Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  For this reason, neither of the two other people I might trust with this could do it – your Grandpa Byron or your mum.

  Your mum is a wonderful person, Al – but I don’t think she has the courage to help you to do this. A mother’s instincts are to protect her child. She would stop you. I can’t blame her for this, and nor should you. Just don’t tell her, OK?

  And your grandpa? What can I say, except that – love him as I do – he doesn’t trust my work in this area. I tried to talk to him about it once, and he shut me right down. “These are not suitable subjects for study, Pye,” he told me. “You are venturing beyond human limits.”

  Except I don’t think there are human limits, Al. Who determines that?

  “Great question, Dad,” I’m thinking. “Only not the one that’s in my head right now.”

  And that is: why involve me in all this? Why not just go to the future and stay there? You could, I don’t know, reappear at your own funeral as your long-lost identical twin or something? I’m thinking this as I read on and it’s like Dad can read my mind.

  Do you have to do this? Well … I’m hoping not. As I write this, I’m hoping that my first or second plan will work. If it doesn’t, you will be reading this.

  So what’s Plan A?

  Tomorrow, I will present myself at the doctor’s, complaining of severe headaches, demanding tests, x-rays, scans, anything I can to stay in hospital so that if – I should say when – the haemorrhage happens, I will be better placed to survive it. If I don’t survive it, well – you will get this letter on your twelfth birthday. Risky? You bet.

  There is a Plan B as well. (As the great mathematician James Yorke once said: “The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.”)

  Plan B is to travel into the future, to a time after I have died and … carry on living. There is (as I discovered) clearly no physical law that prevents me being in the same spacetime dimension as my own corpse.

  I can only presume that this is to do with notions of consciousness or what your Grandpa would call “eternal spirit” and is among the reasons that I am so desperate to continue my research.

  But exactly how this will work I have no idea. I need a little time to consider this. Do I just reappear a few days after my funeral …

  I find myself nodding as I read this. “As your identical twin!” I say. (I’ve probably seen this in a movie or read it somewhere. It’s quite dramatic, especially if he grows a moustache or something.)

  …or do I try to time my return to coincide with my death, without being seen, and somehow dispose of my corpse secretly, then carry on as if I had not died?

  My mouth is hanging open at this point.

  I know: it sounds unlikely, or impossible, or ridiculous … or all three. Think about it, Al – can you really see me secretly getting rid of my own corpse?

  No, nor can I.

  And all the while I will still have this death sentence hanging over me, this piece of metal in my brain, which I will have to deal with – whatever happens.

  And so – to you, Al. My Plan C.

  There are dangers, for sure. But I trust you, Al. You are now twelve, an age when I believe you will be able to carry out this amazing task, if it is required.

  And when it is done, you and I will carry on this work, which will change the world in ways we cannot even imagine, answering questions that have been asked since the beginning of mankind’s journey on Earth.

  I really don’t want you to do this, Al. But if you are reading this, then I promise you there is no other way.

  Well, it went wrong, didn’t it?

  Either his Plan A or his Plan B didn’t work out. I don’t even know which one he chose. Thinking of my dad, Plan A doesn’t sound much like him: faking headaches, making a fuss, demanding this and that. I don’t think he’d be very good at that.

  I think he probably went for Plan B, but never got that far. I guess that piece of metal in his brain was always going to kill him, one way or another.

  And now I’m here (Plan C), with a dry throat and a pumping heart and a dead dad begging for my help.

  Now, remember what I have told you, and follow these instructions to the letter.

  See the cable with the Blu-tack on the end? Stick the Blu-tack on to the zinc tub. Make sure it’s secure and that the wire has contact under the Blu-tack – metal to metal. The other end must connect to the black shiny box.

  Now, copy the code that’s written on the top of the black box into the dialogue box, but do not press ‘enter’.

  Sure enough, on top of the black box was written, in Chinagraph pencil, a string of letters and digits, like this:

  Carefully, slowly, with one finger I copy them into the laptop.

