by Jason Ayres
“It’s pretty obvious what we need to do,” said Josh. “Prevent them meeting and Vanessa will never be born.”
“I think so,” said Henry. “It means that Mike and Jane, and everyone connected to them will live completely different lives, but it’s a small price to pay to restore the world to at least something like we remember.”
“It’s a mere drop in the ocean compared to all the damage Vanessa did. Let’s start making plans.”
“It’s going to be quite a challenge,” said Henry. “1985 is an awful long time ago.”
“I’ve spent plenty of time in the pre-internet era,” replied Josh. “I know all about having to find people the old-fashioned way using things like phone books and electoral rolls. It might take a while, but we’ll track them down.”
“The first thing we need to do is get off this island,” suggested Henry.
“Agreed,” said Josh. “Let’s knock back the rest of this wine and then tomorrow morning we can get started looking for that yacht.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Henry, pouring more of the vintage wine into his glass and then topping up Josh’s.
“Cheers,” he said, clinking glasses. “Here’s to a fresh start for the world.”
“A Vanessa-free world,” added Josh.
“Truly a better place,” added Henry, as they continued to drink their wine in the warm evening air, watching the palm trees sway in the moonlight as the waves crashed on the shore beyond.
Tomorrow, the hard work would really begin.
Chapter Twenty-Three
September 2058
In theory, preventing Vanessa’s parents from meeting ought to be a pretty straightforward task. The real challenge lay in actually getting to Australia in the first place.
They knew that Vanessa must have a yacht stashed somewhere, but Josh was sure it wasn’t on the island because he had explored every inch of it. The only vessel he had ever seen here was the small rowing boat he had discovered on his first day.
“Maybe we could row to the nearest inhabited island and find a bigger boat there?” suggested Josh.
“That’s Bequia, over twenty miles away,” replied Henry. “We’re two middle-aged men, not Olympic athletes. Do you feel up to rowing twenty miles?”
“No, not really.”
“We would be better off rowing to the nearest island,” said Henry. “It’s less than half a mile by my reckoning. She’ll have that yacht stashed over there, I’m sure of it. Because I can’t see her having been able to row this boat more than half a mile or so, either.”
Henry was proved right, as they found Vanessa’s yacht moored in a small, natural harbour on the far side of that other island. It was a good job that they had, as even the short, half-a-mile trip had exhausted the two of them, even though they had been taking turns to row.
They travelled back to the first island in a fraction of the time in the luxury yacht which they moored just offshore. The following day they went back and forth using a small dinghy they had found on-board, using it to pack the yacht full of fuel, water, provisions and everything else they would need for their long voyage to Australia. They also cleared out Vanessa’s wine cellar, Josh pointing out that it would be a crime to leave all that vintage wine down there gathering dust.
Josh wouldn’t have had a clue which way to point the boat, but fortunately Henry was an experienced sailor who was competent enough to navigate using good, old-fashioned methods like a compass, the sea and the stars. This was just as well as the fall of civilisation meant that all satellite navigation and radio communication was out.
The yacht was one of the most advanced, not to mention, expensive ever built, with an advanced new engine that required a minimum of fuel, using an efficient electrical recovery system to generate the bulk of its energy it required, which was minimal with only two people on-board. At twenty metres long, the craft was designed for up to twelve passengers.
The yacht may have been luxurious, but it didn’t prevent the journey being long and fraught with danger. It was the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, and with no weather forecast available they were at the mercy of the elements.
One night there was a fierce storm which led them both to batten down the hatches and hope for the best as the yacht took a real pounding, but it had been well designed to cope with such conditions and they emerged unscathed – just – unlike the contents of Josh’s stomach. He wasn’t a strong sailor and spent many days of the voyage feeling decidedly queasy.
Finally, after six weeks, they sailed into the deserted Melbourne harbour. They had been prepared for the worst, with many months having now passed since the plague struck, but the appearance exceeded their worst expectations. Both were shocked at the appearance of the city. The stench of decaying and dead bodies was everywhere, but it was the appearance of the infrastructure that was the biggest shock.
Whole areas of the city seemed to have been burned to the ground. It wasn’t bushfire season, which led them to conclude that they must have been started by electrical faults or gas explosions. It was also remarkable how quickly the vegetation was taking hold, with giant weeds springing up everywhere, cracking roads and running up the side of buildings. It truly was a post-apocalyptic scenario.
“I imagine it’s like this all over Earth,” remarked Josh. “Give it a few centuries and most evidence of humanity will have disappeared. If aliens ever came to visit, they would find about as much left as we do when we dig up old Roman villas.”
“Perhaps that’s just what the planet needs, given the damage humanity has done to it,” said Henry. “Time to recover.”
“Maybe it does,” said Josh. “But it’s not going to get the chance. We’ve got a timeline to restore.”
