by Alan Cogan
Icouldn't shut my non-physical eyes to the way the whole situation wouldturn out.
Marge and I, with half a dozen others, were getting into a helicar. Ifollowed them out to a house in the country. We handed in all the moneywe had saved and in return were given old-style clothes, ancient-lookingmoney and a small amount of luggage. Then we all stepped into whatlooked like an oversized version of a Grundy Projector and vanished.
Fight? Argue? Scheme?
I didn't have a chance.
* * * * *
It was 1956 when we arrived in old New York. We were met by others whohad pioneered the way before us and they looked after our group until welearned the ropes.
There was nothing easy about getting used to the era. I wished oftenthat I could get back to my own time, Grundy Projector or no GrundyProjector. Still, Marge didn't complain; she was prepared to endureanything just because she thought her life had been saved. Occasionally,bothered by my blunders in adjusting to this past century, I'd start toreason with her, explain that her life hadn't been in danger at all. Butthen, luckily, I would realize that convincing her would leave an angry,dissatisfied wife on my hands and I always managed to stop in time.
I got a job working as a night janitor in a bank and studied accountingin the daytime until I was able to get a steady job. We've been here afew years now and I guess you could say we're pretty well assimilated.We have a house and two small sons and I'm doing well at my job. Westill see some of our friends from the 21st century and they've alsomanaged to make the change successfully.
We get together now and then, and talk over old times, and laugh at somethings and get nostalgic over other things. Now that there aren't anyGrundy Projectors around, we've started feeling once more that our fatesare in our own hands.
Rog Owens has an interesting viewpoint. He said one night, "It wasn'tthe future that was fixed; it was the Grundy Projectors that fixed thefuture! Whatever people saw would happen, they just let happen ... oreven worked to make it happen. No matter what it was, including theirown deaths. Hell, how's that any different than voodoo?"
That was pretty much how each of us had felt, only we hadn't figured itout so clearly. But Rog Owens has a special reason for thinkingparticularly hard about the problem. Mr. Atkins and his syndicate hadn'tsend us back for purely altruistic reasons; they learned that Rog'sdaughter Ann would marry a fellow (not one of us) named Jack Grundy andthat they'd have a son named Bilbo, who would invent the GrundyProjector. Our assignment was to keep that from happening.
Well, we couldn't prevent the marriage, but we could--and did--make suretheir son would have a good, plain American name. It's William Grundy.
But today my younger boy told me their kindergarten teacher callsWilliam "Billy Boy."
And one little girl can't pronounce it. She calls him Bilbo.