（外文电子版资料）Resnick, Mike - Winter Solstice.pdf

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Mike%20Resnick%20-%20Winter%20Solstice.txt WINTER SOLSTICE by Mike Resnick It is not easy to live backwards in time, even when you are Merlin the Magnificent. You would think it would be otherwise, that you would remember all the wonders of the future, but those memories grow dim and fade more quickly than you might suppose. I know that Gallahad will win his duel tomorrow, but already the name of his son has left me. In fact, does he even have a son? Will he live long enough to pass on his noble blood? I think perhaps he may, I think that I have held his grandchild upon my knee, but I am not sure. It is all slipping away from me. Once I knew all the secrets of the universe. With no more than a thought I could bring Time to a stop, reverse it in its course, twist it around my finger like a piece of string. By force of will alone I could pass among the stars and the galaxies. I could create life out of nothingness, and turn living, breathing worlds into dust. Time passed -- though not the way it passes for you -- and I could no longer do these things. But I could isolate a DNA molecule and perform microsurgery on it, and I could produce the equations that allowed us to traverse the wormholes in space, and I could plot the orbit of an electron. Still more time slipped away, and although these gifts deserted me, I could create penicillin out of bread mold, and comprehend both the General and Special Theories of Relativity, and I could fly between the continents. But all that has gone, and I remember it as one remembers a dream, on those occasions I can remember it at all. There was -- there someday will be, there may come to you -- a disease of the aged, in which you lose portions of your mind, pieces of your past, thoughts youve thought and feelings youve felt, unti