The Time Bubble Box Set 2

by Jason Ayres

  Josh and Alice hadn’t arrived yet, leaving the others to speculate about the nature of the emergency.

  “Hey, guys,” said Lauren, as she and Kaylee joined the others. “What do you think all this is about? It had better be good. I didn’t have any staff on today and I’ve had to close the pub for the afternoon.”

  “Whatever it is, it must be important for Josh to summon us here like this at short notice,” said Hannah.

  “Indeed,” said Peter. “You’re not the only one being put out by this. I had a meeting of the allotment association this afternoon.”

  Charlie laughed. “The allotment association! Blimey, you’ll be taking up bingo next.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having an allotment,” insisted Peter. “Imagine how much better it would have been for the environment this past century if we’d all grown our own fruit and veg, rather than flying it halfway around the world wrapped up in plastic.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Kaylee. “Maybe we should get one, Charlie.”

  “I’d rather we started a vineyard,” replied Charlie. “Then I could make my own wine.”

  As they chatted away, Josh and Alice were walking hand in hand towards the Bridge of Sighs. She was still feeling extremely fearful and, despite them talking about nothing else all morning, they hadn’t come up with any sort of workable plan.

  “I just hope the others are going to have some ideas,” she said.

  “I’m sure we can come up with something between us,” said Josh. “This team’s been together a long time and we’ve faced all sorts of problems. We solved them and we can solve this.”

  “I hope so,” she said, looking across at him, desperately wanting to believe what he was saying.

  He was trying to be positive for her sake, but any belief he had in his ability to resolve this was about to be sorely tested.

  As the two of them walked beneath the bridge, he felt her suddenly let go of his hand. When he turned to see why, he realised with a shock that he could no longer see her.

  There were a few students and tourists milling about beneath the bridge, but it wasn’t crowded by any means. He could see everyone nearby clearly and there was absolutely no sign of Alice. Even the fastest runner in the world couldn’t have left the immediate vicinity that quickly.

  She had, quite simply, just vanished.

  It was shocking and terrifying but, even so, Josh knew instinctively what must have happened and there was nothing to do about it right now. His best move was to get to the others as quickly as possible. After looking around one last time to ensure that there was no sign of Alice, he turned and ran down the passage, desperately hoping that his friends hadn’t vanished, too.

  To his relief, he found all five of them in the courtyard, sitting at a long bench, sipping their drinks, smiling and laughing.

  The smiles soon stopped when they saw Josh approach, clearly in a state of panic.

  “Josh, whatever’s the matter?” said Peter. “Where’s Alice?”

  “She’s vanished,” said Josh. “Completely disappeared, just now, right outside under the bridge. She’s in serious trouble – possibly even dead, as potentially all of us are.”

  “Who’s Alice?” asked Lauren, with an uncomprehending look on her face.

  “What do you mean, who’s Alice?” said Josh. “She’s my wife, has been for years.”

  “You’re having a laugh,” said Lauren. “You’re the original bachelor boy – you’re the last person I can ever imagine getting married. Apart from me, that is.”

  The others were all looking at Lauren, bemused.

  “Are you for real? How can you not know who Alice is?” asked Kaylee.

  “I’m telling you: I don’t know anyone called Alice,” insisted Lauren.

  “What about the rest of you?” asked Josh. “Can you all remember her?”

  “Of course,” said Hannah and the others nodded their agreement.

  “All of you can remember her, but Lauren, can’t,” said Josh. “Are you absolutely sure about that, Lauren? Don’t joke around with me because this situation is way too serious for wind-ups.”

  “It’s not a wind-up,” replied Lauren. “I swear I have no knowledge of you ever having a wife called Alice. If anyone’s winding anyone up, it’s you lot trying to make me think I’m going crazy by inventing some person who doesn’t exist.”

  “This is bizarre,” remarked Josh, desperately trying to make some sense of the situation.

  “Josh, you look seriously in need of a drink,” said Charlie. “Go and grab a pint and come and sit down and let’s talk this through.”

  “That’s the most sensible suggestion I’ve heard all day,” replied Josh. “Just hang on here a minute while I nip into the bar, and please don’t vanish on me!”

  A couple of minutes later he emerged from the bar with a pint of King William Coronation Ale. Sitting down with the others, he began the long tale of everything that had happened over the past day or so, right up to the point where Alice had disappeared.

  “This Vanessa sounds like a right psycho,” said Lauren. “She’d better not try anything with me.”

  “That’s the worst thing about this,” said Peter. “Going by what Josh says, if she did decide to do something to you, she would do it in the past when you wouldn’t even know what was coming. How do you defend yourself against that?”

  “You can’t,” added Hannah. “I think you’re in serious trouble here and you need to come up with a plan to stop this Vanessa and fast.”

  “That’s exactly why I’ve called you all here today,” said Josh. “Who else could I turn to?”

  “Do you have any idea what may have happened to Alice?” asked Kaylee.

  “I don’t know but I’m fearing the worst, especially after what happened to Henry. I have to face the likelihood that Vanessa’s gone back in time and killed Alice just like she did to Henry.”

