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Updated: May 5, 2025
I waved a signal to van Manderpootz, the thing clicked, and the subjunctivisor was on. The grassless clay of the field appeared. It is a curious thing about the psychomat that you see only through the eyes of your image on the screen. It lends a strange reality to the working of the toy; I suppose a sort of self-hypnosis is partly responsible.
The subjunctivisor tells me so; I would have invented a calculator to forecast the chances of every engagement; van Manderpootz would have removed the hit or miss element in the conduct of war." He frowned solemnly. "There is my idea. The autobiography of van Manderpootz. What do you think of it?" I recovered my thoughts. "It's uh it's colossal!" I said vehemently. "I'll buy a copy myself.
At any rate, van Manderpootz was impressed. "Well!" he rumbled. "I almost missed you, Dixon. I was just going over to the club, since I didn't expect you for an hour. You're only ten minutes late." I ignored this. "Professor, I want to use your uh your subjunctivisor." "Eh? Oh, yes. You're lucky, then. I was just about to dismantle it." "Dismantle it! Why?" "It has served its purpose.
"What you saw in the subjunctivisor was what would have happened if you had caught the ship!" "I know that." "But something quite different might really have happened! Don't you see? She she Where are those old newspapers?" He was pawing through a pile of them. He flourished one finally. "Here! Here are the survivors!" Like letters of flame, Joanna Caldwell's name leaped out at me.
Then suddenly, a wail of fear and despair went up, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls had given. I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down upon us. I had been late again. That was all. I raised shocked and frightened eyes from the subjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who was scribbling on the edge of the table. "Well?" he asked. I shuddered.
"Not even van Manderpootz can bring back the dead," he murmured. "I'm sorry, Dick. Take your mind from the affair. Even were my subjunctivisor available, I wouldn't permit you to use it. That would be but to turn the knife in the wound." He paused. "Find something else to occupy your mind. Do as van Manderpootz does. Find forgetfulness in work." "Yes," I responded dully.
At last I felt that I couldn't stand it. I had to do something anything at all. I thought finally of the subjunctivisor. I could see yes, I could see what would have transpired if the ship hadn't been wrecked! I could trace out that weird, unreal romance hidden somewhere in the worlds of "if". I could, perhaps, wring a somber, vicarious joy from the things that might have been.
She must be in New York and if she's gone over to Paris, I'll find out and follow her!" Well, it's a queer ending. She was in New York, but you see, Dixon Wells had, so to speak, known Joanna Caldwell by means of the professor's subjunctivisor, but Joanna had never known Dixon Wells.
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 device he called it his "subjunctivisor," since it operated in hypothetical worlds occupied the entire center table.
I could see Joanna once more! It was late afternoon when I rushed over to van Manderpootz's quarters. He wasn't there; I encountered him finally in the hall of the Physics Building. "Dick!" he exclaimed. "Are you sick?" "Sick? No. Not physically. Professor. I've got to use your subjunctivisor again. I've got to!" "Eh? Oh that toy. You're too late, Dick. I've dismantled it.
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