to warn myself? No, because I hadn't let the bets go that far.) Then, if he was me . . . there really was only one of me! He would go back to the future my future, our future with his memories, but But if his memories were different than mine, how could we be the same person? So the question was still unanswered: Where was the Don I had gone to the races with? The one who had worn a sweater and slacks and bet only a hundred dollars? Where was my good sport jacket?!! Danny showed up then, he was giddy and excited like he'd invented money. He waved the check at me. "You want to see it?" I took it thoughtfully and looked. I took my check out of my pocket and compared them they were not identical. The check number on Danny's was lower and the signatures were not quite the same. Of course, how could they be identical? We were leaving earlier in the day after a different set of bets. The situations were not the same why should the checks be? Then, this check I was carrying it was no longer any good, it was from a world that no longer existed. And it was the same situation with the disappearing Don; he was a canceled check in this world, wasn't he? But the canceled check hadn't disappeared. I still had it. (I remembered myself asking if we could cash them both.) I'd been fooled once by the illusion of the duplicated check, but this time the check had been duplicated! And if I could duplicate the check, then couldn't I have duplicated myself? There was another side to it too. I'd already eliminated two possible futures: the one where I'd worn slacks and a sweater and the one where I'd won a million and a half dollars. As far as I knew, both of those Dons had ceased to exist along with their futures. Neither seemed to be still around. And if I could eliminate them what was to keep some other Dan from eliminating me? Perhaps even now * * * No. There must be something I was misunderstanding. Danny drove. He babbled incessantly; he was like a schoolgirl. But I wasn't listening anyway. I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts. I knew there was an answer. There had to be. For one thing, paradoxes were supposed to be impossible. Oh, sure, I know time travel makes the most horrendous of paradoxes possible, even probable; but that's just not so. A paradox would be a violation of the laws of nature. By definition, they're the laws of nature. And inviolable. Therefore, paradoxes are impossible. Because if paradoxes were possible, then time travel would have to be impossible otherwise, we'd have people killing their grandfathers right and left. We'd have people seducing their mothers or kidnapping their fathers. We'd have time travelers killing the inventors of time machines. We'd have all manner of anachronisms and flukes, and the laws of nature would be violated in so many different ways, it would take the invention of a whole new science to catalog them all. But time travel was possible. I had proved it myself So paradoxes were impossible. It sounded all very neat when I explained it to myself that way. Paradoxes had to be impossible; therefore, they were. Everything could be worked out logically Then, dammit, why couldn't I work this one out? If this wasn't a paradox, it was still way ahead of whatever was in second place. * * * All right. Let's assume that paradoxes are impossible then where do I go from here? The checks, for instance. Obviously, Danny's check was the good one, the one we would have to cash in order to collect our winnings. But the question was how? Should I take it forward with me into the future? But then what would Danny have to show himself when he was Don? (Of course, I hadn't made a point of comparing the checks this time around, had I?) But if I left it here in the past, how would I get it in the future? My check shouldn't exist. It was from a canceled world. Danny's check was the only valid one here because I had done things differently from the way they had originally occurred. If I had done things the way Don had done, I would have had the "duplicate" of Danny's check. But I hadn't. I had tampered with the timestream and didn't have a valid check at all. And that meant that I was a canceled check too. Because whatever I did now, this Danny when he became Don and went back in time would not do exactly the same as me. It would be impossible for him to do so. Just as I had eliminated the Don preceding me, this Danny was going to eliminate the Don preceding him me! Did I still exist? Was I about to wink out? Was it just a matter of time? Yes of course it was a matter of time. Ha, ha. The joke's on me. No, this couldn't be right; I was thinking in paradoxes again. After all, I was here and alive I was me. I hadn't eliminated Don at all. I had become him and done things differently, that's all. Sure but I still couldn't