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

"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past experiences of the user."

"You're growing brilliant," he scoffed. "Yes. The device will show ten hours of what would have
happened ifтАФcondensed, of course, as in a movie, to half an hour's actual time."

"Say, that sounds interesting!"

"You'd like to see it? Is there anything you'd like to find out? Any choice you'd alter?"

"I'll sayтАФa thousand of 'em. I'd like to know what would have happened if I'd sold out my stocks in
2009 instead of '10. I was a millionaire in my own right then, but I was a littleтАФwell, a little late in
liquidating."

"As usual," remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to the laboratory then."

The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered me into the Physics Building,
and thence into his own research laboratory, much like the one I had visited during my courses under
him. The deviceтАФhe called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated in hypothetical worldsтАФoccupied the
entire center table. Most of it was merely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy was
the prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart of the instrument.

Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. "Put it on," he said, and I sat staring at the screen of the
psychomat. I suppose everyone is familiar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few years
ago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy; sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a
real aid to memory. A maze of vague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen,
and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene or circumstances he is trying to remember.
He turns a knob that alters the arrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the design
corresponds to his mental pictureтАФpresto! There is his scene re-created under his eyes. Of course his
own mind adds the details. All the screen actually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but
the thing can be amazingly real. I've seen occasions when I could have sworn the psychomat showed
pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality itself; the illusion is sometimes as startling as that.

Van Manderpootz switched on the light, and the play of shadows began. "Now recall the circumstances
of, say, a half-year after the market crash. Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that point I
direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you have nothing to do but watch."

I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoate sounds of the device hummed
like distant voices, but without the added suggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face
flashed and dissolved and then, finally, I had it. There was a picture of myself sitting in an ill-defined
room; that was all. I released the knob and gestured.

A click followed. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picture cleared, and amazingly, another figure
emerged, a woman, I recognized her; it, was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere
actress of the "Vision Varieties of '09." She was changed on that picture, but I recognized her.

I'll say I did! I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07 to '10, trying to marry her, while old
N. J. raved and ranted and threatened to leave everything to the Society for Rehabilitation of the Gobi
Desert. I think those threats were what kept her from accepting me, but after I took my own money and
ran it up to a couple of million in that crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened.