The Time Bubble

by Jason Ayres

  “Yes – and it’s not just the rent. The agents are constantly charging me fees for things as well. Like a fee for sending me a letter to tell me the rent is going up. It’s outrageous”.

  “That’s what I thought” said Peter. “So while I’m travelling to the future, why don’t you stay here? You’d be doing me a favour looking after the place and saving yourself some money into the bargain”.

  Hannah had to admit she liked the idea. His three-bedroom house was a big step up on her flat.

  They talked it over some more and agreed that as long as she covered the bills and met his mortgage payments for him she could stay. She’d be comfortably better off financially than she was in the flat.

  The doorbell went and they headed back downstairs to let the others in. For the next hour the five of them went over the plan in fine detail. The only possible stumbling block was if someone else was in the tunnel when they got there but they’d deal with that if or when it arose.

  They arrived by 8.30pm and waited in the middle of the tunnel. Josh had calculated she must arrive at some time within the next half-hour or so.

  A thought occurred to Charlie as they waited which he now mentioned to the others. “When Kaylee arrives I think we might have to catch her”, he said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Josh.

  “Well, she was riding her bike, so she’s going to be in mid-air when she appears. We need to catch her, otherwise she’s going to go arse over tit. The last thing we want after all this is for her to end up breaking her leg”.

  “OK, well, you and I will stand right in front of where she’s going to appear and try and catch her”, replied Josh.

  “I think I had better stand on the other side”, said Peter. “Once she comes through, I can go in”.

  “Not straightaway”, replied Charlie. “It’s best if she sees you go in. Otherwise she might not believe us”.

  “I just hope she comes soon because I’m freezing my tits off here”, remarked Lauren.

  The wait seemed to go on forever. Charlie and Josh felt faintly ridiculous standing in the middle of the tunnel with their arms outstretched. Fortunately, nobody else came into the tunnel, as what they were doing would probably seem a little odd.

  Finally, at 8.53pm precisely, Kaylee appeared at speed in mid-air as predicted. She cannoned into Charlie and Josh, knocking them over like tenpin bowling skittles, ending up landing right on top of Charlie.

  Despite the fact they knew she was coming, the moment still took them all by surprise.

  “What the…?” asked Kaylee, bemused by the sudden disappearance of her bike. She sat up to find herself straddling her boyfriend in front of several people in what could be construed as a somewhat compromising position.

  It certainly didn’t escape Lauren’s notice “Get a room”, she quipped.

  “It’s so good to have you back”, said Charlie, and kissed her.

  “I haven’t been anywhere”, said Kaylee. “And where did you all come from?”

  “It’s a long story”, said Charlie.

  “And one we don’t have long to tell. Look!” said Peter, pointing back up the tunnel towards town.

  Once again, the familiar shape of Andy Green was lumbering drunkenly towards the tunnel.

  “Mr Grant”, exclaimed Kaylee, turning around and noticing him for the first time. “What are you doing here?”

  “The others will have to explain. I’ve got to go”, he said. Looking back he could see that Andy was almost at the tunnel entrance.

  “Go where?” asked Kaylee.

  “To the future!”, replied Peter, dramatically. He checked his watch. “Right, it’s 8.55pm. See you on Tuesday!”

  With a deep breath, he stepped into the Time Bubble and vanished.

  “Wow!” remarked Kaylee. “What happened there?”

  “Like he said, we’ve got some explaining to do”, said Charlie.

  Andy hadn’t noticed Peter’s disappearance, but as he reached the rest of them he clapped his drunken eyes on Kaylee, and through the alcoholic fog recognition dawned.

  “Hey, I know you. You’re that girl who disappeared. You were on the telly in the pub”.

  “Disappeared?” asked Kaylee.

  Hannah interjected. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, Andy. I’m a police officer and we’ve found her safe”.

  Andy looked at Hannah and recognised her. “I know who you are as well. You fined me £80 for dropping that fag butt”. He started becoming aggressive. “Well I’ll tell you the same as I told your mate in the pub. I’m not paying it”.

  Normally Hannah would stand up to such a display, but right now she had bigger things to worry about than Andy. She just wanted rid of him.

  “Right, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. If you get yourself off home right now and stop going on about it, I’ll see that the paperwork for the fine disappears. But you have to go right now, no backchat, no swearing and no bad-mouthing me in the future. And don’t drop any more fag butts in the High Street. Do we have a deal?”

  Andy looked on the verge of continuing his tirade when the words sunk in. She was going to let him off. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Deal”, he said and walked off up the tunnel without another word.

  The teenagers had been watching all this, laughing, with the exception of Kaylee who was still feeling completely bemused by it all.

  “Right then”, said Hannah. “I guess it’s time we explained what all of this is about”.

  “I think you had”, replied Kaylee.

  “Do you want to do the honours, Charlie?” asked Hannah. “You did discover the Time Bubble, after all. And Kaylee is your girlfriend”.

  Charlie loved hearing her referred to as his girlfriend. He felt happy and more than a little proud. Kaylee and he were together, and nothing would part them again.

  “It’s like this”, he said, and the long process of explanation began.

