by Peter Ward
He knew that love didn’t work that way.
And she was pretty fussy, after all.
And so, after dismissing a number of nonromantic locations to confess his feelings, like the comic book section in Forbidden Planet and outside the local chip shop, Geoff decided to take Zoë to a quiet area at the top of the hill in Greenwich Park, just next to the Royal Observatory. As romantic spots go, this was hard to beat—the hill offered an amazing view across the whole of London, there were no stray socks in sight, and being the site of the Prime Meridian, the place had a certain connection with time that Geoff felt was rather poetic.
They materialized on top of the hill, just as the sun was setting.
“Here we are,” Geoff said, taking a few steps forward and letting his eyes wander across the London skyline. “Back on planet Earth.”
He could see the beautiful dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, peeking over the horizon. The spike of the Shard, piercing the sky like a lone stalagmite. Tower Bridge, which he remembered he would still be visiting at some point in the near future. And in front of him, Canary Wharf, with its chunky skyscrapers lit up in the twilight like giant advertisements for how to waste energy.
Zoë was breathing heavily, her hand pressed to her chest. “I still can’t believe this,” she said, padding over to a nearby bench and sitting down.
“How are you doing?” Geoff said, sitting down next to her.
“How am I doing?” Zoë said, turning to face him. “How am I doing? Geoff—I’ve just found out that you can time travel! That the planet was nearly destroyed two years ago by an alien invasion! I’ve just been into space and back! It’s quite a bit to take in! How do you think I’m doing?!”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”
Zoë shut her eyes, scrunching her face up as tightly as she could for a few seconds and clenching her teeth.
“Look—I’m sorry if I scared you, okay?” Geoff said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It’s just—I didn’t know what else to do. I had to show you I was telling the truth.”
Zoë opened her eyes and shot to her feet, ignoring Geoff’s hand falling away from her shoulder as she stood up.
“Okay—I’m fine,” she said, breathing in slowly. She rested her hands by her sides and breathed out again as if she were doing a relaxing yoga move. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Geoff said.
“Absolutely,” Zoë said. “A little overwhelmed, maybe, but I’m good. Sorry—this has just all come as a bit of a shock, you know?”
“I understand,” Geoff said. “I didn’t believe it either when Time Tours first told me about time travel. Nearly walked out the door. But it’s pretty neat, right?”
“Neat?” Zoë said. “Neat? Geoff, this is incredible! It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” She walked over to him and looked down at the Sat-Nav. “You mean to tell me that thing allows you to travel to any time or place?”
“That’s right,” Geoff said. “We can go anywhere and anywhen we like.”
“Unbelievable,” she said, straightening up and looking around. Behind her, the roof of the Greenwich Observatory was reflecting the last rays of sunlight as dusk began to set in. “So why did you bring me to Greenwich? Was there something else you wanted to show me?”
“No,” Geoff said. “I just thought this would be nice, you know?”
“Nice?”
Geoff swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Nice for what? Are we having a picnic?”
“Um…I dunno,” Geoff said. “I guess I thought…uh…”
He couldn’t believe it. After building this moment up in his mind so much, he was scared to say anything.
And with Zoë now linked to the tablet, if this went wrong, there was no way of undoing a mistake he made with her anymore. Unless he disconnected her, if he rewound time, she would have the same memories he did. And he couldn’t do that, because he didn’t have any more serum.
“Are you okay?” Zoë asked.
“I’m fine,” Geoff said. “I’m fine. Listen—do you mind if we just sit here for a while?”
“You want to just sit here?” Zoë said.
“Yeah. Is that okay?”
Zoë shrugged her shoulders. “I guess,” she said. “But all this has got me a little worked up, you know? Can’t we go and visit another time period or something?”
“You want to go somewhere else straight away?”
“Don’t you?” she said, looking out across the London skyline. “Geoff—we can go anywhere! We can visit ancient Egypt, we can go and see what it was like in medieval times, we can go to the future—the list is endless!”
“I know it is,” Geoff said. “I know. It’s just that I thought…”
Zoë looked at him. “You just thought what?” she said.
Geoff stood up and walked toward her. “What did you think of what I just showed you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know that part where I saved the world from an alien invasion?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think of that? It was pretty good, right?”
Zoë smiled and tilted her head to one side. “If you were trying to impress me, Geoff, you did a pretty good job,” she said. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Uh…yes.” Geoff blushed. “Yes, it was.” He felt a bit stupid now, forcing Zoë to say something.
“You know, maybe we should sit here for a while,” Zoë said, walking over to the bench. “I get the feeling we both need to calm down a little.”
And so that’s what they did. For about five minutes, neither of them said a word. They just sat on the bench in silence, watching as the sun set on the horizon.
“Geoff?” Zoë said eventually.
“Yes?”
