discontinuous. Now some of them think time may be, too. Maybe everything is just imaginary, and appears to our senses in whatever way we want it to appear. We are so well-trained that we see everything just as we are taught to see it by generations of artists, writers, and other symbol-makers. If we could see things as they really are, what might happen?"

"We'd probably all go nuts!" I told him. He just smiled.

"Well, here goes," he said. "It's finished. Now to find out who is right, the scientists and philosophers who say reality is forever unreachable, or the artists who say there isn't any reality—that we make the whole thing up to suit ourselves."

He moved one of those pointers you see there, and squinted around at the different scales and dials, and then stepped back. That little tessy-thing appeared, real small at first. Just a point; you could hardly see it. I couldn't see anything else happening, and thought he was gonna do somepin' else to the machine. I turned to look at Carter, and saw his face was white as a sheet.

"Good Gawd!" he says, just like that: "Good Gawd!" That's all.

"Well," I says to him, "who was right, the scientists or the artists?"

"The artists!" he sorta screeches. "The artists were right all the time ... there is no reality! It's all a fabric of illusion we've created ourselves! And now I've ripped a hole in that!"

He gives a strangled hoot and goes hightailin' outta here like somepin' was after him. Jumps in his car and roars off down the road and disappears.

Naw, I don't mean he really disappeared—are you nuts? Just roared on down the road till he got so small I couldn't see him no more. You know—the way things do when they go farther and farther away. Happens every day; that's what us artists mean by perspective.

The machine? Well, I dunno what to do with it. If Carter ever comes back he might not like my getting rid of it. I was thinking mebbe I'd put it in the hobby show at the county fair next week, though. Ya notice how that funny-looking cube inside there gets bigger every time you look at it? There ... it just doubled its size again, see? People at the fair oughtta get a big kick outta that. No telling how big it'll get with all those people looking at it.

But come on, let's go fishing. We'd better hurry or it'll be too late.

THE END