George Alec Effinger - The Nick of Time

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THE NICK OF TIME

by GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER (1985)

[VERSION 1.1 (October 13 2006). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version

number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

Part One, ‘The World of Pez Pavilion: Preliminary to the Groundbreaking Ceremony,’ first appeared

For Debbie

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space

--Nobody

-=*=-

Book One

The World of Pez Pavilion: Preliminary to the Groundbreaking Ceremony

Day One

Just at noon on the seventeenth of February, 1996, Frank Mihalik became the first person to travel

backward through time. He looked like an explorer and he spoke like a pioneer. He was tall and

broad-shouldered and well-muscled, with a deep chest covered with the right amount of dark hair --

virile but not atavistic -- with large strong hands but the gentle manner of a man who has made a gracious

peace with the powerful body nature had given him. He had short dark hair and bright unyielding eyes.

His face was rugged and handsome, but not pretty and definitely not cute. He spoke in a low earnest

voice and smiled often. He was intelligent but not tedious, a good friend in times of happiness or sorrow,

a joy to his aging mother, a solid citizen, and a good credit risk. He had been chosen to make the first trip

into the past because Cheryl, his girlfriend, had roomed at college with a woman who was now a talent

coordinator on a popular late-night holovision talk show. Such a woman had a lot of influence in the last

years of the twentieth century.

The journey -- or, at least, Mihalik's departure -- was broadcast live all over the world. People in

every nation on Earth saw Mihalik step from the silver van where he'd eaten breakfast and gone through

his final briefing. Accompanied by the brooding brilliant director of the project, Dr. Bertram Waters,

Cheryl, and Ray, Mihalik's backup man, the volunteer walked the last fifty yards to the embarkation

stage. At the foot of the steps leading up to the stage itself, Mihalik shook hands with Dr. Waters and

Ray. He hugged Cheryl and kissed her, fondly but not passionately; this was a moment for emotional

control and steadiness. Mihalik went up the steps and sat in the folding chair that had been placed at the

target point. He waited while the voice of the project's control counted down the seconds. At T minus

zero there was a flicker of amber light, a sizzle, a snap, and a moderate clap of thunder. Mihalik was

gone. He had plummeted into the past.

He was now sitting in a darkened room. He knew immediately that it was no longer 1996. He

wondered where he was -- rather, when he was. He would still be in New York City, of course. He

stood up, a crooked smile on his handsome face. He ran a hand through his mildly rumpled hair, made

sure his fly was zipped, and felt his way across the room toward a door that leaked a thin line of light at

the bottom.

Outside it was summer. In 1996 it had been February, cold and bleak; here it was warm and bright,

the sky partly cloudy, the temperature in the mid-eighties, the humidity somewhere around 40 percent.

There was a large crowd of people outside, and they were wandering from one building to another; it

seemed to Mihalik that he was in some kind of exhibition. The people carried maps, and the parents

among them struggled to control their small children, all of whom wanted to run off in directions other

than straight ahead. Mihalik walked close to a young couple with a baby in a stroller. He looked at the

book the man was carrying: Official Guide Book -- New York World's Fair 1939, For Peace and

Freedom.

The building Mihalik came out of was the Hall of Industry and Metals. He walked along the avenue,

marveling at the past and the peace and quiet and brotherhood and Christian fellowship everyone

showed toward his or her neighbors. There were no fights on the sidewalk. There were no vagrants, no

troublemakers, no drug dealers or prostitutes. There were only happy families and corporate exhibits.

This was the golden past, an era of innocent bliss, of concern for the rights of individuals and respect for

private property. Mihalik was grateful for the opportunity to escape the mad world of 1996 to spend a

little time in this more humane place. He would return to the present refreshed, and he would be able to

help his own world identify the essential problems that created jealousy and mistrust among people.

Mihalik was not unaware of the weight of responsibility he carried; he had been charged with the duty of

returning to 1996 with some token of what society had lost in the intervening sixty years.

Mihalik walked toward a great white needle and a great white globe. He had seen pictures of these

structures: the Trylon and Perisphere. They were located at the Fair's Theme Center, and Mihalik had a

feeling they represented something important. His first task, as he began to orient himself in the world of

1939, was to find out just what these two imposing symbols meant to the people of his grandparents’

generation. He stopped a young woman and spoke to her; she looked at his unusual costume -- he was

wearing the thin, olive green one-piece garment of 1996 -- and assumed he was one of the Fair's

employees. “What do these marvelous buildings mean to you?” he asked.

