THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIME TRAVEL
Kate Mascarenhas
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About The Psychology of Time Travel
1967
Four female scientists invent a time travel machine. They are on the cusp of fame: the pioneers who opened the world to new possibilities. But then one of them suffers a breakdown and puts the whole project in peril…
2017
Ruby knows her beloved Granny Bee was a pioneer, but they never talk about the past. Though time travel is now big business, Bee has never been part of it. Then they receive a message from the future – a newspaper clipping reporting the mysterious death of an elderly lady…
2018
When Odette discovered the body she went into shock. Blood everywhere, bullet wounds, that strong reek of sulphur. But when the inquest fails to find any answers, she is frustrated. Who is this dead woman that haunts her dreams? And why is everyone determined to cover up her murder?
Contents
Welcome Page
About The Psychology of Time Travel
Dedication
1. March–December 1967
2. July 2017
3. January 2018
4. April 1968
5. July 2017
6. February 2018
7. May 1969
8. July 2017
9. May 2018
10. June 1969
11. July 2017
12. July 2018
13. July 1969
14. July 2017
15. September 2018
16. October 1973
17. July 2017
18. September 2018
19. November 1973
20. August 2017
21. September 2018
22. December 1982
23. August 2017
24. September 2018
25. December 1982
26. August 2017
27. September 2018
28. February 1983
29. August 2017
30. September 2018
31. April 1994
32. August 2017
33. September 2018
34. June 1999
35. August 2017
36. September 2018
37. August 2017
38. August 2017
39. September 2018
40. August 2017
41. August 2017
42. September 2018
43. August 2017
44. September 2018
45. August 2017
46. September 2017
47. October 2018
48. September 2017
49. November 2017
50. October 2018
51. November 2017
52. November 2017
53. October 2018
54. November 2017
55. November 2017
56. October 2018
57. January 2018
58. December 2017
59. October 2018
60. January 2018
61. March 2019
62. April 2019
Appendix 1: Glossary
Appendix 2: Time Travel Conclave’s Battery of Psychometric Tests
Acknowledgements
About Kate Mascarenhas
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
For Matthew Murtagh
1
MARCH–DECEMBER 1967
Barbara
The laboratory, in Cumbria, was home to four young scientists. Margaret was a baroness turned cosmologist. Lucille had come from the Toxteth slums to make radio waves travel faster than light. Grace – who never gave the same account of her history twice – was an expert in the behaviour of matter. And the last was Barbara: the baby of the group, hair so fair it was nearly white, ruddy-cheeked and naively wholesome. She specialised in nuclear fission. All four women were combining their knowledge in a new, and unique, project.
They did so in near isolation. The lab overlooked the Lakeland Fells. Some nights, when Barbara’s head was too full of equations, she would run outside with Grace and yell at the darkness because they liked to hear the echo. There were no neighbours close enough to complain. No one visited by day either – not even the postman. Each month Barbara collected mail from the village five miles away: bills for Margaret, the latest Paris Match for Grace, and letters from Lucille’s grandmother in Montego Bay.
But one spring afternoon, a van stopped outside the lab with a delivery for them all. The driver jumped out and pulled open the rear doors. He unloaded a hutch full of rabbits.
When he left, the women carried the hutch to the workroom, and peered inside. The rabbits had crammed themselves into the darkest corner. Their ears and limbs lay flat against their bodies. Each hair trembled. The rabbits were watchful and chary of their new owners. They were right to be.
Barbara snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She opened the wire door and reached for the nearest rabbit. His fur was brown and his eyes black. He struggled for a moment then settled in her arms. Through her lab coat Barbara could feel the warmth of his body.
‘Shall we give him a name?’ she asked the others.
‘Yes,’ Margaret said. ‘For the history books!’
‘He’s a scruffy fellow,’ Grace said. ‘His name should be scruffy too.’
‘Call him Patrick Troughton,’ Lucille suggested.
Everyone laughed.
‘Patrick it is,’ said Barbara. ‘Shall we capture this on film?’
They all agreed, and Barbara fetched the camera. Through the viewfinder she watched her colleagues pose: Lucille, coiffed like Aretha Franklin with NHS glasses perched at the tip of her nose; blue-eyed Grace, her petite features framed by a dark pixie cut; and finally Margaret, smiling imperiously and smoothing her steel-blonde bob.
Barbara set the timer and ran to stand at Lucille’s side. This was a special occasion. The women erupted in laughter, from shared excitement, as the camera clicked.
‘Right then, ladies,’ Margaret said. ‘Let’s put Patrick to work.’
At the far end of the workroom was a hollow steel machine, about the size of a hatbox. The women had spent two years on its design and construction. It could propel a marble up to thirty seconds through time. On most attempts the marble arrived intact.
Today, Patrick would become the first living time traveller – just as long as he, too, remained intact.
