by Peter Ward
Then there came another bump, this time from underneath. This collision was much more violent than the last one, and as they were hit, Jennifer was forced to bank the car on its side to compensate. Geoff slid down toward the passenger door, his body pressed against the window like a sandbag. The direct view of the sheer drop beneath him was terrifying, but then he realized something—if he fell from this height, there was no way he would survive.
And as Jennifer said, if he died, Continuum would die with him.
Geoff finally knew what he had to do.
He had to get out of this car.
And preferably while it was in the air, since getting out once they were parked wasn’t going to be particularly hazardous to his health.
This realization of how he could put an end to Continuum was so powerful it completely overwhelmed whatever inhibitions the drug had placed on him, and he found himself in full control of his body once more. The simulations Jennifer had run might have made her think she was in control of everything, but it seemed the moment she had deviated from what she had witnessed and started teasing Geoff about what he was destined to do, she had set them on a new path—a path where Geoff was able to muster up the will to resist, and break free from her control.
“Where the hell is my protection?” Jennifer screamed, craning her head to look up through the windshield as she leveled the car off.
Geoff lifted his hand up to the door handle, but it was no use—the thing was locked.
William quickly realized what was going on and reached over to grab his hand.
“We’ve got a problem here, ma’am!” he said. “Geoff is trying to get leave!”
“Geoffrey!” Jennifer said, looking at him in her rearview mirror. “Listen to me very carefully! You are to stay completely still, okay? Do not attempt to leave the car.”
Geoff said nothing,
“Do you hear me?” she said.
“You know what?” Geoff said, “I’m getting sick of people telling me what to do!”
Jennifer looked at William.
“Something’s wrong!” she said. “This didn’t happen in the simulation!”
William’s eyes widened.
“It didn’t?”
“No, everything’s changed! You need to do whatever it takes to keep him there!”
William nodded and scooted across the back seat toward Geoff, wrapping his arms around Geoff’s neck to stop him from moving. Geoff tried to wriggle free but it was no use—despite William appearing to be frail, in this position it was incredibly difficult to break free.
Out of the window to the left, Geoff watched as the red sports car came around once more, racing toward them again as if to ram straight into their side. However, moments before it was able to make contact, one of the black cars in Jennifer’s convoy swooped down from above and slammed into its roof, knocking Tim off course.
“That’s right!” Jennifer said. “Keep him away from us!”
Geoff followed the path of the red sports car through the sky, watching as it did an upside-down loop-de-loop and headed straight toward them again from below. The car in pursuit didn’t seem to be capable of pulling off the same maneuver, and within seconds they were rammed again, the underside of the sports car scraping vertically along Geoff’s side of the car.
As Tim made impact, the window next to Geoff shattered, sending bits of broken glass flying inside the car. Suddenly there was an almighty roar as the wind from outside rushed in, and William fell back.
Geoff looked over at the sports car, which was now flying parallel to them. Inside the cabin, Tim was looking back at him. He seemed to be shouting something, but Geoff couldn’t make out what it was.
He tried the door handle again. To his surprise, when he pulled on it this time the latch clicked, and the door flung open. Tim must have damaged the lock when he flew into them.
Tim tried to match the movement of Jennifer’s car, flying as close as possible as if to allow Geoff to jump from her car to his, but at that moment he was shunted from behind by one of the black cars and sent into an uncontrollable spin.
Geoff edged toward the door and looked down through the broken window. Tim appeared to be wrestling with the car to get it back under control, closely followed by two of the black cars.
But Geoff didn’t need Tim to get back up here.
All he needed to do was jump.
“Oh no you don’t!” Jennifer said, seemingly realizing his plan. She banked the car on its side so the open door was facing upward. As she did, the force of the wind ripped the door from its hinges and sent it tumbling toward the streets below.
Geoff fell back into the car and landed on William, who was pressed against the inside of the opposite passenger door facing the ground. Very quickly, he was able to reach around him and try the door handle. He felt the latch click—on this side, they hadn’t bothered locking it.
“No!” William shouted, scrambling at Geoff to try and stop him from opening the door. “Fly level! Fly level!”
“Shit!” Jennifer screamed, looking around at them and tilting the car back the right way up.
As she did, the passenger door flung open. Geoff rolled over William, gripped the doorframe, and began to pull himself outside the vehicle. As he did, though, William grabbed his legs and started to pull him back inside.
But this wasn’t enough to stop Geoff, who turned onto his back and began kicking wildly as though he were in his first swimming lesson. This made it very difficult for William to hold onto him, and his grip slowly began to weaken, allowing Geoff to stick his head and torso out of the car. All he had to do was lean back a little farther and he would fall.
“No you don’t!” William said, lurching forward. He grabbed Geoff by the collar of his suit jacket and started pulling him back inside.
“William, listen to me!” Geoff said. “I can stop this! Do you hear me? I can stop all of this!”
