Time Rep

by Peter Ward

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Mr. Knight said, placing the clipboard face down on the desk. “Now—tell me about any previous jobs you’ve had.”

  “I’ve only ever had one job, as a paperboy,” he paused. “And I was fired from that two years ago for being too old.”

  “And what were your responsibilities as a paperboy?”

  “I was a paperboy.”

  “Paperboy, yes,” Mr. Knight echoed impatiently. “What were your responsibilities?”

  “Well, when I say ‘paperboy,’ I don’t mean ‘policeman.’ I threw newspapers at houses. There wasn’t really any life-or-death decision making that I can think of.”

  Mr. Knight leaned back in his creaky chair, placing both hands behind his head.

  “So you’ve never had a proper job,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, “You don’t go out, you’ve got no hobbies to speak of, and with the exception of young Tim, you’ve got no friends.”

  Geoff nodded.

  “You’re not very observant, either.” Mr. Knight stood up from his desk and turned to look across London. “Did you notice anything odd about what I just said?”

  “Not really,” Geoff said.

  Mr. Knight turned round. “You haven’t told me the man you live with is called Tim.”

  Geoff was so surprised, he got up from his seat. He stood there for a bit, looked around, then decided to sit back down again.

  “Are you MI6?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Geoff sighed, disappointed.

  “We’ve had someone keeping an eye on you for a while,” Mr. Knight said, returning to his seat. “Tell me—do you actually want this job?”

  “Wait a second.” Geoff stood up again, hoping this gesture would express some sort of outrage. “What do you mean you’ve had someone ‘keeping an eye on me’?”

  “I mean exactly that. We’ve had someone keeping an eye on you.”

  “For how long?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”

  “Forget you said anything? You’ve been spying on me!”

  “Does it really bother you?”

  “Of course it does! What sort of holiday company is this, anyway?”

  “Just a regular holiday company,” Mr. Knight said. “I can’t tell you anything more unless you accept the job.”

  “That’s another thing you haven’t explained.”

  “What?” Mr. Knight said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk.

  “The job. What is it? Or can’t you even tell me that?”

  Mr. Knight said nothing.

  “Right. So I have to accept the job before I know what it is.” Geoff weighed this up in his mind. “Sounds a bit unreasonable.”

  “Nobody’s forcing you to work here.”

  “Fine. I don’t want the job,” Geoff said, turning to leave. He felt defiant.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Knight said. “You’re hired.”

  Geoff did as he was told, slowly lowering himself back into the chair. It was pretty comfortable, after all. “What?”

  “You’ve got the job,” Mr. Knight said, loosening his tie.

  “But I just turned the job down.”

  “I know.” Mr. Knight looked at his watch. “That’s why I’m hiring you.”

  “Ding!” Geoff said.

  That was weird. He was planning to say something along the lines of “what the fuck is going on?” Instead, he’d opted for “ding!” He frowned, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish, before realizing the noise had come from the lift behind him. The door slid open and Ruth walked over to where he and Mr. Knight were sitting.

  “Ruth—excellent timing,” Mr. Knight called out. “Mr. Stamp here’s got the job. The real job, that is.”

  “Brilliant,” she said, leaning against the corner of Mr. Knight’s desk. “Somehow, I had a feeling you’d pick him.”

  Geoff was confused. “This is some sort of joke TV show, right?” he said, flicking his eyes between Ruth and Mr. Knight. “‘TV’s Most Hilarious Interview Antics III’ or something?”

  “No, no no no. This isn’t a joke, Geoff,” he said.

  Geoff flitted his eyes between the two of them again, waiting for someone to explain what the hell was going on.

  “What would your reaction be if I told you that we were from the future?” Mr. Knight asked.

  “Say that again?” Geoff said, leaning forward slightly. He tilted his left ear towards Mr. Knight in the hope that the question would somehow change if he heard it at a different angle.

  “How would you react if I told you that we—myself and Ruth—were from the future?” he repeated.

  “The future?” Geoff said.

  “Yes.”

  “The future future?”

  “The future future, yes.”

  “I’m not sure, really,” Geoff said. “It’s not the kind of thing I have to react to very often. I’m more used to reacting to things like ‘There’s a dress code, sir’ or ‘We’ve run out of milk.’”

  “Fine. I’ll just say it then—myself and Ruth—we’re from the future. The distant future.”

  As it turned out, Geoff’s reaction was to raise his eyebrows as high as they would go, take a lungful of air, hold it in his cheeks, and exhale slowly.

  “I’m going to try and run through this quickly,” Mr. Knight continued. “It always works best if I run through it quickly. We work for Time Tours Inc.”

  “Time Tours Inc?” Geoff said. “Never heard of them.”

  “You wouldn’t have. It’s a travel agent, based in the future, that sells holidays to different time periods. Anyway—we want you to be a holiday rep for the early twenty-first century—a ‘Time Rep,’ if you like. Your job will be exactly the same as if you were a representative for tourists from another country, except the tourists you’ll be dealing with will be from the future. You’ll show them the sights. Take them on tours. That’s the job in a nutshell.”

  The speech was concise. Sounded like he’d said it a hundred times.