  Done that? Now add the precise time and date you wish to travel to, plus your exact coordinates on earth. 120030071984 will take you back to two days before my accident. Your coordinates here are 2346-8654-7776-9090-8639-1112. Those digits depict the exact cubic metre of the earth’s surface that you now occupy. You do not need to go anywhere else.

  The program will translate that into the code necessary to generate the mathematical formula required. That in its turn will cause the gold and tungsten rods in the black box to create the subatomic plasmic vibration that will shift your spacetime dimension.

  Now take off your shoes, tie the laces together and hang them round your neck. You need a good connection between your feet and the zinc tub. Sit in it like you were taking a bath.

  This is getting stranger, but for some reason I feel no fear as I bend down and undo my trainer laces, fasten them together and hang them, as the letter said, around my neck.

  Grip one of the metal handles in each hand.

  Now press ‘return’. And wait.

  Bon voyage!

  Your loving Dad.

  Well, what would you do?

  I doubt very much you’d do this without testing it first either.

  I lift everything – tub, computer, box – off the desk and on to the floor for extra stability. Then I pick up Alan Shearer carefully, encircling his midriff with my finger and thumb like the book says you should, and I lower him into the zinc tub where he scampers around, a bit confused, poor thing. Soon, though, he just sits still, cleaning his whiskers.

  I tap super-carefully on the laptop’s keyboard: first all the letters written on the black box, then 1020300784, then all the rest of the digits.

  That’s ten twenty on July 30th, 1984, at precisely this spot.

  Then I press ‘enter’.

  A row of figures scrolls up super-fast on the laptop screen, and something strange appears above the tin tub. The best way to describe it is like a huge, just-visible bubble. I saw a clown once at a school science day make these enormous soapy bubbles with a loop of string and it was a bit like that, but less … definite. I reach out nervously to touch it, and it doesn’t pop. It just sort of shimmers and wobbles slightly.

  I am so caught up in looking at this that a few seconds tick by before the stupidity of what I have done dawns on me:

  THE TIME MACHINE TRAVELS AS WELL.

  In dad’s QuickTime film, the zinc bath disappeared along with the clock.

  I’ll be sending a hamster in a metal tub through unknown dimensions of spacetime with heaven-only-knows what consequences, and no way of following unless I can somehow build a replica time machine, and at this stage I think that’s doubtful.

  These thoughts take about two seconds, max, and by the time I’ve stopped thinking them, I have leapt through the bubble, into the tub, unplugging the laptop from the mains socket and gripping it so hard it might crack as I sit staring at the screen while the numbers continue to scroll up and then … just … stop.

  And nothing happens.

  Well, not nothing, exactly. But I have to be really careful in describing this, because there is no flash, no explosion, no whooshing noise, or wind, or electric shock, or searing white light or anything. There’s only a strange and brief blurring
in front of my eyes, as if a huge invisible lens has passed in front of me. I’m still staring at the computer screen but at the edges of my vision things are out of place and I slowly take my eyes off the screen and look around.

  I’m still in the bunker but it seems different.

  Dad’s letters have gone from the desk.

  So has the mouldy cup, and I check with my hands where it was, running my palm over the desktop.

  A minute ago, that would have sent up a small cloud of dust, but now it’s clean.

  But some things have appeared that weren’t there before.

  On the desk is a half-eaten packet of biscuits

  On the floor is a small heap of comic books – Spiderman and that sort of thing. They may have been there before, but I think I’d have noticed and they’re not the sort of thing my dad would have had.

  On the wall is a dartboard with some tatty darts in it. Again, I think I’d have noticed this before.

  Along the wall are the bunk beds, made up as before. There is a box next to one, marked ‘Dole Pineapple’ – had that been there before? I couldn’t be certain.

  There’s a scratching noise coming from by my feet and there is Alan Shearer. I scoop him up in my hands.

