He is running up St James’s Street now, away from the Steine and towards the point of no return. He feels oddly nervous. No matter; this is where he is meant to be.
The uphill sprint makes his lungs heave and his chest ache but he does not fear a heart attack. He pulls a tattered leaflet from his inside coat pocket, just to have it ready. ‘Know Your Death Date!’ is emblazoned across the cover.
At last he reaches Chapel Street. He glances at his mobile phone, notes that he still has five minutes. He collapses in a heap on the street corner, fighting for breath, not caring that he’s getting dirt on his jeans. He checks the date and time stamped inside the leaflet yet again, sets his mobile down on the pavement by his side and forces his breathing to calm down. This is his final day – the last day he will live through. He has known this day was coming for four years now – the leaflet only confirmed what he already knew. There’s no getting away from it. You can’t cheat death.
His time is up. He stands and balances on the curb, his mobile forgotten on the ground. He places the leaflet reverentially back in his pocket and closes his eyes. He can hear the bus coming and knows what he must do. By his right foot, his mobile phone beeps an alarm. He takes a step forward.
A hand grabs his shoulder and yanks him back. He turns to face his saviour. “No, you don’t understand,” he says as the bus whizzes past him. The person who just saved his life has his face covered by a black hood. The masked rescuer drags the man onto Chapel Street, into the shadows. The man protests and struggles as he is thrown to the ground. He feels no pain as the blade slices through his chest, only surprise.
“This isn’t how I’m supposed to –”
Tuesday June 6th, 2017
The rain spatters off the pebbles as my boots crunch across the beach. It’s hard to walk with purpose when each step sinks and slides. At the bottom of the rocky incline, the gently lapping waves spread out between the rocks, the water searching out countless paths to follow in its push onto land. Here the pebbles are darker and glisten from the constant wash of the tide.
The body lies slumped on its side, the feet and legs still encircled and released by each ebb and flow. Its posture and pallor resemble the carcass of a beached whale – the flesh bloated and bleached white. I avert my gaze, scanning the promenade for police cruisers conspicuous by their absence. The APP should be all over this case like flies on a cow’s arse, but instead they’re stuffing their faces with egg McMuffins and cheap coffee.
Why should they hurry? They know this case will never be solved.
Maybe I can prove them wrong.
I crouch down and push aside the victim’s shredded shirt with a gloved hand, examining the wounds. I’ve viewed the photos already, of course, but this is the earliest after death I will have a chance to see this. I reach into the inside pocket of the man’s coat, pulling out a sodden pamphlet. I check the faded date, time and place stamped inside, barely readable now. ‘June 5th, 2017 – 3:05AM – St James’s Street and Chapel Street, Brighton – Suicide – stepping in front of a bus.’
One hour later the others show up. There is no crowd of gawkers to be dispersed – the murder is already old news. Jim Haggerty is making his overweight way down the sliding shingle slope towards me, coffee in one hand, the other outstretched to maintain his balance. He hasn’t shaved, his hair is only vaguely combed and his tie hangs as limply as his dick probably does when his wife can be bothered to try and wake it up. I can’t stand this guy, will never be able to tolerate his unsanitary appearance and shitty attitude.
“What’s the rush?” he asks in that nasal whine of his. “Mr Parkhurst isn’t going nowhere.”
I ignore his butchering of basic grammar and turn to the body.
“Have you lived through the fifth yet?” I ask, while motioning for an APP photographer to approach.
“Yesterday? No.”
“When you do, can you be on Chapel Street at 3.05am and catch this fucker?”
“You know that would be against the rules.”
I turn on him angrily. “This guy doesn’t give a shit about the rules, so why should we?”
Haggerty spreads his arms wide innocently, spilling a little of his coffee onto the pebbles. “We’re the good guys,” he explains. “The damage this fuckhead is doing to the timelines is nothing compared to the heap of shit we’ll unleash if we try and stop him.”
I mutter something under my breath. That’s the problem with the Anti-Paradox Police – everything’s got to be played according to established history. Sets an example, the government says. If everybody did anything they liked, the universe would explode. How I would love to put that theory to the test.
Back when we were real policemen, back before the Slip, we’d have put this killer away in no time flat. I already know all trace of his DNA has been washed off by the water but there’s an obvious pattern to these murders that would be his undoing if only our hands weren’t tied.
The other officers are bagging up the body now. None of them are taking a lot of care to preserve the evidence.
Screw that. I don’t have a whole lot of days left. If the killer can change history then so can I.
I get home late this evening and Laura is mad at me, which is kind of her default state anyway. Usually she spends her time coming up with new reasons to hate my guts. It’s not like I don’t provide a ton of justification.
“I’m sorry. I was working on the Parkhurst case.”
“Why? Why waste time on a case you can’t crack? I swear you’re just looking for an excuse to stay away from home.”
“I’m doing this so I’ll have more time at home.”
“Jason’s asleep now, so that’s another day you won’t be spending with him. I know you don’t want to be with me, but for fuck’s sake, Craig, are you such a heartless bastard that you can’t spend what time you have left with your son?”
I don’t answer. She doesn’t understand. She’s like all the others, blindly doing what she’s told, living every day according to how things are supposed to be. Exasperated, she announces she’s off to bed and heads upstairs. After I hear the door to our bedroom close I creep into Jason’s room and watch him sleeping. His body is four years old but I wonder how old his mind is. How many days in the future has he lived without me? If I’d spent any time with him today I might know by now. Am I robbing him of time with me by obsessing over my death?
As quietly as I can, I pull out a leaflet from my pocket. ‘Know Your Death Date!’ it says on the front. I don’t have to look inside to know that fateful date and time, but I do anyway. I know it’s right because I haven’t lived through any days beyond Monday.
If time still flowed linearly, I’d be dead in six days.
Thursday January 15th 2015
I awaken to the sound of my alarm and immediately crack open my diary to find out what day it is. The leather bookmark indicates that today is January 15th. I read yesterday’s entry, as I always do, where I’ve written some details about what’s going on in my life right now. This helps me catch up quickly – everyone does this if they want to stand a chance of keeping track. Tonight before the Switch, I will enter details about what happened today. So far, all today’s entry says is that the swearing in ceremony for all APP officers is this afternoon. I’ve been dreading this day for quite some time. It feels weird to be starting a job I’ve already been doing for a while. Everyone has to start somewhere.
All across the country during this time period, pre-Slip police forces are converting into APP units. Crimes don’t require a whole lot of investigation these days. The future doesn’t just tell us who the perp is, it also tells us how long they’ll spend in jail.
I enter the station, careful to avoid the myriad folks setting up this afternoon’s ceremony. On one side of the lobby a huddle of officers is trying to calm Haggerty down. He is pretty distraught.
“What’s going on?” he wails. “I lost two years, two fucking years of my life. Don’t you people understand? Was
I in a coma? What the fuck?” The other officers attempt to explain it to him and he launches into another tirade. “What are you talking about? What’s the Slip? You telling me I spent two years wearing some bird’s nightie?”
“Different kind of Slip, Jim,” Sarge says from behind the desk.
I wave to him as I walk by. “Noob day?” I ask, nodding my head towards Haggerty.
Sarge nods his head. “Happened to us all.”
I can’t help but laugh. Great day to get as his first after the Slip. He’ll have to understand life in general before he can possibly grasp what his new job is. Last night in his own timeline, Haggerty went to bed on Tuesday February 19th 2013 – the day before the most important date in human history – with no concept of the Slip, no idea what happens at midnight every day, not an inkling of what it means to live your life out of order. I remember my first day post-Slip. I jumped straight to a warm summer day in 2015. It took me about twenty days bouncing around inside my own lifetime before I got to grips with the idea that time no longer works by lining up days in a reasonable order. Most people get used to it surprisingly quickly. Some never do. Some go mad waiting to live a day before that fateful Wednesday, but nobody jumps to a date pre-Slip. That’s not how it works.
That afternoon, the ceremony goes without a hitch and everyone on the former police force becomes APP. “Stop the Paradox, Save the Universe!” – the slogan is bandied about carelessly throughout the festivities. To me it rings hollow.
Haggerty is laughing with his APP mates now. He seems to have grown accustomed to the idea pretty damn fast. He’s one of the lucky ones. That’ll help him a lot when he wakes up tomorrow and finds he’s eighty-five years old, living in a nursing home and unable to pee all day until suddenly his bladder explodes. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, I’m sure. Haggerty probably embellished the story. Still, lucky that wasn’t his Noob day. Confused as hell and unable to pee – can you think of a worse way to start a new life?
Thursday June 8th, 2017
This coffee sucks! Why do I come here? Every fucking day I sit here in this café with Haggerty before we start work. Even on weekends. Haggerty’s wife hates him more than Laura hates me. We hate each other, we hate this café and we hate the coffee. But it’s familiar. It’s routine. It’s something we do automatically, regardless of what day this is. Routine is what stops us from going psycho. Everyone’s the same – that’s why I know every person in this place by name. Like Groundhog Day, except everyone feels as if they’re living the same day again and again.
We all crave the same things: stability, order, meaning.
But this is June 8th. In four days (as the clock flies) I will be dead. My opportunities to catch the killer are running out.
“How many times has this guy killed?”
Haggerty grimaced as he sipped his coffee. “You still on this? Jeez, let it go.”
“Indulge me, I don’t have long to live.”
“Bullshit. I bet you have a ton of days left to live before Monday.”
To be honest, I’d lost track. Some people, Haggerty included, kept a memorized tally of how many days they’d lived through and could work out how many days they had left. I gave up doing that a while back – the numbers involved were too depressingly small.
“How many times?”
Haggerty sighs, which turns into a belch. “Fuck, whatever. Assuming it’s the same guy, Ten. Or maybe eleven. Lessee, linearly speaking, three before Parkhurst. Seven follow him. Or is it five?”