Barbara weighed the rabbit. On examination, his mouth and nose were clean, and his feet were free of abscesses. His nails were recently clipped. She shone a torch into his ears to check they were clear. He appeared to be in excellent health. Finally she checked his respiration and heart rate, and wrote the figures down.
‘Normal range,’ she told the others.
‘Mine isn’t,’ Grace replied.
More laughter; nervous this time. The team needed a successful animal trial. Without it, they’d never get funding to develop human time travel.
‘We’re all set,’ Barbara said, and placed the rabbit in the time machine. She adjusted the dials. Now she must join Margaret and Grace and Lucille as spectators. There was nothing to do but wait.
At the machine’s whine Patrick’s ears twitched. He shuffled and sniffed the metal walls, but they were too smooth for him to climb.
‘Three… two… one…’ Barbara counted down.
Patrick’s fur was fading to fawn, like a coat lightened by years of wear. He grew steadily paler, towards translucency, until he resembled only a ghost of himself. He slipped out of existence. The dematerialisation was complete. The steel c
avity shone with afternoon sunlight.
Please come back, Patrick, Barbara prayed. Come back safely.
The women edged closer to each other. Grace gave Barbara’s arm a reassuring squeeze.
And as surely as he’d disappeared, the rabbit returned. Whole. With an understandable expression of surprise.
‘Oh thank God,’ said Lucille.
‘Respiration and heart rate?’ Margaret prompted.
Barbara took the measurements. Patrick was so solid in her hands. He felt real – and he made their work, thus far theoretical, feel real too. To Barbara’s relief, his heart and breathing – though faster than before – were still in a normal range.
‘We’ve done it,’ Barbara said. ‘You bloody brilliant women. We’ve done it.’
They hugged, their voices mingling as they spoke over each other, and Barbara’s vision blurred with tears. She was so grateful – for Lucille’s superluminal research, and Grace’s thermodynamics, and Margaret’s utter, unshakeable conviction that they would succeed. The team were pioneers. They were going to be the first people to travel through time.
‘This occasion calls for cigars!’ Lucille said. ‘What’s on the menu this evening?’
Barbara wiped her eyes. ‘I’m afraid all that’s in the larder is sardines and baked beans. With evaporated milk and tinned peaches for dessert.’
‘All lovingly decanted,’ said Grace.
‘Speaking of feasts,’ Margaret said, ‘we should give Patrick a last supper. Check his digestion’s shipshape before dissection.’
‘No!’ Barbara exclaimed involuntarily.
‘No?’ Margaret repeated. ‘Why shouldn’t we feed him?’
‘Feed him – but don’t dissect him.’
‘We must, darling,’ said Grace. ‘The sooner we check for internal injuries, the sooner we can plan human trials.’
Grace was right, and Barbara struggled to reply because she was embarrassed by her own sentimentality. She’d conducted her share of dissections over the years. However, none of those animals had achieved anything as wondrous as this rather dim, rumpled rabbit: he was the first living creature to ever travel through time. A summary execution horrified her.
‘We have all the other rabbits for replication experiments,’ Barbara said when she found her words. ‘There’s going to be lots of dissections to choose from. Patrick doesn’t need to be one of them.’
‘Actually,’ Margaret said, ‘I can see the benefits to keeping him alive. The press will be interested in the first rabbit time traveller. You know how gaga the public go over animals.’
Press coverage would make it easier to attract funding. Up till now they had got by on a few small grants. They had been helped, too, by Margaret’s wealth. But they would require much greater investment to continue. Clearly Margaret thought Patrick could play a small part in winning the money they needed.
‘I suppose he’d make a sweet lab mascot,’ Grace said.
‘So Patrick lives,’ Lucille concluded.
Patrick swiftly became Barbara’s pet. She took responsibility for feeding and watering him, and for changing his bedding. He came to recognise her voice. His personality turned out to be a playful and affectionate one. He’d even sit on her lap if called, which gave her quiet satisfaction. Everyone recognised that Patrick belonged to Barbara. But when she was forced to leave the lab – before the completion of their project – she was not allowed to take Patrick with her.
*
All four of the pioneers were still working together when the military agreed to subsidise tests with humans. Most of the money that flowed through was spent on fuel. The pioneers’ small prototype machine had minimised fuel requirements by using existing wormholes, but this cheap, crude technology was only suited to small inanimate objects – or expendable travellers like Patrick – because the risks of malformation were high. Safe time travel was more energy intensive.
