by Jason Ayres
By Christmas 2059 they were back in their own house enjoying the festive season with their family all around them, including a heavily pregnant Sophie.
With Charlie and Kaylee settled back in the UK, the aging members of the team were back together once more. They regularly got together socially as the 2060s dawned, but a dark cloud lay on the horizon.
In the autumn of 2060, Hannah discovered that she had advanced bowel cancer. Cruelly, she had experienced no symptoms until it was way too late for any treatment, even by the medical standards of 2060.
Cancer treatments and screenings had advanced tremendously by this time. Early diagnosis had made survival rates virtually 100% for many types. Unfortunately, two of the most deadly, lung and bowel cancer, continued to claim millions of lives worldwide every year, particularly in less developed countries where healthcare facilities still lagged behind those of the wealthier nations.
The news had come as a complete shock to Hannah, who had lived a healthy life. She was devastated when the doctors gave her just three months to live. Breaking the news to Peter, he suggested speaking to Josh. Mindful of how he had once been cured of leukaemia using the time bubble, they asked Josh if he could use the tachyometer to jump forward in time to look for a cure.
Josh was more than happy to bring the tachyometer out of retirement for such a worthy cause, but his quest yielded no joy. He travelled forward to the limits of the tachyometer’s ability, right into the 23rd century, but it was all to no avail.
He discovered that no cure had ever been discovered for cancer in the advanced state that Hannah found herself in. Medical attention in the future had become focused on prevention rather than cure.
Incredibly advanced full body screening for all illnesses had been developed. Such screenings were routinely carried out for everyone every three months, and were as much a part of daily life as a check-up at the dentist was back in Josh’s century.
The technology instantly detected any cancerous growths and destroyed them using advanced nanotechnology while they were still microscopic, long before they could cause the body any harm.
So there was nothing that could be done for someone in Hannah’s condition, because no one ever got that ill in the future.
Sadly, Josh was forced to return home and break the bad news to Hannah, Peter and Jess.
Hannah died in the spring of 2061. With the time rapidly approaching for Dan to return from the time bubble, the surviving members of the team had got together again after the funeral to discuss how to handle his emergence.
The best suggestion at the time had been to push him back in, but it wasn’t solving the long-term problem. None of them would be around in another forty-odd years, and they still felt morally obliged to ensure that no innocent passer-by should fall into the tunnel in the future and disappear.
With no obvious solution in mind, Josh had once again resumed his time travel experiments. He had returned to the tunnel to measure the bubble in every way possible. His plan was to try and find a way to disable it so that it would no longer be a danger to the public.
In laboratory conditions he had successfully managed to achieve this with a small bubble. He had managed to create a bubble in the maze and then freeze it in time in such a way that anything passing through it would be unaffected. He then tried it out on Milly the mouse.
Milly was Maisie’s great-great-granddaughter, the latest in the long-running dynasty of time-travelling mice.
This had worked perfectly. However, experiments with larger, human-sized bubbles had not been so successful. He couldn’t generate enough energy to create the same effect with any degree of stability.
In the end, his experiments proved unnecessary. Peter took the problem out of his hands with his shock revelation that his own cancer had returned and his subsequent plan to journey to the end of time.
It had solved the immediate problem, but Josh was still determined to finish the project. He hated leaving any problem once he’d started working on it until he’d found the solution. He had come this far and there was no way he was going to admit defeat.
Eventually, in the summer following Peter’s departure to the future, he made the breakthrough he needed. He could now create and disable a full-sized bubble in the lab. Once he’d succeeded in doing this, it was a relatively simple task to do the process in reverse. He could also reactivate a bubble after it had previous been disabled.
Now he had achieved his goal in laboratory conditions, he just needed to find out if he could do the same to the original time bubble.
He couldn’t risk doing this while Peter was still inside. He had no way of knowing what effect it might have upon him. It might cause him to emerge there and then but there were a number of more unpleasant possibilities. It might trap him there forever like a fly in amber or, even worse, kill him.
He thought about trying it out in the lab on Milly, but Alice had made it quite clear that no mice were to be harmed in the pursuit of his experiments. Besides, even if Milly did emerge safely, there was no way to guarantee that the same would happen with Peter. He had to work out another way to try it out.
He made two visits to the tunnel in the summer of 2064 to take measurements using the tachyometer before finalising his plan. He would jump forward in time to the point, early in the next century, when Peter would be emerging from the bubble. Then they could test it out together while there was no one inside.
As during his earlier visit when he’d travelled back to witness Lauren’s death, Josh had taken the train. He generally stuck to carrying out his measurements in the evening when he knew there wouldn’t be many people around. No one ever seemed to take much notice of what he was doing, so by the time he was ready to make the jump forward in time, he’d become a little lax on the security front.
Despite the precautions he always took when conducting experiments in public, he had no reason to suspect that anyone might be observing him and was pretty relaxed as he headed off to the station for the third time, all ready to meet Peter in the future.
He had not the slightest inkling that he was being watched.