“The Trylon?” she said. “The Trylon is a symbol of man's upward yearnings, pointing into the sky

where dwell all hope and ambitions.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” said Mihalik.

“And the Perisphere, well, the Perisphere is the promise of Democracity, you know.”

“Democracity?” asked Mihalik.

“You walk into that big bowl and spread out before you is a model of the city of the future. Have you

ever seen a city of the future?”

“Yes,” said Mihalik, “on numerous occasions.”

“Most cities of the future are too conservative, I feel,” said the young woman. “We need monorails.

We need aerial bridges linking cloud-piercing office buildings and apartment towers. We need parks

where slums now blight the boroughs. We need fourteen-lane highways that parallel new sparkling

waterways. We need shopping and recreation centers where citizens may spend their newly won leisure

and newly earned wealth. We need bright, airy schools where young minds may learn to value the gift of

life that has been given them. All this lies within the Perisphere -- a dream of times to come, a vision of

the New York City that will exist in our children's lifetime in this place. The Perisphere is a ringing

challenge, a concretalization of our hope and ambitions as symbolized by the Trylon, drawn down to

earth and made manifest for our inspection. It is a kind of miracle.”

“I can't wait to see it,” said Mihalik.

“Yeah, but there's this huge line all the time,” she said. “You got to be ready to wait. I hate lines, don't

you? You'd be better off seeing something else.”

“What would you suggest?”

The young woman thought for a moment. “Have you seen the Monkey Mountain in Frank Buck's

Jungleland?”

“No,” said Mihalik, “I just got here.”

“I love to watch monkeys,” said the woman. “Well, enjoy yourself.” She waved goodbye.

“Thank you,” he said. He decided to see Democracity another time. He wanted to look at the other

buildings, the exhibitions, and the beautiful, quaint Art Deco architecture of this harmless island in the

past. The buildings themselves reminded him of something: their graceful curved lines where, in 1996,

they would instead have had sharp forbidding edges; their naive pride in proclaiming which company or

nation had erected them; their clean accents in glass, brick, and stainless steel. After a moment he knew

what they made him think of -- it was the colors, the pastel pinks and pale greens. They were the same

colors as the little candy hearts he used to see on Valentine's Day, the ones with the clever little slogans.

Oh Baby and Kiss Me and You Doll and 2 Much. The candy colors contributed to the feeling of

childlike innocence Mihalik felt. It made no difference that the buildings celebrated the very things that

turned this wonderful world into the anxiety-ridden bankrupt ruin of 1996.

He walked toward the Lagoon of Nations. It was heartwarming to see families enjoying their outing

together. That sort of thing was rare in Mihalik's time. Here in 1939, mothers and fathers still protected

their children from the evils of the world, instead of just throwing up their hands in futile despair. Here

there were parents who wanted the best for the young ones, who still thought it was valuable to show the

children new things, educational things, sights and sounds and experiences that let the boys and girls grow

up feeling that they participated in an exciting, vibrant world. Mihalik wished that his parents had been

more like that. He wondered, then, where his parents were; in 1939, he realized, his mother had not even

been born. His father was a boy of two, running around in a darling little sailor suit somewhere in Elkhart,

Indiana. Mihalik was sorry that he had only a few hours to spend in the past; he would have been curious

to visit his grandparents. That was only one of the interesting things he could do in 1939.

Adventures in Yesterdayland

Mihalik looked at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. He sat on a bench along Constitution Mall, under

the cold stone eyes of the giant statue of George Washington. There was a newspaper on the bench.

Mihalik paged through the paper happily, laughing aloud at the simple views people had of the world in

this day. He expected to be astounded by the prices in the advertisements, and he was: linen suits went

for $8.25 or two for $16, a beef roast was $0.17 a pound. They didn't have linen suits or beef roasts in

1996. But Mihalik had been prepared for this. He had been briefed, he had been carefully indoctrinated

by technicians and specialists so that whatever era he ended up in, he wouldn't be stunned into inactivity

by such things as the price of a beef roast. So Mihalik was not paralyzed by temporal shock. He found

that he could still turn the pages of the newspaper. On the sports page he read that both the Dodgers and

the Giants had lost, but that the Yankees had crushed the Browns 14-1 on Bill Dickey's three home runs.

He didn't have any idea what any of that meant.

“Hello,” said a man in a tan suit. He looked like he never got any sun; Mihalik thought the man's face

was the unhealthy color of white chocolate Easter bunnies. The man took a seat on the bench.

“Hello,” said Mihalik.

“I'm from out of town. I'm from South Bend, Indiana.” Mihalik recalled that Indiana had been one of

the fifty-two “states” that had once composed the United States. “You're probably wondering why I'm

not over at the Court of Sport,” said the resident of 1939.

