by Jason Ayres
“It is me, Lauren. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve time-travelled here from the future. That’s not difficult to believe, is it, when you consider all the adventures we had with the time bubble?”
“What’s the time bubble?” she asked.
“You must remember the time bubble,” said Josh. “In the tunnel, under the railway line, transports people forward in time?”
He looked at her hopefully, but the blank look on her face said it all.
“I’m sorry but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You’re obviously wrong in the head. Now get off my doorstep or I’ll call the police.”
The door was firmly slammed in his face, as he had been expecting, causing the baby, who had calmed down during the conversation, to start screaming again.
There was no point trying again. She couldn’t help him and may well carry out her threat to call the police if he kept pestering her. He was pretty sure by now that young Josh wouldn’t be able to help him either, so there was no point waiting around for him. If she had never heard of the time bubble, then it was highly likely he hadn’t either.
As he walked back towards town, he went over the conversation he had just had. How had things ended up like they had in this universe? Weighing up the evidence, he tried to come up with a theory as to how these changes had come about.
If the time bubble didn’t exist here, or had not been discovered by him and Charlie, then that could explain how his life had followed the route it had. He would not have derived any inspiration from the adventures when he was seventeen if they hadn’t happened here.
Subsequently, he hadn’t developed a desire to investigate time travel and hadn’t gone to university at all. Instead he had followed his brother into the family business.
That had led him to be stuck in the town, and seemingly stuck with Lauren. He would never meet Alice. Was this life what this Josh would have really wanted? He had enjoyed what he and Lauren had got up to in their younger years, but he had never considered her marriage material. She was hardly the marrying type, either.
What had been blatantly obvious in their brief encounter was that she wasn’t happy. Everything about her, from her demeanour, appearance and surroundings, hardly painted a picture of domestic bliss and joyful motherhood.
Was his other self equally unhappy? Had they just settled for each other due to having no other ambition in life? Would they have married if it had not been for the sake of the child? He was sorely tempted to find out by looking for the other Josh and asking him, but was that really a good idea? How would his counterpart feel, having another version turn up from a universe?
“Hey, my life turned out to be so much more interesting than yours!” was probably not something he would want to hear.
Would this Josh and Lauren even last? A few months going out with her had been more than enough in his universe. He couldn’t imagine it was any better in this one.
He thought about the baby again, feelings of regret flooding through him once more. He had come to terms some years ago with the realisation he would never become a father, but seeing in flesh and blood what might have been filled him with sadness.
How different would his life have been if he really had had a son? That son would be grown up by now, giving him a legacy and passing on his genes. Instead, he was leaving nothing behind.
Was this Josh here better off after all? Maybe he was living in a run-down house in what was possibly an unhappy relationship. But he did have the one thing that he didn’t – a child. And he knew nothing of the other life he could have led. Maybe ignorance was bliss after all. At least this Josh wasn’t going to end up trapped in the past in the multiverse, unable to find his way home.
Thinking about all of this was quite upsetting. He had to try and put it out of his mind and focus on his next move. Trying to find any further help in this universe was clearly a lost cause, but there was one more thing he wanted to do before he left. He began to make his way towards the railway tunnel, to where all of this had begun.
It was just possible that there might be a way back to the future using the time bubble, if he could possibly gain access to it. It wouldn’t be back to his own universe, but if he could get back to the 2050s, even in another universe, he might be able to acquire the technology he needed to repair the tachyometer.
He had all the dates that Peter had originally jumped when he was using the time bubble permanently committed to memory. He knew that in his universe he wouldn’t be able to use the bubble now as Peter was inside and would be for at least another five years.
But that had been in his universe, not this one. In this one, it was fair to assume that Peter wasn’t in the bubble. He had only found out about its existence through Josh, and since this Josh seemingly didn’t know about it, how would Peter?
Perhaps the time bubble didn’t even exist here, hence why they hadn’t found it, but he may as well go and have a look. There was a tiny chance that if he went to the tunnel now, he might be able to make a jump. It was a very slender chance, but he wasn’t going to lose anything by trying.
Predictably enough, after walking up and down the tunnel a few times, absolutely nothing happened. While he was doing this, a few other pedestrians passed through as well, and none of them vanished.
Had the tachyometer had been functioning properly, it would have been able to detect the bubble and tell him all he needed to know about it in an instant, but without this information, he was blind. He hadn’t expected any miracles here, but it had been worth a try.
He thought about Peter’s jump in 2024 and the ones before that. In theory, if he could find a universe where those jumps still happened, he could intercept Peter before he jumped. Maybe he would let him take his place to travel forward.
It was a sound idea in principle, but not one he could really bring himself to utilise. Peter had been using the tunnel to get far enough forward in time to find a cure for his disease – a goal he ultimately achieved.
If Josh were to take Peter’s place in the tunnel he would be condemning an innocent man, and a friend, to death. Offering to come back in time later to help him would be a promise he couldn’t be sure he could keep. No, he was going to have to find another way.
