Philip’s time-lost trip to New York begins as a deliberate detour after William Stanley Milligan’s discharge from the U.S. Navy, then becomes an episode no single identity can remember or explain. Philip sets out to see a city he feels is his own; the journey instead exposes the distance between a compelling sense of belonging and the fractured continuity of the person carrying it. By the time Allen tries to return to Columbus, Ohio, several days have vanished, and the identities who might explain them are unreachable.

Background and Departure

A month and a day after enlisting, William Stanley Milligan was discharged from the U.S. Navy under honorable conditions. The Navy’s decision followed a psychiatric interview with David and a review of Ohio records, which showed that William Stanley Milligan had been in a mental hospital and had lied on his recruitment papers. He received his pay and an airline ticket to Columbus, Ohio. The ticket offered a direct route home, but Philip, travelling from Great Lakes toward O’Hare Airport, learned that two recruits on leave were heading to New York City and joined them instead.

The choice was purposeful, not a simple mistake in navigation. Philip knew New York City as the place he was from, though he had never seen it. At the terminal, he parted from the other recruits, shouldered his duffle bag, collected maps and brochures, and walked toward Times Square. The streets and voices seemed familiar to him; they confirmed his feeling that this was where he belonged. The city initially appears to answer a question of origin, but the trip provides no stable reunion with that imagined home.

The Search in New York

Philip’s walk across a bridge turns from ease to sudden despondency. He pauses halfway over the water, admires its beauty, and then feels so depressed that he cannot continue. He turns back toward Manhattan. The reversal is striking: the landscape that had briefly held him in wonder does not resolve his distress, and he cannot identify what has gone wrong. He knows there is something he has to see, but cannot say what it is or where to find it.

He rides buses without a destination, looking at houses and people as the search continues without a clear object. At a shopping mall, he flips coins into a wishing fountain. As he prepares to throw in another quarter, a young boy tugs at his sleeve; Philip gives him the coin. The small encounter is followed by another abrupt break. The pain of depression becomes so intense that Philip shudders and leaves the spot. David is then present, burdened by the same duffle bag, but without Philip’s sense of New York or knowledge of the journey that brought him there.

Lost Time and Changing Identities

David’s experience makes the discontinuity visible through ordinary details. The duffle bag is too heavy for an eight-year-old, almost nine, to carry; he drags it, sits on a bench to watch children playing, and wishes he could join them. Eventually he leaves the bag and wanders away. In an Army and Navy store, he activates a plastic bubble with a siren and flashing red light, drops it in terror, and runs outside, knocking over an ice-cream vendor’s bicycle and scraping his elbow. His actions have immediate consequences, but he has no understanding of the larger trip or even where he is.

Later, after eating ice cream, the identity in control is thinking about how easily children can make him give things away. He believes he is in Chicago and plans to spend the night there before flying to Columbus, Ohio. Then an electronic sign gives the date as May 5. The discharge papers are dated May 1, as is the ticket. He realizes that four days have passed since his discharge without his knowing it. The duffle bag is gone; his dress-blue uniform is filthy, its elbows ripped, and his left arm scraped. These are remnants of time spent, but not a remembered account of it.

Allen’s Return and the Meaning of the Episode

The following morning, the identity now in control tries to get to the airport. He cannot reach Arthur or Ragen and recognizes the episode as another mix-up time. At the United Airlines counter, he discovers that he is in New York, not Chicago. Allen responds by improvising an explanation: he says he has been discharged, boarded the wrong plane, and must have been unconscious after someone put something in his coffee. He blames the airline and insists that the Navy should arrange proper transportation. The story is a practical attempt to secure a ticket, not an account of what actually happened; Allen has no memory that can fill the gap.

The airline agrees to issue a new ticket, and Allen flies back to Columbus, Ohio. During the flight he is frustrated that, despite being in New York for five days, he saw almost nothing beyond a taxi and Kennedy International Airport. He still does not know how he got there, who took the time, or what happened to his bags. On the bus to Lancaster, he hopes Arthur or Ragen will hear his complaint that somebody has made a mess of things. The journey ends with transportation restored but understanding still absent.

The episode sets Philip’s sense of home against the practical evidence of disorientation: a familiar-seeming city, a missing bag, a damaged uniform, and dates that expose lost days. Its shifts among Philip, David, and Allen do not supply three complementary recollections; each identity encounters only a fragment, and the links between those fragments remain unavailable to the one trying to make sense of them. The journey is therefore both a failed visit to New York and a concrete instance of lost time: the return ticket can be replaced, but the experience itself cannot be recovered.