“How many have you lived through?”
“All three of the ones in the past, two of the ones in the future. I think. I don’t remember.”
“You know why you don’t remember?”
“No, why?”
“Because you’re a dick.”
“Funny.”
“Seriously though, don’t you think it’s weird?”
Haggerty signals for the waitress. “We all know we never catch the guy so to be honest I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it.”
While my partner orders another coffee and a Danish, I ponder my options.
“We’re supposed to be responding to a call!” Haggerty wheezes. I ignore him, climbing the steps to the Brighton Archive two at a time. The converted 19th century building stands opposite the Royal Pavilion and once housed shops and apartments. Now, the entire complex is given over to a massive storage facility.
“Nuts to the call,” I reply.
“His wife is convinced he’s going to bottle out of topping himself at 11:20am. That’s in thirty minutes. We’ve got to make sure he steps off the ledge. Carter, wait up!”
I’m not listening. Instead I wave my APP badge at the guards and they let me through to the security check. Haggerty is close behind; his breathing is annoying me. Getting him to quit smoking and lose some weight is impossible of course, since that’s not what’s going to kill him so why should he stop?
I stride up to the reception desk. “I need to see the Chief Librarian,” I say to the diminutive lady polishing her nails.
“Would a ‘please’ kill you?” she asks, not looking up.
“I’m APP. The Librarian, please.”
She looks me in the eye and straightens, putting down the little bottle and brush. One cool side effect of being an APP officer: people respect those who are technically allowed to change history, even if we rarely do.
“Certainly, Sir. I’ll have him paged. And can I ask, Sir…?”
“What?”
She whispers conspiratorially, “Can you get me a job at the APP? Something in admin is fine. It’s just that this place is so dull. Every day is exactly the same.”
“Some people like that,” Haggerty says, having finally caught his breath.
“Not me,” she replies. “I want to do something with my life.”
I stare at her. “Do you get a job at the APP?”
“Well, no. Not that I’ve seen yet.”
“So you’re asking me to change history for you?” My tone is slightly threatening.
She straightens some papers. “Of course not. What gave you that impression? Here he is!”
A tall, middle-aged gentleman dressed in scholar’s robes and carrying a huge ledger under his arm descends the stairs to the lobby. He seems distracted, annoyed at the interruption. He approaches the front desk.
“What is it? I’m very busy, it had better be important.”
“My colleague here has only lived a few days since the Slip so he’s never seen your facilities before. I wonder if you’d be so good as to show us around.”
Haggerty is about to protest so I flash him a look, silencing him.
“I’m far too busy for this interruption. Let me find someone junior –”
“We were rather hoping you would do the honours, since there’s nobody more knowledgeable about the Archive.”
He looks horrified at the prospect. “What? Me? Oh very well.”
“You live here, at the Archive, right?”
“Yes, yes, what of it?”
I follow the Chief Librarian through a set of double doors into a room filled with desks and workers. There isn’t a single computer in the room, just people and furniture and endless shelves heaped with stacks and stacks of diaries and pamphlets and ledgers.
“Nothing, just impressed at your dedication to the job,” I tell him.
He turns on me. He’s no spring chicken, but he’s imposing nonetheless. “Job? This is not a job! It is my life! I keep records of everything. Without me, without this Archive, how would people know for sure when they are going to die? How will they know when to conceive their children or quit a job or break their leg? How can we be sure that history will run according to plan?”
“Well, quite. So where do you sleep?”
“Fourth floor,” he replies. “And no I will not show you my apartment.”
“Fifteen minutes to the suicide,” Haggerty tells me in a stage whisper.
“And in here,” the Librarian cont
inues, soldiering on, “we have the most dedicated staff in the region. On this side of the room, workers memorize details of what has happened today, so the next time they live a day in the past they can record those details. On the other side of the room, our workers record their memories from the future so that pamphlets can be sent out in good time. The next room I’ll show you is where we process the pamphlets.”
“What’s that book you’re carrying?” I ask.
The Chief Librarian freezes in his tracks. “This? This is my personal ledger.” He seems uncomfortable discussing it.
“And what’s it for?”
“For? What’s it for? Well, I record things of course.”
“What, specifically?”
“Well, at a high level, every major event from each day that has been memorized from the future, and every major event that actually happens today. I use it to check and validate everything that is recorded and every pamphlet that is sent out. We must be sure our details are accurate.”
“Absolutely. That’s a lot of work, though?”
“Indeed. Which is why, gentlemen, I must ask you to leave now. I am a very busy man.”
“Of course, we’ll leave you alone. Thank you for the tour.”
On our way out, I stop by the receptionist again.
“I’d like to send the Chief Librarian a token of my thanks. Any suggestions? Does he drink?”
The receptionist chuckles. “Like a fish,” she says. “He’s very partial to scotch. Single malt. Better make it a large bottle or else he’ll finish it in one evening.”
“And when should I have it delivered by?”
“As long as it gets here by 6pm you’re golden.”
“Thanks, Miss…?”
Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction Page 27