Free Echoes of the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker Page B

more than one David—and more than one Sistine Chapel; that Great Zimbabwe had stood before, almost but not quite on the same exact spot, and that Alexander had marched and Aristotle had thought not once but over again on more ancient ground. That Cyril, whom they would make a saint, would again and again commit the atrocity of burning the great library at Alexandria, and, once again, what remained of Greco-Roman writings would be preserved for Europe against Europe's best efforts by black Songhai at its library in great Timbuktu. Only the Hindus seemed to know, as they always did, that the cosmic wheel eternally came back again and again to the same place.
    He understood why this was so, that the first natural development of Earth had been recorded through him in a vast data base so distant that none here could comprehend such a gulf and that "reset" meant just that, not a random restart, lest the experiment be spoiled.
    He knew more or less what he was and had his own dim memories of before, but even now he found it more and more difficult to recall specific details, to remember all that much. The human brain could manage only so much. It was not a factor with these mortals, who died before they approached a fraction of their capacity, but for such as him it was . . . spooled off.
    Still, there were differences; there were always differences, but until now, through the countless centuries that preceded it, they were relatively minor ones. Even major changes tended to rectify themselves over time, allowing history to rejoin the original flow. Still, he hadn't remembered the collapse of the Soviet Union at any point in this age, nor the creeping fascism edging out idealistic if no less abhorrent communism. It was so hard to remember, but that change had jolted him as nothing else he could remember with its sense of wrongness. If such a major departure was somehow allowed, did that mean that the experiment was inevitably corrupted or that perhaps this time history was running true? Certainly it would delay space exploration and colonization, perhaps for a century or two. He recalled fleeting snippets of time spent in the Soviet Mars colony. It was so long ago, and the thought was so fragmented, he could not be certain if it was a true memory or not, but he felt that it was. It sure wouldn't be now. It would be interesting to see which would be the nation to get out to the stars. Or was there still some "rectification" to come?
    It bothered him, not so much in principle—he didn't really care if things went differently or not, let alone who did what—but the mere fact that the difference existed at all. It seemed far too big to "rectify." Something just as bad or worse might well come out of it all, but it seemed far too huge a departure for correction, and, lost memories or not, he was certain that a change this major had never happened before.
    Could it be some new glitch in the system? He hoped not. He prayed not. He wanted no more of that sort of thing, and anyway, if it was a glitch, the emergency program should call him and provide a means for him to come and fix things. That hadn't happened. And it wasn't as if, at this stage of technological development, he could just hop aboard an interstellar spacecraft and steer for one of the old portals. These people had barely made it to the moon the old-fashioned way, and when they had, they'd lost interest. He could never comprehend that; it seemed like social devolution. Oh, well . . .
    His thoughts were suddenly broken by the sight of a couple standing on the walk above looking out at the sea. There seemed something decidedly odd about them, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Curiosity and the lack of anything better to do took him toward them. He saw that the woman was in a wheelchair—one of the elaborate, expensive, motorized kinds. There was something odd about the man, more than the fact that he was overdressed for the area and the occasion, something in the way