by Brian Hughes
One end of a wormhole could be opened on Earth and the other on Mars.
As the distance between them would only be a few feet, it could be covered in a matter of seconds. Anybody attempting to do so would therefore travel faster than the speed of light and, consequently, backwards in time.
There is, however, one obstacle that the scientists have failed to take into account.
One of Newton’s Laws, I forget which off hand, states that a body moves relative to its immediate environment. For example, a bluebottle flies down a carriage at six miles per hour, although the train might be travelling at 300 miles per hour.
Regardless of everything else, this same law must surely apply to wormholes.
Anybody walking from Earth to Mars would actually be travelling at four miles per hour, or normal walking speed.
The speed of light is considerably faster than that, the wormhole, therefore, being nothing more than a shortcut.
Nonetheless our learned friends continue their experiments in the full knowledge that those who foot the bills haven’t got a clue what they’re doing.
The enterprise must be costing somebody somewhere an awful lot of money, don’t you think?
A pensioner lay drowsing in her hospital bed. Her mind was off rambling somewhere between reality and purgatory’s gates.
The bed had been pushed beneath the arched Victorian window. The summer breeze panted through the lace curtains, bringing with it snatches of children shouting from outside.
Maude Blueberry was one hundred and four years old.
A quite remarkable age considering the amount of cigarettes, black pudding and fried bread she’d consumed over the previous century.
Her pillows overpowered her tiny head in the manner that a blotting pad would overpower a thumb.
A crescent of relatives had gathered in silence.
Only the occasional cough broke the morbid atmosphere.
At length Maude’s fingers emerged from the sheets. She beckoned Judith Blueberry down to a more comfortable level.
Judith pushed one ear towards Maude’s mouth.
Several whispers crackled between them.
Almost immediately the startled daughter sat up straight.
“Arh Jason!”
The child rearranging the pottery beneath the far side of the bed looked up.
“I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!”
“Just hand me that box behind y’, and button your lip!”
Jason scanned the bedside cabinet, forced a podgy hand through the hypocritical get-well-soon cards and pulled out a small black box.
“That’s the one. Give it to me!” Maude’s eager talons reached for the box.
She tried to focus on the vibrating numbers on its LCD.
“159…158…157.”
It wouldn’t be long now.
Less than three minutes in fact, before the significance of those digits would be revealed.
Maude’s tiny heart beat erratically against her ribcage.
“155…154…153.”
Deep down inside, Maude knew that when the timer reached nought it would finally be the end.
The Tale of the Mysterious Box
July 14th 1895. Mrs Bragg, Greyminster’s most formidable midwife, tottered down Dog Bone Lane.
Using its weight to add leverage to her waddling gait, she swung her carpetbag in one hand. A flask of gin was tucked discreetly in the palm of the other.
Mrs Bragg had the features of a well-plucked goose and the sort of weeping eyes that told of numerous nights around a poker table.
She reached a halt in front of number ten and tried to grab the knocker with her stodgy fingers.
The carpetbag was proving a problem.
So she tried lifting the hand containing the bottle instead, before giving up and rapping loudly with her forehead.
Almost immediately the door swung ajar. Just enough to reveal a thin slice of Adam Potter, his braces round his hips and his long johns on display to the street.
He was flustered, his chin unshaven and his collar springing out in the manner of a propeller.
“Maude Bragg’s t’ name! Bragg be name, not be nature!”
“Arh, Mrs Brag!” The father-to-be flattened himself against the wall allowing her access to his humble home. “Step inside! I reckon she’s just about t’ drop!”
A moan from the rear of the building rushed down the hallway as though in confirmation.
“’Ow orften are t’ contradictions?” Mrs Bragg clattered over the step. “’Ave y’ got plenty of ’ot water ready? And some warm towels? And p’raps a nip of your finest whiskey t’ fill me glass?”
A small tumbler appeared as though from nowhere and was thrust into Adam’s palm.
Three seconds later the bedroom door slammed shut, disturbing the dust from its hinges.
There was a grind from the keyhole and Mrs Bragg called out, “Mek sure it’s full t’ the brim. And don’t try dilutin’ it with water neither, ’cos I’ll know!”
And that was that.
The rest of Maude’s birth would forever remain a mystery. Just one of those women’s things that men weren’t supposed to know about, like cooking and ironing and sootikins.
At three o’clock Mrs Bragg bustled into the Old Bull and Duck. (At this point in our history the tavern was still connected to its terraces.)
With a grunt she hoisted her carpetbag onto the bar and prodded Adam’s shoulder with one finger.
“I’ll ’ave a pint o’ Thackery’s, if y’ don’t mind! And an iddy biddy malt t’ chase it down.”
Adam removed his pipe from his lips and signalled the landlord from the shadows. “So, Mrs Bragg…’ow did it go?”
“Not bad on the ’ole…” The bag was unbuttoned and a pint-sized glass removed from its depths. “Barman? Put y’ malt in this, and mek sure it’s full.”
She turned back to the father.
“No complications t’ speak of, Mr Potter. You’ve got a bouncin’ baby girl.” A grin broke out across her hoary countenance. “In fact she bounced right off t’ bed and into the chamber pot.”
A brimming glass was plonked down before her as a shadow of consternation crossed Mrs Bragg’s face.
“There was one thing though…don’t s’pose you’ve any idea what this is?”
