Imponderable forces shifted when that cleavage took place. You and I know nothing about it, for it happened far beyond the perceptions of any sentient creature. But it happened. Oh yes, it happened.
Funny, how important the little changes are. It's so hard to get used to the absence of so much I used to take for granted. And there are so many new things too, things that weren't there when I went away. Nobody knows that except the four of us, of course. Everybody thinks these things have always been as they are now.
Well, it's all right as a world – maybe.
But not as a world for me. Here I've always been on that roller-coaster, snatching as things rush by. Maybe I'd do the same thing in any world. You never can tell till you try.
So I'm going to try.
There are still sleepers in that cavern where the time-axis turns, you know. If De Kalb had looked deeper when he first brought out our images under ultra-violet, he'd have seen more than we ever guessed, at the time. He'd have seen more than our doubled images, still asleep, waiting for the world of the middle future which is the final station in their round-trip through time. Paynter, Belem, Topaz are sleeping there. And so am I. And I mean myself, Jerry Cortland – twinned.
You see, I've looked. And I'm there. The other fellow, the one who came up the hill from the Kerry transmitter and blacked out and received my dominant mind, is asleep of course, waiting for his own time. But beside him is – Jerry Cortland. Two of us. Double images.
You realize what that means?
I'm going forward. I know – because I went. It was a wonderful world they had. I want to see more of it. I want to wake up in a time when the race of man is spreading through the galaxy, leaping across the gulfs between the stars, opening the gates to all the worlds. I want to and I will.
But I'll never see Topaz again – unless I'm luckier than I expect to be. I'll never see Belem or Paynter or the world where they'll wake – finding it changed too, I suppose, and a little bewildering, as mine is now.
The trouble is, two identical matrices can't exist in the same time. And that other fellow has priority. It's his world, his time. He'll wake with the others and go out. I'll sleep on until the way is clear. That means, of course, until he dies.
I wish I knew more about him. He had no record in the vast files of the galactic government. He was dressed in ragged clothing when I saw him. That indicates he's some wanderer of the outland planets, living a dangerous life – if he goes back to it. He may not. Waking with Paynter, Belem, Topaz, he may be drawn into another kind of career entirely. I'll know someday. But not until he's dead. Not until I wake again.
And when I wake, who knows how many years will have elapsed since Topaz stepped out of the time-axis into her own world again? She may be an old woman before I see her. She may be only a few years matured. She may have been fifty years dead. Perhaps I may never be sure. You see, I don't even know her name.
She was Topaz that week in which I wakened. Next week, and the week after and the year beyond that – do you think any records are kept of the whims of a girl like Topaz? Not even she will remember by the time I wake, if she's alive then. Time moves too fast for that.
Well, all this belongs to the future. And so do I. Even before the cosmic cleavage altered all history I was a misfit in this civilization. And now it just isn't my world anymore. I don't belong here. So I think I'll take my chances in that other place, where I won't have to get used to the little things that keep bothering me here and bother nobody but me –
Like Washington being the capital of the United States – now!