“Yes,” said Mihalik, “that's just what I was thinking.”

“Because they're raising the blue and gold standard of the University of Notre Dame over there, right

this minute. But I said to myself, ‘Roman,’ I said, ‘why travel all this way by train and come to this

wonderful Fair, just to see them raise a flag and give some speeches?’”

“I know exactly what you mean. I came a long way, too, and I'm trying to decide what to see first.”

“I'm looking forward to seeing the girls in the Aquacade.”

Mihalik looked at his watch. He didn't know how long he would have in the past, and he thought he

could spend the time more profitably examining all the fascinating little things that contributed to the peace

and plenty and harmony he saw all about him. “Someone recommended the monkeys in Frank Buck's

Jungleland,” he said.

The man from Indiana seemed angry. “I didn't come all this way to see monkeys,” he said. He stood

up and walked away.

“No,” thought Mihalik, “you came all this way to see shameless women.” He glanced through the

newspaper a little further. In the comics, Dixie Dugan was wondering about a handsome stranger who

was coming into the Wishing Well Tea Shoppe every day. An article informed him that in Berlin the

Germans were having practice air raid drills because, as a German spokesman said, the fact is that air

attack in modern times is not beyond the range of possibility. Mihalik recalled that the Second World

War was due to start any time now, so the Germans were laughing up their sleeves at the rest of the

world. And the United States had revoked its trade agreement with Japan because of Japan's conduct in

China, and in a few months there would be an embargo on raw materials.

Yet all around him, Mihalik saw happy people enjoying the summer morning, crushing the carnations

along Constitution Mall, dropping paper cups on the sidewalk, littering George Washington's feet with

mustard-covered paper napkins. Could they not see how international events were building toward the

great cataclysm that would lead inexorably to the terrifying world of 1996? Would he have to grab them

all, one by one, and scream into their faces, “Behold, how the world rushes headlong to its doom!”

Would they listen? No, admitted Mihalik, not with the Yankees so comfortably in first place. To these

people, everything was right with the world. Everything seemed normal. They had no idea that they were

the architects of the future, each of them individually, and that their attendance here at the World's Fair

was part of the reason their descendants fifty-seven years hence were suffering. “Enjoy it while you can,”

murmured Mihalik bitterly.

Further up Constitution Mall were four statues, four white figures in the overstated, heroic manner that

Mihalik always associated with totalitarian governments. “I must be wrong,” he thought. “These statues

were put here to celebrate the best aspects of the American Way, as it was understood decades before

my birth, during one of the great ages of the ascendancy of the United States.” The statues represented

the Four Freedoms. There was a half-naked woman looking up, depicting Freedom of Religion. There

was a half-naked woman gesturing vaguely, illustrating Freedom of Assembly. A third half-naked woman

with a pencil and notepad took care of Freedom of the Press. And a partially draped man with his hand

upraised somehow conveyed the notion of Freedom of Speech. The statues were white; everything along

Constitution Mall was white: the Trylon and Perisphere, the flowers, the statues, all the way to the

Lagoon of Nations. Things in other areas were color-coded: each building in a particular section of the

Fair was the same color, but the farther away from the Theme Center it was, the deeper the shade, It

was not long before Mihalik learned to find his way around the complex of streets and walkways.

About noon he realized that he was very hungry. “They ought to have sent some provisions with me,”

he thought. For the first time, he felt that the scientists who planned his journey into the past had

overlooked some important details. They had failed to foresee all the difficulties he might encounter. For

instance, he had no money. There were hamburgers and popcorn and cotton candy and Cokes all

around him, but Mihalik was helpless to get anything to eat. He watched sadly as little children dropped

large globs of ice cream on the sidewalk. “What a waste,” he said to himself. “That could feed a family of

six Dutch refugees in 1996.” It also could have fed him. He sat on another bench and tried to devise a

way of getting something to eat. He didn't know if he would have to spend an hour in the past or a day or

a week. He had had a good breakfast in the silver van, but now it was lunchtime.

“Tired?” said a man who sat next to him on the bench. Mihalik made a mental note to report on the

friendliness of the people of the past. They all seemed eager to share his views and listen to his opinions.

That was very rare in 1996.

“Yes,” said Mihalik. “I've been walking all morning, and I've just discovered that I have no money.”

“You've been robbed? A pickpocket?” The man seemed outraged.

“I guess so,” said Mihalik.

The man looked at Mihalik's green jumpsuit. “Where did you keep your wallet?” he asked.

