"That was a deciding p'int in the hist'ry of _all_ of us. Way it happened to you folks, she went back an' sewed it up; that made her a few minutes late, an' she never got time to climb into the machine. "Way it happened to _us_, Helen just jury-rigged her skivvies--'scuse me, honey-lamb!--an' come along. Got into the machine, turned the key an'--here we are!" "Yes, here we are!" I squawked, "but where the hell _are_ we? Logic or no logic, Hank, this is one time I will not believe my own eyes! These other 'usses' don't exist. _Can't_ exist. Why, it violates the Law of Conservation of Matter! The same thing can't exist two places at the same time--" "Sure it can't," agreed Hank impatiently. "But I'm tryin' to tell you, this ain't the same Time! This here is a diff'rent world entirely. This is one world from an infinite number o' possibilities arisin' out o' the past. That other Jim Blakeson _looks_ like you, Jim. An'--" Hank studied him speculatively. My double had jerked a bottle of rye from the bedroom medicine cabinet, and was feverishly engaged in warding off pneumonia for the next ten years. "--an' I must admit he _acts_ like you, too--but he ain't you. He's you like you woulda been under a different set of coordinates." This time I had him! Had him cold! Triumphantly I cried, "Then if he's not me, this whole thing is a delirious dream. Otherwise we couldn't meet. Because _one_ of us has no real existence. Even granting that at any given point in the past an infinitude of things could have happened, the fact remains that only one thing _did_ happen! So one of us is alive, and the other has no real existence!" But Hank shook his head slowly and sadly. "Nope, Jim! I'm sorry, but you're wrong again. It don't work out that way. From the beginning o' Time I reckon they musta been billions o' different crooshul situations--an' each one o' them has made way to another possible future, each one as true an' valid as the rest. "The big trouble is--" And here he looked worried for the first time, stared at his silent prototype. "But _you_ built the machine, too. You know whut the trouble is." And the other Hank nodded his head soberly. "Mmm-hmm. Been wonderin' about it ever since you arrove. Whut you goin' to do about it?" "I dunno exactly," confessed Cleaver No. 1. "I--I mean _we_--had planned on installin' a magnetic grapple in the machine so's we c'd alluz get back where we come from--but now, ding-bust it, I'm in the machine an' can't git out, an' the equipment ain't installed--" That was too much! It was bad enough arguing with Hank Cleaver, but to sit there listening to two Hank Cleavers talking and arguing with one another--that was a little too much for me! I sent out an SOS to my alter ego. "Look, Buster, or Blakeson, or Narcissus,[2] how about a Share-the-Health plan with that bottle? After all, I'm the guy who bought it."