No True Echo

by Gareth P. Jones

  ‘None of this makes any sense,’ said Liphook.

  ‘Yes,’ said the first. ‘I’m afraid that is correct.’

  Second Saturday

  My second Saturday morning, I sat at the kitchen table, watching the rain trickle down the window, wondering if each droplet would be following the exact zigzagged line as before. I thought about Maguire’s diagram explaining what would happen if you went back in time, and how it meant there would be two realities, each a copy of the other. How exact did it have to be? Was every droplet of water acting in the same way as the last time this all happened?

  I was so entranced by the rain on the windowpane that I almost jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. I paused before answering. Ruby’s friends knew not to call so early, which meant that it was Angus, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him about trees.

  ‘Eddie, lad, are you up? That’s the phone,’ I heard Ruby shout from upstairs.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I responded. I picked up the receiver but, before I could say a word, I heard Maguire’s voice say, ‘Eddie? Is that you? I understand now. You were right.’

  ‘What’s happened? What do you understand?’ I replied.

  ‘I see now. You were right. It is possible to travel back. Come quickly. We must try to understand what happened to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think it may be extremely important.’

  ‘You didn’t even believe me before,’ I said. ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘I’ve changed, Eddie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been back too.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s not important where I went. The question is where have you come from?’

  ‘I’ll come now,’ I said.

  I grabbed my coat and shouted, ‘I’m going out.’ I don’t know if Ruby heard and I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for her to respond.

  This time, instead of trying to cross the muddy field, I continued down the hill until I found a lower path that brought me level with the farmhouse. I leaned my bike against the wall and knocked loudly on the door. The reply came, not in the form of a voice, but as a gunshot. A bullet ripped a hole in the door. I dived to the ground, face down in the mud.

  ‘That was a warning,’ yelled Maguire from the other side.

  ‘Don’t shoot! It’s me, Eddie.’

  ‘Eddie who?’

  ‘Eddie Dane. I was here yesterday.’

  ‘If you’re from the agency, you have to declare it now. That’s the protocol.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said.

  Maguire opened the door. As usual it got stuck halfway. ‘Blasted thing,’ he said, yanking it open. He was wearing the same white lab coat as before but his eyes looked wild and frightened, and he had a graze on his head. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.

  ‘You called me,’ I said, still on the ground in the mud and the rain.

  ‘When did I call you?’

  ‘I don’t know, fifteen minutes ago?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did I call you?’ he demanded.

  ‘You said you knew what was going on and that you believed me about the jumping-back-in-time thing.’

  ‘Who’s gone back in time?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Ha,’ he said, waving the gun in my face. ‘So you are echo jumping. I knew it. What’s your originating version and time?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘How far back have you jumped? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I … Well, I only got as far as today, except it was different,’ I said, ‘and I don’t know why it happened.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ he said. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he repeated it. ‘You don’t know.’ His eyes widened and he looked around, as though checking if anyone was there and said, with certainty this time, ‘You don’t know. Yes. Inside now. It’s not safe out here.’

  ‘Not safe? You’re pointing a gun at me.’

  ‘Inside,’ snarled Maguire.

  Echo Jumping

  I couldn’t put my finger on how Maguire was different, but he had definitely changed. It was more than the wild look in his eyes and the way his shaking hands gripped the gun. It was something about the way he moved as he flitted around the room, ensuring the curtains were all drawn.

  ‘You said I called you. How did I sound?’ he asked.

  ‘Excited, I suppose,’ I replied, ‘but why are you asking this like you don’t know?’

  ‘Never mind that. What did I say? What were my exact words?’

  ‘You said that you had … ’ It was strange. As I tried to recall it, I realised I couldn’t remember what he had said to me. A nagging thought occurred to me that it had never happened.

  ‘It’s hazy, isn’t it?’ said Maguire. ‘They’re untethered memories, shifting pasts. Classic early echo-jump side effects before I managed to fine-tune the process.’ He placed his hand to my temple. ‘Any hallucinations? Odd associations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about the repeated days. What differences have there been?’

  My first thought was of Scarlett but I remembered her saying she would be in trouble if anyone discovered that I knew anything. I didn’t want to mention her, but I did want to understand what all this was about. ‘My English teacher, Mr Cornish, came here to kill you.’

  ‘Patrick Cornish?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Interesting. Did he succeed?’

  ‘In killing you?’

  ‘Yes. In killing me.’

  ‘I think he did, yes. He used that gun. Or at least, I thought he did, only he can’t have done, can he?’

  Maguire smiled. It was an odd reaction to being told that he had been shot dead. ‘Why were you here?’

  ‘He was acting weirdly on my way home,’ I said, ‘so the next day I followed him and he came here.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘On my own,’ I said.

