by S G Read
They returned to the twenty first century and William gave James the note to read. He read it, sat down and read it again.
‘So how come I can’t remember anything about it?’ James asked.
‘Causality, time slip, something like that. What we did to help, changed everything so that that time line ceased to be and it reverted to the earlier time line, one in which Sarah did not die.’ William explained as best he could but he did not really understand it himself.
‘So I helped save someone’s life and I can’t remember it, will they?’ James asked.
‘As you were there and they saw you I think they will, so don’t be surprised if they do recognise you.’ William explained.
When they climbed through the next time they were in Victorian garb. They walked out of the door and across the road to the tavern. Sarah saw James first.
‘James, you are back!’ She cried and ran over to where he stood and gave him a big hug.
He had been well briefed on who was who.
‘Hello Sarah, I glad to see you fit and well still.’ James answered.
‘What do you want, food or just ale?’ Goliath asked. ‘It is all on the house, you just have to choose.’
By the time they returned to the twenty first century they were well fed and slightly drunk, they sat on the bed in the flat for a rest before moving on.
‘Well that was strange,’ James declared, ‘being a hero and I can’t remember it.’
‘I know what you mean but look at this picture on my phone, I wondered where it was but it is this place but not a house, it is a park made in memory of Sarah.’ William answered and showed him the picture. ‘We have to be very careful what we change while we are through here. I was content just to rent a place here but when this place was burnt down and I thought I was trapped here I bought a house, I also rent a room in another tavern, which is where I found the television when this house wasn’t rebuilt.’
‘Should we make any more openings like that one?’ James asked, nodding to the television in the bathroom.
‘Yes but just to explore the effects of changing things about and trying to go back further, we can destroy the televisions afterwards, if we think it is better that way.’ William answered.
‘Well I will be happy to work in a workshop instead of driving about London and trying to get to houses to mend televisions, when do I start?’
‘As soon as you can.’ William answered.
‘A week Monday, I will hand in my notice on Monday.’
‘A week Monday it is then, I look forward to working with you.’ William replied.
While James was working out his notice William started equipping the new workshop, he was following his own dictates, he did not know why and when he had written the notes but he knew they were important, as he had written that on there as well.
A week later James started work, he had a workshop to himself and arranged to get hold of the same televisions he had collected before. The only difference now was that they had an occasional visitor, Sarah, she came to see just how they were getting on.
James and William worked without any pressure, they had no reason to succeed, they were just interested in finding out what made the device tick. James made a detailed drawing of the layout and wrote down what he thought had happened to the resistor. He speculated on the effect the overload had on the resistor and added components to mimic its new properties. He added in a few controls and began testing the new circuit. It would take four hours to warm up so he turned it on and set the controls at half power. Four hours later they heard strange noises and traced it to the television.
‘Is it a film?’ James asked.
William passed his hand through the screen.
‘No this is working.’ He answered.
‘What is making that noise then?’ James asked.
‘It sounds rather like a dinosaur to me.’ William answered.
Suddenly they were both very interested and looked through to see what was on the other side. They could see trees and lush growth but could not see any animals, just hear them.
‘Do we go and have a look?’ James asked.
‘Now that is a good question, if we get eaten it will be the end of everything we are trying to do and we will probably not be able to date it very accurately.’
‘We could move the television and find something to bring back without having to go into the past.’ James suggested.
‘A sound possibility, James,’ William agreed, ‘it might help us work out what year it is. Let us put the television on a trolley and wheel it round to try to find something to collect.’
They spent an hour moving the television round the workshop and then out the back in the car park, eventually they found some eggs. William reached through and picked one up.
‘I wonder what it will be when it hatches.’ James mused when William held it up.
‘Surely you are not suggesting that we hatch it to find out?’ William retorted.
‘Can you think of any other way of finding out?’ James asked.
‘No, now that you mention it but what if it is something huge?’
‘It will make us the talk of London.’ James answered.
‘When it eats someone but that would be more notoriety than fame.’
‘We will have to make sure that that does not happen then.’ James argued.
‘It sounds like we need an incubator then.’ William answered.
‘What about the television, we can’t leave it in the car park and we need to return whatever hatches to this spot for continuity, surely.’ James asked.
William looked to see how close they were to the main building.
‘A porta cabin long ways on from the back door should reach here and then we can walk in and out of the porta cabin without any problem.’ He answered. ‘All I have to do is to get permission to put one here on a temporary basis and then buy one but I have to get it all done before the egg hatches.’
‘How long does a dinosaur egg take to hatch?’ James asked.
William looked over to where he stood supporting the television.
