He waved his hand. Nothing at all happened. He sat for a few seconds and was on the point of removing the helmet when he realized that this was exactly what he should expect. Time was blurring along in the computer model, but his first one-year snapshot was thirty seconds in the future.

It came to him not as some form of description or image, but as memory. He remembered the whole of the past year, but with a variable degree of detail. System politics were far-off and vague, while anything that affected him personally was clear. He had persuaded the bosses that his models were the right way to approach prediction, he had been promoted, and he had moved in with Kate — over the screams and protests of his mother and the rest of the family.

Was this the program, or mere wishful thinking? He was still trying to decide that when — memories — another year sprang full-blown into his mind.

So much for his smoothing function! It didn’t seem to work at all. The merger of the Ligon and Mobarak families had taken place — but how and when? Who had married whom? Alex could not remember, although he was somehow sure that he himself was not married to Lucy-Maria.

Here was other news, confusing and muddled, coming from the farther reaches of the Jovian system. Signals had been received there, perhaps from the stars. It could mean the discovery of aliens. The message was being looked at — had been looked at — had been dismissed as bogus. Or had it? It still seemed to be there. Alex felt his own confusion beginning. The future was filled with an infinity of branch points, and the model could not pursue all of them. He had the nagging feeling that he disagreed with some of the program’s choices, but before he could analyze his reasons — memories — another snapshot came pouring in.

Was this only three years out, or were multiple years somehow being crushed together? The solar system had escaped a great disaster that would have ended all life, from Mercury to Neptune and beyond. This was not the gradual dying-off that the model runs had predicted. This one would have been quick, extreme, and total. But it had not happened. So why was it here at all? The program was responsible. The non-event must have been on a high-probability path, otherwise it could not be in Alex’s memories at all. He tried to dig for details and a better understanding, but he was too late. Memories. Something — war, natural disaster, technological failure? — on Earth. Discoveries on Triton, Neptune’s giant moon. Loss of the Oort Cloud explorers. A dozen more events crowding all at once into his mind. He ought to have known this was impossible, even the highlights of a full year could not be comprehended in half a minute. Kate had been the realist, he had not. (Did they live together now? He could not say.) Memories. The tempo was increasing, a year was shrinking to nothing. What had happened to his thirty seconds per year? A trip to Venus — for what possible reason? A death, someone in the family. He could not tell who it was. A great rain of comets, sweeping in from the Oort Cloud and endangering the whole System. Was this the source of humanity’s disaster? No, some form of deflection shield had operated. Memories. Of a meeting, with the population chart of the System spread out before him. Ten billion people — as many as had ever been predicted in the models. But the total was decreasing. Memories. His mother, face changing color and melting like hot wax. Cousin Juliana, shriveling, dying — along with all the Commensals? The data were not there. Destructive forces unleashed around the solar system, as powerful as they had been during the period of the Great War. But he saw only their shadow, an unrealized potential. Was this the warning of coming holocaust? Memories. They came not as individual images, but as a great collective tide. The Seine had collapsed, the Jovian worlds were uninhabitable, Mars did not communicate, battered outposts on the moons of Uranus clung on to diminished life. And Alex himself. Where was he? He had committed a major blunder in planning the model. He had not allowed for his own death. If his Fax “died” within the model, what would happen to the connection? Could he die too? Memories. The worlds of the solar system were dark. He sat on the outer fringes, alone, beyond the planets, beyond the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, looking in toward the weak spark of the distant Sun. Memories. Of solitude and silence. Had he come here hoping to be safe? He knew, through an unexamined accumulation of doomed memories, that his was the only life within light-years. How long had he been alone? How long would he remain here?

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie…

The VR helmet was ripped from his head. Light, world-filling light so bright that he was forced to squeeze his eyes tightly shut, burned around him. He heard the voice of a stranger, calling through the effulgence.

“It’s been more than half an hour, and you were mumbling to yourself. I couldn’t understand what you were saying. I had to get you out. Alex? Alex? Are you all right?”

He was not all right. He had swept far forward in time, to the death of humanity and beyond. He had hovered alone on the rim of the universe. How could anyone be all right after that?

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you do it,” the voice said. “I’m a total bloody fool. Here. Sniff this.”

An acrid vapor filled his nostrils. Alex gasped and gagged. His heart raced, he opened his eyes, and the room flickered and reeled around him.

“Alex!”

“Sa’ right. I’m — mm — a’ right.”

“You don’t sound it. Who are you? Tell me your name, where you are and who you are.”

“I am Alex — Ligon.” The room steadied. He was sitting hunched in a chair, with someone — Kate. Kate… who? — gazing down at him. “I’m — I — where am I? I’ve… been…”

“Alex! What happened to you? When I removed the VR helmet your eyes looked ready to pop and your pupils were all dilated.”

Alex shook his head, not to disagree but to try to clear it. “Dunno. Can’t think straight. Gimme a boost.”

“No. Alex, that’s a bad idea.”

“Need it. Got to have it. Mental overload, too many futures. Too much, too fast.”

“You’ll regret it. You’ll feel terrible later.”

“Give it.”

Alex closed his eyes and lay back. Hours seemed to pass before he felt the cool spray of the Neirling boost on his temple. The world inside his head steadied and came into focus.

He opened his eyes. Kate was frowning down at him.

“I’m all right, Kate. I’m fine. But it’s going to take days to sort out what I experienced. My head was spinning around like a top. It’s my own fault, I ought to have realized what would happen.”

“And I ought to have forbidden you even to try. I thought you said that you had done this kind of experiment before.”

“Not with the Seine running the show.” Alex’s pulse was beginning to slow. The Neirling boost had taken effect, and he would have at least three hours of mental clarity. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. Everything from there to his brain stem had ached. It would ache again, when the boost lost its effect, but for the moment he felt he could understand — and explain — anything.

He said, “I’ll tell you what I think was happening, but I may be wrong. The Seine has enough computational power to consider and select from thousands of branches at a time. A Fax is too simple to be employed in more than one future, but apparently a human isn’t. I was catching glimpses of many possibilities — too many for me to handle.”

“You’ve lost me, Alex.”

“That’s not surprising. I’ve never gone into those elements of the predictive model with you. I would have, but you insisted that I work on a briefing that Macanelly would follow.”

“I did. But if you’re suggesting that I’m a dimwit like Loring Macanelly…”

“No, not at all. It’s just a question of where I put my time. I was trying to produce a simplified version for Macanelly, and that meant I had to leave some of the trickier elements out. Then we had to brief Mischa Glaub and Magrit Knudsen when we weren’t expecting it, so I went with the same approach—”