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Dream Quest, v. 1, issue 1, July 1947
Page 8
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DREAM QUEST Times Three, the representative of the race which made and lost the Probability Engine denounced Prim and his companions who had found and misused it. By this super-race the Probability Engine had been used to forecast the results of alternative choices, merely casting hypotheses and working out the results mechanically instead of mentally. But Prim and his fellows had used it to force divisions in the time stream they belonged to, and actualized three possibilities from the crucial decision on handling atomic energy. After deciding that World II and World III were unsuccessful, and that the world based on putting atomics in the public domain, World I, was successful, the eight villains directed the Probability Engine to destroy Worlds II and III. This reminds me of an amazing little story in an obscure fantasy collection entitled "A Moment of Time." I can't reproduce the cleverness of it, but as i recall, an old gentleman pulled out a watch and said, "The universe will end -- now," and put his watch away. A young man argued with him. "I can still see the world around me." he said. "ono," said the oldster. "If the world had not ended at the moment i indicated, it would have now been as you think you observe it, and you would have been observing it as you now think you are doing." "But, by George," shouted the young one, "i can see it and i'm not addicted to allusions." "What is this you that sees it? You died along with the world a minute ago. That which now makes these extravagant assertions is merely the cut-off projection of what you would have continued to be if you hadn't died." But Prim's gang had not destroyed the unsuccessful possible worlds; they had only placed them beyond their own observation. And the peoples of those worlds went on suffering from the wrong choices forced upon them when the wielders of the Probability Engine split destiny three ways. But they were not utterly beyond the possibility of observation by the eight experimenters, or by people in World I which continued to be within the time-splitters' ken. People in World II found that by intense concentration under the right circumstances, they could swap egos with their counterparts in World I; and citizens of World I who were not yet thus dispossessed sometimes had bad dreams which originated in their World II counterparts. And finally scientists in World II developed a means of bridging the gap which separated them from the happy world, and sent an invading force thru it. As concerns Prim and his fellow Late Middle Dawn men, and Thorn I and his acquaintances, then, World II and World III were actual, for they were knowable to these men's minds. Would they have been actual if there had not remained this possibility of communication and transportation -- if the Probability Engine, though failing to "destroy" them, had put them utterly beyond observation and capacity to affect? If this had been accomplished, would Worlds II and III not have been in exactly the same status as the hypothetical worlds which the True Owners of the Machine claimed they never actualized, but only postulated to test alternatives? The envoy of the True Owners seemed to think there was difference. Human beings continued to live and suffer in Worlds II and III; there was no such suffering in the hypothetical worlds which resulted
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DREAM QUEST Times Three, the representative of the race which made and lost the Probability Engine denounced Prim and his companions who had found and misused it. By this super-race the Probability Engine had been used to forecast the results of alternative choices, merely casting hypotheses and working out the results mechanically instead of mentally. But Prim and his fellows had used it to force divisions in the time stream they belonged to, and actualized three possibilities from the crucial decision on handling atomic energy. After deciding that World II and World III were unsuccessful, and that the world based on putting atomics in the public domain, World I, was successful, the eight villains directed the Probability Engine to destroy Worlds II and III. This reminds me of an amazing little story in an obscure fantasy collection entitled "A Moment of Time." I can't reproduce the cleverness of it, but as i recall, an old gentleman pulled out a watch and said, "The universe will end -- now," and put his watch away. A young man argued with him. "I can still see the world around me." he said. "ono," said the oldster. "If the world had not ended at the moment i indicated, it would have now been as you think you observe it, and you would have been observing it as you now think you are doing." "But, by George," shouted the young one, "i can see it and i'm not addicted to allusions." "What is this you that sees it? You died along with the world a minute ago. That which now makes these extravagant assertions is merely the cut-off projection of what you would have continued to be if you hadn't died." But Prim's gang had not destroyed the unsuccessful possible worlds; they had only placed them beyond their own observation. And the peoples of those worlds went on suffering from the wrong choices forced upon them when the wielders of the Probability Engine split destiny three ways. But they were not utterly beyond the possibility of observation by the eight experimenters, or by people in World I which continued to be within the time-splitters' ken. People in World II found that by intense concentration under the right circumstances, they could swap egos with their counterparts in World I; and citizens of World I who were not yet thus dispossessed sometimes had bad dreams which originated in their World II counterparts. And finally scientists in World II developed a means of bridging the gap which separated them from the happy world, and sent an invading force thru it. As concerns Prim and his fellow Late Middle Dawn men, and Thorn I and his acquaintances, then, World II and World III were actual, for they were knowable to these men's minds. Would they have been actual if there had not remained this possibility of communication and transportation -- if the Probability Engine, though failing to "destroy" them, had put them utterly beyond observation and capacity to affect? If this had been accomplished, would Worlds II and III not have been in exactly the same status as the hypothetical worlds which the True Owners of the Machine claimed they never actualized, but only postulated to test alternatives? The envoy of the True Owners seemed to think there was difference. Human beings continued to live and suffer in Worlds II and III; there was no such suffering in the hypothetical worlds which resulted
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