ated an accounts analyzer. We
advertised for a new operator to assist in my department and lined up
interviews with thirty-two applicants. When the day of the interviews
arrived, only one applicant turned up. He was found suitable and got the
job.

The president, Mr. Atkins, was pretty het up about the whole affair.
"Why would thirty-one men not present themselves for interviews as they
had arranged?" he kept asking me. "It's a good job, isn't it, Gerald?"

I tried to explain to him that the Time Projector was probably involved
in the affair, although I couldn't see _how_ exactly. Mr. Atkins was an
old man who didn't believe in new gadgets of any kind and he wasn't
convinced. Finally, however, I managed to get him to call some of the
applicants and ask them why they had not appeared for their interviews.

He almost went apoplectic when he heard the reasons. Each of the
thirty-one answered that he had flipped ahead to see what was going to
happen on that particular day and each one had seen that he _wasn't_
going to visit Mr. Atkins in search of a job, so he didn't go. Some of
them even told him that they knew they were going to get jobs elsewhere
on a certain date and that they were just taking a vacation until that
day came.

I had a hard time soothing Mr. Atkins that afternoon. He wouldn't stop
talking about it. Finally, just to satisfy himself, he re-interviewed
the sole successful applicant. As we should have expected, the new man
answered that he had looked ahead to see that he was going to get the
job and had dutifully made his appearance.

Mr. Atkins was flabbergasted and he spluttered and fumed for minutes on
end. Then he looked crafty. "What am I going to do now?" he asked the
new man.

"You're going out to get drunk, sir," the new man answered.

And that's exactly what Mr. Atkins did.

* * * * *

Crazy situations like that became commonplace in no time. The newspapers
were filled with them every day, though it still took us quite a while
to understand that there was nothing we could do to avoid the
inevitable. It was all pretty staggering and naturally we protested like
madmen. Naturally it didn't do a bit of good. It was in the cards that
we would protest without results.

Even when we did get quieted down, we were still in a daze because of
the weird things that were happening. For instance, there was this
fellow on our street who suddenly became famous for writing