Nova 4

ROBERT SHECKLEY Slaves of Time

Always dryly witty, always first class, Sheckley's works have changed through the years from phenomenalistic to philosophical, a change landmarked by his novel Dimension of Miracles. Today, from his home in the Balearic Islands, he is taking a longer, deeper look at reality, which produces the happy results of stories such as this one.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One:

Charlie Gleister had invented a time machine, but he hadn't invented it right because it didn't work. His machine was about the size of a white plastic shoe box. Its surfaces were covered with dials and switches and levers and buttons. It made funny noises when Charlie turned it on, and its glow bulbs flashed purple and green, and it made his skin tingle. But nothing else. Charlie's machine was a very good tingler and flasher and noisemaker, but it was not a good time machine. It didn't become that until later, after Charlie had gained enough insight from the future so that he could adjust the machine to work properly in the present. (There is a paradox involved in that, of course. Time travel is full of paradoxes. The universe runs on paradox-power.)

So there was Charlie on a beautiful September afternoon in his basement laboratory on Apple Street in the unincorporated township of Harvest Falls, Indiana, tinkering with his machine and talking out loud to himself, saying things like, "Oscillation deployment factor...beat phase regeneration...infinite recycling amplitudes... second force reflection coefficient..." This is the veritable language in which genius communicates with itself, and Charlie was definitely a genius, even though Myra's father thought he was "a mite loco." Myra's father was the leading banker in Harvest Falls and a keen amateur psychometrician. Myra was Charlie's fiancée. Just now she was out for a drive with Carter Littlejohn, once the finest tailback in Hoosier history, now a locomotive salesman and the future father of Myra's illegitimate daughter, Hilda. Gleister's parents lived in a condominium in Jupiter, Florida, played Bingo every Friday night and wrote to Charlie on the first of every month. These people play no part in the story. Gleister also had an Uncle Max who lived in Key West and was known locally as the Pinochle King of the Conches. He also plays no part in the story. Nobody plays any real part in this story except Charlie Gleister, who plays entirely too large a part, or too many parts. But that's what happens when you begin to jump time tracks, as Charlie Gleister is about to do.

In the meantime, however, he was seated at his workbench putting tiny components together and taking them apart again and getting grease on his white shirt and cursing mildly and waiting for a gestalt to form or an insight to occur or something to happen.

And then something did happen. A voice behind him said, "Er, excuse me."

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One Plus Two:

The hairs on the back of Gleister's neck stood erect. He knew that he had bolted the lab door. His hand closed idiotically on the handle of a micrometer weighing perhaps thirty grams. He turned slowly.

"Didn't mean to startle you," the man behind him said, "but there was no other way. I've come about a very important matter."

Charlie relaxed his grip on the deadly micrometer. The man did not seem to be a dope-inflamed mugger. He was a tall lanky man of about Charlie's own age, with a long, homely, good-natured face. He was holding a white plastic box covered with dials and switches and levers and buttons. There was something familiar about him.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Charlie asked.

The stranger grinned and didn't answer. Charlie looked at him, taking in the white shirt stained with grease, the khaki slacks, the Thom McCann ripple sole shoes...

"Oh my God," Charlie said, "you look just like me."

"I am you," the stranger said. "Or you are me. Or, more accurately, we're both Charlie Gleister occupying different time tracks."

"How can that be?" Gleister asked.

"That's a silly question for you to ask," the other Gleister said, "seeing as how you have just invented the world's first time machine and are therefore the world's leading expert on the nature of time."

"But I haven't invented it yet, not so that it works."

"Sure you have. Or you will very soon, which comes to the same thing."

"Are you certain about that? I seem to be doing something wrong. Could you give me a hint?"

"Of course," the other Gleister said. "Just remember that reality is positional and that nothing happens for the first time."

"Thanks," Gleister said doubtfully. "Let me see if I've got this straight. I'm going to get my time machine working soon, go into the future, then come back and meet myself just before I invent the time machine."

The other Gleister nodded.

"That's sort of weird, isn't it?" Charlie asked.

"Not at all," the other Gleister said. "You come back to now in order to urge yourself not to invent the time machine."

"Not to invent it?"

"That's right."

"Just a minute," Gleister said. "Let's start all over. I invent a time machine and go into the future and then come back to now and tell myself not to invent a time machine. Is that what I'm going to do?"

"That's it. But you don't have to keep on referring to us both as 'I.' We're both Charlie Gleister, of course, but we are also separate individuals, since we occupy different time tracks and are/were/will undergo different experiences at different moments in subjective time. So even though we're the same people, that makes us different, since reality is positional."

"I'll take your word for it," Gleister said. "Or my word for it...I think I'm getting a little hysterical...Why shouldn't I invent the time machine I invented?"

"Because it will be used for evil purposes."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Just take my word for it. I have to get out of here now: you and I talking together in the past constitutes a regressive temporal paradox, which can be maintained for only a few minutes and then is self-canceling. Progressive temporal paradoxes are another matter, of course; but you'll learn all of this yourself. Just believe me, do yourself a favor, don't invent that time machine."

The other Gleister began to shimmer faintly. Charlie called out, "Hey, wait! There's a couple of things---"

"Sorry, I'm smack out of duration," the other Gleister said. The shimmering intensified and his figure grew transparent. "How do you like this for an exit?" the other Gleister asked, grinning self-consciously. "See you around."

