by Peter Ward
And so it continued, with Geoff experiencing everything his past self had seen, but this time from the other perspective.
While an army of doctors, physicians, and surgeons frantically tried to work out why their patient was about as capable of rational thought as a piece of cheese was capable of driving a bus, Geoff’s mind began to wander aimlessly, his unconscious drifting from one dream to another like an unmoored boat floating across a lake in whichever way the current decided to take it.
First of all, he dreamed about a limited-edition meal deal from his local pizza restaurant. It was called the Geoff Box, and it was amazing. In the box you got a large pizza, twenty pieces of garlic bread, fifteen chicken wings, a massive pile of potato wedges, and three dips. In fact, you got so much food that the meal had to come in three separate boxes. Over time, people from all over London regarded it as the best limited-edition meal deal anybody had ever created, and it became so popular that it won several awards, including the coveted “best limited-edition meal deal” award. Ultimately, the Geoff Box made it onto the restaurant’s permanent menu, and the owner of the restaurant was so grateful to Geoff that he got free pizza given to him for the rest of his life. There was a problem, though—every time Geoff went to eat his free pizza, he noticed that it came with lots of little pink pills sprinkled on top, shaped like elongated footballs. No matter how many times he tried to eat the pizza, something would put him off, and he would end up spitting everything out again.
A few moments later, Geoff found himself floating in space, only he wasn’t inside a spacesuit—he was just wearing his regular clothes, like someone who’d left the airlock of a space station without really reading up on this whole space thing. He was pretty sure this oversight would normally present a bit of a problem in terms of not being able to breathe, but for some reason he felt fine, as though he were just drifting through the sky like a balloon. All around him, thousands of spaceships were in the middle of blowing up, but everything was completely silent and moving in extreme slow motion, the bright explosions happening at a fraction of the speed they would normally. Geoff watched as giant frigates broke apart spectacularly, swarms of fighter craft imploded on themselves, and alien flying saucers crashed into each other. At this speed, though, the destruction looked quite gentle, as though the very fabric of time had turned into a thick, gloopy syrup that reality had to wade through in order to get anything done.
As he drifted through the floating wreckage, looking around at all the different spacecraft in various stages of destruction, he felt strangely relaxed, as though he were watching a peaceful ballet. The dead bodies drifting around him no longer looked like dead bodies—they looked like graceful dancers, pirouetting in one synchronized movement across the stars. And the giant explosions no longer looked like giant explosions—the powerful flashes looked like a beautiful light display, dazzling some sort of cosmic audience watching from afar. However, as Geoff took in this fantastic vista of light and sound, his insides began to hurt a little. He didn’t think much of it at first, but after a few minutes he was in extreme pain, clutching his stomach in agony. He began unbuttoning his clothes to see what was causing him so much discomfort, but when he finally ripped his shirt open, he was horrified to see a huge gash running vertically down his chest. There was no blood that he could see, but his body looked as though it had been surgically cut open.
This must have been about as much as his unconscious could bear to imagine, as Geoff soon found himself leaving space altogether, and standing at the top of a big green hill, overlooking a sprawling city. His stomach no longer hurt, and when he looked down at himself, he could see his shirt was buttoned up again.
To his left, he noticed a girl about ten meters away, with long dark hair. For a moment she looked as though she was running away from him, but as Geoff continued to watch, he realized she was moving backward, which meant she was actually getting closer. The girl appeared to have a nasty wound in the back of her head, and just as she looked as though she was coming to a halt, a large bullet burrowed out of her skull and shot toward him through the air. As had happened when he was in space, Geoff perceived all of this in extreme slow motion.
The girl turned to face Geoff, her head completely healed. She looked angry and was screaming something at him, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Then he realized that the bullet that had emerged from the back of her head was heading directly through the air toward him. He thought about dodging out of its path, until he noticed that it wasn’t actually moving toward him as such—it was moving toward the gun he was pointing at the girl, which he just realized he was holding. The next thing he knew, the bullet had disappeared down the barrel of the gun in a reverse muzzle flash, and his finger released the trigger.
He lowered the gun, and walked toward the girl. She just stood there crying, but her tears were flowing back up her cheeks and into her eyes. When he was standing right in front of her, he said something in reverse. He couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but whatever it was, it must have been quite nice because by the time he’d finished talking, the girl looked happy, with no signs that she’d ever been upset.
Then Geoff leaned forward, slipped his hand around the girl’s back and pulled her toward him. They looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds, then kissed. It should have been a moment of pure ecstasy, but something didn’t feel right. Geoff could feel something moving up his throat; something small, round, and hard. The sensation was quite unpleasant, and he felt his face beginning to contort into a frown. The next thing he knew, the small round thing was rolling around inside his mouth, before he felt it getting sucked out between his lips into the mouth of the girl.
He stopped kissing her and took a step back.
The girl looked at him and smiled. As she did, Geoff noticed she was holding a small pink pill in between her teeth.