stop asking myself what had become of my Don who had done things the other way and the Don who had given me the newspaper and told me not to be so greedy. ("Forget about them you simply won't become them, that's all," I told myself. "How would you know?" I answered.) Let's see . . . there must be a way to figure this out. Danny had to go back in time and become Don to his Dan. If he takes his check back with him, I won't have it to cash. On the other hand, if I take it forward with me, he won't have a check to show his Danny. (He'll be changing the timestream, just like me. Unless ) What if I gave Danny the false check to take back with him? Would that undo the damage? Or would it just make it worse? My mind began to boggle. But it was the answer, of course. This Danny would become my Don! That's why his check would match mine when he went back to meet me (and he'd test to see if he could change the past too! He'd try wearing different clothes than me: the slacks and sweater!) And I'd still end up with the money! Yes, of course. It had to be the answer. I'd been sitting and staring at the checks for the past ten miles. Now I handed Danny the false one and he slipped it into his pocket without even looking at it. (Ha-ha! I cackled gleefully to myself.) I realized Danny was saying something: " what happens now? Do you go back to your time? I grinned at him. "Not yet. First we go out to celebrate. Like rich people." This time, I won the argument over who was "gating to use the bathroom first. I don't mind sharing my razor, but at least I ought to get the first shave off a new blade. Danny seemed a little bothered by the pseudo-intimacy of us both dressing out of the same closet, so I compromised and let him wear the red sports jacket. While he showered, I reset my belt and flipped back to morning, phoned The Restaurant and made reservations for two, then flashed forward again, appearing at the exact instant I had disappeared and in the same spot. The air hadn't even had time to rush in. (That was one way to minimize the jump-shock.) It was at The Restaurant that I began to realize what Don had meant the night before and why he had said what he did. Danny looked so ... innocent. So unprotected. He needed someone. And I could be that someone I was that someone; I knew Danny better than anyone. He was my "little brother" I would watch out for him; and that would make him feel as secure as I felt when my "big brother" Don was around. It was a strange feeling exciting. "You'll never have to be alone again," I told him. (I knew how lonely he was; I knew how much he hated it.) "You'll always have me. I'll always have you. It makes more sense this way." (I would keep him from falling into those bitter, empty moods, those gritty moments of aching frustration. It would be good for both of us.) "I don't like being alone either. This way I can share the things I like with somebody I know likes them too." (No, I would never be lonely again; I would have my Danny to take care of. And my Don to take care of me. Oh, it was such a wonderful feeling to have how could I make him see?) "I don't have to try and impress you, you don't have to try to impress me. There's perfect understanding between us. There'll never be any of those destructive little head games that people play on each other, because there can't be." It all came spilling out, a flood of emotion. (I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to hold him.) "I like me, Danny; that's why I like you. You'll feel the same way, you'll see. "And I guarantee, there are no two people in this world who understand each other as well as we do." * * * Life is full of little surprises. Time travel is full of big ones. My worrying about paradoxes and canceled checks had been needless. If I had thought to read the timebelt instructions completely before I went gallivanting off to the past and the future, I would have known. I was right that paradoxes were impossible, but I was wrong in thinking that the timestream had to be protected from them. After all, they were impossible. It wouldn't have mattered whether I had given Danny a check or not; changes in the timestream are cumulative, not variable. What this means is that you can change the past as many times as you want. You can't eliminate yourself. I could go back in time nineteen years and strangle myself in my crib, but I wouldn't cease to exist. (I'd have a dead baby on my hands though . . .) Look, you can change the future, right? The future is exactly the same as the past, only it hasn't happened yet. You haven't perceived it. The real difference between the two the only difference is your point of view. If the future can be altered, so can the past. Every change you make is cumulative; it goes on top of every other change you've already made, and