Ctrl-Z

by Andrew Norriss

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘but stay with the question for a minute; what would you do?’

  ‘Well, I’d phone you and –’

  ‘There isn’t time to phone,’ said Alex. ‘Your dad’s screaming that he’s going to bury you in concrete…’

  ‘Oh… well… I’d go round to your house…’

  ‘Right,’ said Alex. ‘You come round to my house, but I’m not in. I’ve gone down to the shops. So what do you do then?’

  There was something in the intensity of Alex’s gaze that made Callum feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  ‘Well…’ he said, ‘I suppose I’d go upstairs and try using Ctrl‐Z on your computer to –’

  ‘That is exactly what you did!’ said Alex. ‘And you must never do it again!’

  ‘OK.’ Callum looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you hadn’t told me, had you? So you went back in time, but you didn’t know you had! You were just back here in your room playing darts and one of them went out of the window and hurt your dad, so you ran up to my house, set the computer, pressed Ctrl‐Z so you were back here in your room playing darts and one of them went out of the window and hurt your dad, so you ran up to my house and set the computer… !’

  ‘Oh…’ You could almost see the cogs turning in Callum’s brain as he worked out what this meant. ‘What… what happened?’

  Alex told him the whole story. About finding himself at the shop with Mrs Bellini every four minutes, about trying to get home to reset Ctrl‐Z, about taking the bicycle and nearly stealing a car and, finally, about the phone call.

  ‘You must never,’ said Alex, ‘never press Ctrl‐Z without telling me first, so that I can tell you what you need not to do. OK?’

  ‘Right,’ said Callum. ‘OK.’

  That night, Alex wrote an email to his godfather, telling him what had happened. It had been a bit of a shock to realize that his laptop could be quite so dangerous and he wondered if there were any other risks in using it. If there were, he wrote, it would be good to be warned about them so that in future he could try to avoid them.

  The reply, when it arrived, was not as helpful as he’d hoped.

  Dear Alex, it said,

  It sounds like you’ve been making some important mistakes. Well done! And in answer to your question: yes, there are plenty more dangers in using Ctrl‐Z. My advice is to be very careful!

  And I thought I’d mention there’s a chance I may be travelling to Europe some time in the next couple of months – so perhaps I’ll have a chance to call in and hear from you directly how you’re getting on.

  In the meantime, take care!

  Your loving godfather

  John Presley

  ‘Plenty more dangers… ’ Alex read the phrase again.

  It wasn’t exactly encouraging.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Having Ctrl‐Z might cause Alex the occasional scare, but nothing would have persuaded him to give it up. It was by far the most exciting present he had ever received and being able to walk out of school in the middle of the morning or suddenly decide to borrow his mother’s car meant Ctrl‐Z was worth any of the risks involved.

  And in the days that followed, Alex discovered his laptop was useful in more ways than he had expected. For a start, it meant that life became almost totally pain‐free. If he accidentally cut himself on a bit of broken glass, or grazed his elbow when he fell off his bike, or did something as simple as stubbing his toe on a chair leg, with Ctrl‐Z all Alex had to do was go back to before it had happened and the pain was gone as completely as if it had never been there – which of course it hadn’t.

  With Ctrl‐Z, if you were watching a DVD and you were only halfway through it when Dad said it was time for bed, you could go back an hour and watch the second half. If there was a meal you particularly enjoyed you could go back and eat it all over again – and eat it as many times as you liked without getting full because each time you went back, you went back to being as hungry as you were the first time. And if you bought something in a shop, like a computer game, you could have all the fun of playing with it for a few hours and then, if you didn’t want to keep it, go back to before you’d bought it and buy something else.

  But there was one other thing Ctrl‐Z could do that was, in its own way, better than any of those. It was better than never getting hurt, better than undoing Callum’s accidents, and even better than the excitement of breaking all the windows in a greenhouse. With Ctrl‐Z, Alex found, it was possible to make sure that everything went right.