Chapter Nineteen
June 2064
In contrast with the way he’d conducted a lot of his past affairs, Dan had wised up. Rather than reacting to problems without thinking and getting into trouble as a result, now he took his time and planned things carefully.
He knew that he could not afford to make a single mistake if he had any hope of returning to his own time. If Josh got wind of the fact that Dan was on to him, he’d probably lose his chance forever.
The new cool and calculating Dan’s strategy had been to play the dutiful recovering patient, cooperating fully with the terms he’d been released on. He ensured he was in his accommodation after 8pm at night as required, and that he attended all the outpatient appointments on time.
He was also sweetness and light with Amelia at all times, but that was something he didn’t really have to try at. His relationship with her had enabled him to experience a genuine new feeling that he’d never had in his life before: respect for a woman.
In the meantime, he got on with the serious business of tracking Josh down. It didn’t take him very long. Virtually everyone conducted their lives online by the mid-21st century so there was no shortage of information to be found on him. From social media, to press quotes and details of conferences he’d attended, Josh’s life was there for all to see.
Finding which college he worked at was easy. All he then had to do was keep watch outside for him to enter or leave. Dan was cool about this: he was in no hurry. If it meant being patient and waiting for days on end in the pouring rain for Josh to appear, then so be it. He wasn’t going to blow his cover by going into the place or by making enquiries. He certainly couldn’t risk being seen.
The entrance to the college Josh worked at was close to the city centre, opposite a small park where Dan could sit at a safe distance and observe. Fortunately the weather was being kind and the par
k was a very pleasant place to be in the English summer sunshine.
He took to going there on a daily basis, taking his lunch and buying the daily disposable epapers that along with the online editions had almost completely replaced the old paper versions.
He marvelled at how modern technology had made such things so cheap. For less than the price you once would have paid for a paper newspaper, you now got the disposable electronic version. They were printed to order in the shop in under a second, on a piece of incredibly strong silicon less than a millimetre thick, yet flexible.
They looked a little like an ultra-slim line, old-fashioned 10” tablet at first glance, but you could bend and fold them just like an old-fashioned paper. The text was crystal-clear, and the pictures and videos could be projected in front of you to bring the stories to life.
When you were done, you just slotted it into one of the many recycling bins that lined the streets. It seemed there was a bin for everything in 2064. Almost everything could be reused in one form or another.
The only thing that hadn’t changed about the paper was the content. The modern technology made no difference to what was written inside. Most of the leading titles were more or less the same as they had been a century earlier.
The one Dan had always bought was still going strong. The front page still had its traditional red top, sensationalist stories and celebrity gossip. Even the problem pages were still going strong.
“My robot’s cheating on me,” screamed out the headline from the problem page, with a picture of the latest men’s toy, an incredibly realistic-looking, full-size robot doll, scantily clad in black stockings and suspenders.
“Ridiculous,” muttered Dan, though he secretly fancied having a go on one of the dolls. He’d more or less given up on the idea of ever finding a willing human partner. Perhaps one of the “sexbots”, as they were known, might be the answer. He couldn’t afford to buy one on his benefits, but he had heard that you could rent one by the hour. Robot prostitutes were having a huge impact, it seemed, judging by another story he read about traditional prostitutes who were up in arms about the impact all of this was having on their trade.
Perhaps when all this was over, he might investigate. Meanwhile he turned to the sports pages, where there was a debate going on about introducing robot referees. The football European Championships were currently taking place in Scandinavia. The previous evening, England had been knocked out in the quarter-finals following a controversial refereeing decision that had awarded Germany a penalty.
A robot would never have made such an obvious blunder, argued one pundit. Another countered that a robot could never appreciate the subtle nuances of the game.
Dan wasn’t particular bothered about all of this. The days when he’d have punched someone or smashed up a pub because England had lost at football were long gone. Such things just didn’t seem important anymore.
He enjoyed being in the park. The agreeable summer weather made it a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon. He was beginning to appreciate simple things he had never noticed before, like birdsong and flowers.
Most days he would arrive about lunchtime, stop off at the supermarket opposite Josh’s college to buy a sandwich and the paper, and then settle down on his favourite bench. Directly facing the college, he was able to glance up frequently to keep an eye on the entrance.
What he didn’t realise was that while he was watching the college, he himself was being watched. Keeping track of him via the microchip that had been embedded in him as a condition of his release, Amelia was aware that he was making frequent trips to the park. What she didn’t know was why.
She was still quite sure there was more to Dan than met the eye. She still hadn’t quite been able to shake off the feeling that there might be some element of truth in the time travel story. She’d looked at his internet activity to see what he’d been doing, but hadn’t come to any conclusions. She certainly hadn’t made the connection to Josh.
Dan had been very careful on that score. He knew that his internet was being monitored, so he made sure that he looked up as many of his old school friends as he could. By diluting his activity in this way, he figured it might not look quite so obvious that he was seeking out information on one particular person. It would just look as if he was innocently looking up old friends.