  ‘It would be in your best interests to tell me the truth. Remember, I do have a gun.’ He held it up both as a reminder and a threat.

  ‘It was just me,’ I said. ‘Now will you tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘I very much doubt you could understand it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You are mid-echo jump. Since your originating point was here and you jumped back two days, I think we can safely assume that this, the first time-particle accelerator, was used and that it was used in a hurry, meaning that whoever sent you back didn’t have time to adjust the settings. Which leads us to the question of who sent you back. Who was here with you?’

  ‘What’s an echo jump?’ I asked. ‘And how come you know all this when yesterday you didn’t know anything? And how come you don’t remember calling me? And why are you still pointing a gun at me?’

  Maguire lowered the gun and placed it on the armchair.

  ‘Maybe I should show you the recording.’

  ‘What recording?’

  ‘People love the recording.’

  Maguire walked into the back room, where he picked up a camera and found a lead to connect it to one of the computers. After a little jiggling of wires and pressing buttons, an image came onscreen of Maguire sitting on the stool in front of the blank wall.

  ‘Watch this now,’ said Maguire. ‘This is a real piece of history. Or at least, it will be.’

  A Scientific Demonstration

  ‘My name is David Maguire and this is a scientific demonstration.’

  The on-screen Maguire reached forward and clumsily swivelled the camera around to show the equipment that was pointing directly at him.

  ‘I have, for some years now, believed that there exists a particle that governs our relationship with time. Those of my peers who doubted this belief should understand that I feel no ill will towards them. In fact, without their firm hands pushing me away from the established scientific community, I would never have been able to fully dedicate my ti
me to this pursuit.

  ‘Soon I will publish a paper detailing the specifics of my findings, but for the sake of this demonstration, try imagining that just as a strand of DNA holds the blueprint of life, the time particle contains all information pertaining to that which has already occurred: the past. Whether it also contains that which is yet to occur, I do not know. But let’s not try to run before we can walk. What I am sure of is that this particle governs our forward movement through time. Let us take this book as an example.’

  Maguire held up the hardback copy of Frankenstein.

  ‘A book contains many traces of history. This is a story written by Mary Shelley in 1816, published in 1818, then again with changes by the author in 1831. This edition was published in … ’ Maguire opened it up and checked the date inside. ‘1937. I can’t tell you how many owners it has had, how many hands have held it, or whose eyes have perused the words. What I can say is that each molecule that makes up each page is governed by time particles that ensure that this book travels forwards through time. It began life in pristine condition but now its pages have smudges from dirty fingers, folds from those who wanted to keep their place and other marks, common in old books. Time, as we have always understood it, allows for things to become worn and we would all be very surprised if the book’s condition improved over the years.

  ‘I will now use this book to demonstrate how time is not what we thought it was. For some reason, best known to the publishers, there are two completely blank pages at the back.’ He held the book open to its back pages, at first putting it too close to the camera, causing it to lose focus, then moving it further away before lowering it. ‘I have never read this book and only selected it because I was reminded of it recently. Now, watch carefully as I turn to a page, completely at random.’

  He flicked through the pages and chose one.

  ‘I will now read the first sentence my eyes have fallen upon. The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.’

  He paused to reflect on this before continuing.

  ‘That is the first time I have read that line. It’s rather good and oddly appropriate. Watch now, as I turn on the time particle accelerator, which will send me on a short jump back along my own timeline. You will not be able to join me on this journey, but will instead witness me falling into a short temporal coma. Please do not be alarmed by this.’

  He leaned forward and flicked a switch, then sat back in the chair.

  ‘My time perception is now being … ’

  His voice drifted away and he fell forward, crashing straight into the camera and, for a few seconds, the screen showed nothing but the ceiling until Maguire picked it up. This time he had a graze on his temple.

  ‘Now look,’ he said.

  He pointed the camera at the book, opened it and revealed on the blank pages, written in messy handwriting, the sentence: The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

  He swung the camera back to his face. ‘Obviously, you’re thinking this is a trick. I could have written this while the camera was not pointing at me but I assure you it is not. The acceleration of my governing time particles sent me back into my own past. Physically I remained here but my conscious self returned to an earlier point in my life. It entered this very body two days ago. Thursday morning. I was not there long, just long enough to find a pen and write the sentence that I had just read. To avoid confusion, rather than labelling this time travel, which has too many connotations and inherent inaccuracies, I am calling this echo jumping because I returned to an earlier point of my existence, just as a sound wave can bounce back in the form of an echo. I am yet to fully establish the consequences of causality involved in this temporal shift but, as you’ve seen from my demonstration, it is possible to alter events. Whatever the truth, this is a significant leap forward, both in the history of science and in the science of history.’

  An Altered Version

  Maguire pressed stop on the camera. ‘Any questions?’

