A future transportation system goes awry, which results in flangs, tweedledums, collapsed
flooring, argo paste, and mangels (yes, especially mangels) being delivered to the
homes and business places of persons in a past century. Moreover, it’s quite possible that
civilization down the line (including Bloggett’s own time!) will be altered. When the buck
finally stops, the buck-kickers have decided that it’s up to Ronald Mao Jean-Jacques von
Hochbein Mazurin to travel back and set things right.
The mathematicians are still working on that, Your Honor, and the best they can say now
is that it was probably somewhere between the mid-Twentieth Century and the last
Twenty-First. However there is a strong possibility that none of the material reached any
enclosed space which would attract it, and that it may all have been dissipated
harmlessly in the form of incongruent molecules.
DEBUT
“Don’t Live in the Past,” in Galaxy,June 1951.
VARIANTS
Debut. “Don’t Live in the Past,” in Galaxy,June 1951.
The mathematicians are still working on that, Your Honor, and the best they can say now
is that it was probably somewhere between the mid-Twentieth Century and the last
Twenty-First. However there is a strong possibility that none of the material reached any
enclosed space which would attract it, and that it may all have been dissipated
harmlessly in the form of incongruent molecules.
1 English variant