The End of Eternity

by Isaac Asimov

At the 2456th he would be nearly two hundred forty millennia from his birthwhen and that is a sizable distance even for a hardened Eternal.

“Above all, a Technician must be dispassionate. The Reality Change he initiates may affect the lives of as many as fifty billion people. A million or more of these may be so drastically affected as to be considered new individuals. Under these conditions, an emotional make-up is a distinct handicap.”

When one begins by expressing lack of competence in a given field, it usually implies that a flat opinion in that field will follow almost immediately.”

But then, at the end, a Technician such as himself must step in. Following the directions all the others had combined to give him, he must be the one to initiate the actual Reality Change. And then, all the others would stare in haughty accusation at him. Their stares would say: You, not we, have destroyed this beautiful thing. And for that, they would condemn and avoid him. They would shift their own guilt to his shoulders and scorn him.

The “things” were people, dwarfed by the spaceship, as Earth and Earth’s society is always dwarfed by the physical dimensions of spaceflight.

There was even a scrap of poetry he treasured which stated that a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite. And then it was difficult, almost a shock, to return his thoughts to Eternity, and to a universe where Reality was something flexible and evanescent, something men such as himself could hold in the palms of their hands and shake into better shape.)

Every Century was continually being shaken by Reality Changes. No Observations, however painstaking, could ever stand for long without rechecking. It was standard procedure in Eternity to have every Century in a chronic state of being Observed. And to Observe properly, you must be able to present, not only the facts of the current Reality, but also of their relationship to those of previous Realities.

Harlan lost even the faintest interest.

You and me both bud