"I thought it was odd I should dream about my husband," she said. "I'll
believe you, because I don't know how I got here and you do look like
the Harry I used to know, before he went all high scientific surgeon
and no time for fun."
She curved more fully than she had when she was eighteen, but there was
neat symmetry to her sine formulae, and she still had blonde hair. Her
perfume was the same as the one in the lab I had been smelling all day,
it was now reaching me at high amperage.
So that was the key, the evocative power of smell association. I
sniffed deeply at the perfume in appreciation.
"Like it?" Kate asked, wriggling.
"Only for its scientific values," I said. "It suggests a most valuable
line of research."
"I'm in favor," she said, and pressed me to the bed.
"Your husband is coming!" I shouted, and it worked. She disappeared.
Presumably she woke up in her own probability time-space. And no doubt
Kate's reflexes by now were trained to snap her awake and away at the
suggestion that her husband was around. It was highly improbable that
Kate would alter much.
I got up to make myself some coffee. There was no point in wasting
sleep without a plan. Clearly, I had to take the pills and fix the
appropriate smell in my mind, and when I woke up I would drag the
proper slice of another probability with me. And then I would interview
the me who had solved the ultra-uranium heavy element equation. And the
bomb to end all bombs would be perfected. The test was ready, waiting
for me to say, "Let's go, boys. We know what will happen this time."
But there was, it struck me, the difficulty of finding the right scent
to evoke the right probable me.
* * * * *
I collected all the toothpaste, deodorant, shaving stick, aftershave
lotion I could find in the bathroom and started on the toothpaste. I
inhaled deeply and lay down, with the first tube on my chest. But after
the coffee, I slept very briefly, and when I looked up there was only a
toothbrush on the carpet. It was not mine in this world and I had no
idea whose it was, or rather which probable me it belonged to.
But at least this established the principle. The smell produced the
object--and, if I went deep enough in sleep, it would produce the whole
Jones.
I dressed quickly and went out for a walk in the night air, breathing
deeply and memorizing every scent I came across. Then I went back to
the apartment, sniffed hard at the row of personal unguents, and lay
down to sleep.
When I woke up, it was morning and the room was full of people.
There were about a dozen of me, some wearing very odd clothes, some
scowling, others grinning unbecomingly, and some looking just plain
stupid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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