The Man Who Folded Himself

by David Gerrold

  What it meant was that I had unlimited credit.

  Hell! If I wanted to, I could own the country! The world!

  Believe it or not, I didn’t want to.

  I’d lost interest in the money. It was just so many numbers. Useless except as a tool to manipulate my environment, and I had a much better tool for that.

  Those frequent trips to the past had whetted my appetite. I had seen New York grow—like a living creature, the city had swelled and soared; her cast-iron facades had become concrete; her marble towers gave way to glass-sided slabs and soaring monoliths. Two remarkable towers. And beyond that, she became something enchanted: a fantasy of light and color. Oh, the someday beauty of her!

  I became intrigued with history—

  I went back to see the burning of the Hindenburg. I was there when the great Zeppelin shriveled in flame and an excited announcer babbled into his microphone.

  I was there when Lindbergh took off and I was there again when he landed. The little airplane seemed so frail.

  I was there when two more airplanes flew into the World Trade Towers, shattering glass and steel and sanity in a horrifying inferno.

  I saw the Wright brothers’ first flight.

  And I know what happened to Judge Crater. And Jimmy Hoffa.

  I saw the blastoff of Apollo 11. It was the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.

  And I witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t dramatic at all; it was sad and clumsy.

  I was there (via timeskim) at Custer’s last stand.

  I witnessed the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. (The guy who was supposed to pound in the gold spike slipped and fell in the mud.)

  I’ve seen the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake.

  I was at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (How far we have come since then....)

  And I’ve seen the original uncut versions of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance and Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  I was there the day the Liberty Bell cracked.

  And I saw the fall of the Alamo.

  I witnessed the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac.

  I attended a band concert conducted John Philip Sousa.

  I heard Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address. I recorded it on tape.

  I’ve seen Paul Revere’s midnight ride and the Boston Tea Party.

  I’ve met George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

  And I watched Columbus come ashore.

  I saw Ben Franklin flying a kite on a rainy day.

  I was there when Bell tested his first telephone. “Mr.Watson, come here. I want you.”

  I witnessed Galileo’s experiment—when he dropped two lead balls of different weights from the Tower of Pisa.

  I have seen performances of plays by William Shakespeare. At the Globe Theater in London.

  I watched Leonardo da Vinci as he painted La Joconde, the Mona Lisa. (I will not tell you why she smiles.) And I watched as his rival, Michelangelo, painted the Sistine Chapel.

  I’ve heard Strauss waltzes, conducted by Strauss himself.

  I was the disastrous première of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. And Ravel’s Bolero too.

  I’ve heard Beethoven’s symphonies—as conducted by Beethoven himself.

  And Mozart. And Bach. (I’ve seen the Beatles too.)

  And the beheading of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More.

  I’ve seen the signing of the Magna Carta.

  I have visited Imperial Rome. Nero and Tiberius and Julius Caesar himself. Cleopatra was ugly.

  And ancient Greece. The sacking of Troy was more than a myth.

  I have witnessed performances of plays by Sophocles and watched as Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander. I saw Socrates drink a cup of hemlock.

  I have witnessed the crucifixion of one Jesus of Nazareth. He looked so sad.

  And more.

  I have seen dinosaurs. I have seen the thunder lizards walk the Earth. Diplodocus, Apatosaur, Stegosaur, and Triceratops—Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most fearsome monsters ever to stalk the Earth.

  I have seen the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of Pompeii.

  I have seen the explosion of Krakatoa.

  I watched an asteroid plunge from the sky and shatter a giant crater in what would someday be Arizona.

  I’ve witnessed the death of Hiroshima by atomic fire.

  I’ve timeskimmed from the far distant past and watched as the Colorado River carved out the Grand Canyon—a living, twisting snake of water cutting away the rock.

  And more.

  I’ve been to the moon.

  I’ve walked its surface in a flimsy spacesuit and held its dust in my hands. I’ve seen the Earth rise above the Lunar Apennines.

  I’ve visited Tranquility Base—and flashing back to the past, I watched the Eagle land. I saw Neil Armstrong come ashore.

  And more.

  I’ve been to Mars. I’ve been to the great hotels that orbit Jupiter and I’ve seen the rings of Saturn.

  I’ve timeskimmed from the far past to the far future.

  I have seen Creation.

  And I have seen Entropy.

  From Big Bang to Big Crunch—the existence of the Earth is less than a blink; the death of the sun by nova, almost unnoticeable.

  I’ve seen the future of mankind—

  I like to think I understand, but I know that I don’t. The future of the human race is as alien and incomprehensible to me as the year 2005 would be to a man of Charlemagne’s era. But wondrous it is indeed, and filled with marvelous things.

  There is nothing that I cannot witness—

  —but there is little that I can participate in.

  I am limited. By my language, by my appearance, by my skin color, and my height.

  I am limited to life in a span of history maybe two hundred years in each direction. Beyond that, the languages are difficult: the meanings have altered, the pronunciations and usages too complex to decipher. With effort, perhaps, I can communicate; but the farther I go from 2005, the harder it is to make myself understood.

