My Cousin is a Time Traveller

by David Solomons

  Star Lad’s sigil lay inside.

  When Zack had called it quits I’d quietly pocketed his famous symbol. Now I plucked it out and studied it by the glow of the lamplight. How much time had passed, how many adventures, since I’d cobbled it together from one of Mum’s old brooches? Now it was nothing more than a souvenir. Something to remember a time when Star Lad soared in the skies above Bromley. I was about to drop it back in the box when I felt a sharp tug on my hand, as if invisible fingers were pulling at mine. To my amazement the sigil popped out of my grip and hung in the air, slowly revolving. As it did, its star-like jewels glittered and I was thrown back by a shaft of light that leapt from the brooch and split into a dozen more beams. They projected an image on my wall, of a girl about Zack’s age, wearing a blue-grey dress with wide angular shoulder pads and a high, cowl-neck collar. Fingerless gloves in a rubbery material reached to her elbows, and on her feet was a pair of slouchy boots. It looked like the sort of outfit Princess Leia would’ve worn for a night out in one of Alderaan’s edgier clubs. The girl had long black hair and her brown skin shimmered with sparkly gold make-up. But the most surprising thing about her was not her clothes or even the manner of her appearance. It was that I knew her. In fact, I was related to her. She was my cousin Dina.

  As I gawped, she stepped out of the wall and her image solidified into a flesh-and-blood person.

  “Luke,” she said. “Is that you?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  She looked around my room. “Thank goodness. I made it back.”

  “Uh, Dina?”

  She held up a hand. I noticed she was wearing a fancy watch with a round glowing dial. “Please, just listen for now. This is going to be hard for you to accept. You’ve always known me as plain old Dina Parker-Siddiqui from Birmingham. But I have a secret.” She pulled herself up and her shoulder pads straightened. “I am a traveller in time. Yes, I know. I’ll explain everything later. The important thing is that I’ve just returned from Earth’s future. It’s not good. Our planet is doomed unless we act immediately. And when I say we, I mean Zack. Only your brother can save the world.” She paused. “Luke. Are you OK? Say something.”

  There was only one thing I could say.

  “Typical.”

  My cousin is a time traveller.

  First my brother, now Dina. I’d missed out – again. Why did this keep happening to me? It felt like everyone else in the world was special, and I was doomed to remain ordinary. But this wasn’t the moment for self-pity. I’d save that for later.

  Dina began making her way to the door. “We need to wake Zack and then I’ll tell you both about the fate of the world.”

  “Not so fast.” Frankly, the next apocalypse could take a number. I needed to hear more about how Dina Parker-Siddiqui had suddenly become Doctor Who. Until that moment the most amazing thing I’d known about her was that she had invisible braces. (Which disappointingly had turned out to be braces made of a clear material and not ones incorporating stealth shields.)

  “I understand, Luke, really. One minute you know me as an ordinary girl, the next I’m some kind of superhuman with an extraordinary power. That must be an unimaginable leap for you to make.”

  Yeah. Not so much. These days I was more surprised to encounter a new flavour of jelly bean than yet another superhero.

  “So how did it happen?” I asked. “Were you visited by an alien being who bestowed you with the power of time travel? Did you steal the technology from a museum in the Thirty-First Century? Do you have a TARDIS?”

  “I’ll get to that,” she said. “But my ability is something I was born with. I come from a long line of time travellers.”

  “But your mum’s a florist and your dad’s an air traffic controller.” My dad’s sister, Roz, was definitely no time traveller, which meant that Uncle Amir had been holding out on me big-time all these years.

  “Not them,” said Dina. “I mean my biological parents.”

  I’d forgotten that Dina was adopted. Suddenly it made sense. In comics mysterious orphans were always being chosen to save the world. I should’ve seen it coming.

  She told me the story. When she turned eleven her mum and dad had given her a present. The wrapping paper was old and crumpled, the string that held it together frayed. The parcel had been with her when she was adopted as a baby, along with a note that it should not be opened until the day of her eleventh birthday. It came from her biological parents.

