by Peter Ward
Outside, Geoff could see one soldier barking orders at the rest of the troops, but as the inside of the car was completely soundproof, he couldn’t make out a word of what was being said. However, as he watched fifty men and women raise their weapons and point them directly at the car, he started to form a pretty good idea as to what their strategy might be.
“Um…William,” Geoff said, making another futile effort to move in his seat. “Don’t you think you should maybe surrender now?”
“Surrender?” William said, tapping a few more buttons on the dashboard. Geoff felt the car vibrate as the engines roared to life. “Why would I want to do that?”
Geoff nodded toward the circle of guns trained on their position. “Because we’re about to have the shit blown out of us?”
“Don’t be silly,” William said. “The safety features of this car are designed to protect us from a fall from ten thousand feet. The windows are reinforced, the body is armor-plated—they could drop a bomb on this thing and it wouldn’t make a dent. Now, would you like some music?”
“Sure! You got anything relaxing to take my mind off things, like maybe the theme tune to Sesame Street?” Outside, he watched as the soldier who had been talking raised his hand up in the air, then swung it down in their direction. As he did so, the army opened fire from all around, muzzles flashing as a hail of bullets hit the car from every direction.
Geoff shut his eyes. This was it.
Only it wasn’t it.
Not even remotely.
With his eyes closed, he couldn’t sense anything. There was none of the searing pain he was expecting from his body being shredded into a million pieces by the onslaught of firepower, no noise from the guns, not even the slightest vibration from the bullets hitting the car. In fact, it was so peaceful he might as well have been relaxing in the bathtub with a flannel over his face.
As he opened his eyes again, he could see bullets ricocheting off every surface outside, harmlessly bouncing away as though the army had accidentally replaced their ammunition with ping-pong balls. It was strange for such an intensely visceral thing to be happening with no accompanying sound, and for a moment it was like watching an action movie with the volume off. This was actually Geoff’s preferred way of seeing many action movies, so he didn’t have to listen to the horrendous dialogue (The Transporter in particular was much more bearable in silence, he’d discovered), but in this instance it felt strange, like he was somehow detached from reality.
William was nonchalantly fiddling with the radio, completely unfazed by what was happening outside. “Here we are,” he said.
“Let’s Dance” by David Bowie had just started to play. William turned the volume up and smiled. “You like David Bowie?” he said over the funky intro.
“Uh…yes. Yes I do,” Geoff replied.
“So do I,” William said. “In fact, I like all music. Before I was made a Time Rep, I’d never heard a single piece of music. Nothing. I’d never heard an orchestra; I’d never even heard anyone play an instrument. All I knew of music was when people sang in the streets, and those were usually songs about death. And do you know what all songs about death have in common, Mr. Stamp?”
Geoff shook his head.
“They’re all crap.”
The army was still firing at the vehicle, but they didn’t appear to be doing any damage, despite the fact that they were trying really hard. Even the odd grenade thrown in their direction didn’t do anything as it exploded against the windshield.
William released what looked like a handbrake to his side and pulled down on the steering wheel. As he did, the car began to ascend into the sky.
“Can you imagine that?” William continued, turning to Geoff. “Can you imagine never having heard a piece of music your whole life? That’s what it’s like for most of the people in my time, yet here you can put thousands of songs in a little box and listen to them anywhere you like. People in the twenty-first century take so much for granted, it’s unbelievable.”
Geoff turned his head to look out of the window as the car climbed a few hundred feet in the air. Down below, the army had stopped firing, although the man who had been barking orders at the rest of the troops was now shouting something into a radio attached to his shoulder.
“Where are you taking me?” Geoff said, turning his attention back to William.
“Well,” William replied, “you asked me if I knew what damage I’d just caused to the space-time continuum, and the answer is no, I don’t. So that’s what we’re going to find out.”
Geoff sighed and looked down through the glass floor at the city. He could see flashing lights everywhere, with police cars, ambulances, and fire engines tearing through the streets toward the ruins of Canary Wharf.
“Look at this.” William nudged Geoff and pointed ahead through the windshield.
Geoff looked up and saw three Harrier jump jets maneuvering themselves directly in front of them, their engines rotating down to allow them to hover in the sky. They were only a few meters ahead, the nose of each plane pointing straight toward them.
The plane at the front of the formation edged forward. Inside the cockpit, the pilot lifted up the visor on her helmet. She then pointed toward them and then to the ground, repeating the gesture a number of times. Presumably this meant she wanted them to land, although what she was doing did also resemble that dance move from Saturday Night Fever.
“What do you think she wants?” William asked.
“I suspect they might want you to give yourself up.”
“Hmph,” William hmphed. “I don’t think so.”
And with that, he jabbed a small red button on the dashboard and pushed the steering wheel to the right. The car responded immediately, shooting forward at an incredible speed and banking to the right. Unfortunately, William didn’t quite manage to avoid one of the Harriers, clipping the wing of the plane as the car accelerated away.
