The '86 Fix: A 1980s Time Travel Novel

by Keith A Pearson

  I’m greeted with the view of my parents’ garden, but it looks completely different to how it looked when I peered out of this window earlier. Under the care of Dad’s seemingly incompetent gardener, the garden I saw earlier was a far cry from how it looked when Dad used to tend it, and remarkably, the way it now looks. The lawn is impeccably manicured against large slate slabs that form a path down the centre. The lawn is separated from the boundary fences with neatly trimmed borders, which are stocked with orderly rows of plants and shrubs. At the end of the lawn is a small potting shed, shielded by a wooden trellis, itself partially hidden beneath a climbing plant interspersed with delicate white flowers. Directly beneath me on the patio, there are three wooden tubs, all bursting with an array of brightly coloured flowers.

  As I stand and absorb the view, a flicker of motion near the potting shed catches my eye. I cast my gaze to the rear of the garden, just in time to see the door to the potting shed swinging back and forth. A figure then appears from behind the door, carrying a tray of plants. He’s only about thirty yards away, so I can clearly see he’s wearing dark brown trousers and a chequered red shirt. From my first-floor vantage point, his face is hidden below the peak of a flat cap as he looks down towards the tray in his hands. He stands for a few moments as if inspecting the plants. Both the man’s clothing and posture seem eerily familiar, but not recent familiar; distant familiar. The man then bends over and places the tray on the ground. He scratches his head through his flat cap and looks up the garden towards the patio. For the first time since he left the potting shed, I can clearly see his face. It’s the middle-aged face of Colin Pelling. My dad.

  My legs buckle and I stumble backwards, dropping onto the bed behind me. I struggle to find any air in my lungs as my heart pounds like a pneumatic drill. I cannot have seen what I just saw, surely? I was only just downstairs talking to the wizened, arthritic old man. A man who can barely walk without the aid of a stick, let alone carry trays of plants around a garden. I’m either mistaken, or I’m going insane. Either way, this makes absolutely no sense. Another thought fights for attention in my confused mind — it’s just a dream, the only rational explanation.

  I decide to test my theory. I stumble across the floor to the wardrobe and pull open the door. I stand before the mirror, fixed to the inside of the door, and slap my face so hard that it brings tears to my eyes. Real tears, real pain. Through my teary eyes, I stare at the reflection before me. I can’t accept what I see, so I move closer until I’m just a foot away. The reduced distance only serves to confirm that this is no hallucination. No wrinkles, no receding hairline, spotty chin, rake-thin body. I’m looking at a photograph of my teenage self, but it’s not a photograph because as my mouth drops open, so does the image before me.

  I perform a series of random movements, trying to trick my reflection into revealing itself as a fake. I press my hand up against the mirror, and my teenage doppelgänger meets my hand on the cold glass. I drop my hand and tug at the cord holding the dressing gown around my waist. It falls open to reveal a skinny, post-pubescent body. I feel mildly perverted as I run my fingertips across the flat chest. But it’s really my chest, isn’t it? I can feel my hand brush across my skin, and I can see the action reflected on the man-boy in the mirror, precisely in unison. I comb my fingers through the thick mop of hair and grab a tuft at the forehead. I pull it left, then right, then straight up. I examine my scalp as I tug the tuft around, and conclude it’s no wig, this is my hair. I step back a few feet, while maintaining eye-contact with the reflection in the mirror. Whatever, or whoever I’m looking at, it definitely isn’t a figment of a preposterous dream.

  I re-fasten the cord around my dressing gown and slam the wardrobe door shut. I need answers and they aren’t to be found in there. I survey the room, searching for a clue that might unlock this schizophrenic nightmare — and then I spot something that ignites a spark, deep in a recess of my mind. Sat upon the desk, in the far corner of the room, is my Commodore 64 computer and the Ferguson portable TV. The screen on the TV is as black as night, apart from a tiny white blob in the centre. I scurry across the room and collapse on to the plastic chair. I lean forward to examine the blob which, on closer inspection, is actually a single line of miniscule white text...

  PATH RESTORATION: 17/05/86 - DURATION: 39H:48M.

