't thought about it.
In no time at all the tallest Gleister was found, elected Chairman ad hoc and pro tem and sent up to the stage.
"I hereby call this meeting to order," the tallest Gleister said. "Look, before we get to anything else, it seems to me that we simply cannot all keep on calling ourselves 'Charlie Gleister.' It's simply too confusing. For purposes of communication between us, I suggest we all take on different first names. What do you think about that?"
There was a loud murmur of agreement.
"May I suggest that we each try to pick an unusual name," the Chairman said, "since fifty Toms or Georges wouldn't be much of an improvement over a hundred Charlies. I will start the ball rolling by calling myself Egon. I declare a fifteen-minute recess while the rest of you christen yourselves."
After a moment's thought, Charlie Gleister (the one whose time-track we've been following) named himself Hieronymous. He shook hands with Michelangelo Gleister on his right and Chang Gleister on his left. Then the Chairman called the meeting to order.
"Members of the Gleister Coequality Line of Potentialities," Egon said, "I bid you welcome. Some of you have searched for and found this place, others stumbled across it apparently by accident, others found themselves here while going somewhere else. This definitely appears to be a Gleister collection-point, for reasons that escape me at the moment. However, let that be. I think I am expressing the common sentiment when I name this the Time-Space Center for Resistance to the Rule of the Emperor Mingus. The Emperor probably knows about this place and what we're up to. We are the only serious threats to his reign. Many of us have had inexplicable near-fatal accidents at some point before inventing the time machine. Some of those were surely caused by Mingus. We may expect other attempts on our lives.
"That's about all I have to say. I would welcome remarks from the floor."
A man stood up and identified himself as Chalmers Gleister. "Has anyone learned the identity of this Mingus?"
"Not to my knowledge," Egon Gleister said. "He has concealed his origins most effectively. There is an official biography which states that the Emperor was born in Clearwater, Florida, the only child of Anton and Myra Waldheim."
"Has anyone checked this?" Chalmers asked.
A man stood up. "Marcos Gleister. I looked into it. I can tell you that Clearwater was demolished some thirty years before Mingus's rule, when the Sage Creek reactor went up."
"Did you attempt to go to Clearwater before its destruction?"
"I tried," Marcos said, "but I didn't learn anything positive. The Waldheim family might not have been living there at that time, or evidence may have been concealed or Mingus might have picked Clearwater as a convenient cover."
Chalmers asked, "Has anyone gone to the Hall of Records in Washington, or the Library of Congress, or whatever their equivalents are now? If the Waldheim records have been removed, it will be important negative evidence as to Mingus's identity."
"It hasn't been done yet," said Chairman Egon Gleister, after waiting for a response from the audience. "Perhaps you would care to take on the assignment"
"I wouldn't know how to begin," Chalmers said.
"None of us would. Our collective talents lie in other directions. But the job ought to be done."
"Very well, I'll try," Chalmers said sulkily, and sat down.
There was a great deal of general discussion after that. The Gleisters were thoroughly confused about time travel, its possibilities, ramifications, limits and consequences. Nor could they reconcile the various types and aspects of temporality which they had encountered---subjective time, objective time, past time, future time, multiple time rates, and the paradoxical crossing and recrossing of time tracks. What was the past, what was the future? Were "past," "present," and "future" no more than fictions---false separations imposed upon a unified field? And if that were so, how could an individual time traveler orient himself? The situation seemed comparable to a mad chess game in which either opponent could correct any previous moves at any time, in a game which had perhaps been concluded before it had begun.
Hieronymous Gleister---still our hero despite certain technical difficulties in differentiation and identification---had not paid much attention to the discussion. He was watching the audience, for the Gleisters seemed nearly as remarkable to him as time travel itself.
There were Gleisters of every apparent age between twenty and sixty years. All possessed the same somatotype. Beyond this, their differences were more striking than their similarities.
Each Gleister had experienced similar stresses and influences, but at different subjective moments. Events had come upon each man at a particular and unique moment in psychotime, polarizing and modifying the whirling Lullian wheels of his internal world system, producing in each man new and unexpected emotional configurations, modifying and delineating him, and turning him into an individual unlike all the other Gleisters.
To judge by appearances, there were frightened Gleisters and courageous Gleisters, high-strung ones and phlegmatic ones, sociable and solitary ones, clever and confused ones.
As he was thinking about these things, a man stood up and introduced himself as Mordecai Gleister. He asked permission to address the audience on certain urgent matters. Egon invited him to the stage.
"I will make my remarks brief," Mordecai said. "It seems to me that the matter of the Emperor has not been impartially examined. We have blindly assumed that the man and his goals are evil. Yet is this so evident? Consider---"
Hieronymous Gleister stared at him. He had seen this confident, bearded man in his fifties before. But where?