‘I will answer that, James, when this one hatches.’ William answered.
He was soon working on the internet, he had to locate a suitable incubator, the fact that the egg was smaller than an ostrich’s egg led them to believe that it was only a small dinosaur. Whether or not that turned out to be correct, was yet to be seen. He also had to start the ball rolling on the location of the porta cabin but if that was turned down he had a back-up plan, a lorry parked just where they wanted it to conceal the television in.
The following morning the incubator arrived, they plugged it in and put the egg inside it. They both stood there looking at the egg for some time, what they expected neither knew but they stood watching it until it was obvious that nothing was going to happen in the immediate future. William continued with the permission for a porta cabin while James started working on a bigger better television to try to be able to walk through it without the struggle to climb down through as they had to now. It was a different make of television but he looked at the wiring and found that it was similar to the ones they were using. Whether it would work he did not know but he it thought that it would be fun to find out.
When Sarah saw the egg she wanted to go through and collect more, in the end William took her back to the flat and showed her a documentary on dinosaurs so that she could see how big they were and the fact that they just ate, what or who they wanted to. It had the desired effect, she no longer wanted to go into prehistoric England, in fact she was now worried what the egg would hatch in to. That coupled with her normal life in Victorian England made her life quite complicated and she had to be on her guard against saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time.
Mary was now happily married and did not want to talk about the fire and their impossible escape, although Goliath did ask her how they did manage to get out of the secured house. She had seen what Sarah had seen but she preferr
ed not to talk about it, which did not help Sarah. The subject was not up for discussion, Mary knew how easy it was to end up in Bedlam and she did want that to happen to her or Sarah.
Sarah was left with her thoughts while she was in the nineteenth century and William was in the twenty first century. She chose to spend as much time in the twenty first century as possible to save having to watch her tongue but when she met Charles Craigmore, an inventor she found that he was good to talk to. He had weird ideas according to the locals she spoke to, and was busily trying to make a carriage run without horses, using a steam engine. She spent more time there and he was surprised just how knowledgeable Sarah was for someone who waited on tables in a tavern. Some of her suggestions made sense and he took one up to help him in his work, after that she was welcome in his workshop.
Meanwhile back in the twenty first century William finally received permission to site a porta cabin where he wanted it. The following day the porta cabin arrived and was soon placed as close to the back door as it could possibly sit. That caused other problems as the back door opened outwards, they had to get a builder out to install a new door which opened inwards.
After everyone had gone they checked the progress of the egg in the incubator and compared it with the rest of eggs in the nest. William had looked up hatching times for eggs but no one had timed a dinosaur egg before. It was done scientifically and they made note on how they did it. They took an idea from a film and turned the egg every day, why they did, they had no idea but it could do no harm.
As time moved on Sarah came more and more, wondering what the egg would hatch into. She wanted to be there when it hatched but no one could tell her when it would and that made her come more and more. She also used the internet to look up steam engines and how they worked without explaining to William why she was interested.
Sarah’s fifteenth birthday arrived and William arranged two parties for her. She had never had a birthday party before and the one in the nineteenth century made her happy. In the twenty first century William arranged for her to have a helicopter flight. That made her both happy and sad, as she could tell no one in the nineteenth century about it.
William found a house in London which burnt to the ground and went in to see the owner just before the fire to try to buy some of the furniture and fittings. It was an odd conversation but when William offered double what each item was worth the man soon parted with some of them. William only bought what he could get through the original television as the new version with the bigger screen that James was working on was not yet up and running.
James finally finished the new plasma television wiring and with his newly gained insight on how it worked, he added another circuit, so that the picture could be reduced in size, for the initial look into the year they were looking in. He announced to William that it was ready and he went into the past to where Sarah was cleaning tables to let her know.
Between them they set a time and date for the big turn on and they were all there when James plugged the television in and turned it on. They did not know when it would work or if it would work but they stood waiting hoping that James work was not in vain. Half an hour after switch on, the screen turned green.
‘They’ve never done that before.’ James said in alarm.
‘It is a new circuit,’ William replied, ‘so we’ll give it some time.’
‘Yes, the new parts might make it go green.’ Sarah added, although anything to do with the television went right over her head.
They waited patiently for something to happen and it did, the egg in the incubator started to hatch. The new television was forgotten and all eyes moved to the egg as a small creature emerged from the egg.
‘What is it?’ Sarah asked, she had used the internet to read up about dinosaurs but was still unsure what it was, as it was a very small for a dinosaur.
William looked at it closely.
‘It looks like a triceratops to me by those horns on its head.’ He answered.