  As I stare at the screen, the ’48M’ changes to ‘47M’. I study the words and suddenly, the initial spark in my brain ignites a firestorm of memories. The rotating square, the psychedelic colours and the sense of falling. As I stare at the screen and try to process the barrage of memories flooding my mind, the text changes again. ‘47M’ becomes ‘46M’. The numbers are decreasing, and logic suggests that the ‘M’ signifies minutes, and therefore, the ‘H’ must be hours.

  I focus intently to recall the text I entered into the computer before the madness ensued. I’m sure the duration option was 1-48, and I entered '48'. A potential connection dawns on me, and I raise my eyes to the top of the TV where a small digital clock displays the time at 8.14am. I do some quick maths in my head. If I take the original 48 hours that I set for the ‘duration’, and subtract the 39 hours and 46 minutes currently displayed, I’m left with 8 hours and 14 minutes — the current time. Working backwards, the ‘duration’ countdown must have begun at midnight.

  While I now know what the duration is, I have no idea what it is I’m set to endure for the remaining 39 hours and 46 minutes, or what happened to the other 8 hours and 14 minutes since midnight. I think back to the intense pain in my head when I first woke up. I remember breathing deeply while counting the time of every breath. I remember I needed sleep to escape the pain. I must have fallen asleep, and that would explain the missing time. But it doesn’t explain why I’m currently residing in my teenage body, or how my dad apparently discovered the fountain of youth while tending his shrubs.

  It’s clear that the computer has more answers than it’s willing to share, so the obvious course of action is to fathom-out what it’s doing. I hit the ‘Enter’ key. Nothing happens. I work my way across the keyboard, striking every key with increased frustration, but the computer stubbornly ignores me. What if I just switch it off? Will it end this nightmare, or will it send me into a computer-generated purgatory? I flick the power switch. The computer remains on, the LED light shining brightly, and the text still on the TV screen. Shit. I lean down behind the desk and hit the switch on the power socket. I turn back to the screen, but absolutely nothing has changed. Just to underline the impotence of my efforts, the duration timer drops another minute.

  I slump back in the chair and close my eyes. This is too weird, too unfathomable, too unbelievable. This is too much.

  2

  When people approach middle-age, you’ll inevitably hear them chirp, “On the inside, I still feel like a teenager.” Translate that, and it basically means that while their body is a car crash, they still buy clothes from Superdry and know the lyrics of at least one Ed Sheeran song. My problem is the reverse. I’m a middle-aged man trapped in a teenage body — and I do literally mean trapped, as in I cannot see any way out of this. I need to formulate a plan, but to do that, I need to establish some facts. So far, all I know for sure is that my body has lost thirty years, and at least as many pounds of flab. I know that a man who looks exactly like my middle-aged father is currently muttering profanities in the garden, which itself has undergone some sort of miracle transformation. That is all I know, and I desperately need more information.

  With some sense of purpose, I get up from the plastic chair and begin my fact-finding mission. I stand and think back to how the room looked earlier when I was clearing it out. It looks and feels different now. It feels lived in. A pair of battered Gola trainers sit by the door, the laundry basket is full, as is the rubbish bin to the side of the desk. For the first time, I also notice the smell; that distinctive, and unpleasant smell of a teenager’s bedroom. If this is an elaborate prank, the perpetrator has absolutely nailed the ambiance
of my teenage bedroom. Trying to ignore the smell, I continue my visual inspection of the room. I cast my eye towards the bookcase near the door, and in particular, the shelf on which my old Saisho stereo sits.

  I approach the bookcase and wistfully stroke the gloss-black plastic casing. The stereo was a birthday present, maybe my 14th or 15th. It came with me when I moved to the studio flat with Megan, but it eventually met its end at the local tip years ago. I can’t remember the last time I saw it, but I do remember that the soundtrack to my teenage years played through these speakers. The seminal moment I first heard ‘West End Girls’ by the Pet Shop Boys. The tortuous sessions listening to ‘Now 6’ post-Tessa. Randy Crawford serenading my first sexual liaison with Megan. Just a few of the hundreds of memories immortalised in music from this device.

