by Peter Ward
Zoë leaned back on the sofa. She appeared to only be half listening. “So…what did this Terlingown do?”
“Tringrall.”
“Right, Tringrall. What did this Tringrall do?”
“Well, once he knew it was my Internet broadcast that was responsible for delaying the original invasion in the twenty-first century, he realized that if he could stop that from happening, the Varsarian invasion would succeed. But there was just one problem—all time travel was strictly monitored by a powerful supercomputer to stop anyone going back and changing history. However, the supercomputer did have its uses to him—it showed Tringrall that with the exception of stopping the Varsarian invasion, my life was completely insignificant to the space-time continuum.”
Zoë laughed.
“Now there’s something I don’t find hard to believe,” she said.
“Oh yes,” Geoff said. “In fact, if you must know, that computer said I was less important to the world than certain types of mushroom.”
“No kidding.”
“Anyway, that was when Tringrall came up with the idea for Time Reps—hiring nobodies from throughout history to meet tourists from the future. But the project was invented for one reason—it was a cover to allow Tringrall to get to me. You see, Tringrall figured out a loophole in the supercomputer’s programming—one that would allow him to stop me from broadcasting the transmission that stopped the invasion. Fortunately, we were able to realize enough of what was going on before it was too late, and Earth’s entire battle fleet was sent back in time to the twenty-first century to defend the planet.”
“Wow,” Zoë said, standing up from the sofa in that way people do when they kind of want to leave. “That’s quite a story.”
“It’s quite a story that isn’t finished yet,” Geoff said.
“Oh,” Zoë said, sitting down again.
“You see, there was one last problem. By this point, we still didn’t know who Tringrall really was, as he was continuing to hide in human form. This meant he was able to get on board the Concordia—the flagship of the battle fleet sent back to the twenty-first century to defend Earth—without raising any suspicion.”
“Whoops,” Zoë said. She didn’t look like she was taking this story very seriously.
“Right, whoops. Anyway, in the middle of the battle, he sabotaged a computer that was controlling most of our spaceships, sending the entire fleet into disarray. His actions nearly wiped us out completely, but at the last minute, when it appeared all hope was lost, I figured out a way to undo everything he had done. I worked out a way of identifying the ship that had Tringrall’s ancestors on it, took command of the ship, and destroyed that ship by ramming it with the Concordia. The moment that happened, Tringrall ceased to exist. The damage he had caused never happened, all our ships instantly repaired themselves, and the tide of the battle was turned back in our favor.”
Zoë looked at Geoff in silence.
“That it?” she said eventually.
“That’s it,” Geoff said. “The planet was saved.”
“You know I don’t believe you, right?”
“I know,” Geoff replied, placing the Sat-Nav on the table. “That’s why I’m going to take you there right now.”
“Oh, this I’ve got to see,” Zoë said.
“Right,” Geoff said, pressing the WHEN button. After entering the correct date, two years ago, he pressed the WHERE button. Fortunately, he was able to zoom the map of Earth out far enough to get a view of outer space, and as he did, he could see a visualization of the battle taking place just as he remembered it, a few thousand kilometers away from the planet.
“You see?” Geoff said, showing the screen to Zoë. Explosions were flashing against a backdrop of stars, ships were flying around everywhere in a torrent of laser beams and missiles, and the burnt-out wreckages of several destroyed craft were drifting lifelessly around like corpses made from scrap metal.
“Wow,” Zoë said.
She didn’t look particularly impressed, but then that was understandable. To her, this probably just looked like some sort of basic computer game.
If he truly wanted her to believe him, he would need to take her there.
But where should they go? He zoomed in on the battle again to get a good look at the different ships. He wanted Zoë to see him at the moment he took command of the fleet, but he didn’t think plonking them on the bridge of the Concordia was a great idea—he couldn’t just show up out of thin air, turn to the past version of himself, and say, “Don’t mind us, Geoff, you just carry on!” No—that might be a tad distracting at such a critical moment.
He needed to think of something else.
Perhaps if there was another ship he could get on board, one that was near enough to the Concordia so that they could see him take command on the bridge, maybe that would be enough?
He thought back to the battle and remembered a ship that had drifted right in front of the path of the Concordia, just as he was trying to ram Tringrall’s ancestors. Maybe if they were on that ship, it would be close enough for Zoë to see him on the bridge when he was in command.
It wasn’t hard to find the ship he was thinking about—it was one of the last remaining craft toward the end of the battle, just as the Concordia was about to set its collision course toward the ship with Tringrall’s ancestors on it.
Geoff looked at Zoë.
“Here we are,” he said, using the Sat-Nav to select an empty spot in a corridor on the starboard side of the ship that he knew was going to drift in front of the flagship while he was in command. The corridor looked a little bit damaged from the battle, with hairline cracks beginning to appear across the ceiling, but it still looked safe and had huge windows, which he hoped would give them a perfect view of the Concordia’s bridge as they drifted by. He stood up, took Zoë’s hand, and pulled her to her feet. “You ready?”
