Me, Myself and I

Gooseneck McCarthy has never been accused of taking life too seriously. Professor Ruddle offers him a hundred dollars to test an experimental time machine, and that is about as much scientific motivation as the wandering hobo needs. His instructions are simple: travel 110 million years into the past, photograph what he sees, move one rock, and come straight back.

The trip works. The trouble begins afterward. Details in the laboratory have changed, the professor remembers a life McCarthy never witnessed, and even familiar names refuse to stay put. Sending McCarthy back to correct the disturbance sounds reasonable until he encounters another lanky, tobacco-chewing man beside the same rock. The stranger knows McCarthy's favorite punch and is every bit as stubborn. Each attempted correction makes the situation harder to untangle, while McCarthy remains determined to collect every check he has earned.

Me, Myself and I turns a time-travel paradox into escalating comedy. An immensely dangerous machine has been entrusted to a man who calls its controls "dinguses" and would rather argue about a hundred dollars than worry about changing history. Soon several versions of the same stubborn man are convinced they are the original.

Philip Klass was the real name of science fiction author William Tenn. Me, Myself and I appeared in the Winter 1947 issue of Planet Stories under his Kenneth Putnam pseudonym and was later included in Tenn's 1955 collection Of All Possible Worlds. His other stories include "Child's Play," "Brooklyn Project," "The Liberation of Earth," and "Null-P."

Klass served as a combat engineer in Europe during World War II, later worked as a technical editor and at Bell Labs, and eventually taught English and comparative literature at Penn State. He published more than sixty short stories and two novels during his long career.