  Everything.

  When Callum rang up to point out that they had missed their favourite TV programme, Alex could go back to when it had started and set the recorder. When Mum left her handbag in a shop, with all her money and her credit cards in it and was convinced it had been stolen, Alex simply rewound time to when it happened and reminded her to pick it up from the counter. And when Dad got back late to the car park after a trip to the swimming pool and found he had a parking fine, Alex went back to make sure he bought a ticket for the time he would need. And had another swim.

  Everything went so much more smoothly with Ctrl‐Z. With his laptop, Alex could iron out all the little irritations and annoyances that might disturb the even flow of life before they ever happened. In school or at home, when the day hit a wrinkle, it was no problem. You just went back and made the wrinkle disappear. Dad taking a wrong turning in the car, someone spilling tea on the carpet, Mum hitting her thumb with a hammer – whatever it was, you simply went back and made sure it didn’t happen. All at the click of a key on the computer.

  And for Alex, the wrinkle that he was particularly glad to smooth out – the one that had, until recently, made him the most uncomfortable – was the way his parents kept having arguments.

  The simplest way to stop his parents arguing, and the one Alex used most often, was to find out the cause and put it right before it happened. If he found them arguing, for instance, about who should have emptied the bin, he would go back and empty it himself so they had nothing to argue about.

  A lot of the time this was what worked best, but it wasn’t always that easy. Sometimes the arguments were about things that Alex couldn’t change, even with Ctrl‐Z. His parents had a huge argument, for instance, the day his mother’s car broke down on the way to a job interview, and there wasn’t much Alex could do about that. Even with Ctrl‐Z he couldn’t fix a faulty distributor.

  Mrs Howard had been working for some years to pass the exams she needed to get a job, like her husband, as an accountant. The plan was that, after she had got some experience working with a local firm, the two of them would set up an accountancy partnership together. It was a dream they had had almost from the time they had got married, but at the moment it seemed to have stalled.

  There were not that many opportunities to work locally as an accountant and when they did come up, there always seemed to be a reason why Mrs Howard didn’t get the job. When she didn’t even get to the interview because her car broke down, they had one of their worst arguments ever, with Mr Howard saying Mrs Howard should have allowed more time and Mrs Howard throwing half a pound of butter at Mr Howard’s head.

  On occasions like this, although there was nothing Alex could do to stop the cause of the argument, he found he could at least defuse the situation. His parents tended not to argue if he was in the same room, and if he went back and made sure he was in the same room when the row started, it usually meant the argument never properly got off the ground.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a big improvement and sometimes he could do even better than that.

  The worst argument his parents had, and the one Alex was particularly proud of sorting out, was the one they had on his mother’s birthday. It was the Wednesday of half‐term and his father had taken Alex into town to collect the birthday present he had bought for his wife.

  Standing in the middle of a brightly lit car showroom, he patted the bonnet of a brand‐new silver Toyota and grinne
d at Alex.

  ‘There!’ he said. ‘You think she’ll like it?’

  ‘You’re buying Mum a car for her birthday?’ said Alex. ‘I thought she said she wanted an engine hoist?’

  ‘I know!’ His father’s smile grew even broader. ‘This is going to be a real surprise! I chose it last week and all I have to do now is pay for it. With this.’ He held out a banker’s draft. ‘It means she won’t break down on the way to important interviews any more. And she won’t have to spend all her spare time repairing that old Triumph, either. She’ll be able to concentrate on getting the sort of job she deserves!’

  When Mrs Howard got home at four o’clock that day, swinging her bicycle on to the driveway, Alex and his father were waiting for her, standing either side of the new car. Mr Howard had got a huge piece of pink ribbon and tied it round the middle into a big bow at the top, so that it looked like a real present.

  Mrs Howard got off her bike and looked at it.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘It’s for you,’ said Mr Howard proudly. ‘Happy birthday!’ said Alex.

  Mrs Howard stepped forward to examine the Toyota.

