Sand Glass

by A M Russell

  ‘Who are all these people?’

  ‘Sponsors mainly,’ she pointed at page two, ‘this one. He owns a chain of shoe shops. And this…. part of the private secure business paper shredding industry.’

  ‘Paper shredding?’

  ‘Unreal isn’t it? Making money from memos that other people write. All about the things that they are trying to make money from.’ Marcia sighed, ‘but here is the really interesting bit… look there.’

  There was a list of names with “Potential Futures” heading it. It had what appeared to be a load of random names. But I wasn’t good on spotting who was who in business, despite spending two years in the city.

  ‘Where did you get this Marcia?’

  ‘That’s easy. I have clearance remember. I made the copies before we left on the expedition. I felt mutinous…. It was to do with Hanson; of course. Call it insurance if you like. It was in the locked box of personal effects inside a paperback.’

  ‘You read?’

  ‘Novels. Yes.’

  ‘What do you read?’

  ‘Cheesy Chic Lit. I call it. Always sits like a salad followed by chocolate pudding.’

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Quite. I think I’m over him…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hanson.’

  ‘Do you think he is at the centre of this?’

  ‘Playing fast and loose with other people lives? Certainly. But if you want to know if he has any real power; then that my dear is open to debate…. I’m not in the circle of confidence now. My pass code was revoked while we were all out in the field. There may be a way to hack in, but we’d need a friendly computer nerd and a lot of time. And I think we don’t have much of either.’

  I told her about Jared’s universal tag info and how it ended up in the ring.

  ‘It’s good that George has all of that. It may give us some background. But somehow I don’t think there can be much that it tells us that I can’t remember. We need up to date info…’

  I felt a little nettled by Marcia’s casual dismissal of the micro dot. But I had no way of knowing what she did in fact know. ‘You remember it all?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes. I have an extraordinary natural gift. Instant recall. It seems that you are like that as well. But your memory is more…. contextual.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Related to the time and place the information was first imparted in. Jared told me that time at the pond. He said that you were the connection. Like a missing wire as it were. People come back with information… like the Ring. Or with impressions that are non-specific. They are basically screwed. Insanity is almost compulsory. The only alternative is to forget. That way you can’t be affected permanently. But our connection has remained. In a time and place; in that warm place with the tribe.’

  She rolled up her sleeve and seemed to look as if she was feeling some sort of pain.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes! It aches really badly.’

  I reached out and rubbed her wrist, just below the tattoo. I felt it then, that connection. The images poured through my mind in a torrent. I was seeing the whole world through Marcia’s eyes, including at the precipice. I saw Jared as I fell backwards. There was a halo of colour around him; spectral hues. In a flash of a moment I had realised something.

  ‘He took your place. Oh my God!’ I let go of her hand. It was too intense. Fate was like a channel. Life and death. But sometimes it wasn’t insistent on whose.

  I saw it again in my mind’s eye. That moment just before Marcia fell. She looked surprized. I turned to see Jared cast an invisible something to her. A line? A thin sliver of his soul. It made sense. He was sleeping in a hospital somewhere. He was trying to wake up. He had to die! The same way as when you close your eyes in a dream you wake in reality.

  I gasped as the revelation rolled over and over like a tide. He had to choose, him or her. He gave her his soul. All of it; or part of it? But I knew it was the only way for her to have survived the fall.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘You have the knowledge we need to defeat Nimbus.’ I said.

  ‘But I don’t know how to use it.’

  ‘We do it together. We’re a team; remember.’

  ‘But Oliver is back in Wales.’

  ‘He is there because that is where he’s supposed to be. I think I just remembered something important. Something that connects us all. But we need to get Jules, and then go see Janey.’

  ‘But what did you remember?’ she drew her brows together perplexed at my cryptic manner. I wasn’t good at being mysterious. So I tried to explain: ‘Jared said that we could leave….at any time. We just had to want to… but the caveat to that was the way it affected other people’s fate.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We were all scared and trying to hold it together. We all thought that it was negative. Fatal and deadly… that sort of thing. But maybe it’s not. I mean I saw something. Just now. Jared…..’ I trailed off lamely and stared at the remains on the small plate.

  ‘I think I understand. It’s really a matter of seeing this thing the right way round? The way a picture of cubes can look like they’re going into the picture or popping out?’

  ‘Yes; I think that is something like…. We were all afraid, just as the people in charge of this thing wanted us to be. But we have power to change things. It depends what we want to change…’

  ‘So…’ Marcia said slowly, ‘we need to think positively about this. See the picture rearrange in front of our eyes?’

  ‘A little faith,’ I said, ‘perhaps that’s what we could call it?’

  ‘Or Science…..the good kind. From a good scientist. You are right, we need Jules.’

  ‘I’m right?’ I said, ‘so what about Janey?’

  ‘Let me look into that,’ Marcia took out a pad and pen, ‘she might believe this stuff if I say it. She hasn’t met you yet.’

