
Part 1
Bethelman awakens on a bustling New York corner with no recollection of the past two weeks. A quick call to his editor reveals a puzzling Friday that shouldn’t exist, and a mysterious note written in his own hand urges him to “investigate” and head to a place called Marco’s. Disoriented, he discovers a fresh hat, extra cash, and a lingering sense that something crucial has slipped through the cracks of his memory.
As the city hums around him, Bethelman pieces together fragments of a conversation with a biochemist about the nature of time, wondering if he’s been thrust into an impossible experiment. The note’s warning—to stay unnoticed and avoid a “booby bin”—suggests a hidden danger lurking behind his missing days. With curiosity outweighing caution, he decides to follow the cryptic instructions, hoping the answers lie just beyond the bar’s polished glass.
The story unfolds as a tense, cerebral mystery, blending urban noir with speculative intrigue, and invites listeners to join Bethelman on a quest to reclaim the lost pieces of his own timeline.
Language
en
Duration
~12 minutes (12K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc., 1957.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Aug 30, 2023
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1927–1987
A prolific American science fiction and fantasy writer, Randall Garrett is best known for the clever Lord Darcy mysteries, where magic functions as a rigorous science in an alternate twentieth-century world. His energetic short fiction and collaborations helped make him a memorable voice of mid-century speculative literature.
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