Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  Eventually, I stop. It’s like all my crying has been done and I’ve used it all up. There are no more tears left and it feels safe and dry in my little semi-cave. I hear more police sirens on the road above me but I just sit there on the damp sand staring out at the grey and white breakers, still trying to see a head or a raised arm in every movement of the sea,

  And I sit.

  And I stare some more.

  I don’t know how long I sit there. Maybe for hours. Eventually I give a huge sniff and pull on my red T-shirt and spare jumper in case someone recognises me as the kid who was running away from the scene, and I head back to the school.

  The Grandfather Paradox

  Some very clever people have said that time travel cannot be possible because of the grandfather paradox.

  This states that if you go back in time and murder your own grandfather, before he has even fathered your father, then that means your father never existed, which means YOU cannot exist.

  And if you cannot exist, then you cannot travel back in time to murder your own grandfather.

  Therefore time travel cannot exist.

  You know what? Not so long ago I would have said that made sense. Time travel can’t exist because it’s logically impossible.

  But now I know that some things don’t add up, yet exist anyway.

  Logically, then, I should not be alive, because my dad died in a drowning accident in 1984 – long before my dad even met my mum.

  Yet here I am, walking, living, breathing, aching from Macca’s stamping, sick with sadness and, for some reason, very, very hungry.

  I’ve taken the back roads and have sort of come in a circle and I’m quite near Pye’s house. I go past a pub called The Foxhunters on the corner of DeSitter Road, which in my time is a Tesco Metro. Opposite there’s a corner-shop with a stall of fruit outside, and I’m now going to add to my crimes of breaking-and-entering by becoming a thief, because the ten-pound note that I have in the inside pocket of my backpack for emergencies has a totally different design and would arouse suspicion straight away.

  The fruit’s easy. An apple and an orange go straight into my pockets, and inside the shop is almost easier. The shop stretches quite a way back from the front, and there are two rows of shelves running up the centre. One guy in a turban is manning the till, and another young guy is stacking shelves. I make sure I’m out of sight of both of them, and see what I can get on the shelves near me. It’s the dairy counter, so into my backpack go a pint of milk, a packet of cheese slices and a six-pack of yoghurts.

  My heart is beating fast, and at any time I’m expecting to be stopped but no one comes near me. The shelf-stacker guy has come round the corner, so I pick up a pot of cream and examine it, then replace it before heading round the other aisle where I manage to put a packet of custard creams into my bag (careful … the packaging’s noisy) and I figure: milk, cheese, yoghurt, biscuits, an apple and an orange – it’s hardly a feast, but it might fill me up.

  It’s when I’m nearly at the door that the young guy who was stacking the shelves steps in front of me and folds his arms.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Pye?”

  I’m so stunned that I say nothing. He pulls the backpack from my shoulder and opens it roughly. The man with the turban is standing next to me now as well.

  “Pye Chaudhury. What in the name of good God almighty has got into your head?” He’s not shouting, in fact he doesn’t seem angry, just really shocked.

  “I was … I was …” I don’t really know what I’m going to say, but I feel I should say something. “I was … hungry?”

  “Hungry? And you thought you would steal from me? How many times have I given you food, mm? How often have you sat in that back room and eaten dhal bhat with me and Tarun here, mm? Why, Pye, why?”

  “I … I’m not Pye. I just look like him. My name’s Albert. Al.”

  They both laugh at this, a cold, forced laugh.

  Gently, but with a hard edge in his voice, the turban guy says, “How about we let your father decide whether you’re Pye or not?” and he strides over to the counter and picks up the phone.

  I don’t understand the conversation because it’s all in Punjabi, yet at the same time I understand it completely for what else could he be saying:

  “Byron? Yeah, Turban Guy here, hi. Listen, Byron, I’ve got Pye here and I’ve just caught him trying to steal a load of stuff from my shop, right under my nose … Yes, stealing, Byron. Tarun saw him, and the stuff’s in his bag. Oh, and he’s saying he’s not Pye he’s someone else … You’re coming round? Good, see you in a minute, my friend.”

