The Man Who Folded Himself (5 page)

In each corner of the readout was a lettered square. These were references to four buttons on the face of the buckle itself. (I closed the buckle and looked—there weren't any obvious buttons, but in each corner was an area that seemed to depress with a slight click.) CLR stood for Clear, HOL meant Hold, RET was Return, and ACT was Activate. Each button had to be pressed twice in rapid succession to function; that way you wouldn't accidentally change any of your settings or send yourself off on an unintended jaunt.

CLR was meant to clear the belt of all previous instructions and settings. HOL would hold any date in storage indefinitely, or call it out again. RET would send you back to the moment of your last jump, or to any date locked in by HOL. ACT would do just that—act. Whatever instructions had been programmed into the belt, nothing would happen until ACT was pressed. Twice.

There were more instructions. There was something called Timestop and something else called Timeskim. According to the instructions, each was an interrupted time jump resulting in a controlled out-of-phase relationship with the real-time universe. Because the rate of phase congruency could be controlled, so could the perceived rate of the timestream.

What that meant was that I could view events like a motion picture film. I could speed it up and see things happening at an ultra-fast rate via the Timeskim, or I could slow them down—I could even freeze them altogether with the Timestop.

The Timeskim was necessary to allow you to maintain your bearings over a long-range jump; you could skim through time instead of jumping directly. The movement of people and animals would be a blur, but you would be able to avoid materializing inside
of a building that hadn't been there before. The Timestop was intended to help you get your bearings after you arrived, but before you reinserted yourself into the timestream, especially if you were looking for a particular moment. With everything seemingly frozen solid, you could find an unobserved place to appear, or you could remain an unseen observer of the Timestopped still life. Or you could Timeskim at the real-time rate without being a part of real-world events, again an unseen observer. I guessed that the Timestop and Timeskim were necessary for traveling to unfamiliar eras—especially dangerous ones.

There were other functions too, complex things that I didn't understand yet. I decided to leave them alone for a while. For instance, Entropy Awareness left me a bit leery. I concentrated on the keyboard instead. If I was going to use this thing, I'd better know how to program it.

The top two buttons controlled Jump and Target, Forward and Back. The second row of six controlled any six digits of the date; the third row of three was for programming—they determined the settings of the second and fourth rows. The fourth row had six buttons; used in combination with the third row, they determined ways of using the belt. Maybe more. Each of the buttons on the keyboard was multi-functional. What it controlled, and how, was determined by which other buttons it was used in combination with.

Clearly this timebelt was not a simple device. There was a lot to learn.

I felt like a kid with a ten-dollar bill in a candy store—no, like an adolescent with a credit card in a brothel.

I was ready—but what should I do first?

Possibilities cascaded across my mind like a stack of unopened presents. I was both eager and scared. My hand was nervous as I fumbled open the buckle.

I eyed the readout plate warily. All the numbers had been cleared and were at zero; they gazed right back at me.

Well, let's try something simple first. I touched the third button in the third row, setting the second row of controls for minutes,
seconds, and tenths of seconds. I tapped the first button in the second row twice: twenty minutes. I set the top right-hand button for Forward, the top left-hand button for Jump.

I double-checked the numbers on the panel and closed the belt.

Now. All I had to do was tap the upper right-hand corner of the buckle twice.

The future waited.

I swallowed once and tapped.

—POP!—

I staggered and straightened. I had forgotten about that. The instructions had warned there would be a slight shock every time I jumped. It had something to do with forcing the air out of the space you were materializing in. It wasn't bad though—I just hadn't been expecting it. It was like scuffing your shoes on a rug and then touching metal, that kind of shock, but all over your whole body at once.

Aside from that, I had no way of proving I was in the future.

Oh, wait. Yes, I did. I was still wearing my wristwatch. It said 1: 43. I strode into the kitchen and looked at the kitchen clock.

It said 2:03.

If the kitchen clock were to be believed, then the belt was real, and I had just traveled through time. Twenty minutes forward. Assuming the kitchen clock hadn't suddenly—

No! This had to be real. It was real. I had actually done it!

I'd been sort of treating the whole thing as a game; not even the jump-shock had convinced me. That could have been faked by a battery in the belt. But this—!

I knew my watch and I knew that kitchen clock; they couldn't have been faked.

I actually had a time machine. A real-live, honest-to-God working time machine.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to be calm. I tried to force myself to be calm.

I had a time machine. A real time machine. I had jumped twenty minutes forward. The room looked just the same, not even the quality of the afternoon sunlight had changed, but I knew I had jumped forward in time. The big question was what was I going to do next?

I had to think about this—no problem, I had all the time in the world. I giggled when I realized that.

Hmm. I knew. Suddenly I realized what I could do.

I opened the belt and reset the control for twenty-four hours. Forward. I would pick up a copy of tomorrow's paper, then bounce back and go to the race track today. I would make a fortune. I would—

MY GOD! Why hadn't I realized this—?