“My wallet?”

“You don't have any pockets.”

“Well,” said Mihalik lamely, “I carried my money in my hand.”

“Uh huh,” said the man dubiously. “Do you still have the stub from your ticket?”

“Yeah,” said Mihalik, “it's right here. Oh, my God! The thief must have stolen that, too!”

“Sure, pal. I'm a detective, and I think I ought to take you--”

Mihalik got up and ran. He didn't look back; he was big and strong and fast, and he knew that he

could outdistance the detective. Mihalik ran to the right, into the Heinz Dome. He looked around briefly,

but what interested him the most were the samples of all the Heinz products they were giving away free.

He went back to each again and again until the employees of the Dome began whispering among

themselves. Mihalik took that as a cue to leave, and he walked out of the building. Several spoonfuls of

relish and catsup had done little for his hunger, but he did have a nice plastic souvenir, a pin in the shape

of a pickle. On the top of the Dome was a statue of the Goddess of Perfection. Mihalik was not aware

that there was a goddess of perfection, in anyone's pantheon; it was just something else that had been

forgotten on the way to the end of the century.

He checked his watch again, and he found that it had stopped at 1:07. The sky was becoming darker;

the newspaper had mentioned a great drought the city had suffered for more than a month. It looked like

this afternoon there would be some relief. “Just my kind of luck,” he thought. But there would be plenty

of interesting things he could see while he waited for the rain to pass.

The first heavy drops fell just as he left the Washington State Exhibit. The rain fell with flat spatting

sounds on the concrete paths. Mihalik looked around quickly, then ducked into the Belgian Pavilion. He

saw more films and exhibits of things that would soon become extinct. He wondered how horrified these

people would be if they knew how tenuous their existence was, how little time was left for their world, for

the things they so took for granted. A Belgian girl was working away in poor light, making lace. What

place was there in 1996 for lace, or for Belgian girls either, for that matter? Both had virtually ceased to

exist. Yet Mihalik dared not pass that information on to these people: they very definitely were not world

leaders, not even stars of stage and screen who would have some influence over world opinion.

In one part of the Belgian Pavilion there were diamonds from the Congo, which at this time was still a

Belgian colony. There was a copy of a statue of King Albert made of diamonds. It looked foolish to

Mihalik, but the diamonds made him think of rock candy, the kind he used to eat when he was young,

with the little piece of string inside that always stuck between his teeth. There were many diamonds and

other precious gems; Mihalik wished that he had just one to buy a hot dog with.

The day passed quickly. Mihalik wondered what he ought to do. He knew that it was very expensive

to keep him in the past; he was surprised that he hadn't been brought back already. He didn't think he

could learn much more at the Fair: the really interesting exhibits charged admission, and he didn't have a

single penny. And he might as well not even bother going over to the amusement section. It didn't make

any difference where he was when the technicians recalled him; he didn't have to be in the same place he

started from. But he hadn't completely answered the questions the great thinkers of the future wanted

solved. “I've been here since about ten o'clock this morning,” he thought. “It's now after nine o'clock.

Maybe they're going to go for a full twelve hours.” Mihalik shrugged; in that case, the best thing to do

was stay at the Fair. At ten o'clock there was going to be an invasion from Mars, and he kind of wanted

to see it.

At quarter of ten he started walking toward Fountain Lake, where the 212th Coast Artillery had set

up. Mars was as close to Earth as it had been in fifteen years, closer than it would be for another

seventeen. The management of the Fair had taken the opportunity to show what would happen if

Martians took it into their pointy little green heads to attack the 1939 New York World's Fair. Airplanes

flew by overhead. There was a complete blackout around Fountain Lake, and instead of the usual nightly

spectacular, there were flares and fireworks and anti-aircraft bursts and machine-gun fire, all for Peace

and Freedom, and then the fountains themselves began dancing and throwing their red, green, blue, and

yellow streams at the invisible, cowardly invaders. In a few minutes it was all over, and the public began

walking slowly toward the Fair's exits. It was time to go home, time to digest the marvelous holiday, time

to tuck in Junior and Sis and thank God and Mayor LaGuardia for the swell day at the Fair and the

victory over the Martians. It was time for Mom and Dad to count their blessings and hug each other and

realize just how lucky they were to be living in the World of Tomorrow. It was time for Frank Mihalik to

figure out what he was going to do next. He obviously wasn't flashing back yet to 1996, and he wasn't

welcome any longer on the Fairgrounds, not until nine o'clock the next morning. This was something he

hadn't considered: he had no money and nowhere to go.

