ns of  me had  disappeared. I knew something  was
about to happen, but I didn't know what until I got there.
     I have that same kind of feeling now. Too many of
     the older me's are acting strange. Very strange. The more
     I hang around them, the more I see it.
     I'm going to have to investigate August 13.
     * * *
     Is this it?
     Three or four of the youngest Dannys are here.
     They're in a quieter mood than usual though, almost grim.
     A couple of us  frowned at them they really weren't  welcome here; they
should have stayed in their own part  of the  party; but most of the rest of
us tried at  least to  tolerate them,  hoping that  they would lose interest
soon and go back to their own time. "They're here to gape at us," complained
one of me.
     "Well, some of us are gaping right back," snapped another.
     "God," whispered a third. "Were we ever really that young?"
     And then there was a pop! as another me appeared.
     It  was  a  common  enough  sound.  Somebody  was  always  appearing or
disappearing  at any  given moment. But this one was  different. A hush fell
over  the room.  I turned and saw two of me reaching to support a  third who
had  suddenly  appeared  between  them. He was  pale  and gray.  He was half
slumped and holding his heart.
     * * *
     Apparently the jump-shock had been too much for
     him; that sudden  burst of temporal energy that jolts you sharply every
time  you bounce  through  time. They helped  him to a chair.  Somebody  was
already  there with a  glass  of water, somebody who  had been  through this
before, I  guess. And the younger Dans were murmuring among themselves;  was
this what they had come to see?
     "Are you all right, old fellow?" someone asked the newcomer.
     He grunted. He was old. He was very old. His
     hands were thin and weak. His forearms were parchment-covered bones, so
were his legs. The skin of his  face  hung in folds and he  was mottled with
liver spots. "Aaah," he gasped. "What day is it?"
     "August thirteenth."
     "Thirteenth?" Slowly he pulled  his  features into a grimace. "Then I'm
too soon. It's the twenty-third I want. I must have made the wrong setting."
"Take it easy. Just relax."
     The oldster did so.  It wasn't a  matter  of recognizing the  wisdom of
their words; he simply  knew that  he didn't  have to hurry. A timebelt is a
very forgiving device. Besides, he was too exhausted to move.
     "What were  you  looking for?"  asked one  of the  younger  Dans. (They
weren't me. I  didn't remember  ever  having done  this before, so they must
have been variations from another timeline.)
     The  fragile  gray  man  peered at them,  abruptly  frowning. "No,"  he
croaked. "Too young. Too young. Got to talk to someone older. Those are just
just children."
     Some of us shouldered the younger ones aside  then. "What  is it?" they
asked. (Others hung back; had they heard it  before? The room seemed emptier
now. There were less than ten of me remaining. Several of us had left.)
     'Too tired," he gasped. "Came to warn you, but I'm too tired  to  talk.
Let me rest ..."
     "Hey, have a heart, you guys. Don't press him."
     That was  one  of  the  quieter  ones of  us. I  recognized  him by his
business  suit;  he  had  been hanging  back  and just watching most  of the
evening. "Take  him  in the  bedroom and let him lie  down for a while."  He
shoved through and picked up the frail old man God,  was  he that light? and
carried him  off to the downstairs bedroom. "You can talk to him  later," he
promised.
     Out of curiosity, I followed. I helped him put the old man to bed, then
he led me out. "You know what's going on, don't you?" I asked him.
     He didn't answer, just got himself a chair and a
     book, and stationed himself in front of the door. "It might
     be too soon for you to worry about this," he said to me.
     "Why don't you go back to your party?" He opened the
     book and proceeded to ignore me.
     There was nothing else to do, so I shrugged and
     went back into the other room. A little later a couple of
     other me's tried to see how the old man was doing, but
     the business-suit-me wouldn't let them. He sat outside
     the room all night.
     The party was considerably dampened by this incident.  Most of the Dans
faded away  and the house became strangely deserted. Here  and there, one or
two of me were  picking  up dirty glasses and empty  potato-chip dishes, but
they only served to heighten  the emptiness.  They were like caretakers in a
mausoleum.
     I  bounced forward to  the morning, but the  bedroom was  empty and the
business suit was gone too.
