CHRONOSCAPE: The future is flexible we can change it

by Roger Ley

  “Excuse me Dr Riley but I really don’t need to know the technical side of this, although Dr Oakwood has attempted to explain it all, in the car on the way up.” He laughed. “Of course, I did Greats up at Oxford and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I’m afraid I’m not the most practical of types when it comes to science or engineering, all that sort of thing. All I need to see is that you can send information back in time. If you can do that, then the world is your oyster, ‘the crustacean of your choice,’ so to speak. Funding will be showered upon you in biblical proportions.” He laughed. “But you have to convince me, all this equipment could be smoke and mirrors for all I know. How are you proposing to send this message?”

  “I’m going to ask you to send it now,” said Riley. He picked up an envelope which was lying on the desk beside the keyboard. “This envelope contains the message you’re about to send. It arrived on the hard drive yesterday at about this time. Please don’t open it, put it in your pocket, then type anything you like on this keyboard.”

  Buckley took the envelope, placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket and, after a glance at Oakwood, he began to type. The words “Horas non numero nisi serenas” appeared on the screen. Riley took over the keyboard and copied the phrase into the first line of a screenful of computer code he had called up. He pressed the enter key.

  “I’ve just sent your message back to myself. I didn’t have to do it straight away, I could have left it until you’d gone, but I like to keep things tidy,” said Riley. “You can look in the envelope now Mr Buckley.”

  Buckley tore it open, drew out a piece of paper and read the same message out loud. One of the geniuses had written underneath “Only count the happy hours.”

  “Yes, very clever Dr Riley but I’ve seen conjurers perform a similar trick.” Buckley smiled engagingly. “You must do better than that, if you want me to recommend to the Prime Minister that the Government stump up millions of pounds to support your pet project.”

  Despite his friendly demeanor, an image of a smiling great white shark swam through Riley’s mind. He looked at his watch and turned on the television arranged next to the computer monitor.

  “How about the winner of the three-thirty at Beverly, Mr Buckley?” Riley took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to the Cabinet Secretary smiling confidently. “I also received this message yesterday.”

  The civil servant read out loud, “The winner will be ‘River in May,’ at six to one on the nose. Oh, I say,” said Buckley suddenly becoming animated. “Now you’re talking Riley, now you’re talking. What a shame it’s too late to put on a small wager.” He turned to look at Oakwood, grinning, his eyes bright. Oakwood gave a wan smile, Riley thought he was doing his best to appear enthusiastic.

  Riley laughed inwardly and said, “Actually Mr. Buckley I did place a small wager, and I took the liberty of putting a tenner on for you.” Riley handed Buckley a betting slip and the three men pulled up seats and sat down to watch the race.

  After the civil servants had gone, Estella brought in two cups of tea, she sat at the desk next to Riley. He was feeling slightly dreamy as the stress leaked out of him. He tapped slowly at his keyboard.

  “How did it go?” she asked. “They both seemed pleased as they left, chatting away to one another ten to the dozen. Buckley was rubbing his hands together. He looked positively gleeful.”

  Riley finished typing and swiveled to face her. “I got Buckley to send himself a message.”

  “The one we received yesterday?”

  “Yes, he wasn’t impressed, virtually accused me of sleight of hand. I knew I had to come up with something more convincing, so I fell back on our old friends, the gee-gees. I didn’t tell you but I also got a message from myself yesterday, I’ve just sent it. It gave the winner of the three-thirty at Beverley. I heard on the grape vine that Buckley’s a betting man; in the most civilized way of course. The first message didn’t convince him but the second one certainly did. I even arranged for him to win sixty quid. You should have seen Oakwood’s face. You know he’s a lay preacher, he hates betting, but as they say, ‘Needs must when the Devil drives.’ ” They both laughed out loud and Riley managed to spill tea over the front of his trousers.

  “Let’s leave early,” said Estella. “I’ll help you get those off. We can open a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate.”

  The research continued, sometimes problems held them up for weeks or even months before they overcame them, but as time passed the team made progress. Oakwood’s visits became more routine and, for Riley, less stressful. Now that funding was no longer a problem they had commissioned a new cyclotron from ALCEN. It was built to their own specifications, and customized for the excitation amplitudes and frequencies they needed. It proved to be a turning point in the project.

  One evening, soon after its final commissioning, Riley and Estella were working late together. They were both scrutinizing a monitor on a bench in the deserted laboratory. At intervals of a few seconds, filenames were appearing on screen, eventually seven were listed.

  “I’ll print them,” said Estella, who was standing nearest to the keyboard. She tapped some keys and went off to the nearby large format laser printer. Returning a few minutes later she laid seven large sheets out along an empty bench.

  “So, this is a scan of the back page of tomorrow’s Guardian newspaper,” said Riley, scrutinizing the date and heading at the top of the first page. He pointed it out to Estella. The image was less than perfect, grey and fuzzy but just readable. He stared at Estella. “Fuck me, I can’t believe it, we’ve done it,” he stared at her unblinking. “We’ve done it,” he shouted, “the fucking thing works, we’re vindicated,” he grabbed her hands and jumped up and down, dancing with delight.

