"You--ran into the truck, your car swinging a little as it slid. The girder came through the windshield. It could have hit you. It could have missed both of you. By pure chance, it happened to hit Jane." "And killed her," said Jimmy very quietly. "Yes. But it might have been me. That diary entry is written as if it had been me. Did you notice?" There was a long pause in Haynes' office. The world outside the windows was highly prosaic and commonplace and normal. Haynes wriggled in his chair. "I think," he said unhappily, "you did the same as my girl client--forged that writing and then forgot it. Have you seen a doctor yet?" "I will," said Jimmy. "Systematize my lunacy for me first, Haynes. If it can be done." "It's not accepted science," said Haynes. "In fact, it's considered eyewash. But there have been speculations...." He grimaced. "First point is that it was pure chance that Jane was hit. It was just as likely to be you instead, or neither of you. If it had been you--" "Jane," said Jimmy, "would be living in our house alone, and she might very well have written that entry in the diary." "Yes," agreed Haynes uncomfortably. "I shouldn't suggest this, but--there are a lot of possible futures. We don't know which one will come about for us. Nobody except fatalists can argue with that statement. When today was in the future, there were a lot of possible todays. The present moment--now--is only one of any number of nows that might have been. So it's been suggested--mind you, this isn't accepted science, but pure charlatanry--it's been suggested that there may be more than one actual now. Before the girder actually hit, there were three nows in the possible future. One in which neither of you was hit, one in which you were hit, and one--" He paused, embarrassed. "So some people would say, how do we know that the one in which Jane was hit is the only now? They'd say that the others could have happened and that maybe they did." * * * * * Jimmy nodded. "If that were true," he said detachedly, "Jane would be in a present moment, a now, where it was me who was killed. As I'm in a now where she was killed. Is that it?" Haynes shrugged. Jimmy thought, and said gravely, "Thanks. Queer, isn't it?" He picked up the two pictures and went out. Haynes was the only one who knew about the affair, and he worried. But it is not easy to denounce someone as insane, when there is no evidence that he is apt to be dangerous. He did go to the trouble to find out that Jimmy acted in a reasonably normal manner, working industriously and talking quite sanely in the daytime. Only Haynes suspected that of nights he went home and experienced the impossible. Sometimes, Haynes suspected that the impossible might be the fact--that had been an amazingly good bit of trick photography--but it was too preposterous! Also, there was no reason for such a thing to happen to Jimmy. * * * * *