“I’m not an expert mind, but I don’t think you can take me back to just before the accident. I know things now about what happened next and from what you’ve said, it’s not allowed. So that means... if you really meant to wipe us out of each other’s minds, you wouldn’t have come back here as soon as you could; you would have gone back to then and changed something. Only you didn’t do that did you? No, you came back here, to me.” she said, smiling serenely. “You want me in your life just as much as I want you in mine Jack and you don’t know how happy that makes me.”
She snuggled into my side and as always, I found it impossible to argue with her. She was right and we both knew it.
We sat there for a while and I was almost able to forget all the years that had passed, almost able to believe that we had just returned home from an overnight stay in Brighton. I sighed happily and my stomach rumbled.
She laughed; this was something she understood and knew how to deal with.
“Neither of us are at our best when we’re hungry. Let me fix us something to eat and then we’ll get down to thinking properly. There must be a way for us to stay together; I won’t accept that there isn’t. I mean, you’re suddenly old and I’m not. Eighty or so years have passed for you but only a day for me. We’re neither of us in the right time, so it seems to me that the impossible is not that impossible after all. If it can work against us, maybe, just maybe there’s a way it can work for us. Funny old thing time...” she finished softly, getting bits and pieces out of the cupboard and prodding the range back into life.
“Did you come straight back here?” I asked.
“What else could I do?” she said, turning to me. “I’ve been so scared Jack. I didn’t know who they were and I could see that you didn’t either. If there was anything I could have done, like if money was needed, well the only place you could send a message to or find me is here. The only place I thought you’d come back to is here. So by my reckoning, here was where I needed to be.”
I nodded. Here was indeed where I’d come straight back to, the moment the opportunity presented itself. I watched her silently as she worked. I’d been starved of this normality for too long and I found it very comforting. Grace has a way of instinctively knowing things and there was every possibility that she was right and that a way could be found to get us out of the mess I’d put us in.
After we’d eaten we stayed in the kitchen, which was always a favourite place of ours. As the afternoon started to turn into evening, she lit some lamps and we continued sitting there, holding hands while I thought. I had been, as she so aptly put it, on the inside for a long time. I knew the rules and had had the training. She felt sure that somewhere in all that knowledge was an answer. To locate it, all I needed was some peace and quiet.
We remained in the warm, cosy kitchen, with only the clock ticking in the background and in the early hours of the morning I realised what the answer was. I thought about it for quite a while, looking at it from all angles and assessing the risks; not just to us, but to time itself. Eventually I saw that there was only one way; I would have to break the golden rule. There were no certainties or guarantees, just the one small chance that it could turn out right. But was it my decision to make? While I couldn’t be totally sure what the consequences might be for me, I was acutely aware that she had everything to lose.
“Do you trust me Grace?” I asked.
She didn’t answer straight away, but looked at me with her head to one side, a small smile playing on her lips.
“With my life, my hopes and my dreams Jack.” she said, patting my hand and kissing me on the cheek. “Do whatever it is you have to do and I shall look forward to seeing you soon; somewhere, sometime, or even right back here.”
With those words, she told me everything I needed to know. But then as she stood up and straightened her shawl, she held her hand out and made it even clearer, giving me the strength to endeavour to give us a second chance.
“I love you Jack and I know you love me. So the answer to your question is quite simply... yes, I do.”
Part three: Jack
Chapter seventeen
Friday 5th May 2000
I’d received an invitation to discuss my future. It was very specific about the date and time and so I found myself sitting at a melamine topped table in a slightly dilapidated London cafe listening to a fantastic story. The old man sitting opposite me was completely unfazed by what he had been revealing. In fact he looked serene, somehow certain that I would understand why he needed my help. But he was wrong, very wrong. His request was ludicrous and I stared at him for some moments, unable to speak.
I was cold with anger. How dare he do this and put me in this position? I didn’t care what had happened to him over the years. How could I have become this person; this sad old man in front of me who obviously had no respect for the rule that governed all others? Whatever it was, I had no intention of allowing it to happen to me.
What’s more, I couldn’t believe that I’d fallen for his ploy to get me here. Admittedly I hadn’t known that the invitation had come from myself, but I doubted that it would cut much ice with the Board. In that moment I was as angry with myself as I was with him. What on earth had possessed me to think even for a moment, that anyone of any note would have chosen this godforsaken hole, instead of one of the many meeting rooms on any of the bases, to share something important?
His whiney voice broke into my thoughts.
“Don’t you see Jack,” he said, “You have to save her life, but you can’t get injured; you have to retain your memories. Only then can you do whatever it takes to stay here in this time and have the life I should have had. You have to believe me when I tell you that the life you can have with her is the only one that will make you happy.”
I stared at him incredulously for what must have been a minute. I was furious and it took me a while to find the words I wanted to say.
