Alan Cogan

“ You can stay and make the best of your own world."
"You're a fine one to talk. Are you going back to your own life—to Kathy? Even though you don't get along with her?"
Nodding emphatically, Chuck said, "Of course. Your Utopia is as remote to me as Heaven or Hell. The important thing is not the hundreds of lives you could have led or all the possibilities that occur in your lifetime. The thing that counts is what you do with the one lifetime that's given to you. You're not happy with Estelle so you blame Estelle, thinking you'd be happier with Kathy or someone else. ”

“ Then, suddenly, he was standing on another Hobson's Hill.
The four black boxes had gone, but the blurred arch of light was still there. He fell to his knees, clutching in terror at the grass, trembling and breathless: the switch from one world to another was always unnerving. Immediately between worlds, the sensation of being in no world, of stepping into a bottomless abyss, always left him ragged with panic. ”

“ Trying to cheer her up with little surprises was a waste of time. It's no fun trying to surprise anyone who knows better than yourself what the surprise is going to be.
Finally, when out of desperation I had almost decided to take my first time trip in nearly two years, I came home from the office to find Marge sobbing hysterically beside the Projector.
"We're going to die, Gerry!" she said, when I managed to get her fairly coherent. "I've been looking ahead for months now and I just don't see us anywhere in the future!" ”

“ That seemed to make my future self even madder. "You know I wouldn't touch one of those things even to save my life. I mean it, too! Besides, if you do die, it'll be your own fault. You'll have believed yourself to death! You think you're going to die and now you won't be happy until you are dead."
Future Marge began to sob hysterically and my Marge, who had been right beside me, suddenly seemed to grow a little more remote. ”

“ Mr. Sims nodded. "Yes, I looked at the book last night and decided on Socrates. Just a simple cup of hemlock."
A slight frown shadowed the director's features. Was it contempt, Mr. Sims wondered, or disappointment because he had failed in his attempts to make poisoning seem a socially inferior way of dying? Nothing glamorous about such a departure, he realized. No disdainful refusal of the blindfold when gazing bravely into the leveled muzzles of the firing squad. No bullfight, armed combat, duel or ferocious carnivores. ”

“ Kathy and Estelle were a couple of nice kids. Maybe it wasn't their fault entirely. Maybe it was the fault of Charles and Chuck Mead."
"Possibly," said Charles a little wearily. "But that sort of argument gets us nowhere. You still can't disprove that there isn't a perfect Charles Mead somewhere."
"I doubt if he's perfect," Chuck said. "Making the correct decisions all the time doesn't necessarily make him perfect. Besides, even if you did meet him, it wouldn't alter you in any way. You'd be the same person you are now." ”

“ Sims suddenly wished he were in one of the quiet rooms of the palace, alone.
Cousin Nat was the first one to break the awkward silence. "Who in hell was that madman who brought us over here?"
"That's Mr. Hoode, the director," Mr. Sims explained. "He's quite an artist in his way."
"He's insane!" Nat said flatly. "All the way over, he talked about nothing but dying. Told us we could come here and die any way we wanted. If any of us wanted to go out like Early Christians, he would be only too happy to set up an arena for us. ”

“ Marge sat up in the hammock and made room for me to sit down beside her.
"I just don't see how it could happen to us," I said. "I don't see how we could fight like that. There must have been some mistake. Maybe we looked in on the wrong people."
Neither of us added anything to that. We both knew we weren't going to change so much that we couldn't recognize ourselves two years later.
"Maybe it was some sort of alternative world we saw," I suggested, eagerly clutching at any straw, "showing us what could happen if we didn't work hard at our marriage. ”

“ Chuck groaned and settled down resignedly in the armchair.
"If there really are all these worlds," Charles began, "and I can't see why there shouldn't be, then a world must exist where there's a Charles Mead who never made a wrong decision! A Charles Mead who did everything right, who never made a wrong move in his life! Of course there must also be one of us who never made a right decision—to say nothing of all the endless varieties between the two extreme cases. ”

“ Then, one night, we had the identical fight that we had watched two years earlier, on our first time trip. Marge, as usual, was crying hysterically about not having long to live and I was shouting at her about wishing herself into the grave. ”

“ Sims had had a hollow, anxious feeling ever since.
"There's one thing I haven't found out yet," he said to Mr. Hoode. "Is it in order for me to ask how and when I can expect to die?"
"Certainly," Mr. Hoode said. "It's the reason I brought you here to talk. You see, anyone sent here under the Legislation is given a completely free choice as to the manner of his departure. Most people, although they realize this, show a distressing lack of imagination when the time comes. They seem unable to think beyond the ordinary methods of taking a pill, or a needle, or a poisoned cocktail." ”

“ It used to be a good business tactic before the Grundy Projector came out. It wasn't any more—not with people being able to see outcomes of dealings—but he couldn't get rid of the habit.
"It's too bad he had to invent that fool time gadget," he went on. "I suppose your wife uses it all the time. They seem to be very popular with women."
"Marge gave it up a short time ago," I lied. "She got bored with it."
Mr. Atkins nodded thoughtfully. "Wouldn't it be nice to live in an age again when none of us knew what was going to happen? When life had lots of surprises—both good and bad? ”

“ By sheer accident, I crossed into another world and almost scared myself to death.
"By the way," he went on, "what happened to you after you married Kathy? I often wondered what it would have been like being married to her."
"It's all right, I guess," Chuck said. "We got married and bought a house. A couple of years ago, I went into business on my own—Hi-Fi and TV repairs. Business isn't too bad." He flashed another look at the golden girl sunning herself by the pool. "Estelle hasn't changed much in all these years," he said nostalgically. "She's still as beautiful as ever." ”