     So I bounced back an hour. Then another. This time
     he was there, still outside the door, still reading. When I
     appeared, he glanced up without interest. "Hmm? Is it
     that late already?" He opened his belt to check the time.
     I started to ask him something, but he cut me off.
     "Wait a minute." He was resetting his belt. Before I
     could stop him he had tapped it twice and vanished.
     I opened the bedroom door; the old man had vanished too.
     My curiosity was too much. I bounced back fifteen minutes. Then fifteen
minutes more. He was  sleeping  quietly on the bed. His breath rasped slowly
in and out.
     I  felt  no  guilt  as  I  woke  him;  he'd  had  more  than six  hours
undisturbed. I wanted to know what was so important. He came awake suddenly.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
     "August fourteenth," I told him.
     That seemed to satisfy him, but he frowned at me in suspicion. "What do
you want? Why'd you wake me?" "What was supposed to happen last night? "Last
night?"
     "The thirteenth. You came to warn us of something. ..." I prompted.
     "The thirteenth? That was a mistake. I wanted the twenty-third."
     "Why? What happens on the twenty-third?"
     He peered at me again. "You're  too  young." He pushed  himself off the
bed and stood unsteadily. And tapped his belt and vanished.
     Damn.
     * * *
     Naturally, I went straight to the twenty-third.
     My old man was there, of course. A dozen times over. Wrinkled, gnarled,
and white. Their hands hovered in  the air,  or scrabbled  across their laps
like spiders. They clawed, they plucked.
     But not all  of them  were that old. There were  one  or two  that even
looked familiar.
     "Don?" I asked one who was wearing a faded shirt.
     If I remembered correctly, he had gotten that ketchup  stain on it just
a few hours ago at the poker table of the thirteenth.
     He  looked at me, startled. "Dan?  You shouldn't be here. You're  still
too  young.  I mean, let us take care of this  for now. You  go back to  the
party."
     "Huh?" I tried to draw him aside. "Just tell me what's going on."
     "I can't," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a good idea "
     Abruptly, a familiar business  suit was standing before us.  Was it the
same one? Probably. "I'll take over," he said to Don.
     "Thanks," Don said, and fled in relief.
     I looked at the other. "What's going on here?"
     He looked at the  clock in his  timebelt. "In a few more minutes you'll
find  out." He took me by the arm and  led me across the room. "Stand  here.
I'll  stay  right  by  you the whole  time.  Don't  say anything.  Don't  do
anything. Just watch, this time around."
     I shut my mouth and watched.
     The  air  in the room was  heavy.  The few conversations still going on
were  the  merest  of  whispers.  The  supposedly  silent  hum  of  the  air
conditioner was deafening.  Almost all of  these wrinkled faces, pale faces,
were deathly.  The  few  tan ones stood out like spotlights. They  were grim
too.
     The old men, their eyes were like holes in lampshade faces, but nothing
glowed within. Their expressions were bleary. Uniform. Frightened.
     And there were so many of them. More and more; the room was filling up.
This house, so often a happy place, was  now a cloister house of the infirm.
The laughter of youth had shaded into the garish cackling  of senility. What
had  been a firm  grip on life had degenerated into a plucking and desperate
claw, scratching on the edge of terror.
     Who were these men why could I not accept what
     I was seeing? And what drove them together here?
     How old am I? (And here is the fear ) I don't know. I don't know.
     Am  I one of the tan faces  or the pale ones? Does my skin hang in pale
folds, bleached by age? (I touch my cheek hesitantly.)
     As the air pops! softly
     and the body that crumples to the floor is me.
     * * *
     Of course.
     It was the jump-shock that killed him. Will kill me.
     He  was  old.  The oldest  of them  all.  (But  not  so old  as  to  be
distinguishable from the rest. He could have been any of them. Us.)
     There was silence in the room. Then a soft shad-
     owed sigh, almost a sound of relief, as too many ancient
     lungs released their burden of breaths held too long.
     They'd been  expecting this, waiting  for  it eagerly? the curiosity of
the morbid draws them again and again until the room is crowded with fearful
old men. Each praying that, somehow,  this time  it  won't happen.  And each
terrified that it will.
