The Man Who Folded Himself

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 Da

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 Da

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 begi

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 Da

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 Da

ture. 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 Da

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 Da

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, Da

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.

Da

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 begi

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 ca

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 ca

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.