Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  Well, of course I want to. But what I want more is to understand why he is telling me all this now.

  When I get back, Alan Shearer is asleep and Mum tells me not to wake him. My book says that hamsters are ‘crepuscular creatures’ which I think means ‘sleepy’, so I just sit for a bit and watch him sleep. I try accidentally bumping the bit of Hamsterdam where he’s sleeping to see if it wakes him, but it doesn’t.

  The letter from my dad is still in my school bag. I am itching to get it out, but at the same time, I don’t dare to, in case I am disappointed.

  Steve comes back from work. “Hey, champ,” he says, “glad you like the shirt!” I had put it on to please him. Well, to please Mum really, because I knew that she’d be happy if I liked the thing that Steve had got me.

  He goes straight to the TV. Newcastle United Under-21’s are playing in some European game with a team whose name I have forgotten.

  “Come on, son – they’re about to kick off!” He pats the sofa next to him.

  “You know what, I think I’ll just, um … I’ve got homework to do.” I hold up the memory stick on my key ring that I keep my homework on and back out of the sitting room. It isn’t fast enough to avoid a glimpse of Steve’s crestfallen face.

  “But it’s Dortmund! The Germans!” he calls after me, a bit sadly, I think.

  That’s the thing with Steve. It’s so obvious that he wants me to be the son he hasn’t got, but even if I was his son, there’s no guarantee I’d like football, is there? I mean, take Daniel Somerset in my old class. His dad does brilliant magic tricks and once made a coloured hankie appear in my pocket at a party. Daniel thought the whole idea of magic tricks was totally lame, but his dad didn’t seem to care, and even went off for weekends with other amateur magicians and didn’t drag Daniel along with him every time.

  So I’m up in my room, lying on my bed trying to read Grandpa Byron’s book, and The Letter is now propped up against my clock. By midnight the sixteen hours will be up.

  I can’t concentrate on the book. It’s not like it’s boring or anything. It’s just that Grandpa Byron wrote it years and years ago, so the language is a bit difficult, and there are no memory tricks or anything. I haven’t quite grasped it.

  So I put the book down carefully, marking the page I’ve got to with a bookmark. Normally I would fold a corner over, but as this is the last remaining book by Grandpa Byron I don’t think he’d like that.

  I turn to stare again at The Letter. I stare for ages, then reach out and pick it up, as I lie with my head on the pillow. Dad’s instructions say not to open it until sixteen hours after I receive it. But surely a few hours won’t make a difference?

  “Al!” Mum calls from the kitchen. “Dinner!”

  I sigh and put the letter down again on my bedside table, then go downstairs.

  Because it’s my birthday, Mum has made lasagne. She’s been trying to ring Carly to come back for supper, but she’s got her mobile switched off again. Steve’s phone is on the counter and it pings with a text.

  “She’s with that Jolyon Dancey again,” says Mum, reading the screen. I can’t tell whether she’s pleased or not. “Is that her boyfriend?” she asks me.

  “How would I know?” Where Carly and Jolyon are concerned, I figure it’s wise to steer a very cautious path.

  “I just think it would be nice if she had come home for her stepbrother’s birthday supper.”

  I say nothing, using a mouthful of lasagne as cover. Mum has timed the serving up for half-time and Steve joins us.

  “Nil-nil,” he says.

  I grunt and raise my eyebrows in pretend interest.

  Come bedtime, I still haven’t opened The Letter, but I am wide awake when I hear Carly’s key in the door at ten thirty, and then there are raised voices – hers and Steve’s – from downstairs.

  By eleven p.m. I’m dizzy with tiredness and I can’t wait any longer. I reach for the envelope from my bedside table, and, one hour sooner than I should, I ease my little finger under the glued-down flap.

  Dear Al,

  With luck, you won’t ever be reading this.

  And that, I reckon, is the oddest start to a letter I will ever read. No ‘how are you?’ or anything like that. Anyway …

  But let us assume you are. I have given this letter to your mum to hand to you when you are older.

  Did you wait the sixteen hours?

  I sort of shake my head in reply to the question. Like he can see me.

  That was just a test of your resolve. If you did, then well done – you may find what I am about to ask a little easier. If you didn’t … well, I’d still like you to do it.

  If you are reading this, then what I fear will happen has happened, and that means I am not around to help you into adulthood. This, then, will be the only gift I can give to you, my most precious son.

  First, let me reassure you: I am not scared of dying, although it makes me sad to think of the times we will miss together.

  I won’t see you going up to secondary school, or graduating from university, or marrying and becoming a father yourself.

  These are the big things. Yet it is the small things, the tiny little things, that make me sadder. I love your smile, and our shared jokes, and the way you liked my lousy stories. I love the smell of your hair when I hug you and the way you are so glad to be awake in the morning.

  Yet … all these things may not be gone forever. For if you follow my instructions, and if you are as brave and smart as I think you are, then you will be able to prevent my death.

  Right now as I’m writing this, you’re just eight, and far too young to understand the implications of what I am about to tell you. You have had to wait, and now the time is right.

  You are about to learn, Al, how to travel in time.

