by Brian Hughes
“What? You’d like to have me for dinner?”
The ghostly gathering nodded to each other optimistically. An ignorant grin broke out across Damien’s stubbled features.
“Very decent of you. Soon have you eating out of my palm!”
He took a munificent bow.
“Gentlemen, prepare your napkins. I hope I live up to your expectations.”
Millions of years BC. Exact date unknown. Scientists aren’t certain when life first poked its head up from the crevices and scuttled off to cause a nuisance. A granite promontory. The sort of place that in Doctor Who would have probably been ‘Dartmoor Quarry.’ Fingers of shadow stretched towards the small group of people from the Greyminster Rose. Overhead fireballs tore the clouds apart. Volcanoes spewed steaming entrails down mighty crevasses, which in turn swallowed folds of rushing fog. Gases belched through angular fissures from the Earth’s smarting lungs. This was a world still in the raw.
“Watcha doin’, Mrs Muskrat?” Judy Mullins stared at Nancy, still gripping tightly onto Grandma Jo’s hand. “Are you tryin’ to catch a stickleback?”
“What I’m doin’…” Nancy snapped, inconsiderate of the child’s tender years. “Is tryin’ to save your buggerin’ species from the clutches of the Dark Lord.”
She sat upright, a gelatinous substance trickling through her fingers. “This stuff ’ere contains amino acids and all sorts of other stuff that make up every livin’ thing. And in about forty seconds time there’s goin’ to be some sort of weird reaction that’ll kick-start Life on Earth. And I’m not talking about David Attenborough’s programme neither, Gypsy.”
There was a pause. A stagnant, bloated pause as her mistake sank in. Nancy wrinkled her nose in time-honoured tradition and then continued with her explanation.
“I’m gonna’ find the Dark Lord’s DNA amongst this mess and remove it.” Her eyeball became suddenly magnified through the lens of a spy glass. It blinked as she scanned the jelly’s depths. “Even ’ee wouldn’t have thought of comin’ back this far to stop us. ’Ee knows that nobody in their right mind ’ud be doin’ this.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doin’, dear?”
There was an inflection in Grandma Jo’s voice that suggested she for one didn’t.
“It’s takin’ an awful big risk, all things considered.”
“Would you rather spend eternity bein’ nibbled to death by gremlins? Or have the Dark Lord bugger up the Earth?” Nancy tightened her grip on the gelatine, a hint of worry taking up residence in her voice. “I’ve got me instruction book. There’s no need to panic.”
“It looks awfully complicated.” Grandma Jo craned across Nancy’s shoulder. She caught a glimpse of the hologram’s anxious expression. “You look as though sommet’s gone wrong already?”
“It should have reacted by now.” Another shaking of her knuckles. Several globules span away from her whitening grip. “It’s nothing that I’ve done. I’ve followed the directions to the letter.”
She took another glance at the book. Its corners fluttered in the prehistoric wind.
“Gamma Jo?” Judy tugged on the pensioner’s wrist, forcing her downwards. “Tommy Watkins is havin’ a piddle in Nancy’s gunge!”
“What?” Nancy bolted upright. “Dennis? Stop ’im! NOW!”
Startled, Dennis Lowry made a grab for the child. He yanked him backwards, a corkscrew of urine scribbling its way up the cliff face. At the sudden outburst the frightened children all bawled at the tops of their voices.
Nancy slapped her forehead. “Oh my God! Flamin’ kid!” Her teeth sparked as she struggled to her feet. Grandma Jo’s arm came up as a barrier. “Let me go! You know what ’ee’s done, don’t you?”
“I don’t care what ’ee’s done.” A frown rutted the old woman’s warty features. “You’re not raisin’ an ’and to the little ’uns!”
“’Ee’s just destroyed every livin’ creature on Earth!” Nancy snarled. “Every last bloomin’ amoeba, dog, cat, ’amster, ’uman being, bloomin’ plant, every…”
“Right? Well ’ee didn’t know any different, did ’ee?” Grandma Jo planted her craggy fists on her hips. “’Ee’s only a baby. We’ll just have to rely on ‘Plan B’ instead.”
