Ctrl-Z

by Andrew Norriss

  He was still wondering when Mr Eccles, after giving the box of draw tickets a particularly vigorous shake and getting a small girl in the front row to pick out a ticket, announced that the winner of the hamper of groceries was ticket 576.

  ‘It’s the wrong number!’ Callum shuffled through the tickets they had bought and then looked at Alex’s list. ‘It was supposed to be three hundred and seventy‐three!’

  Alex was the one who worked out what had happened. The number was different because Mr Eccles was behaving differently. When he had watched the prize‐giving the first time, Alex remembered, Mr Eccles had picked out all the numbers himself. He had not given the box a particularly hard shake, nor had he asked a girl from the front row of the crowd to choose a ticket. He was behaving differently this time so naturally the numbers that were chosen in the draw would be different as well.

  It was, if he was honest, something of a relief. He had the definite feeling that if he had won anything else, the crowd would have done more than just mutter.

  All in all, it was a disappointing afternoon, and it wasn’t made any better when he dropped the jar of Smarties in a gutter on the way home and then found, two minutes later, that the twenty‐pound note had fallen through a hole in his pocket. By the time he had given the hairdryer to his mother and the bottle of champagne to Mrs Bannister it meant he had no prizes at all.

  ‘Never mind.’ Callum put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You can still do the lottery on Saturday.’

  But it turned out Callum was wrong. When he got home from the fête and went up to his room, Alex found an email on his computer from Godfather John, which said –

  Dear Alex

  Thank you for your letter, and it was good to hear you were enjoying Ctrl‐Z. How interesting that you should have started off by using it to stop your friend having quite so many accidents – and how kind – though I am sure you will

  soon discover it is only one of a good many things you can do!

  And perhaps I should have warned you about one of them. It will probably occur to you at some point that you can use Ctrl‐Z to put a bet on a horse race, play the Stock Exchange or win the National Lottery – and I’m afraid, if you do, the results will be disappointing. Ctrl‐Z will not allow you to violate the Universal Law of Appropriate Returns and you will find, if you try it, that you never get the reward you expected. My advice is to give all those things a miss.

  However, if you give the matter some thought, I’m sure you will soon realize there are at least twenty‐seven legitimate means of making money with Ctrl‐Z, any of which will have much happier results.

  So have fun, make mistakes, and if you have a chance to tell me about them, do write again!

  Your loving godfather

  John Presley

  PS In answer to your question ‘Where did you get Ctrl‐Z?’, I made it myself. How I made it and how it works is rather more complicated and an explanation may have to wait until you have a basic grasp of quantum physics. In the meantime, however, I suggest you just sit back and enjoy it!

  When he had read the letter, Alex leant back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the computer screen. He had never heard of the Universal Law of Appropriate Returns, but it might explain his dropping the jar of Smarties into a gutter and then losing the twenty‐pound note through a hole in his pocket. They were the sort of accidents that Callum might have had, but not Alex. If his uncle was right, he thought, it meant there would be no millions from the lottery. Which was a shame.

  Though the idea that there were twenty‐seven ways he could use Ctrl‐Z to make money legitimately was encouraging.

  He wondered what they might be.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Twenty‐seven?’ said Callum as he and Alex were walking to school the next morning. ‘Twenty‐seven ways to make money?’

  ‘At least twenty‐seven,’ said Alex. ‘That’s what he said in the email.’

  Callum frowned. ‘Like what?’

  So far, Alex had to admit, he didn’t know. He had lain in bed the night before for over an hour, trying to think of even one way that Ctrl‐Z could be used to make money and come up with nothing. He had rather hoped that Callum might be able to help.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Callum, after considering the problem for several minutes. ‘I can’t think of anything.’

  It wasn’t important, Alex thought. They had plenty of time to work on it and, in the meantime, he had had an idea how his computer might be useful at school.

  ‘I was thinking of using it in the test this morning,’ he said.

  Each Monday morning, Miss Simpson gave her class a general knowledge test based on events that had been on the news or in the papers over the weekend. The person who got the most marks could choose a sweet from the treats jar and most weeks it was Sophie Reynolds, who always seemed to know everything. As a rule, neither Alex nor Callum did particularly well.

  ‘But if I listen to the answers,’ Alex explained, ‘then go back to before the test started and take it again, I should be able to get full marks, shouldn’t I!’

  ‘Yes…’ Callum agreed cautiously, ‘except you don’t have the computer with you, do you?’

  He could see Alex was only carrying his school bag, and there wasn’t room in it for his laptop.

  Alex had thought about taking his computer to school, but decided in the end that it would not be wise. You were not supposed to bring anything that ran on batteries on to school premises and if you did, Mr Eccles was liable to confiscate it. His computer would be useful in school, Alex knew, but nothing was worth the risk of losing it.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference, though,’ he told Callum, ‘because I just have to wait till I get home, don’t I? Then I can use it to go back to whenever I want.’

  ‘If you did that,’ said Callum, ‘it would mean sitting through all the lessons again. Even Geography.’