Leaving the tunnel, he decided there was no point going back to Oxford tonight. Other than a few dirty clothes, he had all the possessions he needed for the next jump right there. He would stay in the town overnight and make the jump first thing in the morning. He had seen all he needed to of this universe. It was time to move on.
Early the next morning, he made his way to a park on the outskirts of town. He didn’t imagine there would be anyone around at 8am on a cold December morning. It would be a safe place to jump.
The light on the tachyometer was glowing green. How much longer would it keep working? If it gave up the ghost on him, he would be stuck for good. Holding it out in the gathering gloom, a feeling of apprehension washed over him as he wondered what the next world would have in store.
His feeling of apprehension was well placed. He was completely unprepared for what was to happen next. As soon as he stepped through, the entire landscape around him was utterly transformed.
Chapter Thirteen
November 2024
Josh had seen many subtle changes during his travels through other universes, but they were still fundamentally the same world. Nothing so far had been anywhere near the scale of change in the scene that now lay before him.
Seconds before, he had been standing on the grassy field where he and Charlie used to play football as kids.
Now he was standing in a clearing in a large wood. Great oak and horse chestnut trees towered all around him, half-covered in golden, autumn leaves. Here and there, chinks of sunlight penetrated through gaps where the branches were already bare, as a steady stream of leaves broke off and fluttered downwards in the breeze.
Underfoot, the mown grass of the football pitch had been replaced by rough, uneven ground whic
h was covered with a carpet of open acorn and conker shells, their fruits scattered liberally across the area.
A crow began cawing harshly overhead, a sound Josh often heard during the colder months. He wasn’t sure where he was, but in terms of time, it looked very much like late autumn. He had been expecting to arrive in early November, which fitted the conditions, so why wasn’t he where he was supposed to be?
The tachyometer may have been able to transport him through time and between universes, but the one thing it didn’t do was move his physical location. It wasn’t something he had ever programmed into the device. Now it seemed as if it had inexplicably transported him to an unknown location – or had it?
What if he was in the same place, but rather than thirty-two days earlier in time, he had been transported back centuries to the era when England was still covered in forests? The consequences of that were extremely troubling to contemplate.
Whilst some people might harbour romantic ideals of a pre-industrial golden age, the reality of poverty, disease and medieval brutality were not things he had any desire to experience. With his modern clothing and backpack, he would be more likely to get burned at the stake as a witch than get any help from the locals.
There was a small path leading out of the clearing into a thickly wooded area. If there were any answers to be found, perhaps they would lie at the end of the path. He wasn’t going to get any here.
He started to make his way through the woods. It was slow progress, with the path overgrown in places, and he cursed as he snagged his coat on a stray branch, causing him to temporarily lose his footing. It seemed to take ages to reach the perimeter, even though in reality it was probably only a hundred yards or so.
When he did eventually emerge from the trees, he was encouraged to see a few signs of civilisation. A single-track, narrow road ran alongside the edge of the woods, with a hedgerow and a field beyond which was full of sheep.
The road wasn’t tarmacked and he could see large ruts in the rough terrain that looked as if they might have been made by a tractor or some other heavy-wheeled vehicle. Hopefully these were signs he wasn’t as far back in time as he had initially feared.
He followed the road along the edge of the wood until it turned a corner around the edge of the trees, giving him a panoramic view of the landscape ahead. He paused for a moment, taking stock of the very changed world he now saw before him.
The town he had grown up in was still there, albeit in a much smaller version. He recognised a few of the older buildings, most notably the church, but most of the other infrastructure was gone. There was no Sainsbury’s, no petrol station and none of the out-of-town housing estates that had swelled the population in recent decades. There were no proper roads, only tracks.
He had barely reached the edge of the town in its current guise, yet in his world, he estimated that he would be standing just about where Kwik Fit was.
Where the garage had previously stood, there was now a large, wooden stable that appeared to be attached to an inn about fifty yards further on. These were more or less the first buildings on the outskirts of the greatly reduced town. As he looked up at it, he noted that the inn was named The Fox, which brought back a vague memory. Wasn’t there once a pub of that name in the town? He remembered his dad talking about a famous punch-up there in the 1980s during an England vs Scotland football match.
Pausing outside the stable, Josh heard the sound of a horse neighing inside and a repetitive clink-clink-clink sound which he took to be a blacksmith fitting a shoe.
Deciding against opening the stable door, he decided to press on. The road widened as he reached The Fox, becoming quite recognisable. It followed the same route as the main road northwards towards Buckingham in his own world. This version was devoid of tarmac, traffic lights and anything else that might suggest the invention of the motor car.
He turned right here, heading into the town, passing the church and towards a narrow street, one of the oldest parts of the town. Here there were recognisable clusters of houses, at least in terms of their basic structure. Their exterior appearance, however, was very different. There were no kebab shops, tanning salons or Indian restaurants to be found here.