Eventually I leaned across the table. “This is all very touching, but are you really suggesting that I give up everything I’ve worked and studied for, just because you had two years of blissful happiness followed by eighty years of loneliness? How do you know it will last, huh? Answer me that. You can’t, can you? Because it didn’t happen. You don’t have a future together, it doesn’t exist and it never will. It can’t and you must know that!
“I’m twenty-three years old and about to get clearance to join the Historical Gathering Unit; the elite unit no less. Have you forgotten that too? I’ve been given the chance to work under the one and only Javier Santurnini, who has personally selected me. Remember that old man? They were your dreams too and if you think I’m going to walk away from that opportunity, well you can just think again.”
I sat very still, watching him to see if what I’d just said had had any effect. There was the hint of a smile around his mouth, but it was condescending, mocking me. I didn’t wait to hear if he had anything more to say, I just let rip. I didn’t want him to be in any doubt about my feelings on the matter.
“You’ve obviously had a miserable life. You haven’t fulfilled your ambitions and ultimately, you didn’t even get her. You’re just sad and bitter and I’m not going to let you ruin my life too. You think that by telling me all this, you’re offering me a second chance. Well let me tell you, I’m not going to waste it and end up like you. Have you taken a good look at yourself lately? You’re hardly an inspiration, are you?”
He looked at me with a strange expression on his face, something akin to disgust and pity rolled into one. In some ways, it was worse than the pathetic expectation it replaced. I had to get away from him, even though I knew that our business was not yet concluded.
This shouldn’t be happening to me I thought, as I stood up slowly and made my way to the toilet. I needed to be on my own and I needed time to think.
The waitress raised an eyebrow and looked at me at me sympathetically as I walked past. Perhaps she thought he was my grandfather and had been lecturing me about somethi
ng. I smiled back. If only that were the case, I thought ruefully. Of course she wouldn’t have understood very much of what we’d been talking about, even if she had been listening.
But he wasn’t my overbearing grandfather, he was me, my future self and I didn’t like who I appeared destined to become; it left an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Everything I’d ever aspired to was now in jeopardy and I was furious.
I sat down in the cubicle and put my head in my hands. He had broken the golden rule. Not just any rule, but the ultimate unbreakable one. I sighed; something was going to be said about that and I just knew there would be some suffering on my part as a result, which really pissed me off. On top of that, there was his insistence that I break another primary rule. He wanted me to intervene, to meddle once again with events, or fate, or whatever you want to call it. But look at what had happened to him as a result of his meddling. I’d not yet seen or heard anything that made me think his original ‘good deed’ had been in any way sensible.
There was however, one indisputable fact. He, or was it I, had intervened, had meddled. Did that make it a fixed point in time, a reality so to speak? And did it mean that I would have to follow blindly and repeat it, or did I have a choice in the matter? That was the sixty four million dollar question. Was my future his past? Had it already happened, or was it still unknown? I spent quite a while trying to analyse it, but got absolutely nowhere; there was not enough information to even hazard a guess. But I did know that I wanted to be able to choose; I didn’t want to have my bright future just snatched away from me. I was twenty-three, with everything still ahead of me. If and it was a big if, I were going to give it all up, it would have to be my decision.
I left the toilet, mulling over the idea of a second chance. Did such a thing exist? And if it did, was I going to risk taking it? There were too many questions and not nearly enough answers. I preferred working with facts, but at this point there were too few.
There was a strange silence in the cafe when I returned. It hadn’t been empty and I hadn’t been gone that long, but it was too quiet. I looked around. Everyone was on their feet, staring at something that was happening outside in the street. I made my way to the window and saw a young black woman, crumpled and still, lying on the ground. In the middle of the road was a car at the wrong angle and it was easy to see what had happened. It appeared that the choice had been made for me and that I now had the answer; his meddling was not a fixed point, so my life might still turn out as I’d hoped it would.
My future self turned round to face me. His eyes and voice were filled with sadness.
“You stupid, stupid boy. You’re letting her die. I can’t know of course, but I think you’ll come to regret this day.”
The waitress was standing by the door with her hand over her mouth, when she vanished.
He vanished too, but then of course he never existed. I’d been trained to spot these changes, or shifts in time, so no one noticed the shimmer except me. What surprised me was that two other people in the street also vanished and ceased to be.
All of this was pushed from my mind as a wave of memories hit me. They hadn’t faded with him, so everything the old man had known, seen, felt or thought was now mine. A surge of emotions from his life filled me and I bent double as if the air had been knocked out of my lungs. Knowledge that I had not earned, which although vague and a little dreamlike, was now jumbled up with my own.
I blindly fumbled with the door of the cafe, desperate to get outside. I watched the paramedics put the body onto a stretcher and pull a blanket over her head, but of course I already knew she was dead. As my head began to clear, I saw that my other self’s existence had been linked to her; he’d vanished at the precise moment she died. I was free. But while I was free to pursue my ambitions, I would never be completely free of him.