  At this point I stop and re-read what I’ve just read. ‘Prevent my death? Travel in time?’ What in God’s name is my dad talking about?

  The ability to travel in time has fascinated humans ever since we came up with the idea of time itself.

  Just imagine, Al, if we could go forward in time to see what happens in the future? Or go back and correct our mistakes?

  The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese – all the ancient civilizations tried.

  The ancient Sumerians, who lived in what is now Iraq between maybe four and six thousand years ago, left behind texts and archaeological evidence that suggest they discovered the secret. Trouble is, it was so long ago that the answer – if it was real and not just mythology – has been lost to us.

  I have recently had a huge breakthrough, using the power of modern computing which was unavailable to the ancients.

  Al: are you ready to travel in time?

  No, Al: this is not science fiction, and you will not be battling strange monsters in far galaxies. Instead it is mathematics: pure, but very, very far from simple.

  For I have discovered the formula that allows for the physical movement – ‘travel’ we might call it – between parallel dimensions allowing us to seem to be ‘travelling in time’.

  Notice that I say ‘seem’.

  You see, as Albert Einstein first described it, time is ‘relative’. I’m sure you’ve heard of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity? There was another one too: his Special Theory of Relativity.

  One day, perhaps, you will understand them, for believe me: they are fabulously complex. We all happily acknowledge Albert Einstein as a ‘genius’ – but very few of us have any idea at all of just how amazing his discoveries were. Our brains and our thoughts are so firmly rooted in our lives on earth that most of us are simply unable – unequipped mentally – to imagine the true meaning of Einstein’s theories.

  I pause in my reading and look at the Newcastle United team poster that Steve put on my wall, as if it might help me, but the players just stare back at me, blankly.

  Of course, I’ve heard of Albert Einstein, after all I was named after him. Wild hair, bushy moustache – a completely mad scientist and
a nickname at school for anyone a bit clever. And yes, I’ve heard of the Theory of Relativity, but I thought there was only one, and I had no idea what any of it meant.

  It’s like a goldfish in an aquarium. He might understand everything there is to know about his environment: every rock, every stone, every bubble. He may even understand that when the rattling vibration comes from above (the lid of the aquarium being lifted off) then that means food is coming. But he doesn’t know what people are, what cars are, what a fruit smoothie is, what a cup-winning goal looks like, or what any of it means, and that’s because he simply cannot.

  A goldfish’s brain can’t even imagine these things. And most human brains cannot even imagine the vast possibilities that Einstein’s theories suggest.

  Don’t worry, Al, I’m not going to try to explain relativity to you. Even Einstein had trouble putting it into words. The best he came up with was this:

  “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity.”

  Was Einstein being serious? Well, perhaps. Sort of. His point was this, I think: that the passage of time is something that we see and feel, and because we see and feel it, we describe it. But just because we can describe something does not make it real. You, no doubt, could give a vivid description of an imaginary animal, but that doesn’t make it real.

  ‘Travelling in Time’ is a poor description of what you are about to do, Al, but we are constricted by the words we have in our language. ‘Relatively Shifting Between Spacetime Dimensions’ is perhaps more accurate, or ‘Non-gravitational Multi-versal Static Matter Repositioning’, or …

  See what I mean? ‘Time Travel’ will have to do. Do you remember that time we went to Seahouses and the night was so starry, and I told you about seeing things that had happened many years ago? That was only a few weeks ago as I write this, but I hope you can remember.

  I put Dad’s letter down for a moment and think, closing my eyes. We’re in a field, me and Dad, looking at the stars. It makes me smile.

  Now, read carefully. This is what you must do.

  In the garage of our house, there’s a hole covered over with boards. It leads to a small cellar: there are steps down to it.

  This was our old house, then. Obviously Dad had no idea we’d be moving house. I read on, but I’m getting worried that I won’t be able to do what he wants.

  It’s a small, narrow cellar and at one end is a heavy metal door with a wheel to open and close it, like they have in submarines. There’s a code on the lock. It’s 5021 – your birthday backwards. No one else knows this. Open the door and go in. You’ll find Letter Number Two taped under the desk.

  Trust me like you have never trusted anyone before in your life.

  Things will become clearer.

  Make absolutely sure no one sees you.

  Your loving dad

  P.S. You must act within a week of reading this

  I read the letter again, and then again. The fourth time, something strange happens, and it’s as if I’m not reading with my eyes but with my ears, and instead of seeing the words, I can hear my dad’s voice, soft and a little raspy, his slight Geordie accent, his habit of sometimes going up at the end of sentences, like he was asking a question?

  I imagine our old house, the garage with cellar steps.

  And I just lie, staring at the ceiling, in a sort of trance, and I’m with my dad in our old house. I’m not eight, I’m me, now, I’m twelve; I can smell him and hear him, and he’s asking me again, “Al, are you ready to travel in time?” and I can feel his hand on my cheek.

  For the first time in four years, I fall asleep in my dad’s arms.

  It was the Easter holidays when I was eight, and Mum and Dad and I were in a tiny rented cottage just outside of Seahouses, which is on the Northumberland coast near Scotland.

  Dad was a brilliant engineer, but I don’t think he earned all that much money because we never went abroad for holidays and we had an ancient old car.