As he walked on into the market square he could see a huge amount of hustle and bustle going on as the townsfolk went about their daily business. Gazing around in awe, he nearly got himself run over as a horse and carriage came up the road towards him at speed. With the driver clearly having no intention of moving out of the way, he was forced to throw himself to one side, in the process almost falling into the small brook that ran through the town centre.
“Watch out, will you!?” shouted the driver in a strong, rural accent. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” And with that, he rushed on by. Like most of the men around, the driver was dressed very formally in a suit and tie, and donning a hat.
“Come on,” yelled the man, whipping the horse brutally as he passed, in a manner that would be deemed totally unacceptable in Josh’s world.
Recovering his composure after nearly being run down, he continued to walk through the centre of the town and the hive of activity all around him. It was like something out of a period drama. Everything he could see around him suggested he had gone back to sometime in the 19th century.
There were two more blacksmiths on the square, both busy shoeing horses outside their shops, a man driving a small herd of pigs towards the far end of the square, and various other men and women in formal and old-fashioned clothes, some smart, but others tattered and torn. This applied particularly to the grimy children playing all around him, some of whom were shoeless, despite the cold.
Josh felt a growing feeling of desperation gnawing away inside him. Maybe he hadn’t been in the right universe before, but at least there had been the comfort of familiar people and places around him. Here he had been ripped well and truly out of his comfort zone.
If he really had been transported centuries back in time he was going to find himself seriously up the proverbial creek. He didn’t belong here – he knew it and, worryingly, so did the people around him.
He was more than aware that he was attracting a lot of looks from the people in the town. Not only was he a stranger in their midst, but he was also one wearing clothes of a design and fabric unknown to these people. To them, the parka probably looked like a spacesuit.
Thankfully these people didn’t seem hostile, just curious. A couple of young women a few yards away across the square pointed at him, one making a comment that caused both to burst into laughter. This was reassuring in a way. He could cope with people taking the piss out of him – it was infinitely preferable to being burnt at the stake.
Pausing in the heart of the square, he stopped to look around him. This area was fairly recognisable in comparison to his world. The biggest difference was the lack of cars and facilities such as car parks built around them.
It wasn’t just the sights and sounds that were different, but the smells were, too. Rather than the usual exhaust fumes that polluted this area, the air was instead filled with all manner of other smells. These ranged from the pleasant waft of freshly baking bread, to the less pleasant that made the nose wrinkle, manure and a clearly primitive sanitation system.
At the front of the market square was a general store and haberdashery, outside which he could see a small newspaper stand. Yet again, the press would help him identify where he had arrived in time.
He crossed the busy square, making a guestimate as to exactly what period he was in. The complete absence of motor vehicles suggested it had to be before the 20th century. There was no sign of any electric lighting, either, but there were gas lamps in the street.
As he approached the shop, he heard the distinctive toot of a steam train in the distance, so it had to be sometime in the second half of the 19th century. He decided to go for 1875, but as he was shortly to find out, that guess was well wide of the mark.
As he focused on the top of the old-fashioned, bla
ck and white newspaper, he discovered that it wasn’t the 19th century at all. It wasn’t even the twentieth. The date on the paper was actually the one he had been expecting to arrive at all along:
Tuesday 5th November, 2024.
The date was right, so what had happened to the world all around him? It was well over a century behind the times. Something seismic on the Gardner scale must have happened to the timeline to cause this much change.
Once he had got over the surprise of finding out the date, his eyes were drawn to the headline below. It was in a modest font, much smaller than the bold and brash front pages he was used to in his world, but it caught his eye nonetheless. This headline alone confirmed he really was in a vastly altered world:
Millions celebrate coronation of King Harold XX
King Harold the twentieth? There had been only one Harold he could remember and that was in the 11th century. If there had been eighteen of them since that time, then things had wandered off at more than a tangent here.
Whilst it was discomfiting to find himself in such strange surroundings, he was at least heartened by finding out that he was in the correct time period. He could jump again once the tachyometer recharged, hopefully to somewhere resembling something a little more like reality.
But what was he to do in the meantime? He scanned the top of the paper, looking for the price. It was listed as 3d, indicating that they were using the old English money in this universe. The decimalised, polymer notes in his wallet would be useless to him. He was going to be struggling just to fulfil his basic needs, like food and shelter.
Did he have anything of value he could sell? Not really, unless he could trade his coat, and would anyone even want it? A parka was hardly the height of fashion where he had come from, and it certainly didn’t fit in with the dress of people here.
He toyed with the idea of stealing some money, but how? Even if the tachyometer was working properly, there weren’t any cashpoints to defraud. He wasn’t about to try and steal from a shop or an individual. Somehow to him that always seemed worse than stealing from large corporations. Besides, he didn’t fancy being thrown in the stocks, or hanged, or whatever other savage, archaic punishments they might have here for stealing if he got caught.
