by Peter Ward
“Questions?” Geoff said, leaning back on his hands.
“Keep still. Do you feel disorientated?”
“Yes.”
“Confused?”
“Very.”
“Sick?”
“I want to throw up.”
“Are these stupid answers, or is that actually how you feel?”
“I’d quite like somebody to explain what the fuck is going on,” Geoff said.
“I think he’s angry,” Eric said. “Could be one of the side effects of bringing him back here while he was unconscious.”
“Or it could be one of the side effects of being kidnapped and strapped to a table,” Geoff said.
“You haven’t been kidnapped,” Tim said. “We’ve brought you to the future to understand a bit more about time tourism.”
Geoff looked down at the floor.
“Tim—have you really been lying to me all this time?”
“Not as such,” Tim replied, putting his torch away. “You never asked me what I did for a living, and I never told you. In that sense, it wasn’t so much lying—I just … didn’t volunteer certain information.”
Geoff pulled his best unimpressed expression, like the one he used when Tim had tried to convince him to eat quiche a few years ago.
“Look, I’m sorry for deceiving you Geoff—I really am. But there was no other way of doing this. And hopefully you’ll learn to appreciate what we’ve done when you see what this is all about—the things you’ll see, the places you’ll visit, the people you’ll meet—your life is about to change in the most exciting way imaginable. And I know you’re probably angry with me right now, but trust me—it will all have been worth it.”
Geoff wasn’t sure what to say. He felt conflicted. Part of him was furious with his friend. And a little scared. But at the same time, he had to admit that he was curious. He’d just been to 65 million years BC, for goodness sake.
“So where are we now?” he asked.
“You’re in the future,” Tim replied, helping Geoff down from the table. “And this is one of our arrivals chambers.”
“arrivals chambers?”
“Yes. All time tourists leave for their destinations from a departure chamber and arrive back in an arrivals chamber.”
“You okay to walk?” Eric said.
“I think so,” Geoff said, rolling his head around and stretching his arms in the air.
“Good. In that case, all we need to do is get you signed through at customs, and then we can start to show you around.”
Geoff frowned.
“Customs?”
Tim walked over to the door and opened it.
“Just think of this place as you would an airport,” he explained, motioning Geoff to follow him. “When time tourists come back from their holiday, they go through customs, collect their belongings from the arrivals lounge, hug some relatives, that sort of thing.”
Tim led Geoff down a long, wide corridor, with Eric following a few steps behind. The corridor was a completely different architectural style to the cold, plain feel of the Arrivals Chamber, with dark stone walls, ornamental candelabras, and tall gothic archways towering overhead. Looking up, he noticed various posters hanging down from above, advertising what seemed to be different holiday destinations. One read: “Visit the 22nd century Varsarian invasion and see their final annihilation in the 28th century for one unbelievable price!” The picture underneath seemed to be an artist’s impression of a huge flying saucer crashing into Big Ben. Or was that a photograph?
“Who are the Varsarians?” Geoff asked.
“That’s a long story,” Eric answered. “The Varsarians were a race of aliens who tried to wipe out humanity centuries ago. It’s our most popular tourist destination …”
After a few minutes of walking, the corridor began to curve to the right. Geoff began to hear a general murmur of chitter-chatter coming from ahead.
“We’re nearly there now,” Tim said, slowing down to walk alongside Geoff, “and it sounds like quite a few people have just come back from somewhere.”
The corridor opened out into a massive hall with thin shafts of sunlight pinpricking their way through a spectacular stained glass ceiling. The visual effect was stunning, casting everything below in a variety of different pastel colours. The walls of the hall were a lighter colored stone, the ceiling was lined with an elaborate piece of decorative coving, and the floor was tiled with shiny marble slabs, polished to such a fine sheen that Geoff could see his reflection if he looked down. He noticed his flies were undone and tried to pull them up without anyone noticing.
What was Tim talking about? This place looked nothing like an airport—it was more like the hypothetical offspring of Grand Central Station and a cathedral. Where were the yellow signs sending you on a treasure hunt to find the nearest bin? Where were the sandpaper-like carpets you only found in airports and math classrooms? And where were the shops that thought it was reasonable to charge five pounds for a pint of milk?
There must have been nearly a thousand people in front of Geoff, snaking their way round in a long queuing system that split off through several manned gates at the opposite end of the hall.
“So what happens now?” Geoff said.
“We’ll just have to wait our turn,” Tim said, leading Geoff and Eric up to the end of the queue. “Then we can start showing you the departure lounge, the paradox-scanning facilities, everything that happens here before people are cleared to travel.”
Geoff looked ahead at the people in the queue.
Something wasn’t quite right.
The family in front of them were dressed in torn brown rags.
Further in front, a couple looked like something out of Pride and Prejudice.
The more he looked, the more he realised that everyone was wearing something unexpected. This included Geoff, since it was unusual to see him not wearing pajamas. But you didn’t usually see people dressed in togas, politely waiting in line. Or men in pantaloons. He felt like he’d arrived at a birthday party without realizing it was fancy dress.
