Robert Silverberg - What We Learned from This Morning’s Newspaper

I got home from the office as usual at 6:47 this evening and discovered that our peaceful street has been in some sort of crazy uproar all day. The newsboy it seems came by today and delivered the New York Times for Wednesday December 1 to every house on Redbud Crescent. Since today is Monday November 22 it follows therefore that Wednesday December 1 is the middle of next week. I said to my wife are you sure that this really happened? Because I looked at the newspaper myself before I went off to work this morning and it seemed quite all right to me.

At breakfast time the newspaper could be printed in Albanian and it would seem quite all right to you my wife replied. Here look at this. And she took the newspaper from the hall closet and handed it all folded up to me. It looked just like any other edition of the New York Times but I saw what I had failed to notice at breakfast time, that it said Wednesday December 1.

Is today the 22nd of November I asked? Monday?

It certainly is my wife told me. Yesterday was Sunday and tomorrow is going to be Tuesday and we haven’t even come to Thanksgiving yet. Bill what are we going to do about this?

I glanced through the newspaper. The front page headlines were nothing remarkable I must admit, just the same old New York Times stuff that you get any day when there hasn’t been some event of cosmic importance. NIXON, WITH WIFE, TO VISIT 3 CHINESE CITIES IN 7 DAYS. Yes. 10 HURT AS GUNMEN SHOOT WAY INTO AND OUT OF BANK. All right. GROUP OF 10, IN ROME, BEGINS NEGOTIATING REALIGNMENT OF CURRENCIES. Okay. The same old New York Times stuff and no surprises. But the paper was dated Wednesday December 1 and that was a surprise of sorts I guess.

This is only a joke I told my wife.

Who would do such a thing for a joke? To print up a whole newspaper? It’s impossible Bill.

It’s also impossible to get next week’s newspaper delivered this week you know or hadn’t you considered what I said?

She shrugged and I picked up the second section. I opened to page fifty which contained the obituary section and I admit I felt quite queasy for a moment since after all this might not be any joke and what would it be like to find my own name there? To my relief the people whose obituaries I saw were Harry Rogoff Terry Turner Dr. M. A. Feinstein and John Millis. I will not say that the deaths of these people gave me any pleasure but better them than me of course. I even looked at the death notices in small type but there was no listing for me. Next I turned to the sports section and saw KNICKS’ STREAK ENDED, 110-109. We had been talking about going to get tickets for that game at the office and my first thought now was that it isn’t worth bothering to see it. Then I remembered you can bet on basketball games and I knew who was going to win and that made me feel very strange. So also I felt odd to look at the bottom of page sixty-four where they had the results of the racing at Yonkers Raceway and then quickly flip flip flip I was on page sixty-nine and the financial section lay before my eyes. DOW INDEX RISES BY 1.61 TO 831.34 the headline said. National Cash Register was the most active stock closing at 27 3⁄ 8off 1⁄ 4. Then Eastman Kodak 88 7⁄ 8down 1 1⁄ 8. By this time I was starting to sweat very hard and I gave my wife the paper and took off my jacket and tie.

I said how many people have their newspaper?

Everybody on Redbud Crescent she said that’s eleven houses altogether.

And nowhere beyond our street?

No the others got the ordinary paper today we’ve been checking on that.

Who’s we I asked?

Marie and Cindy and I she said. Cindy was the one who noticed about the paper first and called me and then we all got together and talked about it. Bill what are we going to do? We have the stock market prices and everything Bill.

If it isn’t a joke I told her.

It looks like the real paper doesn’t it Bill?

I think I want a drink I said. My hands were shaking all of a sudden and the sweat was still coming. I had to laugh because it was just the other Saturday night some of us were talking about the utter predictable regularity of life out here in the suburbs the dull smooth sameness of it all. And now this. The newspaper from the middle of next week. It’s like God was listening to us and laughed up His sleeve and said to Gabriel or whoever it’s time to send those stuffed shirts on Redbud Crescent a little excitement.

After dinner Jerry Wesley called and said we’re having a meeting at our place tonight Bill can you and your lady come?

I asked him what the meeting was about and he said it’s about the newspaper.

Oh yes I said. The newspaper. What about the newspaper?

Come to the meeting he said I really don’t want to talk about this on the phone.

Of course we’ll have to arrange a sitter Jerry.

No you won’t we’ve already arranged it he told me. The three Fischer girls are going to look after all the kids on the block. So just come over around quarter to nine.

Jerry is an insurance broker very successful at that he has the best house on the Crescent, two-story Tudor style with almost an acre of land and a big paneled rumpus room in the basement. That’s where the meeting took place. We were the seventh couple to arrive and soon after us the Maxwells the Bruces and the Thomasons came in. Folding chairs were set out and Cindy Wesley had done her usual great trays of canapés and such and there was a lot of liquor, self-service at the bar. Jerry stood up in front of everybody and grinned and said I guess you’ve all been wondering why I called you together this evening. He held up his copy of the newspaper. From where I was sitting I could make out only one headline clearly it was 10 HURT AS GUNMEN SHOOT WAY INTO AND OUT OF BANK but that was enough to enable me to recognize it as the newspaper.

Jerry said did all of you get a copy of this paper today?

Everybody nodded.

You know Jerry said that this paper gives us some extraordinary opportunities to improve our situation in life. I mean if we can accept it as the real December 1 edition and not some kind of fantastic hoax then I don’t need to tell you what sort of benefits we can get from it, right?

Sure Bob Thomason said but what makes anybody think it isn’t a hoax? I mean next week’s newspaper who could believe that?

Jerry looked at Mike Nesbit. Mike teaches at Columbia Law and is more of an intellectual than most of us.

Mike said well of course the obvious conclusion is that somebody’s playing a joke on us. But have you looked at the newspaper closely? Every one of those stories has been written in a perfectly legitimate way. There aren’t any details that ring false. It isn’t like one of those papers where the headlines have been cooked up but the body of the text is an old edition. So we have to consider the probabilities. Which sounds more fantastic? That someone would take the trouble of composing an entire fictional edition of the Times setting it in type printing it and having it delivered or that through some sort of fluke of the fourth dimension we’ve been allowed a peek at next week’s newspaper? Personally I don’t find either notion easy to believe but I can accept fourth-dimensional hocus-pocus more readily than I can the idea of a hoax. For one thing unless you’ve had a team the size of the Times’ own staff working on this newspaper it would take months and months to prepare it and there’s no way that anybody could have begun work on the paper more than a few days in advance because there are things in it that nobody could have possibly known as recently as a week ago. Like the Phase Two stuff and the fighting between India and Pakistan.