Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

The small container stayed where he put it. It played no immediate role in world history. A man’s hand, hours later, reached for it but did not find it. A search revealed it half an hour later still, but in the interim a force-field had blanked out and a man’s temper had been lost. A decision which would have remained unmade in the previous Reality was now made in anger. A meeting did not take place; a man who would have died lived a year longer, under other circumstances; another who would have lived died somewhat sooner.

The ripples spread wider, reaching their maxium in the 2481st, which was twenty-five Centuries upwhen from the Touch. The intensity of the Reality Change declined thereafter. Theorists pointed out that nowhere to the infinite upwhen could the Change ever become zero, but by fifty Centuries upwhen from the Touch the Change had become too small to detect by the finest Computing, and that was the practical limit.

Of course no human being in Time could ever possibly be aware of any Reality Change having taken place. Mind changed as well as matter and only Eternals could stand outside it all and see the change.

Sociologist Voy was staring at the bluish scene in the 2481st, where earlier there had been all the activity of a busy space-port. He barely looked up when Harlan entered. He barely mumbled something that might have been a greeting.

A change had indeed blasted the space-port. Its shininess was gone; what buildings there stood were not the grand creations they had been. A space-ship rusted. There were no people. There was no motion.

Harlan allowed himself a small smile that flickered for a moment, then vanished. It was M.D.R. all right. Maximum Desired Response. And it had happened at once. The Change did not necessarily take place at the precise moment of the Technician’s Touch. If the calculations that went into the Touch were sloppy, hours or days might elapse before the Change actually took place (counting, of course, by physiotime). It was only when all degrees of freedom vanished that the Change took place. While there was even a mathematical chance for alternate actions, the Change did not take place.

It was Harlan’s pride that when he calculated an M.N.C., when it was his hand that contrived the Touch, the degrees of freedom vanished at once, and the Change took place instantly.

Voy said softly, “It had been very beautiful.”

The phrase grated Harlan’s ears, seeming to detract from the beauty of his own performance. “I wouldn’t regret,” he said, “having spacetravel bred out of Reality altogether.”

“No?” said Voy.

“What good is it? It never lasts more than a millennium or two. People get tired. They come back home and the colonies die out. Then after another four or five millennia, or forty or fifty, they try again and it fails again. It is a waste of human ingenuity and effort.”

Voy said dryly, “You’re quite a philosopher.”

Harlan flushed. He thought: What’s the use in talking to any of them? He said, angrily, with a sharp change of subject, “What about the Life-Plotter?”

“What about him?”

“Would you check with the man? He ought to have made some progress by now.”

The Sociologist let a look of disapproval drift across his face, as though to say: You’re the impatient one, aren’t you? Aloud he said, “Come with me and let’s see.”

The name plate on the office door said Neron Feruque, which struck Harlan’s eye and mind because of its faint similarity to a pair of rulers in the Mediterranean area during Primitive times. (His weekly discourses with Cooper had sharpened his own preoccupation with the Primitive almost feverishly.)

The man, however, resembled neither ruler, as Harlan recalled it. He was almost cadaverously lean, with skin stretched tightly over a high-bridged nose. His fingers were long and his wrists knobby. As he caressed his small Summator, he looked like Death weighing a soul in the balance.

Harlan found himself staring at the Summator hungrily. It was the heart and blood of Life-Plotting, the skin and bones, sinew, muscle and all else. Feed into it the required data of a personal history, and the equations of the Reality Change; do that and it would chuckle away in obscene merriment for any length of time from a minute to a day, and then spit out the possible companion lives for the person involved (under the new Reality), each neatly ticketed with a probability value.

Sociologist Voy introduced Harlan. Feruque, having stared in open annoyance at the Technician’s insigne, nodded his head and let the matter go.

Harlan said, “Is the young lady’s Life-Plot complete yet?”

“It is not. I’ll let you know when it is.” He was one of those who carried contempt for the Technician to the point of open rudeness.

Voy said, “Take it easy, Life-Plotter.”

Feruque had eyebrows which were light almost to invisibility. It heightened the resemblance of his face to a skull. His eyes rolled in what should have been empty sockets as he said, “Killed the spaceships?”

Voy nodded. “Cut it down a Century.”

Feruque’s lips twisted softly and formed a word.

Harlan folded his arms and stared at the Life-Plotter, who looked away in eventual discomfiture.

Harlan thought: He knows it’s his guilt too.

Feruque said to Voy, “Listen, as long as you’re here, what in Time am I going to do about the anti-cancer serum requests? We’re not the only Century with anti-cancer. Why do we get all the applications?”

“All the other Centuries are just as crowded. You know that.”

“Then they’ve got to stop sending in applications altogether.”

“How do we go about making them?”

“Easy. Let the Allwhen Council stop receiving them.”

“I have no pull with the Allwhen Council.”

“You have pull with the old man.”

Harlan listened to the conversation dully, without real interest. At least it served to keep his mind on inconsequentials and away from the chuckling Summator. The “old man,” he knew, would be the Computer in charge of the Section.

“I’ve talked to the old man,” said the Sociologist, “and he’s talked to the Council.”

“Nuts. He’s just sent through a routine tape-strip. He has to fight for this. It’s a matter of basic policy.”

“The Allwhen Council isn’t in the mood these days to consider changes in basic policy. You know the rumors going round.”

“Oh, sure. They’re busy on a big deal. Whenever there’s dodging to do, the word gets round that Council’s busy on some big deal.”

(If Harlan could have found the heart for it, he would have smiled at that point.)

Feruque brooded a few moments, and then burst out, “What most people don’t understand is that anti-cancer serum isn’t a matter of tree seedlings or field motors. I know that every sprig of spruce has to be watched for adverse effects on Reality, but anti-cancer always involves a human life and that’s a hundred times as complicated.

“Consider! Think how many people a year die of cancer in each Century that doesn’t have anti-cancer serums of one sort or another. You can imagine how many of the patients want to die. So the Timer governments in every Century are forever forwarding applications to Eternity to ‘please, pretty please ship them seventy-five thousand ampules of serum on behalf of the men critically stricken who are absolutely vital to the cultures, enclosed see biographical data.’”

Voy nodded rapidly, “I know. I know.”

But Feruque was not to be denied his bitterness. “So you read the biographical data and it’s every man a hero. Every man an insupportable loss to his world. So you work it through. You see what would happen to Reality if each man lived, and for Time’s sake, if different combinations of men lived.