Money was also allocated to labour. Transporting people through time required a machine the size of a tennis court. A fleet of engineers came to the Fells to assist with the build. They sheltered in a circle of caravans, while the pioneers continued to sleep in the lab. One of the engineers mentioned to Barbara that down in the village, the locals were convinced the time travel project was a ruse: the engineers were building a nuclear weapons site, and the secrecy was meant to prevent demonstrations. The idea of a functioning time machine seemed too absurd to believe. Barbara was faintly amused by this, but didn’t dwell on it, because the villagers seemed so remote from her day-to-day work. All the world seemed distanced from her. She knew Margaret cared a great deal about public perceptions, and was driven, in part, by a need to make her mark before everyone. Whereas Barbara was excited by the prospect of time travel itself, and loved her colleagues because they were going to help her achieve it. Her life had shrunk to the size of the lab, but she felt it was about to grow – grow as far as the time machine allowed her to travel. It was easy then, to throw herself into the complex, grinding mathematical work the team needed to make their project succeed. It was easy to forget to rest, or to eat, until the others made her. Three in the morning would roll round and she would still be at her desk. Grace would pad across the workroom, her satin eye mask high on her head – the one Lucille had adorned with curly eyelashes in permanent ink – and she would implore:
‘Come to bed, Bee.’
‘In a minute.’
There was always another minute needed, so Grace would have to drag her by the arm into the dorm. There were four iron beds, but once the frosts started and their breath misted indoors as well as out, the women doubled up for warmth like babes in the wood. Often Bee didn’t sleep even once she was under the covers because her mind raced with her work. But it was comforting to feel Lucille’s arm slung over her in slumber, or to hear Grace’s soft breath.
In waking hours the others were as diligent as Barbara. She concentrated on minimising the amount of fuel they would require; Lucille perfected the warping of wormholes to maximise the speed of travel; and Grace carefully tested the composition of objects that passed through the time machine for any changes that might pose a safety risk. Their endurance paid off. The time machine was completed by the first week of December. Rather than switching it on, the pioneers announced the machine would be activated in the New Year. Margaret told the engineers this was because most journalists were already thinking about their holidays and it would be easier to get their attention in January. Barbara wondered whether they believed her. The invention of time travel, surely, would be a big story for any journalist, however demob happy they were. Privately, Margaret had said that they should proceed with a December date for their inaugural trip, but she didn’t want an audience. If anything went wrong she wanted full control over who knew.
All the engineers accepted Margaret’s instruction to take leave. They were eager to see their families, and loath to spend more time in poorly heated caravans, no matter how cheerfully adorned with tinsel and red baubles. Barbara knew that her parents would expect her in Cornwall – that Margaret would be expected in Windermere by her aunt, and that Lucille would be expected in Liverpool by her mother. Grace would have been welcome at any of the pioneers’ homes. But by consensus the pioneers stayed in the lab instead; now that their work was nearly complete, none of them wished to leave. They were going to change the world.
*
On Christmas morning the pioneers donned their boiler suits and trod the brittle white grass to the time machine. Barbara set it to transport them one hour into the future. The women held hands. They stepped, in unison, through the machine entrance, and heard the doors slide shut on the present. Barbara’s eyes did not adjust to the darkness. She smelt ozone and heard steel parts screech against each other. Her ears rang as the machine fell quiet. Behind her the doors slid open again – she could feel winter sunshine on her neck, and see her own shadow on the smooth grey floor. The pioneers dropped each other’s hands and turned to face the light.
At the entrance to the time machine, the women’s future selves stood on the grass. They looked as gleeful as the hosts of a surprise party. The future Grace hopped on the spot in excitement.
Barbara’s gaze was drawn to her own twin.
Your face is the wrong way round, Barbara thought. You’ve been burning the midnight oil – that’s why you’re pale. You are trembling – you are blinking over and over. Has the hard work been worth it? You can remember my feelings. But I don’t know what you’re feeling at all.
Barbara tentatively extended a hand in greeting.
Her older self laughed and crushed her in a hug.
‘Isn’t it funny?’ the elder Barbara whispered. ‘I feel protective of you.’
Barbara laughed too then. What could she do but laugh? It was absurd, to embrace one’s self. She was still laughing when the pioneers stepped back into the machine to go home. She was still laughing when they arrived in their own time. The world she returned to seemed brighter and more deeply coloured than before. Wasn’t it wonderful, she thought, that time travel had granted her a new joy in her surroundings?
‘Are you hearing things differently?’ she asked the other pioneers. ‘Your voices sound musical to me.’
Her friends exchanged puzzled glances.
‘Someone’s had too much excitement,’ Grace told Barbara fondly. ‘What’s for Christmas dinner?’
‘Tinned turkey,’ Barbara said. ‘And baked beans. Lovingly decanted.’
*
On Boxing Day they made their second trip into the future – in fact, they made numerous trips, returning to Boxing Day in between each one without stopping to rest. The effect was dizzying. If the pioneers left their home timeline at noon, they might arrive in the next late at night, and the transition felt instant. Their daylight hours shortened and lengthened drastically.
‘Enough,’ Lucille said when they returned home for the fifteenth time. ‘I need sleep.’
‘I don’t,’ Barbara sang. ‘I don’t. I don’t.’
‘You oddball,’ Grace said. ‘We always have to wrangle you like a toddler at bedtime.’
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