every change you add later will go on top of that. You can go back in time and talk yourself out of winning a million and a half dollars, but the resultant world is not one where you didn't win a million and a half dollars; it's a world where you talked yourself out of it. See the difference? It's subtle but it's important. Think of an artist drawing a picture. But he's using indelible ink and he doesn't have an eraser. If he wants to make a change, he has to paint over a line with white. The line hasn't ceased to exist; it's just been painted over and a new line drawn on top. On the surface, it doesn't seem to make much difference. The finished picture will look the same whether the artist uses an eraser or a gallon of white paint, but it's important to the artist. He's aware of the process he used to obtain the final result and it affects his consciousness. He's aware of all the lines and drawings beneath the final one, the layer upon layer of images, each one not quite the one all those discarded pieces; they haven't ceased to exist, they've just been painted out of view. Subjectively, time travel is like that. I can lay down one timeline and then go back and do things differently the second time around. I can go back a third time and talk myself out of something, and I can go back a fourth time and change it yet again. And in the end, the timestream is exactly what I've made it it is the cumulative product of my changes. The closest I can get to the original is to go back and talk myself out of something. It won't be the same world, but the difference will be undetectable. The difference will be in me. I like the artist with his painting will be conscious of all the other alternatives that did exist, do exist, and can exist again. The world I came from is like my innocence. I can never recapture it. At best, I can only simulate it. , You can't be a virgin twice. (Not that I would, of course. Virginity seems like a nice state of existence only to a virgin, only to someone who doesn't know any better. From this side of the fence, it seems like such a waste. I remember my first time, and how I had reacted: Why, this was nothing to be scared of at all in fact, it's wonderful! Why had I taken so long to discover it? Afterward, all the time beforehand looked so ... empty.) According to the timebelt instructions, what I had done by altering the situation the second time around was called tangling. Mine had been a simple tangle, easily unraveled, but there was no limit to how complex a tangle could be. You can tie as many knots in a ball of yarn as you like. There really isn't any reason to unravel tangles (according to the instructions) because they usually take care of themselves; but the special cautions advise against letting a tangle get too complex because of the cumulative effects that might occur. You might suddenly find that you've changed your world beyond all recognition and possibly beyond your ability to live in, let alone excise. Excising is what you do when you bounce back and talk yourself out of something when you go back and undo a mistake. Like winning too much at the races. (How about that? I'd been tangling and excising and I hadn't even known it.) The belt explained the impossibility of paradoxes this way: If there was only one timestream, then paradoxes would be possible and time travel would have to be impossible. But every time you make a change in the timestream, no matter how slight, you are actually shifting to an alternate timestream. As far as you are concerned, though, it's the only timestream, because you can't get back to the original one. So when you use the timebelt, you aren't really jumping through time, that's the illusion; what you're actually doing is leaving one timestream and jumping to maybe even creating another. The second one is identical to the one you just left, including all of the changes you made in it up to the instant of your appearance. At that moment, simply by the fact of your existence in it, the second timestream becomes a different timestream. You are the difference. When you travel backward in time, you're creating that second universe at an earlier moment. It will develop in exactly the same way as the universe you just left, unless you act to alter that development. That the process is perceived as time travel is only an illusion, because the process is subjective. But because it's subjective, it really doesn't make any difference, does it? It's just as good as the real thing. Better, even; because nothing is permanent; nothing is irrevocable. The past is the future. The future is the past. There's no difference between the two and either can be changed. I'm flashing across a series of alternate worlds, creating and destroying a new one every time I bounce. The universe is infinite. And