One of the children from the brown rag family in front began to stare at Geoff. He stared and stared through his freckle-framed eyes as if Geoff was the most interesting person he’d ever seen. He stared at Geoff’s shoes. His clothes. His face. His legs. Just when this was starting to get mildly annoying, the child finally tugged on his mother’s sleeve.
“Mum,” he said out loud, not taking his eyes off Geoff, “look at that man’s clothes!”
The mother flicked her eyes over to Geoff, then back to her son.
“What time period do you think he visited, Mum?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Ollie,” the mother said. The tiredness in her voice suggested that this was the hundredth question little Ollie had asked today.
“Hey Mister,” the kid said, cocking his head. “What time did you go to?”
“Er … what?” Geoff replied. He didn’t speak child.
“What time did you go to?” The kid narrowed his eyes as if he was weighing up several candidate time periods in his mind.
“This is Geoffrey Stamp,” Eric interrupted, sensing Geoff’s struggle at answering the question. “New Time Rep.”
“My goodness,” the mother said, quickly tugging her son away. “Not the Geoffrey Stamp?” Her husband and a few other people up ahead began to look round.
“No, no,” Geoff replied, turning his gaze to Tim and Eric. “I assume there is some other Geoffrey Stamp?”
Tim and Eric looked at each other, saying nothing.
Geoff looked back at the woman. “You’ve heard of me?”
“You’re the new rep,” she said. “For the twenty-first century?”
Geoff turned back to Tim and Eric. “How does she know that?”
“Your name’s been all over the news for the past week,” Eric said.
“The news?” Geoff said.
The woman in fron
t of them turned to the rest of the queue.
“Can everyone please move aside!” She shouted, “Geoffrey Stamp is coming through!”
The chatter in the hall began to quieten down. A few more people began to look round.
“Don’t worry about me,” Geoff said, stepping back in embarrassment. “I’ll wait in line.”
“You don’t have to wait, Mr. Stamp,” one of the cavemen said. “Please, go straight through!”
Geoff turned to Tim.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
“I thought this might happen,” Tim replied. “Time Reps are starting to be treated like ambassadors these days.”
“What?”
“You’re now quite an important person to know,” Eric said. “Did Mr. Knight take you through any of your responsibilities as a Time Rep?”
“He just said that I’d be showing people the sights,” Geoff said. “You know, like a regular holiday rep. Why—is there a bit of international diplomacy involved as well?”
“Not quite,” Tim said. “But the job is a little more complicated than just showing people around.”
“Such as …?”
“Well, let’s say one of your tourists gets in trouble with the police for breaking a law that no longer exists—most people are insured to have their bail paid and legal representation organised by their Time Rep.”
“Or say one of your tourists is hit by a bus,” Eric said. “You’ll be expected to be at the scene within minutes to arrange safe passage back to the future where they will receive proper medical treatment.”
“A good Time Rep can be the difference between life and death,” Tim explained, “and these tourists know it. You’ll be treated with a huge amount of respect while you’re here.”
Geoff looked back at the crowd of people, most of whom were now looking straight back at him. He took a few tentative steps forward, a little unnerved by the fact that people were moving aside as he approached them.
“That’s Geoffrey Stamp,” a Victorian-looking man said, pointing Geoff out to his daughter as he passed by. “He’s a very important man from the twenty-first century …” The little girl looked up at Geoff, meeting his gaze briefly before burying her face in shyness into her teddy bear.
Geoff began to feel a little uncomfortable—he’d never known so many people to be looking at him at once, apart from that time when he’d accidentally fallen asleep on a train one night and woken up the next morning surrounded by a hundred commuters who had been trying to work out if he was dead.
He needed to get out of here as soon as possible.
“Mr. Stamp!” someone shouted. “Mr. Stamp!”
Geoff stopped walking and looked in the direction of the voice. It seemed to be coming from a medieval knight struggling to push his way through the crowd in a clunky suit of armour.
“Can I just say what a pleasure it is to meet you,” the knight said, lifting his faceplate to reveal a fawning grin. “You can rest assured that my next trip will definitely be to the twenty-first century!” He extended a gauntlet-clad hand for Geoff to shake.
Geoff didn’t really know how to respond to this, so he shook the man’s hand, smiled uncomfortably, and continued towards the customs gates at the end of the hall. More and more people around him were beginning to mention his name to the point that he couldn’t really hear what they were saying. All he could hear was “Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp,” his name drowning out any other snippets of conversation. He could occasionally pick out the odd detail here and there—someone mentioning that he’d turned down the job, someone else saying he used to be a paperboy, but mainly he could just hear his name: “Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp … Geoffrey Stamp.” The words were now ringing in his ears, repeating over and over again, louder and louder, almost as if they were being chanted by the crowd. He waded past the last few people in the queue and hurried over to the nearest customs official, desperate to leave the overwhelming reverberation of “Geoffrey Stamp,” which was echoing all around the hall.