During their long voyage they had decided that Henry would be the one to travel back on their mission. He was the obvious choice, being born and bred in the area, as well as having a good knowledge of Australian history and traditions from the time they were visiting.
He would have to track down Vanessa’s father in the past as there was no way of finding out more about him in the present, and even if there was, it was far too dangerous to travel into the city in its current state. As soon as Henry was off the yacht and onto the harbour side he jumped back in time, while Josh retreated to the sanctuary of the yacht to wait for news.
Henry set the tachyometer to take him back to a week before the concert in 1985, to allow enough time to track Vanessa’s father down before he left for the concert. Fortunately, Vanessa’s maiden name was comparatively rare and there were only about ten of them in the local phone book. He rang each one up and asked if he could speak to Mike. All bar one answered that there wasn’t a Mike there, at which point he apologised and said it must have been a wrong number.
Only one did have a Mike, and when the lady who answered the phone, presumably his mother, went off to get him, Henry promptly put the phone down. He was pretty certain he had located his target, but he needed to be absolutely sure, so he decided to stake out the house.
He had no luck the first day, and with a lack of money and resources meaning he had nowhere to stay, he decided to return to the harbour and jump back to 2058 where he could update Josh with his progress and get a decent night’s sleep on the yacht.
He got lucky the second day, when a teenage lad emerged from the house not long after he had arrived in the street. It was just as well, as he couldn’t keep hanging around outside the house forever: someone would notice.
It would have been so much easier if he had acquired a car to stake the place out, like a proper detective, or even a dog, to give himself a valid reason to be wandering up and down the street.
Mike emerged on foot and made his way to the local coffee shop.
Henry was pretty sure that this must be Mike, even though he didn’t recognise him, but he had only ever met the man when he was in his sixties, and the overweight, bald, middle-aged man he had been then bore no resemblance to this skinny youth. He followe
d him at a distance towards the local shopping centre where he entered a small coffee shop.
Henry followed to discover Mike had met up with a friend who clearly had similar interests judging by their attire of rock T-shirts and their long, curly hair, which reminded Henry of the old heavy metal bands of the period. He sat down at the table behind them, ordered a coffee, and listened, as they eagerly discussed their plans for their trip to Oz for Africa in Sydney.
There was no doubt now that Henry had found the right person, and by the time he had finished his coffee he knew exactly when they were leaving and how they were getting there.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have any money, so he had to scarper through the fire exit next to the toilets at the back of the building, something that felt quite exhilaratingly naughty. He had never done a runner from a restaurant before in his life. It was something he was going to have to get used to, as his lack of funds meant it probably wouldn’t be the last crime he would be committing before he saw this task through.
When he returned to the yacht in 2058 he took out a gun that he had found stashed below decks. Josh was initially alarmed, but when Henry explained that he wasn’t resorting to killing his erstwhile father-in-law and explained his plan, Josh relaxed.
With the plan in place, he set the tachyometer to take him back again to 1985, on the morning two days before the concert when Mike and his friend Paul were due to leave for Sydney.
He had heard Paul tell Mike what time he was coming to pick him up for their two-day road trip, and when he arrived in his battered old red Ford Falcon, Henry was waiting.
As soon as Mike had slung his bag into the back of the car, Henry struck, gun in hand.
“Hand over the keys, now, and no one gets hurt,” he demanded, trying to sound as convincing as he could.
Terrified and speechless, the two teenagers had no option but to comply.
“Now stand back.”
“Please, mister,” said Mike pathetically, sounding nothing like the gruff, old father-in-law Henry had once known, “take the car, but can I have my bag back? My concert tickets are in there.”
“Good,” said Henry, getting into the car and driving off. That was an unexpected bonus. Mike wouldn’t be able to get into the stadium now even if he could find another way to Sydney.
He drove outside the city, then stopped at a station to ponder his next move. He could just ditch the car at this point and head back to 2058, but he couldn’t be completely certain that the job was done. A check of Mike’s wallet confirmed that the ticket was indeed in there along with a couple of hundred dollars in cash. That was handy – at least he would be able to pay for things now.
It wasn’t an impossibility that Mike could somehow get hold of another ticket and since he was here, had money, a ticket and a car, he may as well stay and go to Oz for Africa, which by all accounts had been an amazing experience.
The police would probably be looking for him, but if he did run into them, he could always use the tachyometer to escape, but it didn’t happen. All the way to Sydney, he saw no indication that anyone was looking for him and there was nothing about it on the radio, but why would there be? He had robbed an old banger off some kids, not a bank. And now he was armed with lots of the old, colourful and archaic currency he could pay for petrol, food and places to stay the night on the way without getting into any new trouble.
When he arrived in Sydney on Saturday morning, he abandoned the car and headed straight for the concert. He was slightly concerned that they might know at the gate that his ticket was stolen, but these fears were unfounded. The antiquated paper ticket system wasn’t sophisticated enough for them to know.
The concert was everything he had hoped – a little slice of history, part of something global happening in London, Philadelphia and all over the world.
