"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Worlds of If" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

be impossibleтАФa practical impossibility in the one case and an absolute one in the other."

"Then how do you travel in time?"

"Not even van Manderpootz can perform the impossible," said the professor, now faintly jovial. He
tapped a thick pad of typewriter paper on the table beside him. "See, Dick, this is the world, the
universe." He swept a finger down it. "It is long in time, and"тАФsweeping his hand across itтАФ"it is broad
in space, but"тАФnow jabbing his finger against its centerтАФ"it is very thin in the fourth dimension. Van
Manderpootz takes always the shortest, the most logical course. I do not travel along time, into past or
future. No. Me, I travel across time, sideways!"

I gulped. "Sideways into time! What's there?"
"What would naturally be there?" he snorted. "Ahead is the future; behind is the past. Those are real, the
worlds of past and future. What worlds are neither past nor future, but contemporary and
yetтАФextemporalтАФexisting, as it were, in time parallel to our time?"

I shook my head.

"Idiot!" he snapped. "The conditional worlds, of course! The worlds of 'if.' Ahead are the worlds to be;
behind are the worlds that were; to either side are the worlds that might have beenтАФthe worlds of 'if!'"

"Eh?" I was puzzled. "Do you mean that you can see what will happen if I do such and such?"

"No!" he snorted. "My machine does not reveal the past nor predict the future. It will show, as I told you,
the conditional worlds. You might express it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would have
happened.' The worlds of the subjunctive mode."

"Now how the devil does it do that?"

"Simple, for van Manderpootz! I use polarized light, polarized not in the horizontal or vertical planes, but
in the direction of the fourth dimensionтАФan easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossal pressure,
that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in the direction of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a
single light wave, though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerable improvement over
time-traveling in past or future, with its impossible velocities and ridiculous distances!"

"ButтАФare thoseтАФworlds of 'if'тАФreal?"

"Real? What is real? They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is a real number as opposed to v-2,
which is imaginary. They are the worlds that would have been ifтАФ Do you see?"

I nodded. "Dimly. You could see, for instance, what New York would have been like if England had
won the Revolution instead of the Colonies."

"That's the principle, true enough, but you couldn't see that on the machine. Part of it, you see, is a
Horsten psychomat (stolen from one of my ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the
device. Your own mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if George Washington
could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, he could have seen what you suggest. We
can't. You can't even see what would have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but I can. Do you
understand?"