by Jason Ayres
“I can see the advantages,” said Charlie. “No more aging, no more illness. We’ll be able to live forever. It can’t come soon enough for me, I can tell you. I’ve been having terrible trouble with my back lately. Really playing up it has been.”
“You’re starting to sound middle-aged, Charlie,” said Josh.
“I am middle-aged,” he replied. “And I’m well and truly starting to feel it.”
“You won’t have any of those problems when we are all robots,” said Peter. “Anything that goes wrong can be fixed just as easily as taking a car to a garage.”
“What about the finer things in life, though?” asked Charlie. “You know how much I love my food and drink. I can’t say I’ll relish being a robot. Plugging into a socket to charge myself up is no substitute for a nice drop of claret and a bit of Camembert.”
“True, but it’s better than being dead,” said Peter. “Anyway, enough of this idle chit-chat. I want to hear what Josh has got to tell us on the time travel front.”
“It’s pretty exciting stuff, actually,” said Josh, enthusiastically. “I’ve made a major breakthrough in the time bubble research and I’m ready to embark on my boldest adventure yet.”
“Past or future?” asked Charlie.
“Not necessarily either,” replied Josh – “Same time – same place – different universe!”
“So you’ve finally cracked it, then?” said Peter. “You’ve figured out how to traverse the multiverse?”
“Indeed, I have,” remarked Josh. “Travelling through the time bubbles definitely creates alternative realities, as we always believed. Recently I’ve found a way of recording each universe’s signature each time I travel through time.”
“That must have taken some figuring out,” replied Peter. “How did you do it?”
“It’s quite simple really. I just adapted some of the technology they’ve been using on that amazing new space telescope the Australians have created.”
“The one that can view the entire universe?” asked Charlie. “I was reading about it in the e-paper the other day. It’s not even been launched yet, has it?”
“No, but Alice did some work on the design, so she’s been involved with the trial runs. You wouldn’t believe the things this can do. It makes the Large Hadron Collider look like a penny-farthing.”
“Such is the ever-developing nature of technology,” remarked Peter.
“Which is fortunate for me,” replied Josh. “To sum it up, without going into a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo about cosmic microwave background radiation, it is now possible to measure not only the exact age of the universe, but also the exact number of atoms in it.”
“That’s incredible,” replied Charlie.
“Isn’t it just?” replied Josh. “I’ve been able to incorporate the same technology into the tachyometer. I can now take these measurements myself, at will, just from the device. Don’t ask me how, just accept that I’m amazing and let’s move on.”
“Of course,” said Charlie. “Show off to your heart’s content. Why change the habit of a lifetime?”
“Thank you,” said Josh. “So, recently I’ve started taking measurements of the exact size of the universe each time I’ve time-travelled and discovered something rather interesting. It seems that each time I travel in time, I’m changing the size of the universe.”
“How come?” said Peter, eager to hear more.
“It seems that every time I time travel, the number of atoms in the universe changes ever so slightly. The differences are microscopic on a universal scale, but they are there, nonetheless. Firstly, I noticed that each time I travelled into the past the universe appeared to be slightly larger than it should have been. I soon worked out why.”
“Was it because there were now two of you in it?” asked Charlie.
“Got it in one,” said Josh. “Every time I travelled into the past, I was taking an additional version of myself back into time, increasing the size of atoms in that universe by the amount that constitutes me, my clothes and anything I took with me.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” said Peter. “It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.”
“What initially didn’t make sense was the difference in the size of the universe that I returned to,” continued Josh. “These differences were much smaller, but they were definitely there. Now why do you think that might be?”
The blank faces on Peter and Charlie pleased Josh. They clearly couldn’t figure this one out, which meant he would get the satisfaction of telling them.
“Allow me to explain,” said Josh. “Quite simply, I wasn’t the same size when I returned as when I left. We’re all gaining and shedding atoms constantly. If I ate anything when I was there, then those atoms came back to our universe. And, without being unduly crude, if I went to the toilet, I left those atoms behind.”
“Speaking of which, this beer’s going right through me,” said Peter. “The old bladder’s not what it was. I’m afraid. Since I haven’t upgraded to a super-efficient cybernetic waste disposal system yet, I’m in urgent need of losing some atoms on my own. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“That’ll give Josh a chance to get another round in,” said Charlie.
Once they were all back at the table, Peter was impatient to hear what Josh’s plans were.
“So, all this theory is great, but let’s cut to the chase. What are you going to do with your latest findings?”
“Quite a lot, as it happens,” replied Josh. “I’ve adapted the tachyometer to use this information to allow me to travel not only in time, but also between the universes. I even know roughly how many universes there are.”
“How many?” asked Charlie.
“Millions upon millions,” replied Josh. “And the number seems to be increasing exponentially.”
“So, that’s more than you can possibly have created yourself, then?” asked Charlie.
