by Jason Ayres
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Alice had spent the winter in the south of France with old friends of Josh’s. Future Josh had flown her due south to a hospital in Nantes where they had fixed up her ankle. He left her there with an address and instructions of how and where to find the safe haven he’d prepared for her on the French Riviera.
Forearmed with the knowledge of everything that had already occurred, he was able to tell her the precise date and time to travel. He’d also informed her that when he’d emerged again from The Time Bubble, she had been waiting for him.
And so it was that, on 8th July, Josh emerged back into the cave to find her waiting for him in the cave entrance. They ran towards each other and hugged in the centre of the cave. Such was her enthusiasm that she nearly knocked him over.
“Careful!” he said. “You nearly knocked me back into the Bubble then! How long has it been?”
“Eight and a half months,” she replied.
“Exactly the same as the other one,” said Josh. “That is extremely interesting.” He glanced down to her feet. “How’s the ankle?” he enquired.
“All fixed,” she said. “As good as new.”
“So, how did you know what time I’d be…?” he began to ask, then remembered everything Future Josh had said before. “Of course – he told you what time I’d be here.”
“Correct,” she said. “You’re getting the hang of it!”
“So, did he try anything on?” asked Josh.
“Hardly,” she said. “I was in severe pain from my ankle, I was hardly about to start performing sexual acrobatics, was I?”
They stepped out of the cave into blazing sunshine. Josh was suddenly aware that he was sweating profusely. He was standing in midsummer sun, still dressed from head to toe in his extreme cold weather gear.
“I think I’m going to have to lose a few layers, or I’ll pass out,” he said.
“I’ve brought you some clothes,” she said, producing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.
“Wow,” he said, as he changed. “After all we went through I never thought I’d see myself wearing a pair of shorts again. So what’s been happening while I’ve been away?”
As they walked back up the coastal path, she filled him in on all the detail of what had occurred while he was in the Bubble. She also had the unpleasant task of breaking the news to him of the death of Lauren. She knew that they had once been lovers, and it set a sombre tone for the rest of the walk back to St Ives.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The world had taken a long time to recover from the devastating havoc wreaked across it in the year following the asteroid strike.
It took two years for the atmosphere to return to normal. Although much of the polar ice did melt during the summer of 2030, it was by no means to the extent of what had been normal in the previous decade.
Most of the Northern Hemisphere faced another extremely cold winter, fortunately nothing like on the scale of the previous year.
This time, Britain was prepared, and, despite frequent heavy snowfalls from December through to March, the power stayed on and food supplies got through. The previous year had been a complete whitewash as far as farming and harvests were concerned, and now Britain’s agricultural industry had to start again from scratch.
In the meantime, the country imported most of its food from abroad. New Zealand and other southern countries had survived relatively intact, and when the shops began to open again, it was strawberries, lamb and other food from that country that formed the bulk of the nation’s diet.
Sorting out the mess took most of the summer, but by the end of the year some semblance of normal life had returned. Times were extremely hard and Britain was effectively bankrupted by the cost of putting everything right. Billions of pounds of damage had been done. Just like the Great Depression of the 1930s in America, the 2030s in the UK began in a similar way.
Despite the hard times, there was at least full employment for everyone. The loss of over a million adults of working age combined with the huge clear-up operation needed meant that there was work for all. It was low-paid work, but work nonetheless.
The British people were used to pulling together in times of crisis, and the shared goal of rebuilding their nation brought them together like never before. By the end of the 2030s, Britain was once again a happy and prosperous place.
Once the clear-up operation was underway, the task of tracking down criminals who had taken advantage of the crisis began. What Dan had done was small beer compared to some of the atrocities that had occurred in other parts of the country, and some very high-profile cases came to court.
Hannah kept her vow to track down Lauren’s killer, and Dan was one of her prime suspects. She soon knew all about his little community in the Army base and had him hauled in for questioning as soon as things in the town were back under control.
But Dan was one step ahead of her. He’d been expecting this and took the opportunity to drop Ryan right in it. He told her all about Ryan’s obsession with guns, where he kept them, and how he had created them.
Although Lauren hadn’t died of a gunshot wound, he fabricated a tale where Ryan had led her at gunpoint into the woods to try and rape her, and how it had gone horribly wrong. He then said that Ryan had come back and confessed to him, full of remorse. Dan was telling all this to Hannah now in his duty as a citizen to protect law and order.
From there, it was a pretty straightforward task of matching up Ryan’s fingerprints to the gun they had, and searching his home where they found the blueprints for the guns, his collection of magazines, the 3D printer, and his box of weapons. They had all the evidence they needed.
Despite protesting his innocence all the way to the dock, Ryan was found guilty of Lauren’s murder and jailed for life.
Hannah wasn’t totally happy with the verdict. She felt all along that there was something not quite right about all of it, but once it had been passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service it was out of her hands.