“Name?” the man said, licking his pencil.
“Take a wild guess,” Geoff said, staring blankly at the official.
“This is Geoffrey Stamp,” Tim said. “New Time Rep for the twenty-first century.”
“Another rep?” the official said, jotting something down on his clipboard. “This is the fourth one you boys have brought in today! Just signed through some pharaoh from 3000 BC. He was a new Time Rep, too.”
“Well, we’ve got a lot of new destinations planned this year,” Tim told the customs official. “How long is this going to take?”
“Well, you’ll need to take a sample of his DNA. And you’ll need to inoculate him.”
“Inoculate me?” Geoff said, looking round at his minders.
“There’s a few airborne viruses your twenty-first century immune system won’t be able to deal with,” Eric said. He turned to the customs official. “That’s all been taken care of,” he said. “I personally inoculated Mr. Stamp when he arrived, and we’ve already got his blood, hair, saliva, semen, and tissue samples on record.”
“You’ve got what?” Geoff said, snapping his head round.
“Relax,” Tim assured him. “It’s just a precaution—we need to keep a record of everyone who goes in and out of here.”
Geoff was appalled—this was such a blatant disregard for his human rights, it made the terms and conditions of using his games console’s online service seem perfectly reasonable. He was just about to protest when his attention was distracted by a group of armed guards he noticed out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to get a closer look. There were ten of them, each dressed in bright blue uniforms. They all wore dark glasses and earpieces, held large rifles firmly in front of them with both hands, and had stony expressions on their faces. This was quite an appropriate description since each of them looked as though they were literally carved out of rock.
“Why all the security?” Geoff said.
“We’ve had a lot of attempted terrorist attacks this month,” Eric answered. He put his walking stick under his arm and took the clipboard from the official. “So you can’t be too careful these days …”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Geoff said.
“Some people aren’t just here to go on holiday,” Eric explained, signing something off. “A few have other ideas. They try and use the time-travel facilities to go back and change the past for their own political agenda.” He checked over a few more details on the clipboard, handed it to Tim, and rested back down on his walking stick.
“People try and change the past?”
“I’m afraid so,” Tim replied, adding a few remarks underneath whatever Eric had written. “Ever since this place opened up, there have been various attempts to abuse the technology and change history: people trying to go back and help Guy Fawkes blow up the houses of Parliament, distant relatives of Holocaust victims trying to go back and assassinate Hitler, peace activists trying to prevent World War 4. There’s even a rumour that some people are trying to …” He tailed off, as if he’d thought the better of finishing his sentence.
“Trying to … what?” Geoff said.
“Nothing. Let’s just say that any attempt to change the course of history is considered an act of terrorism.” He handed the clipboard back to the official.
“Did Mr. Knight tell you about my supercomputer?” Eric said. “The one that predicted your total insignificance as a human being?”
“He may have mentioned it,” Geoff said, rubbing the back of his head—he’d been trying to put that to the back of his mind. “Listen—are you sure about this whole insignificance thing? Maybe this ‘super’ computer made some sort of mistake?”
“I spent seventeen years of my life writing the six-billion-character algorithm it uses to make those predictions,” Eric said, stroking his beard. “Won my first No
bel Prize just for suggesting the initial theory in a bar. Trust me—in the fifteen years it has been operational, not once has it made a mistake. The very fact that nothing changed when we removed you from the twenty-first century should be a testament to that.”
“Still could be a mistake,” Geoff said.
Eric took a deep breath.
“The computer predicts everything. It is 100 percent reliable. It has never made a mistake, and it predicts that it never will make a mistake. It is infallible. That’s why we use it to ‘paradox scan’ every person before they leave this time period. If the computer predicts any changes to the space-time continuum, deliberate or not, as a result of a particular journey, then that tourist is blocked from accessing the departure chamber and sent home immediately.”
“We’ll show you how it all works later,” Tim said, suspecting that they were getting a little ahead of themselves.
“You gentleman are clear to proceed to the Arrivals Lounge,” the customs official said. He motioned them to move along, handing Geoff a small badge. “Wear that if you enter any restricted areas,” he said, and turned to the next person in the queue.
Geoffrey looked at the badge. On it was a hologram of his face, his fingerprint, and the words “GEOFFREY STAMP – TIME REP – 21st CENTURY.” He didn’t really want any more strangers knowing who he was and coming up to him to shake his hand, so he tucked the badge in his coat pocket and followed Tim and Eric through the customs gate.
The Arrivals Lounge was bustling with more strangely dressed tourists, the different outfits providing an insight into the kind of places you could visit. To Geoff’s left, a few people dressed in Tudor clothes were collecting their luggage from one of the many conveyor belts. To his right, a group of children wearing nothing but fig leaves were chasing each other around. Tim and Eric pushed their way through the crowd, looking back every so often to make sure they hadn’t lost Geoff. They seemed to be making their way over to a row of brightly lit elevators at the back of the hall. Geoff carefully negotiated his way through the crowd and followed Tim and Eric into the nearest one.