  And there are other differences. In the past, I am too tall. The farther back I travel, the shorter everybody becomes. And the farther forward I go, the taller. In the not-too -distant future, I am too short—humanity’s evolution is upward.

  And there are still other differences. Disturbing ones.

  There are places where my skin is the wrong color, or my eyes the wrong shape. And there is one time in the future when I am the wrong sex.

  There are places where people’s faces are—different.

  I can witness.

  I cannot participate.

  But witnessing is enough: I have seen more of history than any other human being. I have timeskimmed and timestopped and my journeys have been voyages of mystery and adventure.

  There is much that I don’t understand. There are things that are incomprehensible to one who is not of the era and the culture.

  But still—the proper study of humanity is humanity itself.

  History is not just old news.

  It’s people. It’s the ebb and flow of life. It’s the sound of bells and horns, the stamp of boots in the street, the flapping of banners in the wind, the smell of smoke and flowers. It’s bread and trains and newspapers. It’s the acrid smell of the herd, and the press of the crowd. It’s surprise and glory—and fear. It’s confusion, panic, and disaster—

  —and above all, history is triumph!

  It is the triumph of individuals creating, designing, building, changing, challenging—never quitting. It is the continual victory of the intellect over the animal; the unquenchable vitality of life! Passion overwhelms despair and humanity goes on; sometimes seething, sometimes dirty, sometimes even unspeakably evil.

  But always—despite the setbacks—the direction is always upward.

  If I must taste the bitterness, it is worth it; because I ha
ve also shared the dreams.

  And the promise.

  I have seen its fulfillment.

  I know the truth and the destiny of the human race.

  It is a proud and lonely thing to be a man.

  This part, I think, may be the hardest to record.

  It was inevitable, I suppose, that it happened, but it has caused me to do some serious thinking. About myself. About Dan. About Don.

  When Uncle Jim died, I thought my life would be changed, and I worried about the directions it might take. When I thought I had eliminated myself by a timebelt paradox, I realized how much I feared dying—I realized how much I needed to be Dan to my Don and Don to my Dan.

  But this—

  —this makes me question the shape of my whole life.

  What am I? Who am I?

  What am I doing to myself?

  Have I made a wrong decision? Am I moving in a strange and terrible direction?

  I wish I knew.

  It started—when? Yesterday evening? Time is funny when you don’t live it linearly. When I get tired, I sleep, I flip forward or backward to the nearest nighttime and climb into bed.

  If I’m not tired, and it’s night, I flash to day and go to the beach. Or I jump to winter and go skiing. I stay as long as I want, or as short as I want. I stay for weeks or only a few minutes. I’m not a slave to the clock—nor even to the seasons.

  What I mean is, I’m no longer living in a straight line.

  I bounce back and forth through the days like a temporal pingpong ball. I don’t even know how old I am any more. I think I’ve passed my twenty-fifth birthday, but I’m not sure. The timebelt should know, it has linear tracking.

  It’s strange….

  Time used to be a flowing river. I sailed down it and watched the shores sweep past: here, a warm summer evening, ice tinkling in lemonade glasses; there, a cool fall morning, dead leaves crunching underfoot and my breath in frosty puffs. Time was a slowly shifting panorama along the river bank. I was a leaf in the water. I was carried helplessly along, a victim of the current.

  Now I’m out of the river and standing on the bank. I am the motion and time is the observer. No longer a victim, I am the cause. All of time is laid out before me like a table, no longer a moving entity, but a vast and mutable landscape. I can leap to any point on it at will. Would I like a nice summer day? Yes, here’s a pleasant one. Am I in the mood for a fall morning? Ah, that’s nice. I don’t have to wait for the river to carry me to a place where I might be able to find that moment—I can go exactly to it.

  No moment can ever escape me. I’ve chased twilight and captured dawn. I’ve conquered day and tamed the night. I can live as I choose because I am the master of time.

  I laugh to think of it. Time is an everlasting smorgasbord—and I am the gourmet, picking here, choosing there, discarding this unnecessary bit of tripe and taking an extra piece of filet instead.

  But even this temporal mobility, no matter how unlimited it is, does not keep me from arbitrarily dividing things into “day” and “night.” It must be a human thing to want to divide eternity into bite-sized chunks. It’s easier to digest. So no matter how many jumps I make, anything that happened before my last sleep happened “yesterday,” and everything since I woke up (and until I go to sleep again) is part of my “today.” Some of my “todays” have spanned a thousand years. And “tomorrow” comes not with the dawn, but with my next awakening.

  I think I’m still on a twenty-four-hour life cycle, but I can’t be sure. If I add a few extra hours to my “day” so as to enjoy the beach a little longer, my body tends to obey the local time, not mine. Perhaps humanity is unconsciously geared to the sun. At least, it seems that way. I don’t get tired until after the world gets dark. (But like I said before, I’m not sure how old I am anymore. I’ve lost track.)

  Anyway. What I’m getting to is that this happened “yesterday.”

  Don and I were listening to Beethoven. (The original Beethoven. I had gotten a recorder from 2050, a multichannel device capable of greater fidelity than anything known in 2005, and had taped all eleven of the master’s symphonies. Yes. All eleven).