so are the possibilities of my life. * * * I am Dan. And I am Don. And sometimes I am Dean, and Dino, and Dion, and Dana. And more . . . There's a poker game going on in my apartment. It starts on June 24, 1975. I don't know when it ends. Every time one of me gets tired, there's another one showing up to take his place. The game is a twenty-fourhour marathon. I know it lasts at least a week; on July 2,1 peeked in and saw several versions of myself some in their mid-twenties still grimly playing. Okay. So I like poker. Every time I'm in the mood, I know where there's an empty chair. And when. Congenial people too. I know they’ll never cheat. I may have to get a larger apartment though. Five rooms is not enough. (I need more room for the pool table.) Strange things keep happening no, not strange things, things that I've learned not to question. For instance, once I saw Uncle Jim he looked surprised and vanished almost immediately. It startled me too. I was just getting used to the idea of his death. I hadn't realized that he would have been using the timebelt too. (But why not? It was his before it was mine.) Another time I heard strange noises from the bedroom. When I peeked in, there was Don in bed with well, whoever it was, she was covered by a blanket; I couldn't see. He just looked at me with a silly expression, not the slightest bit embarrassed, so I shrugged and closed the door. And the noises began again. I'm not questioning it at all. I'll find out. Eventually. Mostly I've been concentrating on making money. Don and I (and later, Danny and I) have made a number of excursions into the past, as well as the future. Some of our investments go back as far as 1850 (railroads, coal, steel). 1875 (Bell Telephone). 1905 (automobiles, rubber, oil, motion pictures). 1910 (airlines, heavy industry, steel again). 1920 (radio, insurance companies, chemicals, drugs). 1929 (I picked up some real bargains here. More steel. Business machines. More radio, more airlines. More automobiles). 1940 (companies that would someday be involved in computers, television, and the aerospace industry). 1950 (Polaroid and Xerox and Disney). 1960 (More Boeing stock, some land in Florida especially around Orlando). Turned out that 1975 was a good year for bargains too. It was a little too early to buy stock in something called Apple, but I could buy IBM and Sony and MCA shares. Oh, and Don said I should also pick up some stock in 20th Century Fox. There was a nifty little movie coming up in 1977 that would make a bit of money. Down through the decades, I bought a little here, a little there not enough to change the shape of the world, but enough to supply me with a comfortable lifelong fortune. It was a little tricky setting up an investment firm to manage it, but it was worth the effort. When I got back to 1975, I found I was worth one hundred and forty-three million dollars. Hmm. Actually, the number was meaningless. I was worth a hell of a lot more. It turned out I owned an investment monopoly worth several billion dollars, or let's say I controlled it. What I owned was the holding company that held the holding companies. By the numbers, its value was only one hundred and forty-three million, but I could put my hands on a lot more than that if I wanted. What it meant was that I had unlimited credit. Hell! If I wanted to, I could own the country! The world! Believe it or not, I didn't want to. I'd lost interest in the money. It was just so much numbers. Useless except as a tool to manipulate my environment, and I had a much better tool for that. Those frequent trips to the past had whetted my appetite. I had seen New York grow like a living creature, the city had swelled and soared; her cast-iron facades had become concrete; her marble towers gave way to glass-sided slabs and soaring monoliths. And beyond that, she became something enchanted: a fantasy of light and color. Oh, the someday beauty of her! I became intrigued with history I went back to see the burning of the Hindenburg. I was there when the great zeppelin shriveled in flame and an excited announcer babbled into his microphone. I was there when Lindbergh took off and I was there again when he landed. The little airplane seemed so frail. I was there when another airplane smacked into the • Empire State Building, shattering glass and concrete and tumbling to the horrified street below. It was unreal. I saw the Wright brothers' first flight. That was unreal too. And I know what happened to Judge Crater. I saw the blastoff of Apollo II. It was the loudest sound I've ever heard. And I witnessed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't dramatic at all; it was sad and clumsy. I was there (via timeskim) at Custer s last stand. I witnessed the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. (The