  He comes back round to face me. He bends down and puts his face very close and I can smell the cloves on his breath and the soap on his neck.

  “Pye Chaudhury. Let me tell you this. Our families have been friends for many, many years and I’m going to let your father deal with this. But until he does, I have my own way of dealing with thieves like you.” He nods to Tarun, who is standing behind me, and grips me hard by the upper arms. Turban Guy’s hand draws back and he slaps me across my cheek with the full force of the large man he is. My head is jerked to one side with the strength of the blow and I hear whining in my ears. As if from a long distance, I hear Turban Guy’s voice:

  “Don’t you ever, ever, ever steal from me again, you disgraceful little gaandu!” The pain in my face and the shock of the blow have stung my eyes with tears. Tarun is still gripping my arms and Turban Guy is pulling his arm back for another slap, when the bell on the shop door tinkles and in walks Grandpa Byron.

  He takes one look at me and says, “That’s not Pye.”

  I look defiantly at Turban Guy. “I told you. My names Al.”

  “But Byron. He … surely … that’s Pye …”

  Grandpa Byron smiles broadly at Turban Guy, interrupting him: “You telling me I don’t know my own son, Baru? His name’s Al. Singh. Just moved here, apparently. Father’s a Maratha Singh. You know them?”

  And I look at Grandpa Byron, and I want to run to him, and hug him again, and breathe in his smell of beedis and incense, and watch MindGames with him and make hot sweet chai and tell him I’m sorry again and again and again until he believes me.

  Only just then, the doorbell tinkles again, and a policeman opens the door: an old-fashioned-looking policeman, with a pointed helmet and a proper old uniform. He looks at the scene in front of him: Tarun gripping me by the arms, my face red from the slapping and two other men gathered around me. He pauses a moment, and Tarun slowly releases me.

  “Evening Baru, evening Tarun,” says the policemen slowly, looking at me instead of at them with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Good evening, Glen,” they say in reply, together.

  The policeman looks at Grandpa Byron. “Mr Chaudhury?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Your little girl told me you were here. I’d, er … I’d like you to step outside with me, please.”

  He has a very serious expression on his face and I catch the two shop guys looking at each other.

  “Is something wrong?” asks Grandpa Byron.

  “Just, er, come with me if you don’t mind, sir.”

  The policeman and Grandpa Byron go out the shop door and I know what he’s going to tell him, and I just can’t face Grandpa Byron and what’s about to happen, so I take my chance to push past them and run as fast as I can, clutching my backpack in my hand.

  No one follows me.

  There is a television in the tech lab, which I have plugged in, and I’m watching the local news. On the screen are pictures of people on the seafront.

  REPORTER: “Lifeboat-men and worried passers-by wait above the beach at Culvercot for news of a twelve-year-old boy still missing several hours after being swept out to sea. Named locally as Pythagoras Chaudhury, he and at least one friend were on top of the seawall this afternoon when it is thought they were hit by a massive wave. One boy was rescued about 500 metres from sh
ore and was taken to North Tyneside General Hospital, where his condition is described as ‘critical’.”

  DET. INSP. JOHN CALVERT: “We are very pleased at the rescue of one of the boys. He has been officially identified as Paul MacFaddyen, aged 13, from Culvercot. The search for Pythagoras Chaudhury was abandoned this evening as darkness fell and will resume in the morning.”

  REPORTER: “Police say they would also like to talk to a third boy who was seen running from the scene shortly after the two boys entered the water. They stress he is not under any sort of suspicion, but need him to come forward to help establish what happened. The tragedy has prompted renewed calls from locals for a safety barrier to be erected along the top of the seawall. This is Jamie Bates in Culvercot for Tonight Live.”

  I’m swallowing milk, cheese and custard creams and yoghurt, but every mouthful tastes of literally nothing. My stomach is getting fuller, and hurts less, but I just can’t taste the food. I feed bits of cheese to Alan Shearer and he twitches his whiskers, but it doesn’t make me smile like it usually does.