  “Hello, mate! You made it!” He twitches his nose at me and I shove him in the big front pocket of my coat, which I’m pretty certain is not recommended by Dr A. Borgström in Hamster Fancying For Beginners, but it’s not going to be for long. Behind me the steps lead up to the door as before, but instead of being old with blistered paint and rust marks, the door is fresh and smooth.

  “So that’s time travel, then,” I say to Alan Shearer out loud. I check myself over: everything seems all right. I put my right foot out and touch the floor beyond the zinc tub like I’m testing the water in a swimming pool. Seems all right, and I’m about to make for the door when I turn back and look carefully at the laptop. This, I realise, will be crucial to getting me back and I’m nervous in case it’s damaged. Its screen is still on, which reassures me, and I turn for the steps and open the steel door.

  Crouching, I come out where the stairs are, and the planks are replaced over the hole. I ease a couple of them to one side and climb up the steps into the garage.

  Into a different world. Well, the same world, but a different time. You’ll get used to it. I did.

  It takes a second or two for me to notice that it’s day instead of night.

  The sun streams through the bobbled glass of the garage doors, illuminating racks of tools, shelves with plant pots, a lawnmower, and flecks of dust. It smells of cooking, and I can hear a radio playing quite nearby. I’m still in a sort of half-crouch as I’m so nervous, and I slowly straighten up and turn around to see that the connecting door to the house is half open and there’s the sound of footsteps on a hard floor. Then there is a voice, a woman’s voice, and she’s in the kitchen only a couple of metres away from me. It’s a wonder I can hear anything, so loud is the beating of my heart in my chest.

  “How man, Stokoe,” she says harshly, “put that doon. You shouldn’t be playing with that, you little bleeder!” Her Geordie accent is pretty strong, and I’m just guessing at ‘Stokoe’ which is what it sounded like, but isn’t a name I’ve ever heard before.

  I’m still in the middle of the garage, it’s like I’m stuck with glue, and this kid, who must be about two years old, toddles across the kitchen, past the open door, looks straight at me and points.

  “Ba! Ga!” he says, and smiles.

  “What is it now, man, Stokoe?” I see the back of the woman as she scoops the baby up and then she opens the door to the garage fully. “Ba! Ga!” says Stokoe again, and his mum says, “Shut up, will ya? There’s nowt there,” and of course there isn’t, for I am now crouched behind an old gas cooker thinking that this is twice in ten minutes that I have nearly been caught breaking into this garage.

  I hear her footsteps move away from the door and out of the kitchen but I stay still for a few minutes, listening as Madness finish singing ‘Our House’ – I love that song, we did it in a school play once. There’s a jingle on the radio, which goes, “BBC Radio One!” in happy singy voices, and a man’s voice that I think I recognise from a show Mum listens to, except she listens to Radio 2. The man on the radio says, “It’s twenty two Radio One minutes past ten,” and I’m wondering how a Radio One minute is different from any other minute, when I figure I’m safe to get out of the garage.

  There’s no Skoda in the driveway, and no hedge either, just a wooden fence. I quickly nip down the driveway and I’m out on Chesterton Road, and I feel sort of safe, out in the open, not having to hide. I cross the road, and notice the first thing that’s different about 1984. The ‘jungle’, the patch of undeveloped land opposite my house, has been cleared of bushes. It’s just bare earth and a few weeds. (I suppose it’s more accurate to say that the bushes haven’t grown yet, rather than they have been cleared.) In the intervening decades between this time and my time, the neglected patch has been overtaken by the weeds and scrubby bushes, but now it’s still just a clearing. There’s still an alleyway running down the side and a low wall. I can sit on it, and see in both directions up Chesterton Road and not really be noticed. I take a few deep breaths and look across at my old house and try to notice everything that’s different.

  The woodwork’s painted a different colour. When I lived there, the front door and the garage doors were dark red and the window frames were all white. All the woodwork now is a sort of mustard-yellow, and it’s flaky and needs re-painting.