He never saw anything of Mike, but with 11,000 people in attendance, bumping into him would have been pretty unlikely even if he had somehow made it there. Therefore, Henry still couldn’t be completely sure his mission had been successful.
He had nothing to worry about. A disgruntled Mike, with no transport and no ticket, ended up watching the concert at home on TV. He never met Vanessa’s mother, and hence, as he and Josh had planned, they sealed their enemy’s ultimate fate – never to be born.
After INXS’s closing set, Henry left the Sydney Entertainment Centre and headed for Hyde Park in the city. It was pointless going all the way back to Melbourne because if he had been successful, then it was highly unlikely that Josh would be there in any case, due to the altered timeline.
Arriving in the park, he found a suitable tree and jumped forward to 2058. As soon as he got there, he knew he had been successful. Instead of a derelict, abandoned city, he arrived in the middle of the vibrant, throbbing Sydney that he knew and loved.
It was morning, the park was full of dog walkers and families, and he could hear the noise from the hustle and bustle of the city in the distance. He breathed a huge sigh of relief. It seemed that everything was back to normal. Now it was just a case of finding out just how much the world had changed from Vanessa not being a part of it.
He really needed to find Josh, but where would he be? In all likelihood he would be in Oxford, in a timeline where things had played out differently for him since he had first met Vanessa and the other Henry. But presumably he would remember everything due to what they had discovered about time travellers being sensitive to timeline changes.
There was only one way to find out and that was to fly over to Oxford, but that might be a little tricky. Technically, he didn’t even exist in this universe which meant he had no status, no money, no home, no anything. He had better get started on sorting things out.
The obvious answer was to track down his alter ego in this universe, who hopefully would understand what had gone on. If not, he was sure he would be able to explain it to him. The other Henry was bound to be a reasonable chap, just like himself. Yes, it was all going to be fine.
He wandered through the park, heading for Sydney bus station, where he was delighted to discover he could buy a ticket to Canberra using a retina scan, which he passed with no problem. The scan was meant to be infallible, coded to an individual’s unique eyes, but they hadn’t allowed for the possibility of a duplicate from another universe attempting to defraud the system.
Safely on the bus, he could finally relax as he headed for Canberra, hoping that there he would find the other Henry.
Chapter Twenty-Four
September 2058
Back in the UK, Kaylee awoke suddenly, and leapt out of bed in a panic, her most recent and very vivid memory being of the assassin in the stairwell standing in front of her, about to blow her away.
Relief flooded through her as she realised that she was safely in her bedroom at home. She turned to Charlie, who was sitting up with a look of confusion and fear on his face, similar to her own.
“Oh Charlie, I thought I’d lost you,” she cried as she climbed back onto the bed and flung her arms around him.
“What the hell happened?” asked Charlie, trying to make sense of all the muddled thoughts.
“I’ve just had an absolutely terrifying dream,” said Kaylee. “It was back when we were young, shopping at Sainsbury’s, and we were attacked by some black-clad assassin who killed you and then came after me.”
“I dreamt exactly the same thing,” said Charlie. “She pointed a gun at me, then there was nothing – just darkness and oblivion. I’ve never known a dream seem so real.”
“How can we both have had the same dream?” she asked.
“Maybe it was real – in another universe I know some of the others have had dreams like this before. I need to ring Josh and see if he knows what’s going on.”
Josh did indeed know what was going on. He had gone to bed on the yacht in Melbourne and woken up the next day back at home in his own bed, in Oxford, with Alice asleep by his side. The relief at knowing that Henry had been successful, and he would ne
ver have anything to fear from Vanessa again overwhelmed him, and he turned quickly to hold his wife, tears in his eyes.
The next day, the whole team, fully restored, met up at The Red Lion to discuss what had happened. All of them apart from Lauren remembered the original timeline, up to the point where they had been killed, but nothing afterwards.
Each had woken up in terror, just as Kaylee had, the memory of the moment of their deaths etched into their minds, but the fear had quickly faded now they knew that they were safe.
Eventually, both Henrys turned up at the lab to fill in the missing pieces. It seemed that he had met up with the original Henry in Canberra and they were getting on like a house on fire. New Henry had reluctantly changed his name to Harry to avoid confusion, and they had forged him an identity and a passport. He was now officially Harry Jones, twin brother of Henry.
Despite there being no Vanessa in the original Henry’s life, he was aware of what had happened up to the point of being run down, so when Harry turned up and explained what had happened, he was quite happy to accept his version of events.
Interestingly, Henry was still working at the Canberra institute, largely in the field of robotics; his research was nowhere near as advanced as it had been before. Vanessa had pushed things forward with her finances in the old timeline and he no longer had that.
What he did have was his memories of the work he had done before. Sitting down and discussing it with Harry they had discovered that two minds were indeed better than one, and now they were eagerly planning new projects for the future.
