"Idiot!" he snapped. "The conditional worlds, of course! The worlds of
'if.' Ahead are the worlds to be; behind are the worlds that were; to
either side are the worlds that might have been--the worlds of 'if!'"
"Eh?" I was puzzled. "Do you mean that you can see what will happen if I
do such and such?"
"No!" he snorted. "My machine does not reveal the past nor predict the
future. It will show, as I told you, the conditional worlds. You might
express it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would have
happened.' The worlds of the subjunctive mode."
"Now how the devil does it do that?"
"Simple, for van Manderpootz! I use polarized light, polarized not in
the horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourth
dimension--an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossal
pressures, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in the
direction of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave,
though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerable
improvement over time-traveling in past or future, with its impossible
velocities and ridiculous distances!"
"But--are those--worlds of 'if'--real?"
"Real? What is real? They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is a
real number as opposed to [sq]-2, which is imaginary. They are the
worlds that would have been _if_-- Do you see?"
I nodded. "Dimly. You could see, for instance, what New York would have
been like if England had won the Revolution instead of the Colonies."
"That's the principle, true enough, but you couldn't see that on the
machine. Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat (stolen from one of
my ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the device. Your
own mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if George
Washington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, he
could have seen what you suggest. We can't. You can't even see what
would have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but _I_ can. Do you
understand?"
"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past experiences
of the user."
"You're growing brilliant," he scoffed. "Yes. The device will show ten
hours of what would have happened _if_--condensed, of course, as in a
movie, 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? Any
choice you'd alter?"
"I'll say--a thousand of 'em. I'd like to know what would have happened
if I'd sold out my stocks in 2009 instead of '10. I was a millionaire in
my own right then, but I was a little--well, a little late in
liquidating."
"As usual," remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to the laboratory
then."
The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered me
into the Physics Building, and thence into his own research laboratory,
much like the one I had visited during my courses under him. The
device--he called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated in
hypothetical worlds--occupied the entire center table. Most of it was
merely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy was
the prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart of
the instrument.
Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. "Put it on," he said, and I
sat staring at the screen of the psychomat. I suppose everyone is
familiar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few years
ago 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 of
vague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen,
and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene or
circumstances he is trying to remember. He turns a knob that alters the
arrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the design
corresponds to his mental picture--presto! There is his scene re-created
under his eyes. Of course his own mind adds the details. All the screen
actually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but the thing
can be amazingly real. I've seen occasions when I could have sworn the
psychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality
itself; 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 market
crash. Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that point
I direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you have
nothing to do but watch."
I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoate
sounds of the device hummed like distant voices, but without the added
suggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face flashed and
dissolved and then, finally, I had it. There was a picture of myself
sitting in an ill-defined room; that was all. I released the knob and
gestured.
A click followed. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picture
cleared, and amazingly, another figure emerged, a woman. I recognized
her; it was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere of
the "Vision Varieties of '09." She was changed on that picture, but I
recognized her.
I'll say I did! I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07
to '10, trying to marry her, while old N. J. raved and ranted and
threatened to leave everything to the Society for Rehabilitation of the
Gobi 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 in
that crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened.
Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came and
bounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favor
dropped 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 late
again.
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 at
me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzes
became voices.
"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go
back to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you and
your golf."
"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."
"At least they're _alive_. You're a walking corpse. Just because you
were lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're a
tin god."
"Well, I _don't_ think _you're_ Cleopatra! Those friends of yours--they
trail 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.) "It
might help your figure--though I doubt if anything could!"
She glared in rage and--well, that was a painful half hour. I won't give
all the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved into
meaningless 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 it
from now on."
"That," said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's great
contribution to human happiness. 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the
saddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick.
Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might have
been--worse!'"
* * * * *
It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when I
rose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father was
unnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'd
never been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me and
dragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcastically
to 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 rocket
would have been late, and so would have missed colliding with the
British fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention that
when he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in the
mountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that.
"Dixon," he concluded, "you have no conception whatever of time. None
whatever."
The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled to
ask, "And have you, sir?"
"I have," he said grimly. "I most assuredly have. Time," he said
oracularly, "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 aboard
the rocket could have averted the catastrophe. It irritated me; in a
way, it made me responsible for the deaths of those unrescued hundreds
among 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 been
on time and they'd left on schedule instead of five minutes late, or
if--_if_!
If! The word called up van Manderpootz and his subjunctivisor--the
worlds of "if," the weird, unreal worlds that existed beside reality,
neither past nor future, but contemporary, yet extemporal. Somewhere
among their ghostly infinities existed one that represented the world
that would have been had I made the liner. I had only to call up Haskel
van Manderpootz, make an appointment, and then--find out.
Yet it wasn't an easy decision. Suppose--just suppose that I found
myself responsible--not legally responsible, certainly; there'd be no
question of criminal negligence, or anything of that sort--not even
morally responsible, because I couldn't possibly have anticipated that
my presence or absence could weigh so heavily in the scales of life and
death, nor could I have known in which direction the scales would tip.
Just--responsible; that was all. Yet I hated to find out.
I hated equally not finding out. Uncertainty has its pangs too, quite as
painful as those of remorse. It might be less nerve-racking to know
myself responsible than to wonder, to waste thoughts in vain doubts and
futile reproaches. So I seized the visiphone, dialed the number of the
University, and at length gazed on the broad, humorous, intelligent
features of van Manderpootz, dragged from a morning lecture by my call.
* * * * *
I was all but prompt for the appointment the following evening, and
might actually have been on time but for an unreasonable traffic officer
who insisted on booking me for speeding. At any rate, van Manderpootz
was impressed.
"Well!" he rumbled. "I almost missed you, Dixon. I was just going over
to the club, since I didn't expect you for an hour. You're only ten
minutes late."
I ignored this. "Professor, I want to use your--uh--your
subjunctivisor."
"Eh? Oh, yes. You're lucky, then. I was just about to dismantle it."
"Dismantle it! Why?"
"It has served its purpose. It has given birth to an idea far more
important than itself. I shall need the space it occupies."
"But what _is_ the idea, if it's not too presumptuous of me to ask?"
"It is not too presumptuous. You and the world which awaits it so
eagerly may both know, but you hear it from the lips of the author. It
is nothing less than the autobiography of van Manderpootz!" He paused
impressively.