fore you used it on yourself, you made these arrangements to help
you orient yourself. You wrote yourself the letter which you are now
reading.

But if those fifty years are--to you--gone, what of all your friends,
those you loved? What of your parents? What of the girl you are
going--were going--to marry?

You read on:

"Yes, you will want to know what has happened. Mom died in 1963, Dad in
1968. You married Barbara in 1956. I am sorry to tell you that she died
only three years later, in a plane crash. You have one son. He is still
living; his name is Walter; he is now forty-six years old and is an
accountant in Kansas City."

Tears come into your eyes and for a moment you can no longer read.
Barbara dead--dead for forty-five years. And only minutes ago, in
subjective time, you were sitting next to her, sitting in the bright sun
in a Beverly Hills patio ...

You force yourself to read again.

"But back to the discovery. You begin to see some of its implications.
You will need time to think to see all of them.

"It does not permit time travel as we have thought of time travel, but
it gives us immortality of a sort. Immortality of the kind I have
temporarily given us.

"_Is it good?_ Is it worth while to lose the memory of fifty years of
one's life in order to return one's body to relative youth? The only way
I can find out is to try, as soon as I have finished writing this and
made my other preparations.

"You will know the answer.

"But before you decide, remember that there is another problem, more
important than the psychological one. I mean overpopulation.

"If our discovery is given to the world, if all who are old or dying
can make themselves young again, the population will almost double every
generation. Nor would the world--not even our own relatively enlightened
country--be willing to accept compulsory birth control as a solution.

"Give this to the world, as the world is today in 2004, and within a
generation there will be famine, suffering, war. Perhaps a complete
collapse of civilization.

"Yes, we have reached other planets, but they are not suitable for
colonizing. The stars may be our answer, but we are a long way from
reaching them. When we do, someday, the billions of habitable planets
that must be out there will be our answer ... our living room. But until
then, what is the answer?

"Destroy the machine? But think of the countless lives it can save, the
suffering it can prevent. Thi