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Well, you said you’d been working as a Time Rep for two years, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“If that’s the case, why did you wait until today to show me all this? Why didn’t you tell me about your job straight away?”
“It’s a long story,” Geoff said. “For the last two years, I wasn’t allowed to. My old company was worried that if anyone from the twenty-first century knew what I did, there was a risk that it could change the course of history. It was only today that I joined a new company called Continuum. Thanks to the Sat-Nav they gave me, I can go back and do whatever I like.”
“Like showing me the moment you saved the world.”
“Exactly,” Geoff said. “That was the first thing on my list.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I have to say I’m very flattered,” Zoë said, shifting her weight on the bench slightly. “But of all the things you could have chosen to do, why did you want to do that first?”
“Because ever since I became a Time Rep, I’ve found it so frustrating to talk to you,” Geoff said. “You’re one of my closest friends, and I couldn’t tell you any of this. Do you have any idea how hard it has been keeping this all a secret from you?”
“And do you feel better now that you’ve shown me all this?”
“Yes,” Geoff said. “I guess so…it’s just…”
Zoë put a finger to Geoff’s lips. “I know what’s going on here, Geoff. I know what you’re trying to do. Just give me some time to think about it, okay?”
Geoff nodded.
“Now,” Zoë said, standing up from the bench and taking a few steps toward the edge of the hill. “Let’s go somewhere else, shall we? But this time, I’ll choose, okay?”
“Okay,” Geoff said, standing up and joining her at the edge of the hill, Sat-Nav in hand. “Just name the time and place and I’ll take you there. How about we see if your band ever makes it? Wouldn’t that be interesting?”
“I suppose,” Zoë said, looking down at her feet and kicking a small stone. “But it seems so
silly to go and see something like that now, given what we could use this thing to do.”
Geoff frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s just, after being in space, it seems a bit of an anticlimax to go down the pub and watch the band play. I want to experience something else that will blow my mind. Something I’ve never seen before.”
“Are you sure?” Geoff said. “Because you didn’t handle going into space that well, if I’m completely honest.”
Zoë frowned at him. “I’m sure,” she said.
“Okay. If you want to see something that will really amaze you, this device has got just the thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“It can make time speed up.”
“Speed up?”
“It’s really incredible to watch, like fast-forwarding a video. Why don’t we travel to the future, but instead of jumping straight there, why don’t we watch how London changes over time? From here, we’ll have a great view of the city. We’ll be able to see all the new buildings go up in minutes, see the landscape change as the city gets more and more built up.”
“Sounds amazing,” Zoë said. “Let’s do it.”
“Right,” Geoff said, looking down at the tablet. “Let me see if I can remember how this works.” He pressed the WHEN icon, and then hovered his finger over the fast-forward button.
“I think this is it,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” Zoë said, and walked over to the edge of the hill to take in the view.
Geoff did the same. “Here we go,” he said, holding the button down.
Just like before when he had used the Sat-Nav to speed up the passage of time, things began to happen in front of them at a vastly accelerated rate. As the date on the screen counted up through the decades and then the centuries, Zoë and Geoff watched in awe as the London skyline rapidly evolved before their eyes. Some areas stayed remarkably similar over the years, with Saint Paul’s Cathedral remaining completely untouched. Other areas changed dramatically. Three new bridges sprang up over the Thames, Canary Wharf’s roster of skyscrapers quadrupled, and by the twenty-fourth century, the Millennium Dome was replaced by an enormous theme park.
By the twenty-seventh century, there were no signs of the old transport infrastructures of the city. With the advent of flying cars in the twenty-sixth century, which now streaked across the sky in organized lanes of red and white headlights, it appeared roads and railways were obsolete. Eventually, most of the roads and tracks were converted to long stretches of parkland, intersecting every few hundred yards and making the city look much greener, with lines of tall trees replacing most of the bands of gray and brown that had been there before.
After a matter of minutes, they finally reached the thirty-first century, with the city looking both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Some parts of it looked identical to the London of the twenty-first century; other parts looked totally different.
“Well, here we are,” Geoff said.
“Wait,” Zoë said, holding his finger down on the button. “Keep going! This is incredible! I want to see what happens next.”
“Okay,” Geoff said, keeping the button pressed down.
And so they watched as the city continued to grow. Geoff looked down at the tablet—another fifty years had passed, and the city was still changing, with buildings rising and falling in a cycle. There was a strange rhythm to it, as though each part of the city was destined to be rebuilt at a certain point.
However, by the time they reached the mid-thirty-second century, the evolution of the city began to slow down. For a moment, Geoff wondered if he wasn’t pressing the fast-forward button hard enough, but it wasn’t that—the years were still counting up quickly; it was the city that wasn’t changing that much. Not only that, but the bright lines of traffic that had consistently streaked through the sky for hundreds of years started to weaken, as though fewer people were now traveling. By the end of the thirty-second century, something looked to be very wrong indeed. There was no traffic in the sky at all, and the city wasn’t changing in the slightest. The only thing that was different was the greenery throughout the city and the parkland around them, which was now becoming hugely overgrown. It was as though there hadn’t been anyone tending to it for years.
