by Jason Ayres
“Not really,” she said. “You still haven’t explained how you came to be in Christ Church Meadow at that time of night.”
“Oh that’s quite simple,” he replied, and began explaining about the key and how certain undergraduates had access to the park after hours if they knew the right people. Rebecca didn’t believe a word of it, but before he had finished, they were interrupted by her radio which crackled into life as a female voice began reading out an urgent message.
“All units, we have a reported armed robbery in progress at the Midland Bank in Summertown. All units please respond immediately.”
That wasn’t far from where Rebecca was. She was going to have to leave this for now.
“Got to go – emergency,” she said to Jonty, to his visible relief. “But I’m not done with this.”
With that, she left the house and began sprinting up the road towards the bank. As she did so, she heard the wail of police sirens approaching behind her and hoped she wouldn’t be spotted. She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, as her visit to Jonty was another bit of extra-curricular activity that Adam didn’t know about.
As she ran, she tried to piece it all together in her head. Three people had gone missing – and all three had reappeared – on the 2nd, 6th and 10th of January. There was a pattern there of four days between each reappearance. Could she expect another on the 13th?
Meanwhile, Peter and Josh were reaching the exact same conclusion over coffee in a café in the Covered Market.
“There’s definitely some sort of time bubble operating here,” said Josh. “But I don’t think it’s working in the same way the others were.”
“What’s different about this one?” asked Peter.
“With the others, people would enter, reappear at some point in the future and then the next person would go in. This one seems to be picking people up in the past and bringing them forward to the present day, which suggests that this bubble can hold more people at a time, or there are multiple bubbles in the same place.”
“Can we do anything to fix it?”
“I’m not sure we can, not at the moment. If I had a fully operational tachyometer I could probably deactivate it. Without that there’s not much I can do until I get back to the future, but which time anything that’s going to happen will have happened.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” asked Peter.
“That’s what we need to try and work out,” replied Josh. “First we have to figure out if there is a pattern.”
“You mean like the first bubble you found doubling each time someone went in it?”
“Exactly,” replied Josh. “There’s nearly always some sort of mathematical progression. We just need to work out what it is.”
“Any ideas?” said Peter.
“That’s out next job,” said Josh. “We need to analyse what we know and then try and predict what will happen next.”
“So let’s go over what we do know,” replied Peter. “You turned up on New Year’s Day. We know that.”
“Yes, I did. And then there was the old man who fell in the river. According to the paper, he turned up the following day.”
“That would have been January 2nd. And he disappeared on New Year’s Eve so was in the bubble for two days.”
“You’re getting the hang of this,” replied Josh. “So what about the others?”
“Tracy Ellis, disappeared on Christmas Eve, reappeared on January 6th. And the lovely Jonty who we’ve just had the displeasure of meeting. He disappeared on December 13th and reappeared on January 10th.”
Peter did some mental calculations in his head but was stumped. “I can’t see any obvious pattern there.”
“I can,” said Josh. “There has been a gap of four days between each person.”
“Apart from you,” Peter reminded him. “There was only one day between you and the old man.”
“Yes, well, we can probably discount that as it was before the tachyometer went haywire and set off the new bubble. Since then it’s been four days each time.”
“Why four?” asked Peter. “Why not two or ten?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Josh. “The tachyometer was screwed, remember? But it does look as if four days is the gap. Whether that’s fixed or not, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I thought you knew what you were doing with all this time travel stuff,” replied Peter. “It sounds to me like you’re figuring it out as you’re going along.”
“That’s often the way,” replied Josh. “Time travel’s a complicated business and no one’s done it before. It’s not like I can just pick up the equivalent of a Bradshaw’s Railway Guide to help me along.”
“True,” replied Peter. “So if it is a four-day gap, then the next person ought to appear on the 14th.”
“That’s three days from now. And I think we ought to be there to meet them,” said Josh.
“Is there anything we can do to try and figure out who they might be in advance?” asked Peter.
“Not easily,” replied Josh. “The police have a missing person’s database but I can’t see any way that we can get access to it.”
“Hey, maybe we should ask that WPC,” said Peter.
“I don’t think getting the police involved is a good idea,” replied Josh.
“Oh that’s a shame because I thought she was really nice,” said Peter dreamily.
He had been very taken with the pretty young officer and this hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“What is it with you and policewomen!” exclaimed Josh. “Is it some sort of fetish?”
“Huh?” answered Peter, a little confused. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind,” replied Josh, not wanting to go into that. He had told Peter nothing about his future marriage to Hannah Benson, the local DI whom he wouldn’t even meet for another twenty-six years. Thankfully Peter didn’t push it.
“Is there any pattern to the dates on which the people originally disappeared?” he asked.
