The Man Who Folded Himself

by David Gerrold

  Well, that was silly. He was me. He hadn’t disappeared—he was right here. I had simply done things differently this time around.

  Ouch.

  That meant that the Don who had come back in time with the newspaper was me too. (Of course—but would I have to go back in time to warn myself? No, because I hadn’t let the bets go that far.)

  Then, if he was me . . . there really was only one of me! He would go back to the future—my future, our future—with his memories, but—

  But if his memories were different than mine, how could we be the same person?

  So the question was still unanswered: Where was the Don I had gone to the races with? The one who had worn a sweater and slacks and bet only a hundred dollars? Where was my good sport jacket?!

  Danny showed up then, he was giddy and excited—like he’d invented money. He waved the check at me.

  “You want to see it?”

  I took it thoughtfully and looked. I took my check out of my pocket and compared them—they were not identical. The check number on Danny’s was lower and the signatures were not quite the same.

  Of course, how could they be identical? We were leaving earlier in the day after a different set of bets. The situations were not the same—why should the checks be?

  Then, this check I was carrying—it was no longer any good, it was from a world that no longer existed.

  And it was the same situation with the disappearing Don; he was a canceled check in this world, wasn’t he?

  But the canceled check hadn’t disappeared. I still had it.

  (I remembered myself asking if we could cash them both.)

  I’d been fooled once by the illusion of the duplicated check, but this time the check had been duplicated!

  And if I could duplicate the check, then couldn’t I have duplicated myself?

  There was another side to it too.

  I’d already eliminated two possible futures: the one where I’d worn slacks and a sweater and the one where I’d won a million and a half dollars.

  As far as I knew, both of those Dons had ceased to exist along with their futures. Neither seemed to be still around.

  And if I could eliminate them—

  —what was to keep some other Dan from eliminating me?

  Perhaps even now—

  No. There must be something I was misunderstanding.

  Danny drove. He babbled incessantly; he was like a schoolgirl. But I wasn’t listening anyway. I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts.

  I knew there was an answer.

  There had to be.

  For one thing, paradoxes were supposed to be impossible.

  Oh, sure, I know—time travel makes the most horrendous of paradoxes possible, even probable; but that’s just not so. A paradox would be a violation of the laws of nature. By definition, they’re the laws of nature. And inviolable.

  Therefore, paradoxes are impossible.

  Because if paradoxes were possible, then time travel would have to be impossible—otherwise, we’d have people killing their grandfathers right and left. We’d have people seducing their mothers or kidnapping their fathers. We’d have time travelers killing the inventors of time machines. We’d have all manner of anachronisms and flukes, and the laws of nature would be violated in so many different ways, it would take the invention of a whole new science to catalog them all.

  But time travel was possible. I had proved it myself.

  So paradoxes were impossible.

  It sounded all very neat when I explained it to myself that way. Paradoxes had to be impossible; therefore, they were. Everything could be worked out logically—

  Then, damn it, why couldn’t I work this one out? If this wasn’t a paradox, it was still way ahead of whatever was in second place.

  All right. Let’s assume that paradoxes are impossible—then where do I go from here?

  The checks, for instance. Obviously, Danny’s check was the good one, the one we would have to cash in order to collect our winnings. But the question was how?

  Should I take it forward with me into the future? But then what would Danny have to show himself when he was Don? (Of course, I hadn’t made a point of comparing the checks this time around, had I?) But if I left it here in the past, how would I get it in the future?

  My check shouldn’t exist. It was from a canceled world. Danny’s check was the only valid one here because I had done things differently from the way they had originally occurred. If I had done things the way Don had done, I would have had the “duplicate” of Danny’s check.

  But I hadn’t. I had tampered with the timestream and didn’t have a valid check at all. And that meant—

  —that I was a canceled check too.

  Because whatever I did now, this Danny—when he became Don and went back in time—would not do exactly the same as me. It would be impossible for him to do so. Just as I had eliminated the Don preceding me, this Danny was going to eliminate the Don preceding him—me!

  Did I still exist?

  Was I about to wink out?

  Was it just a matter of time?

  Yes—of course, it was a matter of time. Ha. ha. The joke’s on me.

  No, this couldn’t be right; I was thinking in paradoxes again. After all, I was here and alive—I was me. I hadn’t eliminated Don at all. I had become him and done things differently, that’s all.

  Sure—but I still couldn’t stop asking myself what had become of my Don who had done things the other way and the Don who had given me the newspaper and told me not to be so greedy. (“Forget about them—you simply won’t become them, that’s all,” I told myself. “How would you know?” I answered.)

  Let’s see . . . there must be a way to figure this out.

  Danny had to go back in time and become Don to his Dan.

  If he takes his check back with him, I won’t have it to cash. On the other hand, if I take it forward with me, he won’t have a check to show his Danny. (He’ll be changing the timestream, just like me. Unless—)

  What if I gave Danny the false check to take back with him? Would that undo the damage? Or would it just make it worse?

