"In effect, yes. I'll try to explain. Matter and motion are not real in the basic sense. They are properties of your mind. They are what your finite mind sees; but reality is the space-time continuity of which one instant is a cross-section. In effect, consciousness flows along the time dimension which I term the fourth dimension. But in addition there is a fifth dimension, so that these two Earths have the same space-time coordinates in four dimensions, and two different ones in the fifth. In Euclidean concepts, that other Earth is eighty-seven millionths of an inch from this, in the fifth dimension. In that Earth I did not develop. The Dome is still there, but the Brain, if it still exists, was never activated. As a result, humanity continued its violent progress through time, engaging in war after war. "When I discovered time travel and saw all this I decided to go back and contact you before your instant of decision and get you to release the identity of the nerve fluid when you discover it _tomorrow_." "Tomorrow?" Earl said. "In your time." "I see," Earl said. "Tomorrow I make the discovery. In one time stream I tell Glassman. In the other I decide not to. _What made me decide not to?_" "You _thought_ the Brain would be bad for humanity. You were, of course, wrong." "Was I?" Earl said. "In that other world, wars are the normal state of things. They stem from problems that don't exist in my world. Over-population, competition in trade in things that aren't necessary to human economy, opposed political systems--all the foibles and inconsistencies of untrained and unorganized populations." "I understand that," Earl said. "Why don't your people wear clothes?" "Clothes are unnecessary--one of the things I eliminated in reducing the industrial economy to a minimum. Over-population? There is none. People are made in the laboratory as they are needed. Their lives are uncomplicated by animal problems such as reproduction, and artificial customs such as modesty. Their education is simplified and factual, their lives functional." "And I made that decision all by myself?" "Yes. That's why I have brought you here--to get you to change that decision. You see, I must change the past. I must do that in order to correct the future, make the other Earth a sane place, _dominated by a second Cyberene which is a counterpart of me_." * * * * *