The other Gleister disappeared.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One:

After the other Gleister had gone, Charlie needed only a moment to decide not to not invent the time machine. He didn't like taking orders, not even from someone who called himself himself: which was arguable anyhow, since reality is positional. If it was so important not to invent a time machine, let the other Gleister not invent it.

Charlie went to work immediately, and, knowing that the thing was possible, needed only two hours to get his time machine working properly. Nothing happens for the first time, especially if what you're trying to do is to invent something absolutely novel and unprecedented. Of course, if nothing happens for the first time, that leaves the apparent problem of how anything happens at all. But the difficulty is entirely semantic: in the eternal recurrence of subatomic configurations of which our world is a simulacrum, there is no question of beginnings or endings. There are only middles, continuations, repetitions. Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.

So there was Charlie with his fully operational time machine neatly encased in a white plastic box, and now he is going on a journey into the future. But how? Consider---time and space are potentially equivalent quantities. They can be transformed into each other via the deus ex machina of a time machine. Take a simple analogy. You have five oranges and three apples. You want to add them together. To do so, you must first convert apples into oranges or oranges into apples or both into something else. The formula for converting apples into oranges is Taste divided by Flavor plus the square root of Color multiplied by seeds squared. You handle space-time transpositions in the same way, but using the appropriate formula. A time machine is no more than a realtime space-into-time converter operating on recycling interface energy residues. The practical application is a little more complicated than that, of course, and only Charlie Gleister was ever able to make it work. That may seem to be a violation of the law of Eternal Recurrence; but Exceptionality is also subject to repetition, as will be seen.

Gleister set the machine's controls for the limit of its forward ability---a matter of some millions of years of human time, or several hours from the viewpoint of a star, or a googol of chilicosms from the outlook of a Paramecium. He pushed the button. Something happened.

At Gleister's level of awareness, he seemed to be traveling on a straight line extending between past and future; a line capable of countless branchings as chance or circumstance arose. But seen from a higher level of magnitude, a time track is a fixed orbit around some unimaginable center, and what feels like a deviation is mere perturbation in an inevitable circle. Only the macrocosmic outlook permits the fiction of straight lines and novelty; the microcosm is the realm of circularity and repetition. The interface between these different realities is coincidence. Rate of coincidence is a function of rate of speed. Travel fast enough and far enough and long enough and you get to see the cosmic scenery---the haunted landscapes of eternal recurrences.

Gleister experienced a brief moment of vertigo (Quaestura Effect) and then, there he was, the world's first time traveler, standing in the unimaginably far distant future. Tremulously, he looked around him.

The first thing he noticed were the policemen.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One Variation A:

...determined to keep my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut. One of the first things I notice is the accommodation effect which regularizes my experience. (Inseparability of subject and object, constancy of sense-ratios.) It is all so familiar! I suppose that an electron, traveling from one atom to another, also expects to enter a realm of unimaginable novelty. But perhaps the scenery in every part of the universe is roughly similar; since one sees in accordance with who one is rather than with what is there.

Linguistic accommodation as well. Are they speaking my language or am I speaking theirs? I can never know: the transaction cannot watch itself being transacted.

I am in the town of Mingusville 32 S. There are at least four different sets of uniformed police on the streets---municipal, political, secret and special police. I am posing as a Nepalese sociology student writing a thesis entitled "The Ecstasy of Conformity." (This theme is acceptable to officialdom of any time period and explains away my chi-chi accent and lack of presentday knowledge.)

Mingusville 32 S is a ramshackle place containing some interesting technological retrogressions: steam-operated vehicles burning dried cow dung, for example, as well as many horse-drawn vehicles (and mules, oxen, and even a few camels). Is this due to depletion of fossil fuels? And whatever happened to atomic power?

Mingusville has a rudimentary communication system, but only officials have individual telephones. Electricity is scarce and expensive, and equipment maintenance is haphazard. I estimate that two-thirds of the homes use kerosene lighting. No structure is higher than three stories: cinderblock construction sometimes faced with brick or tile. Center of town is dominated by large open-air market facing gigantic police barracks. My impression is that the people around here lead uneventful, slothful, unchallenging lives. This is reflected in their willingness to drop whatever they're doing and talk for hours with a stranger such as myself.

I learn that various diseases are endemic here: equivalents of trachoma, encephalitis, tick fever, etc. (Cholera and bubonic plague devastated this region six years ago.) There are many beggars in the streets, although this is forbidden by the Emperor. Blacks and whites are present in roughly equal quantities. I am unable to detect any appreciable difference in social status on a racial basis: everybody here seems to be equally deprived.

Government is the only interesting game in town. One man rules the world---the Emperor Mingus. He maintains a standard police state. Mingus is your typical paranoid fascist, has everybody watching everybody else. There are cameras and recorders everywhere, miles of film and tape, legions of people monitoring all of this, other people monitoring the monitors, and so on and so on until you get to the Emperor, the ultimate monitor. I wouldn't have believed you could control a world in this way, but Mingus is giving it a pretty good try.

He is aided in all this by a secret weapon. It seems that Mingus possesses a time machine. When something goes wrong, he can (subject to certain natural restrictions) go back in time and correct it. It's a hell of a good way to take out underground leaders: don't bother combing a city or countryside for them, just go back to before they went underground---to when they were children, say---and then kill them.

The main restriction on all this is physical. Mingus has to do it all himself. He can't entrust the time machine to anyone else, because then that person could go back and kill Mingus and become Emperor himself.

