Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [91]
He nodded. "Yeah – I thought I was going crazy when it started to happen. But it all just went on unreeling inside my head, and I knew it was the real thing. Really the Future; a hundred years or more ahead. Seeing everything that was going to happen, through the eyes of my children and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Wild, huh?"
"Indeed," I murmured.
"You see, Dower," he said excitedly, "your old man – what a genius that sonuvabitch was! – he figured out a way to alter, like, brain waves and stuff – all the things that go on inside your head – through this goddamn flashing light. And he wasn't even the first, man! Ol' Bendray showed me some stuff from the Royal Anti-Society archives; Catherine de Medici, back in the sixteenth century, had a tower built for her pet prognosticator Nostradamus, and that was how he worked it. He'd sit up there looking at the sun, and fanning his fingers in front of his eyes – real quick, like flickering – and then he'd see stuff! The Future! That's how he made all those predictions; more of 'em are gonna come true, too; you just wait and see. But anyway, what ol' Nostradamus just bashed away at, your father worked out scientific how to do it right. The Paganinicon – did he tell you a buncha stuff about a sort of medium, that certain fine vibrations from the human brain travel through?"
I nodded.
"Okay; what the deal is – that medium's not limited by spatial dimensions, like he told you. But it's not limited by Time, either. It extends through Past, Present, Future, all together. No difference, everything simultaneous. And the flashing light – if you get the speed and the pattern just exactly right – it can alter what section of that medium you perceive. Instead of this little piece that you normally see, you can just go sliding off into the Future. It's like genetic time-travel. What you get are the perceptions what they see, what they think and know – of your own descendants, laid on top of your own. Dig it: you see the world to come through your own children's eyes."
I hadn't understood some of the words he used, but I gathered the general import of his explanation. "So this is what you did? Used my father's device for this… Future perception?"
"Sure did. Me and Miss McThane both. We spent so much time staring into the lens on that box, while it went flickity-flick into our eyeballs – Christ, I'm telling ya." He shook his head. "I've spent so much time in the Future… I don't really belong back in this time any more. That's why I talk like this, you know? This is the way some grandkid of mine is gonna talk some day. And I got the personality, too – a Future personality. I mean, I was pretty much of a crook before; but since I've taken on the characteristics of the way people are gonna be in the next century – jeez, I'm a real sharp dealer. I guess it's just the way everybody's gonna be some day."
That was a daunting prospect. A world of Scapes – perhaps it was best that I was not meant to see anymore of such a dismal vista's approach.
"Actually," continued Scape, "I think I might've looked into it a little too much. All that flashing kinda screwed up my eyes – can't take anything too bright. That's why I wear the shades all the time. I guess it's a good thing that the device finally wore out and flew to pieces; otherwise I would've gone on staring into it until I was blind."
The subject worked a horrible fascination upon me. "What… what is the Future going to be like, then?"
"Hey, it's gonna be a gas," Scape assured me. "If you're into machines and stuff – like I am – you'd go for it. People are gonna have all kinds of shit. Do whatever they want with it. That's why it didn't faze me when ol' Bendray first told me about wanting to blow up the world. Hey – in the Future, everybody will want to!"
He had satisfied my curiosity; I wished to hear no further of these dreadful days to come. "This device, then, is no more?"
"Yeah – when it went, it went like a bomb. I couldn't