He walked with the crowd through the exit and into the subway. Even though he didn't have the fare,

he was able to slip on a train in the middle of the throng. He stood in the crowded subway car, trying to

keep his balance and at the same time avoiding shameless body contact. He wondered if there could be

any rides in the amusement section of the Fair that were as frightening and revolting as the subway; he

doubted it because anything so terrible would have made its mark on civilization, and would have been

known to the historians of 1996. “We're jammed in here like a boxful of Milk Duds all crushed together,”

he thought. He rode for a long time, through the borough of Queens and into Manhattan. He was

tempted to get off and walk around the famous places that had once existed in New York: Broadway,

Times Square, Fifth Avenue. But he didn't think he would be so lucky later, trying to get back on the

subway without money. He decided to spend the whole night on the train.

There were fewer and fewer people on the train as time passed. He looked at his watch: it was almost

midnight. The train was pulling into a large, noisy underground station. He waited for the doors to open.

There was a flicker of amber light, a sizzle, a snap, and a moderate clap of thunder. Then everything went

dark. “Thank God!” said Mihalik aloud. He knew he was back home. Very soon he would see Cheryl,

his girlfriend, and Ray, his backup. Ray would be sorry he missed the Fair. At least Mihalik had brought

back a pickle pin for Cheryl. He got up and tried to feel his way in the dark. He wondered where he had

materialized. He found a door after a few moments and walked through.

A Necessary and Fundamental Change in GamePlan

Outside it was bright daylight. “That isn't right,” thought Mihalik. The time in 1996 was two hours

ahead of 1939; he had left at noon and arrived at ten in the morning. He had last looked at his wristwatch

just before midnight; it ought to be 2 a.m. “I'll bet I know what it is,” thought Mihalik, a wide smile

appearing on his face, “I'll bet there's this time-dilation principle. Maybe twelve hours in 1996 translate to

more or less than that in 1939. So I really wasn't kept in the past as long as I thought. I just got the

benefit of the Mihalik Effect.” He liked the sound of that a lot.

He was less happy when he left the building. It turned out to be the Hall of Industry and Metals. “My

God,” he thought, “they brought the whole building back with me.” All around him he saw laughing,

happy people enjoying what was clearly the 1939 New York World's Fair. Mihalik was sturdy and he

was almost fearless, but he had a tough time handling disappointment. Sometimes he chose the most

incredible theories rather than face up to the truth. “They brought the whole damn Fair back!” he cried.

“Well, at least they'll be able to study this period at their leisure.” Privately Mihalik thought it was an

extravagant waste of time, energy, and research bucks.

In lighthearted moments, Mihalik had tried to imagine his welcome back in the gritty, weary world of

1996. He had pictured plenty of blue and yellow bunting hanging from buildings, political figures on hand

to share his glory, beautiful San Diego screen stars with orphans for him to kiss, bands, cheering, free

beer. He saw none of that. It was all very disillusioning to him. There was a band, he had to admit that,

but it was the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Girls’ Pipe Band, and they had played at the Fair yesterday

and had somehow been snatched into the future along with the rest of the World of Tomorrow.

He saw a young couple wheeling a stroller. They looked familiar; it took a moment, but Mihalik

recalled them. They had been the couple whose copy of the guidebook yesterday let him know where he

had arrived. And evidently, they had returned to the Fair for a second day, only to be whisked through

time along with the Saskatoon Girls’ Pipe Band. He felt he owed them some sort of apology.

He found a bench and sat down to wait. Someone would come to get him soon, he knew. He needed

to be debriefed. He needed to be debriefed and fed. He hoped the scientists and technicians had a hearty

meal waiting for him, and a warm bath, and a nice bed, because he didn't feel that he could face world

leaders and San Diego screen stars in his present condition. He would be ashamed to spend another hour

in the same green Jumpsuit.

There was a newspaper on the bench. Mihalik picked it up and read it for a moment before he

realized that it was from the day before. That made him wrinkle his brow; he was sure, from all that he

had seen, that the Fair's sanitation employees wouldn't have left the newspaper on the bench all day and

all night. But there were the same stories: the air raid drills in Berlin, the revocation of the Japanese trade

pact, Dixie Dugan and her handsome stranger, Bill Dickey and his three home runs. He took the paper

with him, intending to throw it in a trash container. He had always been civic-minded.

“Hello,” said a man.

“Hello,” said Mihalik.

“I'm from out of town. I'm from South Bend, Indiana. You're probably wondering why I'm not over in

the Court of Sport.”