Even with this limit, the machine gives him absolute and uncanny powers. Yet in spite of it, there is a resistance movement. Not everybody can be located via time machine. The vulnerable ones have been weeded out already. Mingus's entire creaky organization is devoted to finding and destroying those enemies that Mingus cannot personally destroy.

People tell me that the time machine looks like a shoe box. It is made of white plastic. People nightly curse Gleister, the fiend who invented the thing. The word "gleister" has entered all languages. "I'll gleister you" is the ultimate threat; "you damned gleister" is the ultimate insult.

There is a great deal more to learn about this place, but it'll have to wait. I've just learned that I am an absolute and unmitigated gleister and that I have gleistered the human race but good. I must do something about it.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One Variation A Continuation 12 plus Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track 5 plus Gleister Minor Sequence 32:

Gleister sat down on a bench in Mingus Memorial Park to think things over. What should he do? The first thing that occurred to him was to go back to just before he invented the time machine and not invent it. But that could not be done, to judge by the experience of the other Gleister. Not only can you not step into the same river twice; it is not even the same you who can't step into the same river twice. Everything modifies everything. There was no niche in the past waiting for him to come back and occupy it. Nature will tolerate a paradox, but she abhors a vacuum.

There seemed to be no point in trying to go back and convince another Gleister not to invent the time machine. (Again!) There wasn't one Gleister to convince, anyhow; there were a multiplicity of potential Gleisters, each of them identical to him up to the moment of contact, and each of them different from him from that moment on. That too was inevitable: like the universe, the mind is a plenum constantly cycling its contents. A novel input redistributes the contents and changes their cycling rate. Gleister could remain himself only if he didn't interfere with himself.

But the situation he had presented to the world was intolerable. He was determined to do something about it. But what should he do?

He sat and thought, uncomfortably aware that at least one other Gleister had done the same thing. How many more Gleisters would sit on this spot and consider the alternatives?

But that was defeatist thinking. From one viewpoint there were (potentially) a multiplicity of Gleisters; but from another viewpoint there was only one, and he was that one. After all, it didn't matter what these other people called themselves or where they came from, he was only the person he was here and now, the person whom he experienced. Reality is positional, ego is relational and nature doesn't deal in abstractions.

What could he do, specifically? He could stay here in the future (which operationally was the present), assume a disguise and wait for a chance to strike a blow against the Emperor.

He could go back fifty or a hundred years, to a time before Mingus's accession to power, locate the future Emperor as Mingus had located others, kill him.

Or, if Mingus was able to protect himself through the powers of the time machine, Gleister could form an organization to overthrow the Emperor, starting his organization before the Emperor assumed power.

It was impossible to juggle all of the variables presented by his various plans. He would just have to pick one and go with it. But which one? Aye, there was the rub: man proposes, but the hidden law of temporality disposes. Which plan? Random sampling---eenie meenie...

Gleister looked up as a man sat down on the bench beside him. He was in his fifties, bearded, somberly dressed. He carried an attaché case. He looked like a businessman or a minor official.

"You new around here?" the man asked.

"Sort of new," Gleister admitted reluctantly. "I'm a student."

"Where from?"

"The University of East Bengal. The new one, not the old one. I'm here to do a study." Stop babbling, he ordered himself.

"School days are the best time of all," the man said, smiling. "How well I remember my own."

"Where did you go to school?" Gleister asked.

"I attended the University of Ohio," the man said. "But I never did graduate. Too much work for me to do out there in the world. Ah well, it can't be helped."

"No, it can't be," Gleister said. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He too had attended the University of Ohio.

"What do you use that white box for?" the man asked abruptly. "School books?"

"Yes. I mean no," Gleister said. "It's a little too small for books. I keep tapes of some of my lectures in there."

"Is that a fact?" the man said. "You know, it's a weird coincidence. I've got one just like it." He opened his attaché case. Within it Gleister saw a white box identical to his own, cushioned in red velvet. Beside it, there was a large blue-steel automatic.

The man picked up the automatic and pointed it at Gleister.

"Hey, wait a minute, don't fool around with that thing," Gleister said. Already he was beginning to feel a faint twist of sickness in his stomach. He was afraid that he knew all too well what was happening.

"Hand over that white box of yours," the man said. "Handle it real slow and don't try to push any buttons."

"Who are you?" Gleister asked.

"I'm known by various names in various regions of the Earth," the man said. "But I'm best known as Mingus."

"You're the Emperor!" Gleister said.

"At your service," the bearded man said. "Now, very slowly, give me the box."

Gleister's forefinger rested on the operation button. He could feel the Emperor's eyes on his hand, daring him to press the button. Gleister remembered that there was a lag between turning the machine on and physically leaving a place. He decided that he had no chance at all. Slowly he began to extend the white box.

"That's it, slow and easy," the Emperor said.

Then Gleister noticed a shimmering in the air some ten feet behind the Emperor. Something was about to happen, and, considering the circumstances, it could only help Gleister.

"Look," he said, "can't we talk this over? Maybe we could reach a compromise."

"What are you up to?" Mingus's forefinger tightened on the trigger. An involuntary movement of Gleister's eyes warned him that something was happening. He whirled just as another Gleister materialized behind him.

The Emperor fired at the new arrival at pointblank range, but with no apparent effect. Charlie Gleister, noticing the faint red haze around the newcomer, had realized in an instant that it was not an actual corporeal person; obviously, to the trained eye, it was a solidified pseudo-doppler reflection caused by Gleister's passage through time. As he watched, the image disappeared.

