After that, though, even the groupies drew back. And that evening he went home alone.

“Uh!”

Derek awakened suddenly from the drug-induced playback. He shuddered, and for a long time just lay there on the unkempt mattress, breathing.

The new drug certainly did release a charged, totally vivid experience. It also drew out the playbacks more rapidly.

All he had to do was somehow endure the next three years’ worth of memory recall. That’s all. At this rate it shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, real time. A few more weeks, then, if Bettide was right, it would be back to the golden years!

Derek had come to believe the drug did more than simply play back chemical memories inscribed in the brain. He was half convinced it actually took one back. Personally. And when the bad times were through he would be free once more to cycle back to childhood… to model airplanes and long summer afternoons… to ice cream and the sweetness of precocious first love… to a time when there were no regrets.

He got up, stretching to ease a crick in his back, and slipped a Diet-Perf dinner into the rusty old microwave. He barely tasted the meal when he spooned it down.

Derek got out the log Dr. Bettide had given him. Success depended on the physician’s goodwill, so he wrote down the times and places he had returned to… avoiding mention of the nasty little personal details. They were irrelevant, anyway.

He watched the Late Show on TV until, at last, sleep arrived. Then came the inevitable struggle with his dreams, trying to make them conform to his will. But they were not pliant, and had their way with him.

“Blakeney, just who do you think you are? This is the third time you’ve come in late and stoned, and gotten belligerent with the audience! We may be a small-time company, but we’ve got our reputations to consider…”