I said, "How long will you be gone?"
He considered that gravely. "Literally, Rob, there is no answer to that—but I know what you mean, of course. I may undergo a mental experience that will seem a day, a week, a month—measured by our present standards. But to you, sitting here waiting for me—" He shrugged. "By that clock there, an hour perhaps. Or five hours—I hope no more."
My mind was groping with all that he had said. I was confused. There was so much that I no more than vaguely half understood; so much that seemed just beyond the grasp of my comprehension. I seemed to have a thousand questions I would ask, yet scarce could I frame one of them intelligently. I said finally:
"You say you may be gone what will seem a day, yet by our clock here it will be only a few hours. This—This other state of existence then moves through time faster?"
"I conceive it so, yes."
"But then—are you going into the future, Will? Is that what it will be?"
He smiled, but at once was as grave as before. "Your mind is trying to reconcile two conditions irreconcilable. You may take an apple and try to add it to an orange and think you get two apple-oranges. But there is no such thing. Our future—let us call it that which has not yet happened to us but is going to happen. I cannot project myself into that. If I could—if I did—at once would the future be for me no longer the future, but the present.
"The conception is impossible. Or again—in this other state—I must of necessity exist always in the present. Nor can you compare them—reconcile one state of existence with the other." He stopped abruptly, then went on with his slow smile. "Don't you see, Rob, there are no words even, with which I can express what I am trying to make you realize. That being reclined there in the other room a while ago and watched us. Perhaps for what it conceived to be what we would conceive a day were we to experience it."
His smile turned whimsical. "The words become futile. Don't you see that? The future of that being is merely what has not yet happened to it. To compare that with our own consciousness is like trying to add an apple to an orange."