"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."