Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 92: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

OUTSIDE—LOOKING IN night was with me still. That, of course, was self-evident, otherwise I should be mooch- ing about stark naked. But I mean the contents of my '/ pockets—fags, money, etc. I began searching them, half hoping to find a four course dinner somewhere, and did manage to rake up a caramel, and a solitary section off a block of milk chocolate— relics of the last time Brown- eyes and I went to the pictures. The chocolate was minus silver paper and _ liberally coated with fluff and tobacco dust. However... Fact three came with a boy on a bike. He was delivering newspapers and, as he entered the Doc’s house, I saw the News of the World. So I knew it was Sunday. The date, according to the papers in the luggage rack thing on the front of his bike, was October 24th, 1953. “‘Last night”? was February 25th, 1954, so I was four months adrift and rather late for the Great Fire. “The last Sunday in Octo- ber,”’ mused I. “That was before I met Browneyes. I had a date with that red- head from P.P., and we...” I stopped, pondered, and 91 arrived at the following con- clusions. “If I’m here, I can’t be there as well. But that was then, while this is—er—then too, I suppose. So, if ‘I’ meet her, ‘outside,’ today I can watch ‘me’ do it. Then there must be two of me—like a split personality, perhaps. Good. Then—whoa—that’s not right, for if I can see ‘me’ now, then another ‘I’ must have been watching me when I was outside. If so, he’s still here somewhere, and if I meet him, then there’s three of us. It would probably sound better set to music. There was only one thing to do—go to Shepherds Bush and see me for myself. It was then that I saw the streak. Though, come to think of it, I had seen it for quite a while but had other things to worry about, as it was not a con- spicuous sort of streak at all, but one of those “‘out of the corner of your eye”’ objects. You know what the shadow of a cloud is like, tearing across the ground in the distance? Well, it was that sort of thing, only (a) it wasn’t there when you looked direct, and (b) it wasn’t tear- ing anywhere, but bobbed up comiclooks.conn |