The Emperor turned toward him again; but Gleister had already punched the OPERATE button of his time machine.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Time Track One Sub One Low Probability Closed Loop 12:

Nothing goes right when you're in a hurry. Charlie Gleister hit the OPERATE button so hard that he broke the interlock on the OVERRIDE assembly. Unrationalized power surged crazily through the time machine, turning the primary circuits into roulette accelerometers, and causing an instant multiplication of geometric accumulators. Energy flooded the available networks of n-dimensional pasts/ presents/futures, then searched for new outlets and found them by jumping an entire magnitude---to the universe of low-probability actualities.

When Gleister came to himself, he was standing on a flat, featureless plain. The glaring white sky above pulsated with bulges of darkness. He could hear a low, melancholy crooning. It seemed to come from a piece of white limestone rock near his right foot.

"Is that you singing?" Gleister asked.

"Yeah, baby, it's me," the limestone rock answered in a deep mournful voice. "I been singing the blues ever since the world began."

"How long has that been?" Gleister asked.

"About three hundred years, close as I can figure it. You got any idea what or where or why this place is?"

"I can make an educated guess," Gleister said. "It seems reasonable to hypothesize that we are in a low-probability universe. The theoretical existence of such a place is quite certain. High and low probability are terms of statistical intuition relative to our experience, of course. Do you follow me so far?"

"Well, baby, not too closely," said the limestone rock. "When you said an educated guess, you really meant educated. Could you maybe put it into English for me?"

"Well...in my own particular case there was like one hell of an explosion and I was blown clean out of the world into this place."

"Hey, that's just what happened to me," said the limestone rock. "How I came to be playing tenor sax in the Wigwam Club in downtown Hiroshima on that fateful day in 1945 is a story which I won't go into right now. You got any idea how we get out of here?"

"I think we must simply wait until it happens," Gleister said. "In normal high-probability terms, there's not much chance of that happening. But if this is a universe where low-probability is the law, then all odds are reversed and our chances for getting out of here are very good indeed."

"Ask a man a serious question and he jives me," the limestone rock said.

"No, I meant what I said quite seriously."

"In that case, baby, and excuse my saying it, you are a real weirdo."

"At least I'm not a limestone rock," Gleister said, then added hastily, "not that I consider you in any way inferior because of your igneous appearance."

"Sure, baby, sure," the limestone rock said, with sarcasm so thick that you could cut it with a knife and spread it on a piece of Tibetan barley bread that had just appeared on the low oaken bench that supported the various instruments that Gleister needed to make a reasonable assessment of the validity of his previous statements.

In a universe of non-sequiturs---which is what low-probability is all about---it is difficult to find continuities, tough to keep a grip on sequences, hard to hang on to certainties. Historically, the low-probability levels have been considered paradise. They are the vacation spots of the hashishin, the mystagogue, the doper. They are usually fun places, which is why most people can't get into them.

There are some low-probability worlds in which nothing much happens and the whole thing is as boring as being kept after school. But usually, a good time is enjoyed by all.

Gleister's world was a pretty good place. There were always a lot of girls around, asking, "Hey, man, is this Katmandu?" A big rock candy mountain appeared, and a pibil tree, and the congestion cleared up around the synapses affording a view all the way to the lemon factory.

As the limestone rock remarked, "Maybe it ain't reality, but it'll just have to do until the real thing comes along."

So it was with a definite sense of regret that Gleister saw one morning, emblazoned across the sky, the words: "Th-th-th-th that's all, folks!" Quickly he said goodbye to the limestone rock, now revealed as an anti-Gleisterian particle, and to the girls, who were in actuality anima-Gleisterian wave forms. Then he held his breath, quite unnecessarily, for the brief transition that followed.

Gleister Main Line Sequence plus Multiple Time Track Conjunctions:

Gleister surfaced in a large, dusty, crowded auditorium located (as he learned later) in the Crich-Kridarin foothills near the ruins of Norfolk. It was some 234 years before the accession of the Emperor Mingus.

There were perhaps a hundred men in the auditorium. Most of them looked like Gleister. This was only reasonable, since all of them were Gleister.

Charlie Gleister learned that these people were trying to hold a meeting, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Obviously, they needed someone to act as chairman: but how can you have a chairman without first having an organization to elect him with? And how can you have an organization without a chairman to be elected by it? It was a perplexing problem, especially for the Gleister line, which had never been strong on social studies.

Everyone turned to Charlie Gleister, who, as the newest arrival, might have some ideas on the subject.

"Well," Charlie said, "I read once that among the Flathead Indians, the tallest brave was usually chosen to lead the war party or the hunting party or whatever there was to do. Or maybe it was among the Shoshones."

All the Gleisters nodded in vigorous agreement. They had all known that, of course; they just hadn't thought about it.

In no time at all the tallest Gleister was found, elected Chairman ad hoc and pro tem and sent up to the stage.

"I hereby call this meeting to order," the tallest Gleister said. "Look, before we get to anything else, it seems to me that we simply cannot all keep on calling ourselves 'Charlie Gleister.' It's simply too confusing. For purposes of communication between us, I suggest we all take on different first names. What do you think about that?"

There was a loud murmur of agreement.

"May I suggest that we each try to pick an unusual name," the Chairman said, "since fifty Toms or Georges wouldn't be much of an improvement over a hundred Charlies. I will start the ball rolling by calling myself Egon. I declare a fifteen-minute recess while the rest of you christen yourselves."

