by Jason Ayres
“How do you mean?” asked Charlie. “Don’t start going all cryptic on us.”
“Well, we already know that I have travelled back in time. I have met my future self twice already. And on both of those occasions, you could argue that my future self changed history.”
The team all knew about his trips back to meet himself. Alice had been there during the first one, and the second one had been instrumental in their decision to cast Dan into the time bubble. Josh took the opportunity to remind them of this fact.
“You could say that I changed history when I came back to tell myself that it was Dan who killed Lauren. I know we had our suspicions, but if I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have known for certain. We’d have believed it was Ryan who had killed her for evermore.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Hannah. “I said all along that I didn’t think Ryan was responsible.”
“But that’s not changing history, is it?” argued Kaylee. “That all already happened. I’m confused.”
“It only happened because I made it happen,” said Josh.
“Have you travelled back to tell yourself yet?” asked Peter.
“No, I’ve only done a few small trips, no more than a few hours,” replied Josh. “I wanted to talk it all over with the rest of you before I went any further. I’m as worried about the implications as you are.”
“Well, implications or not,” replied Peter, “I think you have no choice but to make those trips. As far as we are concerned, they have already happened, so they are set in stone.”
“You certainly do,” said Alice. “Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to come and rescue me and I’ll end up dying in the snow twenty years ago.”
“That’s not going to happen. I am going to be there,” replied Josh. “It’s going to take a bit of organising, though. It’s not as if I can fly a helicopter through a time bubble.”
“And it’s not like there were lots of spare helicopters just lying around twenty years ago for you to hop in at your leisure,” said Charlie.
“That’s not an issue,” said Josh. “I already know where the helicopter came from. Believe me, I’ve done nothing else but plan this in every last detail. You don’t have to worry about it.”
He paused as he knew what he was going to say next was going to be a sensitive subject.
“I’ll fill you in on some more of the details of what I’ve got planned for the helicopter trip later, but I really want to talk about what happened to Lauren first. I know it’s painful, but I am sure we will all feel a little better if we knew exactly what happened to her. When my future self came back to tell me, he didn’t go into much detail.”
“I don’t think I will feel better, regardless of what happened,” said Kaylee. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
Josh continued, adding, “Since my future self didn’t give me a great deal to go on, I’ve had to do a fair bit of research and I’ve found out quite a lot.”
“Go on,” said Peter.
“Well, I thought the best thing to do was to track down Ryan and get his side of the story. He’s moved to Bristol now and is doing quite well for himself. He’s settled down with a guy who imports classic American cars for a living and they’ve got married. Anyway, I managed to find him and accidentally on purpose bumped into him in a pub. As you can imagine, he wasn’t best pleased to see me. He’s keen to put the past behind him.”
“That’s understandable: who wouldn’t, in his situation?” asked Peter.
“Well, eventually, after I’d bought him a few drinks and assured him I only wanted to extend the hand of friendship, he opened up. He told me pretty much not only where, but also almost exactly when Lauren died.”
“So that means you can go back and save her,” said Kaylee.
“No, it doesn’t,” replied Josh. “But it does mean I can go back to 2029 and see exactly what happened. Then I can travel forward to 2041 and tell myself about it, therefore setting in process the chain of events that led to us pushing Dan into the time bubble.”
“Wait a minute,” said Kaylee, sharply. “If you know the exact place and time and you’re going back to see what happened, then there’s no reason why you can’t stop Dan from killing her.”
“There’s every reason,” stated Peter, ever the voice of reason. “As far as we are all concerned, all of this has already happened. If Josh goes back and does as you suggest, then everything that’s happened since will be changed. We’ll be changed. And who’s going to take my place in the bubble: some poor sod just wandering through the tunnel? What about their friends and family?”
“I don’t care about that,” replied Kaylee, a red flush spreading across her cheeks as she felt the long, pent-up anger well up in her. “She was my best friend and that evil, fat bastard killed her. I would do anything to have her back here with us right now. Why can’t you go back right now and rescue her? If everything changes like you say, she could reappear and be with us right now, laughing, drinking and enjoying herself with her friends, instead of rotting in a grave in the cemetery.”
The good mood had vanished from the group. Charlie was torn by his wife’s outburst. He understood her pain. He’d held her when she’d broken down, sobbing uncontrollably when they had learned of Lauren’s death.
But he also knew that everything Josh and Peter had said was true. In the end it was Hannah who broke the uncomfortable silence.
“They’re right, Kaylee,” she said softly. “I’d like Lauren to be here as much as any of us, but if we start going back in time trying to change things, where would it end? No one should have that much power. Imagine if it fell into the wrong hands and someone started seriously meddling with history, altering key events. It doesn’t even bear thinking about.”
“I know they’re right, but it doesn’t make what happened to her right.” In floods of tears, she got up and ran into the house. Instinctively, Charlie got up and followed her in.
“Perhaps I should have thought about this before I mentioned it,” remarked Josh.