“Shit!” Geoff screamed, watching in horror as the jet spun out of the sky in a spiral of smoke and smashed into a street below, the wreckage tearing through rows and rows of traffic in a blaze of fire and molten metal.
He hadn’t seen a parachute.
Despite the damage they had done to the plane, the car they were flying was completely fine. This thing was strong.
“Whoops,” William said, leveling the car off as it continued to accelerate away. “Didn’t mean to do that!” He looked through the glass beneath him as scores of people scrambled away from the crashed plane. “Sorry!” he called out.
And then a missile shot past them.
Geoff looked around, his eyes following the missile’s vapor trail back the way it came. It led to the wing of one of the two remaining Harriers, which had both turned around to give chase.
“They’re firing on us!” Geoff screamed.
“I know!” William said, banking the car to the right as another missile whistled past. “Isn’t this amazing? Bet you never thought you’d be doing this today!”
William pushed down on the steering wheel, sending the car soaring up through a layer of cloud and high up into the atmosphere. The Harriers were struggling to keep up, but every so often a missile narrowly missed them, indicating that they weren’t too far behind.
“Okay, let’s see what these guys can do,” William said, pushing the steering wheel forward. The car responded by entering a steep dive, piercing the thin layer of cloud again and hurtling toward the ground at an incredible speed. As they descended, another missile shot past, missing its target again but exploding against the roof of an apartment block directly ahead of them. Or was that beneath them? With all the sudden changes in direction, Geoff was more disoriented than the time he’d tried to take a shortcut through IKEA to avoid following the path around the all showrooms.
Just as they were about to hit the ground, William pulled the steering wheel down hard, leveling the car off a few hundred meters in the air. Behind them, the two pursuing Harriers weren’t able to maneuver out of th
eir dive fast enough, and Geoff watched in despair as they crashed into the ground in a ball of flames.
“William!” Geoff cried out, “Please, you’ve got to stop this!”
William laughed, wiping a tear from his eye. “I knew it was worth renting one of these things.”
“William!”
“All right, all right,” William said. “I’ll stop.”
Geoff shut his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing.
Air in.
Air out.
This couldn’t be happening.
It was impossible.
It had to be a nightmare.
Or a horrible dream.
No, wait—that was the same thing as a nightmare.
Focus on breathing.
When he opened his eyes again, the car was hovering in midair with an aerial view of London in front of them. Over in the east, Canary Wharf was shrouded in plumes of smoke. William held a small device in his hand. At first glance it looked a bit like a tablet computer—a thin, rectangular thing with a large touchscreen. William was pressing a few buttons on the screen.
“What are you doing?” Geoff said.
“You’ll see,” William replied, tapping away. Once he had finished his tapping, he put the tablet to one side, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a syringe. “Now, hold still, will you?”
“W-what’s that?” Geoff said, trying his best not to hold still at all. The syringe looked pretty serious. It was filled with a red liquid and ended in a cluster of six needles, which in turn surrounded a larger one in the middle. William bit the plastic safety cap off the end and spat it to the floor.
Geoff hated injections. Particularly ones administered to him under duress by lunatics.
“Wait!” Geoff said, his body shaking as William held his right wrist down and pressed the tip of the syringe against his skin. “I’m really not a fan of needles!”
“I’m sorry,” William said, plunging the needles into Geoff’s arm. “But unless this serum is inside you, you won’t get to experience the next part properly.”
“N-next part?” Geoff said, wincing as a shot of pain seared through his body. “What next part? And what is that stuff?”
“Don’t worry,” William said. “It’s perfectly safe.” He withdrew the syringe and tossed it behind him.
Looking back, Geoff could see a number of empty syringes lying across the back seat.
“How many other Time Reps have you visited?” Geoff said, glancing down at his wrist. He could see six small pinpricks of blood on his skin, surrounding a larger one made by the central needle.
“Oh, just a few,” William said, reaching for his tablet again. “Now, watch this.”
William pressed a symbol displayed on the tablet’s screen. The symbol looked like a bit like a fast-forward button you would get on a video remote, and as William held it down, the world around them began to react as though it were indeed being fast-forwarded. Time appeared to be speeding up before their very eyes—the sun started to set quickly, then rise again, then set, the movement getting faster and faster the longer William held the button down. Clouds quickly transformed from calm brushstrokes of white into pools of liquid spooling across the sky. And down below, traffic moved at lightning speed, with streaks of headlights flashing on and off on the roads as the days and nights rushed past.
In the distance, Geoff watched in fascination as Canary Wharf started to regain its form. In a matter of moments, the cloud of black smoke dispersed, all the rubble was cleared away, and the skyscrapers were rebuilt twice as tall.
It was a truly incredible sight.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” William said, holding up the tablet for Geoff to see. “This thing is standard issue when you join Continuum. The damn thing allows you to control time however you like! Can you believe that?”