  Chapter Seventeen – 27th October 2018

  After all the excitement of the last few days, Charlie and the others got back to some sort of normality over the weekend.

  Having seen Peter vanish into thin air right in front of her eyes, it wasn’t difficult to convince Kaylee of the existence of the Time Bubble. They had quickly outlined their plan to her and put it into operation.

  The story was that Hannah had found her wandering dazed near the railway bridge and taken her straight home. Her parents were naturally overjoyed to have their daughter home, but still concerned about where she had been for the past two days.

  Kaylee acted the part of the dazed schoolgirl who had fallen off her bike, ending up with amnesia to a tee. In fact she acted it so well that Cathy had insisted that Phil take her to the nearest A&E Department to have her checked over.

  As was to be expected, the hospital couldn’t find any evidence of any head injury or trauma. In fact, other than her cut hand, they could not find anything wrong with her at all. Aware of the high media profile of her disappearance, they insisted on keeping her in overnight for observation.

  The lack of injury or explanation of where she had been for the past two days wasn’t particularly satisfactory. Her parents didn’t dwell on the details, though. Their daughter was safe and sound and that was all that mattered.

  News soon got round of her reappearance and it was all over the newspapers the following morning. When she returned home the paparazzi were camping outside her house in the hope of getting a picture for the Sunday editions.

  Kaylee took it all in her stride. She was quite enjoying all the attention and it would soon die down.

  Her parents may have been content with the situation, but there was one person who certainly wasn’t.

  Kent was extremely annoyed that the case had turned out not to be a case after all, and even more unhappy that Hannah was getting all the glory for being the one to have found the girl.

  Still, at least he’d get his office back now, so that was something. Perhaps it was time he mov
ed on and did something else with his life. The one exciting thing to happen in the last ten years had fizzled out like a damp squib and he wasn’t sure if he could face another decade of drudgery behind the desk.

  Hannah also found herself thrust into the media spotlight briefly, and played along. She gave a pretty convincing TV interview to Seema who seemed to accept her explanation that she was out walking when she “just found her”.

  The finer points were glossed over in the feel-good factor around the story. There had been so many similar cases over the years that had ended badly. It was nice to have one with a happy ending for a change.

  Once she’d got away from work for the day she didn’t go back to her flat but instead went to Peter’s house. No-one would find her there and she could think about the next stage of their plan.

  She knew she was going to need to enlist the others’ help again, and arranged to meet up with them on Monday to discuss what they were going to do.

  Charlie didn’t get to see Kaylee in the flesh at all on Saturday. There was no way her parents were going to let her out of their sight that quickly so he decided to keep a low profile and stayed at home all day. Now that Kaylee had been found there was no longer any media interest in him so he wasn’t disturbed.

  Kaylee’s parents had insisted she rest, so she spent most of the day up in her room exchanging romantic messages with Charlie on her phone. They were aching to see each other.

  They arranged that he would come over and see her on Sunday night. They’d get a pizza and watch a movie. Her parents didn’t mind, they liked Charlie. Cathy did insist that they stay downstairs in the living room with the rest of the family, though.

  She still remembered Liv’s remarks about Kaylee wanting to have sex with Charlie. Whether or not it was true, she didn’t want to take any chances.

  Lauren and Josh had quiet weekends, too. Both still needed to catch up on some sleep and took the opportunity to recharge their batteries.

  On Monday the parents went back to work and the team were able to get together for a meeting. Hannah had been granted a few days’ leave, so the five of them were free all day.

  They decided that the best place to meet up would be at Peter’s house again. This time the main topic on the agenda was what to do once Peter emerged from the Bubble.

  Josh had assumed the role of statistician of the group. Over the weekend he had spent some time calculating the finer workings of the Time Bubble in great detail. He had turned up to the meeting with printouts from a complicated spreadsheet showing the details of all the trips taken so far, plus projections for the future.

  He excitedly explained it all in great detail. Some of the more complex explanations, such as the definition of a “planck”, were somewhat lost on the group but they got the general drift.

  “So, to summarise”, he began. “Once Mr Grant emerges, which should be at 8.55pm tomorrow, the next person to go into the Time Bubble will be in there for eight days. Then it will be sixteen, 32, 64, 128, 256 and so on. I’ve worked out all the dates right up until the end of the century. As you can appreciate, this has some pretty serious implications”.

  “Too right it does”, said Lauren. “Look at how much trouble Kaylee vanishing for two days caused. There is no way we can cover up people disappearing for the amounts of time you are talking”.

  “Josh and I have talked about this before”, said Charlie. “The fact is, it isn’t our responsibility. I know we are the ones that discovered the tunnel, but surely there are government departments that specialise in things like this. Perhaps we should just let things run their course, and in time they are bound to come and investigate”.

  “I am not sure such departments really exist”, said Josh, who had been watching reruns of The X-Files on one of the Freeview channels. “I think it’s pretty much something we’ve been led to believe by TV. After all, when has anything like this ever happened before?” he asked. “In the real world things like this don’t happen, so there wouldn’t be any need for something like that”.

