by Jason Ayres
“Why not?” replied Jess. “This is a special occasion, after all.”
As the others chipped in with more drink orders, it was soon clear that this was going to be a boozy night. It always was when the old team got together. Although Hannah, Lauren and Kaylee saw each other regularly, Josh and Alice didn’t see the others so often, being down in Oxford and wrapped up in their work most of the time. Tonight would be an excellent opportunity to let off steam.
When the drinks arrived, Josh and Charlie were talking about motor racing, something they were both huge fans of.
“Do you fancy going to Silverstone this year for the Robo Grand Prix?” asked Charlie. “We’re doing the marketing for one of the teams and we’ve got free hospitality and tickets. I can get you into the pits and everything.”
“No offence, mate, but I just can’t get excited about Roboracing,” replied Josh. “I know it might look very spectacular, but for me, it’s just a glorified Scalextric. Racing should be done by proper men in proper cars.”
“That’s so sexist!” protested Jess, who was also keen on racing and had done some karting herself. “What about women? Don’t forget Bethan Bradley.”
Bethan Bradley was a rising young British star in Grand Prix racing. She had finally made the long-overdue breakthrough for women in the sport the previous year. On rain-soaked streets, she had scored a sensational victory in Monaco driving an underpowered car from one of the unfancied teams.
“So you don’t want to come, then?” asked Charlie.
“Haven’t you got any tickets for the British Grand Prix?” asked Josh, hopefully.
“Don’t be so ungrateful,” chipped in Alice. “He’s offering you a day out, you should go. You spend way too much time holed up in the lab than is good for you.”
“OK, I’ll go,” said Josh, relenting. “Speaking of cars, that’s a smart new BMW you’ve got out there, Charlie,” remarked Josh.
“It’s my latest company car,” explained his friend. “I’m out on the road a lot so they’ve given me the latest executive in-car office edition.”
“You must be doing well at work, then?” asked Alice.
“Well, yes and no. It depends how you look at it,” said Charlie. “I can’t deny they pay me well, but quite honestly, my heart is not in it anymore. I have to work long hours and the kids are often in bed by the time I get home. I feel like I’m missing out on their childhood.”
“But you’re providing for their future, aren’t you?” asked Josh. “Earning plenty of money?”
“That’s not the be-all and end-all of it,” replied Charlie. “No amount of money can replace those precious childhood moments, like being there to read to them at bedtime. You’ll understand this when you become a parent.”
“If he becomes a parent,” said Alice, a resigned and disappointed look on her face. She and Josh hadn’t told the others but they had been trying for a baby for five years with no success.
Steering the conversation away from this rather sensitive subject, Josh added, “So what sort of speed do you get out of it? I’ve heard the latest Beamers can do 150 easily.”
“Not mine,” said Charlie. “I’m not allowed to drive it. It’s driverless only. HR said that was for insurance purposes, but we all know the real reason. They don’t want us wasting our time on the road driving; they want us to work on the way.”
“I’m surprised you even have to spend that much time on the road now. I thought holographic conferencing was supposed to be putting paid to all that,” said Alice. “That’s why HS2 is doing so badly, apparently. No one needs to get from London to Manchester anymore: they can do it all remotely.”
“Not in our case,” said Charlie. “The company’s got this big ethos thing going on about face-to-face interaction. They sell themselves on the personal touch which means I end up having to be in London one day and Manchester the next. Hence the executive office edition car – with no slacking off allowed. We’re not even allowed to have the radio on anymore.”
“Seriously?” asked Josh. “Sounds like some sort of police state – no offence, Hannah.”
“Yes, seriously,” continued Charlie. “We have to be permanently connected to the office the whole time we are on the road. I tell you, it’s getting bloody ridiculous. They are on about giving us these virtual reality implants now so we can interact with the office wherever we are. I tell you, they are tracking our every move these days. I can’t even go for a dump without someone knowing about it.”
“Wow,” said Josh. “That was a pretty impressive rant for you. Whatever happened to our mild-mannered Charlie?”
“He just needs a career change, that’s all,” said Kaylee, ever supportive of her husband.
“To do what?” asked Josh.
“Well, I’ve always fancied doing something artistic,” said Charlie, “Writing, probably, as I can’t paint or draw to save my life. All our adventures with the time bubble have given me plenty of story ideas. I was thinking of trying to write a film script, or maybe a novel. I’m reasonably confident that it’s a robot-proof job, too – at least for the foreseeable future. Artificial intelligence may be advancing at a lightning pace, but when it comes to the arts, nothing can surpass the creativity of a human mind – yet.”
“Why don’t you give it a go, then?” suggested Alice.
“I already am,” said Charlie. “I’ve got a work in progress right now. I’ll tell you more about it if it goes anywhere. For now, though, it looks like I’m stuck with sitting in the car on the M40 and M6.”
“Still, there is one good thing about driverless cars,” said Josh, as he grabbed the nearest red wine bottle and replenished his already empty glass.
