"Simon Hawke - Sorcerer 1 - The Reluctant Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

because you're probably confused enough.) Before Brewster
sent the machine back into the past, there had to be a past in
which he hadn't sent it back at all. The moment that he sent
it back, he would, in effect, have altered history. At least his
history, which meant that the moment he programmed the
machine and tripped the switch to send it back ten minutes
for ten seconds, at the very instant that it disappeared, he
should have suddenly acquired a memory of standing in the
lab and seeing two time machines, standing side by side. At
least, that's how he thought it would work. He was not
exactly sure. But then, in scientific experiments, one never
is, is one?

The problem was, that wasn't how it worked in practice.
What happened was that Brewster had programmed the
machine, entered the auto-return sequence, and tripped the
timer switch to send it back. And it had disappeared. Only
Brewster did not suddenly acquire a memory of having seen
two time machines sitting side by side, ten minutes earlier.
The machine had simply disappeared, complete with Bugs,
and reappeared on the exact same spot ten seconds later.
Where had it been? Brewster had no way of knowing. He
had repeated the experiment with more or less the same
results.

This posed certain problems. Did this mean that there was
a sort of linear factor to time, where there was now a past in
which Brewster had, in fact, seen a pair of time machines
sitting side by side, complete with two rabbit passengers,
but he could not remember it because he only had that
experience further back along the timestream? And since he

12 тАв Simon Hawke

had repeated the experiment, did this suggest that there were
now two past segments of the timestream, one in which he
had seen two time machines and two rabbits, and another,
slightly further back, in which he had seen three time
machines and three rabbits? The whole thing gave Brewster
quite a headache. (And if you feel like putting down the
book right now and taking a couple of aspirin, your narrator
doesn't mind at all. Go ahead. I'll wait.)

The only solution to this dilemma that Brewster could
devise was to actually get inside the time machine himself,
so that he could find out where it went after he tripped the
switch. (A video camera might have been an excellent
solution to this problem, but he had tried that and discovered
that the temporal field caused interference.) He had actually
planned to make the trip himself all along, though he would