  ‘I thought I told you I wanted an engine hoist,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said Mr Howard happily, ‘but I got you this.’

  ‘I’ve already got a car,’ said Mrs Howard. ‘But this one,’ said Mr Howard, ‘is completely reliable! You can go to interviews, drive it to work – it’ll never break down!’

  ‘And what do I do with that?’ Mrs Howard pointed to the Triumph in the garage.

  ‘Well… you can sell it!’

  ‘Sell it.’ Mrs Howard looked at her husband. ‘Of course. After I’ve spent two years doing it up, what else would I want to do but sell it?’

  ‘Look,’ said Mr Howard, beginning to sound rather cross, ‘I think the least you can do after I’ve spent all that money is –’

  ‘Yes, that’s the other thing,’ interrupted Mrs Howard. ‘You spent all that money without talking to me about it first?’

  Mr Howard stared at her. ‘I can’t believe this! You are angry with me for buying you a car?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Mrs Howard. ‘Very angry.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Mr Howard was beginning to sound quite angry himself. ‘We’ve been working for twelve years so that you can do something a bit more useful with your life than be a garage receptionist, and I thought at least you’d like –’

  ‘No, you didn’t!’ said Mrs Howard. ‘You didn’t think what I might like at all. All you did was decide what you wanted, and then went ahead and did it!’

  After that things followed a familiar pattern. The arguing got worse, the things that were said got more hurtful and the voices got louder and louder until they were both shouting so much that neither of them noticed Alex as he quietly walked back into the house and up to his room.

  ‘There!’ said his father, patting the bonnet of a silver Toyota. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s fantastic,’ said Alex, ‘but if you’re getting it for Mum’s birthday, I can tell you she won’t like it.’

  ‘What?’ His father looked rather startled. ‘What do you mean? How can she not like it? It’s brand new. It won’t break down on the way to interviews. It’s –’

  ‘She’s already got a car,’ said Alex. ‘The Triumph.’

  ‘Well, she can sell that!’

  ‘She’s been working on it for two years!’ said Alex. ‘Would you want to sell something you’d been working on for two years and only just finished?’

  Mr Howard opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

  ‘You need to trust me on this one, Dad,’ said Alex firmly. ‘Don’t buy the car. Not till you’ve talked to Mum about it. It’d be a mistake. I know it would.’

  There was something in the way his son spoke that made Mr Howard hesitate. Things had not been working out too well with Lois recently and he had been hoping that the present would improve things. But if Alex was right…

  ‘Why don’t you call her?’ said Alex. ‘Just to check it’s what she’d really want.’

  ‘If I call her,’ said his father, ‘it won’t be a surprise.’

  ‘If it is a surprise,’ said Alex, ‘it’ll be a disaster. Honestly.’

  Mr Howard said nothing for several seconds, then slowly took out his mobile and dialled his wife’s number. The conversation he had was short, but left him in no doubt what he should do.

  ‘Right.’ He turned to Alex. ‘Let’s go and buy that engine hoist.’

  Mrs Howard was delighted with her birthday present. It would mean, she pointed out, that she could get at the driveshaft housing without all the trouble of taking her car down to the garage. She gave her husband a huge hug and an embarrass‐ingly soppy kiss, then sat down and opened her cards and her other presents. Later, she ate the supper Dad had cooked, and the cake he had bought and said at the end that it had been one of the nicest birthdays she could remember.

  Mr Howard was pleased, you could see that, but Alex couldn’t help noticing that his father was quieter than usual and, occasionally through the evening, he would look at his wife with a puzzled expression, as if there was something about her that he simply didn’t understand. He had wanted to buy her a really expensive present, something that would be useful as well as smart, something she really needed… and for some reason it was not what she wanted.

  He wondered, sometimes, if he understood her at all.