  ‘Of course….’ I shook my head. I had it fairly clear, it was getting a little fuzzy now I had expended some energy being clever. Biscuits might be a good idea. And tea.

  ‘So give me the address. For Janey. And then we can talk about what we need to tell Jules.’

  I fetched the letter. Marcia looked up at me appraisingly as she put the biro away, ‘So this plan; we getting moving with it when?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Then I have to think of what to say to Janey, after talking to Jules…’

  Marcia rolled her eyes. Saving the world and I was still suffering the fanged predator of male embarrassment.

  ‘Let’s just talk to the brains first. We’ll worry about your personal angst later. I’ll call back at four. Will that be enough time for you to recover?’

  ‘I err….’ I thought Marcia was amused, but her face was serious. I kept forgetting about Jared. It just hurt. And she was still upright and moving. And more to the point alive and on my team. Our team…. I thought about George and the ring; but my head started to spin round a bit then, so I stopped thinking about it all and put the kettle on.

  We knocked on Jules’ door. I hadn’t rung him. I just didn’t want him freaking out about Marcia while I wasn’t physically there to reassure him.

  ‘He’s taking his time.’ Marcia shivered.

  It was getting cold out there. A few damp leaves littered a path to an untidy garden and a porch. I rang the bell again. A light flicked on.

  ‘Friend or Foe?’

  ‘Er… Friend?’

  Jules opened the door. He was wearing a tee-shirt and shorts and had a mug of tea in one hand.

  ‘Oh… Come in Davey. Hi Marcia.’

  We looked at each other in a silent conversation of “what’s going on here”; “I don’t know”.

  He wandered in to a front room littered with books and papers. Jules lifted a pile of text books off the settee and pointed at it in a kind of vague way.

  ‘I’m making popcorn. Do you want some?’

  I scanned the small table in the middle of the r
oom. Apart from a pair of glasses, and a pile of books and papers; there was a whisky bottle and a half empty glass.

  Jules wandered off towards what I supposed was the kitchen.

  ‘Is he drunk?’ Marcia asked me.

  ‘No Idea. I don’t know what drunk really looks like in other people when I’m sober.’

  ‘Do you think we should follow him in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes. I think popcorn at least could be done better and quicker by you.’

  ‘Ok.’

  Jules was searching in cupboards. The kitchen was very tidy. In fact it was such a contrast to the room we had already seen it was like two different houses had been stuck onto each other.

  Jules looked at me with glittering eyes. Clearly at that stage of drunkenness that doesn’t show itself by slurring your words but by irrational feats of stupidity.

  ‘You didn’t call first.’ He was still searching the shelves. ‘Here it is.’

  ‘Would you like me to do this?’ Marcia took it gently from him. I propelled Jules back into the front room. He sat down, and then put his glasses on. He showed me a book; ‘I’ve been searching through all the research I could find. Nothing else to do.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’ve been sacked. Letters there.’

  I picked it up.

  ‘Yes.’ He said shuffling some papers, ‘It’s all there. Clearly I’m too bright for that kind of work. Damn him to Hades and back!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It doesn’t have his name on. But his paw prints are all over it.’

  ‘Jules… I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Now isn’t that the truth. You’re sorry. I know you are. One of the few…..’ He stretched back in the chair, ‘I really need popcorn right now!’

  ‘Coming up!’ Marcia shouted from the kitchen.

  ‘I didn’t know you wore specs.’ I said, as much for something to say.

  ‘Only for reading.’ He took them off, ‘we didn’t do much of that on the expedition did we?’

  I went in the kitchen. ‘Marcia? Does Jules wear glasses?’

  ‘Yes… for reading. But he uses contacts sometimes; when he’s doing lectures. Doesn’t want to appear too professor-like.’

  ‘Thank you. I thought that we had one of those little things that had changed around us.’

  ‘I would call a change of optician’s prescription a “little thing”.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Will you stop apologising! Go and see if Jules is ok. And then make coffee. If he’s going to drink like a fish I’d prefer it to be on a full stomach.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call popcorn filling.’

  ‘Depends how much you eat. Go!’

  Jules was sat just were I had left him.

  ‘I hoped you’d come round. I’m glad you did. It gets very lonely here sometimes. I only have my work… the research. But you know that there are things that they don’t know. I know I’m not right. I mean sorry for being a trifle tipsy. But there is something that we can use.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It is the final design of the thing that caused the trouble in the first place. It all in here….’ He tapped his head, ‘I admit. Not accessible at the moment. But I’ll work on that.’ He poured some more whisky in the glass.

  ‘I think you’ve had enough.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He raised the glass. ‘Here’s to those who’ve had enough.’

  ‘Jules. Can you tell me anything right now about this Modulator?’

  ‘You want it in Layman’s terms right?’ he asked smiling. I nodded. ‘It’s easy. It just takes time to produce streams of consequences to one action. Instead of one outcome you get dozens. Then the knack is to choose between them.’

