by Jason Ayres
He continued to watch the news, trying to ignore the noises increasingly coming from outside.
A few minutes later the screen cut away from the pictures of devastation to show Seema, alone in the studio in front of camera. There was what sounded like an old-fashioned air-raid siren going off in the background.
“And I’m sorry to have to tell you that we now have confirmation from Downing Street that nuclear missiles of Russian origin are on course to strike London in the next two to three minutes.”
Professional to the end, she was delivering her final word to the camera with barely a flicker of emotion on her face, even though she knew she must be about to die.
“All I can say is please try to find whatever shelter you can, following the advice we gave out earlier. I would also like to say, as I believe we will be going off the air very shortly, that it’s been my absolute pleasure to report for the BBC these past six years and I thank you all for your support during that time. God bless you all.”
She paused, as a low, rumbling sound grew all around her, a single tear emerging from her right eye and rolling down her pretty Asian features. Then the picture cut off, turning instantly to static.
Josh switched the television off. He could have flicked through to see if any other channels were still broadcasting, but there was no point. It was blatantly obvious what had just happened and it was high time he was making his way down to the cellar.
During his time at the university, Josh had enjoyed the luxury of many an evening’s fine banqueting in the company of the other Fellows. These exquisite meals took place in the college’s historic dining hall, a medieval building with thick, stone walls which ought to stand up well should the shock wave reach this far.
Even better, beneath the massive flagstones that made up the floor was a hugely prized, fully stocked wine cellar, accessed through a wooden trapdoor in the floor leading to a stone staircase. It had been there for centuries and this was where Josh was headed now. It was undoubtedly the cellar that Future Josh had tipped him off about and he was hoping it would be far enough below ground to give him the protection he needed.
He didn’t see a soul as he made his way through the college which suited him just fine. Most of the people onsite had been visitors and they had all fled. As he made his way down the steps into the cellar, pulling the door shut above him, he was relieved to see that there was no one else down there. Much as he felt sorry for the doomed people of the planet, he had no desire to spend the next twelve hours in their company.
It was eerily quiet in the cellar. The thick stone walls of the building and the floor above had effectively insulated him from the outside world. It was almost as if the doomsday event taking place above wasn’t happening at all.
He tried not to think about what must be happening up there, but alone and with no other distractions he couldn’t help it. He kept thinking about what the younger Josh has said, accusing him of somehow causing all of this. He really didn’t believe he would be capable of such a thing, not intentionally, anyway, but he couldn’t deny it was a strong possibility.
After he had been in the cellar about fifteen minutes, the light went out. Whatever was going on up on the surface was clearly now close enough to wipe out the electricity.
To blot out his anguish at his potential culpability, he pulled his trusty corkscrew out of his backpack, rummaged around until he found his torch and then went off in search of a decent bottle of wine. Settling on a bottle of 1982 claret, a year he remembered Charlie telling him was a fine vintage, he sat down on the dusty, stone floor and drank straight from the bottle.
Eventually, having downed the lot, he felt tired. Lying down on the cold stone slabs, he swiftly fell asleep. He had no idea how much time had passed when he awoke, but he was very relieved to see the tachyometer glowing green again. There was no sign of any bomb damage; he just hoped that the cellar had afforded him the protection he needed against the radiation. He would know in a few days’ time if his hair started falling out if he had avoided it.
Ordinarily he would not have considered jumping in an enclosed space like this. He had already visited one world radically different from his own. What would happen if he arrived next in a world where this building didn’t exist? He’d be buried underground which would result in an agonising, choking death. Perhaps that was all he deserved, as the man who had potentially wreaked genocide upon this world.
Jumping from within the cellar was a risk, but it was the lesser of two evils. There was no way he could risk going back up to the surface – that could be suicidal.
The only comfort was that Future Josh would undoubtedly have made the same decision and he had clearly survived. Clinging to that crumb of comfort, he prepared to jump once more, praying that he would survive to see another day.
Chapter Fifteen
December 2023
He knew that if he landed underground, the game would be well and truly up, but it hadn’t stopped him taking the deepest possible breath before he stepped through. There was little this would achieve other than prolonging his life by a few seconds, but to his relief, he reappeared in exactly the same spot. There was no initial sign that he had jumped at all.
He fervently hoped that the tachyometer hadn’t failed him now. He really didn’t relish being trapped down here, waiting for the radiation to kill him, even if he did have a few hundred bottles of vintage wine for company. Still, what changes had he expected to see? It wasn’t like outside where the changes in the weather were a dead giveaway.
He turned and looked back to where he had been sitting on the floor before he fell asleep, flashing his torch around the area like a searchlight. There was no sign of the empty wine bottle he had left there. Reassured that he must have left the hell-hole of the previous world behind him, he climbed the stone steps and heaved open the cellar door.