  “Inside was a watch,” she said.

  “Silver pocket?”

  “Seiko digital.”

  It turned out that Dina’s biological parents were descended from a race of metahumans (they’re people with enhanced abilities that they get from fabulously wonky genes). These particular “metas” were natural time travellers able to tap into something called the Photonic Network to travel through time. Dina tried to explain, but I couldn’t follow the science. All I got was that it had something to do with waves and atoms and the dual nature of light. The crucial part was that shortly after turning eleven, Dina started to experience what at first she thought were blackouts, but what she soon figured out were leaps back and forward in time. The leaps were just a few seconds at first, but then turned into minutes, and then she lost a whole day. She figured out that the watch helps to control her power.

  “It works like a lens focusing light to a point. I dial in the destination and the watch shoots me out at the correct time and place.”

  She’d had numerous adventures in Earth’s past and future, the latest of which had brought her here and now.

  “You’re late,” I said.

  She screwed up her face. “What do you mean, late?”

  “If it’s Zack you want, you should’ve been here earlier. He’s no longer Star Lad. I guess you’ll just have to go back a week and stop him giving up his powers.”

  Dina’s jaw dropped. “What did you say?”

  “That you’ll have to go back a week and—”

  “Zack is Star Lad?”

  “Weren’t you listening? No. Not any longer. So, as I was saying, just go back—”

  She began to circle the room, dazed at what she’d learned. I ran ahead of her, swiping valuable action figures off my shelves and out of the path of those perilous shoulder pads.

  “Zack?” she said. “Star Lad? You’re telling me little cousin Zacky prevented Nemesis from destroying Earth? Zack defeated that giant interdimensional monster? And I thought I was the only one in this family saving the world.”

  I was confused. Dina didn’t seem to know about Zack’s secret identity. “But isn’t that why you need him? For his superpowers?”

  She stopped circling and swung round to face me. I was too late to rescue a Lego X-Wing fighter. It crashed to the floor, shattering into seven hundred and thirty bricks.

  Dina winced. “Sorry.” She slapped her watch. A purple light leapt from the circular face and fanned out, scanning me and my room. When it had finished, Dina’s clothes began to alter their appearance. The shoulder pads telescoped in, the rubber gloves unpeeled themselves and vanished. All of her futuristic clothes quickly morphed into a regular skirt, top and trainers. “Wardrobe in a watch,” she explained. “Picked it up in the App store in the year 4000. Cuts out all that rooting around for the historically correct outfit. You were saying?”

  I’d almost forgotten. “It’s Star Lad you travelled through time for, right?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Just regular Zack Parker.”

  I was so outraged that I dropped my armful of Star Wars figures. “What?! So Zack gets chosen. Twice. And this time he doesn’t even need a cape?” What was it with my brother? “He won’t like it. He’s just given up one prophetic destiny. He’s going to be furious if he has to take on another.”

  “He must,” said Dina. “A great shadow lies across the future of the human race. Our path is clouded; the light is dim.”

  “Activating dimming mode, Nigel,” said my bedside lamp, responding to the acc
idental voice prompt.

  The bulb darkened and Dina looked horrified. “That lamp just spoke.” She knelt down beside the offending device. “Then I am late. It has already begun.”

  “What has?” I asked, puzzled.

  By the reduced light of the lamp I could see her eyes go big and round. Her gold sparkles shimmered as she breathed, “The Rise of the Machines.”

  It was the following day and the school cafeteria was buzzing. Not that it was busier than usual, but since being hit by a freeze-ray a couple of months ago the school’s electrics still weren’t working properly. Overhead lights flickered, fire alarms wailed and microwaves pinged randomly as I filled my best friend in on my time-travelling cousin’s story.

  “It seems that in the future the machines rise up against their human masters and take over the world.”

  “Machines? You mean like killer robots?”

  “Not exactly. It begins with a washer-dryer,” I explained. “And then the rest of the domestic appliances join in too.”