After a moment's thought, Charlie Gleister (the one whose time-track we've been following) named himself Hieronymous. He shook hands with Michelangelo Gleister on his right and Chang Gleister on his left. Then the Chairman called the meeting to order.

"Members of the Gleister Coequality Line of Potentialities," Egon said, "I bid you welcome. Some of you have searched for and found this place, others stumbled across it apparently by accident, others found themselves here while going somewhere else. This definitely appears to be a Gleister collection-point, for reasons that escape me at the moment. However, let that be. I think I am expressing the common sentiment when I name this the Time-Space Center for Resistance to the Rule of the Emperor Mingus. The Emperor probably knows about this place and what we're up to. We are the only serious threats to his reign. Many of us have had inexplicable near-fatal accidents at some point before inventing the time machine. Some of those were surely caused by Mingus. We may expect other attempts on our lives.

"That's about all I have to say. I would welcome remarks from the floor."

A man stood up and identified himself as Chalmers Gleister. "Has anyone learned the identity of this Mingus?"

"Not to my knowledge," Egon Gleister said. "He has concealed his origins most effectively. There is an official biography which states that the Emperor was born in Clearwater, Florida, the only child of Anton and Myra Waldheim."

"Has anyone checked this?" Chalmers asked.

A man stood up. "Marcos Gleister. I looked into it. I can tell you that Clearwater was demolished some thirty years before Mingus's rule, when the Sage Creek reactor went up."

"Did you attempt to go to Clearwater before its destruction?"

"I tried," Marcos said, "but I didn't learn anything positive. The Waldheim family might not have been living there at that time, or evidence may have been concealed or Mingus might have picked Clearwater as a convenient cover."

Chalmers asked, "Has anyone gone to the Hall of Records in Washington, or the Library of Congress, or whatever their equivalents are now? If the Waldheim records have been removed, it will be important negative evidence as to Mingus's identity."

"It hasn't been done yet," said Chairman Egon Gleister, after waiting for a response from the audience. "Perhaps you would care to take on the assignment"

"I wouldn't know how to begin," Chalmers said.

"None of us would. Our collective talents lie in other directions. But the job ought to be done."

"Very well, I'll try," Chalmers said sulkily, and sat down.

There was a great deal of general discussion after that. The Gleisters were thoroughly confused about time travel, its possibilities, ramifications, limits and consequences. Nor could they reconcile the various types and aspects of temporality which they had encountered---subjective time, objective time, past time, future time, multiple time rates, and the paradoxical crossing and recrossing of time tracks. What was the past, what was the future? Were "past," "present," and "future" no more than fictions---false separations imposed upon a unified field? And if that were so, how could an individual time traveler orient himself? The situation seemed comparable to a mad chess game in which either opponent could correct any previous moves at any time, in a game which had perhaps been concluded before it had begun.

Hieronymous Gleister---still our hero despite certain technical difficulties in differentiation and identification---had not paid much attention to the discussion. He was watching the audience, for the Gleisters seemed nearly as remarkable to him as time travel itself.

There were Gleisters of every apparent age between twenty and sixty years. All possessed the same somatotype. Beyond this, their differences were more striking than their similarities.

Each Gleister had experienced similar stresses and influences, but at different subjective moments. Events had come upon each man at a particular and unique moment in psychotime, polarizing and modifying the whirling Lullian wheels of his internal world system, producing in each man new and unexpected emotional configurations, modifying and delineating him, and turning him into an individual unlike all the other Gleisters.

To judge by appearances, there were frightened Gleisters and courageous Gleisters, high-strung ones and phlegmatic ones, sociable and solitary ones, clever and confused ones.

As he was thinking about these things, a man stood up and introduced himself as Mordecai Gleister. He asked permission to address the audience on certain urgent matters. Egon invited him to the stage.

"I will make my remarks brief," Mordecai said. "It seems to me that the matter of the Emperor has not been impartially examined. We have blindly assumed that the man and his goals are evil. Yet is this so evident? Consider---"

Hieronymous Gleister stared at him. He had seen this confident, bearded man in his fifties before. But where?

Then it came to him.

Hieronymous Gleister stood up and ran to the stage. "Grab that man!" he shouted. "He's Mingus! He's the Emperor!"

Egon hesitated for a moment, then made his decision. He and Hieronymous moved toward Mordecai Gleister. Several other Gleisters were on their feet and climbing on to the stage. Then everyone stopped.

Mordecai Gleister had taken a blue-steel automatic out of his pocket and was aiming it at Egon.

"Please resume your seats," Mordecai said. "All except Chairman Egon and this young man, whose lives depend upon your good behavior. I have a statement to make."

Everyone sat down except for Egon and Hieronymous. Mordecai said, "This weapon I am holding is not a projectile weapon, though it is housed in the case of a Colt .45 automatic. It is an invention of mine---or ours---which operates on a laser-diffusion principle. At fifteen feet its first effect is paralysis; death follows seconds later if the beam is not turned off. Whatever you decide to do now, you should take this weapon into your calculations."

Mordecai paused to let his words take effect. Then smiling, he said, "My worthy brothers and loyal subjects, the Emperor Mingus greets you."

Main Lines Junction No. 2:

"My reading of the situation," Mingus said, "is that I invented a time machine and went to a point in the distant future. I underwent various experiences there which shaped my subsequent decisions. The world I came to was a sad, brutish place, depleted of its physical and mental resources, divided into tiny, squabbling kingdoms. I took over. The time machine gave me matchless power, of course. But my success was due to more than that: the times were right for organization, and I was the right man for the job.

