The Time Bubble Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  “Leave it, Josh,” suggested Peter, as the Professor and Lewis wandered off together, with the former jabbering away animatedly at the new arrival.

  “Why?” asked Josh.

  “Think about it,” said Peter. “Maybe we should just let Professor Hamilton take him. Lewis was based here at the university when he disappeared after all. This could be exactly what we need. It’s certainly better than our idea of taking him to Jonty’s place. It takes the responsibility away from us, if nothing else.”

  “I can’t get over how he knew so much about what was happening here,” said Josh.

  “Is it really that much of a surprise?” asked Peter. “You did say he was a leading expert on time travel. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to figure out. Rebecca managed to, and she’s not had any experience of this sort of thing before.”

  “While you two are busy debating this, they are getting away,” chipped in Christina, gesturing towards the two men who were now forty yards up the path. “Are you going to follow them?”

  “Let them go,” said Peter. “I’m sure the Professor knows what he’s doing.”

  Josh wasn’t particularly happy about this but, frustratingly, he had to get to work.

  “Great this, isn’t it?” he remarked. “Here I am, with a chance to meet a legendary writer who has come into our world much like his characters came through a portal into Narnia, yet I’ve got to go and wash up people’s leftover Sunday dinners in a pub in Cowley.”

  “Needs must,” says Peter. “Pity you couldn’t remember the results of the fourth round of the FA Cup yesterday. Then you could have put a few bets on.”

  “A few more weeks, that’s all,” replied Josh. “Then I’ll be taking Ladbrokes to the cleaners and that pub can find some other mug. I can’t believe, even in this primitive day and age that they haven’t even got a dishwasher.”

  He took one long last look down the path, where Lewis and the Professor seemed deep in conversation and perfectly content.

  “It’s best I get off, then. What are you two going to do?”

  “I think we might grab a pint,” said Peter. “Fancy it?” he said to Christina.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said and off they went to The Bear where they talked about old times, and Peter’s growing relationship with Rebecca.

  “So you’re sure you don’t have a problem me seeing her?” he asked as they sat by the window.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “You and I both agreed it wasn’t working out between us.”

  “Even if I spend the night at the flat when you’re there?” he asked.

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to be around that much longer anyway. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier but they’ve agreed to let me back on the course.”

  “That’s brilliant,” replied Peter. “Did they take much persuading?”

  “I had to practically go down on my hands and knees and beg, but they gave in as I promised I would work doubly hard to catch up all the work from the Michaelmas term before Easter. As luck would have it they’ve also found me a room in the halls as a few first-years have dropped out already. I’m moving out of Rebecca’s tomorrow.”

  “What do you think of Rebecca?” he asked.

  “I think she’s great,” said Christina, and it seemed like she genuinely meant it. “But you’re punching well above your weight there,” she joked.

  “Don’t put yourself down,” said Peter, grinning.

  “Touché,” she replied, and they laughed, both glad that they had rekindled their friendship.

  The following day Josh, fingers raw from the effects of half a bottle of Fairy Liquid, took it upon himself to visit the Professor. Taking a chance that the man would still be based in the same lab, he breezed straight into the college.

  This was a reasonable assumption. Things at the college had a tendency to stay unchanged for decades. If you held an eminent post at an Oxford college, you really did have a job for life if you wanted it. Josh had never heard of anyone getting sacked in the whole time he had been there.

  The Professor couldn’t have been in his post very long in 1992 but by the look of the lab as Josh entered, he certainly hadn’t wasted any time getting his feet under the table. It looked almost exactly the same as it had when Josh would first walk into it, nearly thirty years from now.

  As he entered, he could see that the Professor and Lewis were deep in conversation, just as they had been on the previous day.

  “Oh, hello again,” said the Professor, looking up, as Josh walked into the lab. “What can I do for you? I’m terribly sorry, I can’t remember your name. I know you told me yesterday.”

  This suited Josh just fine, as he had no intention of revealing his true identity. He didn’t want the Professor to figure out who he was when he turned up as a student decades later.

  “Look, Professor, I’m just another person interested in the disappearances in Christ Church Meadow. I’m guessing you worked out what was happening and were expecting someone to come through.”

  “Every four days, by my calculations.”

  “Yes, we figured that out, too, that’s why we were there yesterday,” said Josh. “And I take it that you also worked out that Mr Lewis here might be coming through next?”

  “I did indeed,” said the Professor.

  “And how do you feel about all this, sir?” Josh asked Lewis.

  “If our Lord had brought me to this time then it is for a reason,” replied Lewis. “Who am I to question it?”

  “But how are you going to explain your presence here?” asked Josh.

  “Oh there’s no need to worry about that,” said the Professor. “We’ve got all that worked out, haven’t we?”

  “Indeed we have,” replied Lewis. “I’m going to tell everyone I’m my own long-lost son. It shouldn’t be that difficult to pull off. After all, I do look exactly like me, or should that be him?”

  “But how are you going to live?”

