In the Cards Part 1

In the Cards.

by Alan Cogan.

[Sidenote: It is one thing to safeguard the future ... and something else entirely to see someone you love cry in terror two years from now!]

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 pa.s.s 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. Not that I had any doubts about Marge, but the Grundy Projectors were guaranteed harmless and there's no point in taking chances with a serious step like marriage.

Everybody was looking ahead then. Within a week after the Grundy Projectors were introduced, you could walk past homes every evening and see people with those s.h.i.+mmering bird-cages around them. Their bodies were there, but heaven knows when their minds were--months and often even years ahead of time.

I knew exactly when to go on my first time trip. I even knew where: I'd already put a down payment on a home in the new dome housing area where Marge and I would be living after the wedding. Knowing where to go on a time trip is important. On this one, for instance, I hadn't been a.s.signed an address yet and there were all sorts of changes in the place--buildings and streets where there had only been empty lots and sections marked off by string--and I just had to hunt until I came to our home.

You can imagine how much more difficult finding my future self would be if I hadn't known the exact location. That's about the only major drawback to making time trips and I don't see how it can be overcome.

Directories would be one answer, but how would you go about putting them together if your crews can't ask questions or touch filing cards or even open future visiphone books?

Eventually, after setting the dial around the two-year mark, which is about the maximum limit on most models, I found myself in my future home in the dome housing area. I was watching myself as I would be and Marge as she would be. Only I didn't like what I saw.

We were fighting and screaming at each other. You could tell at a glance that we hated each other. And after only two years!

I was completely stunned as I watched that scene. Future Marge looked furious; she had the kind of look I never even suspected she could get on her face. But I think I was more enraged at my future self than at her. At the time, I was seriously in love with Marge--although it seemed evident it wasn't going to last--and I loathed myself for acting that way toward her. And after all those rash promises I had been making, too!

I was really a tangled mess of emotions as I watched our future selves battling it out.

I became conscious of not being alone as I watched. It didn't take long to discover that it was Marge who had come to join me. I should have expected her--she must have been just as curious about her marriage as I was and, like myself, would naturally take her Projector to the two-year limit. Of course we couldn't hold hands the way we would have if our bodies had been there, but then we probably wouldn't have held them long. We were both pretty embarra.s.sed by what we saw.

The cause of the fight was very obscure, and though we saw and heard everything perfectly, we still didn't really understand. However, the emotions expressed were plain enough.

"You aren't going to die, Marge," my future self was yelling at her.

"Try and get that through your d.a.m.ned thick stupid skull!"

"I am! I am!" she was screaming back at me. "You know I'm going to die.

You want to get rid of me. Our marriage has been one long fight from the start."

"Don't talk such d.a.m.ned rot," my future self hollered back at her.

"There's probably a perfectly good explanation for it all and you're too ignorant to see it!"

"The only explanation is that I'm going to die," future Marge insisted.

She broke down, sobbing into an already saturated handkerchief.

My future self stamped around the room, cursing and furiously kicking the furniture. "Why don't you find out for sure? Why don't you go in closer and find out the real reason?"

She sobbed even louder. "I daren't! You do it for me. Go find out for yourself and then tell me."

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.

Then a strange thing happened. My future self stopped pacing up and down the room and turned to look straight at me with the queerest expression on his face. That was enough for me. I got out of there fast and flipped back to the peace and security of 2017.

I climbed out of my Grundy Projector, glad to be back in the relative calm of my body, although it still took me a long time to get settled down. I felt like smas.h.i.+ng the Projector there and then, and I guess I should have done it.

The problem that had me all tied in knots was whether or not I should go ahead and marry Marge after what I had seen. I know it looked as though I was going to marry her anyway, but in my innocence I figured I could beat that.

I soon realized I was going to get nowhere sitting all by myself in my room, so I went over to Marge's place. She was waiting for me, swinging quietly to and fro on the hammock on the dark patio. Normally I would have sat right down beside her, but this time I just stood back sheepishly and waited.

Neither of us said anything for a while and I just watched as the hammock floated in the faint bluish light from some nearby lamps. Marge seemed to s.h.i.+ne almost angelically as the glow caught her dark eyes and her softly tanned arms and legs.

I could have whipped myself for treating her the way I had seen myself treating her in the future. It must have been a mistake. There had to be a mistake somewhere. I couldn't have made myself do anything to hurt her.

Her voice was husky and scared when she spoke. "Do you think it'll happen the way we saw it, Gerry?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "They say that whatever you see always turns out to be the thing that happens."

"Do you think we'll fight like that when--if we're married?"

It was on the end of my tongue to talk common sense and logic to her, but then I realized that neither of us wanted to hear anything like that. We were in love and we didn't want to hear anything that conflicted with our emotions.

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. It could have been a sort of warning of what could happen to some people. But not us, of course!"

Marge's lonely little hand crept into mine for comfort and I began to warm up to the subject.

"Don't you worry about it," I a.s.sured her. "What would we ever find to quarrel about?"

The idea seemed so preposterous, we both began to laugh.

"I couldn't fight with you, Gerry," Marge said, snuggling closer.

"Me, neither," I said. "Don't worry about what we saw. The scientific boys will probably have a rational explanation worked out for the whole thing. I'll bet it's happened to lots of people."

Somehow, while we were talking, we had managed to get very close together in the hammock. Marge and I could never talk far apart for long.