“Not that I can see,” said Josh. “There was an eleven-day gap between Jonty and Tracy vanishing but only seven days between Tracy and Mr Chambers. It is possible the gaps increase going backwards through time, but there could be all sorts of other variables at play, too – not just mathematical, but physical, too.”
“Such as?”
“Well, to fall into the time bubble you’ve got to approach it from exactly the right direction and it is right next to the riverbank away from the path. It’s not like the original tunnel which people were walking through all the time. There could be long periods when no one falls into this one.”
“There’s no way of knowing, then?”
“No really. All we know is that each person who comes out has been in there longer than the one before. Mr Chambers was in there for two days. Tracy Ellis was in there for thirteen days, and Jonty for twenty-eight days. It would be reasonable to expect those gaps to keep increasing.”
“What was that about only one person being in a bubble at a time?”
“That’s always how it’s worked in the past,” replied Josh. “But I think we have multiple bubbles this time. The tachyometer disappeared after I dropped it by the river but it was very much active. Perhaps it went on a spree back through time, creating bubbles as it went, then spitting each person that fell into them out here at four-day intervals.”
“That seems like a reasonable theory,” said Peter.
“It’s about all we’ve got for now,” said Josh. “We may as well run with it until we find out more.”
“Assuming we have got this right, how far back in time could this thing go?”
“That’s what concerns me,” replied Josh. “In theory there’s no limit.”
“So people from years ago could reappear?” asked Peter.
“Very probably,” said Josh. “I can’t even begin to think about how we’re going to deal with that scenario.”
Peter thought for a moment. “How many of these time bubbles could ther
e possibly be?” he asked.
“I’ve wondered that myself,” admitted Josh.
“I was just thinking about all the thousands of people who go missing every year,” replied Peter. “You see them on posters on lamp-posts everywhere. I often thought many must have been murdered or committed suicide but their bodies were never found. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe they all fell into time bubbles.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” admitted Josh.
“And don’t you even feel a little guilty about that?” asked Peter. “After all, you created them.”
“I may have created this one, but not all of them. I still don’t know where that first one in the tunnel came from that started all this in the first place. And yes, I do feel more than a little guilty. Do you think I’d have started this whole thing if I’d know how much trouble it would cause? That’s why I need to get back to my time so I can sort it all out.”
“What about all the famous people who have disappeared over the years?” continued Peter. “Like Lord Lucan, Amelia Earhart and C.S. Lewis. No one ever came up with any satisfactory explanation for what happened to them.”
“Wait, what?” asked Josh, picking up on one of the names, “Do you mean C.S. Lewis as in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? When did he disappear?”
“You must know about C.S. Lewis,” insisted Peter. “There have been all sorts of theories about what happened to him.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard about it,” replied Josh, “and I’m a big fan of his. I read all seven Narnia books when I was at school.”
“All five Narnia books,” corrected Peter. “And I’m a big fan, too.”
“Look, I know my Prince Caspian from my Magician’s Nephew,” insisted Josh. “There are seven Narnia books. And I’ve never heard anything about C.S. Lewis disappearing until now.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t in your universe, then,” suggested Peter. “You said you might be from a slightly different one, with subtle changes. And what’s The Magician’s Nephew anyway?”
“That’s his sixth Narnia book. Now listen, this could be important. What happened to C.S. Lewis?”
“No one knows,” said Peter. “Except that one day in 1952 he simply disappeared and was never seen again.”
“I can tell you for certain that didn’t happen in my universe,” replied Josh. “And what’s more, he lived in Oxford. You know what I’m thinking?”
“He’s in one these bubbles?” said Peter.
“Exactly,” replied Josh.
“But that was nearly forty years ago,” said Peter. “How long will it be until he comes out? And what are we going to do with him when he does?”
Josh just looked back at him feeling slightly deflated. For someone who usually had all the answers, he was suddenly feeling rather lost for words.
Chapter Thirteen
Monday 13th January 1992
“Haven’t you gone home yet?” enquired Adam French as he passed by Rebecca’s workstation, wrapped up in his thick, black coat indicating he was on the way out. It was late on Monday evening, a good couple of hours after she should have gone home, but she was still at her desk rummaging through piles of old papers.
“No, just catching up on some paperwork,” she replied, which seemed to satisfy him.
“That’s what I like to see,” he said. “Devotion above and beyond the call of duty. Keep this up and you’ll have my job in a few years.” And with that, he headed for the door.
“Creep,” said Dan Bradley, from across the room, as soon as Adam was out of earshot.
“Whatever,” replied Rebecca, noting with amusement that Dan, who was also working late, hadn’t received any praise. Perhaps that was just as well because he didn’t actually seem to be doing anything. She knew that in five minutes, once Adam was safely gone, Dan would be off like a shot.
He had this big thing about always being in the office before Adam in the morning, and always leaving after him. He obviously thought that was the best way to look dedicated and get promoted, but Rebecca just thought it made him look a bit sad. It was all very well staying behind when it was necessary but it was clear from the way Dan hung around that he couldn’t have much of a life outside work.
