That this world is a better place than the one into which I was born, and promises to grow still better, seems true. What idealism lay behind the Southron cause triumphed in the reconciliation of men like Lee; what was brutal never got the upper hand as it did in my world. The Negro is free; black legislatures pass advanced laws in South Carolina; black congressmen comport themselves with dignity in Washington. The Pacific railroad is built, immigrants pour in to a welcoming country to make it strong and wealthy; no one suggests they should be shut out or hindered. There are rumors of a deal between northern Republicans and southern Democrats, betraying the victory of the Civil War—how strange it is still, after fourteen years, to use this term instead of the familiar War of Southron Independence—in return for the presidency. If this is true, my brave new world is not so brave. It may not be so new either. Prussia has beaten France and proclaimed a German Empire; is this the start in a different way of the German Union? Will 1914 see an Emperors’ War—there is none in France now—leaving Germany facing ... whom? Any one of the inventions of my own time would make me a rich man if I could reproduce them, or cared for money. With mounting steel production and the tremendous jump in population, what a success the minible would be. Or the tinugraph. Or controllable balloons. The typewriter I have seen. It has developed along different and clumsier lines; inevitably, I suppose, given initial divergence. It may mean greater advances; more likely not. The universal use of gaslight must be far in the future if it is to come at all; certainly its advent is delayed by all this talk of inventing electric illumination. If we couldnt put electricity to work it’s unlikely my new contemporaries will be able to. Why, they havent even made the telegraph cheap and convenient. And something like HX-1? It is inconceivable. Could it be that in destroying the future in which Haggershaven existed I have also destroyed the only dimension in which time travel was possible? So strangely easily I can write the words, “I destroyed.” Catty. But what of Tyss’s philosophy? Is it possible I shall be condemned to repeat the destruction throughout eternity? Have I written these lines an infinite number of times before? Or is the mercy envisaged by Enfandin a reality? And what of Barbara’s expression as she bade me goodbye? Could she possibly * * * * * Editorial note by Frederick Winter Thammis: Quite recently, in the summer of 1953 to be exact, I commissioned the remodelling of my family home near York, Pennsylvania. Among the bundles of old books and papers stored in the attic was a box of personal effects, labelled “H M Backmaker.” In it was the manuscript concluding with an unfinished sentence, reproduced above.