The thermometer bleeped.
“What is it?” I asked.
Rachel read the display and pursed her lips. “Slightly high.”
That surprised me. I was so cold. “I’m okay, really.”
“What rating was the film?” Dad asked.
“Twelve A,” I told him.
“Was there something bad in it?”
I shrugged. “Somebody died. A lot of people actually.”
“Oh, Jules.” He gave me a hug. “Maybe James Bond wasn’t the right thing for you to go and see, not right now. Too soon, huh.”
“You poor thing,” Rachel said sympathetically.
“I’m all right.”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“I think I just want to go to bed now, thanks.”
“You have to eat something. Your gran will be angry with me if you skip a meal.”
“I’ll have a hot chocolate,” I told her.
Dad sat beside me while Rachel put a mug of milk in the microwave. Microwaves break up all kinds of protein molecules, which wrecks milk’s nutritional value—but she meant well.
“Just the film that bothered you?” he asked quietly.
I nodded.
“All right. But I’d like to go with you to the next one, okay?”
“Okay.”
He leaned in close. “And don’t mention the microwaved milk. Please?”
I gave him an astonished look.
“You’re my son,” he said with a lopsided smile. “I do listen to you, even though I screwed up with the PlayStation.”
I thought I might start crying.
Rachel stirred chocolate powder into the milk and brought the mug over to me.
“Thank you, Rachel. That’s very kind of you.”
I think she looked as shocked as I felt.
I got into my pajamas and went to bed. I didn’t open my laptop, but I did check that the catapult was still there. It was.
Vladimir McCann was a murderer. Rather…he will be. He’s going to kill Michael.
I suppose that’s when my soul is born into this Julian body. So it shouldn’t bother me. After all, I’m living this life because of that murder.
But Michael and Jyoti are expecting a baby. I loved Jyoti when I was Michael. I don’t think love like that will ever happen to me in this life. We could have spent decades together. All that love will be lost now. Never to exist. That’s not fair. There’s so much suffering in the world already, what right does Vladimir have to take away a piece of genuine happiness from anyone, let alone me?
Jyoti will be devastated. And the baby. What will happen to the baby? It’ll never know its father. It’ll never know me.
Worse, my Julian life starts after Michael dies, so I never knew my own child. The baby won’t know that its father’s soul is alive. And even if it did, as Julian I can never be a proper father to it. I still miss Mum terribly, and I know her soul is safe and sound somewhen. Michael’s baby won’t have even that small comfort.
There’s only one thing I can do. The right thing: stop Vladimir before he shoots Michael. In the memory, Michael heard Nancy call out—she’s the security woman on the door, the one with CND earrings. She said I know you just before Vladimir fired the gun. She must have recognized him. But she wasn’t quick enough. If I’m there, I can let her know earlier, in time to stop it.
That way Michael will live. Which might be a slight problem. My soul leaves his body to live in me. What’s going to happen if he doesn’t die on time? Does that mean I don’t get born?
It’s a paradox. I really hate paradox.
But there’s only one way to find out.
—
The news the next morning was all about the Bank of England’s announcement that it was increasing the base interest rate by a quarter percent.
“Finally!” Dad exclaimed as he was eating his breakfast toast. “Savings are going to have a purpose again.”
“Going to be busy this morning,” Rachel agreed cheerfully. “The City will go bananas over this news.” She popped a vitamin pill. “How are you feeling now, Jules?”
“Fine, thanks.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The reporter on the morning news was standing outside the Bank of England, talking excitedly. People were hurrying past in the background, their faces all creased up and urgent.
“Take it easy today, okay?” Dad said to me. “What are you going to do?”
“Maybe some schoolwork. I want to get well ahead on the science curriculum before term starts.”
“All right. I’ll try and get home early, okay?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”
“Good lad, you.”
I wonder if he realizes how much like Barney he sounds sometimes?
I took my time getting ready. Two hoodies again, the catapult in my inside pocket. I put the ball bearings into a plastic box, the type you get to keep food fresh. I laced my trainers up twice, making sure the bow was tight. Phone fully charged—after all, someone’s going to have to call the police.
I left the flat just before eleven. I couldn’t risk being late. Even if the Tube and DLR packed up completely, I could still get there in a bus or taxi.
The underground and the DLR worked just fine. I rode the elevator up out of Canada Square station at ten to twelve. Forty minutes to go.
My limbs weren’t working so well. Every part of me had that horrible vertigo tingle. I was going to change the time line. Which was a physics impossibility. Paradox.
When Robert Oppenheimer tested the first atom bomb, the scientists who built it were worried the explosion would trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere that would destroy the world. Could me creating paradox destroy the whole universe?
I started walking along the road outside Michael’s office at twenty past twelve, searching for Vladimir. I couldn’t see him anywhere. But I remembered him, and time was catching up with that memory.