“What’s that, then?” asked Charlie.
“No more worrying about getting taxis or who’s going to have to stay sober to drive,” said Josh. “We can get as pissed as we want and roll into our cars and they’ll take us straight home.”
“Bearing in mind how much we always seem to drink when we get together, that’s probably just as well,” remarked Kaylee. “I bet these driverless cars have made your life easier, Hannah. No more drink-drivers to worry about.”
“You would think that,” said Hannah. “But you still get the occasional pissed-up idiot who fancies a joyride in an older car. We had one the other day: he completely wrote off an ancient Ford Focus down by the canal at Shipton-on-Cherwell. He went right through the barrier and into the water. The joyriders always look for the old cars now, as all the modern ones can detect alcohol on the breath and automatically lock the steering.”
“Well, the good news is, there are no alcohol detectors in here,” said Josh. “So as we’re all being taxied home, I think we’d better order another couple of bottles. These are going down rather too well.”
He reached over for the one remaining bottle that wasn’t yet empty and poured the remainder into his glass, just as Mario returned with their starters.
“Another couple of bottles of that Chianti, if you please, Mario,” he added.
“And another double vodka over here for me,” piped up Lauren who had been quietly knocking down her double while all the boring talk about cars had been going on. “Perhaps it’ll knock me out enough to get a decent night’s sleep tonight.”
“You turning into an insomniac, Lauren?” asked Kaylee.
“She’s normally too busy with other things in bed to find time to sleep,” joked Josh.
This generated a dirty look from Alice towards him. Quips of this nature were generally acceptable among the group. They had all been friends long enough to push the boundaries and remarks about Lauren’s colourful sex life were considered fair game.
For Alice, a relative newcomer to the party, it was slightly different. She knew Josh and Lauren had history before she had come on the scene and still felt a little pang of jealousy around her, as well as feelings of inadequacy.
Lauren and Alice were poles apart in their views on many things, including sex. The way L
auren was so free and easy about her sex life had convinced Alice that Lauren was probably much better at it than she was. That led on to her deciding that Josh had probably enjoyed sex better with her, too.
Her repeated failure to conceive in years of trying with Josh didn’t help matters. She often wondered if Josh still had feelings for his ex and still irrationally saw her as a threat, even though Lauren clearly had no interest in him anymore.
“Hardly that,” said Lauren. “Believe it or not, I’ve been quite well behaved on that front recently.”
This drew a few snorts and guffaws from the group.
“Honestly,” she continued, “the reason for my bad sleep is that I keep getting this recurrent nightmare. It’s been happening nearly every night lately.”
This piqued Alice’s interest, causing her to forget her earlier jealousy. She, too, had been experiencing strange and repeated dreams. Perhaps she and Lauren did have something in common after all.
“Can you describe it?” she asked.
“Well, I know this probably sounds silly, but it all goes back to when we had the Black Winter and I got taken prisoner by Dan’s gang at the Army camp.”
Lauren described the details of the alternative ending of the dream in which she was killed by Dan. As she did so, the others listened intently. When she finished, Alice was ready to add her story.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, you are not the only one. I’ve been having a recurrent dream for years about something that happened back around that time, and it, too, has an ending that differs from reality.”
This was news to Josh who said, “You never mentioned this before.”
“Well, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?” replied Alice. “Dreams are private, and besides, I really don’t think you would have liked how mine turned out.”
“Try me,” said Josh.
“OK, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. As I said, my dream also dates back to the Black Winter, specifically the day when the version of you from the future appeared to rescue me in the helicopter.”
The others already knew about the mysterious appearance of the future time-travelling Josh, so this was no surprise to them.
“In my dream, your future self never turned up to rescue us. We ended up stranded in the cave where the second time bubble was with the tide coming in.”
“And then what happened?” asked Josh.
“Well, as you know, only one person can enter a time bubble at a time, so you talked me into going. My leg was hurt so there was no other option. You said not to worry. You were confident you could make it back to St Ives and that you would be waiting for me when I returned, a few months later.”
“And was I?” asked Josh.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Alice. “You really don’t want to hear this next bit.”
“Trust me, I do,” said Josh, “in the interests of research.”
“OK, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is the bit where the dream turns into a nightmare. When I emerged from the bubble, several months later, the snow had gone, but you were still there. Or rather, what was left of your body was after the seagulls had got at it. You had clearly never left the cave and either drowned or froze to death. There, I said it wasn’t pleasant.”
“Bloody seagulls,” said Josh, trying to make light of it. “I suppose they must have been hungry with no tourists around to steal ice creams off.”
“But these are only dreams that both of you are having,” said Kaylee. “None of this is real. We wouldn’t all be sat here now if it were.”
“It all seems very real when I dream it,” said Alice. “It’s more vivid than any other dream I have ever had. I hadn’t given that much thought to it before tonight. I just dismissed it as some sort of reaction to the trauma and worry of that time, but having heard what Lauren said, I now wonder if there’re more to it.”