  “Oh, we’ll take care of all that,” said the Professor. “I’ll sort things out here at the university. In fact, we might even be able to get you your old job back. C.S. Lewis Junior, how does that sound?”

  “It sounds like you two have got it all worked out, then,” said Josh. “Does this mean you’re also going to finish off the last two Narnia books? People have been waiting for them for nearly forty years.”

  “Absolutely,” said Lewis. “I was just about to get started on the next one when I was thrust forward in time. I’m sure everyone can’t wait to discover how it all turns out.”

  “Well, I already know,” said Josh, unable to resist making a reference to his time-travelling nature, despite his earlier vow not to let on who he was. “I’m about the only person on this Earth right now who does.”

  “Who exactly are you?” asked the Professor.

  “Never mind that,” said Josh. “But since you’re going to be busy helping Mr Lewis out here, perhaps it would be better if you let us handle the next person who comes through.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” said the Professor. “Who put you in charge?”

  “Let’s just say, I work for a secret department of the Government,” said Josh. “We aren’t keen on members of the public getting involved in this. For your own safety it might be better if you kept away from Christ Church Meadow for the foreseeable future.”

  Josh tried to say this in the style of some mysterious agent from TV, with just a tiny hint of a threat, but the Professor didn’t seem to pick up on it.

  “I’ll certainly bear it in mind, Mr… uh…what did you say your name was again?”

  “The less you know, the better,” replied Josh, trying to keep up the air of mystery. “Right, it’s time I was out of here.”

  “Lovely meeting you,” said Lewis, seemingly completely unperturbed at having recently found himself forty years in the future.

  “You, too, Mr Lewis,” said Josh. “And don’t forget to write those last two books.”
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br />   “I won’t,” replied Lewis. “I’ve already got the plot for the next one worked out. I’m also going to do a prequel which is going to be called The Magician’s Nephew. And then this little trip to the future has given me some other ideas. Mr Wells doesn’t have to have a monopoly on time travel, you know.”

  “I’ll leave that with you, then,” said Josh, wondering what new classics C.S. Lewis might be inspired to come up with by his journey through time.

  Happy that the latest traveller from the past was safely settled in the present day, Josh made his way back into town. So far everything had worked out fine, but how much longer could their luck hold? He knew there were bound to be bigger challenges ahead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It fell to Rebecca and Josh to pick up the next time traveller on Thursday morning. The others were occupied at college. Christina didn’t dare miss any lectures in her attempts to catch up the time she had missed, whilst Peter had an important tutorial he couldn’t get out of.

  He was pleased to see that there was also no sign of Professor Hamilton so perhaps he had heeded his warning. It meant he had got Rebecca on her own which gave him the perfect opportunity to quiz her about her relationship with Peter.

  “Seems like things are getting pretty serious between you and Peter,” began Josh.

  “I like him a lot,” she said.

  “You must do,” replied Josh. “Peter didn’t come home last night.”

  “We’re both grown adults. You sound like you don’t approve. Are people more prudish about that sort of thing in your century?”

  “Not at all,” replied Josh. “People are far more liberated than now. We’ve got same-sex marriage for a start. But Peter’s gran wasn’t happy about it. She’s quite old-fashioned like that. She spent half an hour bending my ear over breakfast this morning about how she and her husband, Pat, waited until they were married.”

  “Well, Peter’s gran will have to get used to it,” said Rebecca. “And that’s not all she’s old-fashioned about from what Peter’s told me. It seems the colour of my skin might be a problem, too.”

  “That’s another thing you’ll be pleased to hear we don’t have to worry about by 2055,” replied Josh.

  “That doesn’t help much now, though, does it?” said Rebecca.

  “I suppose not,” said Josh. “You know I’m pretty sure he hasn’t told her yet as she didn’t say anything about it this morning,” said Josh.

  “Well, she’ll be in for a shock on Saturday, then, as he’s invited me round for tea.”

  “That should be interesting,” said Josh. “I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall for that one. Unfortunately I’m going to be at work.”

  “Ah yes, how’s the washing-up business going these days?” asked Rebecca. “I bet they haven’t had many Oxford dons working in that pub.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said Josh. “I’ve only got a few more weeks and I can start betting for a living. I’ve got a corner of a charred page of racing results from 22nd February. It can’t come soon enough.”

  “Ah, yes, Peter told me about that. Are you sure these horses are going to win? Because I was thinking about this and I wouldn’t count your chickens.”

  “Why not?” asked Josh.

  “Quite simply, you said yourself in the pub the other night that your mere presence here is changing history in lots of tiny ways. What was it you called it – the butterfly effect?”

  “I did say that, but it takes time for these ripples to have an effect, and anything I am doing here is only very minor and very local. I can’t honestly see that on a short-term basis it will affect horses in stables forty miles or more away, will it?”

  “Can you be sure of that, though? There are all sorts of possibilities. Say you decide to catch a bus, causing it to pull away ten seconds later. During those ten seconds a couple of cars slip past. The consequent changes alter the whole traffic flow in the area as the changes multiply with every vehicle they come into contact with.”