Then I realized actually seeing him didn’t matter. I knew he was there; it was that simple. I headed straight for the entrance to Michael’s office, pulled out my phone, and dialed 999.
“What is the nature of your emergency?”
“There’s a man with a gun,” I said. “He’s shooting another man. There’s blood and everything. Help, please. We need police and ambulances. Now!”
“Where are you? What is your name?”
“Jubilee Park Docklands. Hurry!”
“What’s your name—”
I’d reached the steps in front of the big revolving door. “Hurry! He’s going to kill him,” I shouted into the phone.
The people around me started to stare, concern registering. Somewhere behind me, I could hear a siren. That was awfully quick. And Michael was coming out of the sliding door. I started to run toward him. Vladimir was there, waiting calmly. Ten meters away.
I tugged the catapult out.
“Hey, you!”
I gaped in surprise. It was Nancy the door warden, glaring down at me.
She started down the steps. “Yes, you, I know you.”
“No, no, no,” I groaned. I’m not the bad guy! The memory was happening right in front of me. I had to stop it. I tugged frantically at the box of ball bearings in my other pocket. They came free, but I lost my grip and the box tumbled out of my hand.
Nancy was two meters away, reaching for me. “What are you doing?”
The expression on her face is one of my clearest-ever memories. That disapproving frown turning to a comic mask of surprise and panic. She stepped on the ball bearings and flailed about, her arms windmilling wildly. Down she went, as if she’d been rugby-tackled. And behind her, Vladimir was raising his arm, the pistol coming up.
I dropped to my knees and snatched up a ball bearing. Took aim, pulling the elastic back as Michael turned to see what the commotion was about.
I fired. The ball bearing hit Vladimir on the side of the head. He bellowed in pain and jerked about in reaction. His finger pulled the tri
gger.
The bullet hit Michael in the side of his chest, spinning him around. Blood sprayed out. So much blood! And then Michael was falling.
But Vladimir was turning, one hand held against his head where the ball bearing had struck. All around me people were screaming and ducking down for cover.
I was still on my knees, scrambling around for another ball bearing.
Vladimir saw me and started. “You!” His face was bright red, suffused with a terrible rage. I was so scared I almost urinated. He lifted his pistol.
I let go of the elastic. The ball bearing hit him square on the forehead. He flipped backward like a gymnast, his feet actually leaving the ground before he crashed down.
Three of the building security people pounced on him.
The only sound in Docklands was the siren.
I ran up the steps to Michael. He was lying there inertly on the top step, blood spreading out from his wound. His mouth was flapping about like a fish in air.
I knelt beside him and clamped my hand on the wound. Pressure. You always needed to keep pressure on a wound like that. It says so on the Internet.
His blood was horribly warm as it leaked out all over my hand. I could feel bile rising. But his gulping was getting slower—then his limbs started to shake.
I screamed.
Nancy appeared at my side, tipping his head back and opening his mouth. “He’s having a seizure.”
The siren stopped. There was an ambulance at the bottom of the stairs. Two paramedics were racing toward us.
I got pushed aside just as his motions slowed and…stopped. The paramedics took over from Nancy, and she came to stand beside me, her arm going around my shoulder. There was a big pressure dressing, and an IV bag, and an oxygen mask. They cut Michael’s shirt open and put defibrillator paddles on his chest.
Michael spasmed back to life, and he sucked down a big breath of oxygen. “Hell, that hurts.” His eyes flickered open.
“He’s alive,” I said numbly.
“Yes,” Nancy said. “I can’t believe how quickly the ambulance got here.”
I looked up into the sky, waiting calmly for paradox to strike, to not exist anymore, or for the universe to end…
Neither happened.
Chapter 19
The Non-Paradox End
Looking back after seventy years, I still wonder. Am I right? Was Uncle Gordon (wherever his soul is now) right? Is consciousness nothing more than a window into time?
I’m not religious, but I sincerely believe that we have a soul—one that goes on in some way after our body dies. As to when and where it goes—Well, that I’m about to discover.
Here’s two things I discovered after I saved Michael: One, Michael only lived because the paramedics got to him so fast. Me squeezing on his bullet wound didn’t help at all, despite what the Internet says. Of course, I was the one who phoned the emergency services before it happened, thus making sure they got there in time, but I can’t take credit for that. It doesn’t matter because, fact two—Docklands has a phenomenal amount of CCTV surveillance.
Boy-with-a-catapult-taking-out-lunatic-shooter played on every news show on the planet from multiple angles. The YouTube video got eighteen million hits in the first twenty-four hours. Then someone did a mash with a silly music track. That got thirty-two million hits.
Rachel had the front pages of me framed, and eventually hung them all the way up the stairs in the new Wimbledon house.
I got to go to lunch with the prime minister—I took Dad and Rachel and Uncle Gordon.