  The rest of the street’s newer-looking, that’s for sure. In front of where I’m sitting there’s usually a big tree, a sycamore that in the autumn sheds seed pods that spin to the ground like little helicopters. Right now, it’s a spindly-looking thing, still supported by a stake and a canvas strap. The monkey-puzzle tree at old Mr Frasier’s isn’t there at all.

  Another thing that’s not here is cars. Well, there are a few, but they’re mainly in people’s driveways and there are only five that I can count parked on the street. When I lived here, both sides of the road were pretty much lined with cars. And the ones here look old. That is, new-looking, but old style, sort of smaller and squarer, except for one really old one next to me which I know is a 1950s Austin Cambridge because I have a tiny model one in my bedroom that’s exactly the same that used to belong to Dad.

  Three people have walked past on the other side of the road while I’ve been sitting here, and I’ve been checking out their clothes. I was expecting crazy multi-coloured 80s style fashions, like Mum and Dad wore once to a fancy dress party, but these people are dressed pretty normally. (At least, that’s what it looks like to me, but I’m not exactly a fashion expert.) Now there’s someone coming up the alleyway behind me, and there’s something I need to check so I stand up and turn to see a middle-aged man, holding a pipe between his clenched teeth, which strikes me as pretty funny.

  “Excuse me,” I say. He stops and takes the pipe out of his mouth, exhaling a plume of smoke. He looks down at me.

  “Aye?”

  “I wonder if you would mind telling me today’s date?” I ask, in my politest talking-to-the-head-teacher manner. The man gives a little smile on one side of his mouth.

  “Today’s date? Why, laddie, it’s the thirtieth of July. Monday, July the thirtieth. And aren’t you a wee bit warm in your coat?” He points with the stem of his pipe to my thick coat, which I had put on last night. His voice, a rich Scots accent, is oddly familiar.

  “Ah! Aha – no, I’m fine, er … thanks. No, I meant the year. What year is it?”

  At this he takes a draw on his pipe and actually smiles with his whole mouth. “The year? Aw, now ye’re havin’ me on. Have some of your friends dared ye to ask me a daft question?” and he looks up and down the street for the guilty parties.

  “No – honestly! I … I’ve forgotten,” I say, lamely.

  He shakes his head and makes to walk off, putting the pipe back between h
is teeth. He has taken a few steps on his way, when he turns his head and calls back over his shoulder, “It’s 1984, lad, 1984.”

  I watch him walk up the street, and turn into old Mr Frasier’s house where one day he will plant a monkey-puzzle tree.

  That’s it then. It works.

  My dad’s time machine works!

  That’s when I look at my watch, and …

  I’m not really one to panic, but – with no regard for being discovered – I sprint back over the road and into the garage. It’s already ten minutes past the taxi driver’s deadline. If I’m stuck in Culvercot in the middle of the night with no means of getting home, then I’m well and truly stuffed. That’s if I even get back to my own time, which I keep telling myself I will I will I will because Dad’s time machine works.

  Little Stokoe and his mum are nowhere to be seen, and I slip under the wooden boards and through the steel door in no time.

  And now I’m standing in the zinc tub about to press ‘enter’ again when I have an idea. Fishing my keys from my pocket, I find my key ring memory stick and plug it into the side of the laptop, then click and drag the folder marked ‘Al’ on to the stick’s icon. The ‘Copying Files’ dialogue box pops up, and in a few moments, all 8 gigabytes of the program will be copied on to my stick.

  The progress bar creeps along. Four minutes to go. I’m clenching my fists so hard with tension that it hurts, so I shove them in my pockets where I find a plastic sandwich bag. I’m supposed to fill it with earth for Carly’s spell. Now obviously any old earth is going to do, she won’t know, but I feel compelled to do this properly. It’s the ‘precision counts’ thing again, and it’s better than watching the progress bar, so once again I creep out of the cellar, into the garage and out into the front driveway where I can scoop up a handful of soil.

  A minute later, I’m back in the bunker, sitting in the zinc tub, and I press ‘enter’.