Later on that day, after the agents had left, Rachel arrived home, loaded down with textbooks and looking cross.
“Guess who was here today looking for you,” Nicholas said. He told her who.
“Bastards!” Rachel cried out. “Bastards!”
It was two nights later that Nicholas had his mystical experience.
He and Rachel lay in bed, asleep. Nicholas was on the left, nearer the door of their bedroom. Still disturbed by the recent visit of the FBI agents, he slept lightly, tossing a lot, having vague dreams of an unpleasant nature. Toward dawn, just when the first false white light was beginning to fill the room, he lay back on a nerve, awoke from the pain, and opened his eyes.
A figure stood silently beside the bed, gazing down at him. The figure and Nicholas regarded each other; Nicholas grunted in amazement and sat up. At once Rachel awoke and began to scream
“Ich bin’s!” Nicholas told her reassuringly (he had taken German in high school). What he meant to tell her was that the figure was himself, “Ich bin’s” being the German idiom for that. However, in his excitement he did not realize he was speaking a foreign language, albeit one Mrs Altecca had taught him in the twelfth grade. Rachel could not understand him. Nicholas began to pat her, but he kept on repeating himself in German. Rachel was confused and frightened. She kept on screaming. Meanwhile, the figure disappeared.
Later on, when she was fully awake, Rachel was uncertain whether or not she had seen the figure or just reacted to his start of surprise. It had all been so sudden.
“It was myself,” Nicholas said, ‘standing beside the bed gazing down at me. I recognized myself.”
“What was it doing there?” Rachel said.
“Guarding me,” Nicholas said. He knew it. He could tell from having seen the expression on the figure’s face. So there was nothing to be afraid of. He had the impression that the figure, himself, had come back from the future, perhaps from a point vastly far ahead, to make certain that he, his prior self, was doing okay at a critical time in his life. The impression was distinct and strong and he could not rid himself of it.
Going into the living room, he got his German dictionary and checked the idiom that he had used. Sure enough, it was correct. It meant, literally, “I am it.”
He and Rachel sat together in the living room, drinking instant coffee, in their pajamas.
“I wish I was sure if I saw it,” Rachel kept repeating. “Something sure scared me. Did you hear me scream? I didn’t know I could scream like that. I don’t think I ever screamed like that before in my life. I wonder if the neighbors heard. I hope they don’t call the police. I’ll bet I woke them up. What time is it? It’s getting light; it must be dawn.”
“I never had anything like that happen before in my life,” Nicholas said. “Boy, was I surprised, opening my eyes like I did and seeing it – me – standing there. What a shock. I wonder if anybody else ever had that happen to them. Boy.”
“We’re so near the neighbors,” Rachel said. “I hope I didn’t wake them.”
The next day Nicholas came around to my place to tell me about his mystical experience and get my opinion. He was not exactly candid about it, however; initially he told it to me not as a personal experience but as a science fiction idea for a story. That was so if it sounded nutty the onus wouldn’t be on him.
“I thought,” he said, “as a science fiction writer you could explain it. Was it time travel? Is there such a thing as time travel? Or maybe an alternate universe.”
I told him it was himself from an alternate universe. The proof was that he recognized himself. Had it been a future self he would not have recognized it, since it would have been altered from the features he saw in the mirror. No one could ever recognize his own future self. I had written about that in a story, once. In the story the man’s future self came back to warn him just as he, the protagonist, was about to do something foolish. The protaganist, not recognizing his future self, had killed it. I had yet to market the story, but my hopes were good. My agent, Scott Meredith, had sold everything else I had written.
“Can you use the idea?” Nicholas asked.
“No,” I told him. “It’s too ordinary.”
“Ordinary!” He looked upset. “It didn’t seem ordinary to me that night. I think it had a message for me, and it was beaming the message at me telepathically, but I woke up and that ended the transmission.”
I explained to him that if you encountered your self from an alternate universe – or from the future, for that matter – you would hardly need to employ telepathy. That wasn’t logical, since there would be no linguistic barrier. Telepathy was used when contact between members of different races, such as from other star systems, took place.
“Oh,”Nicholas said, nodding.
“It was benign?” I asked.
“Sure it was; it was me. I’m benign. You know, Phil, in some ways my whole life is a waste. What am I doing at my age, working as a clerk in a record shop? Look what you’re doing – you’re a full-time writer. Why the hell can’t I do something like that? Something meaningful. I’m a clerk! The lowest of the low!” And Rachel is going to be a full professor some day, when she’s through school. I should never have dropped out; I should have gotten my BA.”
I said, “You sacrificed your academic career for a noble cause, your opposition to war.”
“I broke my gun. There was no cause; I was just inept the day we had to take apart our gun and put it back together. I lost the trigger down inside the works. That’s all.”
I explained to him how his subconscious was wiser than his conscious mind, and how he ought to take credit for its vision, its sense of higher values. After all, it was part of him.
“I’m not sure I believe that,” Nicholas said. “I’m not sure what I believe any more. Not since those two FBI agents came by and rousted me. They wanted me to spy-on my wife! I think that’s what they were really after. They get people to spy on each other, like in 1984, and destroy the whole society. What does my life add up to, Phil, in comparison to yours, say? In comparison to anyone’s? I’m going to Alaska. I was over the other day talking to the man at Southern Pacific; they have connections to Alaska through a yacht that goes up there three times a year. I could go on that. I think that’s what my self from the future or an alternate universe was there to tell me, the other night, that my life doesn’t add up to anything and I better do something drastic. I probably was about to find out what I was supposed to do, only I wrecked it all by waking up and opening my eyes. Actually it was Rachel who scared it off by screaming; that’s when it left. If it wasn’t for her I’d know how to organize my future, whereas as it stands I know nothing,
I’m doing nothing, I have no hopes or prospects except checking in the goddamn Victor shipment that’s up there at the shop waiting for me, forty big cartons – the whole fall line they pushed on us, that even Herb went for. Because of the ten percent discount.” He lapsed into gloomy silence.
“What did the FBI agents look like?” I asked, never having seen one. Everybody in Berkeley was scared of just such a visit as Nicholas had received, myself included. It was the times.
They have fat red necks and double chins. And little eyes, like two coals stuck into dough. And they watch you all the time. They never take their eyes off you. They had faint but detectable southern accents. They said they’d be back to talk to both of us. They’ll probably be by to talk to you too. About your writing. Are your stories left-wing?”
I asked, “Haven’t you read them?”
“I don’t read science fiction,” Nicholas said. “I just read serious writers like Proust and Joyce and Kafka. When science fiction has something serious to say, I’ll read it.” He began, then, to talk up the virtues of Finnegans Wake, in particular the final part, which he compared to the final part of Ulysses. It was his belief that no one but himself had either read it or understood it.
“Science fiction is the literature of the future,” I told him, when he paused. “In a few decades they’ll be visiting the moon.”