I got a citizen’s bravery award at a big ceremony at a really plush hotel. Barney and Gran flew in from Spain for that one.
Vladimir McCann received a ten-year sentence in a psychiatric prison. He was released after seven, and spent the rest of his life in and out of various medical institutions before dying of an overdose fifteen years later.
Michael spent five days in hospital before going home and made a full recovery. He and Jyoti got married in Vegas the next week. Exclusive pictures were sold to a magazine for a five-figure sum. He used that money to make stock market investments. Their baby was born eight months later. A boy. They called him Julian.
That’s not just embarrassing, it’s completely weird.
I changed the time line, yet I still live. How can that be?
I really hate paradox.
Or maybe I was just as crazy as Vladimir back in those days, and it was all part of my grief process. I certainly never remembered any more of Michael’s life after that—not that I saw a lot of him afterward. But when I did, it triggered nothing.
He was GeneFood’s major backer at the start. By then, those early stock market investments of his had made him a billionaire, and his venture capital company funded a lot of tech start-ups. I’d started GeneFood a couple of years after I got my genetics doctorate. It was a hell of a ride. Michael cashed in his shares five years later, when their value had increased 3,000 percent.
—
That whole crazy episode was what shifted my interest from physics to biotechnology. I mean, what’s the point of studying quantum cosmology when the universe is underpinned by strange spirituality? So I went into genetics and set up GeneFood. You see, I still wanted to invent something that would help the world. Just not a gadget.
And, boy, did I succeed.
Turning my head is painful now; the nurses have piled the pillows up around me. But I can do it if I take it slowly.
“Careful, Grandpa.”
I smile at Ian. He’s a good lad, him. He shouldn’t have to sit at my bedside watching me die.
“I’m okay,” I reassure him. And—wow—my voice sounds dreadful. But then, breathing is really difficult now. They are not shoving air tubes down my throat. I won that argument a month ago (well, my lawyers did). No drugs. No resuscitation.
I just want to see it one last time. The bedroom window looks down across the cliffs to the Cornish coastline beyond. It’s a fabulous view. Even fifty years back, the house cost a fortune—worth it, though. The Atlantic waves are rolling in, breaking on the rocks in tremendous white spumes. And out there, a kilometer from the shore, the surface of the water is green from huge fields of seawheat.
It feeds a billion people now, they tell me. And it costs practically nothing. I made varieties for every climate, from the poles to the tropics.
I helped people.
Something tightens in my chest. I smile as my eyes close, and now I’m finally going to know. The blackness engulfs me, and so I die—
Chapter 20
After the Paradox
Of all the things, I didn’t expect reincarnation to be painful. Logically, I shouldn’t be aware of much at birth: an abrupt immersion into alien air and light, taking my first breath and crying. A mother’s welcome embrace.
This hurts!
I can barely breathe. My body is shuddering around like I’m being electrocuted. And the pain isn’t letting up one iota; it hurts like hell. Wait, did I just say that out loud? Newborn babies can’t talk.
I open my eyes. Of all the things (2), I wasn’t expecting to see my own face from seventy years ago staring down at me. Damn, I look terrified—poor me. I have a really bad dress sense, too. And then thirteen-year-old Julian Costello Proctor is looking up serenely into the sky, waiting for—
Oh, I remember what he’s waiting for. Paradox to strike with all the might of a dinosaur-killer asteroid.
I really hate paradox. But this universe is definitely strange. I think it has a sense of humor, too. Bet Jack Haldane never knew that.
Anxious paramedics are shouting at me, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. On the ground next to me, underneath three burly security wardens, Vladimir McCann is screaming like—well, like a demented man whose murderous plan just got foiled.
Then one of the paramedics meanders back into focus. “You are one lucky bloke,” he shouts with a smile. “Someone called us just in time.”
I know. I did. Seven
ty years ago. And I remember every single day of those years. Ah! Including stock market figures. Well done, past-life-me Julian; but now my name is Michael Finsen (again!), and I have The Best memory.
BY PETER F. HAMILTON
Great North Road
Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories
A Window into Time
Pandora’s Star
Judas Unchained
The Void Trilogy
The Dreaming Void
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void
The Night’s Dawn Trilogy
The Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God
The Greg Mandel Trilogy
Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower
Fallen Dragon
Misspent Youth
A Second Chance at Eden
The Confederation Handbook
The Abyss Beyond Dreams
A Night Without Stars
PHOTO: © PETER EYRE/LRPS
PETER F. HAMILTON is the author of numerous novels, including The Evolutionary Void, The Temporal Void, The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora’s Star, Fallen Dragon, and the acclaimed epic Night’s Dawn trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God). He lives with his family in England.
peterfhamilton.co.uk
Facebook.com/PeterFHamilton
@PeterFHamilton1
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