Geoff was about to ask William what he meant by being able to control time however he liked, when suddenly there was a bright flash. Despite still being restrained, he instinctively tried to reach up to cover his eyes, but just as quickly as the flash had appeared, it was gone again. And once it had, all that was left behind was a decimated city. Time continued to wind on forward with the sun rising and setting every few seconds, but no matter how long they waited, nothing was rising from the ruins. Buildings were not getting rebuilt. It looked as though London had been completely destroyed, and no one was left to pick up the pieces. Or put the pieces back together again, which would have been much more useful than just picking them up.
“Whoa.” William took his finger off the tablet’s screen. “Did you see that?”
Geoff swallowed hard as time returned to normal speed. “My God,” he said. “What have you done?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” William said casually, as though he’d just been asked a tricky Trivial Pursuit question rather than being made to answer for the annihilation of a city, “but this definitely didn’t happen in the original timeline. I guess something I did must have caused it.”
Geoff shook his head. “You guess?!” he said. “You guess!?”
“Huh,” William said, reading something from the tablet. “It says here that the British media blamed my attack on foreign terrorists, which in turn led to an extremist regime being elected into office a few years later. In the decades that followed, London was rebuilt, but Britain changed in its attitude toward the rest of the world, becoming far more defensive and less tolerant toward other cultures. This all came to a head at the turn of the twenty-second century, when they launched a preemptive nuclear strike against another country they incorrectly suspected to be an aggressor. The other country responded with a nuclear strike of its own, and London was destroyed. England’s remained a wasteland ever since.”
After what he had seen, Geoff barely had the strength to speak.
But he managed five words.
“How do you know that?”
“The device gave me a summary of the how the new timeline reacted to the changes I made. A bit like that supercomputer at Time Tours, but small enough to fit in your pocket! Clever bit of kit, don’t you think?”
Geoff let out a long, deep breath.
“Well, there you go,” William said. “You asked me if I had any idea of the damage I’d caused to the space-time continuum by destroying those buildings, and now we know. It caused a chain reaction that ultimately wiped out the whole city. Pretty interesting, huh?”
“Pretty interesting!?” Geoff screamed, writhing around in his chair. “Pretty interesting!? William—you just killed millions of people! You may have just caused the end of the world!”
“Oh, there’s no need to worry about all that,” William said, pressing a few more buttons on his tablet. As he did, a small icon appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. It said REWIND.
“Now—look what happens when I do this,” he said, pressing the icon. When he did, the screen displayed a message: PLEASE CONFIRM HOW FAR BACK YOU WISH TO REWIND.
Beneath the message was a horizontal slider, with an arrow hovering over the far right-hand side. Geoff watched as William touched the arrow and dragged it to the left. As he did, a number of dials at the bottom of the screen showing years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds began to count backward. William stopped moving the slider once the date matched when he had first shown up at Canary Wharf, but the time was set to midnight. Geoff noticed that he had only moved the arrow back about a tenth of the way across the screen.
“Okay. What time was it when I first came to see you?” William said, touching the dials at the bottom of the screen that corresponded to hours and minutes. “Eight…thirty…five…a.m., wasn’t it?”
Once he’d finished adjusting the slider, a green button that looked like the rewind symbol started flashing.
“There we go. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Geoff said.
“This,” William said, pressing the button.
Then something very strange happened. Geoff no longer had any co
ntrol over his body.
Next to him, William began unpressing all the buttons he had been pressing, unsliding the slider he had been sliding. Then they began having a very strange reverse conversation as William began reading the text about the destruction of London backward. Soon after that, the sun began setting and rising again at the same speed it had done before, but in reverse.
Setting and rising.
Setting and rising.
Then there was the flash again. Afterward, though, London was completely undamaged.
And this was how the next few minutes continued, with Geoff watching time reverse itself. Everything that had just happened was unhappening, except Geoff could perceive the rewinding of events as though they were still constructing a forward narrative in his mind. It was incredible. The taller skyscrapers of Canary Wharf unbuilt themselves, the fighter jets unchased them, and Canary Wharf undestroyed itself as the lasers fired by William unfired from his car, which disappeared back into the sky as if it had never arrived.
There was one thing that wasn’t quite the same, though—Geoff noticed that when William unplunged the syringe into his arm, the red liquid didn’t come out again. And when he had removed the needle in reverse, the marks still remained on Geoff’s wrist.
Other than that, everything undid itself exactly, and before Geoff knew it, he was sitting down at the table outside the coffee shop again, picking up his coffee in reverse (which actually meant putting it down) as William walked backward away from him into a crowd of people, looking down at his watch.
And then Geoff was able to move again.
He jerked suddenly, as if he had just been resuscitated, and looked down at his own watch.
Eight thirty-five exactly.
As was Geoff’s habit when he was very surprised about something, he leapt to his feet, looked around a bit, then sat back down again.
No one was paying any attention to either of them anymore. After all, there was no reason to. Canary Wharf was exactly as it was before William had blown it up.
“There,” William said, looking up from his watch. “You see? No harm done.”