"I have some friends," he went on, "who make a practice of helping
people like yourself to better things."
"What do you mean by 'better things'?" I asked warily.
"I'm talking about time travel, Gerald. The real thing--not the Bilbo
Grundy toy, but real physical time travel. These friends have gone a lot
further than Grundy did with his invention and they perform the service
of transporting people to a better age."
"You mean the future?"
"The past!" said Mr. Atkins. "The chances are the future will be even
worse. I'm talking about the middle of the last century, around the
nineteen-fifties or thereabouts."
I began to laugh. "The nineteen-fifties! What would I do to earn a
living in those days?"
* * * * *
He gave me a thin smile. "I guess that would be your first unsolved
problem. After all, you said you wanted problems and the chance to make
plans and try to make them come true."
"But why pick me?" I wanted to know.
"I like you, Gerald," he said. "I would like to see you have a decent
chance. And don't flatter yourself--you wouldn't be the first one to go.
You'd be in good company."