And that was the last he saw of the girl with long dark hair before his surroundings melted away again, this time changing to a plain white room. Geoff was just standing in the middle of it, wearing nothing but a surgical gown, his feet bare. For some reason, he felt absolutely exhausted, as if he’d just been for a run.
The place was so white that he couldn’t tell where it ended.
He began walking in the hope of finding an edge, but instead of walking forward, he walked backward. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing this, but he decided to just go with it.
As Geoff continued to walk, he began to notice a small crack running along the ground. At first it was barely noticeable, no wider than a human hair, but the farther he walked, the wider the crack became, and the wider the crack became, the faster he began to move. Soon, the crack was so wide that he found himself breaking into a backward run, and as he did, he could feel the floor beginning to vibrate violently with each footstep, the two sides of the crack splitting farther and farther apart. Geoff was now sprinting backward, yet instead of feeling exhausted, the farther he ran, the more energy he felt he had. Finally, at the moment when he couldn’t run any faster, everything around him shattered like shards of glass in a giant greenhouse. The floor gave way, the ceiling caved in, and he found himself falling.
There was something odd about the way he was falling, though—if memory served him correctly (which it wasn’t really doing at the moment, but he decided to ignore that), when most people fell, they usually fell downward. That was kind of how gravity worked, wasn’t it?
In Geoff’s case, though, gravity appeared to be reading its job spec upside down, because he was actually falling upward toward a big bright light.
What’s more, as he fell he began to remember things.
He remembered his name.
His job.
His email password (geoffisgreat1, all lowercase.)
He remembered Zoë.
And by the time he had reached the light above him, he finally began to remember everything else.
He finally remembered the truth about C
ontinuum.
And that he needed to change his password to geoffisgreat2 in three days’ time, because it was going to expire.
Twelve
“There,” a voice said. “I think that’s it.”
“You sure?” somebody else replied.
“I think so. His neural pathways are restoring themselves now. With any luck, he should regain his full memory within a matter of minutes.”
“And you’re telling me that all that was done to him with this little pill?”
“That’s right. We found it inside his stomach when we cut him open. Fortunately, it was only partially digested, so it hadn’t taken full effect. Had he gotten here a few minutes later, though, there might not have been a way to save him. You brought him to us just in time.”
“Jesus. Who would have thought something this small could wipe his memory?”
“The pill doesn’t work like that, Dr. Skivinski. It didn’t wipe his memory—it just stopped him from being able to access it.”
“So you’re telling me all his memories should be intact?”
“That’s right. When Mr. Stamp ingested the pill, a chemical was released that created a barrier around all his thoughts and experiences, locking them away from the rest of his mind. Even his most basic brain functions were blocked, from his ability to understand language to the processing of visual images. For all intents and purposes, that pill was able to turn him into a vegetable in a matter of seconds.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Trust me—this man is lucky to be alive. The damage to his mind was so great, it’s a miracle his body even knew how to breathe.”
“But you say you were able to repair it?”
“We think so. Once we were able to isolate the chemical compound released by the pill, all we had to do was synthesize an antidote, which began to break down the barriers forming in his mind the moment we administered it.”
“And what about the wound in his back?”
“Oh, that was easy. The bullet missed his spinal column by a few inches and didn’t puncture any major organs. We were able to stop the bleeding and heal the wound up with some regeneration gel in a matter of minutes. When he wakes up, he should feel just fine—”
Geoff opened his mouth and made a noise that sounded a bit like a cross between a long yawn and a zombie moaning.
“He’s waking up!” one of the voices said.
Geoff opened his eyes. He was lying faceup in a bed, his head nicely cushioned on a big, comfy pillow. To his left, he could see Eric standing over him, leaning against the back of a chair. To his right, a man he didn’t recognize was scribbling furiously on a clipboard. That’s not to say the man looked angry about what he was scribbling—he was just doing it very quickly.
Geoff groaned again and moved his elbows to lift his body into a more upright sitting position. As he rested his back against the headboard, he noticed that a long white curtain had been pulled around the bed, making it difficult for him to see the rest of the room.
“Wait here,” the man on the right said. “I’ll get the others.”
He stood up, put his clipboard on the chair, and ducked through a gap in the curtain. As the curtain parted, Geoff caught a glimpse of the room beyond. He saw cream walls. A few other beds. Medical equipment. A couple of nurses. Unless this was a movie set designed to look like a hospital ward, he was in a hospital ward.
“I don’t believe it,” Geoff said. “It’s happened again! Why is it that every time I come to the future, some psychopath tries to wipe my memory and I end up in hospital?”
“I don’t know,” Eric said. He walked over to the other side of the bed, picked up the clipboard that the man had left on the chair, and sat down. “But it seems to be a nasty habit of yours.”
“Well, it needs to stop,” Geoff said. “Do you have any idea how inconvenient it is when people try and make me forget things all the time?”