Then in the distance, a few of the taller skyscrapers began to erode away and collapse, as if they had fallen into disrepair. It appeared that, like the greenery, people weren’t attending to the upkeep of the buildings, either.
“Geoff?” Zoë said, looking around at him. “What’s happened? Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know,” Geoff said. He could feel his heart beating faster.
He took his finger off the fast-forward button and watched as time immediately flowed at a normal speed again.
They were now standing in foot-high grass, overlooking a decaying, deserted city. According to the Sat-Nav, it was early evening. At this time of day you would normally be able to see thousands of buildings lit up as far as the eye could see, but there were no lights anywhere—just a gray, lifeless skyline, slowly withering away to nothing.
Either there had been a massive power cut and the entire city had gone to try and sort it out, or something was very wrong here.
“What’s going on?” Zoë said. “Where is everyone?”
“I don’t know,” Geoff said.
“Geoff, I don’t like this.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” Geoff said, tapping his forehead with the palm of his hand in that way people do when they’ve just remembered something. “I know what this is.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. Or at least, I think I do. If I’m right, then there’s nothing to worry about.”
“And if you’re not right?”
“If I’m not right, it still might not be that bad. There might be a perfectly reasonable, nonworrying explanation.”
Zoë didn’t look convinced. “The entire city is deserted and you think there’s a perfectly reasonable, nonworrying explanation?” she said. “It looks pretty bad to me, like everyone’s died or something.”
Geoff shook his head. “No, no no no. I don’t think that’s what happened. You remember that supercomputer I told you about? The one that predicted the future?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that computer always said that humanity would one day leave this planet to explore other galaxies. We must have just passed the point in history when that happened, that’s all.”
“I don’t know, Geoff,” Zoë said, walking over to an area that was a little less overgrown. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Geoff said. “Pretty sure. All that’s happened is that mankind has gone to explore other worlds. And while this looks bad now, with everything falling apart, in the future, once all these old buildings erode away, Earth will revert back to being a beautiful garden world.”
“Hmm,” Zoë said. “If you say so. But it still feels a little bit strange to me.”
“Well, why don’t we look it up?” Geoff said, pressing the WHAT button on the Sat-Nav. “Will that make you feel better?”
“You can do that?”
“Yeah—this thing can tell us exactly what happened.”
Geoff found the page describing why everywhere appeared to be deserted and began reading it to himself. At first he just thought the explanation would confirm what he already knew—that mankind had left the planet to explore other galaxies.
Unfortunately, it didn’t say that at all.
And contrary to what he had told Zoë, the real explanation wasn’t a perfectly reasonable, nonworrying one.
In fact, it was kind of the opposite.
“Well?” Zoë said, peering over the Sat-Nav to try and read the screen for herself. “What does it say?”
Geoff looked at Zoë and sighed.
He handed her the Sat-Nav to read the explanation for herself. “There’s been a
complete and utter disaster, and we’ve got to do something about it.”
Zoë took the Sat-Nav from him and started read aloud. “In the early thirty-second century, the population of the world had become completely addicted to the Continuum experience,” she said. “To cope with this extraordinary demand, Continuum launched an ultra-premium holiday package. This meant that instead of people using Continuum to go on holiday and come back again, they were now allowed to disappear into their own alternative timelines and never come back. This package became so popular, it was decreed to be a basic human right for someone to be able to spend their entire life within the Continuum experience if they wished. To cope with demand, the world’s entire manufacturing capabilities were dedicated to producing enough serum and Space and Time Navigation tablets to cater to the entire population of the planet. Within fifty years, over half the population had used Continuum to disappear into their own timelines forever, and by the end of the century, only a few remnants of humanity remained.”
She handed the tablet back to Geoff and looked him in the eyes. “I don’t think I can read any more,” she said.
“Me neither,” Geoff said. “Who would have thought that something like this could become so popular, it would end up swallowing up the entire population of the planet? It’s worse than the bloody Pokémon craze.”
“So what are we going to do?” Zoë said.
“I don’t know, but first of all, we need to get out of here and warn someone.”
Geoff pressed the WHEN button, selected the date he had joined Continuum, and pressed EXECUTE.
Nothing happened.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Zoë said.
“I don’t understand,” Geoff said, pressing the EXECUTE button again. “It’s not working.”
“Not working? What do you mean it’s not working?”
“I mean it’s not working!”
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
“This isn’t an office laptop, Zoë! I don’t think it works like that!”
“So what the hell do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Geoff said. He kept pressing the button again and again, but nothing happened.