“Perhaps you should,” said Alice. “But the subject couldn’t be avoided forever and you can’t blame her for feeling the way she does. They had been best friends since they were four.”
“It’s for the best that we got it all out into the open,” agreed Peter. “Time travel isn’t to be undertaken lightly. We need to talk about these things before we start blundering around in time doing goodness knows what damage.”
“I’m not sure we should be doing anything at all,” remarked Hannah. “The conversation we have just had is proof of how dangerous all of this is. Everyone’s got something in their past they’d like to change. It might not seem like a key event to us, like assassinating a world leader, but who is to say what effect changing some small and seemingly significant event might have?”
“I’m not planning to alter anything,” replied Josh. “I’m going to go back on the night that Lauren died and witness the event with my own eyes. This is something I know I did, because I’ve already told myself about it.”
“How are you going to witness it without being seen?” asked Peter.
“I know the exact location of the building: Ryan described it. However, that in itself is problematical.”
“How come?” asked Peter.
“Because it’s not there anymore,” replied Josh. “It was on the site of the old Army base which was demolished over ten years ago. There’s a brand new housing estate there now.”
“Can’t you just go and stand in the middle of the housing estate and make the jump back in time from there?” suggested Hannah.
“That’s extremely dangerous,” said Josh. “Who is to say I wouldn’t materialise halfway inside a brick wall or in the path of a car? I have to make the jump in open air, which means somewhere I am sure is in clear space, both now and in 2029.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Hannah. “Yet another reason why your planned trips back in time are so risky and perhap
s all the more reason why you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“We could debate the rights and wrongs of it all night,” remarked Josh. “But for the time being we know two things for a fact. We know I’ve been back twice already and I have no choice but to fulfil that destiny. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been working towards getting my pilot’s licence. I never had any intention of learning to fly, but when the future me turned up in a helicopter, I knew that at some point between then and now I’d have to learn.”
“I agree that you have to do those things,” said Peter. “It seems logical.”
“But after that, don’t you think he ought to call a halt to it?” asked Hannah. “In fact, perhaps it would be best if you destroyed that device altogether.”
“You do realise what you’re asking?” said Josh. “You’re asking me to throw away a life’s work, just like that! I can’t do it. Besides, what if someone else has been carrying out similar research elsewhere in the world? Are they going to be as responsible? And if they are not, who can possibly stop them? It could be down to me. If I destroy the tachyometer, I’ll be powerless.”
“I can see you now,” joked Alice. “Josh, the time-travelling superhero, saves the world!” The others laughed. The mood was beginning to lighten again.
As they laughed, Kaylee emerged from the house, smiling again, with Charlie in tow. Whatever he had said to her had clearly helped.
“I’m sorry about before,” she said. “It’s just talking about Lauren brought it all back. I do understand what you’re saying. I’ll be alright now.”
Hannah reached out her arms and gave Kaylee a hug whilst Charlie cracked open the last bottle of the Australian sparkling wine. Peter had brought six bottles with him and they had gone down extremely well. With the previous good atmosphere now restored, the discussions continued.
“You were saying about the helicopter,” said Peter. “So how are you going to get hold of it? Or should I say, how did you get hold of it? It’s difficult to know what tense to use when we’re talking about things that are going to happen in both the future and the past.”
“Well, I’ve been working on this for a long time,” replied Josh. “Like I said, the first hurdle to negotiate was to get the pilot’s licence. One of the first things I did when things got back to normal after the Black Winter was to start taking flying lessons. It took a few years, bearing in mind all the time we were spending on the time travel experiments, but I got there in the end. Once that was sorted out, it was just a case of working out exactly how to get hold of the helicopter and getting it to the right place at the right time.”
“Did you not think to ask yourself that at the time?” asked Peter.
“It wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind,” replied Josh. “Picture the scene – there we were, freezing cold, trapped on the side of a cliff face with Alice unable to move because she’d fallen and hurt her leg. The next thing we know, this helicopter appears and out steps a future version of me. As you can imagine, it was quite a shock. My first words certainly weren’t ‘nice helicopter, where did you get it?’ that’s for sure.”
“I’m amazed you managed to get it there at all in the blizzards,” said Charlie. “At the time you were flying about in your helicopter, we were trying to get out of the country any way we could. Flying was out of the question for us. There was no way that any planes could get off the ground at Gatwick; the runways were completely covered in snowdrifts. It was a pretty hairy time, I can tell you. We nearly didn’t make it out of the country alive. Some of the people who’d been queuing for the ferries were found months later, frozen solid in their cars. I’m so glad we decided to abandon ours and make it on foot. Ours was the last ferry out of there, you know, before the whole system ground to a halt.”
“I thought it was quite romantic,” said Kaylee, smiling as she remembered the adventure they’d had. “It was just me, you, and bump, fleeing south to France.”
“Well, it’s interesting you mention France,” said Josh. “Because that’s where I got the helicopter from.”