Nancy’s anger abated gradually. She turned from the cleaved tomato of Tommy’s head to the old woman’s frown.
“And what’s ’Plan B” when it’s at ’ome?”
Grandma Jo blinked vacantly back, the colour draining from her cheeks.
“I dunno...” She shrugged her shoulders, then let them sag. “I just thought you might’ve had one. Obviously I was wrong.”
Thud, smack, thud went Nancy’s boots across the floor. It looked as though she was forcing her head from her sternum chin-first, her shoulders up around her ears. Reaching the console she grabbed one of the levers. Duffel, scuff, thump went Grandma Jo’s shuffle in Nancy’s wake. The pensioner leaned into her walking stick, pole-vaulting forwards urgently, Dennis in close pursuit. Pitter, patter, thunder went the symphony of children’s feet, Tommy Watkins at the rear. He stood on tiptoe and, with the sort of expression that constipated bulldogs might wear, pulled the door closed. It was barely in time, the caravan shuddering as the lock clicked into place.
“I don’t know what you’re up to but I can’t allow it!” Grandma Jo reached the convulsing column and made a grab for Nancy’s wrist. “You’re bein’ too hasty, girl. You’ve already caused enough problems, don’t you think?”
“Get off me, you senile old sow!” Each individual word forced itself through the clenched gates of her teeth. “I’m goin’ to put this matter to rights once and for all.”
“No you’re not, Miss Skunk.” The grip tightened with little effect. “Just consider what it is you might be doin’.”
“I know exactly what I’m doin’. I’m goin’ back to the ‘Big Bang.’ I’m goin’ to have a go at alterin’ everythin’ from there.”
“You’ve got to be effin’ jokin’?”
The smallest children covered their ears against the blasphemy. Ever conscientious Grandma Jo covered Judy’s ears as well, albeit several seconds too late.
“You’ve already wiped out the whole of life and now you want t’ bugger up the universe as well?”
“Got any better suggestions?”
“Aye, I have. How about a cup of tea and a scone? Then p’raps we could sit down and discuss this?”
Judy unhooked the hands from her temples and shook the sound back into her head. Nancy cranked the last remaining dial in a clockwise direction, then folded her arms across her chest.
“It’s too late. We’re goin’ back to the start of the universe and that’s that!”
“Listen, Nancy…” A condescending smile rearranged the wrinkles of Grandma Jo’s countenance. “I understand you’re upset about losin’ Spike and all your animals. But don’t you ’onestly believe that messin’ about with Creation is a bit on the drastic side? I mean, ’onestly? What good’s it gonna do?”
“You don’t understand nothin’ about Quantum Mechanics, do y’ Mrs Lowry?” Nancy cocked her head on one side in the fashion of an arrogant parrot. “You might ’ave given the Dark Lord ’is first time machine, not a brilliant idea in the great scheme of things, but you had no idea how it actually worked did y’?”
“I didn’t give ’im nothin’. He bloomin’ nicked it!” The old woman leaned backwards at a self-important angle, taking the measure of her companion. “Now before we make the biggest bugger up in ’istory I want to know what you’ve got in mind.”
An ominous thud resonated through the craft, forcing the storm lantern to momentarily dim. The Greyminster Rose had reached its destination.
Producing a scanner from her pocket Nancy pointed its towards the rafters, then at her boots and lastly at the stone sink beneath the window. The delicate needle flicked back and forth. Several houseflies peered up at her.
The atmosphere darkened.
Grandma Jo could f
eel the crush of worried children about her knees.
“Where are we now?” Her voice was hushed, almost reverential. There was a sensation of weight on the creaking roof. “Have we landed?”
“We’re outside time.” Nancy’s own voice had dropped to a whisper. “We’re in the countdown to the ‘Big Bang.’ It’s due to go off in approximately ten seconds, nine…”
“I thought there was s’posed to be nothin’ about before the ‘Big Bang’?” Grandma Jo’s face crumpled in puzzlement. “No time, no space, not even a vacuum cleaner.”
“Seven, six…there wasn’t.” Nancy stiffened. “We’re still in the temporal vortex. We’re outside time.”