guy who was supposed to pound in the gold spike slipped and fell in the mud.) I've seen the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. I was at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (How far we have come since then. . . .) I saw the burning of Atlanta. And I've seen the original uncut versions of D. W. Griffith's Intolerance and Merian C. Cooper's King Kong and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was there the day the Liberty Bell cracked. And I saw the fall of the Alamo. I witnessed the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack. I attended a band concert conducted by John Philip Sousa. I heard Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address. I recorded it on tape. I've seen Paul Revere's midnight ride and the Boston Tea Party. I've met George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And I watched Columbus come ashore. I saw Ben Franklin flying a kite on a rainy day. I was there when Bell tested his first telephone. "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." I witnessed Galileo's experiment when he dropped two lead balls of different weights from the tower of Pisa. I have seen performances of plays by William Shakespeare. At the Globe Theater in London. I watched Leonardo da Vinci as he painted La Jac- onde, the Mona Lisa. (I will not tell you why she smiles.) And I watched as his rival, Michelangelo, painted the Sistine Chapel. I've heard Strauss waltzes, conducted by Strauss himself. I saw the disastrous premiere of Stravinsky's Rites of Spring. And Ravel's Bolero too. I've heard Beethoven's symphonies as conducted by Beethoven himself. And Mozart. And Bach. (I've seen the Beatles too.) And the beheading of Ann Boleyn and Thomas More. I've seen the signing of the Magna Carta. I have visited Imperial Rome. Nero and Tiberius and Julius Caesar himself. Cleopatra was ugly. And ancient Greece. The sacking of Troy was more than a myth. I have witnessed performances of plays by Sopho- cles and watched as Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle taught Alexander. I saw Socrates drink the cup of hemlock. I have witnessed the crucifixion of one Jesus of Nazareth. He looked so sad. And more. I have seen dinosaurs. I have seen the thunder lizards walk the Earth. The Brontosaurus, the Stegosaurus, and Triceratops and the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the most fearsome monster ever to stalk the world. I have seen the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of Pompeii. I have seen the explosion of Krakatoa. I watched an asteroid plunge from the sky and shatter a giant crater in what would someday be Arizona. I've witnessed the death of Hiroshima by atomic fire. I've timeskimmed from the far distant past and watched as the Colorado River carved out the Grand Canyon a living, twisting snake of water cutting away the rock. And more. I've been to the year 2001 and beyond. I've been to the moon. I've walked its surface in a flimsy spacesuit and held its dust in my hands. I've seen the Earth rise above the Lunar Apennines. I've visited Tranquillity Base and flashing back to the past, I watched the Eagle land. I saw Neil Armstrong come ashore. And more. I've been to Mars. I've been to the great hotels that orbit Jupiter and I've seen the rings of Saturn. I've timeskimmed from the far past to the far future. I have seen Creation. I have seen how Entropy ravages everything. From Great Bang to Great Bang the existence of the Earth is less than a blink; the death of the sun by nova, almost unnoticeable. I've seen the future of mankind I like to think I understand, but I know that I don't. The future of the human race is as alien and incomprehensible to me as the year 1975 would be to a man of Charlemagne's era. But wondrous it is indeed, and filled with marvelous things. There is nothing that I cannot witness but there is little that I can participate in. I am limited. By my language, by my appearance, by my skin color, and my height. I am limited to life in a span of history maybe two hundred years in each direction. Beyond that, the languages are difficult: the meanings have altered, the pronunciations and usages too complex to decipher. With effort, perhaps, I can communicate; but the farther I go from 1975, the harder it is to make myself understood. And there are other differences. In the past, I am too tall. The farther back I travel, the shorter everybody becomes. And the farther forward I go, the taller. In the not-too-distant future, I am too short humanity's evolution is upward. And there are still other differences. Disturbing ones. There are places where my skin is the wrong color, or my eyes the wrong shape. And there is one time in the future when I am the wrong sex. There are places where people's faces are