“How did you find that out?” asked Charlie.
“He didn’t,” said Alice, “I did. As you know, the older Josh took me away in the helicopter whilst my version of Josh went into the time bubble in the cave. There was no way we could land back in England – the whole country was blanketed in snow by then.
“He managed to land on the beach, though, didn’t he?” questioned Charlie.
“Only because the tide had been in and washed the beach clean of snow,” said Alice. “Once we got into the air, we flew directly south to France. The snow wasn’t anything like as bad there, and he was able to land on the roof of a hospital in Nantes. After that he gave me all the details I needed to get me through the rest of the winter, as well as the name and address of the private hire helicopter firm. It was just a few miles outside Nantes and that’s where he’d got the helicopter from.”
“That was pretty smart of me, wasn’t it?” asked Josh. “You see, I’m always thinking ahead. Or is it behind?”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Peter. “It could be as a direct result of this conversation we’re having now, that you remembered to tell Alice all of that.”
“Such is the circular nature of time travel,” observed Josh. “If you start thinking about it too much, you start to tie yourself in knots.”
“I know what you mean,” said Kaylee. “My brain hurts just thinking about it.”
“That could also have something to do with the eight glasses of wine you’ve had,” joked Hannah.
She had a fair point. They were all getting very drunk in the way they always seemed to do when all six of them got together.
“So now I’m more or less ready to take the trip,” continued Josh. “I know where I need to be and when I need to be there. But I’m going to go back in time a few days in advance to ensure that I’ve got plenty of time to prepare.
“Better safe than sorry, eh?” asked Peter.
“Exactly. I’m also going to travel to France before I make the jump back in time. That way, I’ll avoid any unexpected travel problems, bearing in mind the prevailing weather conditions. I need to be on a ferry long before the snow arrives. Once I get to the right place, as long as I find a nice, open field to make the jump in, I should come out in clear air.”
“It sounds like you’ve got it all mapped out,” said Charlie.
“Well there’s no real reason to worry,” added Peter. “We already know that he turns up at the right place at the right time. It’s set in stone. That’s the theory, anyway.”
“Let’s hope it’s that straightforward,” said Josh. “This trip is the first real big test of travelling into the past that I’ve done. We need to find out if it all works out as we expect it to.”
“And after that?” asked Peter.
“We’ll think about that when the time comes,” replied Josh. “There is at least one other thing that I need to do in the past, but I’ll tell you about that later.”
“Can we talk about something else now?” asked Kaylee. “In fact, let’s forget the talking, I want to party!”
“There is just one thing,” commented Charlie. “Kaylee already knows about it, but I wanted to just run it by the rest of you.”
“Quickly, then,” replied Kaylee, sloshing her wine glass about. “All this talking’s getting boring. And it’s getting cold.”
She was right. It was getting quite late, and since darkness had fallen the air had become noticeably chilly.
Charlie explained how he’d had an offer to have the book he’d loosely based on the time bubble made into a film.
“I don’t really see a problem,” said Peter. “You changed enough details, and besides, as far as everyone is concerned, it is just a story.”
“That’s what I thought,” replied Charlie. “After all, it’s not as if the FBI went round to check out the guy who wrote Back to the Future to see if he had a time-travelling DeLorean, is
it? I’ve sold thousands of copies of the book, and not one person has asked me if it is based on a true story.”
“Well, that’s settled, then,” said Kaylee. “Come on, let’s get this party started.”
Kaylee jumped up and bounced back into the house, buoyed by all the wine she’d drunk. A few seconds later, music began booming out: a classic early 21st century dance tune.
“Come on, you guys,” she said, poking her head back through the French windows. “Let’s dance!”
“Sounds good to me!” said Hannah. “This is my era.”
All talk of time travel forgotten for the time being, the friends made their way indoors where Kaylee was already dancing on the kitchen floor, her blonde hair flying around as she did so.
“Come on, Hannah, this is a classic!” she shouted, as she grabbed hold of her friend.
When Jess and the others came back from town soon after, they were amazed to find their parents acting like teenagers but soon joined in the fun.
There were going to be some seriously sore heads in the morning.
Chapter Seven
September 2063
Left alone in the interview room for over an hour, Dan had been given plenty of time to weigh things up, and as far as he was concerned he’d done nothing wrong. He didn’t belong in this time and the police had no right to hold him like they had.
He couldn’t waste any more time hanging around in the station: he needed to get out and start finding a way to return to his own time.
He may have been 22 years in the future but it seemed very little had changed in the layout of the police station during that time. There had been no high-tech developments or modernisation as far as he could see, just the same old furniture that had always been there.
In fact, he was pretty sure that the crappy plastic chair he was sitting on was the same one he had been sitting on the last time he was here.
The lack of development within the station was to Dan’s advantage. Having been hauled in on several previous occasions in the interests of “helping the police with their enquiries” was going to come in very handy.