“Can you remember any more details?” asked Josh.
“Oh, there’s more, a lot more,” replied Alice. “As the years have passed, the dreams have got longer, including events in the years following that time in the cave. These dreams seem to run in time with our world, but take place in a strange, alternate reality where you did die in that cave and my life has carried on without you. This is another reason I didn’t want to tell you.”
“It’s OK,” said Josh. “I know I’m not dead, any more than Lauren is. Not in this reality, anyway. But there could be more to this than meets the eye. I want to know more.”
“Are you sure? It can wait until later if you want,” said Alice. “I’m not sure everyone wants to hear about my dreams all night.”
“I think we do,” said Hannah, and the intense looks on the faces around the table suggested the others did, too. They were finding all of this fascinating.
“Definitely,” said Josh. “There’s no need to sugar-coat it. I’m a big boy now, don’t leave anything out.”
Alice sighed and continued. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She continued, describing how in her dreamworld she had left the university after Josh’s death, accepting a research post with a large technology firm based out in Australia. There she had met and married a local man and had two children.
If Josh was at all disturbed by this, he didn’t let on. With the wine flowing, it was actually Alice who started to become emotional.
“It’s been so hard for me, all these years, trying for a baby and failing. Then, when I go to sleep, I have my two children in my dreams. They seem so real to me that often when I wake up and they are not there, it makes me cry.”
She began to sob now, prompting Kaylee who was seated next to her to lean over and give her a hug. It was unusual for Alice to display emotion like this: she was normally so cool and reserved.
Then Josh said something unexpected.
“Those children could be real.”
Chapter Four
July 2040
“How can they be?” asked Charlie, recognising the pensive look on Josh’s face as his brow furrowed. He knew that his friend was about to come out with one of his renowned theories.
“These dreams about other realities could be down to the consequences of time-travelling into the past,” said Josh. “You know all about the multiverse theory, Charlie, we’ve discussed it before.”
“He might, but we don’t,” said Hannah. “Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us?”
Noting the eager look on Josh’s face, Charlie added, “Yes, go on, I can see you’re dying to.”
Josh was never happier than when given a captive audience to elaborate on his ideas. Such opportunities were rare; it was only in his present company that he was able to command an audience. Taking a large swig of wine to lubricate his palate, he began.
“The multiverse theory is that there may be an infinite number of universes, based on every possible eventuality that could ever happen. So to demonstrate, if I drink this glass of wine now…”
He lifted the glass to his lips and took a swig of Chianti.
“Then that happened in this universe. But if I decided not to take a drink, then in theory there’s another universe somewhere where I didn’t.”
“Now you mention it, I have heard something about this before,” said Hannah. “It was years ago, in one of those Professor Brian Cox documentaries.”
“Yeah, I remember that too,” said Kaylee.
It seemed most of them understood the concept with the exception of the youngest member of the party, who now spoke up.
“But that’s impossible, surely? Our universe alone is so massive, how could there be room for any more?” Jess had a look of disbelief on her face.
“You’re being constrained by thinking about it in purely physical terms,” replied Josh. “Our minds just can’t comprehend the sheer size and scale of what we are talking about. So let’s try and put it in more understandable terms.”
“Dumb it down for me, you mean?” asked Jess.
“Not at all,” he repl
ied. “Just try and look at it another way. Do you remember at school, those maps of atoms that looked like little solar systems? Well, what if they really were? Not just solar systems, but entire universes? Imagine that, every single atom was an entire universe fitting inside ours. Do you know how many atoms there are in the universe?”
“Trillions and trillions, I guess,” answered Jess.
“A lot more than that,” said Josh, taking another swig of wine to lubricate his overactive vocal cords. “I just drank trillions and trillions of atoms in that one sip.”
“Does anyone know exactly how many?” asked Hannah.
“Actually we do. It’s something scientists have been trying to calculate for centuries, and since the mid-2030s we’ve known it precisely, to as much detail as Pi. I can’t rattle off the exact number offhand, but it’s a very long number that begins with a 1 followed by a further 82 digits. That’s an awful lot of atoms. Can you get your head around a number that size?”
“Well, I can picture a number with 82 digits in it,” said Jess.
“That’s the easy part,” said Josh. “Actually getting your head around what that number actually means is the mind-stretching part.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say I can,” said Jess. “What comes next?”
“OK, imagine that there were that many mini-universes inside ours,” said Josh. “Next, imagine our universe is also only the size of an atom inside an even vaster universe also containing that huge number of universes inside it. And so on and so on.”
“I think I’m starting to struggle with this,” said Jess.
“I’m not surprised,” replied Josh. “The whole concept becomes mind-boggling, but if you want to try and visualise it, imagine a set of Russian dolls, where each set of universes fits into the next doll up.”
This was all getting a bit much for one of the other guests, who had lost the plot long before the Russian doll analogy.
“My head hurts,” chipped in Lauren. “I think I need more vodka. Where’s Mario when you need him.”