"That was a deciding p'int in the hist'ry of all of us. Way it happened to you folks, she went back an' sewed it up; that made her a few minutes late, an' she never got time to climb into the machine.
"Way it happened to us, Helen just jury-rigged her skivvies—'scuse me, honey-lamb!—an' come along. Got into the machine, turned the key an'—here we are!"
"Yes, here we are!" I squawked, "but where the hell are we? Logic or no logic, Hank, this is one time I will not believe my own eyes! These other 'usses' don't exist. Can't exist. Why, it violates the Law of Conservation of Matter! The same thing can't exist two places at the same time—"
"Sure it can't," agreed Hank impatiently. "But I'm tryin' to tell you, this ain't the same Time! This here is a diff'rent world entirely. This is one world from an infinite number o' possibilities arisin' out o' the past. That other Jim Blakeson looks like you, Jim. An'—" Hank studied him speculatively. My double had jerked a bottle of rye from the bedroom medicine cabinet, and was feverishly engaged in warding off pneumonia for the next ten years. "—an' I must admit he acts like you, too—but he ain't you. He's you like you woulda been under a different set of coordinates."
This time I had him! Had him cold! Triumphantly I cried, "Then if he's not me, this whole thing is a delirious dream. Otherwise we couldn't meet. Because one of us has no real existence. Even granting that at any given point in the past an infinitude of things could have happened, the fact remains that only one thing did happen! So one of us is alive, and the other has no real existence!"
But Hank shook his head slowly and sadly.
"Nope, Jim! I'm sorry, but you're wrong again. It don't work out that way. From the beginning o' Time I reckon they musta been billions o' different crooshul situations—an' each one o' them has made way to another possible future, each one as true an' valid as the rest.
"The big trouble is—" And here he looked worried for the first time, stared at his silent prototype. "But you built the machine, too. You know whut the trouble is."
And the other Hank nodded his head soberly.
"Mmm-hmm. Been wonderin' about it ever since you arrove. Whut you goin' to do about it?"