“I’m ready,” Zoë said, throwing her arms up in the air in mock excitement. “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Geoff smiled, pressed the EXECUTE button, and the next moment, he and Zoë were standing in the corridor on the spaceship, right where he had intended.
For a second, Zoë didn’t say a word. She just looked at Geoff in silence as though they’d just gone out for a walk and she’d remembered that she’d forgotten her handbag.
“Well, we’re here,” Geoff smiled, reaching for her hand “You okay?”
“Agggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” was Zoë’s response, screamed directly at Geoff’s face at the top of her voice.
Twelve
Zoë’s legs gave way immediately, her limp body spilling across the floor as though her bones had instantly been replaced with overcooked spaghetti. Geoff tried to catch her as she fell, but failed quite spectacularly and ended up lying on the floor with her in a tangled mess of arms and legs. The whole episode reminded him of the last time he’d been ice skating.
“Hey hey hey hey hey!” Geoff said, grabbing Zoë by the shoulders and pulling her body upright, seating her with her back against the window. “Keep calm, okay? Everything is fine.”
“Keep calm?” Zoë leapt to her feet and pressed herself against the wall on the other side of the corridor as though she’d just seen a big spider crawling toward her. “Keep calm? What the hell just happened? Where are we?”
“I told you,” Geoff said, standing up. “We’re in space.”
“Space?” Zoë cried. “Space? How can we be in space? We’re in space? This is space?”
“Yes, this is space,” Geoff said, “and we’re in it. I told you this was going to happen a minute ago, remember?”
“I thought you were joking!”
“Yeah, I know,” Geoff said. “But I wasn’t.”
Zoë started murmuring something incomprehensible to herself. Geoff sometimes found it difficult to read women, but in this instance he thought he knew what was going through Zoë’s mind: sheer panic. “It’s okay, Zoë,” he tried to calm her down.
“Oh, i
t’s okay, he says,” Zoë scoffed. “We’re in space and that’s fine. It’s normal.”
He walked over to the window and looked outside.
“We won’t be here for very long. I just want to show you one thing, and then I’ll take you back to Earth.”
Zoë looked at him in silence.
“I’ll even make you another tea.”
She still looked at him in silence. He had a feeling that the promise of a nice cup of tea afterward wasn’t quite enough to calm her nerves.
“Look,” Geoff said, pressing his hands against the window. “This is the moment I was telling you about, the moment I took command of an entire fleet of spaceships and defeated an alien invasion.”
He peered through the glass at the war raging outside, trying to work out at what point they had arrived. Just as he’d intended, the Sat-Nav had brought them to a point in time near the end of the battle. In front of him, the charred remains of thousands of Earth ships drifted lifelessly through space, with the Varsarians conducting an all-out assault on the remainder of the fleet. The cosmos were littered with dead bodies and space debris, with flying saucers gleefully whizzing in all directions, and laser beams and missiles were exploding everywhere like some sort of nightmarish fireworks display.
In the distance, he saw the badly damaged Concordia, the massive ship just sitting in space, biding its time. If he wasn’t mistaken, his past self would be sitting in the captain’s chair right now, getting ready to put his last-ditch plan into action.
His suspicions were confirmed when he heard his own voice come over the loudspeaker. He remembered this moment vividly—it was his first command to the Earth fleet, the bluff he knew the enemy was listening in on that he’d used to draw out Tringrall’s ancestors.
“Remaining Earth ships, your attention please! Prepare to activate the Death Bringer!” it said.
As the order came, all the enemy ships stopped firing and moved to retreat, fearing that humanity was about to fire a superweapon that didn’t actually exist. But there was one ship out there that would still be firing on the others. This was the moment when his past self was on the bridge, surveying every square inch of space to identify the right ship to attack, the one with Tringrall’s ancestors on it, which, if destroyed, would wipe him from existence and undo all the damage his sabotage had caused.
Geoff looked around and extended an arm toward Zoë.
“Why don’t you come over here and have a look at this?” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Zoë didn’t look particularly convinced.
“Come on,” Geoff said, reaching toward her. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Zoë took a few slow steps forward, approaching the window with caution as though it were the edge of a cliff face. Eventually, she pressed her hands against the glass and leaned forward, staring in wonder at what she saw like a small child looking into an aquarium for the first time. “Oh my God,” she said.
“You see that big ship in front of us?” Geoff said, pointing toward the Concordia. “That’s the ship I told you about—the one I commanded two years ago. Right now, I’m standing on the bridge of that ship, trying to spot a particular craft that I need to destroy.”
Zoë turned to Geoff. Her eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them before. “It’s real!” she exclaimed. “It’s really real!”
“That’s right,” Geoff laughed, taking her hand.
In front of them, the Concordia’s engines began to power up, a bright blue glow emanating from the rear of the craft. Slowly but surely, the ship began to move, the battered hull creaking like the bones of an old man prising himself out of a chair.
“Ah—here we go,” Geoff said, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “This was the part I wanted you to see, when I set the Concordia on a collision course with the enemy ship.”