  My mind began to boggle.

  But it was the answer, of course. This Danny would become my Don! That’s why his check would match mine when he went back to meet me. (And he’d test to see if he could change the past too! He’d try wearing different clothes than me: the slacks and sweater!)

  And I’d still end up with the money!

  Yes, of course. It had to be the answer.

  I’d been sitting and staring at the checks for the past ten miles. Now I handed Danny the false one and he slipped it into his pocket without even looking at it.

  (Ha-ha! I cackled gleefully to myself.)

  I realized Danny was saying something: “—what happens now? Do you go back to your time?”

  I grinned at him. “Not yet. First we go out to celebrate. Like rich people.”

  This time, I won the argument over who was going to use the bathroom first. I don’t mind sharing my razor, but at least I ought to get the first shave off a new blade. Danny seemed a little bothered by the pseudo-intimacy of both of us dressing out of the same closet, so I compromised and let him wear the red sport jacket. While he showered, I reset my belt and flipped back to morning, phoned The Restaurant and made reservations for two, then flashed forward again, appearing at the exact instant I had disappeared and in the same spot. The air hadn’t even had time to rush in. (That was one way to minimize the jump-shock.)

  It was at The Restaurant that I began to realize what Don had meant the night before and why he had said what he did. Danny looked so . . . innocent. So unprotected. He needed someone. And I could be that someone—I was that someone; I knew Danny better than anyone.

  He was my “little brother”—I would have to watch out for him; and that would make him feel as secure as I felt when my “big brother” Don was around. It was a strange feeling—exciting.

  “You’ll never have
to be alone again,” I told him. (I knew how lonely he was; I knew how much he hated it.) “You’ll always have me. I’ll always have you. It makes more sense this way.” (I would keep him from falling into those bitter, empty moods, those gritty moments of aching frustration. It would be good for both of us.) “I don’t like being alone either. This way I can share the things I like with somebody I know likes them too.” (No, I would never be lonely again; I would have my Danny to take care of. And my Don to take care of me. Oh, it was such a wonderful feeling to have—how could I make him see?) “I don’t have to try and impress you, you don’t have to try to impress me. There’s perfect understanding between us. There’ll never be any of those destructive little head games that people play on each other, because there can’t be.” It all came spilling out, a flood of emotion. (I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to hold him.) “I like me, Danny; that’s why I like you. You’ll feel the same way, you’ll see.

  “And I guarantee, there are no two people in this world who understand each other as well as we do.”

  Life is full of little surprises.

  Time travel is full of big ones.

  My worrying about paradoxes and canceled checks had been needless. If I had thought to read the timebelt instructions completely before I went gallivanting off to the past and the future, I would have known.

  I was right that paradoxes were impossible, but I was wrong in thinking that the timestream had to be protected from them. After all, they were impossible. It wouldn’t have mattered whether I had given Danny a check or not; changes in the timestream are cumulative, not variable.

  What this means is that you can change the past as many times as you want. You can’t eliminate yourself. I could go back in time nineteen years and strangle myself in my crib, but I wouldn’t cease to exist. (I’d have a dead baby on my hands though. . . . )

  Look, you can change the future, right? The future is exactly the same as the past, only it hasn’t happened yet. You haven’t perceived it. The real difference between the two—the only difference—is your point of view. If the future can be altered, so can the past.

  Every change you make is cumulative; it goes on top of every other change you’ve already made, and every change you add later will go on top of that. You can go back in time and talk yourself out of winning a million and a half dollars, but the resultant world is not one where you didn’t win a million and a half dollars; it’s a world where you talked yourself out of it. See the difference?

  It’s subtle—but it’s important.

  Think of an artist drawing a picture. But he’s using indelible ink and he doesn’t have an eraser. If he wants to make a change, he has to paint over a line with white. The line hasn’t ceased to exist; it has just been painted over and a new line drawn on top.

  On the surface, it doesn’t appear to make much difference. The finished picture will look the same whether the artist uses an eraser or a gallon of white paint, but it’s important to the artist. He’s aware of the process he used to obtain the final result and it affects his consciousness. He’s aware of all the lines and drawings beneath the final one, the layer upon layer of images, each one not quite the one—all those discarded pieces; they haven’t ceased to exist, they’ve just been painted out of view.

  Subjectively, time travel is like that.

  I can lay down one timeline and then go back and do things differently the second time around. I can go back a third time and talk myself out of something, and I can go back a fourth time and change it still again. And in the end, the timestream is exactly what I’ve made it—it is the cumulative product of my changes. The closest I can get to the original is to go back and talk myself out of something. It won’t be the same world, but the difference will be undetectable. The difference will be in me. I—like the artist with his painting—will be conscious of all the other alternatives that did exist, do exist, and can exist again.

  The world I came from is like my innocence. I can never recapture it. At best, I can only simulate it.

  You can’t be a virgin twice.