“Continuum is everything to me!” William gasped, struggling to speak as he pulled Geoff back.
“Look at yourself, William!” Geoff shouted, pulling himself farther out again. “Is this what you imagined Continuum would give you? Leaving you old and frail, a servant to Jennifer Adams for the rest of your days?”
Jennifer looked back at William. “Don’t listen to him, William!” she said, “Get him back in this car at once!”
William looked at Jennifer, then back toward Geoff.
“Please, William,” Geoff said. “Let me go.”
“What are you doing?” Jennifer said. “Pull him in right now!”
William’s eyes gazed down once again at his old, withered hands, then back up at Geoff again.
“Let me go,” Geoff said again.
William nodded, and loosened his grip. But as Geoff began to fall backward, Jennifer opened her door and reached out toward Geoff. Her hands darted toward his collar, but with no tie around his neck, she had nothing to grab onto. Had Geoff been wearing one, Jennifer would have easily been able to pull him back inside the vehicle and that would have been that, but instead, she began fumbling with the lapels of Geoff’s shirt, desperately trying to keep hold of him somehow.
But it was no use. Jennifer just couldn’t get a strong enough grip, and within seconds Geoff was completely free from the car and began to plummet through the sky toward the streets below.
“Nooooo!” he heard Jennifer scream from above him.
Despite the wind rushing in his ears and his eyes watering, Geoff experienced a brief moment of calm.
This was it.
This was the end of Continuum.
There was no chance he could survive a drop from this height, unless his fall was about to be broken by a number of inconveniently placed window canopies, hanging laundry, and tarpaulins before landing in a skip outside a bouncy castle factory.
Which would be seriously annoying after all that effort to get out of the car and kill himself.
From here could barely tell how high up he was, but for a whil
e the ground didn’t seem to be approaching him that quickly. He fell through low-hanging clouds, he fell through various streams of flying traffic, and he fell past the tops of the tallest buildings.
To his side, he noticed one of the black cars going into free fall as if to try and catch up with him, but it was no use—there was no way anyone would be able to get to him before he hit the ground.
In the last few seconds before Geoff became a two-dimensional object, time seemed to slow down. He wasn’t sure if this was because in your last moments all kinds of crazy stuff was supposed to happen to your powers of perception, but nonetheless, everything seemed to move in slow motion.
He could now see the terrified faces of the people below, looking up at him as he fell. He could see cars skidding to a halt in the streets, with people climbing out and pointing to him. And he could see the fine texture of the paving slabs he was about to slam into.
He clamped his mouth shut, closed his eyes, and just hoped he wouldn’t make too much of a mess.
But he already had made quite a mess, and the space-time continuum was now busy trying to work out how the hell it was going to clean this all up.
Twenty
“Mr. Stamp?”
“Mmmm?”
“Mr. Stamp, can you hear me?”
“Mmmm…mmmm?”
“Mr. Stamp, please can you stop mumbling and open your eyes?”
Geoff didn’t want to open his eyes just yet. He was still a little bit overwhelmed from the sensation of falling to his death, and needed a couple more seconds to compose himself. He did think it would be a good idea to stop mumbling, though.
He needed to think. What just happened? Wasn’t he supposed to be Geoff pâté right about now? Why was he still alive, and where was he?
Maybe he wasn’t alive at all.
Was he dead?
He soon came to the conclusion that a large number of these questions would probably be answered if he did actually open his eyes, just as he’d been asked to.
So he did.
Okay, so he was sitting in a room.
He was sitting in a small room, behind a gray desk.
It was quite bright in here, so much so that he couldn’t quite see properly.
As more details of his surroundings filled themselves in as his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized that he knew this place—unless he was mistaken, this was that room at Time Tours where the man with the thin moustache had told him off for nearly creating a paradox when he’d almost told Zoë he was a Time Rep!
What the hell was he doing here?
He was so surprised, he didn’t realize that the man with the thin moustache was actually sitting across the desk from him, albeit in a chair slightly to the right. There was also another chair directly in front of him, but it was empty.
“Mr. Stamp?” the man said. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Oh shit!” Geoff said, jumping out of his chair as though someone had just run an electric current through it. He suddenly realized why he was probably here—if his actions had succeeded in destroying Continuum after all, he had probably created the mother of all paradoxes, just as he’d suspected! He had no idea how much trouble he was in, but he knew this wasn’t going to be good.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Geoff said. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble!”
The man looked at him quizzically. “What on Earth are you talking about, man?” he said, looking down at a clipboard in front of him. “You haven’t caused any trouble!”
“I haven’t?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” the man said. “Unless you haven’t shared something with us?”
Geoff narrowed his eyes and slumped back into his seat. “What about Continuum?” he said. “What happened to it?”