  Geoff was still slowly exhaling air from his cheeks. He’d understood roughly none of what Mr. Knight had just said.

  “Any questions?” Ruth said.

  “Yes,” Geoff said. “Tell me—have you both recently been released from some sort of mental hospital?” Geoff asked.

  “No,” Ruth said. “We’re just normal people.”

  “From the future,” Mr. Knight added.

  “Would it be terribly rude if I said that I didn’t believe you?”

  “You don’t believe us?” Mr. Knight said.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Time travel is impossible!”

  “That’s what people once said about teleportation.”

  “That’s what people still say about teleportation!”

  “To be honest,” Ruth interrupted, “this is something we’ve come to expect from all Time Reps when we first tell them. Disbelief. That’s why we always orchestrate the little game with the application letters.”

  “Stops successful interviewees from walking out the door,” Mr. Knight added.

  “What are you talking about?” Geoff stammered.

  “Think about it.” Ruth said, leaning down to retrieve Geoff’s crumpled letter that Mr. Knight had thrown to the floor. “How could we have known to send a response to your letter before you’d even posted it?”

  “Well for a start, you could have … um … er …”

  “It’s impossible,” Ruth said, “unless we were capable of time travel.”

  Geoff looked out of the window. It was beginning to get dark outside, the sun casting a soft red glow over the London skyline. A sea of streetlights began to flicker on in the distance like lighters in the air at a rock concert.

  “Does this convince you that we’re telling the truth?” Mr. Knight said.

  “Not really,” Geoff replied, standi
ng up. “And it’s getting late now, so I’m leaving.”

  “Wait!” Mr. Knight pleaded, leaping out of his chair. “OK, Mr. Stamp—OK. We don’t normally do this, but if you really don’t believe us, we’ll prove it to you.”

  He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small set of earphones.

  “Put these on,” He said, handing them to Geoff.

  “What are they?” Geoff asked, examining them in his hand. They looked like a regular set of shoddy earphones, but there were no wires, as if they were supposed to rest in his ears by themselves.

  “Just … put them on,” Mr. Knight said, taking a second pair out of his drawer and placing them in his ears. “See? It’s fine.”

  Ruth pulled a similar set out of her trouser pocket and did the same.

  “It’s OK, Geoff,” she smiled.

  Geoff looked at Mr. Knight for a moment, rolling the earphones around in the palm of his hand. He didn’t see what possible harm there could be in wearing a stupid pair of earphones (unless they were playing hardcore Belgian trance music of course), so he did what he was told.

  Once they were in, he listened carefully, but they didn’t appear to be making any sound.

  “Good,” Mr. Knight said. “Now, are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Geoff said. He felt stupid.

  “Ready to travel back in time,” Ruth replied.

  “Is that what these earpho …”

  But before Geoff had a chance to finish his question, he felt his mind tingle as if it were being charged with electricity. His vision blurred, his palms began to sweat, and his heart started beating faster. Suddenly there was a flash. Geoff shut his eyes and wrapped his arms around his face. What was happening to him?”

  Then nothing. He felt normal.

  “Geoff?” Ruth said.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Geoff, lower your arms.” He felt her touch his side and jumped.

  “It’s OK, Geoff—it’s over. We’re here. Lower your arms.”

  Geoff lowered his arms but kept his eyes shut.

  “Now, open your eyes …”

  Geoff opened his eyes a crack, then a little wider, then wider still, until they were completely open. What he saw before him was nothing short of amazing. It was unbelievable. Impossible. Crazy.

  Mr. Knight stood next to Geoff and placed an arm around his shoulder.

  “Welcome,” he said, “To 65 million years BC.”

  Three

  Geoff couldn’t comprehend how it was possible, but he was no longer standing in an empty, open-plan office, overlooking the streets of London. He was standing on the side of a tall, rocky mountain, overlooking a lush rainforest. His knees were shaking as if they were about to give way at any second. This couldn’t have been some parlor trick or complex illusion—real dirt crunched beneath his feet as he stepped forward to take a closer look at his surroundings, the hot sun was beating down on his face from above, and the warm, humid air wrapped itself around him like a heavy, invisible blanket.

  Geoff edged towards the side of the mountain and looked down—they were very high up, perhaps a few thousand feet above sea level. Beneath him, he could see all kinds of strange vegetation—species of trees he’d never seen before towering over the canopy of the rainforest, huge plants with giant curved leaves the size of bed sheets, and thick, green vines twisting in all sorts of different directions. This was nature unleashed—a dense, sprawling mass of jungle, totally untouched by mankind. In many ways, it reminded him of the back garden, which he really needed to tackle at some point if he didn’t want it to take over the world.

  Geoff turned around and looked at Mr. Knight, who was standing a little closer than he would have liked, given how close he was to the edge. Geoff moved away and sat down on a nearby rock.

  “Well?” Mr. Knight said, removing his earphones. “What do you think?”

  Geoff didn’t know what to think. His brain felt as though it had turned to mush, as if he’d just watched something on Fox News.

  “Have I … gone mad?” he managed.