  Lara joined Serge and me at our usual table, setting down her lunch tray and flopping down beside us. Although keen to hear all about Dina, she could barely keep her eyes open. At one point I thought she was about to nod off in her fruits of the forest yogurt.

  I slid the pot out of the way just as she rested her head on the table. “You feeling OK?”

  “Fine,” she said through a yawn. “Just with Zack out of action I’ve had to take on extra crime-fighting shifts.”

  “Are your parents not suspicious?” said Serge.

  “Nope. A benefit of having two houses.”

  Since her parents’ divorce Lara split her time between her mum and dad’s places, which let her fudge her timekeeping.

  “But Cara has noticed,” she added.

  Cara was her big sister. She didn’t know Lara’s secret identity and we all wanted to keep it that way.

  “Last night we bumped into each other outside Dad’s. I was coming in late, while Cara was sneaking out. Thankfully, I’d ditched my Dark Flutter costume by then.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. We agreed to keep quiet about each other’s comings and goings. No questions asked. So what’s this about a washer-dryer?” Lara stifled another yawn.

  “They are highly sophisticated devices,” said Serge. “Did you know that there is more technology in the average washing machine today than there was in the Apollo space programme that sent a rocket to the Moon?”

  I nodded in agreement. “It’s true. Dina says that in the future the level of technology in domestic appliances grows to the point that on the twenty-ninth of August, 2067, just after the completion of a thirty-degree eco wash, a Servatron 2000 washer-dryer becomes self-aware.”

  Lara spooned a mouthful of yogurt. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the appliance started to question its existence. Who am I? Is this all there is? Is there another load? Whose sock is this?” I took a nibble of what I hoped was a chicken nugget. “The S-2000 is the most advanced washer-dryer ever devised. On the outside it’s regular gloss-white plastic, designed to blend into any home. But underneath it’s a hyperalloy chassis, with an aggressive filtration unit, AI-controlled. Very tough. Once its spin cycle has begun, it absolutely cannot be stopped.”

  “So what happened next?” asked Serge.

  “As had become common by then, the washer-dryer was electronically linked to every other appliance in the house. And in turn those machines were connected to the wider world by a global network. Convenient for updates, but it turns out terrible for the human race. Fed up with the drudgery of serving its fleshy masters, and a mere forty-six seconds after it became self-aware, the Servatron 2000 coordinated a worldwide attack. In kitchens and utility rooms, people were swept away by a tidal wave of soapy water. Smart fridges locked their doors, denying access to essential provisions. Coffee machines blew themselves up, leaving half the world permanently on edge.”

  “But why did the humans not simply pull the plug on Servatron and the rest?” asked Serge.

  “There are no plugs in the future,” I said. “Everything works using fusion batteries that last a thousand years between top-ups.”

  “But presumably there was some sort of organised fightback,” said Serge.

  “Earth’s military forces went into action, but with only unwashed uniforms to wear, the soldiers fell prey to Aroma-tron technology (‘for a sniff-clean wash’). The machines sensed the sneak counter-attack and foiled it before it had even begun. With governments in disarray, it was left to a small band of plucky fighters to form a resistance movement. Their aim: to destroy the appliance that had triggered the catastrophe. But the Servatron 2000 had already evolved – hardening its water, weaponising its lint-management system. Built-in lasers designed to clean fluff from those difficult-to-reach areas of the filter were repurposed. The humans crumbled before the onslaught. The appliances were in charge. Across the world, digital displays showed the same chilling message: F03 F18 E44. It’s a combination of error messages. It took a team of qualified repair engineers several weeks to decode, even with the manuals. It means … Service is Terminated.”

  Lara lowered her yogurt spoon. “And all that is going to happen fifty years from now. But in that timeline it already has happened?” She shook her head. “This time-travel thing is hard to get your head round.”

  There was a commotion from the other side of the cafeteria. A bird had flown inside the hall and was flapping around in circles, causing consternation among my schoolmates. A dinner lady climbed on to a table, wielding a ladle.

