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 identical to the one I just left up to the moment of my insertion into it. From that instant on, my existence in it causes it to take a new shape. A shape I can choose — in fact, I must choose; because the timestream will be changed merely by my sudden presence in it, I must make every effort to exercise control in order to prevent known sequences of events from becoming unknown sequences.
This applies to my own life too. I am not one person. I am many people, all stemming from the same root. Some of the other Dans and Dons I meet are greatly variant from me, others are identical. Some will repeat actions that I have done, and I will repeat the actions of others. We perceive this as a doubling back of our subjective timelines. It doesn’t matter, I am me, I react to it all. I act on it all.
From this, I’ve learned two things.
The first is that I do have free will.
With all that implies. If I am a homosexual, then I am that way by choice. Should it please me to know that? Or should it disturb me? I don’t know — I’m the me who likes it too much to excise. So I guess that’s the answer, isn’t it?
And that’s the second thing I’ve learned — that every time I travel into the past, I am excising. I am erasing the past that was and creating a new one instead. I didn’t need to excise my first trip to the races to prove that I had free will — I’d already proved it the first time I was Don, when I’d worn a windbreaker instead of a sweater.
Every time I excise, I’m not erasing a world. I’m only creating a new one for myself.
For myself — meaning, this me.
Because every time I excise, I am also creating versions that are not me.
There are Daniel Eakinses who are totally different people than I am.
The Danny that I told not to go to the races — he’ll go off into a timestream of his own creation; he’ll have different memories, and eventually, different needs and desires. His resultant timestreams may be similar to mine, or, just as likely, they’ll be different.
And if he can be different from me—
—then there are an infinite number of Dannys who are different from me.
Somewhere there exist all the possible variations of all the possible people I could be.
I could by any of them — but I cannot be all.
I can only be one of the variations. I will be the variation of myself that pleases me the most.
And that suggests—
—that my free will may be only an illusion, after all.
If there are an infinite number of Dans, then each one thinks he is choosing his own course. But that isn’t so. Each one is only playing out his preordained instructions — excising, altering, and designing his timestream to fit his psychological template and following his emotional programming to its illogical extreme…
But if each of us is happiest in the universe he builds for himself, does it matter?
Does it really matter if there’s no such thing as free will?
It bothers me — this me.
I need to know that there is some important reason for my existence. There must be something special about me.
I will find the answer!
Yes. Of course.
I know what my mission is. I know who I am. I should have realized it when the timebelt was first given to me.
I am destined to rule the universe. I am God.
But I must never let them find out, or they will try to kill me.
I think I will kill them first.
If I ever get out of this room, I will kill them all!
I made a point of cautioning Danny, “I don’t know if he can be cured. But I am sure we can never trust him with a timebelt again. I think we’ll have to be very careful to see that he doesn’t get out. A paranoid schizophrenic running amok through time could be disastrous — not only for the rest of the world, but for us as well.”
Danny was thoughtful as he peered through the one-way glass. “It’s lucky that we caught him in time.” His voice caught on the last word; I think — I know — he was a little shaken at seeing the drooling maniac he might have become. I hadn’t gotten used to the sight either.
I said, “I think he wanted to be caught. We got him at a point where he was still conscious of what was happening to himself.”
“If he ever does get his hands on another timebelt,” Danny asked, “he could come back and rescue himself, couldn’t he?”
I nodded. “That’s partly why it was so hard to trap him. We had to get him into a timeline where he had no foreknowledge of where he was going, otherwise he would have jumped ahead to help himself against us. We wouldn’t even have known about him if he hadn’t kept coming farther and farther back into the past; one of us must have eventually recognized what was happening and gone for treatment, then come after this one who was still rampaging around. That’s when I was called in to help. We had to deny him any chance to look into his own future until we could get the belt off him. The fact that he hasn’t been rescued yet is a pretty good sign that this is the end of the line for this variant.”
Danny grinned. “Well, just the fact that we’re standing here talking about it proves that.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m from a line where they caught it in me before it got this far. I never went through that.” I pointed at the glass. “You, you’re a variant too. You’re from even earlier. Neither of us is in there. He could be incurable — and if that’s the case, then he has to stay in there. Forever. He — and I mean all of us — has to be either completely safe, or the timebelt must be held beyond his reach. The consequences—” I didn’t have to finish the sentence.
Danny bit his lip. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that I don’t like seeing him there.”
“It’s for his own good,” I said. “More important, it’s for our good. If time travel is the ultimate personal freedom, then it’s also the ultimate personal responsibility.”
“I guess so,” he said and turned away from the glass.
I didn’t add anything to that and we left the hospital for the last time.
Today President Robert F. Kennedy announced that “in response to recent discoveries, the United States is initiating a high-priority research program to investigate the possibilities of travel through time.”
So in order to protect myself (and my one-man monopoly), I had to go back and unkill Sirhan Sirhan. Dammit.
The “recent discoveries” he was referring to were some unfortunate anachronisms which I seem to have left in the past.
I thought I had been more careful, but apparently I haven’t. One of the Pompeiian artifacts in the British Museum has definitely been identified as a fossilized Coca-Cola bottle from the Atlanta, Georgia, bottling plant.
Well, I never said I was neat…
I don’t remember dropping the Coke bottle, but if it’s there, I must have. Unless some other version of me left it there—