Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester Read Online Free PDF

one, I’ll explain later. Let’s try some more clues. Lela Machan, for example. She escapes into the Roman Empire where she lives the life of her dreams as a femme fatale . Every man loves her. Julius Caesar, Savonarola, the entire Twentieth Legion, a man named Ben Hur. Do you see the fallacy?”
    “No.”
    “She also smokes cigarettes.”
    “Well?” Carpenter asked after a pause.
    “I continue,” Scrim said, “George Hanmer escapes into England of the nineteenth century where he’s a member of Parliament and the friend of Gladstone, Winston Churchill, and Disraeli, who takes him riding in his Rolls Royce. Do you know what a Rolls Royce is?”
    “No.”
    “It was the name of an automobile.”
    “So?”
    “You don’t understand yet?”
    “No.”
    Scrim paced the floor in exaltation. “Carpenter, this is a bigger discovery than teleportation or time travel. This can be the salvation of man. I don’t think I’m exaggerating. These two dozen shock victims in Ward T have been U-Bombed into something so gigantic that it’s no wonder your specialists and experts can’t understand it.”
    “What the hell’s bigger than time travel, Scrim?”
    “Listen to this, Carpenter. Eisenhower did not run for office until the middle of the twentieth century. Nathan Riley could not have been a friend of Diamond Jim Brady’s and bet on Eisenhower to win an election … not simultaneously. Brady was dead a quarter of a century before Ike was President. Marciano defeated La Starza fifty years after Henry Ford started his automobile company. Nathan Riley’s time traveling is full of similar anachronisms.”
    Carpenter looked puzzled.
    “Lela Machan could not have had Ben Hur for a lover. Ben Hur never existed in Rome. He never existed at all. He was a character in a novel. She couldn’t have smoked. They didn’t have tobacco then. You see? More anachronisms. Disraeli could never have taken George Hanmer for a ride in a Rolls Royce because automobiles weren’t invented until long after Disraeli’s death.”
    “The hell you say,” Carpenter exclaimed. “You mean they’re all lying?”
    “No. Don’t forget, they don’t need sleep. They don’t need food. They’re not lying. They’re going back in time, all right. They’re eating and sleeping back there.”
    “But you just said their stories don’t stand up. They’re full of anachronisms.”
    “Because they travel back into a time of their own imagination. Nathan Riley has his own picture of what America was like in the early twentieth century. It’s faulty and anachronistic because he’s no scholar, but it’s real for him. He can live there. The same is true for the others.”
    Carpenter goggled.
    “The concept is almost beyond understanding. These people have discovered how to turn dreams into reality. They know how to enter their dream realities. They can stay there, live there, perhaps forever. My God, Carpenter, this is your American dream. It’s miracle working, immortality, Godlike creation, mind over matter … It must be explored. It must be studied. It must be given to the world.”
    “Can you do it, Scrim?”
    “No, I cannot. I’m an historian. I’m noncreative, so it’s beyond me. You need a poet … an artist who understands the creation of dreams. From creating dreams on paper it oughtn’t be too difficult to take the step to creating dreams in actuality.”
    “A poet? Are you serious?”
    “Certainly I’m serious. Don’t you know what a poet is? You’ve been telling us for five years that this war is being fought to save the poets.”
    “Don’t be facetious, Scrim, I—”
    “Send a poet into Ward T. He’ll learn how they do it. He’s the only man who can. A poet is half doing it anyway. Once he learns, he can teach your psychologists and anatomists. Then they can teach us; but the poet is the only man who can interpret between those shock cases and your experts.”
    “I believe you’re right, Scrim.”
    “Then don’t