I sighed deeply. Now I understood the need for the golden rule. He had lived more than eighty years beyond my own twenty-three and now I knew what would happen during that time. Although it was his past, it was my future. But now of course, there was a paradox; it hadn’t happened yet.
I also understood the price of my ‘so called’ second chance. “It’s always best to get unpleasant things over and done with quickly.” I muttered to myself, but this saying was not one I knew, even though it was somehow familiar. I sighed again, knowing that it must be one of his, or worse, one of hers.
I went back into the cafe and calmly returned to the privacy of the toilet. With a deep sense of frustration, I lifted my wrist and set the timepiece for home and the meeting I would have to have with my boss. This wasn’t going to be the one I’d been expecting to have with him and I feared it would tarnish the golden future I’d mapped out for myself.
Chapter eighteen
21st September 3062
As I hurried along the corridor to my quarters, the thoughts occupying my mind were of the meeting I’d had with that alternative version of myself almost eight decades earlier, when I’d successfully severed the link between myself and the young woman. My life had not followed the same course as his and we now knew that it was possible to change a personal timeline. That question at least had been answered and I felt privileged to know that I was living proof of something that we’d believed to be impossible. Javier had forgiven me for not being more cautious and to a great extent had found the situation interesting. As a result, I’d been his protégée and then his friend, right up to his untimely and senseless death.
It was hard to compare our two lives, because all those years ago, a thought inhibitor had been deemed part of the solution to my predicament. I hadn’t refused the insertion of a small device inside my brain, because I didn’t want his memories any more than I wanted his life. The science relating to the problems that breaking the golden rule invariably caused was mainly untested, but the inhibitor worked well enough most of the time, leaving me free to think my own thoughts and recall my own memories. But every now and then, ghosts from his life bled through. For reasons no one could really explain, this happened more frequently at times of heightened brain activity or extreme stress.
The Board allowed me to continue with my chosen profession, but I was reassigned to contemporary history. Parameters were set and my time travelling was limited accordingly. Generally speaking, it was never a problem; the previous two centuries were interesting enough and I’ve always been good at whatever I choose to do.
The door silently slid open and I stepped into what had been my home for more years than I cared to remember. Once inside I could disable the flashing lights telling all and sundry that soon we would be under attack again. With all our knowledge of ourselves, all our experience and everything that history could tell us, here we were once more, intent on killing each other. Would we ever learn? I wondered wearily.
At the age of one hundred and two, I was too old to fight and anyway, I lacked both the training and the will. I was approaching the age the other me had been when he’d ceased to exist, but I’d earned for myself most of the knowledge he’d had, so the danger of knowing something before its time had passed.
I wanted only to sit for a while in the peace of my rooms and then later, if necessary and if the opportunity presented itself, do whatever was required of me in order to protect our chosen way of living and dying.
Settling into my favourite chair, I realised that the meeting with my other self was still pushing out all other thoughts and concerns. Over the years I’d only ever thought of him in passing, when my mind was at a loose end and then usually it was some quirk of curiosity that prompted me to shuffle through the echoes. Whenever he crept into my awareness, I was always filled with the satisfying sensation that our lives had been very different.
I have always lived alone, never feeling the need to make room in my life for another person. Of course over the years I’ve shared some very pleasant times with others. One in particular was a charming, intelligent woman called Suri and I always smile when I think of our time together. Bu
t she had been ambitious and driven like myself, so there had never been any real chance of a long and successful relationship. In fact, none of the women I’d ever admired had any more intention than I had of giving up part of themselves or their hopes in order to support those of another and I had no real regrets in that regard. But occasionally, what bled through was not a memory, it was an emotion; a warm, tremendous impression of being loved. Not of loving, but of being loved. I disliked that particular ghost because of the way it mocked me. It belittled all that I had achieved and left me feeling empty inside.
In fact I had a lot to be proud of. I’d had the privilege of working closely with Javier, one of the greatest minds of our time and together we had enjoyed teasing the truth out of a situation and laying it bare; only then was it of any use to us. One of my talents is the ability to see a problem and its possible solutions from all angles and only by doing this could we examine the multitude of potential consequences. He hadn’t had to teach me this, it was a natural gift, but over the years he had honed it, with the pleasing result that we became friends. We had made a great team and I still missed him.
I suddenly grasped why the memory of meeting myself was bleeding through with such force. There was an anomaly, something was wrong. I smiled; a puzzle was exactly what I needed while I waited for the conflict raging outside to cease.
I dimmed the lights, closed my eyes and requested soothing music; a clarinet piece from the twenty-fourth century. I had discovered that sometimes I could think around the inhibitor and in that way could access echoes of his memories. In many ways it was frustrating, because I could never select a specific reference point from which to explore logically; after all, they were a record of his life, not mine. However, over the years I had built up a mental library of the more interesting of these echoes and it was to them that I turned. I shuffled through them, trying to find a clue to what is was that was bothering me. Then I stopped in my tracks, realising that the anomaly wasn’t in his memories; it was in mine.
What about us? Page 20