by S G Read
He returned to his house and looked round it to work out where the week points were, for a Victorian house it was quite secure. To get in, someone would have to break a window or smash open a door. He was quite impressed. When he returned to the living room Sarah was standing there.
‘You should lock the door really,’ she warned, ‘what if Barber was about at this time and looking for trouble.’
‘Then I would have to fight him, Sarah, that is better than hiding away any day,’ William answered, ‘and you are here for what reason?’
‘I was thinking, I know I am just a girl but surely, if they did rebuild the house opposite the tavern, then you would still be living there in the future?’ Sarah asked.
‘I didn’t think of it that way, I thought I might suddenly find out I was living there again,’ William answered, ‘it is a bit deep for a thirteen year old girl to think about when there are horse drawn carriages about.’
‘It does seem a bit odd, does it not William but I suddenly thought about it and I cannot talk about it with anyone else, can I now?’ Sarah complained.
‘Not really, I have to admit that,’ William answered, ‘but if I don’t end up living back there then what can happen between now and when they finish it?’
‘I do wonder about that myself but I do not come up with any answers, I must go back and get my chores done now.’ Sarah agreed.
‘Your speech is really improving.’ William exclaimed as she walked out.
‘I am trying to improve myself so that I can get better employment than cleaning someone else’s house.’ Sarah replied. ‘I will be fourteen soon.’ She added as she walked away.
William closed the door behind her and locked it but his mind was on his old house and what happened between now and the twenty-first century, he had to be very careful about altering things in the future. The fact that he had bought a house in his name, when he thought he was stuck in the nineteenth century. That had to mean that he had made some sort of impact here. He chose to walk to the room he was renting in the pub, just to go back to the twenty first century and have a look round. He thought he might also find a present for Sarah’s birthday.
This meant spending some time there to get the feel of the place again. He walked along the street with his percussion pistol readily available, in case Barber tried something while he was in the street. He did not see anyone he did not know on the way and walked up the stairs to his room. As everything in the room was as he left it, he climbed through into his twenty-first century flat. After making sure the cleaning lady was not in, he unlocked the cupboard and stepped into the flat. He spent a week looking round twenty first century London to see what changes had happened since he had been time travelling. Had he caused any major upsets there by his actions?
Back in the nineteenth century Sarah walked up to William’s house, what she found was Tom Barber waiting for William. Tom Barber saw his chance, he stifled her screams and tied her up before he threw her in his cart. On his way out of Tooley street, he gave an urchin a message for William and sent him to the tavern. Goliath and Mary knew nothing about it, until the urchin arrived with the message.
‘Tom Barber said you can have Sarah back if Just meets him in Cheapside by the Crow and Gate Tavern.’ The urchin said from the doorway and ran.
Goliath ran after him and as Gus was returning from a fare, he saw the chase he caught the boy and held him for Goliath.
‘Tom Barber has taken Sarah, he will exchange her for William at the Crow and Gate in Cheapside;’ Goliath explained, ‘he was the messenger.’
‘Had to be by mouth, as Barber don’t write.’ Gus replied.
‘Do you know where William is?’ Goliath asked.
Gus shook his head.
‘I’ll get the thief taker.’
‘Is that wise?’ Goliath asked. ‘Let us try to find William first and we’ll ask him.’
Gus nodded, he took the urchin and Goliath back to the tavern, before driving on. He tried William’s house and then the room above the tavern but did not find him although the man behind the bar thought he was up there. He drove back to Goliath’s tavern.
‘Did you find him?’ Goliath asked hopefully, even though Gus was alone.
‘No, the man behind the bar at the Nelson thought he was in but there was no sign of him inside.’ Gus answered. ‘Do I get the thief taker?’
Goliath looked at Mary, with no sign of William, it was all they could do. Gus drove off at a faster pace than was normal for him and drove to the thief taker’s office. He explained what had happened in detail to thief taker.
‘We’ll get her back, Gus.’ The thief taker declared.
The thief taker left to track down Tom Barber and his cohorts, while Gus returned to the tavern. All they could do now was to wait and hope. They spent the day waiting and hoping and a second day but they heard nothing. On the morning of the third day a runner arrived from the thief taker with a message saying that they were hot on Tom Barber’s trail, they would soon have him in custody. That gave them all hope.
The next morning, when Mary looked out of the tavern, she could see Sarah hanging in the partly rebuilt house opposite. Mary screamed a loud and mournful scream, which brought Goliath running to her side but what he saw sickened him to his stomach. He walked over, cut Sarah down and walked back with her in his arms, he was crying all the way back.
When the thief taker returned he had Tom Barber in his cart. He saw Sarah’s body laid out on one table while Gus was busy making a coffin to bury her in.
