Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
In memory of Rachel Lewis (née McFeely) 1969-2011
Copyright © Stoneham Press Ltd 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
“Are you sure?” said Natalie.
“Yes, I’ve seen him a few times now,” said Nigel.
“I’d call the police if I were you. If you’re telling me about him then you must be worried,” said Natalie, cuddling Nigel.
“It’s probably nothing, just a strange mental patient interested in my shoes or something.”
Natalie drew in her breath. “Look you should do something about it. If you think this bald guy is following you then report him. I love you and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Nigel Saunders thought for a while about reporting the man who had been following him, but decided to ignore Natalie’s advice.
Two days later while walking home from the station, Nigel heard someone running behind him. Before he had a chance to react, Nigel felt a cold blade against his neck. He froze.
He heard a voice say “come with me - if you want to live” and he felt himself being pushed down a side alley. Nigel feared for his life. He complied. Turning around, he saw the middle-aged bald man who had been following him grasping the knife. The man looked almost apologetic – desperate rather than malicious.
“Who are you?” asked Nigel. “Raymond Deville, I need your help!” Just as the man was speaking a young woman passing the alleyway saw Nigel being held at knife-point and started screaming. Nigel managed to push Raymond out of the way and took the chance to run. He called the police when he got home.
A young female police officer sat with Nigel in the local police station and showed him photo stills of a man from a CCTV surveillance camera near the alleyway. Nigel confirmed the man was the person who had attacked him. The officer told Nigel that the only person named Raymond Deville they had on file had died almost ten years previously. She told Nigel that his attacker was probably delusional.
Nigel still felt worried but at least he knew the police were now looking for the man. He told Natalie about what had occurred and she consoled him, though she was worried too.
Nigel spent the next few days looking around every corner and feeling worried about being attacked but then gradually began reverting to his old routine. The same old routine - up at 7.30am for the commute to the City – then back for 7.30pm to spend a few hours with the kids. Nigel wondered what his life would have been like if he had continued working in theoretical physics rather than financial mathematics. It came down to money, if he was honest. Meeting Natalie and having children meant he needed a steady income. Complex derivatives pricing was a lot more lucrative than theoretical physics and he didn't really miss academic life.
A week later on a bright summer Monday night, Nigel got home to find his front door open. He rushed into the house, his heart was beating like a drum. He frantically dashed from room to room but nothing material seemed to be missing. Then he suddenly noticed that Natalie and the kids were nowhere to be seen.
On the living room table was a note - scrawled on a pad of paper - “If you want your wife and kids to live, go to Hilda's cafe on Park Road at 8.30pm tonight and sit outside – I will give you instructions. DO NOT CALL THE POLICE OR THEY WILL DIE”. Nigel felt an overwhelming sense of horror.
Nigel pondered – should he call the police? Surely they could stake out the cafe and catch the guy – but what if they failed or they caught him and he wouldn't tell them where Natalie was? No - he thought – best thing is to play along for now. He got up to go to Hilda’s cafe.
Nigel walked towards the cafe – he looked around to see if Raymond was anywhere to be seen. No. No sign of Raymond - there was just a small park opposite the cafe, overlooked by a series of stucco terraced houses. Nigel came up to the sole table outside. Then he realised the cafe was shut – he had been wondering how Raymond knew the table would be empty.
It was 8.29pm on Nigel's watch. He saw the second hand moving towards 8.30pm. At the instant of hitting 8.30pm the whole table vibrated. Nigel looked momentarily perturbed until he felt a mobile phone taped under the table. He untaped it and answered it. He heard Raymond’s voice: “Go to house number 15, across the park and wait in the room on the right on the ground floor.”
Nigel ran across the park to the house numbered 15. The door was ajar and he hesitantly went inside, turning to open the only door on the right. As he entered he felt a blow to his head as he was struck from behind. Nigel lost consciousness.
Waking up, Nigel found himself gagged and bound in what seemed like the boot of a car. He had no idea where he was – Raymond had kidnapped him! He should have phoned the police – what was he thinking! Suddenly, it felt like the car was slowing down and the road was getting bumpy – it seemed to him like they had left London and were now in the countryside.
Suddenly, the car boot opened. Nigel saw Raymond holding a spanner. Raymond seemed disappointed that Nigel was conscious. Again he hit Nigel on the head, knocking him out once more.