‘I can see what you mean,’ James agreed, ‘so we know it is a herbivore but don’t they grow quite big?’
‘Yes they do so we need to put it back while it is still small enough to fit through the television, we can’t have one of them walking about in the twenty first century, people would wonder where it came from.’
‘What about a park like the one in that film you showed me?’ Sarah asked.
‘Do you mean the park where the animals started to eat the tourists?’ James asked.
‘But you just said that this one is an herbivore, they only eat vegetation according to what I read on the internet.’ Sarah answered. ‘Surely if you do not bring back any meat eating dinosaurs then it will be safe for people to go in and see them?’
‘It sounds like a good idea but to be able to buy a park like that, I would need a lot more money than I have now.’ William explained. ‘In short the triceratops is going home before it grows too much but we will have to feed it until then.’
All three of them had the same idea and hurried to the television which was aimed at the Stone Age. They leant through and pulled leaves and branches off the bushes to feed the baby triceratops. They found that it was hungry.
‘How quickly do they grow?’ Sarah asked as she fed it.
‘I have no idea but it has to go back through before it grows too big.’ William repeated.
‘What if something eats it?’ Sarah asked, turning to face William.
‘Then it gets eaten.’ William answered.
‘What if we changed what happened and it would have escaped and got quite old, surely we could change things back there.’ Sarah argued.
‘That is a chance we have to take, to not put it back means it dies in that time line anyway but it also means we have a triceratops to deal with and they grow quite big.’ William explained. ‘It has to take its chance back in its own time, there are predators that will try to kill it if they find it but we might have saved it by bringing it through and all its brothers and sisters might have been killed as they have all hatched.’
‘Can we go through to see what is going on there, to see if any made it alive?’ Sarah begged.
‘Are you sure you want to?’ James asked. ‘It might not be nice.’
‘I have to know, if some survive then it does not matter so much if this one gets eaten but if the rest are eaten then it will be better to wait as long as we can before we return it to its time.’ Sarah answered.
‘If that does happen, we will know it should have been eaten and we will know we have changed things.’ William argued.
‘But it might have escaped the nest undetected if it was the first one hatched.’ Sarah argued.
‘We shall find out when we return it to the right year,’ William answered, ‘if the world is suddenly run by dinosaurs, then we can assume it has made a difference.’
The following day James was working on his latest television and tried to make it adjustable like the television which was open into the stone age although they had yet to try to adjust the date it was set to so that they could allow the triceratops to grow even larger than the television which was set to the Stone Age. That was all he could do to try to help it.
When he turned the latest television on it was set in the eighteenth century but this time he tried the adjustments, when he turned it to try to make it change the year the television went blank and he had to wait for it to come on again. This time it was in the nineteen fifties, which he thought was fairly safe and decided to have a walk round. He saw something he wanted in the nineteen fifties, a hunting rifle but he needed money from that era to be able buy it. He spent two hours on the internet when he returned, to find a way to be able to buy it, in the end he bought an antique television in the later time line, which was actually just on the market at that time. He bartered it for the hunting rifle and returned triumphantly. The man selling the rifle had given him a lesson on how to use it, before he climbed back through to the present, as James had not fired a rifle befor
e.
He had barely had time to put the rifle down when he heard a child scream, it was a loud and hysterical scream and James tried to pinpoint the source, it was the Stone Age. He only hesitated for second then picked up the rifle and stepped into the Stone Age.
He crept through the trees, as he knew that there were predators which would eat him without stopping to think about it and he did not want that to happen. He wanted to help the child but on the other hand, he could hardly do that if he was dead. He could still hear the screams and that told him the child was still alive as he moved through the trees, the hunting rifle at the ready.
In front of him he saw the girl who was screaming, she was dressed in an animal skin and it dawned on him that she would be a stone age girl. He moved further and saw the reason why she was screaming, she was being stalked by a sabre toothed tiger. He raised the rifle but watched for a few more seconds and realised the tiger was making her scream on purpose, it could have killed her long before but he was playing with her.
James smiled at the irony and shot the sabre toothed tiger dead. The girl stopped screaming and looked at the dead tiger before turning to look at James. James watched the tiger to make sure it was dead then smiled at the girl. She looked back at him blankly then he turned back to return to the present. He walked carefully to make sure nothing took him by surprise and climbed back through the television, a noise behind him made him spin round with the rifle ready to shoot. The girl had followed him through.
He tried to get her to go back but as she could not understand him and he could not understand her, he did not get anywhere. He was still trying when William and Sarah walked in. They saw the girl dressed in the animal skin, James and then the rifle. Neither spoke but the girl hid behind James for protection.