Mihalik studied this joker. He was wearing a suit the color of Bit-O-Honey. Why had all these people

come back for another day, and why were they all wasting their time going back to the same places he

had seen them at yesterday? Didn't they realize it was 1996 beyond the Fair's gates now, no longer their

comfortable, secure 1939? Well, he didn't want to be the one to tell them. Let them find out on their

own. There was no real way to prepare them for it, anyway. “I'll bet I know,” said Mihalik. “I'll bet you

said to yourself, ‘Roman, why travel all this way by train and come to this wonderful Fair, just to see

them raise a flag and give some speeches?’”

The man stared at Mihalik. “How did you know I was going to say that? How did you know my

name was Roman?”

“Did I guess right?” asked Mihalik.

“Right as rain. Both times.”

“I'm an amusement attraction. You owe me twenty-five cents.”

“Gee,” said Roman, still astonished, digging out a quarter from a little change purse, “they don't have

anybody like you in South Bend.”

Mihalik nodded wisely. “You got to come to New York for that,” he said. “This is the big city. You

be careful now, you hear?”

“Gee,” said the man again. He walked away, shaking his head.

“You came to see the girls in the Aquacade, right?” Mihalik called after him. The man's mouth

dropped open. “Don't worry, that one's on the house. Have a good time!” Mihalik wished that the

designer of the official time-travel project's suit had foreseen a need for pockets. It meant that he had to

carry the quarter in his hand until he decided how to spend it. He walked around the Fair, noticing many

other people he had seen the day before. He found that increasingly odd.

As he was sitting on another bench, a man came up to him. “Tired?” the man asked.

“Yes,” said Mihalik. “It's tough, guessing people's occupations, you know. I bet I can guess yours,

easy. For a dollar.”

“Concessions like that are all over in Carnivaland,” said the man. “And don't none of them cost a

dollar.”

“You're scared to try,” said Mihalik.

“You're a liar,” said the man. “All right, go ahead. What am I?”

“You're a detective.”

“Naw.”

“Yeah, you're a detective. You've got a badge in a black wallet in the inside pocket of your jacket.”

“Do I look like a detective to you?” said the man grimly.

“You want me to fish the goddamn badge out for you?” asked Mihalik.

“Sure, pal, you just try. Say, I ought to--”

“Never mind, keep your dollar. I must have been out of my mind.”

The man studied Mihalik closely. “How'd you know I was a dick?”

“Your intelligent face,” said Mihalik.

“Look, pal, I think I'm going to take you--”

Mihalik got up and ran. He thought while he ran, something he had learned to do while still in his

teens. He realized that he was faced with two mutually exclusive explanations for the day's events. The

first was that the whole Fair had been picked up bodily from Flushing Meadows in 1939 and transported

to 1996, and the people who had done the moving were taking their time about announcing themselves.

The second was that, in some weird and super-science way, he was living Thursday, July 27, 1939, all

over again. He had reached no conclusions when he came to the Heinz Dome; neither of the choices

were particularly attractive.

The matter was decided not long after. While he wandered into a part of the Fair he had not seen the

day before, he casually looked at his watch. It had stopped at 1:07, the same time it had before. “Hmm,”

said Mihalik. He knew significance when he encountered it. Evidence was piling up in favor of the second

explanation.

He passed by some more things he either had already seen or wasn't interested in. It seemed that he

might be forced to spend longer in 1939 than anyone had anticipated. “Maybe this is all a dream,” he told

himself. “Maybe yesterday was all a dream, and this is it coming true. Maybe yesterday was real and I'm

dreaming about it now.” For a few minutes those thoughts were more entertaining than the film he was

watching in the Science and Education Building. It was called Trees and Men. He was sitting through it

because he wanted to see the one that came after, Dawn of Iran. He was curious to find out what an

“iran” was.

He saw more people he recognized, and turned his early twenty-five-cent victory into a tidy four and

a half dollars, which he spent on a Maryland soft-shell crab at one place and some strawberries in

Moselle wine at the Luxembourg Exhibit in the Hall of Nations. Individually the items were spectacular.

Together they were lousy; but Mihalik had little experience in dining so extravagantly. Real strawberries

surprised him. They tasted nothing like the Lifesavers and Turkish Taffy that presented themselves as

strawberry-flavored.

The rain started right on time. Mihalik smiled and went into the Petroleum Industries Building and

watched another terrible film, Pete Roleum and His Cousins, a puppet animation. In 1996 there was a

worldwide ban that prohibited puppet animations; now Mihalik understood why.

