The next day Nicholas came around to my place to tell me about his mystical experience and get my opinion. He was not exactly candid about it, however; initially he told it to me not as a personal experience but as a science fiction idea for a story. That was so if it sounded nutty the onus wouldn't be on him.

"I thought," he said, "as a science fiction writer you could explain it. Was it time travel? Is there such a thing as time travel? Or maybe an alternate universe."

I told him it was himself from an alternate universe. The proof was that he recognized himself. Had it been a future self he would not have recognized it, since it would have been altered from the features he saw in the mirror. No one could ever recognize his own future self. I had written about that in a story, once. In the story the man's future self came back to warn him just as he, the protagonist, was about to do something foolish. The protaganist, not recognizing his future self, had killed it. I had yet to market the story, but my hopes were good. My agent, Scott Meredith, had sold everything else I had written.

"Can you use the idea?" Nicholas asked.

"No," I told him. "It's too ordinary."

"Ordinary!" He looked upset. "It didn't seem ordinary to me that night. I think it had a message for me, and it was beaming the message at me telepathically, but I woke up and that ended the transmission."

I explained to him that if you encountered your self from an alternate universe - or from the future, for that matter - you would hardly need to employ telepathy. That wasn't logical, since there would be no linguistic barrier. Telepathy was used when contact between members of different races, such as from other star systems, took place.

"Oh,"Nicholas said, nodding.

"It was benign?" I asked.

"Sure it was; it was me. I'm benign. You know, Phil, in some ways my whole life is a waste. What am I doing at my age, working as a clerk in a record shop? Look what you're doing - you're a full-time writer. Why the hell can't I do something like that? Something meaningful. I'm a clerk! The lowest of the low!" And Rachel is going to be a full professor some day, when she's through school. I should never have dropped out; I should have gotten my BA."