When Nigel woke up he found himself tied to a wooden chair in the main room of a derelict country cottage. The windows were broken with barely any glass left and the whole place felt damp and very cold. There were two other chairs and something covered with a white sheet in the corner of the room. Raymond was sitting opposite Nigel, and he looked surprisingly happy to see him awake. “Dr Nigel Saunders – unless you do something for me, your wife and children will die!” Nigel shuddered.
“Who are you? What do you want from me? Where are my wife and children?” said Nigel.
Raymond spoke - “I am a dead man – and you are going to help me live again.”
“What?”, Nigel was confused.
“We used to be friends. Now I am dead.”
“What? I've never met you before in my life – and how can you be dead – you seem pretty alive to me!” Nigel's tone had changed from concerned to incredulous.
Raymond responded “Do you believe in alternative realities?”
“Well, some physicists consider them a possibility, but personally I would say that they may well exist though it's a strange thing to ask! Where are my wife and children? What have you done with them!” Nigel retorted.
“They are safe – for now.” Raymond continued “what if I told you I am from an alternative reality? And there we were friends?”
“Well, if we were friends why didn't you just ask for my help? Why threaten my family?”
“I am not sure if you can do what I want – but you need an incentive. Without you achieving what I want then my life is worthless. And I hold you responsible for what happened – so you should take the consequences if you fail!”
“So, assuming you aren't just a madman, and saying I believe you are from an alternative reality – why are you holding me responsible for what the alternative Nigel Saunders did? Surely that is unfair!”
“Unfair perhaps – but that is how I feel. You allowed me to change the past and now I am dead!�
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“So you think you are a time traveller? Ah, OK – so you believe in fairies as well then I expect?”
With that, Raymond pulled a sheet off a trolley sitting in the corner of the room. Suddenly a broken contraption was visible on the trolley. “You invented this in the other time-line – it's broken now – and unless you fix it your wife and kids will die!”
“Friends don't threaten friends, Raymond,” Nigel said, trying a different approach.
“Well you need to succeed,” said Raymond, his voice breaking up slightly as he spoke.
“So what did you change?”
“What do you mean?” replied Raymond.
“What did you change in the past? It must have been quite a lot.”
“No – just one thing. The one thing I was intending to do. It just didn't work out as I expected.”
“I can imagine. Why did I send you back and not myself?” questioned Nigel.
“You did some small experiments – but I begged you to send me back – I wanted to make sure my sister didn't die in a pointless car accident. You gave in to my begging and sent me back.”
“So did you save her?” asked Nigel.
“Yes, from that car accident. Sadly though what I failed to realise was that she was just a dreadful driver. When I came back I discovered I had died in a car with her 6 months later. By stopping her driving the car that day, I condemned myself to death.” After saying this, Raymond was close to tears.
“What do you want to do if you go back now? Let your sister die?”
“No – I don't know – stop her from ever driving somehow.”
“Well it's a bit of a moot point as I can't imagine how I could fix this mess – I've no idea how it is supposed to work.” Nigel surveyed the broken contraption as he spoke. “What DID it look like?”
Raymond pointed and explained roughly what it used to look like. He also helpfully pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It had Nigel's handwriting on it and a drawing of the machine.
“You wrote me this to explain how it works – something about stopping the thing inside falling through time. You made the analogy of falling on a bed and then having a large helium balloon tied to your back – all in the dimension of time, of course.”
“That Nigel sounds like he had an interesting turn of phrase. Well, as that is my handwriting, either you are a master forger or you really have met me before.”
“You weren't married in the other reality – very much more the academic,” mused Raymond.
Reading the text and analysing the drawing, Nigel began to understand how the machine worked. He suddenly realised that he could fix it. But bad thoughts came into his mind. If he let Raymond go back in time then who knows what other damage he could do.
Nigel was happy with this time-line – what was the use in saving Natalie and the kids if by some chance Raymond accidentally erased them from history. But if he didn't fix the machine, how could he hope to see Natalie and the kids again? He needed a plan.
Chapter 2
Raymond seemed less scary to Nigel now. He still couldn't think of a way to stop him going back in time and yet keep Natalie and the kids safe. Could he let him go back and take his chances? Perhaps Raymond would jump into a different time-line again and this one would stay the same? Would he take that chance?
Nigel guessed that if he just reconnected the battery and re-attached the base of the unit then it might well work. But he tried to still appear puzzled to Raymond. He needed an idea. And he needed one quickly.
