Only a Moment
Someone built a bridge to the future and set up a toll booth with an unusual price: you had to swear off all your convictions, beliefs, and prejudices before you could go over. They said that was the only way you'd last when you got there. This swearing was done in form like the courthouse oath, except that a rubber fish was used in lieu of a Bible.
The old people wouldn't go—they didn't want to. They said they'd seen enough of the future. It was the young folks who flocked by the thousands. The lines became so long that businessmen set up shops along the way to the bridge. They found they could secure their own futures best by staying in the present.
When John Dixon III stepped off the far end of the bridge with his new bride Nancy, he found himself in a space that was no space at all. He could perceive no depth in front of him and he had no idea whether he was standing on his feet or lying on his back, or neither. He was only conscious of these things: his own presence, the color gray, and the presence of Nancy, whose hand he had been holding a moment ago—or was it only a moment?
“Is this the future?” he shouted in his thoughts. Or at least it seemed it was in his thoughts because he did not hear his voice sending out into space. But he heard an answer back that filled his consciousness.
"Not yet John, but you won't be here long. We only need to sort one thing out."
The voice was cool, female, secretarial.
"Alright," he said or thought, taking it in stride. "What have we got to do?"
"You were told that to cross the bridge you had to let go of all your convictions. You are still holding onto one."
He was aware of Nancy, and asked if it was her he had to let go of.
"Yes, you have been holding her very tightly. Belief in another person is an especially material type of conviction. I am afraid you'll need to let go."
At this moment he would have tried to protest, but the thought struck him that perhaps Nancy was having the same conversation as he was, somewhere else outside of time and space. He wondered if she would let go. With the thought of her having an experience separately, distinctly from him, he felt his grip loosen slightly.
At the next moment—or was it only a moment?—he found himself waking up from a long nap. He felt the drool on his chin and saw it in his lap. He thought of his bride, so many years ago, and in his dimming mind wondered if he had somehow let go.