“Well, me personally, yes, but what about all the other Joshes in all the other universes? What if lots of them are doing the same as me? It’s perfectly possible. I’ve already travelled to two other universes, and they were remarkably similar to this one. I met two other versions of myself there, both of whom were conducting similar experiments.”
“And that’s assuming you are the only person who had worked out how to do this,” added Peter. “Are you aware of any other time travel experiments going on anywhere in the world?”
“I’ve heard whispers the Australians are trying to develop something,” said Josh, “but nothing more than that.”
“Because this is pretty powerful stuff,” continued Peter. “If someone else got hold of this technology, they might not just want to use it for research, like you are. In the wrong hands, there could be catastrophic consequences from changing things in the past or in other universes.”
“But not for us,” said Josh. “Remember, every trip into the past creates a different universe. You are quite safe here in yours – what has happened here won’t change. What I want to do now is find out what some of those other universes are like, and there is only one way to do that.”
“You’re off to explore some of these other worlds, then?” asked Charlie.
“That’s the plan,” replied Josh.
“Isn’t this a little bit dangerous for you?” asked Peter. “What if something went wrong with the tachyometer and you couldn’t find your way back?”
“I’ve thought of that,” said Josh. “That’s why I’ve created three of them. Alice is going to track where I go using one of the other tachyometers. If I don’t come back, she can come after me using hers and bring me a spare. Failing that, I’ll find my other self in the other universe and get him to help me get back.”
“Assuming he knows what you are talking about,” said Charlie. “You can’t guarantee he will have developed the same technology as you.”
“That is a potential problem,” conceded Josh. “Look, I’m not naïve enough to not realise there are risks involve
d. Future Josh hinted there would be danger at Mario’s, remember? But he made it back OK, didn’t he? If scientists throughout history hadn’t taken risks, the human race would still be living in the Dark Ages.”
“It could be riskier than you think,” added Peter. “What if you emerged in a world so different to ours that you couldn’t survive in it? Say, a world where the dinosaurs never died out and super-intelligent reptiles might kill you and eat you?”
“I hardly think that’s a possibility,” said Josh. “How could I have made that happen? I haven’t been further back in time than 1974.”
“Maybe you haven’t, but someone else might have,” replied Peter.
“Well, that’s just a chance I’ll have to take,” said Josh. “I did say it was going to be an adventure. Wouldn’t you take it, given the chance?”
“I’m not as adventurous as you,” said Charlie. “I like my home comforts too much, but I guess if you could guarantee it was safe, I wouldn’t say no to the chance of seeing some of those other worlds.”
“Same here,” said Peter. “It’s only fair after all the time we’ve spent helping you over the years.”
“Fair enough,” said Josh. “But before I open my new multiverse tourism agency to you two, let me take a few trips first, just to be sure.”
“Don’t worry, that was our intention – right, Charlie?”
“Absolutely,” replied Charlie. “He can be the guinea pig.”
“Good, well, that’s all settled, then,” said Josh. “Now then, whose round is it?”
Chapter Seven
July 2055
In the month following that evening in the pub, Josh began shifting sideways into other universes on a daily basis.
Just as on his previous forays through time, he kept a meticulous record of every journey, noting changes in the different universes as he went in a handwritten notebook. Although the tachyometer recorded all the technical details of each trip, he still wanted to keep a written record, just in case anything should go wrong.
In theory, the tachyometer ought to function wherever he should find himself, even if he ended up somewhere with no electricity. It drew its power from the kinetic energy of the rotation of the planet so it wasn’t as if he would have to plug it into a charger. But he knew he couldn’t become too complacent. Every time he jumped, he knew there was an element of risk.
So far, he had not encountered any problems. Each time he shifted into another universe, he was successfully able to return to his own, which he had named Earth One. He was easily able to navigate his way home using his universe’s signature. As he had described to Peter and Charlie, this was based on its age and number of atoms at his time of departure, allowing for his own body mass. This measure was as clear an identifier of a universe as DNA was to an individual human being.
He could also use the tachyometer to scan for the signature of different universes and analyse them, even without visiting them. As he continued to take measurements he began to be able to do all sorts of clever things with the information. He soon worked out how long the duplicate universes had been in existence. It seemed some had been around for only days, other for years, and some for centuries.
If all of these really had been created by him, then it posed some interesting questions. The furthest he personally had travelled back in time was 1974, yet there were universes that were thousands of years old. If he had created them, he either hadn’t done it yet, or they had been created by somebody else – possibly another Josh.
The idea of exploring further back in history fascinated him, but mindful of the increasing significance of changes made far back in time, he had held off, so far. It was a project for the future when he had more experience with what he was doing.
All of the universes he had visited so far were pretty similar to his own. He hadn’t found any radical differences, even in one he visited that was millions of years old. He hadn’t found anything like dinosaurs still roaming the Earth or that the whole planet had been taken over by aliens.