  Alex was puzzled as well. The two birthdays could not have been more different, he thought. If you’d seen how furious his mother was the first time round and how his parents had shouted and yelled, you’d have thought they hated each other and were heading for a divorce. And yet, when the same two people came together with a different birthday present, they had both been happy and full of smiles and everything had been just like the old days. Why, he wondered, should what you got for your birthday make so much difference?

  Not that he was objecting. With Ctrl‐Z, he had managed to make things turn out right, and that was the best thing about having his laptop, really.

  That you could make everything turn out right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Alex was not the only one who appreciated the effects of Ctrl‐Z. Life for his friend Callum had not simply got better, it had been transformed.

  Callum had been accident‐prone for almost as long as he could remember and however hard he tried, he had never found a way to stop it. A psychologist had once suggested that the accidents happened because he was always worrying that they might, but as Callum pointed out, he only worried because the accidents did happen – and it was very hard not to worry if you walked through life knowing that disaster was always only a footstep away.

  In the last few weeks, however, all that had changed. Since Alex had been given the laptop, Callum had not had any accidents at all. None, at least, that he could remember, and for the first time in years the anxiety that had once been his constant companion had eased. He no longer walked everywhere with the worry at the back of his mind that something bad was about to happen because… well, because nothing bad did happen any more. And, apparently, if it ever did all he had to do was tell Alex and let him press a couple of keys on his computer.

  The relief was almost indescribable. The tight ball of tension that Callum normally felt in the pit of his stomach had begun to unwind. The worry slipped away, and it was as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. There was a relaxed ease in the way Callum walked these days, a calm in the face of any situation that he had never shown before and – and this was the really odd thing – he didn’t have as many accidents now. In fact, fewer and fewer all the time.

  When Alex had first got his laptop, he could expect to rescue his friend from some disaster at least once or twice a day but, as the weeks passed, that number had steadily dwindled. Maybe the psychologist had been right and, now that he was less anxious, Callum was no longer drawing the accidents into his life.
Alex didn’t know, but he did know that his friend had changed.

  Mr and Mrs Bannister had noticed it as well. ‘I hope you know how grateful we are,’ Callum’s mother told Alex one day as they were sitting out in the garden. She pointed to Callum standing at the barbecue in an apron, calmly cooking sausages. ‘Look at him!’ she said proudly. ‘He’s in charge of an open fire and we’re not worried at all! It’s like he’s a different boy!’ She beamed down at Alex. ‘And we all know why, don’t we!’

  ‘Do we?’ said Alex a little nervously. He had explained to Callum the importance of not saying anything to his parents about Ctrl‐Z.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it!’ Mrs Bannister placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder. ‘Callum’s told us how you’ve been helping him. Talking to him. Teaching him how to stay out of trouble.’

  ‘Oh, that…’ said Alex. ‘And whatever you’ve said to him, it’s certainly worked.’ Mr Bannister had come over to join them. ‘We can’t believe how much better he’s been the last few weeks. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Alex. ‘And because of that,’ said Mrs Bannister, ‘we were wondering if perhaps you’d be able to come on holiday with us this summer. Only it makes such a difference when you’re around, and we thought –’

  ‘We thought it’d be safer for all of us,’ Mr

  Bannister took over, ‘if you came too. We’re renting a villa in France. With a swimming pool. If you’d like, I’ll have a word with your parents.’

  And Alex said he thought a villa in France with a swimming pool would be… very nice. Thank you!

  The one thing Alex hadn’t been able to do with his computer was use it to make money. Godfather John had said that, if he thought about it, he would find there were at least twenty‐seven ways to make himself rich with Ctrl‐Z – and Alex had thought about it, but without coming up with one idea, let alone twenty‐seven. Not that it bothered him, really. At the moment, he was having too much fun.

  One day he painted the sitting‐room sofa blue (to see what it looked like); on another he experimented with putting half a dozen eggs in the microwave to see if they’d explode (they did); and on another he nailed a set of planks to the staircase so that he could use it as a ski run. In fact he did all the things that a boy his age might want to do if he knew they wouldn’t get into trouble for doing them.