  This was, Alex had to admit, a serious consideration. Geography was boring enough the first time round. No one would go through it twice without a very good reason. A better reason than a free sweet, anyway.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘maybe I’ll save the test idea for another time.’

  But when they got to school, Callum had another of his accidents.

  At the fête the day before, Callum had bought a pot of something called Roller Putty. It was odd stuff, slightly sticky, but when rolled in a ball, bounced off the walls or the floor with extraordinary speed. He was giving a demonstration of this in the boys’ toilets before school started and threw the Roller Putty on to the floor, where it bounced straight up to the ceiling above one of the lavatories… and stuck there.

  Callum climbed on to the lavatory bowl to get it back, but slipped. His right foot landed in the bowl and he couldn’t get it out. He pulled and twisted, but however hard he tried, his foot was firmly jammed down the bend in the pan.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Alex. ‘I’ll get Mr Boney.’ Mr Boney was the school caretaker and while waiting for him to arrive Callum struggled desperately to get free, and – and this was his real mistake – grabbed hold of the cistern on the wall above the toilet to try to get some leverage to pull his foot out. As he tugged, the cistern came away from the wall.

  There was a lot of water. There was the water from the cistern, which emptied itself down Callum’s front, there was more water flushing up his trouser leg from the bowl and there was a huge amount of water spraying on to his face and chest from the broken pipe on the wall.

  It took the caretaker fifteen minutes to turn off the water and get Callum’s foot free from the toilet, by which time the entire room was flooded. Then Callum had to report to Mr Eccles the head teacher, who lectured him on the cost of damage done to school property by carelessness, before sending him to get some dry clothes from the office.

  The school office kept a small supply of clothes that students could borrow in an emergency. Most of them, however, were for younger children and the best that the secretary could offer Callum w
as a pair of rather small PE shorts and a girl’s blouse. On top of what had already happened it was, to say the least, embarrassing.

  ‘Goodness, Callum!’ said Miss Simpson when he finally arrived at the classroom. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘He had an accident in the toilets, Miss,’ said Sophie Reynolds.

  ‘Well, never mind!’ Miss Simpson patted Callum’s shoulder sympathetically. ‘A lot of children have that problem and I’m sure you’ll grow out of it.’

  Callum wanted to explain it had not been that sort of accident but Miss Simpson was already telling everyone to get out their pens for the general knowledge test.

  For both boys, the test was even worse than usual. Alex got one right answer out of twenty and Callum got none at all. The sweet from the treats jar went to Sophie Reynolds again, and at break time the two boys sat on a bench in the playground feeling rather depressed.

  On top of the accident and the test, Alex had just discovered he had forgotten to pack his lunch box in his bag, and Callum had found out that Sophie Reynolds had somehow taken a video of him with his foot in the toilet on her mobile phone and was going to post it that evening on the Internet. He had pleaded with her not to do this, but Sophie had told him that if he had been someone she liked she might have agreed, but he wasn’t.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Alex told him. ‘When I get home, I’ll be able to make all this not happen.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Callum. ‘That’ll be good.’ But it didn’t sound like the idea cheered him up much.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We just have to wait, that’s all.’

  Callum nodded, but he wasn’t happy. Even if Alex could make everything all right eventually, somehow he still had to get through the rest of the day.

  Then, as he was walking back to class at the end of break, Alex suddenly realized he didn’t have to wait till the end of the day before going home and pressing Ctrl‐Z on his computer. He could go home now. And there was no need to worry about getting into trouble for leaving school without permission because by the time he’d got home and pressed Ctrl‐Z, no one would know that that was what he had done. In fact, he wouldn’t have done it. That was the whole point. None of the events of the morning would have happened.

  Instead of going to the classroom, he made his way down the corridor that led to the main entrance… then stopped at the supply cupboard outside the library. The door was open and the sight of the contents inside gave him an idea.

  Thoughtfully, he reached up to one of the shelves and took down a bucket of wallpaper paste that had been put there for the Year Ones to use to make papier mâché masks. Before he went home, he thought, there was one thing he wanted to do…

  In the classroom, Miss Simpson had begun flashing up pictures of a farm in Brazil on the whiteboard and didn’t see Alex as he came in, walked straight over to the table by the window and carefully emptied the bucket of paste over Sophie Reynolds’s head. Sophie screamed, there was a gasp from the class and Miss Simpson, when she turned round and saw what had happened, was at first too astonished to speak. For several seconds the entire class sat there in silence staring at Alex and the only sound was the drip of wall‐paper paste as it slid down Sophie’s face and on to the floor.

  ‘If anyone’s wondering why I did that,’ said Alex, ‘I’ll tell you. I don’t like Sophie. Yesterday she said I was cheating when I won a prize at the fête, and this morning she took photos of Callum when he got his foot stuck in the toilet and said she’s going to put them on the web. I thought she deserved to have something bad happen to her for a change.’

  ‘Alex Howard!’ Miss Simpson had finally recovered her voice. ‘Have you gone completely mad?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Alex. ‘No need to get upset.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll want me to go to Mr Eccles’s office now, I expect.’ Despite what had happened, he felt remarkably calm. ‘I’ll go and do that then, shall I?’