“Don’t y’ think this might be dangerous?” Grandma Jo gathered her toddlers to her comfortingly. A ring of protection that would be about as much use against the Big Bang as a marrow fat pea would against a steam roller.
“Four, three. You could say that.” Holograms don’t sweat. At least, they’re not supposed to. “Two, one…”
Suddenly the caravan was plunged into darkness.
The emptiness was filled with terrified screams.
One of the flies from the sink buzzed worriedly past their ears.
The tiniest fizzle appeared briefly in the air before them. A wriggling worm of light.
Then just as suddenly it disappeared with a ‘Phut’, allowing the lights to come back on.
Several moments bloated with expectancy passed. Nancy pointed her scanner towards the greasy patch of air that the fizzle had occupied.
The dial crackled.
She rushed across to the window, staring out at the void beyond. Her expression of bafflement gave way to despair.
“That was it was it?” Grandma Jo knew that something wasn’t right. “That wasn’t it, was it? Don’t tell me we’ve stopped the universe being created?”
“Grandma Jo?” Nancy swallowed. Her scrawny arms fell limply by her sides. “Cover up the kiddies ears for me will y’?”
The old dear tried her best. Moments later the toddlers were all turning purple beneath her cardigan sleeves.
Nancy bit into her bottom lip, reticence written into her features. Satisfied that only Grandma Jo was going to hear what she had to say, she muttered, “Fuck!”
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Final Solution
It was H. G. Wells who first observed that ‘time’ was the fourth dimension. He probably stole the concept from Thomas Hobson’s Quantum Masterpiece. It was a point of view that was used to great effect in, ‘The Time Machine.’ And one adopted by Quantum Physicists ever since.
As Jonathon Livingstone Bluebottle would no doubt have theorised before his untimely departure, ‘Time’ inside the temporal vortex acted differently. It was a law unto itself, occupying whatever dimensions it might care to occupy. That was why the Greyminster Rose was larger on the inside than on the out.
The vortex itself was a sort of seam between, ‘That Which Might Have Been,’ and ‘That Which Already Was.’ Seconds sometimes stretched to hours. Weeks concertinered into minutes.
Nobody grew old here. Nothing aged, or developed, or had birthdays with cakes. There was progression. Just so long as it had nothing to do with entropy. It could have been hours since their argument. It could have been years for all the difference it made.
“How long ’ave we bin ’ere?” Grandma Jo brushed an ibex turd into the opened hatch, then watched it tumble into the eternal wasteland. “It feels like forever. Don’t you think it’s time we started sortin’ somethin’ out?”
“What’s the point?” Nancy was sitting on an upturned pail. It was painted with clashing flowers and flattened lizards. She was browsing depressively through an American comic book.
“I’ll tell you what the point is, Madam.” Grandma Jo propped up the broom against an empty crate and jabbed a finger towards the corner of the console room. “Those little kiddies over there aren’t growin’ up.”
Despite the fact that children love to interrupt conversations, this particular group of prepubescent eco-warriors apparently knew better. They were gathered in a cosy cubby-hole between the cupboards playing Jacks, Dennis inventing the rules as he went along.
“And I’m old and rickety meself. I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity sufferin’ from arthritis. Not exactly what I ’ad in mind for me autumn years.”
Nancy snuffled ignorantly, licked her thumb and turned the leaf. “There’s nothin’ we can do about it. We’ve destroyed the universe, Mrs Lowry. There’s no way we could cap that ’un off.”
“I’m not suggestin’ we do a Gang Show!” The old woman struggled to keep her anger from boiling over. “I bet there’s somethin’ in that library that’ll help us put things back to ’ow they was. There’s got to be sommet we could do with all them books.”
“We could always build a native American tepee from ’em. That’d keep the little ’uns happy for a couple of millennia.” Another page was turned. “On the other hand we could just sit ’ere miserable like.”
“S’posin’ we started at page one of the first encyclopaedia?” Grandma Jo’s shadow fell across the pages, dragging Nancy’s brow down with it. “We could work through ’em, one be one, until we found somethin’ useful.”
“Such as?”
Grandma Jo puffed out her cheeks like brown paper bags and shrugged her shoulders.