  (Not that I would, of course. Virginity seems like a nice state of existence only to a virgin, only to someone who doesn’t know any better. From this side of the fence, it seems like such a waste. I remember my first time, and how I had reacted: Why, this was nothing to be scared of at all—in fact, it’s wonderful! Why had I taken so long to discover it? Afterward, all the time beforehand looked so . . . empty.)

  According to the timebelt instructions, what I had done by altering the situation the second time around was called tangling. Mine had been a simple tangle, easily unraveled, but there was no limit to how complex a tangle could be. You can tie as many knots in a ball of yarn as you like.

  There really isn’t any reason to unravel tangles (according to the instructions) because they usually take care of themselves; but the special cautions advise against letting a tangle get too complex because of the cumulative effects that might occur. You might suddenly find that you’ve changed your world beyond all recognition—and possibly beyond your ability to live in, let alone excise.

  Excising is what you do when you bounce back and talk yourself out of something—when you go back and undo a mistake. Like winning too much at the races. (How about that? I’d been tangling and excising and I hadn’t even known it.)

  The belt explained the impossibility of paradoxes this way: if there was only one timestream, then paradoxes would be possible and time travel would have to be impossible. But every time you make a change in the timestream, no matter how slight, you are actually shifting to an alternate timestream. As far as you are concerned, though, it’s the only timestream, because you can’t get back to the original one.

  So when you use the timebelt, you aren’t really jumping through time, that’s the illusion; what you’re actually doing is leaving one timestream and jumping to—maybe even creating—another. The second one is identical to the one you just left, including all of the changes you made in it—up to the instant of your appearance. At that moment, simply by the fact of your existence in it, the second timestream becomes a different timestream. You are the difference.

  When you travel backward in time, you’re creating that second universe at an earlier moment. It will develop in exactly the same way as the universe you just left, unless you act to alter that development.

  That the process is perceived as time travel is only an illusion, because the process is subjective. But because it’s subjective, it really doesn’t make any difference, does it? It’s just as good as the real thing. Better, even; because nothing is permanent; nothing is irrevocable.

  The past is the future. The future is the past. There’s no difference between the two and either can be changed. I’m flashing across a series of alternate worlds, creating and destroying a new one every time I bounce.

  The universe is infinite.

  And so are the possibilities of my life.

  I am Dan. And I am Don.

  And sometimes I am Dean, and Dino, and Dion, and Dana. And more....

  There’s a poker game going on in my apartment. It starts on June 24, 2005. I don’t know when it ends. Every time one of me gets tired, there’s another one showing up to take his place. The game is a twenty-four-hour marathon. I know it lasts at least a week; on July 2, I peeked in and saw several versions of myself—some in their mid-twenties—still grimly playing.

  Okay. So I like poker.

  Every time I’m in the mood, I know where there’s an empty chair. And when. Congenial people too. I know they’ll never cheat.

  I may have to get a larger apartment though. Five rooms is not enough. (I need more room for the pool table.)

  Strange things keep happening—no, not strange things, things I’ve learned not to question. For instance, once I saw Uncle Jim—he looked surprised and vanished almost immediately. It startled me too. I was just getting used to the idea of his death. I hadn’t realized that he would have been using the timebelt t
oo. (But why not? It was his before it was mine.)

  Another time I heard strange noises from the bedroom. When I peeked in, there was Don in bed with—well, whoever it was, they were both covered by the blanket, I couldn’t tell. He just looked at me with a silly expression, not the slightest bit embarrassed, so I shrugged and closed the door. And the noises began again.

  I’m not questioning it at all. I’ll find out. Eventually.

  Mostly I’ve been concentrating on making money. Don and I (and later, Danny and I) have made a number of excursions into the past, as well as the future. Some of our investments go back as far as 1850 (railroads, coal, steel), 1875 (Bell Telephone), 1905 (automobiles, rubber, oil, motion pictures), 1910 (heavy industry, steel again), 1920 (radio, insurance companies, chemicals, drugs, airlines), 1929 (I picked up some real bargains here. More steel. Business machines. More radio, more airlines, more automobiles). 1940 (companies that would someday be involved in computers, television, and the aerospace industry), 1950 (Polaroid and Xerox and Disney), 1960 (More Boeing stock, some land in Florida—especially around Orlando). Turned out that 1975 was a good year for bargains too. It was a little too early to buy stock in something called Apple, but I could buy IBM and Sony and MCA shares. Oh, and we also picked up some stock in 20th Century Fox.

  Down through the decades, I bought a little here, a little there—not enough to change the shape of the world, but enough to supply me with a comfortable lifelong fortune. It was a little tricky setting up an investment firm to manage it, but it was worth the effort. When I got back to 2005, I found I was worth—

  —one hundred and forty-three million dollars.

  Hmm.

  Actually, the number was meaningless. I was worth a hell of a lot more. It turned out I owned an investment monopoly worth several billion dollars, or let’s say I controlled it. What I owned was the holding company that held the holding companies. By the numbers, its value was only one hundred and forty-three million, but I could put my hands on a lot more than that if I wanted.