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Banshee, whole no. 7, March 1945
Page 8
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Anyhow, I put the damn thing into reverse as fast as I could -- and landed right back where and when I'd come from, perfectly safe and sound. I put in a couple of days going over that machine with a fine-toothcomb to see what had gone wrong, but I couldn't find a thing. I'm willing to admit at this point that I was half-afraid to try again.-- and I'd have shown a lot better sense if I'd been all the way afraid, too -- but, as usual, my curiosity overcame my better judgement. The third time I set the machine for a week ahead again -- everything exactly as it had been the first time. I'm positive everything was set the same way, and I'd swear on a stack of ghibles that there was nothing wrong with the machine -- it was all in working order, the controls were properly adjusted.... Only I didn't go a week ahead that time. Not in this cosmos, anyhow. Go ahead and think I'm crazy -- by now I'm not so sure myself -- because I landed in a two-dimensional world. And don't ask me to describe that one either. Just take my word for it -- it was two-dimensional all right. When I got back that time, i had sense enough not to try anything more until the original week was over, and I'd had a chance to check on my first findings. Well -- the first trip was on the level -- everything happened just the way I'd seen it happen from the machine. I'm certain that on my first trip I went a week ahead into the future! Once I was positive about that, I began making one trip after another. And out of fifty attempts, the only time I even hit earth, let alone the lat, was on that first try. Why it should have been the first one that was lucky, I couldn't say. Probably some minor god's poor sense of humor. But most of the other attempts were like the second -- just nothing at all. Space, and more space. Sometimes I'd hit one of the cockeyed universes we always sneered at in stefstories; sometimes it would be a recognizable world something like our own. I'm just surprised, now, that I never hit smack in the center of a star, or collided with anything -- I'm beginning to realize it was nothing but luck that I didn't. Sure -- we figured the space-time warp. And let me tell you, it took a lot more figuring to find out why that wasn't enough. Oversimplified isn't the word for it! I won't go into all the math of it here, because the censor would be sure to think it was code or something and kill the letter -- and anyhow I have to pay postage on this mess! But here's what it boils down to: You know that in the three-dimensional universe we live in, no object can occupy two different points in space at the same time. In other words, we use a hypothetical fourth dimension, which we call time, to locate a three-dimensional object in three-dimensional space. Follow me? Okay then -- take your four-dimensional continuum -- in which time is no longer the hypothetical fourth dimension, but the real one. Well, it's equally true that no object can occupy more than its own 'point' in the continuum at the same 'time' (using time, again, as the hypo- p8
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Anyhow, I put the damn thing into reverse as fast as I could -- and landed right back where and when I'd come from, perfectly safe and sound. I put in a couple of days going over that machine with a fine-toothcomb to see what had gone wrong, but I couldn't find a thing. I'm willing to admit at this point that I was half-afraid to try again.-- and I'd have shown a lot better sense if I'd been all the way afraid, too -- but, as usual, my curiosity overcame my better judgement. The third time I set the machine for a week ahead again -- everything exactly as it had been the first time. I'm positive everything was set the same way, and I'd swear on a stack of ghibles that there was nothing wrong with the machine -- it was all in working order, the controls were properly adjusted.... Only I didn't go a week ahead that time. Not in this cosmos, anyhow. Go ahead and think I'm crazy -- by now I'm not so sure myself -- because I landed in a two-dimensional world. And don't ask me to describe that one either. Just take my word for it -- it was two-dimensional all right. When I got back that time, i had sense enough not to try anything more until the original week was over, and I'd had a chance to check on my first findings. Well -- the first trip was on the level -- everything happened just the way I'd seen it happen from the machine. I'm certain that on my first trip I went a week ahead into the future! Once I was positive about that, I began making one trip after another. And out of fifty attempts, the only time I even hit earth, let alone the lat, was on that first try. Why it should have been the first one that was lucky, I couldn't say. Probably some minor god's poor sense of humor. But most of the other attempts were like the second -- just nothing at all. Space, and more space. Sometimes I'd hit one of the cockeyed universes we always sneered at in stefstories; sometimes it would be a recognizable world something like our own. I'm just surprised, now, that I never hit smack in the center of a star, or collided with anything -- I'm beginning to realize it was nothing but luck that I didn't. Sure -- we figured the space-time warp. And let me tell you, it took a lot more figuring to find out why that wasn't enough. Oversimplified isn't the word for it! I won't go into all the math of it here, because the censor would be sure to think it was code or something and kill the letter -- and anyhow I have to pay postage on this mess! But here's what it boils down to: You know that in the three-dimensional universe we live in, no object can occupy two different points in space at the same time. In other words, we use a hypothetical fourth dimension, which we call time, to locate a three-dimensional object in three-dimensional space. Follow me? Okay then -- take your four-dimensional continuum -- in which time is no longer the hypothetical fourth dimension, but the real one. Well, it's equally true that no object can occupy more than its own 'point' in the continuum at the same 'time' (using time, again, as the hypo- p8
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