mistake—" until I remembered that there were never any mistakes with Grundy Projectors.

Nevertheless, I still tried to find a way out of the situation. "Maybe you couldn't find us because we moved," I said quickly. "Maybe I got another job and left town or was transferred to the Boston office. Mr. Atkins has mentioned it a couple of times."

"I looked," Marge said miserably. "I looked everywhere and I just couldn't see us anywhere."

"But how do you know we're going to die?" I argued. "Did you see it happen?"

She shook her head. "I didn't dare look that close. I got it pinned down to somewhere in the next month and I didn't dare look any closer, afraid I might have to see something horrible. All I know is we just won't be around sometime after the next four or five weeks."

"Has anyone mentioned anything to you about our death?" I asked. It was considered improper to even hint at another person's death just in case that person hadn't found out. Still, you know how tactless some people can be.

Marge just shook her head and went right on sobbing.

"Listen," I said, "I'll bet you're getting all worked up for nothing. Anything—absolutely anything—could happen in the next few weeks. There's probably a perfectly simple explanation for the whole thing."

I guess I wasn't very convincing because Marge just stared dumbly at me, tears spilling out of her eyes. "Gerry, would—would you go and look? If it's something harmless, you can come right back and tell me. If it's something awful, I won't ask about it."

"No," I said. "That would be just the same as telling you what's going to happen. Besides, I don't want to know."

We just sat around the house for the rest of that evening. After Marge had gone to bed, I went down to the basement and smashed both our Bilbo Grundy Time Projectors into little pieces. I'd seen the hopelessness and despair in people who had learned just how and when they would die. Smashing the things wouldn't change the future—I realized that—but I didn't want Marge obeying the impulse to find out. Or myself, for that matter.

Shortly after that, the quarreling started in earnest. Marge wouldn't let up on the business of dying, and as well as being scared, I was also sick of hearing about our short and questionable future. Marge was furious with me for destroying her Projector and blamed me constantly for making her suffer by preventing her from looking into the future.

"Now we won't know what's going to happen until it's too late!" she shrieked at me.

"That's right!" I yelled back. "And that's just the way I want it! What's the use of knowing and worrying in advance if there's no way of doing anything about it?"

Then, one night, we had the identical fight that we had watched two years earlier, on our first time trip. Marge, as usual, was crying hysterically about not having long to live and I was shouting at her about wishing herself into the grave. She seemed to have forgotten that I was going to go, too, and had taken all the suffering on her own shoulders.

When I was hollering and stamping about the room, I had a funny, eerie feeling as I suddenly remembered that my younger unmarried self had watched—or was watching—the same scene.

I just stopped doing anything for a moment and stared around the room. Naturally I saw nothing, because there was nothing to see, and I remembered how quickly my younger self had fled when I had looked up like that. Ashamed, I tried to soothe Marge, but she was too far gone to be comforted.

I was glad to get out of the house every day and spend a few hours at the office. I must admit that I was scared to be with Marge because it looked as though we were going to go together and I felt safer away from her. I know it's nothing to be proud of, but it helped ease the