Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

PLAYING WITH TIME tighter and filled with lustre. Light shone from within him, and from within the grass and the trees and the little stream- let—until he was a tiny, crystal creature in a shadow- less world. But the Being still sat in his dimness. David felt the need for familiar things. “Are you a Presbyterian?” he asked. “What strange words you use,’ said the Being. “Well, if you won’t tell me what you are, can you te]l me what I am become?” “You are the record of what you were,” came the answer. “First we had tele- vision of the past—like pictures on a screen. Then we put in a new dimensional valve, which had a stereoscopic effect.” ‘**Three-D,”’ said David. “You called it that, too, did you?’ said the Being. “Well, well, man hasn’t changed much in a thousand million years.” He paused a moment. ““Then we put another valve into the circuit and we found the image was cast with life—the fourth dimension.”’ David was struggling within himself towards a thin, remote, unbelievable suggestion of hope. “Can you turn me back?’ he asked. 103 “Certainly,” the Being an- swered, and reached up again over and out of sight beyond the sky. David could see the soft muscles of his arm, pumping. There was a remote whirring sound, and , David felt himself suddenly bucketted about like a marionette whose movements are not his own. Then the whirring ceased, and David was standing a little lower down, where the moun- tain stream foamed by a shoulder of rock. The shepherd whom David had met ten days ago was disappearing below, as he had disappeared then, and David knew it was now ten days ago. The hope within him burned as steadily as his determination to pursue it. “Tf,” said David to the Being, who was, despite the change of position, just as near as before—or was it after, “If I can be reversed ten days, couldn’t I go back, say five months?” The Being lifted his hand again towards the hidden controls, but David inter- vened, quickly: ‘“‘Not yet, not yet. I wil go to then some other time. I want to stay now in now for now anyway, if you see what I mean.” The Being withdrew his hand. Slyly David bent down comiclooks.corn