  As well as being totally sad, I am totally scared, and I don’t know what to do.

  I pushed Macca. People saw me. It’s not murder, because he’s not dead, at least not yet, but the police are definitely looking for me. They’ll want to know where I live, who my parents are. And as for Pye, well, barring some miracle, he has drowned. My dad is dead, and it’s my fault, pretty much.

  Pye’s dad, Grandpa Byron, will want to know who I am, the boy who was – at any rate – involved in his son’s death, even if I didn’t actually kill him.

  I can’t stay here in 1984, that’s for certain. I need to go back to my own time, and I must ensure that all traces of my time travelling are erased.

  But is that even possible?

  Assuming I could go back to my own time, what will happen when I get there? Will I exist? Can I exist? I have no father, after all.

  If I’m to go back to my own time, I need the zinc tub which, at the moment, is still in the MacFaddyen’s bunker, and their house when I passed it at a distance earlier was swarming with people: reporters, sympathisers, police …

  For a long time I just sit there, unblinking, my mouth turning sour from the cheese and milk I’ve been eating, and a pain in my chest, which could be from the running, and the tension, and Macca’s stamping, but which could just as easily be a broken heart.

  It’s dark outside now and the sadness inside me is like the heaviness you feel when you’ve eaten too much and I feel breathless and exhausted. But one thing has changed: there’s now an idea in the back of my head.

  Wearily, I turn on the six computers and then I head to the janitor’s store. There’s a stack of metal buckets. They’re made of zinc. They might just get me home.

  I also need some matches, or a lighter. Surely in a janitor’s store there are matches or a lighter?

  Not in this one.

  It’s my dad who helps me out this time. Not his ghost, and not a time travelling version of him from some distant dimension. Just his voice, in my head, but it’s as clear as anything, like a voiceover track on a film. I’m wandering up and down the aisles of shelves, moving stuff in an increasingly frantic attempt to find anything that’ll create a flame, when I hear him.

  “Shhh. Slow down, pal. There you go, easy does it. That’s what you need right there, it’s in front of you.”

  I’ve stopped now, and I’m looking around me, trying to obey Dad’s soothing voice.

  “No, there! In front of you.”

  “The wire wool?” I say out loud, because I’m looking at a box of it – steel wool pads used for rust removal.

  “Yes. You remember? In the kitchen?”

  My breathing slows down and I remember every detail, and I close my eyes and I’m with Dad in the kitchen doing one of his mad experiments. I do remember, I do.

  I smile, and grab a box of steel wool.

  Back in the technology lab, the only problem remaining – apart from, that is, whether this will work or not – is the code that will be left on Pye’s supercomputer.

  If I leave evidence of time travel in 1984, the risk is that someone will find it and piece it together. The results of that could be catastrophic.

  A self-destruct program would be perfect: I run the supercomputer along with the self-destruct program: it gets me home and then wipes the discs. Only I don’t know how to write such a program. Wouldn’t know where to start, in fact.

  The only other option I can think of, then, is setting the whole lot on fire.

  In the janitor’s store are several tins of creosote, the brown wood preserver used on fences, and some steel wool.

  Twenty minutes later, and everything is rigged up: Pye’s supercomputer is connected with electrical cable, via the black box, to two zinc buckets arranged to touch one another on the floor, and more electric cables, with wires exposed at the ends, form the improvised hand grips. The shiny black box is in one of the buckets, connected with wire to both the supercomputer and the hand grips. Alan Shearer is in a box slung around my neck with string, and the laptop – minus its battery – along with everything else I brought, is in my backpack. I tighten the straps on my shoulders. The laptop battery is in my jeans pocket. I pat myself down, like a commando going on a raid.

  Picking up the tins of creosote, I splash it around the perimeter of the tech lab, watching it form into pools, and then pour a single line of the sticky liquid from one of the pools to near the buckets.