“ Atkins and I knew just how much money I was going to have in the bank at the end of two years. I even knew that my paunch would get bigger and my hair would start falling out.
Life got to be just a matter of sitting around waiting for the expected to happen.
I tried hard to break Marge of the time projection habit, but it was useless. She was as addicted as everyone else and the Grundy Projector looked as though it was going to be here for good and no one was going to stop it. ”

“ It's depressing. We have the best accommodation, food, entertainment, everything the guest requires during his three days here; then they go ahead and die their miserable deaths. Somehow it makes all the luxury seem like pink sugar frosting around a rotten cake. That's why we're always happy to find a guest with the proper spirit." Mr. Hoode said.
Mr. Sims listened in silence to the sales talk, wondering absent-mindedly what the director's personal interest was in other people's death. ”

“ Do you fight often?"
"I guess we do," Chuck said, "from time to time."
"Estelle and I fight all the time. I still regret marrying her, even though I got rich because of it. Anyway, we don't get along. We don't even try to manage. There were plenty of times when I regretted not marrying Kathy. She seemed to me to be a nice homy, comfortable sort of kid."
"I hope you're not going to suggest we trade places," Chuck said.
"Of course not. I told you—I'm searching for the perfect world. Charles Mead's Utopia!" He raised his glass in a mock toast. "Want to come along?" ”

“ Sims admitted.
"We have a service to assist you," said the director. "We of the Sunnylands staff have discovered what you might call a Philosophy of Dying. For instance, if a man lives an active life, there's no reason why he should be subjected to a sneaking prick of a needle in his sleep just because he reaches the age of sixty-five. We discovered that a few people objected strongly to such methods. There are some people who would prefer to die fighting. ”

“ The dome housing development was only temporary as far as I was concerned and I wanted something bigger for when we could afford a family.
I suppose we all have those dreams of success when we're young, and though most of us have fairly predictable futures, I still can't help thinking that it's those wild dreams and schemes that keep us slugging away and add a little zest to life. Anyway, I soon found that Marge was knocking all the zest out of my life because she knew the future for both of us and she kept telling me about it. ”

“ Sims repeated. "What did you have in mind?"
"It's what you have in mind that counts. I can offer you a lot of advice, but the final choice is yours. For instance, a large number of men like to die in some sort of combat, with guns or swords, or even with animals. We had one man who fought a tiger. Another fulfilled a life-long ambition to play the role of bullfighter. Perhaps I should explain that the government allows each guest a generous sum of money to pay for his departure. ”

“ I put my own Grundy Projector away in the basement shortly after I got married and I never used it any more. To my way of thinking, it made life pretty dull. I had just been married and I was also starting to get ahead at my job—Mr. Atkins had put me in charge of a whole department full of accounts analyzers. I went around with all sorts of wild plans and dreams of a rosy future for us. I hoped someday to form my own company and I was also interested in finding a better place to live. ”

“ Don't tell me you intend to round up all the different versions of yourself. If so, count me out!"
"You're getting warm," Charles said. "If you'll bear with me a little longer, I'll stretch your imagination again." ”

“ He had protested—threatened—pleaded.
"Overpopulation! Elimination of needless suffering! Burden to society! Duty to humanity!" The cliches had tripped glibly off the doctor's tongue as he signed the form. ”

“ The first thing I did when I bought my Grundy Projector was take a trip to about two years ahead and see what was going to happen to me. Everyone was doing it around that time; students were taking short trips into the future to learn whether or not they would pass their exams, married couples were looking ahead to see how many kids they were going to have, businessmen were going into the future to size up their prospects.
I took the trip because I was getting married and I couldn't resist the temptation of finding out how things would work out with my fiancee Marge and myself. ”

“ After all, there's nothing but row upon row of stuffy little rooms where people come to die. And they take a long time doing it, too!"
Mr. Sims winced noticeably.
"You'll forgive me if I don't appear overly sanctimonious about death," Mr. Hoode said, smiling. "It's just that the other directors and myself decided we must take a realistic view of the situation. A place like this could become pretty morbid, you know, and there's actually no reason why a guest's last hours here shouldn't be pleasant and satisfying."
Pleasant and satisfying—the key words when you spoke of Sunnylands Palace, Mr. ”

“ For a start, a lot of people automatically found their jobs had disappeared overnight—weather forecasters, news analysts, pollsters, stock-market speculators, and all the people connected with any form of racing, betting, lotteries or raffles, to name only a few. Gambling, respectable or otherwise, requires someone to win and someone to lose—and who'd be willing to lose on a result he already knew? ”

“ The growing efficiency of the rescue services worked wonders—which were part of the future, as you'd expect, not successful attempts to change it—although there were always a small number of deaths, mainly the kind of people who never used to pay any attention to the news, didn't look at road signs, and the like. ”

“ The only answer to that, of course, is that Willy just didn't get out of bed that morning, thus proving the prediction true.
We argued for weeks over that one. It doesn't matter now—Willy is a 'copter mechanic and crazy about the work. After all, he didn't have the slightest difficulty getting a job. He simply looked ahead to see where he would be working and then applied.
Inevitably, some people found out when they were going to die. Even when they took steps to forestall the grim event, they often discovered that their plans actually helped them arrive at their demise right on the button. ”

“ The real thing—not the Bilbo Grundy toy, but real physical time travel. These friends have gone a lot further than Grundy did with his invention and they perform the service of transporting people to a better age."
"You mean the future?"
"The past!" said Mr. Atkins. "The chances are the future will be even worse. ”

“ After all, who could prevent an expectant mother from jumping ahead a year or so to find out whether she is going to have a boy or girl? I know the doctors can tell with one hundred per cent accuracy in the second month, but the parents-to-be still want to find out if Junior will look like Mom or Dad. ”