  “No Geoff, you haven’t gone mad. You’ve gone to the Cretaceous Period. And you can remove your earphones now, by the way.”

  “The … Cretaceous Period?” Geoff said, taking the earphones out one at a time.

  “Yes,” Mr. Knight said, looking up at a strange bird hovering in the sky. It was small with blue wings and a long beak. Geoff had never seen one before. “The end of the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous Period to be precise. Are you familiar with the prehistoric timeline?”

  Geoff shook his head. He’d seen Jurassic Park a couple of times, but that was about it. In the distance, he noticed the head of a diplodocus break through a layer of vegetation, its snake-like neck stretching towards the higher branches of a tall tree. The dinosaur snagged the branches in its mouth, stripped away a clump of leaves in its jaw, and began to chew.

  “This … this is incredible!” he said, watching a couple of stegosauruses drinking from a large lake at the foot of another mountain. “I mean … these are real dinosaurs! I’m looking at real dinosaurs!”

  “Does this convince you that we’re telling the truth?” Ruth asked, sitting down next to him.

  “I’m … I’m speechless,” Geoff stammered. “I never thought I’d ever see anything like this. It’s … it’s beautiful.”

  “Well don’t get too used to it,” Mr. Knight said, looking at his watch. “In eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds, everything you see here will turn to dust.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re about to see how the dinosaurs became extinct,” Mr. Knight replied, looking up in the sky.

  “Extinct?”

  “You see that shiny dot?” Mr. Knight said, pointing at a faint speck of light in the sky.

  Geoff nodded.

  “That dot is an asteroid. A very large asteroid. And it’s about to hit the Earth with such tremendous force that it will wipe out almost all living creatures on the planet. The moment it strikes, a cloud of super-heated dust will be thrown up in the air, blocking out the sun for years. Huge tsunamis will sweep the planet from one side to the other, and colossal shockwaves will set off volcanoes and earthquakes on a global scale.”

  Geoff gulped.

  “Can I ask a question?” he said.

  “Go on …”

  “Where exactly is this asteroid going to hit the Earth?” he said, looking nervously up at the sky.

  “Right in front of us,” Mr. Knight said, pointing towards the middle of the rainforest. “By my calculations, we’re about forty miles away from the impact point.”

  “I see,” Geoff said, pausing for a moment. “In eight minutes, you say?”

  “Seven minutes and fifty-three seconds,” Mr. Knight said, checking his watch again.

  “Can I ask another question?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Knight said. “What is it?”

  “Well, don’t get me wrong—this is all very interesting and everything, but isn’t it a teeny tiny bit dangerous? I mean, shouldn’t we be somewhere else? Like in a nuclear bunker?”

  “Nonsense,” Mr. Knight said. “We’re perfectly safe. We’ll just wait here long enough to see the moment the asteroid strikes, then we’ll transport ourselves back to the future. It’ll be fine.”

  Geoff started rubbing his hands together. He always rubbed his hands together when he was nervous.

  “I’d rather we just left now, if it’s all the same to you …” he said, hastily inserting his earphones again. “Shall we?”

  “But this is the proof I promised you, Mr. Stamp. You are about to witness the most devastating event in the history of the planet. Difficult thing to fake, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes, but we really don’t have to stay here on my account,” he insisted, fiddling with his earphones. “How do you make these things work?”

  Ruth turned to Geoff and placed a hand on his shoulder.<
br />
  “Don’t panic,” she said. “Everything will be fine.”

  Geoff took a few deep breaths.

  “So you guys … really are from the future?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you really do send people on holidays to different time periods?”

  “We do.”

  “And you need me to be a holiday rep … for the twenty-first century?”

  “A Time Rep …” Mr. Knight corrected him.

  “But … why me?” Geoff asked, looking up as a flock of pterodactyls glided overhead. The speck of light in the sky had grown ever so slightly bigger.

  “Oh, you have no idea how special you are,” Mr. Knight said, taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiping a few beads of sweat from his forehead. “Our supercomputer has taken years to draw up a shortlist of candidates suitable for the job, and you were one of them.”

  No one had ever called Geoff “special” before. He was curious to find out more.

  “Your … supercomputer?” He said, leaning forward. It really was quite hot out here, the sun shining directly down on them.

  “Look, I may be getting ahead of myself, so stop me if this gets confusing. We’ve got this supercomputer in the future.”

  “Stop.”

  Mr. Knight ignored him. “This supercomputer has so much processing power, it can predict causality. In other words, it can tell us the precise effects of interfering with the space-time continuum in a particular way.”

  “And this computer picked me to be a … Time Rep?”

  “Well, it short-listed you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it worked out that you’re totally insignificant.”

  Geoff blinked. For a moment he forgot about the asteroid.

  “Insignificant?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Knight said, walking towards a small piece of shade under a tree. “Every Time Rep must be a totally insignificant person. Imagine if we asked someone important or famous from the twenty-first century to do the job—we’d be in danger of changing the course of history. By only approaching people who don’t matter to the course of the space-time continuum, we avoid that risk.”

  “And we avoid drawing attention to ourselves,” Ruth added. “It goes without saying that time tourism is kept absolutely top secret to the destination time periods.”