There was no one in the dining room, which was in darkness. He could see through the gaps in the curtains it was night-time outside. Only a few narrow shafts of yellow light from the old-fashioned lamp in the quadrangle penetrated through the gaps to dimly illuminate the room. It was just enough for him to make out the time on the old-fashioned grandfather clock at the far end of the room. It was just coming up to 5 o’clock.
Presumably that would be 5am rather than 5pm, judging by the complete absence of noise from outside. It was so quiet, he suddenly became extremely aware of the ticking from the pendulum of the clock. He had dined in this room many times, but had never noticed how loud it was before.
He was a little unsure as to exactly what date he had arrived at. He had calculated that he should have jumped back 128 days, but his younger self’s unexpected hijacking of the bubble may have altered that. Had he gone 128 as well, or would it be 256? He made some brief mental calculations to try and figure out where that would leave him.
If he had gone back 256 days then it would be late December. 5 o’clock could mean morning or afternoon, as it was dark at both in December. He was still pretty sure it wasn’t the afternoon, though. That suggested he had slept nearly 24 hours, which couldn’t be right. It had to be the morning.
The clock chimed loudly for the hour, making him jump. He was still feeling a little on edge after the experience of the previous world. It was time to go and explore, confirm the date and find out what this universe had to offer.
There was no one around in the corridors as he headed back towards the lab. Unless the Professor was pulling an all-nighter, he ought to have the place to himself. Pausing to look through a window on the way, he got the confirmation he needed that he had definitely arrived once again in December. There was a large, Christmas tree, glittering with lights in the centre of the quadrangle. Some wag of a student had stuck a puppet of Boris Johnson on the top.
When he switched on the lights in the lab, he was reassured to see the Professor’s equipment scattered around on the desk as usual. He looked around but couldn’t find any evidence of his own presence here.
&n
bsp; This was his last chance of finding a younger Josh in the lab. He was now in the year he had graduated. His next jump would take him back to a time when he was still a student, and before he had started working with the Professor. The further back he went in time, the less developed his counterpart’s knowledge of time travel would be.
Remembering what the Professor had done previously, he called up the database of college alumni on the touch screen but was aghast to find once again that his name was not on it. This was happening all too often.
Next he switched the screen to TV mode, checking for differences on the news channel. Thankfully there was no sign of impending nuclear Armageddon this time, just bog standard news with nothing unexpected.
Realising that he would have to go in search of Josh elsewhere, he left the lab and wandered into Oxford, waiting for his favourite café to open.
By late-afternoon, he was sitting at the bar of The Red Lion in his home town, feeling depressed and downing the pints. His day’s search had once again led him to a dead end.
Once again, he had found young Josh working for his father in the family business. Rather than approach him, he took a trip to check up on the time bubble, a journey that proved fruitless.
The tunnel which housed it, built for pedestrian access beneath the newly constructed HS2 railway line, was non-existent in this universe, as was the line. Further investigation revealed that the line had been diverted several miles north of the town instead after a successful campaign by the local residents.
It wasn’t much of a change on the Gardner scale, not in comparison with Harold winning the Battle of Hastings or nuclear obliteration, but it was enough to screw up any hope he had of getting help from Josh here.
It was time to start looking at some other options. He couldn’t keep wasting his jumps like this. He still had plenty of money left – perhaps it was time to stay put for a while and try and come up with a Plan B. He mulled over the various possibilities now, as he ordered another pint from none other than Kent, the policeman turned landlord.
He wasn’t sure why, but he wished Lauren were here. He wasn’t sure what she was doing in this world, perhaps she was married to Josh as she had been in the last similar world. Perhaps Kent would know – she had worked here on and off during the 2020s, after all.
“Excuse me,” he said to landlord. “Do you have a girl called Lauren working here?”
“We did have, for a while, but she’s got a flat in Oxford now,” replied Kent, being unusually helpful for once. “She went off to become a beautician. A pity really, she was good for this place.”
“You only say that because you wanted to shag her,” said a man sitting on a bar stool a couple of metres further along, turning towards them as he spoke. As he caught his eye, Josh recognised him as Andy, the rockstar that never was. By the look of him, fame had passed him by in this universe.
“What was that?” said Kent’s wife, Debbie, emerging from the door behind the bar that linked to the restaurant on the other side.
“Take no notice of him, my sweet,” said Kent, quickly looking to dispel any suggestion that he might have been lusting over Lauren. He had hopes of persuading the girl to come back and work there at some point, but not for romantic reasons. She worked hard and pulled in the punters. He certainly didn’t want Andy ruining that possibility for him.
As Debs started to harangue both of them, Josh decided to find a quieter corner of the pub to think things over. He had spent many an evening in this pub in his younger years listening to this lot bantering on about nothing in particular. He simply wasn’t in the mood for it today.
A quiet spot was hard to come by as the pub was very busy. It was the final Friday before Christmas, which was always a lively time. Eventually, grabbing a stool at a small, round table close to the fire, he sipped his lager and considered his options.