It rained on the twilight concert of the Manhattan Music School Chorus and on the Reverend

Carleton F. Hubbard of the Ocean Parkway Methodist Church, who gave an address few people

listened to. Mihalik was getting very tired. He had been robbed of his entire night and had not slept now

in -- how long? He'd lost track. He wondered where he could go to spend his second night in the

romantic past. He looked around the Fair, at the people who were still having a terrific time.

“Personally,” he thought, “I've had just about enough.” Finally he decided to do just what he had done

the night before. He watched the obsolete airplanes fly to victory over the no-show Martians --

interplanetary combat decided by default. Mihalik shook his head ruefully -- if only the real thing had

been so easy in 1992.

He got on the subway and was again disgusted by the crowded conditions. It was only natural that

he'd feel the same; these were the same people. He was getting weary of the beauties and quaintness of

this bygone age. He was sick to death of Thursday, July 27.

Just at midnight there was a flicker of amber light, a sizzle, a snap, and a moderate clap of thunder.

Then everything went dark.

A Sign from the Future or God or Something

Mihalik sat on the chair in the lightless room. “I've been here before,” he thought. He was exhausted,

hungry, and thirsty, yet his curiosity urged him to ignore all that and run to the door. There were two

possibilities: either he had returned to the future, to his home in 1996; or he had cycled around once

again, locked into Thursday as if on an endless tape loop of the hours between 10 a.m. and midnight.

Neither logic nor the way these things work out in stories permitted anything else. Suddenly despairing,

Mihalik was in no hurry to learn the truth. He stretched himself out on the floor and slept until his spent

energies had restored themselves. Only then did he rise and feel his way to the exit. He grasped the

doorknob, took a deep breath, and went through.

He was still at the Fair. Mihalik accepted his fate quietly: he was stranded in the past, marooned upon

the reefs of time, lost possibly forever on this same long-dead day. He maintained some hope because he

had faith in the science of tomorrow and the dedication of everyone involved in the time-travel project.

He realized that his fate included an unusual inconvenience: he would have to adjust to a fourteen-hour

day.

He made the unused room in the Hall of Industries and Metals his home, his fortress. “I must begin to

provide for myself,” he thought. It was seven o'clock in the evening. He wandered through the Fair in the

slackening rain, and he saw that fortunately everything he required for a good life was available here.

There were food and shelter, clothing and companionship, candy and balloons. He looked at his watch,

which had again stopped at 1:07 during his nap. It was a symbol to him of his isolation. It also suggested

that if he relied on his intelligence and wits, he would suffer little in a material way. He could do nothing,

however, about the essential loneliness of the shipwrecked traveler. The world he came from could not

be reached on a handmade raft of logs.

The days passed, all of them basically identical. Mihalik amused himself by learning the movements of

the people and things he saw during the day. After a while he began to win money by betting with

visitors. “See that woman in the white hat?” he would ask. He pointed to a woman with a hat decorated

with many white balls, like a chocolate nonpareil covered with round white sprinkles.

“What of it?”

“I'll bet you a buck that she stops by that bench, bends down, and takes off her shoe.”

“You're crazy.”

And soon Mihalik had the price of a dinner of hot dogs and a soft drink. It didn't take long before he

knew who would accept a bet and how much he could raise the stake. He even began calling the people

by their names, like old friends, startling them or fooling them into believing he had strange mental

powers. It made no difference: after midnight, when it all began again, they always forgot what happened

on the previous version of the day.

But in a similar and more ominous fashion, Mihalik lost everything he gained during the day. He tried

to build up a supply of food, but it disappeared at midnight. A pillow and a blanket that he moved into his

secret home vanished during the night as well. Every mark he made upon this world of the past

evaporated with the rising of the sun at 10 a.m. Mihalik was forced to go out each day and begin all over

again. He could not save against hard times. He could not afford to be sick or to take a holiday. His life

became a daily struggle to hunt for or gather food.

The man from 1996 avoided thinking about the ramifications of that fact. He had been given, in effect,

a license to perform the most hideous crimes -- whatever catastrophes and personal tragedies he created

would all be made better at midnight. Whatever the police did to him, wherever they took him, at

midnight he would be back in the dark room in the Hall of Industries and Metals. On a few occasions, in

unsettled moments, he allowed himself to behave without conscience, knowing that no genuine damage

could be done. He robbed, he assaulted, and once he beat a man severely beneath the granite gaze of

Freedom of Assembly. He was frightened by the fear and frustration that were unleashed; he didn't know

such horrible things were pent up inside him, and he vowed to stand guard against being taken over by

them.