     And perhaps perhaps each is most afraid that the next  time he comes to
this moment, he will not be a witness, but the guest of honor himself. . . .
     * * *
     Two of the younger men (younger? They were older than  I or were they?)
moved to the body. It was still warm. One of them clicked the belt open; the
last  setting on  it was  5:30, March 16,  1975. (Meaningless, of course. He
could have come from there,  or it could have  been a date held  in storage.
There was no way of knowing.)
     They took  charge efficiently,  as if  they had done  this before. Many
times before. (And in a way, they had.)  They slung the  body between  them,
tapped their belts and vanished.
     "What're they going to do with him?" I asked the
     Don in the business suit,
     "Take him back to his own time, to a place where he can be buried."
     "Where?"
     He shook his head. "Uh-uh. When the time comes youll know. Right now it
wouldn't be a good idea." "But the funeral "
     "Listen to  me."  He  gripped my  arm  firmly.  "You cannot  go  to the
funeral. None of us can." "But why?"
     "There'll  be others there," he said. "Others. A  man should attend his
own funeral only once. Do you understand?"
     After I thought about it awhile, I guessed I did.
     * * *
     As for me . . .
     I'm almost afraid to use the timebelt now.
     * * *
     But now I know who I am.
     I guess I've known for some time. I'm not sure when
     I realized; it was a gradual dawning, not a sudden flash of aha. I just
sort of slipped  into it as if it had been waiting for  me all my  life. I'd
been heading toward it without ever once stopping to consider how or why.
     And even if I had, would it have changed anything?
     I don't think so.
     At first  I tried to ignore the events of August 23. I went back to the
earlier days of the party, but burdened  as I was with the knowledge of what
lurked only a few weeks ahead, I could not recapture the mood. (And that was
sensed by the others; I was  shunned as being an irritable and temperamental
old variant. Nor  was I  the  only one; there  were several of  us. We put a
damper on the party wherever we went.)
     For a while I brooded  by myself. For a while I was terribly scared. In
fact, I still am.
     I don't want to  die. But I've seen  my own dead body. I've seen myself
in the act of dying. Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the
future, with no possible chance of  escape. I wake up cold and shuddering in
the middle of the night, and were it not for the fact that I am always there
to hold and comfort  myself, I would go mad. (And I still may  do so ) Uncle
Jim  once told  me that  a  man must  learn to live with  he fact of his own
mortality. A man must accept the fact of death.
     But does that mean he must welcome it?
     I'd thought that the measure of the success of any
     life form was its ability to survive in its ecological niche.
     But I'd been wrong. That doesn't apply to individuals, not  at all only
to a species as a whole.
     If you want to think in  terms of individuals, you have to qualify that
statement. The measure of the success of any  individual animal is based  on
its ability to survive  long enough  to  reproduce. And  care for  the young
until  they  are  able  to  care  for  themselves.  I  have  met  half  that
requirement. I've reproduced.
     (It's said that  the only immortality  a man can achieve is through his
children. I understand that now.)
     * * *
     I went back to 1956 to  bring up my son. He was right where I had  left
him.
     I named him Daniel Jamieson Eakins, and I told him I was his uncle. His
Uncle Jim.
     Yes. That's who I am.
     In many ways,  Danny is a great joy  to me. I am learning as much  from
him  as he is learning  from me. He is a beautiful child  and I relish every
moment of his youth. I relive it by watching it. Sometimes I stand above his
crib and just watch him sleep. I yearn to  pick him up and hug him and  tell
him how much I love him but I let him sleep. I  must avoid smothering him. I
must let him be his own man.
     * * *
     I yearn  to leap ahead into the future and  meet the young man  he will
become. It will be  me,  of course,  starting all over again. Wondrously,  I
have come full circle. Once more I am in a timeline where I exist from birth
to  death. So I  must avoid tangling it. I  will try to live as. serially as
possible for my child.
     (No, that's not entirely true. Several times I have bounced forward and
observed him from a distance. But only from a distance.)
     On occasion I still  flee to the  house in 1999. But I no longer do  so
desperately. I go only  for short vacations. Very short. I know what  awaits
me there. But I also know that I will live to see my son reach manhood, so I
am not  as fearful as I once was. I know  I have time; so death has lost its
immediacy.