  “Not necessarily,” suggested Kaylee, trying to put a brave face on things. “From what you’ve told us, she despised Henry and couldn’t bear to live with him any longer. She couldn’t have hated Alice that much, surely?”

  “I’m not sure about that,” said Hannah. “You heard what Josh said about her being obsessed by him. In her psychotic state, she probably saw Alice as the one thing standing in her way.”

  “Putting her in even greater danger than Henry,” suggested Charlie. “I’m sorry, Josh.”

  “It’s OK, Charlie, I’ve already come to these conclusions myself, as Alice herself had before she disappeared. She knew she was in danger and she was terrified. Sadly, it seems that those fears have come true.”

  “But surely Vanessa can’t think that by disposing of Alice that’s going to make you fall for her instead?” asked Kaylee. “That’s deranged.”

  “And therein lies the problem,” said Josh. “She is deranged and power-crazed, and thinks she can have anything she wants. A lot of this is down to her wealth. Over the years she’s got used to being able to throw money at anything she wants until she gets it.”

  “No amount of money can make someone love you,” insisted Kaylee. “The Beatles taught us that nearly a century ago.”

  “We know that – but does she?”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Kaylee.

  “The first thing we need to do is establish the facts,” said Hannah, bringing her decades of policing experience to the table. “To begin with, that means establishing exactly what has happened to Alice.”

  “Where do we start with that?” asked Kaylee.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Josh. “In Henry’s case she nipped back a few hours in time to bump him off but I suspect we may be dealing with a longer timescale here.”

  “How do you figure that?” asked Kaylee.

  “Because Lauren can’t remember her,” said Josh. “If Vanessa had nipped back a few hours in time to kill her like she did with Henry, there is no reason why that would erase Lauren’s memory of her.”


  “Speaking of which, I still can’t understand why Lauren can’t remember her, but we all can,” said Peter.

  “That is a mystery,” said Charlie. “How long have we all known Alice? At least thirty years?”

  “Yes, since I got together with her at college,” said Josh.

  “And you don’t remember anything about her at all?” said Hannah to Lauren.

  “Honestly, I’d never heard of her until you mentioned her today,” said Lauren.

  “The waiter in the restaurant couldn’t remember Henry either, when he disappeared,” said Josh. “Which made sense because Henry had never made it to the restaurant in the altered timeline. Which means that whatever Vanessa has done to Alice, she did it over thirty years ago, before I met her.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain why the rest of you can remember her and I can’t,” said Lauren in frustration.

  “There must be a connection,” said Charlie. “Something that we’ve all got in common that Lauren and the waiter haven’t?”

  There were blank faces as they pondered this for a moment, then Charlie’s face lit up as he came up with the answer.

  “You know, I think I’ve got it,” he said. “Do you remember when we had all the original adventures with the Time Bubble? Well, when all of that was going on, each of us here at the table went into the bubble at one point or another. All of us that is, except for one.”

  “That’s right – I didn’t,” said Lauren.

  “And if I remember correctly, you’ve never travelled in time at all, have you?”

  “That’s true,” replied Lauren. “I wouldn’t mind trying at some point, though, especially if it means a chance to be young again like we talked about before. I could have sex with all the people I didn’t have time to shag the first time around.”

  “Trust you to think of that,” said Kaylee.

  “The point is that you haven’t ever travelled in time, and it’s a fair bet to assume that the waiter hasn’t either,” continued Charlie. “That must be the common factor that explains why we can remember, and they can’t.”

  “Why, though?” asked Hannah.

  “I don’t have an explanation for that,” said Charlie. “My best guess would be that travelling through a time bubble alters the brain in some way to enable those who have to sense changes in the timeline that others can’t – similar, say, to dogs who can hear certain frequencies that humans can’t.”

  “And how would that work, exactly?” asked Hannah.

  “I don’t think we need to get hung up on the technicalities,” said Josh. “Let’s just go with Charlie’s theory for now because it’s all we have.”

  “Definitely,” said Peter. “And it could come in very useful for comparative purposes. If we remember the new timeline and Lauren remembers the old one, we can compare notes if there are any more changes.”

  “Exactly,” said Josh. “Maybe we can use that to try and work out what’s happened to Alice.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Hannah. “We already think it happened before you met her, so we could look back at social media for a start. That was huge back in the first quarter of the century. People documented every move they made on Facebook and Instagram. There are bound to be clues there. We can also Google her and, if there’s no joy there, there’s always the good old registrar of births, marriages and deaths. We’ll track her down.”

  “And when we do?” asked Kaylee.

  “I’ll have to go back and find out what happened,” said Josh. “I can’t do it right away – only she has a tachyometer that can merge universes, but I’m using Henry’s notes to adapt mine to do the same. I should have it up and running in a couple of days.”

  “All this talk of universes always totally confuses me,” said Lauren. “Forget the technobabble and get to the point – can you stop her?”

  “Hopefully,” said Josh. “Let’s just say we’ve got a workable plan, which is about the best we can hope for at this stage.”

  “And what will you do when you do catch up with her?” asked Hannah. “She needs to be brought to justice for killing Henry.”