different. I can witness. I cannot participate. But witnessing is enough: I have seen more of history than any other human being. I have timeskimmed and timestopped and my journeys have been voyages of mystery and adventure. There is much that I don't understand. There are things that are incomprehensible to one who is not of the era and the culture. But still the proper study of humanity is humanity itself. History is not just old news. It's people. It's the ebb and flow of life. It's the sound of bells and horns, the stamp of boots in the street, the flapping of banners in the wind, the smell of smoke and flowers. It's bread and trains and newspapers. It's the acrid smell of the herd, and the press of the crowd. It's surprise and glory and fear. It's confusion, panic, and disaster and above all, history is triumphl It is the triumph of individuals creating, designing, building, changing, challenging never quitting. It is the continual victory of the intellect over the animal; the unquenchable vitality of life! Passion overwhelms despair and humanity goes on; sometimes seething, sometimes dirty, sometimes even unspeakably evil. But always despite the setbacks the direction is always upward. If I must taste the bitterness, it is worth it; because I have also shared the dreams. And the promise. I have seen its fulfillment. I know the truth and the destiny of the human race. It is a proud and lonely thing to be a man. * * * This part, I think, may be the hardest to record. It was inevitable, I suppose, that it happen, but it has caused me to do some serious thinking. About myself. About Dan. About Don. When Uncle Jim died, I thought my life would be changed, and I worried about the directions it might take. When I thought I had eliminated myself by a timebelt paradox, I realized how much I feared dying I realized how much I needed to be Dan to my Don and Don to my Dan. But this this makes me question the shape of my whole life. What am I? Who am I? What am I doing to myself? Have I made a wrong decision? Am I moving in a strange and terrible direction? I wish I knew. It started when? Yesterday evening? Time is funny when you don't live it linearly. When I get tired, I sleep, I flip forward or backward to the nearest nighttime and climb into bed. If I'm not tired, and it’s night, I flash to day and go to the beach. Or I jump to winter and go skiing. I stay as long as I want, or as short as I want. I stay for weeks or only a few minutes. I'm not a slave to the clock nor even to the seasons. What I mean is, I'm no longer living in a straight line. I bounce back and forth through the days like a temporal Ping-Pong ball. I don't even know how old I am anymore. I think I've passed my twentieth birthday, but I'm not sure. It's strange. . . . Time used to be a flowing river. I sailed down it and watched the shores sweep past: here, a warm summer evening, ice tinkling in lemonade glasses; there, a cool fall morning, dead leaves crunching underfoot and my breath in frosty puffs. Time was a slowly shifting panorama along the river bank. I was a leaf in the water. I was carried helplessly along, a victim of the current. Now I'm out of the river and standing on the bank. I am the motion and time is the observer. No longer a victim, I am the cause. All of time is laid out before me like a table, no longer a moving entity, but a vast and mutable landscape. I can leap to any point on it at will. Would I like a nice summer day? Yes, there's a pleasant one. Am I in the mood for a fall morning? Ah, that's nice. I don't have to wait for the river to carry me to a place where I might be able to find that moment I can go exactly to it. No moment can ever escape me. I've chased twi- light and captured dawn. I've conquered day and tamed the night. I can live as I choose because I am the master of time. I laugh to think of it. Time is an everlasting smorgasbord and I am the gourmet, picking here, choosing there, discarding this unnecessary bit of tripe and taking an extra piece of filet instead. But even this temporal mobility, no matter how unlimited it is, does not keep me from arbitrarily dividing things into "day" and "night." It must be a human thing to want to divide eternity into bite-sized chunks. It's easier to digest. So no matter how many jumps I make, anything that happened before my last sleep happened "yesterday," and everything since I woke up (and until I go to sleep again) is part of my "today." Some of my "todays" have spanned a thousand years. And "tomorrow" comes not with the dawn, but with my next awakening. I think I'm still on a twenty-four-hour life cycle, but I can't be sure. If I add a few extra hours to my "day" so as to enjoy the beach a little longer, I find my body tends to obey the local time, not mine. Perhaps humanity is unconsciously geared