But Charley's afraid that Cooper won't see the necessity for retroactive action. He's afraid that Cooper won't realize that, when you outlaw electricity, you can't limit it to the current that runs through a wire to light a lamp or turn an engine. When you rule out electricity as a natural phenomenon, you rule out all electricity, and that means you rule out an integral part of atomic structure. And that you affect not only this Earth but the entire Universe.
So Charley sits and worries and waits for the flicker of the lamp beside his chair.
Although he realizes, of course, that when it comes there won't be any flicker.
—CLIFFORD D. SIMAK