     And the  party has changed.too. The mood  of it is no longer so morbid.
Not even grim. Just quiet. Waiting. Yes, many of these men have come here to
die. No to  await death in the company of  others like themselves. They help
each other. And that's good. (I don't need their help, not yet, so right now
I can be objective about it. Maybe later, I won't.)
     So I'm relaxed. At ease with myself. Happy. Because I know who I am.
     I'm Dan and Don and Diane and Donna.
     And Uncle Jim too. And somewhere, Aunt Jane.
     And little Danny. I diaper him;  I  powder  his pink  little  fanny and
wonder that my skin was ever  that smooth. I clean up his messes. My messes.
I've been doing that all  my life. I'm  my own mother and my own father. I'm
the only person who exists in my world but isn't it that way for all of us?
     Me more than anyone.
     * * *
     How did this incredible circle get started?
     (Or  has  it  always existed? Could it have begun in  the  same way the
timebelt began in a world that I excised out of existence? In a place so far
distant and  so almostpossible that the  traces of  the  might-have-been are
buried completely in the already-is?)
     Many years ago I pondered the reason for  my own existence. (Why  "me"?
Why me as "me"? Why do I perceive myself  and why do I experience me as "me"
and not somebody else? Why was I born at all? It could have been anyone!) It
almost drove  me mad. I had to have a meaning. I was sure I had to. Variants
of me did go mad seeking that  meaning but only those of me who could accept
the gift of life without questioning it too intensely would survive to  find
the answer.
     I  wrote  in these pages  that  if  there  were  an infinite number  of
variations of myself, then what meaning could any one of us have? I wondered
about that then. I know the answer now. I know my answer.
     I am the baseline.
     I am the Danny from which all other Dannys will spring.
     I  am a  circle, complete unto  itself. I have  brought life into  this
world,  and  that life is me.  And from this circle will  spring an infinite
number of  tangents. All the  other Dannys who have ever  been and ever will
be.
     Who the others are, what  they are  that is for each of them to decide.
But as for me, I know who I am. I am the center of it all.
     I am the end.
     I am the beginning.
     * * *
     So, before it is over, I will have done it all and been it all.
     I will take the body back to the summer of 1975 and lay it gently in my
bed, to be discovered in  the morning by the maid. I will take his  timebelt
and  put it in  a  box, wrap it up for my nephew and take it back a month to
give it to  my lawyer, Biggs-or-Briggs-or-whatever-hisname-is. I will  leave
Danny the legacy of ... our life.
     Later I will go back in time and visit him again. This time, though,  I
will  handle the situation properly. It's not enough to  just give  him  the
timebelt after my  death; I  must visit him early in 1975 and explain to him
how to use it wisely. Especially in the case of Diane.
     I've already  spoken to the nineteen-year-old Danny once, but I  felt I
mishandled it, so I  went back and talked myself out of it. Later I will try
again. Perhaps a little earlier. May  of 1975.  Or April. (I must be careful
though. Each  time  I  change my mind about how to tell Danny,  I have to go
back earlier and earlier. That way  I excise the later tracks, the incorrect
ones.  But  I must be careful  not to  go back  too early  I must give him a
chance  to  mature. I think of the old  Dan who went chasing after the young
Diane. I must be careful, careful.)
     Perhaps I should  just  leave him  this manuscript instead. These pages
will tell the story better than I can. Maybe that would be the best way.
     * * *
     There is just one last thing . . .
     What is it like to die?
     There is no Don to come back and tell me.
     And I'm scared.
     It's the one thing I will have to face alone. Totally alone.
     There will be absolutely no foreknowledge.
     Nor will  there be any hindknowledge. The terrible thing about death is
that you don't know you've died.
     Or is that the terrible thing? Maybe that's the blessing.
     It's the jump-shock that will kill me. I know that. I will tap my  belt
twice and I will cease to exist. Cease to exist.
     Cease to exist.
     The words echo in my head.
     Cease to exist.
     Until they lose all meaning.
     I try to imagine what it will be like.
     No more me.
     The end of Danny.
     The end.
     (What happens to the rest of the universe?)
     I am afraid of it more than anything else in my life.