Although Rebecca was keen to climb the ranks, she had no desire to do it by kissing the boss’s backside. Her reason for working late wasn’t a bona fide one in any case. She had been going through old files trying to find more unexplained missing person cases in Oxford.
It had taken her a long time to find what she was looking for. The police mainframe computer was unwieldy, old-fashioned and painfully slow and she had pretty much given up trying to get any useful information from it. It was patchy at best and she knew many of her colleagues didn’t bother inputting information into it, even though they had received training. They preferred to stick to the old handwritten forms.
This would all change in the future, she surmised. Computers were the way things were going and there were plans afoot to link up all of the various different police computers into one national database. She was a firm supporter of this, believing that the ability to embrace this modern technology would be of far greater help to her in her career than Dan’s old-fashioned brown nosing techniques.
For now she was reduced to trawling through years of old paper files, many of which she had brought up from the archives in the basement the previous evening after everyone had gone home. She hadn’t enjoyed going down there at all. It was dark, gloomy, and at one point she was sure she had seen a rat dart out from behind one of the filing cabinets.
Going through hundreds and hundreds of missing person cases going back over twenty years had taken time. Many had turned out to be wild goose chases when the person had turned up either alive and well or, in less happy circumstances, dead.
But there were others that had piqued her interest, certainly enough to make her want to head back down to the river bank the following morning. If her four-day theory was correct, then the next day was the day when another missing person just might reappear.
The next morning was crisp and clear and, as luck would have it, was her day off. Out of uniform, she wouldn’t attract any attention and could pose as just another inconspicuous tourist in the park.
As she breakfasted on Special K, with skimmed milk and just a small sprinkling of sugar, she thought about her plans for the day ahead.
In the three cases she had dealt with so far, each of the missing people seemed to have reappeared mid- to late morning. Her plan was to get down to the park early, stake the place out and watch for anything unusual.
If anyone did mysteriously reappear she wanted to be the one to find them and not as part of official police business. They weren’t interested anyway, so as far as she was concerned this was now a personal project. If Adam wasn’t interested then she’d pursue it herself and what she did on her day off was her own business.
Unlike the police, the press had been all over it, but they hadn’t come up with anything concrete and the general consensus seemed to be that it was just another blown-up tabloid story.
The public had long been used to seeing outrageous headlines on the front cover of papers like The Sunday Sport, from World War II planes being found on the moon to London buses turning up at the South Pole. A story about a few missing people turning up in mysterious circumstances was hardly going to bat an eyelid. They weren’t even celebrities.
Rebecca rented a small one-bedroomed flat on Trinity Street, not far from work and also not far from Christ Church Meadow. She had no idea how long this stake-out was going to last, and with the weather so cold, she made sure she wrapped up well, with thick leggings, a scarf and her big, blue winter coat.
It was just after 10am when she got to the park, which she felt would be early enough. It was relatively quiet again, despite the sunshine. Most people were at work or school and the cold was keeping a lot of others from venturing out.
But she wasn’t along in the park. As she approached the a
rea where the body of old Mr Chambers has been found, she spotted two very familiar-looking figures loitering suspiciously beside a nearby tree. Fortunately they were deep in conversation and didn’t notice her.
“Those two again,” she murmured to herself as she paused, and found a tree to shelter behind before she was spotted. It was the two men she had seen at Jonty’s house a few days earlier. Now what on earth were they doing here?
This couldn’t be just a coincidence. This reinforced her suspicion that there was something very strange going on here. She was now more determined than ever to get to the bottom of it.
She strained her ears to try and hear what they were saying but they were too far away and she dared not get closer even in her relatively incognito outfit. It would be best for now if she stayed put and just watched.
Unaware of her presence, further down the riverbank, Josh and Peter were again speculating on the nature of what they were facing.
“So if today is the day the next person is coming through, from how far back in time do we think they are coming?” Peter asked.
“We can only really make an educated guess at that,” replied Josh. “My gut feel is that it will be at least as far as before, possible twice as much, possibly much more. It could even be C.S. Lewis himself, though that would be a huge jump in time compared to the last one. Until whoever it is turns up, we just don’t know.”
“That’s if anyone does show up,” reminded Peter. “We don’t know for certain people are coming through every four days.”
“Personally, I would be quite glad if they didn’t,” said Josh. “Not today, not ever. I’m hoping the tachyometer bounced back through time three times, zapped those three people into the future, and then expired. I’ve got enough to worry about as it is, without all this on top.”
“That doesn’t explain C.S. Lewis going missing, though, does it?”
“I guess not, unless that’s a difference between the universes caused by some other event,” replied Josh.
“Assuming more people do come through, what exactly are we going to do about it? Can you take them back to where they should be once you get back to the future?”