  “Well in the real world this is happening”, said Charlie. “There could have been other things like this but we just haven’t been told about them”.

  Hannah decided it was time to tell them what she and Peter had talked about the other night. “We may not have to worry about it in the short term”, she said. “Peter and I have already talked this over and have come up with a plan”.

  Over the next few minutes she explained to them about Peter’s leukaemia and how he hoped to use the Time Bubble over and over again to travel into the future to get the treatment he needed.

  “Obviously we haven’t gone over some of the finer points yet. For example, he’ll need to find some way of explaining in however many years it takes that he hasn’t got any older. We’ve got plenty of time to think of the solution to that one”.

  “Plastic surgery?” suggested Lauren. “It works for all those Hollywood stars”.

  “I like it”, said Josh. “It’s a way we can use the Time Bubble to do some good”.

  “There is one small problem we have to deal with”, said Hannah. “I was hoping you may be able to come up with some ideas”.

  “What’s that?” asked Charlie.

  “As you know, Peter’s got to go to the hospital on Wednesday for some more tests and a diagnosis. After that we’ll know for sure what the situation is and he can begin his time jumps to the future. But we’ve got the problem in the meantime of stopping anyone else going into the Bubble after he comes out tomorrow night”.

  “Does it really matter if anyone else goes in?” asked Josh. “OK they will be gone for eight days and it will cause a lot of hassle, but ultimately they will come back. Then he can go in afterwards”.

  “I don’t think we can risk that” said Charlie. “Whether there are government departments related to this sort of thing or not, another disappearance in the same spot is going to attract an awful lot of attention”.

  “Not necessarily”, said Josh. “What if it was just some old drunk like Andy? No one would miss him. We could get him to the tunnel and shove him into the Bubble just after Mr Grant comes out”.

  “I still think that’s going to attract unwarranted attention. No matter how pissed Andy is, he’s going to notice the disappearance of eight days. And anyway, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get him to the right place at the right time. I think we need to think of something else”.

  “Surely the best way is to prevent anyone else going into the tunnel for a few days”, said Kaylee.

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” asked Hannah.

  “Couldn’t you get it sealed off on police orders?” Kaylee replied. “Put tape up across it or something?”

  “Even if I could”, replied Hannah, “I’m not working this week, and how would I explain it to my colleagues? And there’s still no guarantee someone won’t just go in anyway. Police tape is pretty flimsy and it won’t keep out nosey people. No, that’s a non-starter, I’m afraid”.

  “We need to make it physically impossible for anyone to enter or leave the tunnel then”, said Lauren.

  “I know!” exclaimed Josh. “We could blow it up”.

  “In my capacity as a police officer I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that”, replied Hannah. “It’s highly illegal, extremely impractical and, to be honest, quite ridiculous”.

  “Yes, but you’re in the police – you must have access to explosives and stuff”, continued Josh.

  “I can assure you I haven’t”, replied Hannah. “And even if I had, can you imagine what would happen if we blew up the end of the tunnel? We’d have the anti-terrorist squad and media all over us. I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen”.

  “I can think of a solution” said Lauren.

  “Go on”, said Hannah.

  “Josh’s dad runs a building firm. He’s got loads of bricks and cement stored in his garage. I’ve seen it. So it’s quite simple – let’s just brick it up”.

  �
��And what’s to stop the powers that be coming along and unbricking it again?” asked Josh.

  “Yes, that is what will happen”, said Lauren. “But not for a few days, if not weeks. You know what the council’s like around here, it takes forever to get the simplest thing done. Do you remember when someone crashed their car into that fence next to the park last year? It was months before anyone came to fix it”.

  “She’s right”, said Charlie. “People will be annoyed and complain about it but it will take a few days to get it sorted out which will buy us the time we need”.

  “OK, so assuming I go along with this”, said Josh, “it means we have to basically nick some bricks and cement out of my dad’s garage, take it to the edge of the tunnel, and brick it up. Assuming we manage to get the stuff undetected, we then have to do the bricking up without anyone seeing us. Bearing in mind the time of day that Mr Grant is due back, there are bound to be people about”.

  “I should also point out that there’s CCTV down there”, remarked Hannah. “There are people watching it during the day. Someone rang up 101 the other night about some graffiti artists, and they were able to spot them on it. That’s why we were down there the first night we met you two”.

  “What about at night?” asked Charlie.

  “It’s not manned 24 hours”, replied Hannah. “But everything is recorded. There’s nothing to stop someone going in there the next day after someone’s reported that the tunnel has been bricked up, and reviewing the recording”.

  “Then we’ll need to knock out the camera”, said Charlie.

  “Not really practical, I’m afraid” replied Hannah. “They are twenty feet up in the air and tamper-proof. However – I have worked shifts in the CCTV centre and if I can get in there undetected, I can remove the recordings myself. It’s risky, though”.

  “I think it’s our only option, bearing in mind everything else we’ve said”, replied Charlie.

  “It’s essential”, replied Hannah. “If they see those recordings and identify us from them, we’ll all be in trouble. And I’ll have to kiss goodbye to my career, that’s for sure”.