“Continuum?” the man said. “You mean the space-time continuum? As far as I’m aware, it’s fine. We’re still here, aren’t we? Cause and effect are still the right way round, aren’t they?”
“I don’t mean the space-time continuum,” Geoff said. “I mean the organization called Continuum.”
The man looked at him blankly.
“You know?” Geoff said. “The holiday company that allows you to go back in time and change whatever you like.”
“A holiday company that allows you to go back and change whatever you like?” the man laughed. “I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life!”
“What?” Geoff said. “But I thought you guys were really worried about them! Haven’t they been stealing all your tourists? Isn’t Time Tours on the verge of going bust because of them?”
“Are you kidding?” the man said, smiling. “Business has never been better! We’ve got more tourists going back to more historical periods than ever before!”
“So you’re telling me there is no such company as Continuum?” Geoff said.
“That’s right.”
“Interesting,” Geoff said, taking a moment to stroke his chin in that way people do when things begin to slot into place in their mind. Was it possible that his actions had actually succeeded in creating a new timeline in which Continuum never existed?
He certainly hoped so, because that would be marvelous.
“Are you taking any hallucinogenic drugs I should be aware of, Mr. Stamp?” the man said, “Because if you have, it may affect the verdict of the panel.”
“Panel?” Geoff said. “What panel? What am I doing here?”
“You don’t remember?” the man said. “You’re here to find out whether your change request has been approved, aren’t you?”
Geoff blinked. “My change request?”
“That’s right.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“What is what?”
“A change request. What’s that when it’s at home?”
“Don’t you remember anything?” the man said. “How can you not know what a change request is when you were the first Time Rep to volunteer for the trial?” The man removed a sheet of paper from his clipboard and slid it in front of Geoff. “Here’s the form you filled in,” he said, tapping the paper with his pen. “You remember filling this out, don’t you?”
Geoff scanned his eyes over the sheet of paper quickly. At the top it read:
CHANGE REQUEST FORM V.1
THIS FORM IS FOR REQUESTING A CONTROLLED CHANGE YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE TO THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.
Q1: WHAT WILL YOU CHANGE?
Well this was certainly new—it appeared to be a form that Time Reps could fill out, requesting permission to make a controlled change to the space-time continuum. Reading down the form, he could see that this one had been completed in his handwriting, and the request was very clear: he had asked if he could change the course of history by pursuing a relationship with Zoë.
“I remember now,” Geoff lied, pushing the paper back toward the man. “Sorry about that. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to be awfully forgetful at the moment.”
But then, just as he was able to retain dual memories of Jennifer Adams with and without her scar, he began to remember things about this parallel timeline. He’d changed so much, though, that it was taking a moment for the blanks in his mind to fill themselves in.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man said, attaching the paper back to his clipboard. “These things happen.”
“So you say this is a trial?” Geoff said.
“That’s right,” the man replied. “The ability for Time Reps to make small controlled changes has always been high on the Time Rep Council’s agenda. We like to think we listen to you guys, so we’ve developed this trial. We still don’t want you going around making massive changes willy-nilly, but if your request is sensible and able to be made under controlled conditions, we’re happy to consider it.”
“The Time Rep Council?”
Geoff thought about asking what that was, but as he searched the back of his mind, he realized he already knew. In this reality, Time Reps were represented by elected members of a counci
l. They acted as a sort of union, putting forward issues from the workforce for the Time Tours management to deal with.
They finally had a voice.
At that moment, there came a knock at the door.
“Ah—that will be the Director of Change with the results of your request,” the man said, turning toward the door. “Come in!”
Geoff looked up. The door opened, and in walked someone he wasn’t expecting.
It was Jennifer Adams.
“Hello, Mr. Stamp,” she said, taking a seat in the empty chair in front of him.
Geoff looked Jennifer in the eyes. She looked kind of similar to the older Jennifer Adams he had last seen on Tower Bridge, although her hair was now cut into a bob, much like her younger self had worn it. She also didn’t have any sort of scar under her left eye, and still wore her black-rimmed glasses.
As he looked at her, Jennifer just sat there, politely returning his gaze. There was no malice in her eyes, no sign that she remembered anything about Continuum.
“Now, to business,” she said, leaning forward on the desk. “I’m pleased to inform you that your request to pursue a relationship with your friend Zoë has been approved. There are a few minor changes that will happen to the space-time continuum as a result, but nothing too serious.”
“Really?” Geoff said. “That’s fantastic!”
“There is one condition, though,” Jennifer said. “You still can’t tell her what you really do for a living, do you understand? She can’t know that you’re a Time Rep, and she certainly can’t know anything about the events of two years ago. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Geoff nodded.
“Good,” she said, holding a hand out for him to shake. “Then there’s nothing more for me to do than offer you my congratulations, and the best of luck.”
Geoff looked down at her hand and hesitated.
This was very strange—one minute this woman was trying to kill him, the next she was making his dreams come true.