‘He’ll hang for this.’ He declared and drove on.
Mary cried and cried, this was her daughter and she was dead. All she asked was why? No one could give her an answer so no one answered.
On the last day of his visit to the twenty first century William decide to find out what was there, in place of the building his old flat used to be in. He knew it was a park now and wondered what had happened to make it into a park. When he arrived he read the old plaque on the gate. It read ‘The Sarah Marchant Memorial Park.’
William ran for the first time in a long time and kept running until he arrived at his flat, there he found the cleaning lady vacuuming. He could not go through while she was in the hall but as soon as she was in the lounge, he unlocked the cupboard, slipped inside and locked it again. A few minutes later he was running through Victorian London, he needed to get back and find out what was happening. He ran into the tavern and saw a small crude wooden coffin sitting on one table, the lid was closed.
‘Where have you been?’ Goliath asked accusingly.
‘Out of town on business, what happened?’
‘Tom Barber took her and told us that she would be freed when you gave yourself up to him. We could not contact you and when the thief taker closed in on Barber, he killed her. The thief taker has Barber and he will hang but Sarah is dead.’ Goliath answered.
‘Can you do anything?’ Mary pleaded.
William looked at the coffin.
‘I don’t know if I can Mary but I will certainly try.’ He answered.
Goliath did not understand what Mary meant and put her arms round her assuming that grief was making her too distressed to make sense.
William left them to bury Sarah, he wanted no part of Victorian London if Sarah was dead and the only way he could change that was to risk not being able to come back again. Now it was a risk he was willing to take. He had to go back and try to change things so that he could come back in time to save her life. He had to wait in the cupboard for a while until the cleaning lady finished and went home, then he emerged, to try to work out what to do.
After buying a lot of electrical test equipment he realised that he was getting nowhere, he needed help. He decided to advertise for an electronics expert to help him, after all he could easily afford it. He needed to be able to turn back the clock and return to the day before Tom Barber killed Sarah, that way he might be able to change things.
The man he chose was a mature televisio
n engineer who had great credentials and good references. He no longer wanted to drive round the country, trying to park to mend plasma televisions and working in a workshop suited him down to the ground. William interviewed him the first time when he was looking for an engineer. When they met the second time, William gave him the job and explained what he wanted him to do.
‘What I need James, is for you to look at a television I have, which is set up just how I want it to be, find out about the original fault on the television and work out how to adjust the modification, if it is possible.’ William announced in his lounge. ‘I have numerous pieces of equipment you can use to test with and when you have an idea you can tell me what sort of workshop I need to supply, for you to do the work in. You might not understand what it all means but you cannot interfere with the original piece of equipment but you need to recreate it in the workshop. The one thing you will understand is the bonus I am offering if you are successful in doing what I want, that is fifty thousand pounds!’
James’ eyes opened wide.
‘A fifty thousand pounds bonus, that means I can retire when I have finished.’
‘That you can, when we have a working machine, you will get the money, James.’ William agreed.
In one way William wanted it finished as soon as possible but realistically, if it could not be done then he would not go back at all. On the other hand, if James was successful he could go back to before Sarah was killed and save her however long it took.
William was the worst employer ever, hovering over James as he examined the television which William had attempted to repair but James was very laid back. He asked questions and pointed to components as he took reading after reading, not once did he ask what it was, he assumed that is was just a television.
‘I can’t see why what you added to it, makes it work when the R21 is burnt out, it throws the whole of that board into disarray with spurious currents and voltages travelling where they should not.’ James declared after an hour of testing.
‘When you say burnt out, does that mean that it is out of circuit now or just giving a different reading?’ William asked.
‘It could be either, it could now be at meg ohm level or open circuit, the only way to find out is to removed it and test it separately.’ James answered.
‘That can’t happen,’ William answered emphatically, ‘but we can use one of the identical televisions and removed the resistor, add a circuit the same as mine and then see what happens. If you leave it so that you can add a resistor if nothing happens, you can try one resistor after the other until it works.’
‘I can do that, but I will look at the circuit board before I start as a slight change in component layout will change the outcome, it has to be the same circuit board.’ James warned.
James looked at the three televisions William had bought.
‘No these are all different, this was probably a faulty board and it was superseded.’ James declared. ‘What we need is an old television, as it seems important to you and with fifty thousand pounds riding on it, it has become extremely important to me. I know where all the old televisions go to die and I have a friend there who might just help me out.’
‘Go for it, James.’
Now William had to wait again and he was not good at waiting. He paced up and down, tried to watch the normal television but he could not even do that. In the end he went out for a walk and ended up sitting in The Sarah Marchant Memorial Park.