  Along the corridor from the tech lab is a locked office. By now, what I do next is becoming almost normal. Grabbing a fire extinguisher from the wall, I smash it repeatedly into the door handle till it gives way.

  I’m staring at the phone on the desk. It’s one of those old ones, with the rotary dial on the front. As soon as I make the call, there is no going back, and I dither and stare for what seems like ages. My palms are moist and my breathing is shallow, so shallow that I don’t think I’m going to be able to speak on the phone.

  I swallow hard and pick up the bit you hold. Without hesitating further, I put my finger in the hole labelled ‘9’, drag the dial around and release it. I do this twice more.

  Almost immediately, my call is answered.

  “Emergency. Which service do you require?”

  “Fire. Please.”

  “Please hold the line I’m putting you through now.” There’s a short wait, and then:

  “Fire Service. May I take your name and number please?”

  It’s written in the middle of the dial, so I read it out: “I’m, er … Jamie Bates, and the number is Culvercot 212232.”

  “And where are you calling from?”

  “46 Chesterton Road.” A lie, but I’m guessing they won’t find out until later. And besides, lying – among all the other crimes I’ve committed – is hardly worth worrying about.

  “Where is the fire, caller?”

  “I’ve seen smoke and flames coming from Culvercot Secondary Modern. Ground floor, what they call the technical lab.”

  “Are you in any danger, caller?”

  “No.”

  “And are there any people present in the building?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

  As soon as she says a fire engine was on its way, I have about three minutes because the fire station is on this side of town, and it’s a straight run. But I need the flames to take hold and destroy the computers before they put the fire out.

  Arson – another one to add to the list.

  Back at the lab, and it stinks of creosote. I stand in the buckets, one foot in each, I’ve got the wire hand grips ready and I just … freeze.

  I just cannot do what I need to do.

  I don’t know how long I’m standing there, but when I hear the sound of the fire engine at the top of the road, I’m snapped out of my daydream. The siren is going full blast, and now I have only seconds.

  I quickly copy the line of letters and numbers from the top of the bl
ack box on to the screen, and add the coordinates for time and place.

  I’ve got the laptop battery in one hand and the steel wool in the other, held by plastic tongs, and I bring the two together, so that the steel wool bridges the gap between the battery’s contacts and …

  POW!

  There’s a spark, more than one, and the wool catches fire for a few seconds.

  That’s all I need. I crouch down and spark the wool again, and this time the creosote catches fire, but much, much faster than I had expected. There’s a burst of flame in my face as I’m bending over and I can smell my singed eyebrows. The fire dances along the trail of creosote and seconds later has reached a big pool of the flammable liquid which bursts into flame with a whoomph and ignites all the rest of the creosote around the room.

  I’ve barely had time to stand up again and already the flames are surrounding me, getting hotter by the second. I’ve got the wires gripped in each hand, and I reach out for the ‘enter’ button on the keyboard, but in my panic, I knock the keyboard off the desk, where it dangles by its cable.

  Now, as well as the light from the flames, there’s a flashing light of the fire engine that has pulled up only metres from the windows, and I hear a voice shouting “Sarge! There’s a boy in there! A boy, in the room!”

  I’m groping through the thickening smoke for the swinging keyboard, and I’m coughing and coughing, and crouching down with my feet in the buckets, because the filmy, wobbly bubble seems smaller than ever. When the window smashes, there’s an even bigger ball of flame as the inrush of oxygen from outside feeds the fire, and I’m sure I can feel my skin burning, and I’m stabbing at the keyboard with my fingers, hoping to hit ‘enter’, and that’s when I collapse and don’t feel anything more at all.

  I’ve never remembered this conversation before, I don’t think, or maybe I’ve remembered it and didn’t understand its significance.

  Did I mention that my dad was a bit weird in the days before he died? If I didn’t it’s because of a kind of loyalty, I guess. I want you to think the best of him, like I do, and I don’t like remembering how he made me feel.