“And you’ll listen to them even more closely than I did, in the hope of finding out whether or not anyone was able to understand in time to help.”
Weinbaum and Wald looked dazed.
Her voice became a little more somber. “Most of the voices in the Dirac beep are like thatthey’re cries for help, which you can overhear decades or centuries before the senders get into trouble. You’ll feel obligated to answer every one, to try to supply the help that’s needed. And you’ll listen to the succeeding messages and say: ‘Did wewill we get there in time? Did we understand in time?’
“And in most cases you won’t be sure. You’ll know the future, but not what most of it means. The farther into the future you travel with the machine, the more incomprehensible the messages become, and so you’re reduced to telling yourself that time will, after all, have to pass by at its own pace, before enough of the surrounding events can emerge to make those remote messages clear.
“The long-run effect, as far as I can think it through, is not going to be that of omniscienceof our consciousness being extracted entirely from the time stream and allowed to view its whole sweep from one side. Instead, the Dirac in effect simply slides the bead of consciousness forward from the present a certain distance. Whether it’s five hundred of five thousand years still remains to be seen. At that point the law of diminishing returns sets inor the noise factor begins to overbalance the information, take your choiceand the observer is reduced to traveling in time at the same old speed. He’s just a bit ahead of himself.”