  So the three of us were walking back along the road that leads out of Seahouses to where our cottage was, and it was late, like ten o’clock, and really, really dark. We’d had dinner in the Seahouses Magna Tandoori, and Dad had spoken some Bengali to the waiter who hadn’t understood him, because Dad’s Bengali is pretty rubbish actually. Anyway, we were all chattering away, me and Mum and Dad, and then Dad stopped and gasped and said, “Look, guys!”

  He was staring up at what must have been the starriest sky I had ever seen. There were no streetlights, and Seahouses was a mile behind us and round a curve in the road. The sky wasn’t even black, it was a sort of dark navy, and there were so many stars that some of them merged into one another and formed smudges across the sky.

  It was a chilly night and Mum said that she wanted to hurry back to the cottage, so it was just me and Dad. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll show you something.” He hopped over a gate into a field and turned back to help me follow him over. We walked together over the black-green grass, the only light coming from the stars, and then we laid down on our backs, gazing upwards. I felt Dad’s hand reach over and grip mine.

  “Do you want to see something that happened nine years ago?” he asked.

  “Um … yeah?”

  “It’s not a YouTube clip or anything, it’s real life.”

  “OK.”

  “Can you see that star there, the brightest one?” He was pointing not straight up, but more towards the horizon where a bright, bluish star was flickering. “That’s Sirius,” he said, “nicknamed the Dog Star. It’s a huge sun, bigger than our sun, and it’s 81 trillion kilometres away.”

  Now, I don’t know about you but when someone starts talking about numbers like trillions, I kind of glaze over. I can’t even imagine what 81 trillion kilometres is like. As if reading my mind, Dad went on: “That’s eighty-one thousand billion.”

  I wasn’t any wiser.

  “Or in other words – nearly a million times greater than the distance between our earth and our sun.”

  OK – that’s a little bit easier to imagine. Just a bit. I gave Dad’s hand a squeeze to let him know I was sort of following him.

  “So, Al: the light from Sirius has taken nearly nine years to travel to earth. Nine years from leaving Sirius to hitting your eyeballs. In other words, you are looking at something that happened nine years ago.”

  I gave this time to sink in. I think I understood, but I was only eight. I understand it better now.

  Dad leapt to his feet and stood, hands on hips, head thrown back.

  “So how many are there?” I asked. “Stars, I mean.”

  There was a long pause, and I wasn’t sure Dad had heard me.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, yeah … I’m just thinking how to answer, because no one really knows for certain. You see up here, the ones we can see without a telescope? That’s probably only a few thousand. But you see that whiteish blur there?” He pointed to one of the smudges. “That’s the Milky Way …”

  “Named after the chocolate bar?”

  “Well, the other way round, but yeah. Our star, our sun, is part of the Milky Way. We sort of live on the outskirts of it, that’s why we can see the centre. And the whole Milky Way has about one hundred billion stars in it. Probably.

  “They’re nearly all further away than Sirius – and some of them have already exploded –” he turned to me, his dark eyes shining in the starlight – “but the light from the explosion hasn’t even reached us yet! We’re still seeing what happened hundreds of years ago!”

  He helped me up. By now we were both shivering.

  “To look at the night sky, Al – that’s travelling in time!”

  We walked back to the gate, and Dad was still talking about the stars and the galaxies, and how there’s billions more galaxies like the Milky Way, but I wasn’t listening any more. Not because I was bored, but because I was remembering what he said: that looking up at
a night sky is travelling in time. I gazed upwards all the way back to our cottage, looking into the past.

  I have, according to the letter from my dad, one week to act on his instructions.

  That’s a whole week to consider, very carefully, exactly why it’s a truly, epically bad idea.

  So, next day I’m deep in thought all the way to school. I’m walking because Grandpa Byron’s off on some meditation retreat in Wales. I’m going over and over in my head the reasons why I can’t do what my dad wants me to do. In order, they are:

  How do I get to my old house – ten miles down the coast – without being noticed?

  How do I break into my old garage?

  What if I get caught?

  I decide I will think them through one by one, starting with the easiest one.

  Number three is no biggie. I keep telling myself: what’s the worst that could happen? Yes, I’d get one heck of a telling off, but twelve-year-olds don’t get sent to jail and I could always pretend that I was suffering some sort of mental breakdown and that I wasn’t responsible for my actions, sent crazy by delayed grief for my dad, that sort of thing. Back in primary school, Hector Houghman stabbed Conrad Wiley in the thigh with a compass and he wasn’t punished at all because his mum came to school and said he had ADHD and that it was the school’s fault for not ‘adapting to his needs’, so I should be OK.

  For a while I walk along practising how I’d behave if I had had a mental breakdown. I try to make my left eye twitch, which is really hard, but making my tongue loose is easier, and it hangs out of my mouth a bit, but some Year 10’s see me and start laughing so I stop. I think I’ll be fine.

  I’ve reached the school gates and I feel better now that I can tick off one problem on my list, but the other two are battling for attention. Thankfully it’s PE first period and it’s cricket, which is just brilliant for thinking, especially if you always get given a distant fielding position.