to the sun. At least, it seems that way. I don't get tired until after the world gets dark. (But like I said before, I'm not sure how old I am anymore. I've lost track.) Anyway. What I'm getting to is that this happened "yesterday." Don and I were listening to Beethoven. (The origi- nal Beethoven. I had gotten a recorder from 2050, a multichannel device capable of greater fidelity than anything known in 1975, and had taped all eleven of the master's symphonies. Yes. All eleven.) We had spent the day swimming skinny-dipping actually (it's strange to watch your own nude body from a distance), and now we were resting up before dinner. I have this mansion in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley; the view is spectacular. All fields and orchards. Even the bedroom has a picture window. It was dusk. The sun was just dipping behind the hills to the west. It was large and orange through the haze. Don had turned on the stereo and collapsed exhaustedly on the bed (a king-size water bed) without even toweling off. I didn't think anything of it. I was tired too. I made an attempt to dry myself off, then lay down beside him. (I'd gotten into a very bad habit with Don with Dan with myself. I'd discovered I didn't like being alone. Even when I sleep, I need the assurance of knowing there's somebody next to me. So more and more I found myself climbing into bed with one or more versions of myself. Sometimes there's a lot of horseplay and giggling. What did I want? Did I know? Is that why I did it? It extends to other things too. I won't swim alone. And several times we've showered together, ostensibly so we could scrub each other's back.) We were both stretched out naked on the water bed, just staring at the ceiling and listening to the Pastoral Symphony, that part near the beginning where it goes "pah-rump-pah-pah, rump-pah-pah . . ." (You know, where Disney's joyous trumpets announce a cascade of happy unicorns.) It was a good tiredness. Languorous. I was floating oh so pleasantly and the light show on the ceiling was swirling in red and pink and purple, shifting to blue and white. I'd been getting strange vibrations from Don all day. I wasn't sure why. (Or perhaps I hadn't wanted to admit ) He kept looking at me oddly. His glance kept meeting mine and he seemed to be smiling about some inner secret, but he wouldn't say what it was. He touched me a lot too. There had been a lot of clowning around in the pool, and once I thought he had been about to (I must have sensed it earlier, I must have; but I must have also been refusing to recognize it.) The symphony had reached that point where it sug- gests wild dancing, with several false stops, when a soft pop! in the air made me look up. Another Don. I had long since gotten used to various versions of myself ma- terializing and disappearing at random. But I sat up any- way. He looked troubled. And tired. "Which one of you is Dan?" he said. He looked at me. "You are, aren't you?" I nodded. Don, beside me, raised up on one elbow, sending ripples through the bed, but his gaze was veiled. Don II looked at him but stepped toward me. He was holding a sheaf of papers I recognized it as my, no, his diary; that is, his version of my diary. "I want to excise something," he said. "What?" "That is, I think I want to excise it. I'm not sure " He looked at me. He sat down on the bed, and for a moment I thought he was close to tears. He was trembling. "Look, I don't know if this this thing is good or bad or what. Maybe the terms are meaningless. I just don't know. I'm not sure if I should tell you to avoid this or whether I should let you make your own decision." He looked at both of us. "I can't talk about it. I mean, I can't talk about it to you because you wouldn't understand. Not yet. That's why I have to do it this way. Here's my diary. Read it, Dan. Then you decide for yourself if if that's what you want. I mean, it's the only way. You shouldn't stumble into this. You should either go into it with your eyes open and be aware of what you're doing, or you should reject it because you're aware of its possibility. Either way, it's going to change your our life." He was very upset, and that made me very concerned. I reached out and touched his arm. He flinched and pulled away. "Tell me what it is " I said. He shook his head adamantly. "Just read the diary." "I will," I promised. "But stay here until I do, so you can talk to me about it." "No, I can't. I tried that once and we ended up doing exactly what I came back to stop. I mean, I mustn't be here if you're to make your own choice." And he popped out of existence. Back to his own future my future perhaps? I won't know till I get there. I picked up the papers and paged through them. The early parts were identical to mine, even up to the point where Don and