  His enthusiasm puzzled Estella at first but then the realization flooded over her and she joined in. “If we can send a page of newsprint back a day, then the sky’s the limit. We’ve done it,” she shouted.

  They stopped dancing to take another, longer look at the printout. “Is that your thumb in the picture?” asked Riley.

  “It looks like mine but I haven’t got a broken nail.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  Estella checked her thumb nail to be sure, but it was intact.

  “So tomorrow I’ll scan that day’s newspaper and send it back twenty-four hours to us now, and the file will have appeared on the hard drive the day before we sent it. It’s difficult to get used to the effect coming before the cause. What would happen if I decided not to send it?” she asked.

  “But you will, or if you don’t then somebody else will, somebody with a broken thumb nail.”

  “I must remember to pick up a copy of The Guardian on my way in to work, although I’ve always been a Telegraph reader myself.”

  “Yes,” he said, “and we’ll scan the day’s newspaper and send the file back up the Timestream every day this week. We need to designate one of the geniuses to do this from now on.” He gestured at the bench. They looked at the first sheet again.

  “I can just read it,” said Estella. “What a pity that the sports news is so boring, why can’t we scan the business pages and see what the share prices are doing? We could make money.”

  “Because we don’t understand the ramifications of making even tiny changes in the present yet, if we fiddle about with the present we’ll change our future. Anything could happen. There might be horrifying consequences, we might blink out of existence; we have to be very careful. Why am I the only one who can see this?”

  “Alright, calm down Martin; don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  He calmed himself with an effort and looked at the print out again.

  “I see the West Indies are sixty-five for four, or at least they will be tomorrow. Let’s look at the printout from the next day.”

  Riley and Estella looked at the next sheet, it was less clear.

  “So, we’ll send this one the day after tomorrow. I can’t read it. Perhaps it’s noise in the rece
iver,” said Estella. They walked along beside the bench looking at each of the pages. “As we go further forward the quality reduces even more. The ones from over four days ahead are just a mass of grey. We have to find a means of sharpening the transmission; we could filter it or perhaps increase the resolution of the scan head?”

  “That’ll make the files larger and slow their transmission rate. We must increase the bandwidth if we want to send files from further down the Timestream. Maybe we need more power.”

  Riley and Estella were sitting in a quiet corner of their local six weeks later, they were both on their second pint.

  “It doesn’t matter how much power we use,” said Estella, “information sent from two weeks downstream seems to be the limit, if we try to send it further it doesn’t arrive. I told you, the numbers don’t lie, if there are wormholes that stretch more than two weeks then we haven’t found any. Perhaps they exist in a different form. It’s probably a quantum effect we don’t understand.”

  “You’re right,” Riley agreed, “the further downstream we try to go, the more difficult it gets to detect the wormhole clusters and the more the bandwidth for transmissions reduces.” He thought that if he was working in academia, scientists would call this the “Riley Effect.” With his name permanently linked to the new field of study he would be the “Father of Time Travel.”

  “Well, if we’ve established the limitations then it’s time to try something practical,” said Estella.

  “Practical, what do you mean?” said Riley. He had a sudden hollow feeling in his guts.

  “Well, we could make a small intervention, a Temporal Adjustment. We might stop something bad happening. That’s what you want to use this technology for isn’t it. You’ve said so enough times, after a glass or three.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready,” he said, “we need to gather more data, do more experiments.” He realized how pathetic he sounded, and that Estella knew he was playing for time.

  “Oh, grow a pair Martin; we have to try it sooner or later, Her Majesty’s Government won’t fund us forever and Oakwood’s no fool, he knows how much progress we’ve made.”

  Riley felt a terrible emptiness flow over him. He realized she was right, but the prospect of making even the smallest change to the future petrified him.

  Next day, back at his office, Riley spoke to Oakwood over the encrypted phone. “I want to try something new Dr Oakwood, I want to try making a small intervention. We call the idea a Temporal Adjustment, a TA.”

  “Yes, I suppose it’s the logical next step,” said Oakwood, “given that the whole purpose of this technology is to control or possibly to steer the future. What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure yet, it depends what we get from our scans of the newspapers. Something important enough to appear in print but the less significant the better.”

  “Do nothing without consulting me,” said Oakwood. “Call me if you find anything suitable and I’ll be there post haste.”

  Riley spent days reading future news stories as they arrived on the hard disks each day. Eventually, after much soul searching, he made his choice. He, Estella, and Oakwood met in Riley’s office. Oakwood punched “999” into his brick like, government issue, mobile phone. They wanted to avoid any chance that the call could be traced.

  “Hello, is that the police? I want to report a disturbance at 19, Moorefield Street, High Barnet,” he said.

  It was the address of a house where a drug addict would murder his partner in about an hour’s time, according to the newspaper story that had arrived almost two weeks earlier. The copy had lain on Riley’s desk for over a week while he overcame his uncertainties. They had chosen this episode carefully.