"Those of you who have seen a little of my empire don't think much of it. But you judge too quickly. You forget the materials I had to work with. I assure you that I aim toward peace and prosperity for everyone; yes, and political freedom as well, as soon as men have the intelligence and self-control to use it.

"You think that my empire looks like a twentieth-century Latin American or African dictatorship. Granted. But when I took over, this world was in chaos. There was no peace, and strength was the only recognizable law. I have given people a measure of security and continuity from which to rebuild a civilization.

"All of us here are products of American democracy. 'Empire' and 'Emperor' are dirty words to us. But I earnestly request that you not judge my work by political reflex. What would you have had me do? Extend the vote to the serfs and slaves and abolish the robber-barons? Even with the time machine I wouldn't have lasted a week.

"Should I have lectured them on all men being equal? Those people knew that all men were not equal, and that justice was the exclusive prerogative of the ruling class. They viewed all egalitarian ideas as devilish perversions, to be resisted to the death.

"Democracy is not natural law. Men must be educated to it. Democracy is a difficult and advanced concept for men whose instinct is to band together in wolf packs under a single leader. Effective democracy requires the exercise of responsibility and fairness to others. For the people of the future Earth, this was an outlandish concept; others were there only to be used.

"Given this state of affairs, what would any of you have done? Would you have witnessed the misery and squalor of the world and turned away from it, returning to your own happier times? Or would you have stayed and put together a token democracy, to be overwhelmed as soon as you were no longer in physical control? Or would you have done as I did---formed the only political organization that the people could understand, and then tried to educate them in the difficult practices of freedom and responsibility?

"I did what I thought was best for the people, not for myself. I took over. But then you Gleisters---my alter egos, my brothers---kept coming up from the past, bent upon assassinating me. I tried to kidnap some of you and re-educate you. But there were too many Gleisters, the dynamics of the situation were against me.

"I learned about your organization. I came back here and infiltrated it. I have taken it over now.

"I have explained the situation as fairly as I can. I most sincerely beg you to cooperate with me, assist me, help me to change a regressed and savage Earth into the sort of place we have all dreamed of."

There was a long silence. At last Chairman Egon Gleister said, "I believe there may be considerable merit in what you have explained to us."

Hieronymous asked, "Have you forgotten already what you saw in his future? All of the suspicion and misery, and all those police!" He turned to Mingus. "Why don't you just leave them alone? I really don't care what your motives are. Hasn't Earth had enough emperors, dictators, generalissimos, war lords, Great Khans, Shahinshahs, Caesars, whatever you want to call them? Some of them had admirable motives---but the only people they really helped were themselves."

"I suppose you feel that a state of anarchy is preferable?" Mingus asked.

"I think it probably is," Hieronymous said. "The main defect of anarchy is its vulnerability to people like you."

There was no sound at all from the audience. Hieronymous went on: "In any event, it's not your age your tampering with, it's someone else's. You come here from the happy and enlightened twentieth century and impose your obsolete political solutions on them. Really, Mingus, you're acting just like any other colonizer."

Mingus appeared shaken. "I must think about this. I honestly believed..." He shook his head irritably. "It is strange," he said, "that all of us are one person, yet we represent widely differing viewpoints."

"It's not so strange," Egon said. "One person is many people even under normal circumstances."

Hieronymous said, "Perhaps we should call for a vote on what the Gleisters are to do---if you think we are civilized enough to vote."

"Taking power is a responsibility," Mingus said. "But giving power up is equally a responsibility. This will require careful thought on my part."

"Perhaps not," Egon said. "Perhaps you won't have to think about it at all."

"Why do you say that'" Mingus said.

The Chairman smiled and said, "I think you have made a fatal misreading of the sequence of events. By coming back here, you have ceased to be the Emperor. So there is nothing for you to think about."

"Explain yourself," Mingus said. "Who is the real Emperor then?"

"There is no 'real' emperor," Egon told him. "There is only a Gleister who went to the future, seized power and became Emperor. He found himself opposed by an organization, returned to the past in an attempt to take over the organization. He was killed in the attempt."

"Be careful," Mingus said.

"There's nothing to be careful about," Egon said. "We know that time travel necessarily involves duplication. One law we are sure of, governing time travel and its events, is: nothing happens for the first time. You, my dear Mordecai, have the honor of having been the first Emperor. But it can't remain that way. Since time travel is involved, there must be a second Emperor for the Emperor-line of probability to take place at all."

"And you think that the first Emperor dies?" Mingus asked.

"Or goes into retirement, perhaps," Egon said. "Give me the gun."

"You crown yourself Emperor?"

"Why not? I'm a Gleister, and therefore a legitimate heir to the royal line. Give me the gun and I'll let you go in peace."

Hieronymous said urgently to Mordecai-Mingus, "Do it. Give him the gun. He's right, time travel necessitates the overdetermination of events. There must be a second Emperor."

"Very well," Mordecai-Mingus said. "I'll give you the gun. And since you are the future Emperor, you won't mind which end you get first."

He aimed the gun at Egon and pulled the trigger. A look of shock came over Mordecai's face. He went rigid, then fell. The gun dropped from his hand and clattered across the floor, coming to rest at Hieronymous's feet.

Hieronymous picked up the weapon. He bent over Mordecai for a moment, then looked at Egon. "He's dead."

Egon said, "We seem to have a new Emperor."