“A man in my situation will descend into madness,” he thought. “It is the natural and expected course

to follow.” Mihalik decided to forego the years of slow deterioration and fall apart in one quick plunge.

That was the way things were done where he came from.

Although he knew it was a pointless thing to do, he began a journal. “This Fair has become a Carnival

of Despair,” he wrote. He rather liked that line; he thought it showed a certain style. “I am alone here,

among a crowd of 101,220 (71,491 paid; Fair Total to Date: 15,562,809). Everyone I knew is dead to

me, or might as well be -- Cheryl, my beloved; Ray, the greatest old backup a man could want; all the

guys in the long white lab coats; every friend and relative and enemy and total stranger I ever saw. In

these last few days I have railed against the fate that brought me here. That was a fruitless exercise. I

have cursed the gods for singling me out for this punishment. That, too, brought me no nearer a solution. I

perceived at first that I had no chance of relief: I had neither food, house, clothes, nor weapon on which

to rely. There was nothing but death before me. Is this the way it would end for Frank Mihalik,

Chronologic Trailblazer? Devoured in the past? Murdered by savages in a savage time, starved to death

in the midst of plenty? As night approached I again fought off these phantoms and determined to sleep

soundly, and to take appropriate measures in the morning.

“This I attempted to do. In the light of the new day I saw, to my great surprise, that upon the shores

of time's great ocean, upon which I had been cast up by the inscrutable Governor of the universe, there

were also such things as I needed for my livelihood, if not my complete happiness. I tried to build a little

store of things, a gathering of provisions won by cleverness, stealth, and yes, occasional violence. But

these provisions disappeared at midnight, like the magical accoutrements of Cinderella, and I was left

each morning with only those things I had brought with me through the corridors of time -- myself, my

clothing, and my wristwatch.” Mihalik abandoned his attempt to record his trials when he realized that the

journal, as well, would disappear at midnight, and that he could never keep track of anything from one

day to the next. A calendar was impossible; even scratches made on the wall or slashes carved into a

wooden pole would vanish with the day. It was just as well, he told himself; the journal had started to go

off the deep end before it was a page old.

Mihalik was troubled by the notion that his imprisonment was, in fact, a form of punishment,

something that had been planned and implemented by unknown forces in his own time, something kept

secret from him but set up specifically to torment Frank Mihalik. He didn't understand why; he had

always been a model citizen. His only flaw, or, at least, all that he could recall anyway, was that he

coveted his neighbor's ass. But there was a lot of that in 1996; he thought it was unfair that he had been

singled out for such monstrous treatment. He wanted everyone to know he was heartily sorry. But that

didn't seem to be enough.

One day Mihalik rose from his sleep sometime after noon -- his watch had stopped as it did every

day, at 1:07 -- and went forth to have fun and find entertainment among the people. The newspaper was

where it always was, on the bench. Mihalik read it once again, paying attention this time to articles he had

only glanced at before. He thought he might go into Manhattan one evening to see a movie; the scientists

in 1996 would want to know about popular entertainments. He considered seeing Naughty But Nice,

with Ann Sheridan, the Oomph Girl. There was a serious lack of “Oomph” in Mihalik's world of the

future. He would be doing everyone a great service by returning with his impressions of the real thing.

But there were a lot of exciting shows to choose from. There were funny little items in the news, too,

and he wished that he could talk about them with Cheryl, his girlfriend. He missed her and her simple,

guileless approach to life.

One article caught Mihalik's eye. He had read it before, but had paid little attention to it -- it had been

just an amusing example of how foolish these people could be when they took themselves too seriously.

The story described how some scientists at a major university had unlocked the secret of atomic

structure. “Within the heart of the atom,” claimed Dr. Z. Marquand, “is a solid little nucleus, shaped like a

football. Tiny things called electrons whip around the nucleus, and that's about all there is to it.”

“This will make an entertaining diversion,” thought Mihalik. He went to a public telephone, dropped in

a nickel, and had the operator connect him with Dr. Marquand's office at the university.

“Hello,” said a gruff no-nonsense voice at the other end, “this is Zach Marquand.”

“Hello, sir. My name is unimportant. I am calling in reference to your announcement concerning the

nature of the atom.”

“Yes, indeed. A major leap forward in our understanding of the world around us, if I do say so

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THENICKOFTIMEbyGEORGEALECEFFINGER(1985)[VERSION1.1(October132006).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.] PartOne,‘TheWorldofPezPavilion:PreliminarytotheGroundbreakingCeremony,’firstappearedinTheMagazineofFantasyandScienceFiction,copyright©1983byMercu...

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George Alec Effinger - The Nick of Time

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