I snapped the trap shut. "Just picked this world out of all the millions there are? Just like that."
Joe grinned. "I just thought of the damnedest world that I could, and here I was!"
Well, he had me. There wasn't much more I could say. Joe's idea, of course, was to build machines and put them on the street corners like you would newspaper stands. He figured that all the misfits and the unhappy people would sneak out and use them and whisht, off they'd fly to their own favorite world, leaving all us well-adjusted people behind. He even had a slogan figured out. "Paradise—for only a quarter!"
You see, he figured he'd have to charge a quarter not only to pay for the machines but because people are just naturally suspicious of anything they get for free....
oe and Wally Claus rigged up three of the machines and installed them on some of the better known street corners around Fremont. Joe had trouble getting a license to do it, but when he told the city fathers what the machines did, they figured the best way to discourage a crackpot was to let him go ahead and flop on his own.
And he came close to doing it. Those booths just sat on the street corners all summer and gathered dust. People called them Shannon's folly, which didn't help things with Marge any.
And then one day, Barney Muhlenberg disappeared. We thought he might have gotten drunk and fallen in the river and we spent a good two days dragging it. And then we looked in at his rooming house but we didn't find a thing except thirty-nine empty bottles and a rusty opener.
It was Joe who first discovered what had happened. He got hold of me and we went down to the Paradise booth on the corner just opposite from Schultz's Bar and Grill. There was a quarter in the coin till and when I looked at the screen, I knew Barney had taken off.