In 1985, a small impenetrable living pod appears out of nothing at the National Physics
Laboratory. A window on one side shows the pod’s occupant: a delirious man who grows
younger and saner through the years, although generally doing little other than sitting and
reading, leading the observers to conclude that his quarters are in fact a VSTM taking him
back through time at the rate of one year for each year of his life.
As of writing this, I
am only partway through my reading and wondering so many things: When the man in the world at
large who will eventually enter the machine realize that he is the traveler? From his
perspective, what happened to the machine (and him!) when it materialized in 1985? (Ah! That
question is answered shortly after it occurs to me.) For that matter, why doesn’t he
himself, while in the pod, already know that he will reach 1985? To what extent does his very
appearance cause the technology that permits his trip to occur? VCIS! (Very Cool
Idea-Story!), although it offers little in plot or character.
Our passenger is the object of popular cults by now—a focus for finer feelings. In this
way his mere presence has drawn the world’s peoples closer together, cultivating
respect and dignity, pulling us back from the brink of war, liberating tens of thousands
from their concentration camps. These cults extend from purely fashionable
manifestations—shirts printed with his face, now neatly shaven in a Vandyke style;
rings and worry-beads made from galena crystals—through the architectural (octahedron
and cube meditation modules) to life-styles themselves: a Zen-like “sitting quietly,
doing nothing.”