  “I think I heard a gunshot,” said Oakwood, thus triggering the attendance of an armed response unit. He hung up giving no further details. Riley sat quite still, shoulders raised, he didn’t speak, he half expected oblivion. They had finally interfered with the Timestream. He waited to see if there were any discernible changes.

  “Well everything appears to be normal,” said Oakwood brusquely after about a minute. “If there were to be any ramifications, they probably wouldn’t be immediately apparent.” He got up from his chair. “Congratulations Martin, I’ll be on my way. Let’s talk next week.” He left and as nothing untoward appeared to have happened, Riley and Estella went home for the weekend as usual.

  Riley’s worry that they had caused the Timestream to branch or change in some way nagged at him. He suspected that Oakwood wasn’t interested in the consequences of Temporal Messaging, as long as it worked, and its success reflected on him.

  The next day was Saturday, early that morning Riley got up, threw on a pair of jeans and quietly let himself out of their house in Ipswich, they’d moved there to be closer to the lab. He walked around the corner to the tobacconist and bought a copy of the Guardian. Back home, in the kitchen, he made two mugs of tea and took them upstairs. Estella grunted, sat up, pushed her hair back, and reached for her tea.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Well, what’s the news?”

  Riley opened the paper to the story of the police raid and placed it on the bed. He unfolded a copy of the printout of the page from the future and laid it next to it. They looked very similar, except that the original story’s headline was, “DRUG ADDICT MURDERS WIFE,” while the newer one was, “POLICE STORM CRACK HOUSE.” While the stories differed, the layout of the rest of the page was unchanged.

  “Well,” said Riley, “now we know.”

  “We saved a life,” said Estella smiling.

  Riley nodded, “Yes, yes we did,” he said, although he was far less sanguine than he appeared. Why was it that everybody around him was oblivious to the cliff edge they were sleep walking towards, he wondered?

  Chapter Four

  England the 1990s

  “Well, they’ve finally done it,” said Estella. She’d walked in to Riley’s office and was sitting on the edge of his desk.

  Riley was working on the end-of-year report. “Who?” he asked without looking up.

  “Charles and Diana of course.”

  He carried on typing. “Done what? Look, I have to get this finished before the end of the day, before we break up for Christmas. Can we talk about it tonight?”

  “It’s the Queen I feel sorry for,” she said, ignoring his objections. “It’s just one thing after another. Those photos of the Duchess of York, disporting herself topless with that Texan millionaire. I’ve never had my toes sucked,” she said wistfully. “And that biography of Princess Di that came out earlier in the year, that was a slap in the face for the Royals, but Charles and Diana separating, well it must be the last straw for her.”

  “You’ve forgotten income tax,” muttered Riley, peering at the computer screen.

  “Income tax?”

  “The Queen has to start paying tax, like the rest of her subjects,” said Riley. He couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

  “But she isn’t like the rest of her subjects,” said Estella. “You’re so cynical, I don’t expect she cares about the tax.”

  “Well, it would’ve been a much worse year for her if we hadn’t put a stop to the fire at Windsor Castle, remember? The original pictures of that were almost apocalyptic, Windsor Castle in flames, what a sight. And all it took to prevent it, was for a man with a fire extinguisher to be in the right place at the right time. Just a quick squirt of carbon dioxide, child’s play for Paul Burnley to arrange. We didn’t save any lives, but we did something important there. Even if the Royals are a bunch of parasites, I still believe in our national heritage.”

  “Yes,” said Estella, “I was so glad we could do that for her. It would have broken her heart to see Windsor Castle burning, on top of all her other problems. It’s been a difficult year for her.”

  There was a knock on the door and Paul Burnley, now head of internal security for the project, came into the office. Still wearing the same grey suit, he had on when he arre
sted me, thought Riley.

  “I knew you’d like to know,” he said, “we’ve had a story come in about a bombing in Manchester. Two bombs, one near the city center and another near the Cathedral, sixty-five injured. I expect we’ll be able to stop them but I knew you’d want to include it in the report. I wouldn’t publish it yet.”

  Riley, Oakwood and Burnley were well aware that their funding depended on results. Unfortunately, their results were invisible to the general public and most politicians. The unpleasant events they predicted didn’t happen, because of the Temporal Adjustments made by the security services. It was crucial that they reported their interventions to the Cabinet, with newspaper stories of the original incidents.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it then.” Burnley withdrew, closing the door.

  Riley sat back. “You know, we’ve accomplished a lot this year. We couldn’t stop all the IRA bombs without risking giving the game away, but we stopped the biggest ones.”

  “How many people do you think we’ve saved?” asked Estella.

  “There was the big one in September, that would have injured twenty people and damaged seven hundred houses. The one at the Baltic Exchange was bigger, about a ton of fertilizer. There would’ve been about ninety people injured, but the damage was going to be enormous, hundreds of millions of pounds worth.”

  “So, are you still worrying about interfering with the Timestream?”

  “I realize that people change the Timestream every time they make a decision or do anything, but I’m still uncomfortable about what we’re doing. I mean, we’ve always made changes for the better, to save lives or prevent crime. We’ve done nothing for personal gain.”

  “What about the betting? We took a lot of money off the bookies with our little scam,” she said.