He would stay here over Christmas and try to look up a few friends. He needed a break from all the time-travelling and a few days here would not cause him any harm. Then there were a few other things he could try. Firstly, he would go and find Thomas Scott to see if he was still living backwards in this universe. He would also try and track down Amy, the nurse, to see if anything unusual had happened to her.
Once he was done with that, he would travel to Cornwall, to the cave near Zennor, to see if the second time bubble was there. If it was, he would try and use it to move forward in time.
It was highly unlikely he would be successful as the chances were high that there would already be someone inside it. But if there was any chance at all, he had to give it a try. With all the disappointments so far, he had to explore every possible avenue available.
He spent the night in the hotel on the square where Annie/Lauren had touted her wares to him not so long ago. While he was there, he contemplated seeing if he could find her in Oxford. She had lived in a flat in Walton Street around this time, but would there be any point. With no tunnel and no time bubble she wouldn’t have any knowledge of time travel rendering any conversations on the topic redundant. The same would apply to Charlie and the others.
By the morning, he had decided against seeking them out. Much as he would have loved an invitation to Christmas dinner, it was unlikely his claims to be who he was would be believed under the circumstances.
“Hi, I’m Josh,” he would say at the front door, “your friend, but from thirty years in the future – any chance of a mince pie?”
No, that was definitely not going to work. He was done here and it was time to head back to Oxford to seek out Thomas and Amy.
He decided to visit Thomas first as he ought to be easy to find. He knew that he had lived in a house in Botley. He had visited it before when he had taken Thomas time-travelling to his own future. Hopefully he would find him there, being a weekend. If Thomas was living his life backwards in time like he had been in Josh’s universe, then he was sure he would be only too delighted to welcome another time traveller.
Josh was greeted at the front door by Thomas’s daughter, Stacey, whom he recognised from the hospital. She was the woman who had been crying outside Thomas’s room the night time had been splintered. Explaining he was a friend of her dad’s, she let him in and ushered him through the hall towards the kitchen.
“Friend of yours to see you, Dad,” she said. Josh caught sight of Thomas sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. That accounted for why the whole house reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Josh had noticed it the second he walked in the front door.
Thomas looked up at Josh, with no hint of recognition in his eyes.
“Hi, Thomas,” began Josh. “How are you?”
Before Thomas could speak, Stacey interjected. “Well, I’ve got presents to wrap, so I’ll leave you two to it.” Thomas waited for her to leave before he spoke.
“Who are you?” he asked. “I’ve never clapped eyes on you before in my life.”
“Ah, of course, you won’t have met me yet, will you, not with you living your life backwards. You won’t meet me until December 2021 at Cheltenham Races.”
“What are you talking about, 2021? That was two years ago. Are you mad? And what do you mean, living my life backwards?”
Josh began to get an all too familiar feeling that things were going wrong yet again. Why couldn’t anyone or anything be what they should be in these bloody alternate universes?
“You mean you’re living a normal life?” asked Josh. “What day will tomorrow be? Sunday or Friday?”
“Sunday, obviously,” replied Thomas belligerently. “Now you are clearly some sort of nutter, and I want you out of here, right now, or I’m calling the police.”
As he finished speaking, he descended into a protracted, hacking coughing fit, but still drew on his cigarette once it had stopped.
“You know, you really ought to give that up,” said Josh. “It’ll kill you, you know.”
“Who the hell do you think you are coming into my house telling
me what I can and can’t do? For your information, I enjoy a good smoke. It’s one of the few pleasures I’ve had in life since my wife died.”
“Yeah, but seriously – it really will kill you – in about a year from now,” replied Josh. “I know – I’m from the future and I’ve seen you on your deathbed. If you want my advice, you’ll stop right away and get yourself checked out immediately. You might just about catch it in time.”
“You’re insane,” replied Thomas, calling out, “Stacey! David!” The urgency in his voice brought Stacey and her boyfriend rushing into the room.
“You need to be more careful who you let in, Stacey. This bloke is no friend of mine, he’s clearly escaped from the local loony bin and he’s ready to leave, right now. David, do you want to give me a hand escorting him to the door?” asked Thomas, stubbing out his cigarette and getting to his feet.
“It’s alright, I’m going,” said Josh. “It’s obvious I’m getting nowhere here. Remember what I said, though. Quit the fags or you’ll be dead in a year.”
He just about made it out before they threw him out, Thomas hurling a torrent of abuse at him all the way. His house call had been a complete waste of time. This Thomas wasn’t travelling back in time, so that was another unexplained mystery he was never going to solve. Perhaps each day had two Thomases – one going forwards and one going backwards.
Whichever it was, it was no help to Josh. It wasn’t worth wasting any more time on, that was for sure. He had tried to do a good deed and warn Thomas of his impending death in this universe. Judging by the response, he highly doubted he would follow his advice and instead continue to smoke himself to death.
That still left Amy, but after this experience he wasn’t holding out much hope. He did manage to track her down at the hospital and start a conversation with her on a pretext of visiting a patient, but it was quickly clear there was nothing unusual about her either.