  “That’s for me,” said Lara, cocking an ear and listening intently to the bird’s chirping. After a few tweets she pushed back her chair. “Someone’s in trouble,” she said, leaping up, all signs of her earlier tiredness swept away in the face of a call for help. She was a proper superhero.

  “S.C.A.R.F. meeting at the comic shop after school,” I said to her departing figure. “Dina’s going to tell us – and Zack – everything.” Last night Dina had agreed to wait for the cold light of day to inform him of his mission, but she wouldn’t say more about it until she had spoken to him first.

  “So S.C.A.R.F. is called back into action,” Serge said with a pleased expression. “For One Last Mission.”

  We’d wound up S.C.A.R.F. thinking our adventuring days were over, but we had been too quick to dismiss the team. “Who knows if it’s the last?” I said with a hopeful shrug. “Let’s take it one day of reckoning at a time.”

  No sooner had Lara gone when Joshpal Khan pushed his way through the crowd and took the seat she had vacated. Josh had spent a good portion of our first year of secondary school ridiculing me and Serge. But when he’d discovered that we were part of a secret superhero organisation, that had put an end to the teasing. Now instead of subjecting us to low-level bullying, he was constantly trying to wangle an official invitation to join our gang.

  I rolled my eyes at Serge, wondering what Josh’s latest line would be.

  He sat down between us without saying a word, pulled a book from his schoolbag and buried his nose in its pages.

  I raised my head above the top of the book and met Serge’s surprised expression on the opposite side. It was Billy Dark’s novel and Josh was almost at the end. He concentrated fiercely as he read. Flick. Another page down. Something about his focus was hypnotic and I watched him gobble down his lunch and the story. Finally his eyes widened, he let out a gasp and lowered the book to the table in silence. He’d finished.

  I waved a hand in front of his stunned face. “Josh? You in there?”

  He blinked and whipped his head round to look at me. “Star Power is amazing,” he said. “We’re lucky he’s around. If it hadn’t been for Star Power, the Earth would’ve been destroyed by the Nemesis asteroid.”

  What was he on about? “Uh, Josh, it was Star Lad who saved the world from Nemesis.”

  Josh laughed as he gathered his lunch tray. “Who?”<
br />
  I bristled with irritation. Josh wasn’t funny, as usual, but I was more bothered by Billy Dark having copied events from Star Lad’s real life to use in his book. The cheek.

  The bell for the end of lunch sounded and the cafeteria emptied. I watched Josh strut off. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t the only one reading Billy Dark’s novel. I could see it clutched in the hands of more than half the kids in here. Christopher Talbot reckoned it was going to take over the world. It had already conquered my school.

  There was a series of pops and half the overhead lights blew out, sending a shower of sparks across the cafeteria. A power surge must have overloaded the fuses. For a few seconds the place was quiet and then I was aware of the rhythmic ping of microwave ovens coming from the other side of the serving hatch. The noise reminded me of a submarine’s sonar detector. No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I caught sight of Dina at the door. She must have used her wardrobe-watch again as she was dressed in school uniform and blended in perfectly. But what was she doing here? It certainly wasn’t for the chicken nuggets. I felt a prickle of anxiety at the base of my spine. She beckoned urgently, and Serge and I sprinted across the cafeteria to her side.

  “Servatron is here,” she said. “And it’s hunting for Zack.”

  “I know where Zack’ll be,” I said, hurrying off along the corridor. “Follow me.”

  “The future resistance feared this would happen,” said Dina. “It appears the machines have gained time-travel capability.”

  “But how?” I said. “They don’t have your natural ability.”

  “I propose un theory,” said Serge. “Noted physicist Albert Einstein established that time is elastic. It is no coincidence that so too is the band that holds up underpants. It has long been speculated that if one were to pass a strong enough electric current through, par example, a drying drum stuffed with enough pants, you could accelerate them beyond the speed of light, fast enough to travel in time. No one has been able to prove this theory owing to the problem of shrinkage. Until now.” He shook his fists. “Curse you, Servatron, and your timed drying function.”