The Worlds of If
Page 2
does not reveal the past nor predict thefuture. It will show, as I told you, the conditional worlds. You mightexpress it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would havehappened.' The worlds of the subjunctive mode."
"Now how the devil does it do that?"
"Simple, for van Manderpootz! I use polarized light, polarized not inthe horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourthdimension--an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossalpressures, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in thedirection of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave,though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerableimprovement over time-traveling in past or future, with its impossiblevelocities and ridiculous distances!"
"But--are those--worlds of 'if'--real?"
"Real? What is real? They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is areal number as opposed to [sq]-2, which is imaginary. They are theworlds that would have been _if_-- Do you see?"
I nodded. "Dimly. You could see, for instance, what New York would havebeen like if England had won the Revolution instead of the Colonies."
"That's the principle, true enough, but you couldn't see that on themachine. Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat (stolen from one ofmy ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the device. Yourown mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if GeorgeWashington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, hecould have seen what you suggest. We can't. You can't even see whatwould have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but _I_ can. Do youunderstand?"
"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past experiencesof the user."
"You're growing brilliant," he scoffed. "Yes. The device will show tenhours of what would have happened _if_--condensed, of course, as in amovie, to half an hour's actual time."
"Say, that sounds interesting!"
"You'd like to see it? Is there anything you'd like to find out? Anychoice you'd alter?"
"I'll say--a thousand of 'em. I'd like to know what would have happenedif I'd sold out my stocks in 2009 instead of '10. I was a millionaire inmy own right then, but I was a little--well, a little late inliquidating."
"As usual," remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to the laboratorythen."
The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered meinto the Physics Building, and thence into his own research laboratory,much like the one I had visited during my courses under him. Thedevice--he called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated inhypothetical worlds--occupied the entire center table. Most of it wasmerely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy wasthe prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart ofthe instrument.
Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. "Put it on," he said, and Isat staring at the screen of the psychomat. I suppose everyone isfamiliar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few yearsago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy;sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a real aid to memory. A maze ofvague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen,and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene orcircumstances he is trying to remember. He turns a knob that alters thearrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the designcorresponds to his mental picture--presto! There is his scene re-createdunder his eyes. Of course his own mind adds the details. All the screenactually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but the thingcan be amazingly real. I've seen occasions when I could have sworn thepsychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as realityitself; the illusion is sometimes as startling as that.
Van Manderpootz switched on the light, and the play of shadows began."Now recall the circumstances of, say, a half-year after the marketcrash. Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that pointI direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you havenothing to do but watch."
I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoatesounds of the device hummed like distant voices, but without the addedsuggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face flashed anddissolved and then, finally, I had it. There was a picture of myselfsitting in an ill-defined room; that was all. I released the knob andgestured.
A click followed. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picturecleared, and amazingly, another figure emerged, a woman. I recognizedher; it was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere ofthe "Vision Varieties of '09." She was changed on that picture, but Irecognized her.
I'll say I did! I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07to '10, trying to marry her, while old N. J. raved and ranted andthreatened to leave everything to the Society for Rehabilitation of theGobi Desert. I think those threats were what kept her from accepting me,but after I took my own money and ran it up to a couple of million inthat crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened.
Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came andbounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favordropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were engaged,in April we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been lateagain.
And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out,and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring atme with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzesbecame voices.
"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to goback to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you andyour golf."
"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."
"At least they're _alive_. You're a walking corpse. Just because youwere lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're atin god."
"Well, I _don't_ think _you're_ Cleopatra! Those friends of yours--theytrail after you because you give parties and spend money--_my_ money."
"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!"
"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real name.) "Itmight help your figure--though I doubt if anything could!"
She glared in rage and--well, that was a painful half hour. I won't giveall the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved intomeaningless colored clouds.
"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been reading.
"You liked it?"
"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't regret itfrom now on."
"That," said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's greatcontribution to human happiness. 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, thesaddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick.Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might havebeen--worse!'"
* * * * *
It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when Irose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father wasunnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'dnever been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me anddragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcasticallyto my missing the _Baikal_; I reminded him of the wrecking of the liner,and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocketwould have been late, and so would have missed colliding with theBritish fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention thatwhen he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in themountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that.
"Dixon," he concluded, "you have no conception whatever of time. Nonewhatever."
The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled toask, "And have you, sir?"
"I have," he said grimly. "I most assuredly have. Time," he saidoracularly, "is money."
You can't argue with a viewpoint like that.
But those aspersions of his rankled, especially that about the _Baikal_.Tardy I might be, but it was hardly conceivable that my presence aboardthe rocket could have averte
d the catastrophe. It irritated me; in away, it made me responsible for the deaths of those unrescued hundredsamong the passengers and crew, and I didn't like the thought.
Of course, if they'd waited an extra five minutes for me, or if I'd beenon time and they'd left on schedule instead of five minutes late, orif--_if_!
If! The word called up van Manderpootz and his subjunctivisor--theworlds of "if," the weird, unreal worlds that existed beside reality,neither past nor future, but contemporary, yet extemporal.