  ‘Marcia said something about a dice experiment?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes… it’s the original game for dummies. How to win at any game. The secret becomes not how you play but what you choose. It’s about making the right choices. Ok… where’s that popcorn got to?’

  Marcia came in at that moment with a big bowl full. Jules dived straight in; ‘The problem is,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘to not have too many choices. Because then it just becomes impossible. You cannot win. Or even get close because you cannot process that number of different outcomes. Even a chess master has an absolute limitation on how many moves ahead they can consider.’

  ‘But surely?’

  ‘It’s like asking the Master Chess to think ahead onto moves in a game that he hasn’t even played yet, while still playing this one.’

  ‘Is anyone capable of such a feat?’

  ‘Not by ordinary methods. No. But give it time. And they are in the process of perfecting a technique where the divided self can exist temporarily in the same space. It is quite literally multiple personalities induced by a combination of drugs, and exposure to the modulation frequency.’

  ‘That sounds horribly dangerous.’ Marcia picked a little popcorn up.

  ‘Yes. Of course it is! But get this. If you do it more than once you build up a kind of tolerance. It has been done. And not on me… so don’t ask me that. At least, not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘So these different personalities… are they aware of each other?’

  ‘Yes. The central ego state remains. It’s what controls the whole thing. You can play around with mind as much as you like if the ego state is strong. It has to do with a certain predisposition to megalomania. You see what’s coming don’t you?’

  ‘Do that mean that the most likely people for it to work on, are the ones that will tend to misuse it?’

  ‘Succinctly put.’ Jules pointed at me, ‘Dear lord do I love popcorn!’

  ‘So….so let me be really clear,’ I said, ‘they have the power to change history?’

  ‘If you really insist in putting in such simplistic terms then, yes; they do.’

  ‘But Jules…. Doesn’t that mean that with one action someone could undo what has been done?’

  He sat back and rubbed his temples, obviously trying to think of a way to explain this to me… the class dunce.

  ‘Give me that bottle!’ Jules took it off Marcia who was examining the label, ‘I think you need to get your head round this a little more; if you are going to attempt to do what I think you’re going to attempt to do…..’ he poured another inch and a half into the glass, ignored Marcia’s expression and continued: ‘you must understand that a system… any system has an absolute value basis… I mean there is a point at which all probabilities are zero. That point is when all things have either worked their way out… already happened; or they have not yet started.’ He raised the glass to his lips, took a large satisfying gulp and continued with a relaxed confidence, ‘You cannot…. And I mean must not under any circumstances, change what is happening on a particular line of consequence until it has worked its way out. You must work with it, not against it. Time is a killer. But also a creator; rather things are being made and destroyed all the time. But you just have the problem of sorting out which events are part of your pattern and which aren’t… in other words you’ve got exactly the same problem that you had before you started messing with Time itself. Too many choices. And no way of knowing which end up in the channel you want, that brings about the outcome you want it to…’

  ‘So how are these people on the board of the Project doing this?’ Marcia asked.

  ‘They are breaking the rules and storing up trouble for themselves for later… I guess,’ Jules focused vaguely on her, ‘You are one hell of a beautiful girl. I think that Jared ought to appreciate you just a little more…. Give up being an insane idiot. He is still in a state of uncertainty.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘At the level of uncertainty in physics…. The events from a fixed point in time. But since we don’t know what that point is we will have to go with nudging the time line in the direction we
want it to go in..’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take control Milnes…. That is the issue. And I know what you are going to say next…. “What about Janey?”’

  ‘I admit there was a certain thought there…’ I said.

  ‘Look.’ said Jules, ‘I’m pissed as a newt and still twenty times smarter than the most intelligent person in the room. That’s what I got… sacked for. Get it. And so whatever assistance I can render will be forthcoming. But you need to be careful! And I mean really careful. I don’t want to see this all end in tears. We must preserve the time lines that we are existing in at the moment. You get that don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Jared?’ Marcia said, ‘and our Janey?’

  ‘You want to save them. So save them. But know that every action creates another set of events that fall like dominoes outward from any point in space-time. You are creating history Mr Milnes. And in Janey’s Cloud Field, if you mess up, you will create more and more parallel realities that line up like crackers in a box until something snaps.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I will not be able to explain this to you properly, because you are not one of the few real Physicists alive. But I can just say this; be Bloody careful! I value my existence in this world and I don’t want it to be erased.’

  ******

  Two

  I had stayed with Jules. Marcia left by taxi at about nine in the evening. We’d talked and even laughed. Jules had kept drinking. I had one glass just to keep him company. Marcia said that it wasn’t her poison and stuck to endless cups of tea.

  Early morning light in an unstructured bedroom. I cleared some space by the simple process of putting laundry in the laundry hamper. Jules was still asleep where I had left him covered with a thin summer duvet.

  I was just wondering if a hair of the dog would be appropriate, when the phone rang. Being a bit slow at that time in the morning I answered it.