Zoë wasn’t really listening. At this moment, her mind was still coming to terms with the fact that she was in space, and that Geoff had actually been telling the truth all along about being a Time Rep. She was so stunned, he probably could have said anything to her at this point and she wouldn’t have reacted, no matter how outrageous the statement.
“I don’t believe this,” she said, raising her hand to stroke the back of her neck.
“None of our weapons were working,” Geoff continued his story regardless of whether Zoë was paying attention or not, “so I had to ram the Concordia into the alien ship in order to destroy it.”
“Geoff,” Zoë placed a hand on Geoff’s shoulder to steady herself, “this is amazing. I can’t believe it.”
In front of them, the Concordia began to accelerate faster, the massive ship using every last drop of energy to catch up with its target. Just as Geoff had remembered, the ship they were standing on began to drift into the path of the flagship, and within seconds they had a full view of the bridge as the Concordia heaved toward them.
“There!” Geoff said, leaning close to Zoë and pointing her line of sight toward the bridge’s main window. Sure enough, there was his past self, sitting in the captain’s seat, looking ahead in horror at the ship that had just drifted in front of the Concordia’s path. “Can you see me?”
“Well I’ll be damned,” Zoë said, nodding. “It’s you! Can he see us?”
“I don’t remember seeing us, so I guess not,” Geoff said. “At the time, I was a little bit more concerned with getting this ship to move out of the way.”
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before an order from his past self was broadcast throughout the ship.
“Get out of the way!” his past self said. “I can’t hit it if you’re in the way!”
“See?” Geoff said.
“What was that?” Zoë said.
“That was me ordering this ship to move,” Geoff explained.
“This is extremely confusing.”
The two of them stood transfixed by the window, watching as the Concordia narrowly avoided colliding with the ship they were on and maintained its pursuit of the enemy craft. Even though Geoff knew the outcome of this chase, he still felt his body tensing up in anticipation, and when Tringrall’s ancestors began to accelerate away from the lumbering Concordia and it appeared all hope was lost, he still felt nervous, as though there were still a possibility that he might not succeed in catching them up.
But then the came his past self’s master stroke—the Concordia activated its tractor beam, the enemy flying saucer was stopped in its tracks, and within seconds, the two ships crashed into each other spectacularly, with the enemy saucer ricocheting back out into space and folding in on itself before exploding in a brilliant flash of light.
Geoff turned to Zoë. “This is the best bit,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Watch what happens now.”
With Tringrall’s ancestors destroyed and Tringrall himself erased from existence, the space-time continuum got to work undoing all the damage caused by his act of sabotage. Conveniently, this meant that all the ships that had been destroyed by the Varsarians began to restore themselves to pristine condition, with burnt-out wreckages and exploded craft unburning and unexploding before their very eyes. In front of them, the previously battered hull of the Concordia repaired itself, the giant gashes and scorch marks healing over as though they had never happened. Even the corridor Zoë and Geoff were standing in fixed itself, the cracks in the walls joining back together again, the floor and ceiling straightening out almost instantaneously. Someone in an insurance company somewhere was no doubt breathing a very large sigh of relief at this point.
Geoff smiled as he watched the fleet repair itself again—seeing it do this for the second time really was incredible. He could only imagine what Zoë must have been thinking, but he hoped it was something along the lines of: Wow—Geoff wasn’t lying! He really did save the world! I am seriously impressed with this man, and will now ask him if he would like a big kiss!
Needless to say, that wasn’t what was going through Zoë’s mind in the slightest.
&n
bsp; It was only a matter of seconds before Earth’s battle fleet was back up to full strength, and as the last of the alien forces were being wiped out by an invigorated enemy, she turned to Geoff and gave him a look he’d never seen before.
“My God, Geoff,” she said, letting go of his hand and taking a step back from the window. Her voice was quivering as she spoke, her wide eyes looking at him from a new perspective. “I can’t believe it! Everything you said was true.”
“That’s right,” Geoff replied. “And you have no idea how hard it’s been keeping that a secret from you.”
• • •
Since there was no point sticking around to see the rest of the Varsarians being wiped out, Geoff used the Sat-Nav to bring them both back to present-day London. But he didn’t want to go back to the house—now that she knew the truth about who he really was, he wanted to take Zoë somewhere nice, somewhere he could confess his true feelings toward her, somewhere romantic. The house wasn’t really ideal for that sort of thing, not least because a) you needed an ordnance survey map to navigate your way through each room, and b) even if you found a clean spot (which you wouldn’t, but let’s pretend for argument’s sake), you were probably never more than two meters away from a stray sock.
And stray socks were a real mood killer when you were in the middle of telling someone how much you loved them.
No—he needed to take her somewhere special.
He knew he was probably going about all this a little quickly, but he couldn’t help it—he was in love with Zoë, and he had been desperate to tell her how he really felt for years. And what better time to do that than after showing her how he had saved the world?
That sort of thing was pretty impressive, right?
Of course, Geoff understood that just because Zoë had seen him save the entire human race from extinction, it didn’t mean she felt the same way about him.