Back to Julie

The narrator, a scientist who can side-shuffle into lateral timelines, is hired by a crooked politician to retrieve a foreign world's formula for a truth gas. After a disorienting transit he integrates into a near-parallel society, befriends a file clerk named Julie, and researches the gas's development and social effects. He observes that enforced candor has curtailed deception, political scheming, and war there, that the inventor became a public hero, and that attempts to undermine the gas were suppressed. The account traces his practical findings and the ethical and political implications of transferring such a technology.