Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/96

96 Susie Ann wishes I was like that, instead of pale, and a little hunched from brooding over a bookkeeping desk all day.

"Don't go! " he suggested easily, as I turned, on my way. "Let's have a little talk. You look highly intelligent to me."

I perked up at these words.

"Well, I'm in quite a hurry. My girl, you know."

"Just ten minutes!" he urged. "I've got a story to tell you that will pin your ears back. Not that I expect you to believe it. Nobody has yet!"

"Well," I yielded, "Sometimes I do have to wait a while for Susie Ann. The cars are so crowded."

"Sure. Hoist yourself up on this window ledge. We'll have a little chat!"

He talked in that easy confidential manner that has you following before you hardly realize it. So I was perched upon the wide ledge with him, with the thinning crowd clicking their heels past.

"I'm Morton Weinstock," he began, by way of introduction.

"Like the famous scientist who smashes up atoms!" I exclaimed brightly. Science is quite a hobby of mine, and I follow such things in the periodicals.

"I am Morton Weinstock, who smashes atoms!" he snapped.

"No ! He's an old man."

"I'm Morton Weinstock, Junior. I also smash atoms," he went on patiently. "Do you want to hear my story?"

I nodded.

S YOU seem to know, my father has made remarkable advances in atomic science during the past several years. However, none quite so astounding as the discovery he and I worked over together, the bulk of which was never made public."

"What was that?"

"I'm trying to get to it," he frowned.

He looked vexed. I made as if to jump down, but he restrained me, and continued.

"I will just skim over the technical angles of this manifestation, since you seem to be in such an almighty hurry."

"As you like." My tone was sulky. I wanted to leave, but felt bound to hear him out.

"Einstein gave us invaluable theories regarding Time. In fact, it may be assumed that he about reduced time to a mere dimension.

"My father went a step further. He found out, by what will some day be accepted as an entirely new branch of science, that time, as mankind considers it, does not actually exist at all!"

"Preposterous!" I exclaimed. He frowned again.

"The best way I can give you a hint of our theory is to use similes. Take a phonograph record, for example. Call the exact point where the needle is playing now. Apparently, the now part of the music or speech is all that exists; actually the whole thing is right there. Beginning, middle section, and end. You might call the music on the record two-dimensional, to complete my simile. We are three-dimensional entities. I see this two-dimensional 'life' as one complete whole. I have the power to jerk the needle off the first part of the record and set it down on the last part, thus interrupting the normal sequence of sound, making what ought to come a couple of minutes in the future—now."

His eyes blazed. He seemed keen on this subject.

"But what are you—" I began in bewilderment.

"Just keep quiet, and listen!" was my answer. "Same with a book. The main character is born on the first page,