I were listening to Beethoven, stretched out on the water bed * * * What I'm trying to get at is that it started almost accidently. Don rubbed himself abstractedly and then stretched and rolled over on his stomach. He reached over and grabbed a pillow above my head. "You want one?" I nodded. He fluffed it and shoved it under my head, then grabbed another one for himself. He didn't roll away; instead, he sighed and let his arm fall across my chest. Absentmindedly I reached up and stroked his arm. In response, he gave me a casual hug. And then he was looking at me and our eyes were locked in another of those glances. He was mysterious. I was curious. His smile was bottomless. "What is it?" I asked. In answer, he slid himself upward and kissed me. Just a kiss. Quick, affectionate and loaded with desire. He pulled back and looked at me, still smiling, watching my reaction. I was confused. Because I had accepted it. I had let him kiss me as if it were a totally natural thing for him to do. I hadn't questioned it at all. His eyes were shining, and I studied them carefully. He lowered his face to mine again. . . . This time the kiss was longer. Much longer. And he didn't just kiss me. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to him. And I helped. We stretched out side by side, facing each other on the water bed. We put our arms around each other. And we kissed. I realized I liked it. I liked it. "Don," I managed to gasp, "We shouldn't " He studied me. "But you want to, don't you?" And I knew he was right. "Yes, but " His face was so open, his eyes were so deep. "But it's wrong " "Is it? Why is it?" "Because it's not right " "Is it any worse than masturbation? You masturbated yesterday, Danny, I know. Because I did too. You were alone in the house, but you're never alone from yourself." "I I but masturbation isn't I mean, that's " "Danny " He silenced me with a finger across my lips. "I want to give you pleasure, I want to give you me, You have your arms around me. You have your hands on me. You like what you feel, I know you do." And he was right. I did like it. I did enjoy it. He was so sure of himself. "Just relax, Danny," he whispered. "Just relax." He kissed me again and I kissed him back. * * * I've done it twice now. I've been seduced and I've seduced myself. Or maybe I should say, after Don seduced me, I seduced Danny. I'm filled with the joy of discovery. A sense of sharing. My relations with Don with Dan have taken on a new intensity. There is a lot more touching, a lot more laughter, a lot more . . . intimacy. I look forward to tonight and yet, I also hold myself back. The anticipation is delightful. Tonight, tonight . . . (I begin to understand emotion. Now I know why there are love songs. I touch the button on my belt. I fly to meet myself.) * * * So this is love. The giving. The taking. The abandonment of roles. The opening of the self. And the resultant sensuality of it all. The delight. The laughing joy. Were I to describe in clinical detail for some unknown reader those things that we have actually done, the intensity and pleasure would not come through. The joy would be filtered out. The written paragraphs would be grotesque. Perverse. Because love cannot be discussed objectively. It is a subjective thing. You must be immersed in it to understand it. The things that Danny and I (Don and I) have done, we've done them out of curiosity and delight and sharing. Not compulsion. Delight. And joyous sexuality. We are discovering our bodies. We are discovering each other. We are children with a magnificent new toy. Yes, sex is a toy for grownups. To describe the things we have been doing would deprive them of their special intimacy and magic. We do them because they feel good. We do them because in this way we make each other feel good. We do it out of love. Is this love? It must be. Why didn't I do this sooner? * * * And yet, I wonder what I am doing. A vague sense of wrongness pervades my life. I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot Who's watching me? Who's judging my days? Is it wrong? I don't know. There is no one I can talk to about it, not even myself. Every Don I know every Dan is caught up in the same whirlpool. None of us is any closer to the truth. We are all confused. I'm alone for the first time in days. It makes no difference. I'm still talking to myself. I wish some Don from the future would come back to advise me but even that's a useless wish. Any Don who did come back would only be trying to shape me toward his goals, regardless of mine. (I did meet one once. I don't know if it was intentional or accidental. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe older; there were tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. He was a little darker and a lot heavier than me. He said, "You