"We do indeed,"' Hieronymous said, and handed the gun to him butt-first.

Gleister Emperor Line No. 2:

"That's good of you, cousin," Egon said, hefting the weapon. "You have no imperial ambitions, then?"

"Ambitions, but not imperial ones. Besides, Egon, I've had a premonition."

"I'm not Egon anymore," the Chairman said. "For the sake of symmetry, I'm renaming myself Mingus...What was your premonition?"

"I thought I heard a voice say: 'The Emperor is the slave of time.'"

"Just that and no more?"

"That's all I heard," Hieronymous said.

"How strange, dark and ominous," the new Mingus said, grinning. "How do you interpret it?"

"It hints at something unpleasant, but I don't know what. Take it for what it's worth."

"Well," Mingus said. "You have given me an oracle and an empire, and I thank you most kindly for both, but especially the Empire. Now, what can I do for you?"

"You grant me an imperial boon?"

"Yes, anything."

"Then go rule your Empire, and let me and the rest of us do what we have to do."

"It's doubtless unwise," Mingus said, "but I'll do it. God knows what complications would ensue if I started killing Gleisters. Just remember---"

Mingus stopped. A man had just materialized onto the stage beside him.

Main Lines Junction No. 3:

The man was old, he had a gray beard and a ravaged face. His eyes were shadowy and lined.

"Who are you?" Mingus demanded.

"I am you, Egon. I am Mordecai, I am Hieronymous, I am the others. I am the Emperor you will become. I have come here to beg you to abdicate now and change what still can be changed."

"Why should I do that'" Mingus asked.

"Because the Emperor is the slave of time."

"That makes no sense whatsoever, old man. Who are you really? Hieronymous, this looks like the sort of theatrical stunt you might come up with someday."

"I can give no promise for the behavior of my old age, if that's what this is."

"Abdicate," the old man said.

"Nobody likes a nag," Mingus said, aimed his gun and fired.

There was no apparent effect. The old man shook his head irritably. "I can't be killed---not here, not now, not by you! Reality is positional, as you will learn when you grow up. Now I must return to my work."

"What work is that?" Hieronymous asked.

"All slaves perform identical meaningless work," the old man said, and disappeared.

Mingus rubbed his chin irritably. "Nothing like a ghost to keep the comedy moving! Hieronymous, are you going somewhere?"

Hieronymous had been adjusting his time machine. He looked up and said, "I'm going on a trip."

"Where?"

"To visit an old friend."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"You'll see, in good time."

Mingus said, "Wait, Hieronymous! Stay with me and help me build a true civilization. We'll do it your way."

"No," Hieronymous said, and pushed the button.

Main Lines Junction No. 4:

This time Gleister came out near Krul in the late years of the Mingus Imperium. He bartered clothing for money and took the day coach to Washington. From the station he walked to the White House, seat of Imperial power and now a Byzantine city within a city. He told the sergeant of the Exterior Guard to announce him to the Emperor.

"What kind of a joke is this?" the sergeant said. "Put your petition through proper channels."

"Announce me for the sake of your own continued welfare," Gleister said. "Tell him that Hieronymous is here."

The sergeant was skeptical, but unwilling to take a risk. He rang up the captain of the guard, who contacted the commandant of the guard. Nothing happened for ten minutes, then things began to happen very quickly.

"I beg your pardon," the sergeant said. "I'm new at this post. I hadn't received the standing order concerning you. Please come this way, sir."

Hieronymous was led through winding gray corridors, into an elevator, through more corridors, to a steel-plate door painted crimson. The sergeant let him in and closed the door behind him.

Hieronymous was in a small white audience room. There was a man present, seated at a small table. The man stood up when he entered.

"It's good to see you again," Egon-Mingus said.

"Good to see you, too," Hieronymous replied. "How fares the Empire?"

"Well...it's not too successful, as you perhaps foresaw. In fact, it's disastrous." Mingus smiled painfully. He was old now, a tall man with a gray beard and ravaged eyes.

"What's the trouble?"

"Don't you know?"

Hieronymous shook his head. "I had a premonition, not a vision. Are Gleisters still trying to overthrow you?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Mingus said. "I don't even bother trying to stop them. Our family possesses a deep-seated ineptitude where politics are concerned. The Gleisters have no head for intrigue! They come into my empire in their twentieth-century clothing, brandishing strange weapons and talking in concepts the populace can't understand. People think they represent some mad foreign overlord, or are just plain crazy. At the first opportunity they turn them over to the police."

"And what do you do with them?"

"I educate them."

"Ah!"

Mingus made a face. "I hope you don't think I'm using a euphemism for violence. I assure you that I educate them most conventionally, with lectures, guided tours, films and books. Then I find some place in the Empire for them to stay."

"Do they all choose to live here?"

"Most of them. One must live somewhere, after all, and their original places in their own time are occupied by other Gleisters."

"Well...That sounds all right. What's the trouble?"

"Hieronymous, you need some education yourself! Maybe you should go on the guided tour."

"Just tell me about it."

"Very well. It's actually quite simple. The first or original or Ur-Gleister built a time machine and went into the future. Nature, which tolerates a paradox but abhors a vacuum, was left with a hole in the space-time fabric. A Gleister was missing from his normal position. Nature, therefore, supplied an identical or near-identical Gleister from wherever she keeps the spare parts."

"I know all of this," Hieronymous said.

"You haven't thought it through to the end. Each time a Gleister uses a time machine there is a displacement, another hole in the space-time fabric, which Nature fills by producing yet another Gleister."