As for Dan, there was very little she could charge him with. Frustratingly, most of the people she could find who’d been in the camp with Dan seemed to think he was some kind of hero. She had thoroughly disliked him ever since she’d first encountered him and she was sure he knew more about Lauren’s death than he was letting on.
Eventually he got a caution for breaking into the Army base and for looting, amounting to little more than a slap on the wrist. He’d effectively got away with it all scot-free.
But he was still to get his come-uppance. There had indeed been a face at the window that night when he’d killed Lauren, and it was that of Future Josh.
Future Josh had watched the events agonised, and wanting to intervene, but he knew that he could not due to the consequences of changing history. But he knew that he could still make sure Dan paid for his crimes.
In early 2041, Josh was working away, as ever, in his laboratory at the university. For the past ten years he had spent every spare moment doing more research into the Time Bubbles. He had learned a great deal and felt sure he could unlock the secrets of how to control them. In fact, he knew that he would – his future persona had already told him so.
It was that future persona that now walked in the lab and coolly greeted him.
“Hello, again!” he said.
“Oh, bloody hell, not you again,” joked Josh. “What do you want this time? I hope you’ve come to tell me something useful. Like how to reverse the tachyons in this field generator, for example.”
“Now you know I can’t tell you that,” replied Future Josh.
“I know. I’ve got to work it out for myself,” said Josh. “It’s taking bloody long enough, I know that. Still, at least I’ve got my pilot’s licence now, so that’s one thing sorted.”
“I’m here on a more serious matter, I’m afraid,” said Future Josh. “The time has come for me to tell you something important – something you need to act on.”
“What is it?” ask
ed Josh.
“It’s about Lauren. Ryan didn’t kill her. Dan did.”
“I knew it. I was never happy about Ryan going down for that. How do you know?”
“Because I was there,” replied Future Josh.
“And you didn’t do anything to stop it?” asked the younger Josh.
“First rule of time travel, I’m afraid,” replied Future Josh. “You know the score, changing history and all that.”
“So what can we do about it?” asked Josh. “Ryan’s been convicted, the case is closed.”
“Well,” replied Future Josh. “As you know, Peter is coming out of The Time Bubble in a few weeks. Which means it will be ready for someone else to go in. For a whole 22 years, in fact. Well, we can’t risk some innocent bystander getting trapped in there, can we? Not for that length of time. So it strikes me that this is the ideal opportunity for you to get rid of Dan.”
“I like it,” said Josh. “But how are we going to get him in there?”
“Oh you’ll think of something, I’m sure,” replied Future Josh. He produced a wand-like device from his pocket that looked like an advanced version of the tachyometer that Josh already possessed.
He pointed it in front of him and pressed a button on it. “Bye for now,” he said, and stepped forward and vanished.
A few days later, Josh got everyone together for a meeting and they discussed what had been said. Between them they came up with a plan.
Jess had grown into an extremely attractive young woman, and it was she who came up with the idea. Dan was still hanging around in the pubs of the town and leering at all of the young girls, even though he was now old enough to be their father. He had tried it on with Jess in the Red Lion only a couple of weeks ago. She’d rebuffed him then, but she knew he would be putty in her hands, given the opportunity.
It was only a week shy of Jess’s 21st birthday, so they made their plans around that. The biggest stumbling block would be getting Dan to the tunnel at the right time. He was unlikely to be hanging around at 6.45 in the morning. So they hit on the idea of staging her 21st birthday party the previous evening.
She made sure she bumped into him in the pub the previous weekend when she flirted like crazy, despite the fact that she found him repulsive. He lapped it up and was only too eager to accept when she invited him to her 21st birthday party, to be held the following Friday evening at her house.
They were all there at the party, Charlie and Kaylee, Josh and Alice. Charlie and Josh had a crucial part to play.
Everything had been planned down to the last detail. The most important thing they needed to do was to keep the party going all night. At least they didn’t have to worry about the neighbours calling the police to complain about the noise. Hannah was the police.
Jess played up to Dan all evening. Although she was watching her alcohol intake, there was no need for him to know that. As the night wore in, she acted increasingly drunk, much to his satisfaction. They were always easier when they were drunk in his experience.
He was definitely drunk and couldn’t resist taking a few pot-shots at some of his old enemies, most notably when he bumped into Hannah on the landing on his way back from the toilet and announced to her: “I’m going to shag your daughter.” She resisted the temptation to punch him in the face, and merely smiled sweetly, knowing what was to come.
About 6.15am, Jess playfully suggested he come outside with her, leaving him in no doubt as to her intentions. They went out into the back garden and he made a drunken lunge for her.
“Not here,” she said, and led him towards the back gate. “Someone might see.”
She took his hand and led him out through the garden gate and along the road that led towards the tunnel. She checked her watch. She’d timed it perfectly.
She led him into the tunnel, and stopped midway through. Had he looked more closely, he might have noticed the chalk marks on the floor, where she now made sure he lined up.