  We had spent the day swimming—skinny dipping actually (it’s strange to watch your own nude body from a distance), and now we were resting up before dinner. I have this mansion in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley; the view is spectacular. Even the bedroom has a picture window.

  It was dusk. The sun was just dipping behind the hills to the west. It was large and orange through the haze. Don had turned on the stereo and collapsed exhaustedly on the bed (a king-size water bed) without even toweling off.

  I didn’t think anything of it. I was tired too. I made an attempt to dry myself off, then lay down beside him. (I’d gotten into a very bad habit with Don—with Dan—with myself. I’d discovered I didn’t like being alone. Even when I sleep, I need the assurance of knowing there’s somebody next to me. So more and more I found myself climbing into bed with one or more versions of myself. Sometimes there’s a lot of horseplay and giggling. What did I want? Did I know? Is that why I did it? It extends to other things too. I won’t swim alone. And several times I’ve showered together, ostensibly so we could scrub each other’s back.

  We were both stretched out naked on the water bed, just staring at the ceiling and listening to the Pastoral Symphony, that part near the beginning where it goes “pah-rump-pah-pah, rump-pah-pah…” (You know, where Disney’s joyous trumpets announce a cascade of happy unicorns.)

  It was a good tiredness. Languorous. I was floating oh, so pleasantly and the light show on the ceiling was swirling in red and pink and purple, shifting to blue and white.

  I’d been getting strange vibrations from Don all day. I wasn’t sure why. (Or perhaps I hadn’t wanted to admit—) He kept looking at me oddly. His glance kept meeting mine and he seemed to be smiling about some inner secret, but he wouldn’t say what it was. He touched me a lot too. There had been a lot of clowning around in the pool, and once I thought he had been about to—(I must have sensed it earlier, I must have; but I must have also been refusing to recognize it.)

  The symphony had reached that point where it suggests wild dancing, with several false stops, when a soft pop! in the air made me look up. Another Don. I had long since gotten used to various versions of myself materializing and disappearing at random. But I sat up anyway.

  He looked troubled. And tired.

  “Which one of you is Dan?” he asked. He looked at me. “You are, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  Don, beside me, raised up on one elbow, sending ripples through the bed, but his gaze was veiled. Don II looked at him but stepped toward me. He was holding a sheaf of papers—I recognized it as my, no, his—diary; that is, his version of my diary.

  “I want to excise something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That is, I think I want to excise it. I’m not sure—”

  He looked at me. He sat down on the bed, and for a moment I thought he was close to tears. He was trembling. “Look, I don’t know if this—this thing is good or bad or what. Maybe the terms are meaningless. I just don’t know. I’m not sure if I should tell you to avoid this or whether I should let you make your own decision.” He looked at both of us. “I can’t talk about it. I mean, I can’t talk about it to you because you wouldn’t understand. Not yet. That’s why I have to do it this way. Here’s my diary. Read it, Dan. Then you decide for yourself if—if that’s what you want. I mean, it’s the only way. You shouldn’t stumble into this. You should either go into it with your eyes open and be aware of what you’re doing, or you should reject it because you’re aware of its possibility. Either way, it’s going to change your—our—life.”

  He was very upset, and that made me very concerned. I reached out and touched his arm. He flinched and pulled away. “Tell me what it is—” I said.

  He shook his head adamantly. “Just read the diary.”

  “I will,”
I promised. “But stay here until I do, so you can talk to me about it.”

  “No, I can’t. I tried that once and we ended up doing exactly what I came back to stop. I mean, I mustn’t be here if you’re to make your own choice.” And he popped out of existence. Back to his own future—my future perhaps? I won’t know till I get there.

  I picked up the papers and paged through them.

  The early parts were identical to mine, even up to the point where Don and I were listening to Beethoven, stretched out on the water bed—

  What I’m trying to get at is that it started almost accidentally.

  Don rubbed himself abstractedly and then stretched and rolled over on his stomach. He reached over and grabbed a pillow above my head. “You want one?” I nodded. He fluffed it and shoved it under my head, then grabbed another one for himself. He didn’t roll away; instead, he sighed and let his arm fall across my chest.

  Absentmindedly I reached up and stroked his arm. In response, he gave me a casual hug.

  And then he was looking at me and our eyes were locked in another of those glances. He was mysterious. I was curious. His smile was bottomless. “What is it? I asked.

  In answer, he slid himself upward and kissed me.

  Just a kiss. Quick, affectionate—and loaded with desire.

  He pulled back and looked at me, still smiling, watching my reaction.

  I was confused. Because I had accepted it. I had let him kiss me as if it were a totally natural thing for him to do. I hadn’t questioned it at all. His eyes were shining, and I studied them carefully. He lowered his face to mine again….

  This time the kiss was longer. Much longer.

  And he didn’t just kiss me. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to him.

  And I helped.

  We stretched out side by side, facing each other on the water bed. We put our arms around each other. And we kissed.

  I realized I liked it.

  I liked it.

  “Don,” I managed to gasp, “We shouldn’t—”

  He studied me. “But you want to, don’t you?”

  And I knew he was right.

  “Yes, but—” His face was so open, his eyes were so deep. “But it’s wron g—”