a tiny shuddering hole under the city of
Yokohama, and by a miracle I survived. And the East won. But it seems to
have mattered little who did win, for all the world had become, in all
except its few remaining prejudices, a single race, and nothing was
changed when it was all rebuilt again, under a single government.

I saw the first of the strange creatures who appeared among us in the
year 6371, men who were later known to be from the planet Venus. But
they were repulsed, for they were savages compared with the Earthmen,
although they were about equal to the people of my own century, 1900.
Those of them who did not perish of the cold after the intense warmth of
their world, and those who were not killed by our hands, those few
returned silently home again. And I have always regretted that I had not
the courage to go with them.

I watched a time when the world reached perfection in mechanics, when
men could accomplish anything with a touch of the finger. Strange men,
these creatures of the hundredth century, men with huge brains and tiny
shriveled bodies, atrophied limbs, and slow, ponderous movements on
their little conveyances. It was I, with my ancient compunctions, who
shuddered when at last they put to death all the perverts, the
criminals, and the insane, ridding the world of the scum for which they
had no more need. It was then that I was forced to produce my tattered
old papers, proving my identity and my story. They knew it was true, in
some strange fashion of theirs, and, thereafter, I was kept on
exhibition as an archaic survival.

I saw the world made immortal through the new invention of a man called
Kathol, who used somewhat the same method "legend" decreed had been used
upon me. I observed the end of speech, of all perceptions except one,
when men learned to communicate directly by thought, and to receive
directly into the brain all the myriad vibrations of the universe.

All these things I saw, and more, until that time when there was no more
discovery, but a Perfect World in which there was no need for anything
but memory. Men ceased to count time at last. Several hundred years
after the 154th Dynasty from the Last War, or, as we would have counted
in my time, about 200,000 A.D., official records of time were no longer
kept carefully. They fell into disuse. Men began to forget years, to
forget time at all. Of what significance was time when one was immortal?

* * * *