“Please, Geoff—calm down. How are you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess,” Geoff replied. But as he spoke, his mind was suddenly overcome with a flood of memories. He remembered what Continuum was really up to, how the world would one day become addicted to their technology, how Jennifer Adams needed to be stopped.
“Eric,” Geoff said, “how long have I been here?”
“You mean in the hospital?” Eric replied, stroking his long white beard. “I’m not sure. Just under a day, I think. The doctors were operating on you throughout the night.”
“Just under a day?” Geoff said. “You mean it’s tomorrow already?”
“What are you talking about?” Eric said.
“When you found me, I’d traveled back in time by one day, right?”
“Right.”
“So do you mean to tell me it’s been almost a full twenty-four hours since I arrived?”
“Yes, almost,” Eric replied.
“My God,” Geoff said. “Quick—what time is it?”
Eric looked at his watch. “I make it eleven forty in the morning.”
“Jesus—I need to get to a phone,” Geoff said, tossing his sheets to one side and swiveling his body out of the bed. “There’s no time to lose!”
“Hold your horses,” Eric said, placing a hand on Geoff’s shoulder and pushing his body back against the headboard. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until the doctors say you’re okay.”
“You don’t understand. I need to speak to Tim!”
“Oh I understand, son,” Eric said. “I understand that you were this close to having your entire memory erased!” He pinched his index finger and thumb together, leaving the teeny-tiniest gap between the two to show how close he meant. “Now, please, let’s just wait for the doctors, okay? Let’s see what they say.”
“I feel fine, Eric,” Geoff said. “Really, I do.”
“Your phone call can wait,” Eric said. “Do you have any idea what kinds of injuries you just sustained? Have you seen the thing they removed from your back?”
“No, but I’m guessing it was a bullet, right? Quite a large bullet?”
Eric blinked. “How did you know that?”
“That was the thing that sent me back to yesterday. It’s called a temporal bullet, and it’s fired from a kind of gun that can program each shot to send its target to a particular point in time on impact.”
“Huh,” Eric said. “Do you have any idea who shot you?”
“No, but it must have been someone from Continuum.”
“Continuum, eh? We thought this was something to do with them. What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Tim sent me to spy on them—he wanted me to find out why they were hiring so many Time Reps when they didn’t really need them, and what they might have had to do with my future self appearing on Tower Bridge with a bullet in his back. It turns out the only reason they are interested in hiring Time Reps is to put Time Tours out of business, but while I was there I discovered a much darker secret. Something horrible. I tried to get away, but some goons from their customer support team gave chase. In the commotion, one of them must have shot me.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Eric said. “If these guns work as you say they do and can be programmed to send the target anywhere in time, why would they send you back to a point like this, when you could still warn others about what was about to happen? Why not send you somewhere you couldn’t do any harm, like the distant future?”
“I don’t know,” Geoff said, “but speaking of the distant future, I have a question for you.”
“Fire away,” Eric said.
“Nice choice of words, considering I’ve just been shot.”
“Sorry,” Eric said. “I meant—go ahead. Ask your question.”
“While I was at Continuum, I had a long chat with an old friend of yours.”
Eric sighed. “You mean Jennifer.”
“Yes—Jennifer Adams. She told me something about your supercomputer, and I wanted to know if it was true.”
“What did she say?”<
br />
“Well, you know how the computer’s simulation shows the Earth being completely deserted in 100,000 years’ time?”
“Yes?”
“You once told me that that was because one day, humanity would leave Earth to explore other galaxies, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Okay. So here’s my question: have you actually seen that happen in the simulation?”
“What?”
“I mean have you personally seen the moment when humanity leaves the Earth to explore other galaxies for yourself? Did you watch that moment with your own eyes?”
“Not exactly,” Eric said, rubbing the back of his head. “I didn’t really have time to watch all the simulation footage generated by the computer. But the reports are very clear, and I have it on good authority that—”
“Jennifer lied to you,” Geoff said, folding his arms over his chest.
“What?”
“She’s the one who told you that story, right?”
Eric looked at the floor. He said nothing.
“Well, she made it up. Earth doesn’t eventually become deserted because humanity leaves this world for a better one. It becomes deserted because the entire population of the planet gets addicted to her Continuum experience, and disappears into their own fantasy timelines. Jennifer discovered that this was going to happen back when she was working at Time Tours, running all those simulations of the future for you. Knowing you would probably try and stop this from happening if you ever found out the real reason the planet appeared deserted in 100,000 years’ time, she covered the whole thing up, writing false reports about humanity flying off to distant galaxies to throw you off the scent.”
“That’s impossible,” Eric said.
“No it isn’t,” Geoff said, looking the old man in the eyes. “In fact, I saw it for myself when I tried out the Continuum experience. That’s why Jennifer tried to wipe my memory, and why they tried to kill me when I almost escaped. In the future, humanity doesn’t go off to explore other galaxies—it simply vanishes without a trace into millions of alternate realities, where mistakes can be undone, dreams can be realized at the push of a button, and all achievements are worthless.”