     Absence of
     me.
     * * *
     Dear Danny,
     Time travel is not immortality.
     It will allow you  to experience all the  possible  variations  of your
life. But it is not an unlimited ticket. There will be an end.
     My body has not experienced its years in sequence.
     But it  has  experienced  years. And it has aged.  And my mind has been
carried  headlong  with it this  lump of flesh travels through  time its own
way, in a way that no man has the power to change.
     I've  had to learn to accept that, Danny, in order to find peace within
my mind.
     My mind?
     Perhaps I'm  not a mind at  all. Perhaps I'm only a body pretending the
vanity of  being something more. Perhaps  it's only the fact that  language,
which allows  me to  manipulate symbols, ideas, and  concepts, also provides
the awareness of self that precedes the inevitable analysis.
     Hmm.
     I have spent a lifetime analyzing my life.  Living it. And rewriting it
to suit me.
     I once compared time travel to a subjective work of art. That was truer
than  I realized. I am the  artist of  time.  I choose the scenes  I wish to
play. Even the last one.
     And that scares me too. Just a little.
     I don't know when that body was coming  from. It he tapped the belt and
came  back  to August 23  Thinking he  was going to  witness the arrival  of
himself. Thinking he was going to witness his death.
     Or maybe he was seeking it.
     I don't know when that body came from. I don't  know when it's starting
point is/was/will be.
     I don't know  when  I'm going to die. But I do  know it will be soon. I
admit it. I'm scared.
     But perhaps it will be a gentle way to go.
     I will never know what happened. I will never really  know  when. And I
will die  much as  I lived in the  act of jumping across time. It will be  a
fitting way to go.
     Danny, you  cannot avoid mortality.  But  you can  choose  your way  of
meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
     Live well, my son.
     * * *
     Maybe this  will be  the last  page. I think I  should add something to
"Uncle Jim's" diary.
     Uncle Jim has given his life back to himself that is, to me. Now that I
know the directions in which I will go no, can go the decisions are mine.
     I need  do none of the things that Uncle Jim  has described.  (In fact,
some  of them shock me beyond words.) Or I could do all of them I may change
as I grow  older. The point  is, I know what I am beginning if I put on this
belt.
     I feel a strange empathy for that frightening  old man. He  was bizarre
and perverse and  lost. But he was me  and all those things he did and  felt
and wrote about echo profoundly in my own soul. I feel a terrible sadness at
his loss, greater than I did before I knew who he was. And not just sadness;
fear and horror too. I cannot be this person in this manuscript. This is too
much  to assimilate.  Is  this  me?  I  am drawn  to it  and  simultaneously
repelled. It can't be true.
     But I know it is.
     My god. What have I wrought? What will I?
     I wish he were here now. I wish there were some way to reach him punish
him, scream at him, berate him. How dare he do this to me?
     And ... at the same time, I want to hug him and  thank him and tell him
how much he means to me. Even though I know he knows knew.
     I saw him in  his coffin. I sat through his  funeral. He's dead. And he
isn't. I could go looking for him. . . . Should I?
     I want to reassure him. And be reassured by him.
     And the tears roll down my cheeks. I'm crying for  myself now more than
him because now I know how truly isolated I really am. I am abandoned by the
universe. There is no god who can save me.
     I am so alone I cannot bear  the pain of it. Now I know how desperately
isolated one human being can be. What have I done to deserve this?
     I will surely go mad.
     * * *
     No. I will not.
     I can't escape that way either.
     I know what choice I have. And it is no choice at all.
     The decision is mine.
     A world awaits me.
     The future beckons.
     All right, I accept.
     I am going to put on the belt.
     * * *
     About the Author
     David GerroldĀs Career began when, as a
     college student  in  1967, he  sold  his first  television script, "The
Trouble with Tribbles," to
     Star Trek. He went on to write more television scripts, as well as such
novels as The Man who
     Folded Himself, the Hugo-nominated When
     HARLIE Was One, When HARLIE Was One:
     Release 2.0, and the first three books in The
     War Against the Chtorr series: A Matter for
     Men, A Day for Damnation, and A Rage for
     Revenge. He is currently working on the fourth novel in the series.