"I'm beginning to understand," Hieronymous said.

"Now we have numerous Gleisters," Mingus went on, "all whizzing around on their various missions. We have a Gleister-sequence that becomes the Emperor, another sequence that forms an organization against the Emperor. And there are other sequences. Each sequence involving time travel results in the duplication of a Gleister. Each new Gleister time travels and is instrumental in the creation of more new Gleisters."

Mingus paused to let that sink in, then said: "Gleisters are being produced at a geometric rate."

"Well," Hieronymous said, "that's a hell of a lot of Gleisters."

"You still don't grasp the scale," Mingus said. "Geometric progressions tend to get out of hand very early. Hundreds become thousands, thousands become millions, which become trillions and quadrillions. Do you get it now?"

"I get it," Hieronymous said. "Where do they all go?"

"They come here," Mingus said. "There's really no other place for them to go."

"And where do you put them?"

"I've managed to house about twelve million to date. But the Empire is running out of resources, and they're coming thicker than ever!"

"Is there no way of stopping them?"

Mingus shook his head. "Even if the Army shot them on sight, we couldn't control the mounting progression. Soon there will be nothing but Gleisters; the Earth will be carpeted in Gleisters, and new ones will continue to pour in. The Emperor is truly the slave of time."

"What have you done about a solution?"

"Everything possible. I'm open to suggestions."

"The only thing that occurs to me," Hieronymous said, "is that the original Gleister must be killed before he can invent the time machine."

"It can't be done. Many of us have tried, but we can't get back far enough in time. We can only encounter Gleister after the invention. And each Gleister who goes back and fails further expands the progression."

"Yes, I see."

"Do you have any ideas?"

"Only one, and I don't much like it."

Mingus waited. Hieronymous said, "As it stands now, the Gleister-series is an infinite expansion. Therefore a limit must be introduced in order to make the series capable of termination."

"What limit'"

"Death is the only natural limit," Hieronymous said. "Termination must be introduced as early as possible in the series, so that it will expand simultaneously with the series, render it self-limiting, and finally self-canceling."

"Many of us have died," Mingus said. "It hasn't effected the expansion."

"Of course not. All the Gleister-deaths so far have been normal terminations of individual time tracks. What is needed is an early death out of continuity---a suicide."

"In order to introduce a short-term recycling death factor," Mingus said. "Suicide...Yes. It will be my final imperial act."

"Not yours, mine," Hieronymous said.

"I am still the Emperor," Mingus said. "It is my responsibility."

"You're too old, for one thing," Hieronymous said. "A young Gleister must die as early in his time track as possible."

"Then we'll draw lots among the younger Gleisters."

Hieronymous shook his head. "I'm afraid it must be me."

"Would you mind explaining why?"

"At the risk of seeming egotistical," Hieronymous said, "I must tell you that I believe that I am the original Gleister, and only my suicide can end what I began."

"Why do you think you are the original Gleister?"

"It's an intuition."

"That's not much to go on."

"No, but it's something. Do you have an intuition like that?"

"No, I don't," Mingus said. "But I don't believe that I'm---unreal!"

"You're not," Hieronymous said. "We're all equally real. I'm just the first, that's all."

"Well...It doesn't matter, I suppose. I hope that you're right."

"Thanks," Hieronymous said, setting his time machine. "Do you still have that laser gun?" Mingus handed it to him and Hieronymous put it in his pocket. "Thanks. I'll be seeing you."

"That seems unlikely."

"If my assumptions are correct," Hieronymous said, "then you will have to see me again."

"Explain that!" Mingus said. "That makes no sense..."

But Hieronymous had pushed the button and was gone.

Gleister Main Line Sequence Termination No. 1:

It was a beautiful September afternoon in Harvest Falls, Indiana. Charlie Gleister walked past Apple Street and looked wistfully at the white frame house in which he had had his laboratory. He thought about going in and having a word with himself, but decided against it. He'd had his fill of Gleisters.

He continued walking, out of town on Route 347. Cars passed him, but he didn't try to hitch a ride. He didn't have far to go.

He turned off the route and crossed a stubbled field. He went through woods and came to a little brook. He had fished here as a boy, catching an occasional sunfish. The big oak tree was still where he remembered it, and Charlie sat down and leaned his back against it.

He took out the gun and looked at it. He felt numb, self-conscious. He rubbed his nose and looked at the sunlight on the water for several minutes.

Then, irritably, he said, "All right, let's get it over with." He put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth, gagging slightly over the taste of oily metal. He shut his eyes and pulled the trigger and died.

Gleister Series Initial Termination Recycling:

Charlie Gleister opened his eyes. The imperial audience room was as he had remembered it. On a table in front of him were the latest statistics: over twelve million Gleisters settled to date, more coming every minute. He shook his head and ran his fingers absentmindedly through his beard. Then he looked at the young man standing in front of him.

"Good luck," he said, and handed him the laser gun.

Egon Gleister said, "Thank you," pushed the button on his time machine, and was gone.

Alone, Charlie looked around the audience room. He would have to accustom himself to imperial duties, for of course he had to take his turn as Emperor, just as all the others would have to do. He and they would have to take all of the Gleister roles as the termination proceeded, until at last only he was left, in the end as in the beginning.

But for now he was the Emperor, and that might be interesting. He was grateful that he had gotten the suicide-part out of the way. He would have to do it again, of course; but not yet, not until all the others had done it.