"Man, you ain't livin'," said one of the technicians he worked with. "We're gonna buzz a few dives tonight. Why not drag it along with us?"
Edgar blanched. "Thank you just the same, but I—I have some work to do."
After a while, naturally, they stopped asking.
He continued to dream hopelessly, miserably, but one day he was yanked out of it by—of all people—a military man. The brass were on inspection tour and the lab's Chief Engineer was apologizing for a faulty run of synchros which had occurred some time ago, when the Brigadier snorted.
"What's past is finished. I'm interested in five years from now!"
Edgar found himself staring fixedly at a top secret gadget still in the breadboard stage.
"Great heaven!" he thought. "I have a fixation. This isn't doing me any good."
But what would? Suppose, instead of dreaming, he spent time actually working toward what he wanted most?
Here in the lab, he helped to build amazing machines, things which daily did the impossible. He no longer marveled at what could be done with electronics and, more important, he knew the methods and the details.
That was when Edgar decided to build a time machine.