The latter would have been unlikely in any event. There was nothing he could envisage doing in the distant past that would somehow entice an alien invasion from a distant galaxy. Whatever changes he made to the universe were seemingly confined to events on Earth.
The first universe he investigated in detail was one that had apparently been in existence for only a couple of years. He couldn’t find any differences at all in this universe from the one he was currently living in. When he arrived there, another Alice was in the lab waiting for him, while apparently his counterpart from that universe had just left on exactly the same experiment.
Josh assumed the lack of changes must mean that it was a universe that he had created during one of his early experiments, such as going back a few minutes making little changes like swapping flavours of packets of crisps. These were hardly things that were going to affect the future destiny of the world.
After a few similarly uninspiring jaunts, he turned his attention to the matters that had begun all of this in the first place, namely Lauren and Alice’s dreams.
Identifying a universe that had come into being on Halloween 2029, the date of Lauren’s death, Josh stepped sideways into that time to find out if everything they had theorised about it was true.
When he arrived in the lab, there was another Josh and Alice already there. They didn’t seem particularly surprised to see him – this sort of thing was happening a lot, but when he explained he was from another universe, he soon got their attention.
It seemed that in this timeline, this Alice and Josh had concentrated their efforts purely on time travel, and had not even considered the possibility of travelling between universes. That was the first difference. Over the next hour, the three of them sat, drank coffee, and discussed in detail the different paths that events had followed in their respective worlds.
It turned out that this was indeed a world where Dan had killed Lauren back in 2029. Josh listened, fascinated, as his counterpart described how their timeline had deviated from his own since that time.
He and Alice described how they had dealt with the problem of what to do with the time bubble when Peter emerged in 2041. In their universe, Dan had wriggled out of taking the blame for killing Lauren, even though the team all knew he had done it. To punish him, they had hatched a plot to lure him into the time bubble and send him twenty-two years into the future.
In their world, after they had got rid of Dan, Josh and Alice had continued their time travel experiments, but with Lauren dead, the subject of her strange dreams was never brought up. Josh never developed an interest in the multiverse and concentrated his research on time travel alone. He finally unveiled his version of the tachyometer to the rest of the team during a barbecue at Charlie and Kaylee’s house in 2049.
After that, the Josh of their universe had begun his travels back into time, unaware that he was creating alternate timelines as he went. Later, after Dan emerged from the time bubble he had eventually figured out what Josh was doing. He had then attacked him and stole the means to travel back into time in an attempt to return to his own past. Ultimately this had culminated in him returning to the scene of Lauren’s demise, saving her, but causing his younger self’s death in the process. This was the timeline in which this Josh and the others currently resided.
Lauren’s survival was what Josh would consider a seismic change, one that he classified as a nine on his Gardner scale. There were all sorts of implications. Lauren hadn’t had children in his world, but what if she had? Children would be born into the world that weren’t born before.
The effect of that on the long-term timeline was potentially huge after a few generations of breeding from stock that simply didn’t exist in this world. It wasn’t difficult to see where the William the Conqueror theory had come from. It may not have happened in this universe, but presumably it would in the other universe Alice had dreamt about. There she had had children by another man.
Despite the ch
anges in the timelines, there were still fixed points that were common to both universes. One was that meal at Mario’s in 2040. Another was the barbecue in 2049, which both Joshes remembered. There were differences between what happened at the barbecue, though. The most obvious was that Lauren was present at one but not the other. The other major change regarded the nature of the demonstration Josh gave.
In the universe where Lauren was alive, as well as demonstrating the time travel capabilities of the device, Josh also revealed that he was close to understanding the nature of the alternate universes and how to travel between them.
When Josh and his counterpart compared tachyometers, it was quickly clear that Josh’s, capable of shifting between universes, was a lot more advanced than his other self’s. Eager to learn its secrets, his counterpart pestered Josh for more information.
This became a little uncomfortable for Josh, who at one point thought the other Josh was going to try and take it off him, so persistent were his attempts to let him examine it. He found this quite unsettling. Could he trust his other selves to all have the same personality and values as his own? Up until now, he had assumed that their behaviour would be consistent with his own, but could he always be certain of that?
What if he met a Josh who had suffered a bad life, nothing like his own? Would he be angry, bitter, and resentful? He tried to imagine what he would do in such a circumstance. Would he be capable of stealing his counterpart’s life, by seizing the tachyometer and using it to escape his miserable existence? What if he met a Josh who had had a completely different upbringing in a hostile world? What would come to the fore, his nature or nurture?
So far he hadn’t met anyone like that, but the more he travelled, the more universes he wanted to see. It was a seriously addictive pastime and soon the trips began to take over his whole life. He was away more than he was at home. As soon as he got back from one trip he was itching to go off on the next.
