David Gerrold: The Man Who Folded Himself

This book is for Larry Niven, a good friend who believes that time travel is impossible. He’s probably right.

In the box was a belt. And a manuscript.

I hadn’t seen Uncle Jim in months.

He looked terrible. Shrunken. His skin hung in wrinkled folds, his complexion was gray, and he was thin and stooped. He seemed to have aged ten years. Twenty. The last time I’d seen him, we were almost the same height. Now I realized I was taller.

“Uncle Jim!” I said. “Are you all right?”

He shook off my arm. “I’m fine, Danny. Just a little tired, that’s all.” He came into my apartment. His gait was no longer a stride, now just a shuffle. He lowered himself to the couch with a sigh.

“Can I get you anything?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t have that much time. We have some important business to take care of How old are you, boy?” He peered at me carefully.

“Huh—? I’m nineteen. You know that.”

“Ah.” He seemed to find that satisfactory. “Good. I was afraid I was too early, you looked so young—” He stopped himself. “How are you doing in school?”

“Fine.” I said it noncommittally. The university was a bore, but Uncle Jim was paying me to attend. Four hundred dollars a week, plus my apartment and my car.

And an extra hundred a week for keeping my nose clean.

“You don’t like it though, do you?”

I said, “No, I don’t.” Why try to tell him I did? He’d know it for the lie it was.

“You want to drop out?”

I shrugged. “I could live without it.”

“Yes, you could.” he agreed. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but stopped himself instead. “I won’t give you the lecture on the value of an education. You’ll find it out for yourself in time. And besides, there are other ways to learn.” He coughed; his whole chest rattled. He was so thin. “ Do you know how much you’re worth right now?”

“No. How much?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully; the wrinkled skin folded and unfolded. “One hundred and forty-three million dollars.”

I whistled. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s been properly handled.”

One hundred and forty-three million dollars — !

“Where is it now?” I asked. Stupid question.

“In stocks, bonds, properties. Things like that.”

“I can’t touch it then, can I?”

He looked at me and smiled. “I keep forgetting, Danny, how impatient you were — are.” He corrected himself, then looked across at me; his gaze wavered slightly. “You don’t need it right now, do you?”

I thought about it. One hundred and forty-three million dollars. Even if they delivered it in fifties, the apartment wasn’t that big. “No, I guess not.”

“Then we’ll leave it where it is,” he said. “But it’s your money. If you need it, you can have it.”

One hundred and forty-three million dollars. What would I do with it — what couldn’t I do with it? I had known my parents had left me a little money, but—

One hundred and forty-three million—!

I found I was having trouble swallowing.

“I thought it was in trust until I was twenty-five,” I said.

“No,” he corrected. “It’s for me to administer for you until you’re ready for it. You can have it any time you want.”

“I’m not so sure I want it,” I said slowly. “No — I mean, of course, I want it! It’s just that—” How to explain? I had visions of myself trapped in a big mansion surrounded by butlers and bodyguards whose sole duty was to make sure that I dusted the stacks of bills every morning. One hundred and forty-three million dollars. Even in hundreds, it would fill several closets. “I’m doing okay on five hundred a week,” I said, “All that more—”

“Five hundred a week?” Uncle Jim frowned. Then, “Yes, I keep forgetting — There’s been so much — Danny, I’m going to increase your allowance to two thousand dollars a week, but I want you to do something to earn it.”

“Sure,” I said, delighted in spite of myself This was a sum of money I could understand. (One hundred and forty-three million — I wasn’t sure there was that much money in the world; but two thousand dollars, yes, I could count to two thousand.) “What do I have to do?”

“Keep a diary.”

“A diary?”

“That’s right.”

“You mean write things down in a black book every day? Dear diary, today I kissed a girl and all that kind of stuff?”

“Not exactly. I want you to record the things that seem important to you. Type out a few pages every day, that’s all. You can record specific incidents or just make general comments about anything worth recording. All I want is your guarantee that you’ll add something to it every day — or let’s say at least once a week. I know how you get careless sometimes.”

“And you want to read it—?” I started to ask.

“Oh, no, no, no—” he said hastily. “I just want to know that you’re keeping it up. You won’t have to show it to me. Or anyone. It’s your diary. What you do with it or make of it is up to you.”

My mind was working — two thousand dollars a week. “Can I use a dictation machine and a secretary?”

He shook his head. “It has to be a personal diary, Danny. That’s the whole purpose of it. If it has to pass through someone else’s hands, you might be inhibited. I want you to be honest.” He straightened up where he sat, and for a moment he looked like the Uncle Jim I remembered, tall and strong. “Don’t play any games, Danny. Be truthful in your diary. If you’re not, you’ll only cheat yourself. And put down everything — everything that seems important to you.”

“Everything,” I repeated dumbly.

He nodded. There was a lot of meaning in that nod.

“All right,” I said. “But why?”

“Why?” He looked at me. “You’ll find out when you write it.”

As usual, he was right.

I’m not fooled. Uncle Jim is trying to teach me something. This isn’t the first time he’s thrown me into the deep end of the pool.

Okay, this is it. At least this is today’s answer:

There’s a point beyond which money is redundant.

This is not something I discovered just this week.

I’ve suspected it for a long time.

Five hundred dollars a week “spending money” (—like what else are you going to do with it?—) gives a person a considerable amount of freedom to do whatever he wants. Within limits, of course — but those limits are wide enough to be not very restricting. Increase them to two thousand dollars a week and you don’t feel them at all. The difference isn’t that much. Not really.

Okay, so I bought some new clothes and records and a couple of other fancy toys I’d had my eye on, but I’d already gotten used to having as much money as I’d needed (or wanted), so having that much more in my pocket didn’t make that much more difference.

I just had to start wearing bigger pockets, that’s all.

Well—

I like to travel too. Usually, about once or twice a month I’d fly up to San Francisco for the weekend, or something like that. Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Newport, San Diego. Follow the sun, that’s me.