“How the ’Ell should I know? We ’aven’t come across it yet. There might be sommet though, no matter ’ow insignificant.”
With some reluctance the comic went down and Nancy scratched the back of her head.
“It’d take forever t’ plough through that lot. You’ve sin the size of that library! There’s thousands of volumes!”
The old woman raised one crooked eyebrow.
“Got anythin’ else planned for the next couple of centuries?”
“Grandma Jo, the only thing we could do is rebuild the entire universe. Rather a tall order don’t you think?” Nancy snorted and closed the comic. “We’d have to put it together molecule by molecule. Buggerin’ quark by bastard quark.”
A sudden thought suggested itself.
The tiniest of notions that twitched her facial muscles. Nancy suddenly raised her eyes, Grandma Jo still tapping her lips with one finger.
“Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” asked Grandma Jo.
“I dunno? That all depends on whether you’re thinkin’ what I thinkin’ or not.” A grin broke out across Nancy’s cheeks, pinning their rosy knobs together. “And what I’m thinkin’ is that I might just take you up on that cup of tea after all.”
Great clouds of dust obfuscated the shelves as Nancy Skunk and Grandma Jo downloaded the reference books one by one. A huge mound was steadily growing all around them. It was industrious work, beads of sweat breaking out around their foreheads. There was barely time to stop and cough.
“What about programmin’ the machine with only the best bits of information?” Grandma Jo smacked the dust from her bacon-rind palms. “That way we could sort out all the cock-ups and inconsistencies in the World.”
“There’s not much point.” A large book about the Dark Lord’s family tree was torn in half beneath Nancy’s fingers, fluttering butterflies of paper being thrown about her head. “The human race ’ud only make a mess of it all again. That’s somethin’ I’ve noticed about ’umans. They like their mysteries and their conspiracy theories. Spike did in particular.”
“Gamma Jo?” Judy Mullins tugged the loose-fitting hammock of Grandma Jo’s trousers. “What are you doin?”
“We’re goin’ to rebuild the universe, dear.” A volume so thick with ash that it made the toddler sneeze was heaped into her helpful arms. She struggled against its weight. “All these books are goin’ to be fed into me special quark-generating teapot. You know the one? The machine we snook on board when we exchanged it for the other one. All the ’istory of the universe is contained in these works. Reckon that should put everythin’ back to how it was.”
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br /> “Minus one or two details,” Nancy muttered. She stomped the photograph of Reginald Beaumont beneath her heel, then ground it down into the floorboards. “Come on kids, you can give us a hand carryin’ these to the workshop.”
Children enjoy being useful. Half an hour later a chain of toddlers, ranging from the tallest at the front to the smallest at the rear, marched through the workroom door. Each child was laden down beneath the weight of literature. Mammoth piles of books reaching up like fabulous anthills from their arms.
Nancy peered around the edge of several volumes on ‘The Roman Empire’ and caught Grandma Jo’s beady eye.
“’Course, you know what’s goin’ to happen don’t you, Grandma? All that information being collated at once?”
“I’m well aware of the consequences.” The following words were hissed between Grandma Jo’s teeth. “We’re all goin’ to…Dee Aye Ee.”
There were several contorted faces from the children who had overheard and were now trying to work out the letters in their heads. Grandma Jo marched smartly on, a strangely unconcerned expression on her face.
“I know a thing or two ’bout scientific principles. And as far as I remember if sommet’s recreated faithfully, right down to the last microscopic detail, then it’s exactly the same thing.”
This much was true. She’d read about it in one of Dennis’ ‘Look & Learn’ annuals.
“Which means that so long as we’re all included in the generator’s programme we’ve got nothing to worry about, have we?”
She didn’t sound totally convinced. But Grandma Jo knew that any chance to sort this mess out was more important than her scientific beliefs. Nonetheless a nervous twitch pulled at the corner of one eyelid.
“Course the problem is, Miss Skunk…” She reached the enormous teapot and found a latch. A steel panel came away beneath her grip. She deposited her bounty with conviction down the chute. “If you remake all the universe without the Dark Lord’s family then you’re not likely to be part of the equation yourself.”