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.At last he looked again at the text of the newspaper cutting, and reread the quoted words of Dr Williams: ‘.our minds, which will seem to experience the projected world, will in fact stay within the program…‘For a moment Harkman felt that in these words lay the clue: there had been a mistake, something had gone wrong.All that apparent sensationalism in the other newspapers was, after all, right: he had travelled in time!It seemed to be the only solution to the dilemma, and irrational and incomprehensible as it was it would explain.The notion took hold for a few seconds, then slackened its grip, fell away.It could not be so: he had no memory of the twentieth century, nor of any time before his own life.Forty-three years, perhaps thirty-eight of them remembered with any clarity.No more.An ordinary life.He looked again at Williams’s words: ‘.our minds will seem to experience.’It was possible, just marginally possible, that this was the central statement.In effect, everything he saw, everything about him, what he ate, what he read, what he remembered.was a mental illusion.Again, he kicked back his chair and walked in torment from the desk and along the nearest aisle.He paced agitatedly to and fro.All this was reality.He could touch it, smell it.He breathed the musty air of the vault, sweated in the unventilated room, kicked up clouds of ancient dust: this was the world of external reality, and it was necessarily so.As he strode past the seemingly endless rows of files and books, each of which contained its own fragments of remembered past, he concentrated on what he himself conceived as reality.Was there an inner reality of the mind which was more plausible than that of external sensations? Did the fact that he could touch something mean that it was as a consequence real? Could it not also be that the mind itself was able to create, to the last detail, every sensual experience? That he dreamed of this dust, that he hallucinated this heat?He halted in his fretful pacing, closed his eyes.He willed the vault to vanish.let it be gone!He waited, but the dust he had kicked up was irritating his nose, and he spluttered a great and messy sneeze.and the vault was still there.Wiping his eyes and nose, Harkman walked back to the desk.There was something else in the cutting, something that had left a barb that snagged at his memory.He scanned the faded newsprint once again, but couldn’t see it.Then he noticed the date.It was printed at the top: 4th August 1985.There was something incontestable about a date, an impartiality, a known and labelled event shared by all.The newspaper had described the initiation of the project as taking place ‘today’.presumably the same date.In which case the projected future would have begun on 4th August 2135.Where had he been on that day? What had he been doing?He knew the general answer at once: for the last few years he had been in London, working at the Bureau.That would seem to be rejection enough of any but a coincidental link with this twentieth-century experiment, because his roots extended beyond or before the incident date.But he was still not satisfied.Why was August 2135 a significant month to him?Then he had it: that was the month he had applied to the Bureau for transfer to Dorchester.He remembered because his birthday was 7th August, and he had filed the application with a feeling of resolution and changed direction, a present to himself.It had felt then like the fulfilment of a long-felt need, but he knew that the decision had been a relatively sudden one.He had become obsessed with the idea three days before, when he had had the realization that until he was able to live and work in Wessex he would never be content.Three days before! That would be 4th August!His incomprehensible urge to go to Maiden Castle, feebly rationalized, had started on the very day the project began.The significance of it was awful, but for the life of him Harkman couldn’t see why.His memories before that date were his hold on reality; so long as they extended before then he knew that his identity was safe.The memories were there: education, career, marriage, career.Talking to Julia a few days ago he had had the same static memories.The events stood out like check-marks on a list.They had happened, and they had not happened [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.At last he looked again at the text of the newspaper cutting, and reread the quoted words of Dr Williams: ‘.our minds, which will seem to experience the projected world, will in fact stay within the program…‘For a moment Harkman felt that in these words lay the clue: there had been a mistake, something had gone wrong.All that apparent sensationalism in the other newspapers was, after all, right: he had travelled in time!It seemed to be the only solution to the dilemma, and irrational and incomprehensible as it was it would explain.The notion took hold for a few seconds, then slackened its grip, fell away.It could not be so: he had no memory of the twentieth century, nor of any time before his own life.Forty-three years, perhaps thirty-eight of them remembered with any clarity.No more.An ordinary life.He looked again at Williams’s words: ‘.our minds will seem to experience.’It was possible, just marginally possible, that this was the central statement.In effect, everything he saw, everything about him, what he ate, what he read, what he remembered.was a mental illusion.Again, he kicked back his chair and walked in torment from the desk and along the nearest aisle.He paced agitatedly to and fro.All this was reality.He could touch it, smell it.He breathed the musty air of the vault, sweated in the unventilated room, kicked up clouds of ancient dust: this was the world of external reality, and it was necessarily so.As he strode past the seemingly endless rows of files and books, each of which contained its own fragments of remembered past, he concentrated on what he himself conceived as reality.Was there an inner reality of the mind which was more plausible than that of external sensations? Did the fact that he could touch something mean that it was as a consequence real? Could it not also be that the mind itself was able to create, to the last detail, every sensual experience? That he dreamed of this dust, that he hallucinated this heat?He halted in his fretful pacing, closed his eyes.He willed the vault to vanish.let it be gone!He waited, but the dust he had kicked up was irritating his nose, and he spluttered a great and messy sneeze.and the vault was still there.Wiping his eyes and nose, Harkman walked back to the desk.There was something else in the cutting, something that had left a barb that snagged at his memory.He scanned the faded newsprint once again, but couldn’t see it.Then he noticed the date.It was printed at the top: 4th August 1985.There was something incontestable about a date, an impartiality, a known and labelled event shared by all.The newspaper had described the initiation of the project as taking place ‘today’.presumably the same date.In which case the projected future would have begun on 4th August 2135.Where had he been on that day? What had he been doing?He knew the general answer at once: for the last few years he had been in London, working at the Bureau.That would seem to be rejection enough of any but a coincidental link with this twentieth-century experiment, because his roots extended beyond or before the incident date.But he was still not satisfied.Why was August 2135 a significant month to him?Then he had it: that was the month he had applied to the Bureau for transfer to Dorchester.He remembered because his birthday was 7th August, and he had filed the application with a feeling of resolution and changed direction, a present to himself.It had felt then like the fulfilment of a long-felt need, but he knew that the decision had been a relatively sudden one.He had become obsessed with the idea three days before, when he had had the realization that until he was able to live and work in Wessex he would never be content.Three days before! That would be 4th August!His incomprehensible urge to go to Maiden Castle, feebly rationalized, had started on the very day the project began.The significance of it was awful, but for the life of him Harkman couldn’t see why.His memories before that date were his hold on reality; so long as they extended before then he knew that his identity was safe.The memories were there: education, career, marriage, career.Talking to Julia a few days ago he had had the same static memories.The events stood out like check-marks on a list.They had happened, and they had not happened [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]