when we're young, and
though most of us have fairly predictable futures, I still can't help
thinking that it's those wild dreams and schemes that keep us slugging
away and add a little zest to life. Anyway, I soon found that Marge was
knocking all the zest out of my life because she _knew_ the future for
both of us and she kept telling me about it.

It took me a few weeks to finally persuade her that I'd rather not know
what was going to happen. But it was too late then, because she'd told
me everything that was important.

For instance, I knew I was going to be living in the dome house for
another two years and probably more. I knew I was still going to be
working for Mr. Atkins and I knew just how much money I was going to
have in the bank at the end of two years. I even knew that my paunch
would get bigger and my hair would start falling out.

Life got to be just a matter of sitting around waiting for the expected
to happen.

* * * * *

I tried hard to break Marge of the time projection habit, but it was
useless. She was as addicted as everyone else and the Grundy Projector
looked as though it was going to be here for good and no one was going
to stop it.

After all, who could prevent an expectant mother from jumping ahead a
year or so to find out whether she is going to have a boy or girl? I
know the doctors can tell with one hundred per cent accuracy in the
second month, but the parents-to-be still want to find out if Junior
will look like Mom or Dad.

Or who could prevent a young boy and girl from finding out whom they
were going to marry? New methods of courting appeared--if you could call
it courting. A boy would merely look ahead and find out who the lucky
girl was going to be and then call on her. She was usually sitting at
the front door waiting for him, too. I kind of liked the old-fashioned
way, when Marge and I met by chance one day and then spent months
getting to know each other.

Of course it was impossible to avoid knowing future news whether you
wanted to hear it or not. The newspapers, in trying to beat each other
to scoops, could only find good headline material among the Diehards;
the rest of us all knew what would happen to us. Most of the papers
carried two separate sections--one for future events and the other for
present "news."

We still had crime with us. The crooks who knew they were going to jail
always went there at the appointed time, regardless