Marge spent a lot of time with her Projector. The device was very popular with women, mainly, I guess, because it was the absolutely perfect fortune-telling device and it was much more fun than either video or visiphone conversations.
I put my own Grundy Projector away in the basement shortly after I got married and I never used it any more. To my way of thinking, it made life pretty dull. I had just been married and I was also starting to get ahead at my job—Mr. Atkins had put me in charge of a whole department full of accounts analyzers. I went around with all sorts of wild plans and dreams of a rosy future for us. I hoped someday to form my own company and I was also interested in finding a better place to live. The dome housing development was only temporary as far as I was concerned and I wanted something bigger for when we could afford a family.
I suppose we all have those dreams of success when we're young, and though most of us have fairly predictable futures, I still can't help thinking that it's those wild dreams and schemes that keep us slugging away and add a little zest to life. Anyway, I soon found that Marge was knocking all the zest out of my life because she knew the future for both of us and she kept telling me about it.
It took me a few weeks to finally persuade her that I'd rather not know what was going to happen. But it was too late then, because she'd told me everything that was important.
For instance, I knew I was going to be living in the dome house for another two years and probably more. I knew I was still going to be working for Mr. Atkins and I knew just how much money I was going to have in the bank at the end of two years. I even knew that my paunch would get bigger and my hair would start falling out.
Life got to be just a matter of sitting around waiting for the expected to happen.
I tried hard to break Marge of the time projection habit, but it was useless. She was as addicted as everyone else and the Grundy Projector looked as though it was going to be here for good and no one was going to stop it.
After all, who could prevent an expectant mother from jumping ahead a year or so to find out whether she is going to have a boy or girl? I know the doctors can tell with one hundred per cent accuracy in the second month, but the parents-to-be still want to find out if Junior will look like Mom or Dad.
Or who could prevent a young boy and girl from finding out whom they were going to marry? New methods of courting appeared—if you could call it courting. A boy would merely look ahead and find out who the lucky girl was going to be and then call on her. She was usually sitting at the front door waiting for him, too. I kind of liked the old-fashioned way, when Marge and I met by chance one day and then spent months getting to know each other.