  “OK, that’s possible, but all the vehicles will eventually get to where they were going,” said Josh. “Just because someone gets to work 30 seconds later isn’t going to change their whole future.”

  “But what if they don’t? What if getting past that bus means the first car gets through a traffic light that would have gone red and consequently ends up being involved in a fatal crash which kills the driver? That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t caught the bus.”

  “True, but it’s still hard to see how that’s going to alter the result of the 4.10 at Kempton on a Saturday in three weeks’ time,” said Josh.

  “What if it was the jockey that died in the car crash?”

  “What crash?” asked Josh. “This is all just theoretical. All I know is that a horse called Docklands Express is going to win the Racing Post Chase at 6/1 and I can’t see how anything I am doing locally here can interfere with that.”

  “I guess we’ll find out on the day,” said Rebecca. “Despite my reservations I’ll obviously have to have a few quid on it as well. It’s possibly the best tip of all time.”

  “Are you sure that’s appropriate?” asked Josh. “I mean what with you being a police officer and all that. Don’t you consider this to be some sort of fraud?”

  “It’s hardly fixing races or anything like that,” she replied. “My conscience is clear.”

  “Don’t blame me if it doesn’t win, then,” said Peter. “You’ve already given me a good excuse if it doesn’t. I’ll just say I caught a bus a few days before.”

  “I must say I’m finding all of this quite fascinating,” said Rebecca. “How much of our futures do we plan and how much is just determined by a series of random events?”

  “On that subject, I wanted to talk to you about you and Peter,” said Josh, wondering how she would take him broaching this sensitive subject.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she replied. “Peter’s already warned me you might try and talk me out of being with him so I may as well tell you that you’re wasting your time. Neither of us cares about the future timeline. He told me he loved me last night. And I told him I love him, too.”

  Josh could see there was no point pursuing it any further. This was one change to the timeline he was powerless to interfere with. He knew from his own youth that when a young couple was in love there was no power in the world that could stop it.

  “Then you have my blessing,” he conceded. “But it’s important that Peter stays on the career path he followed before. We will have a lot to talk about when all this is over.”

  “And now we had better concentrate on what we came down here to do,” replied Rebecca. “It’s almost time.”

  They watched keenly, neither of them really sure what to expect this time. Both Kevin Austin and C.S. Lewis had been expected, but things had reached the point now where people would be coming from so far back in time there would be no surviving record of their disappearance.

  A few moments later a young man appeared dressed in the unmistakeable uniform of a World War One soldier. Unlike some of the other arrivals, it was clear from his startled reaction that he realised something was wrong right away.

  “Daisy?” he called out, looking around, bewildered.

  Josh and Rebecca were observing this from about thirty yards away.

  “He knows something’s wrong,” said Rebecca.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Josh. “He’s been in there for the best part of a century by the look of him. I know I said this park was timeless but it must have changed enough in that time to be instantly noticeable.”

  “We’d better go and help him,” said Rebecca.

  They walked up to the soldier, noting from his fresh, rounded face that he must be barely out of his teens, even though he was wearing an officer’s cap.

  “Excuse me,” said Josh.

  “Who are you?” asked the soldier. “What’s happened? Why are you wearing those strange clothes? And where’s your hat?
”

  “Please don’t be alarmed,” said Rebecca, not sure which question to answer first. “We’re here to help.”

  “Where’s Daisy gone?” asked the soldier.

  “I know this must seem difficult to understand,” said Rebecca. “But you’ve travelled forward in time.”

  Josh and Rebecca assumed they would have to explain this, but he surprised them with his response.

  “Like in H.G. Wells?” he asked. “Have you read The Time Machine?”

  “Yes, just like that,” said Rebecca. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Captain Alfred Millington,” replied the soldier. “But everyone calls me Alfie.”

  He looked her up and down. “So where do you hail from, miss? Are you from one of the colonies?”

  “No, I’m English just like you,” replied Rebecca. “I was born right here in Oxford. A lot has changed since your time.”

  Alfie shivered and sneezed. He wasn’t wearing a coat. “So how far in the future is this? It’s bloody cold, I know that.”

  “It’s January 1992,” replied Josh. “Can you tell me the exact date you’ve travelled from?”

  “Goodness me, 1992! That’s the far future!” exclaimed Alfie. “I’ve come from 1918. May 12th to be precise.”

  He looked around him, wistfully. “I guess that explains where Daisy went, then.”

  “Who’s Daisy?” asked Rebecca.

  “Daisy’s my sister. I’m back on a few days’ leave from the front. I guess she must be wondering where I went.”

  “For the past seventy-four years, to be precise,” said Rebecca.

  “Look, Alfie, there’s no easy way to break this to you,” said Josh, “but I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to send you back, at least not anytime soon. I’m afraid you’re stuck here in 1992 for the foreseeable future.”

  He had been expecting a negative response, but Alfie’s reply was anything but.

  “That’s a relief!” exclaimed Alfie. “Because I don’t want to go back – it’s horrible!”