  Distracted from more pressing tasks, I press the power button and the gentle hum of electricity emanates from the speakers. I turn the volume down to a lower setting and nudge the output switch from ‘Tape’ to ‘FM’. The sound of a distant piano, accompanied by low bass notes, fills the room. I know the song — George Michael’s, ‘A Different Corner’. The vocals begin and I stand motionless, listening to the words, with a particular line from the fourth verse triggering an itch deep in my mind. The lyrics mention being taken back in time and turning a different corner so a lover is never met.

  As the track plays out, and I try to scratch the itch in my mind, the DJ cuts across the closing bars…

  “That was ‘A Different Corner’, the former number one by George Michael. You’re listening to Peter Powell this Saturday morning here on Radio 1. Next up is a chart climber from Falco. This is 'Rock Me Amadeus'.”

  I hit the power button, and the room is quiet, unlike my mind, which is screaming with more confused thoughts. I distinctly remember the Falco track, not least because somewhere in the second verse he appears to say the word ‘cunt’. A few years ago, I discovered he actually says ‘könnt’, the German word for ‘can’. It was a disappointing revelation. However, it isn’t Falco’s lyrics that perturb me. Firstly, Peter Powell is now of pension age, and hasn’t been on the radio for decades. It seems unlikely that Powell has resurrected his career on the youth-obsessed station that is today’s Radio 1. And secondly, I’m positive he said ‘chart climber’. Unless Falco has just died, and news of his demise has created a temporary spike in downloads, I fail to see how his track could be climbing the charts again.

  Far from finding answers, all I’ve done so far is spawn more unanswerable questions.

  The frustration sharpens the dull ache in my head. I raise my hand and place my palm on my forehead, offering me an unsettling reminder of my restored hairline. I draw a deep breath and slowly exhale, willing the pain to leave with it. The aching eases, but I feel dizzy again, so I slump back down on the plastic chair at the desk. In lieu of any other options, I investigate the contents of the desk, and pull open the top drawer. It’s a disorganised mess. Scraps of used paper, the operating manual for the computer, sweet wrappers, a few empty cassette cases, and some loose change. I slam it shut and open the second drawer, which contains only two items: a C90 cassette, and an A4 jotter pad with a single line of text written on the front in marker pen...

  AFTERPATH PROJECT by Craig Pelling

  I pull it from the drawer, sit back in my chair and hold the pad in front of me with both hands. Memories of the long-forgotten ‘Afterpath’ game I created flood back. I spent hundreds of hours on it as a teenager, meticulously planning and coding the complex set of scenarios the lead character, whose name escapes me, could find himself in. It was an ambitious project, and I’d nearly completed it before an impenetrable bug, and my post-Tessa depression, brought the curtain down on it for good.

  I open the pad and study the first page. Paragraphs of neat handwriting, reminding me what the world was like before every form of communication became digital. As I read the text, it seems hard to believe that I am actually responsible for the words on the page. Not just because the handwriting is a world apart from the few words I write today, but the almost palpable enthusiasm they convey. These are words written by an intelligent and creative young man.

  As I digest more of the content, I feel an odd sense of appreciation for the cleverly constructed premise of the game. Odd, because I actually wrote it myself, albeit thirty years ago. However, my appreciation is also tinged with disappointment I never fulfilled the obvious potential demonstrated in these pages. I turn to the second page, titled ‘Characters’, and the first line sends a cold shiver down my spine...

  MAIN CHARACTER: Professor Lance Gilgrip

  The word ‘professor’ connects with another memory. The final words on the screen before my hallucinogenic episode, ‘PATH RESTORED - GOOD LUCK PROFESSOR’. I flick back to the first page and desperately scan for a line which initially caught my eye...

  “Time, both current and past is called a ‘path’ due to its linear nature. By restoring the path, the main character is able to go back in time to the start of that path (the path restore date) and has to determine at which point he deviates to create a different path, and a different future.”