She’d followed him to the park a couple of times and observed him, but couldn’t really see that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. He just seemed to be having lunch and reading the paper.
The only thing he was doing that could be perceived as wrong was feeding a few crumbs to the pigeons. There were signs in the park asking people not to do so. But Amelia couldn’t fault him for that. She saw it as a sign of his growing humanity. Anyone who had seen the greedy, fat version of Dan from the past, stuffing his face with food at every opportunity without ever offering to share, would never have believed it.
Amelia was there the day that Dan first caught sight of Josh. He had been feasting his eyes over the holographic Page 3 girl dancing around above his epaper in her bikini. He’d have preferred her topless like in the “good old days”, but they were long in the past. Scantily clad was still acceptable, but nipples were not – even on robots. Apparently they had rights, too.
As he glanced up from the dancing model, described as Sophie, 24, from Cheshunt, he saw a man walk out of the imposing, black, wrought-iron gates about a hundred yards in front of him. It was unmistakeably Josh. Dan had studied enough photographs of him online to recognise this older version of him straightaway.
Dan wasn’t really expecting anything enthralling to happen, and it didn’t. Josh had come out of the college, headed across the road to the shop, and then returned clutching a sandwich and a drink.
Dan stayed where he was throughout and didn’t attempt to follow him in any way, which was probably just as well. Amelia, observing him from afar, had come to the conclusion that Dan wasn’t doing anything other than enjoying a summer’s day in the fresh air. She decided she was happy to let him spend his days there unobserved, and went back to the secure unit to deal with more pressing cases.
The next day followed a similar pattern. Josh came out, went to buy his lunch, and went back into the college. This wasn’t really getting Dan any further forward. He began to toy with the idea of trying to follow Josh inside the college to find out exactly where he worked. Perhaps there would be some clues there.
He mulled this over but ultimately rejected it, for the time being at least. It was just too risky. There was way too much danger of getting caught. Maybe he should follow him home instead. That wouldn’t be as dangerous. He decided that he would try this the following day.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to because the next day things took an altogether more interesting turn. Having failed to appear at lunchtime, Josh didn’t emerge until late afternoon, just as Dan was about to give up and go home. This time, rather than heading over towards the shop, he turned right towards the city centre.
Dan observed him closely as he walked along the street. He was dressed in a red and white, chequered, short-sleeve shirt, denim shorts, sunglasses and a baseball cap. What did he think he looked like? thought Dan. The guy was over sixty years old: didn’t he look a bit ridiculous dressed like that? Josh had always been a bit of a poser at school, and clearly it was still the case now.
In fact, Josh’s attire wasn’t that unusual by 2064 standards. Dress codes at work had become a lot more relaxed as the century had progressed, and people tended to wear the clothes they felt most comfortable in. This had long been the case at the university where, other than the gowns required for formal occasions, people pretty much wore what they wanted.
As people aged, their fashions aged with them. Unlike previous generations, people didn’t reach a certain age when they suddenly started dressing in beige. These days, pensioners everywhere were sporting the same sort of outfits they’d worn when they’d been skateboarding as teenagers back in the noughties.
The baseball cap was now as much a symbol of the current generation of pensioners as their grandfather’s flat caps had once been. This was one of many changes that had taken place that Dan was gradually beginning to take note of.
Dan was interested to see that Josh was wearing a large backpack which looked pretty full. He looked as if he was about to head off on a mountaineering expedition, which was completely at odds with his attire. It seemed an odd combination.
“I wonder what he’s got in there, then,” he said to himself. Clearly Josh wasn’t just popping out to the shops. Following at a discreet distance, Dan was determined to find out.
Unaware that he was being followed, Josh turned out of St Giles’ and into Beaumont Street, walking alongside the Randolph Hotel and past the Playhouse. Dan stayed on the opposite side of the road next to the Ashmolean Museum, about 200 yards behind. He was pretty confident Josh wouldn’t recognise him at this distance, even if he turned around.
By the time Josh had crossed the canal along Hythe Bridge Street, Dan guessed he must be heading for the railway station. He was right, and as they approached the station, he realised he was going to have to plan his moves carefully.
If Josh was catching a train, how would Dan know which one? He had no way of knowing unless he followed him directly onto the platform, and you couldn’t get onto the platform without buying a ticket. At least you didn’t used to be able to – maybe it was all done differently now: everything else was.
As he entered the concourse he could see that, although the place was a lot more clean and modern than it used to be, not everything had changed. It was still necessary to pay at a machine to buy a ticket and then insert it into a slot to pass through a gate to get onto the platforms.
He waited by the coffee shop for Josh to buy his ticket, and then watched him pass through the gates and turn right. Quickly he dashed to the nearest machine and pressed the touch screen to bring up the ticket options. As was usually the case, he didn’t have a lot of cash on him, so he bought the cheapest ticket he could. It was a single to his home town, just fifteen miles to the north. But even that was 45 euros, which was three days’ food money for Dan. It was a lot considering he was on benefits.
