Hellerbochen's Dilemma

by

Ray Bradbury

Hellerbochen faced a crisis. He could tell what would happen in the future. He could see when he would die--and it was very distressing, as you well may imagine. Every brach of his life lay before him. He knew he would die the next day. He saw himself being blown to bits by a tremendous explosion.

Hellerbochen had another marvelous feature about his person: He had the unique power to be able to stand still in time for a few minutes. But only for a pitifully short few minutes.

He faced death and was terribly afraid.

"The Day" dawned and Hellerbochen looked into the future with his magic mind. He wished he never had found the fateful power he possessed so strongly,. He knew he could pursue thousands of paths into the future that day. But each one culminated in a horrible death for his person. Which one to choose was up to Hellerbochen entirely.

He left his apartment and walked toward the elevator that would take him down twelve stories to the hotel lobby. Somehow he had a premonition of impending doom. On the way he decided to stand still in time to see what would happen if he did so. The cables of the elevator broke a second later as a vision of Hellerbochen entered the car. It landed loudly on the hard cement stories below. Hellerbochen drew back aghast at what he had witnessed. He supposedly had viewed himself enter the vehicle and be killed by its crash! He pinched himself to see if he were still alive. But he knew he was because he was standing still in tim at the moment.

Shaken, he returned to his room and tried to think clearly. H eknew he dared not leave the hotel by the elevator--else be killed. So he left his room and started down the stairway.

On the third floor a man accosted the clairvoyant with a gun and demanded his money. Hellerbochen quickly stood still in time and as the revolver went off he was not affected by the bullet though he saw a phantom figure of himself fall dead on the carpet.

Hellerbochen retraced his steps very discouragedly. He didn't want to die but it seemed inevitable. For the next hour he tried going out time afer time but always as he would approach the elevator it would crash in exactly the same way. He wondered absentmindedly if the people in the plunging prison were getting tired of being killed so many times. So far they'd fallen fifteen within an hour. Also, every tim ehe'd start down the stairs the same robber would appear and take a shot at him. It was becoming monotonous. He wished the robber would run out of imagination.

Hellerbochen wanted to save the lives of the people in the elevator. So he decided he never would leave the hotel at all. He had only two ways to exit and they both were blocked by death.

The passengers in the elevator "3" has a most impleasant experience. In a brief second they had felt that they were falling. They felt themselves hit the floor many times. Then the machine ceased its crazy antics and stopped at the main floor. They walked out, wondering at their odd dream--for obviously it really couldn't have happened.

Spike Malone stuck his gat in a fat man's rib. Impulsively he fired when the victim refused to hand over his money. At that the man disappeared! This incredible action occurred manby times. Finally it stopped and Spike murmured something about going to get a good strong drink as he fled the fantastic hold-up failure spot.

Hellerbochen stood still in time and waited. He had determined he's stay in the hotel forever.

He wondered about the inexplicable explosion he'd seen in his foresights of the future, where recurrently he was blown skyward by an unknown force.

He suddenly realized he had been standing still in time for quite a while. His head was beginning to ache terribly. A queer noise was ringing in his ears. It grew in intensity by the second. His head felt fearfully large, his body Brobdingnagian.

The noise rose to a deafening crescendo. A dull rumbling preceded a loud explosion as Hellerbochen, hotel and city were blown into minute atoms.

A tremendous amount of energy had been generated by Hellerbochen's standing stationary in time. He never realized this and he never would. When he stopped in time it in turn had flown around him for a short space. But he had waited too long and a giant spacewarp of stupendous force had been straining for release. It had found that release, but in doing so taken Hellerbochen, the hotel, and the city, with it out into space.

This Hellerbochen had brought about his own death, the death he had predicted and seen but didn't quite understand.

Hellerbochen had solved his own dilemma.

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