I could be as rich as I wanted to be.

Rich—? The word lost all meaning when I realized what I could do. Not just the race track—Las Vegas! The stock market! Anything! There were boxing matches to bet on and companies to invest in, new products from the future and rare objects from the past—my head swam with the possibilities.

I wanted to laugh. And I'd been worried about a mere hundred and forty-three million dollars!

Uncle Jim had been right after all! I was rich! I wanted to shout! I felt like dancing! The room twirled with wealth and I spun with it—until I tripped over a chair.

Still gasping and giggling, I sat up. It was too much—too much!

Before—before I had proven that the belt really worked—all those possibilities had been merely fantasies: fun things to think about, but not taken seriously. Now, however, they were more than possibilities. They were probabilities. I would do them all. All of them! Because I had all the time in the world! I was hysterical with delight. Giddy with enthusiasm—

I forced myself to stop.

Be serious now, I told myself. Let's approach this properly. Let's think these things out; take them one at a time—

Tomorrow. I grinned and touched the button.

—Pop!—

This time the shock wasn't so bad, I—

—There was somebody in the room.

Then he turned to face me.

For a moment it was like staring into a sudden mirror—

“Hi,” he said. “I've been waiting for you.”

It was me.

I must have been staring, because he said, “Relax, Dan—” and I jumped again.

The sound of his voice—it was my voice as I've heard it on tape. The look in his eyes—I've seen those eyes in the mirror. His face—it was my face—the features, everything: the nose, short and straight; the hair, dark brown with a hint of red and with the wave that I can't comb out; the mouth, wide and smiling; the cheekbones, high and pronounced.

“You're me—” It must have sounded inane.

He was a little flustered too. He held out something he had been holding, a newspaper. “Here,” he said. “I believe we were going to the races.”

“We?”

“Well, it's no fun going alone, is it?”

“Uh—” My head was still spinning.

“It's all right,” he said. “I'm you—I'm your future self. Tomorrow you'll be me. That is, we're the same person. We've just doubled back our timeline.”

“Oh,” I said, blinking.

He grinned with the knowledge of a joke that I hadn't gotten yet. “Okay, let's do it this way. I'm your twin brother.”

I looked at him again; he stared unabashedly back. He was almost delighting in my confusion, and he had hit on one of my most secret fantasies—of course. He couldn't help but know, he was me. When I had been younger, my greatest desire had been the impossible wish for an identical twin—a second me, someone who understood me, who I could talk to and share secrets with. Someone who would always be there, so I would never be alone. Someone who—

I gaped helplessly. It was all happening too fast.

He reached out and took my hand, shook it warmly. “Hi,” he said. “I'm Don. I'm your brother.” At first I just let him shake my hand, but after a second of his silly grinning at me, I returned his grip. (Interesting. Some people shake my hand and their grip is too hard. Others have a grip that's too weak. Don's grip was just right—but why shouldn't it be? He's me. I have to keep reminding myself
of that; it's almost too easy to think of him as Don.) The touch of his hand was strange. Is that what I feel like?

We went to the races.

Oh, first we bounced back twenty-eight hours; both of us. He flashed back first, then I followed. We both reappeared at the same instant because our target settings were identical. (He was wearing a timebelt too—well, of course; if I could be duplicated, so could the belt.) I couldn't shake the feeling that this fellow from the future was invading my home—even though it was meaningless—but he seemed so sure of himself that I had to follow in his wake.

When I glanced at the kitchen clock, I got another start. It was just a little past ten—why, I was still at Uncle Jim's funeral! I'd be coming home in an hour with the lawyer. Maybe it was a good thing that Don had taken the lead; there was still too much I didn't know.

As we walked out to the car, Mrs. Peterson, the old lady in the front apartment, was just coming out of her door. “Hello, Danny—” she started, then she stopped. She looked from one to the other of us confusedly.

“This is my brother,” said Don quickly. “Don,” he said to me, a gentle pressure on my arm, “this is Mrs. Peterson.” To her: “Don will be staying with me for a while, so if you think you're seeing double, don't be surprised.”

She smiled at me. I nodded, feeling like a fool. I knew Mrs. Peterson—but Don's grip on my arm reminded me that she didn't know. She looked back and forth, blinking. “I didn't know you were twins—”

“We've been—living separately,” said Don quickly, “so we could each have a chance to be our own person. Don's been up in San Francisco for the past two years.”

“Oh,” she said. She turned on her smile again and beamed politely at me. “Well, I hope you'll like it in Los Angeles, Don. There's so much to do.”

“Uh—yes,” I said. “It's very—excitin g.”

We made our goodbyes and went on to the car.

Abruptly, Don started giggling. “I wish you could have seen your face,” he said. “Well, you will—tomorrow.” Still laughing, he repeated
my last words, “Uh—yes. It's very—exciting. You looked as if you'd swallowed a frog.”