  “I can’t see that being easy,” replied Josh. “My preferred solution would be that we would undo the damage she’s already done, so neither Henry nor anyone else would have died in the first place. That would leave no case to answer.”

  “You’ll have to put a stop to her, permanently, though,” said Charlie. “You can’t have a maniac like that running around in time on the loose.”

  “What do you mean by ‘permanently’?” asked Hannah. “Killing her? You know I can’t condone that.”

  “Sounds like the bitch deserves it to me,” chipped in Lauren.

  “Let’s just concentrate on preventing her doing any more damage first and worry about what to do with her later,” said Josh.

  “I agree,” said Hannah. “And we need to work together as a team on this and keep in close contact, in case she tries anything else. At least there’s more of us than there are of her.”

  “Safety in numbers,” said Kaylee.

  “Exactly,” said Hannah. “Now, let’s concentrate on finding out what happened to Alice. Here’s what I suggest we do.”

  Hannah began to outline her plans, but unbeknown to her, their opponent was already one step ahead of them.

  Every single word that had been spoken at the table had already been overheard.

  In the larger, high-walled garden at the rear of the pub, Vanessa was sipping a glass of white wine, wearing a black wig, dark glasses and a large straw hat. They couldn’t see her from where they were and wouldn’t recognise her even if they could.

  They could plan all they wanted, but they’d never outwit her. She had already followed them here once today, then travelled back in time to place the listening device beneath the bench where they were right at this moment discussing how they were going to deal with her. Everything that was being said was being transmitted directly to the implants in her inner ear.

  Whatever they came up with, she would always be one step ahead of them. Eventually they would be bound to uncover the truth about Alice and then Josh, or one of the others would come looking for her.

  And when they did, she’d be waiting.

  Chapter Fourteen

  September 2024

  Alice was spending her student gap year backpacking across Australia.

  She had just been dropped off close to the entrance to a service station about 150 miles south of Brisbane, hoping to find someone to take her all the way to the city.

  Her last ride had taken her just twenty miles further north, having been picked up by a friendly middle-aged lady who had a farm nearby and had been delivering fresh produce around the area in her truck.

  She had spent the last few days hitch-hiking alone from Sydney, where she had been unexpectedly abandoned by Ellie, her travelling companion.

  “You can’t just stay here,” Alice had protested, over coffee on the harbour front at Sydney. Ellie had fallen hook, line and sinker for an impossibly perfect, blue-eyed surfer boy at Bondi Beach. “What about your degree?”

  “I don’t care – he’s the one,” replied Ellie in her besotted state of mind.

  “What happened to sticking together at all costs?” asked Alice. “You know I can’t afford the bus fare to Brisbane. Are you really suggesting that I hitch-hike alone? A twenty-year-old single woman?”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Ellie. “Just stick to public places and only accept lifts from women.”

  “It won’t last with this guy, you know,” insisted Alice who had seen right through Brad, the surfer’s, act. “He probably picks up a different tourist every week.”

  “That’s not true,” replied Ellie. “He says he’s never felt like this about anyone ever before.”

  “Was that before or after he got you into bed?” asked Alice.

  “Look, I’m not listening to any more of this. My mind is made up and I’m going now,” sa
id Ellie. “Brad’s taking me out on his boat for the day. If you want to go, then go. I’m not stopping you.”

  “Fine,” replied Alice. “I will. Ring me when it all goes tits up and you can come and meet me with your tail between your legs.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” replied her deluded friend, as she flounced confidently out of the café, leaving Alice to foot the bill.

  Left with no option but to proceed on her own, Alice had begun the journey up the east coast, breaking it into small chunks. She didn’t want to make the trip to Brisbane in one go as there were many places she wanted to visit along the way. If she couldn’t find anywhere cheap to bed down for the night, she would get off the road and use her tent. She was resourceful like that.

  Getting lifts had proven to be a lot easier than she had thought. Four days after leaving Sydney, she was now ready to head straight for Brisbane where the hitch-hiking would have to stop – it was illegal in Queensland.

  It was getting significantly hotter with every passing day as she headed north, and today it was becoming quite unbearable. The truck she had been riding in was old with no apparent form of air conditioning and she had been practically sticking to the hot, black leather seats. All through the journey she had felt rivulets of sweat running into the small of her back and it was incredibly uncomfortable.

  She refrained from putting her backpack on for the time being to give her back time to breathe, instead opening the top and pulling out her last bottle of water. Taking a long cool swig, she decided she would have to seriously stock up at the garage because there was no guarantee she would make it to Brisbane today.

  As she savoured the refreshing liquid, she heard a strange, high-pitched whistling sound, like a firework taking off. She looked all around but she couldn’t see anything. Thinking no more of it, she drained the rest of her water and walked up to the garage shop to replenish her supplies.

  She hadn’t expected it to be this hot in springtime, but then she was moving closer to the Equator every day, and the Southern Hemisphere was getting more and more sunlight as the equinox approached.

  It had been winter when she and Ellie had arrived in Australia three months before, though it hadn’t felt much like winter, even then. They hadn’t had a day cooler than the average April day in England since they had arrived.