In the midst of his stalling, a simple idea occurred to Nigel – sabotage the machine to strand Raymond in the past – say the Jurassic period. Then he rejected that idea – if Raymond was in the past, however far back, he could still potentially change the current time-line. Nigel despaired.
Then it came to him – what about the future? The machine could work either way – as how had Raymond travelled back from the past? That worked – Raymond could do no harm in the future – he could live out the rest of his life and learn to forget about what he had done. But how far in the future? Nigel didn't want an irate Raymond attacking him in his 80s – so it needed to be much more than 50 years. Nigel decided – 100 years in the future – that would do.
Subtly Nigel sabotaged the machine to make it push Raymond 100 years in the future and then fail.
“I am close to fixing the machine – but I need to know where my family are before I complete it,” stated Nigel as confidently as he could manage.
Raymond moved towards the side of the room and opened a door to the basement. “They are down there – when I am gone you can free them.”
“I want to see them!” demanded Nigel.
Raymond raised his knife and beckoned Nigel to go ahead of him down the stairs to the basement. Walking down the creaking wooden steps Nigel saw Natalie and his children tied up, blind-folded and gagged in the corner of the room. They were clearly still alive though the sight angered Nigel far more than he expected. Some doubt had been running through his mind as to whether it was fair to strand Raymond in the future, but this sight dispelled that doubt instantaneously.
“I've seen enough,” Nigel said turning to go up the stairs. Raymond backed up the stairs and they both went towards the machine. Nigel finished his final tweaks to the time machine and stood back. “All done – all yours – now leave me alone.”
Raymond stood on the base of the time machine and adjusted a control on it to go back 10 years. Nigel had rewired the machine to go forward 100 years instead and had managed to conceal his duplicity. Raymond pressed the blue activation button and suddenly the whole machine disappeared.
Nigel was instantly filled with many conflicting emotions. Raymond was gone. He rushed down the stairs to the basement and untied Natalie. Just as he was untying the first of his children - Nathan - he heard a noise upstairs.
Suddenly the basement door swung open and to Nigel's horror he saw Raymond. How was this possible, Nigel thought? Raymond seemed older and he was holding what looked like a toy ray gun. “You will pay for what you did to me, Nigel Saunders!” shouted Raymond.
Raymond aimed the gun at Natalie and pulled the trigger. A tiny dart shot out of the gun and went straight into Natalie's chest. Suddenly her skin began to become grey and gradually she disintegrated into a pile of dust. Raymond fired twice again at Nigel's children and each disintegrated when they were hit.
Nigel closed his eyes and thought “This is it.” But he felt nothing.
“You must live – feel the loss that I have felt - to pay for your treachery. It took me 15 years but I found another time machine. Now to go back and correct my life.” With that Raymond disappeared upstairs.
Nigel, in an act of bravery quite out of character, rushed upstairs only to discover Raymond already in the process of disappearing on his new time machine. This one was of a different design, a unit with a seat rather than a platform. It seemed it was considerably better made than the machine the alternative Nigel had created.
Before Nigel could reach Raymond he was gone. Nigel pulled out the piece of paper Raymond had given him earlier. “I will get revenge” he muttered to himself, clutching the plans in his hand.
Chapter 3
Over the next year and half Nigel fought through his grief and began the huge undertaking of building a brand new time machine. This was not as simple as fixing the original device – there wasn't much wrong with it, it was only Raymond's lack of technical ability that meant he could not fix it.
Building a new machine was an order of magnitude more difficult. Nigel had two advantages – he knew it could be done and that he had already done it in a parallel existence. He also had the very rough plans that Raymond had given him. His remaining friends and family assumed that he was just in a state of grief and paid no attention to his obsessional behaviour.
On a grey November morning Nigel finished construction of a prototype. He had bought the land containing the derelict country cottage that Raymond h
ad used to hold him hostage. He assembled the time machine there as he guessed the cottage had been derelict for a long time. Nigel conducted a small test. He sent the machine on autopilot 3 minutes into the future. It disappeared. Nigel waited. He began to worry – what if he never saw it again?
He really had put his whole life into creating that machine – to have to build yet another one would probably be too much for him.
Exactly 3 minutes later the machine re-appeared. Nigel broke down in tears as this happened. It worked! Now he had to decide where to go back to – he wanted to ruin Raymond Deville's life and try to restore his own life.
Timeshock - I Want My Life Back Page 1