‘Be patient Sarah, I’m trying,’ he said as though she was present, ‘I just chose the wrong time to come back here and stayed too long.’
There was no one to hear him and he said it quietly, just in case there was but he meant what he said. When he walked back to the flat there was no sign of James, William spent the next hour searching websites for old plasma televisions, just in case James had no luck.
When James did phone him, he had good news, he had old televisions but there were too many to bring to the flat, they needed a workshop. William needed to hire a building to be a workshop for James to work in but it meant going into the nineteenth century with a list of prospective workshops to see what was on the site then. He did not really want to see Goliath, Mary and Gus and hoped that he did not run into either of them.
He returned to his flat and after putting the plasma television back into the cupboard, he turned it on. He had to wait again until the screen changed colour then he climbed through into the past. A past he hoped to change. He had both, watched and read H. G. Wells the Time Machine and understood his slant on causality, he made the time machine purely to go back and save his girlfriend and therefore the girl had to die. William had other thoughts on the subject, after thinking about it for a long time. If he altered the time machine to be able to go back into the past and save Sarah, surely then the second time machine would just not have happened and he would be back to having the machine he started with. Of course, in doing all that the flat would be built and his doorway to the twenty first century would be sitting outside the flat and it would have been that way for two weeks now.
William realised that he might be stranded in the nineteenth century when the coins in his pay as you go meter ran out and regretted not doing anything about it, before he came through the first time.
He chose his workshop, and empty building which he could drop down into without being seen and then go and sort out Tom Barber. The name Tom Barber conjured up a picture of a huge man with a wicked temper, and he was going to fight him? He needed to think that out. He returned to the twenty first century and rendezvoused there with James at the new workshop.
‘This is the workshop, you can have the televisions brought here to work on them, I think there is enough room.’ William announced as he gave James a set of keys.
‘What am I actually trying to do?’ James asked.
‘Earn a fifty thousand pound bonus for one, the technical side is yours, the whys and wherefores are mine to sort out. What you don’t know cannot hurt anyone but knowing just might.’
‘You’re the boss.’ James answered.
It took four hours for the televisions to arrive at the workshop and all William had to pay for was the delivery costs. James started work as soon as they were all in the workshop, William had no need to stay, as the working version was not there but he did stay, and helped where he could. In place of the burnt out resistor James soldered in a rheostat so it could be adjusted to a different value. That saved him the trouble of replacing the resistor numerous times. He set it according to his ohm meter before he soldered it into the circuit.
William watched James work knowing he had a long wait on his hands again. When all the televisions were ready William watched James go home then turned them on one by one. He knew they would probably take around four hours before they started working but he had decided to be there all night to watch to see what happened.
The comfortable chair in the workshop was designed to make his wait more acceptable. He sat there reading a book on Victorian history, with the occasional glance at each television in turn.
Four hours to the minute he jumped out of the chair and looked at each screen. He had heard noises while he waited and hoped for a happy outcome, instead he found one television working. He tried the channel change button and ended up watching television. He still looked at the other televisions during the night but nothing happened.
He was asleep in the chair when James arrived for work in the morning. William told him of the complete failure of the tests and James started again.
‘It would help if I could measure the resistance of the burnt out resistor.’ James complained, when he found out that none of them had performed as they were supposed to.
‘Unfortunately that will not happen and I can’t really explain it, we have to keep trying until we are successful, after that we need to be able to adjust the result.’ William answered.
‘Which is?’ James asked.
‘You will know that when you get one of these working,
then you will understand my reluctance.’
‘I have one or two things to try today,’ James explained, ‘last night I subjected twenty resistors to an overload, each one of a different voltage and current. I have measured each reading and listed it using a colour code, I will fit ten of them today in place of the rheostats and we will see what happens.’
William spent another night in the workshop and this time one television screen turned the correct colour and William could shine his torch into the nineteenth century. He turned the other televisions off and left the working model for James to see but covered it with a wooden board to stop anything coming through from the nineteenth century.
When James arrived in the morning he saw nine televisions unplugged and one still plugged in and covered with a board. He looked at the colour code and smiled.
‘That resistor showed quite a remarkable change and although it gave me no resistance reading it did show a high reluctance and high impedance.’ James explained. ‘It was not like any of the others, the surge that caused it must have been huge.’
‘The result is a time machine of sorts,’ William explained, ‘it should be the same date as today but sometime in the nineteenth century.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘No,’ William answered and removed the board, ‘that should be a small door to the nineteenth century.’
James looked suitably dubious and looked into the screen, the sunshine on the other side surprised him so he tried to touch the screen which meant his hand passed into the nineteenth century.
‘So that is why I couldn’t take the other one apart, it does this as well.’ James assumed.
