From: Kevin Tarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It's tough to look back now at what could have been. I'm happy with my life as it turned out so far, but I'll always wonder about the alternate universe where Things Were Different.
This is the second time recently that I've been reminded of this certain neat
sci-fi short story that I can't remember the name/author of. It might very well
be one of Dr. Brin's, but I've lost my copies of his collections so I can't check.
I've read so many short story collections that they all blur together, but I've read
this story more than once, so it had to be in a worthy collection for me to reread
it. Maybe someone else here will recognize it...
The relevant part of the story that Kevin's post reminded me of was that people
experiencing FTL travel would see an endless stream of their alternate selves, each
reflecting different possibile outcomes of their past choices. The main character in
the story was the rather down-and-out captain of a passenger space transport, blackballed
by all the major space lines. He was haunted by the vision of some of these alternate
selves in the crisp white uniform of a captain for a major space line.
Anyway, if that sounds familiar at all, here's a summary of the story, as I recall it (spoilers!):
The main story line goes that a psychologist passenger on the ship is attemting to treat
a patient by observing the patient's alternate-selves during the jump. In doing so, he
manipulates an instrument containing a special material (mu-metal?) during the FTL jumps,
which causes the ship to end up in deep in uncharted space. And due to the way the FTL
drive works, without knowing *exactly* where they are, they have no way to get back. No
ship ever lost in that way had ever returned ... (big spoilers!) ... Until the captain figures out what
the psychologist did and how to fix it. They repeat the jumps in reverse, having the psychologist reverse all his manipulations of the instument as well (which unfortunately also reverses all the
great progress he had made on his patient) The ship makes it home safe, the captain is
acclaimed a hero, he rejects a new offer to captain a big space liner, and as a new line of his
selves in their crisp white uniforms stretches off into the distance, he is no longer haunted by them.
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