  He left the classroom and walked along the corridor to the Head’s office. He didn’t go in, though. Instead, he went straight past to where the school receptionist was at her desk and tapped on the window.

  ‘Mr Eccles says can he have a jug of hot water, please,’ he said.

  ‘A jug of hot water?’ The receptionist looked puzzled. ‘What for?’

  Alex gave a shrug. ‘He just said to ask if you could bring it to his office.’

  With a sigh, the receptionist got up and disappeared in the direction of the kitchens. As soon as she was out of sight, Alex pressed the security button that unlocked the front door and walked out. The path that led to the road was screened by bushes so nobody saw him as he strode out through the school gates and began walking home.

  He didn’t have his bag with him – that was still in the classroom – but it didn’t matter because when he pressed Ctrl‐Z the bag would be with him at home again. Nothing mattered. It was a warm day and, as he walked, he took off his sweatshirt and left it hanging on some railings. There was no point in carrying it if he didn’t need it. That was something else that didn’t matter.

  If anyone had stopped him on the way home and asked why he wasn’t in school, he had a story ready about being off with suspected measles, but nobody did. Nobody gave him a second glance and he was back in Oakwood Close fifteen minutes later, collecting the spare key from under the loose brick in the paving so that he could open the front door.

  The only person who saw him was Mr Kowalski, who was out in his front garden planting some geraniums. He was wearing the grey cardigan with the holes in the elbows that he always wore, and there was a stubble of unshaven hairs on his chin.

  ‘Hey, Alex!’ he called. ‘Why you not in school?’, but Alex didn’t answer. He simply smiled and waved, and let himself indoors.

  The house was empty. His mother and father were both at work and Alex helped himself to a can of drink and a chocolate bar from the tin in the kitchen. Normally he was only allowed a chocolate bar if he asked his parents first, but today there was no need to ask anybody about anything because very soon this, like everything else, would never have happened.

  He watched some television while he finished his drink and ate the chocolate bar, then made his way upstairs to his room. Sitting at his desk, he opened his laptop, set the time for twenty‐five past eight in the morning and pressed Ctrl‐Z.

  An instant later, he was walking along the pavement with Callum.

  ‘Twenty‐seven?’ Callum was saying. ‘Twenty‐seven ways to make money?’

  ‘At least twenty‐seven,’ said Alex, ‘and before you ask what any of them are, I have to go back and get my lunch box, and then I’m going to warn you about the Roller Putty…’

  The second time around, the morning was much more pleasant. On the walk to school, Alex went over the questions he could remember from Miss Simpson’s general knowledge test and both boys did rather well. Sophie Reynolds tried not to show it, but you could see she was distinctly put out at coming third.

  It was, from everyone else’s point of view, a very ordinary day, but Alex found himself thinking at odd moments how different it had been the first time around. He thought about pouring the bucket of paste over Sophie Reynolds’s head and how calm he had felt as he offered to report himself to the head teacher. He thought about what it had been like to walk out of school in the middle of the morning and to leave all his cares, like his school sweatshirt, hanging on some railings behind him.

  He was finally beginning to realize that, with Ctrl‐Z, you could do anything. Anything at all. Whatever you wanted, however strange or dangerous or wicked – however much trouble it would cause – you could just go ahead and do it.

  And that was an idea with some interesting possibilities.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘You’re going to what?’ asked Callum. ‘I’m going to borrow Mum’s car and take it for a drive,’ Alex repeated.

  He and Callum were standing in the garage to one side of Mrs
Howard’s precious TR4. It was Tuesday, they had just got back from school and Alex had everything worked out. He had collected the keys from the hook by the back door in the kitchen, his mother would not be cycling home from her work at the garage for another half‐hour and he was ready to go.

  ‘But you can’t!’ There was a look of panic on Callum’s face. ‘Your mum’s spent years doing that thing up; if you damage it… ’

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ said Alex. ‘It doesn’t matter if I damage it. Because when you press Ctrl‐Z, none of this is ever going to have happened.’

  ‘Me?’ Callum’s look of panic deepened. ‘I’m going to press Ctrl‐Z?’

  ‘Well, I can’t do it, can I!’ Alex passed him the computer. ‘I’m going to have both hands busy with the steering.’ He pulled open the car door. ‘I’ve set the time. All you have to do is press Ctrl‐Z when I tell you.’

  Sitting in the car, he adjusted the seat, put the key into the ignition and turned it. There was a throaty roar from the engine and Alex smiled happily to himself. All he had to do now was depress the clutch and put the gear stick into reverse. He had seen his mother do it a thousand times…

  ‘Please, Alex!’ Callum’s anxious face appeared alongside him. ‘Don’t do this! If something happens –’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Alex waved him away. ‘And don’t press Ctrl‐Z till I say!’

  There was a grinding noise as he put the car into gear then, as he took his foot off the clutch, the car leapt backwards rather faster than he’d expected. The side of the car scraped along the edge of the garage and the wing mirror pinged off on to the floor. Alex hurtled down the drive, pulled hard on the steering wheel, swung the car round and ran straight along the pavement into a lamp post.