  The term ‘path restore date’ sets my pulse racing. It’s the same term I entered when I was trying to get the computer working earlier. No, it’s too ridiculous to even contemplate. But then again, it would explain an awful lot about my current situation. I let this new information sink in, and wonder if I’m going crazy. Do crazy people actually know they’re crazy? Maybe this isn’t real at all, and somewhere back in the real world I’m lying in a hospital bed being pumped full of drugs. Maybe Megan and my parents are solemnly sat at my bedside, wondering how I got there, blaming themselves for not spotting the signs of my impending mental breakdown.

  I read the first page of the jotter again. The core plot of the game surrounds the professor going back in time to change a series of decisions he made — decisions which led to his wife being killed in a bungled kidnap rescue. He could have booked a different restaurant that night. He could have called a cab rather than suggesting they walk back to the hotel. He could have paid the ransom without informing the police. Dozens of different decisions he could have made that would have taken him on a different path and changed the events which led to his wife’s death. Even now, I have to admit it was a clever concept for a game.

  As I stare at the page, an obvious conclusion strikes me — perhaps the professor shouldn’t have gone on holiday in the first place. Patently, that wouldn’t have made for a particularly interesting game, but his problem would have never have been a problem if he'd reversed one fundamental decision.

  Those George Michael lyrics suddenly slam back into my mind.

  The itch is scratched. Unlike the game where the professor had to unpick a whole series of decisions, my future was more easily fixed. If only I’d walked past Patels’ Newsagent on that Friday afternoon after school. I wouldn’t have met Tessa waiting in the queue, and it wouldn’t have set off the chain of events which screwed my life up. Different corner, different outcome.

  I drop the pad on the desk and stare at the TV screen. The timer has continued its countdown and now reads 39 hours and 29 minutes. My eyes move across the line of text to the date, 17/05/86, and I'm aware of the significance. In just over four hours time, I’m due at Tessa’s house for some extremely brief, and unrewarding sex. Or am I? I consider the parallels with the ‘Afterpath’ game, and how my own future is determined by what happens this afternoon. What if I don’t go to Tessa’s house? I won’t break my virginity, or suffer the emotional turmoil afterwards. That would mean I pass my exams and go to college, so I never work at Video City, or meet Megan — and if I don’t work at Video City, I don’t end up at RolpheTech, and Marcus Morrison becomes an irrelevance.

  As I think about it, a slow realisation dawns that maybe this is my ‘Afterpath moment’. The timeline is changed and the single, yet critical event which forged an unwanted future is removed. The professor cancels his hol
iday and I don’t have sex with Tessa. If this isn’t real then the consequences of anything I do are surely moot? I can play the game and see where it takes me, or I can give in to the madness, and sit here watching the timer on the TV screen drop minute by minute.

  My previous thought about having a mental breakdown gains validity as I chuckle away to myself. Here I am, considering the ridiculous notion that my feeble Commodore 64 computer has spent thirty years in a box, autonomously working on the bug within my game, to the point where it’s created a real-world version. There’s science fiction, and then there’s science fantasy. This firmly falls into the latter genre. But despite how ludicrous the theory might be, the reality is I appear to be sat in my teenage bedroom, inside my teenage body, and seemingly hours away from re-breaking my virginity in 1986. This feels just as real as when I stood here earlier, reminiscing about my porn collection.

  The countdown timer drops another minute. Counting down to an unknown end. Do I wake up in a hospital bed surrounded by my family, or do I wake up in a new future? In 39 hours and 28 minutes something happens, but what?

  I decide I'll play this like a game. I’m going to spend the next 39 hours and 28 minutes living, no, reliving my teenage life. But I won't make the same mistakes. I’m going to avenge my stupid teenage self. If this is, as I suspect, some psychotic episode, then it won’t matter what I do. As unlikely as it seems, if it is real, maybe I’ll wake up to a new future, one where I fulfilled my early promise. A future where I don’t waste years of my life in a loveless marriage, or in a dead-end career. A new path where Craig Pelling is the head of a successful IT business, maybe living in a fabulous home, with a loving wife and doting children. A life without Megan, without Video City, without RolpheTech or Marcus fucking Morrison.