“Now close your eyes and count to ten,” she said. “And I’m going to take my clothes off.”
He did as he was instructed. Just before he reached ten, Peter emerged from the tunnel right in front of where Dan was standing.
“Hello, Dad,” she said.
She gave Charlie and Josh, who were waiting at the end of the tunnel, their cue and they came running towards them.
Neither Dan nor Peter had a clue what was going on and exchanged a few confused words and then the deed was done. Charlie and Josh shoved Dan into The Time Bubble where he was to remain, trapped like a fly in amber for the next 22 years.
Epilogue
After almost another decade of research, Josh was ready to carry out his final tests with the new tachyometer Mark IV. Alice had joined him in the lab for the two big tests which he hoped would finally create the ability for them to control their travels through time.
He had set up that traditional scientist’s tool for the experiment, the maze for lab rats to run through. The rats already knew their way through the maze. They had been through it dozens of times. What they didn’t know was that one of them was about to become the first time-travelling rat in history.
Josh pointed the tachyometer at a central point in the maze and switched it on to generate the Bubble. He had set the device to five seconds.
Alice released the gate at the entrance to the maze, and Maisie, the appropriately named rat, began to scurry through the twists and turns. Just as they’d hoped, when she reached the point where Josh had directed the tachyometer, she vanished.
Five seconds later, she reappeared and ran on as if nothing had happened.
“Now for the really clever bit,” said Josh.
He rotated one of the dials on the tachyometer by 180 degrees and pointed it at the same point of the maze as before. Once again, Alice released Maisie and this time something really strange happened.
Before Maisie got more than a quarter of the way into the maze, a second rat appeared in the middle of the maze and continued on towards the exit. For five seconds there were two rats in the maze, until Maisie reached the middle and vanished.
“What happened there?” asked Alice. “Where did the second rat come from?” Josh hadn’t told her about the second part of the experiment in case it didn’t work.
“That was the same rat,” replied Josh. “I just sent Maisie back in time five seconds.”
“So that’s how you were able to travel back in time to rescue me in the helicopter,” she said.
“It seems so,” he said, “That must happen quite soon. I must be about the age I was when I turned up in the helicopter. I just need to put some finishing touches to this device, and then we can go anywhere, forwards or backwards in time.”
Alice put Maisie back in her cage, topped up her food, and they left the lab, hand-in-hand, thinking about the adventures that lay ahead.
The end…but now the adventure continues in Man out of Time…
Man Out Of Time
Chapter One
September 2063
Daniel Fisher’s head was in a spin.
He leaned against the crumbling brick wall of the aging railway underpass and tried to make some sense of everything that had happened over the past few minutes.
He was a large man with broad shoulders and shortly cropped, dark hair, which was beginning to show signs of receding. Almost forty years old, his middle-aged spread was well and truly starting to show. In truth, he had always been on the chubby side, and now, without the metabolism of youth to hold it in check, he was rapidly expanding.
For the past few years he had been working in a factory as a forklift truck driver, living alone with his life going nowhere fast.
For a brief period in the past, he had been someone. Over a decade ago, he had seized power temporarily in the local area. It had all happened during the national breakdown in law and order that had occurred during that terrible winter when it seemed like the world was coming to an end.
In his mind, almost everything he’
d done during that time had been perfectly justified. The one exception was the terrible act he’d committed which he had done the utmost to block from his mind. If he did find himself thinking about it, he dealt with it by trying to convince himself that it wasn’t him who had done it.
His friend Ryan had gone to prison for it, so as far as he was concerned, it must have been Ryan who had done it. Justice had been served. As long as he kept telling himself that over and over again, perhaps eventually his mind would come to believe that was the truth.
It wasn’t too difficult when he was awake, but sometimes at night he woke up in a cold sweat with the image of snowflakes falling on the dead girl’s face imprinted on his mind. He could see every detail of her dead body as she lay in the woods, the blood staining the snow where it had seeped from her head.
Then it was much harder to fight off the guilt.
Living alone meant that he didn’t have to make any effort when it came to cooking. His diet consisted predominantly of burgers, chips and lager. It was hardly surprising he had let himself go.
Right now he was wearing a pair of ill-fitting jeans which had sunk down, exposing a classic builder’s bum cleavage. The upper part of his bulk was squeezed into a plain, white T-shirt at least two sizes too small. It had ridden up over his stomach, exposing a couple of inches of midriff – pretty on a girl half his age, but quite hideous on him.
There was an unidentifiable yellow stain on the front of the shirt, about halfway between his nipples, which were beginning to jut out. He was developing a classic case of the moobs.
This was the outfit he had worn to the birthday party he’d been to during the evening. Despite his shabby appearance, not to mention his vile personality, he had somehow found himself leaving the party with the seemingly real prospect of shagging Jess, the 21-year-old birthday girl. She seemed to have quite taken his fancy.
