A window frame appeared transposed over the man’s figure. All of this was very faint, and even with the training given everyone throughout life, Monarch had trouble holding the images intact long enough to study them. Why the unaccustomed difficulty? he wondered. He closed his eyes to see the images better, then sighed as he interpreted the message: A man called Window was speaking. But to whom? About what? And how did the event have any connection with himself?

But there was … something! Monarch suddenly felt weak and leaned against the hallway table. The channel that had opened had a different feel to it … a vacant quality, as if some important ingredient were lacking. A message from a dank world—and Monarch’s head suddenly snapped up—a world before the Codicils; a world seeking for them; and a personality living in that world … who was … another aspect of himself!

There was no doubt of it. Monarch knew the feel of his own essence. And if the Codicils had taught man anything, it was the multidimensionality of the self, which was seeded throughout the centuries. And he recognized that peculiar yet definite alter-essence that represented his own psychological acknowledgment of “another self.” A self, Monarch thought, that would always be “other” to him as he would be “other” to it. Yet they were connected through neurological pathways that appeared ghostily, roaming through the worlds of their individual thoughts.

But why in a world prior to the Codicils?

What was that ancient self trying to tell him? Monarch broke off, correcting himself: That self existed simultaneously with his own life—the twentieth and twenty-fifth centuries coexisted.

“Brother of my mind, speak,” Window said mentally.

No answer; only a steadily growing sense of anxiety. But about what? This time Monarch heard the words, “the Codicils,” repeated several times, in a warning or at least highly anxious mental voice that now he accepted as his own. Were they about to be stolen? The Codicils themselves couldn’t be stolen, Monarch thought; they were in the people’s minds. The precious ancient microfilms could, but why? Monarch frowned again. It couldn’t be that. He must be wrong.