  I had so many I didn’t know where to begin. He disconnected the camera but the image of his frozen face remained on the monitor.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You can ask me anything. This is a museum, after all. Or it will be. I believe they call this one the discovery room.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘if you went back in time and wrote the sentence two days ago, then why wasn’t it there when you opened up the book in the first place?’

  ‘That is a very good question and one which will take many years of research and speculation to answer.’ He switched off the monitor.

  ‘Which is another way of saying that you don’t know,’ I said.

  Maguire smiled patiently at me. ‘I did not say it was unanswerable. I said it would take time, and indeed it did.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You think I am the same man you spoke to this morning on the phone?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes and no. This is certainly the same hand that dialled the number and called you.’ He wiggled his fingers. ‘I am speaking with the same vocal cords that spoke to you, but this is not the same consciousness.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘In my timeline, I have never called you on the phone. Not that I can remember anyway.’

  ‘But … I … What?’

  ‘I have jumped back to this point from a version of the future.’

  ‘You’re from the future?’

  He nodded. ‘We don’t have time to go into my reasons for being here, but it does mean that I can answer your question about the outcome of the experiment, although I don’t hold a great deal of hope you’ll fully understand this first time. It takes the world a long time to adjust to the complexities of echo technology. A long time, indeed.’

  ‘Echo technology?’

  ‘Don’t get too distracted by the technical terms. Think about it this way: there are two predictable consequences of the experiment with the book. In the first, it simply doesn’t work. In the second, it does. We call these two possibilities, the originating and the altered versions. In the originating version, I am disappointed by the failure yet intrigued by the inability to affect the future. In the altered version, or the echo, the experiment is a success. The words have miraculously appeared on the page.’

  ‘Then they should have been there when you opened the book.’

  ‘Intriguing, isn’t it? Imagine you’re a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge over a river. At the furthest point of the jump, you dip your hand into the water and pick up a stone from the riverbed. The cord then snaps back and returns you to your jump point with the stone in your hand.’

  ‘Bungee jumping?’

  ‘Yes, except that the bridge in this case is your originating point in time, the lake is the past and the stone is whatever you changed when you went back.’

  ‘There’s a bit of difference between taking a stone out of a river and changing the past.’

  ‘Not as much as you might think. The river’s flow is altered, much as the course of events are changed.’

  ‘But surely you return to a different bridge if you’ve changed something.’

  ‘Eddie, don’t spend too much time worrying about bridges or rivers. These analogies are never perfect. Echo technology is extremely complicated even when simplified. The important thing is that it is possible to go back to the past and affect the future. But here is the thing that most struggle with: while the bungee rope itself remains intact, each jump has both outcomes. Both the originating and altered versions coexist.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Try repeating the experiment with the book and you soon discover that you have a fifty-fifty success rate, because half the time you’ll return to the originating version, not the altered version.’

  ‘So which is the real one?’

  ‘Real is not a helpful word. Time doesn’t distinguish between versions.’

  ‘You’re saying that every time you do this thing w
ith the book, you’re making another version of the world.’

  ‘That’s a very neat way of putting it. As I continue with my investigations, I will discover how the jump cord can be broken, once a return is made to the originating version, to destroy the altered version. This prevents all that messing-about-with-the-past business and makes it possible to echo jump back and do whatever you like without worrying about what your actions will do to the future.’

  ‘But if you’d done that, then the thing with the book wouldn’t have worked.’

  ‘Exactly. I performed these early jumps before I learned how to clean up these versions.’

  ‘And before it was the law to do so.’

  We both turned to see Scarlett standing in the doorway. The curly red hair was gone. In its place was straight blond hair. The green-blue eyes were the same, though.

  ‘Hi, Eddie,’ she said.

  ‘Scarlett?’

  ‘Lauren,’ said Maguire. ‘I should have guessed.’

  ‘Lauren?’ I said.

  ‘Hello, David,’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry about names, Eddie. Please let me handle this – and no heroics this time.’

  ‘I didn’t let him know there was anything to know,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Maguire. ‘Eddie has been acting convincingly ignorant since he arrived, almost like someone who didn’t have the faintest idea of what’s happening to him. There are protocols about that.’

  ‘I’m not here to talk procedure,’ said Scarlett. ‘I’m here to take you in. It’s time, David. The trial is underway.’

  ‘A trial in which I’m accused of a murder,’ he said.

  ‘Murder?’ I said. ‘No. Cornish shoots him.’

  ‘Patrick Cornish is a footnote in all this,’ said Maguire. ‘His group of anti-echo activists thought they could change things using the technology they were trying to get rid of.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Scarlett. ‘Cornish has already stood trial for his actions here. This is much more important than that,’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s time to tidy up.’

  ‘Tidying up? Is that what they call it these days? What if I prefer it messy like this?’ Maguire picked up the gun and pointed it at her.