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.”
God has decided to cut reality and re-edit it.
They were called slow birds because the flew through the air—at the stately pace of
three feet per minute.
What’;s happening? I’ll tell you what’s happening. Those “films” you see flying
off surfaces and hitting your eyes—that’s how our friend here thought visions worked.
And now we’re seeing it happen, as though it’s true.