She dug into the grubby pocket of her apron. Moments later a she pulled out a black box. It was humming, as though a bumblebee had somehow managed to climb inside it. Across one end an oblong of glass winked tiny numbers. “3,281,990,400…3,281,990,399…”
Adam Potter took the machine from her, frowning. “What is it?”
“Dunno, I’m sure,” Mrs Bragg replied indifferently, removing the beer from her chin with one doughy wrist. “If I wasn’t no wiser I’d ’ave said that it fell out o’ your Missus. Found it at the side o’ the commode when I was tidyin’ up.”
She wrinkled her nose and gave the object a tap.
“Could be some new fangled fashun accessible from France, I s’pose. One what got caught up on me boot ’eel when I entered your ’ouse.” The tankard was brought down with a hearty wallop. “Still, thought you’d better ’ave it. Now, watcha gonna call y’ little ’un?”
She toyed humbly with her collar and chanced a minuscule cough in Adam’s direction.
Changing gear mentally, he stowed the object in his waistcoat pocket and returned the only answer that Mrs Bragg was likely to accept. “I thought that Maude might be a good name…”
A Romantic Interlude
The dimly lit precincts of Memory Lane become more shrouded towards the far end.
Maude couldn’t remember the occasion just related. She’d heard the story from her parents though. And now she turned it over again, holding the buzzing contraption before her nose.
Around the bed the vultures watched in anticipation.
Fssst.
The sort of noise that a cat cornering a spider would make, shot up the bedpost and dispersed into ceiling.
Maude’s beady eyes narrowed.
“72…71…70…”
August 8th 1916. It was Maude Potter’s twenty-first birthday. Now she was on the rampage to quell the romantic thirst in her veins.
She wasn’t in a rush to get married, you understand? She could wait a good three months for that, like any chaste working girl would.
It was just that the stirring in her loins had grown so violent of late that if it went on for much longer she’d end up with rickets.
Maude had been working in the seamstresses’ hut at the rear of Trotter’s Cotton Mill since she was fourteen. It was a daily grind of antimacassars and frilly shirts. Embroidery conducted with tight lips under the auspicious gaze of Madam Charlotte Trotter who moved between the rows of girls like a lighthouse on castors.
Today, however, whilst Maude sewed her mind was otherwise occupied.
6.15 p.m. Whistles shrieked around the factory walls. Maude pounded breathlessly across the cobbles, bustling through the mulling workers with the dexterity of one of her needles.
Beyond the ocean of cloth caps she could just make out Benjamin Miller, leaning against the gatepost.
He really did look the dandy this afternoon. His dapper tweed suit stood out from the dowdy work clothes all around him. He’d set his cap at a jaunty angle, his chequered breeches tucked jauntily into his socks. Benjamin might only have been a chandler’s boy, but the tales he could tell! Adventures passed down to him from salty mariners returning from the orient, as exotically flavoured as the teas in Mrs Lovecraft’s Herbal Emporium.
He also cut a fine dash and was considered quite a catch amongst Mrs Trotter’s embroidery gals.
Maude skewed to a halt, flattened her pinafore, took a deep breath and walked demurely towards him.
“’Ello Ben...” She flicked her auburn hair from her eyes. “Fancy meeting you ’ere…” She twisted a curl between her teeth.
“’Ello Maude.” Scuff, kick, rattle, tap. A pebble skittered across the yard. “You doin’ anythin’ tonight?”
“Going ’ome for me tea.” Maude grinned, one eyebrow raised coquettishly.
A bloated couple of moments passed. Ben snuffled, flicked a slither of fingernail towards the crowd and straightened. “Right! See y’ round then, Maude…”
And that was that. Maude watched astounded as Benjamin Miller stuffed his hands in his pockets and then plodded away towards Old Bridge Lane, whistling some damned annoying shanty he’d picked up from his boss.
Maude shuffled dejectedly up the back yard, ignoring the butcher’s bike leaning against the outhouse wall.
The kitchen door swung open onto a blanket of blue tobacco smoke. Standing by the sink, his flat cap in his hands and dressed in a funeral suit several sizes too small, was Bertram Blueberry. His hair was plastered to his oleaginous forehead. Not bothering to greet him Maude plodded in, watching as Bert’s fingernails dug into the chequered cloth.
“’Ere she is…” Adam Potter removed his pipe from his mouth and grinned. “’Eh up, Arh Maude. Bertram ’ere ’ud like to ask for your hand in marriage.”
There was barely a grunt in response. Without raising her eyes from the stone floor, Maude stomped into the living room.
“’Ee can bloomin’ well ’ave it as far as I’m concerned!”
The apron was flung onto the snoring cat. Maude threw herself into the chair. Almost as though the box was some sort of comforter she dragged it onto her lap and watched the numbers steadily decrease.
“I’ll show you, Benjamin Miller. Not man enough t’ ask me out, are y’? Well let’s see what y’ reckon t’ me gettin’ married then, shall we?”
From Here to Eternity
“24…23...22” The aerial sat there, waiting to explode.
Deep down inside Maude’s heart she felt annoyed.
The peal of church bells rebounded round the rooftops, conducting games of tag through the narrow streets.
Doves watched from the eaves of St Oliver’s as the rotund bride stomped out of the foyer. She hitched the meringue of her wedding dress up about her knees. A snowstorm of confetti dowsed her head as she thundered on towards the Thatch.
“I alwez enjoy a good weddin’!” Mrs Bragg, who considered herself part of Maude’s family even though she’d never clapped on them since the birth, took a handful of rice and threw it into Maude’s eye.
With a toothless grin she leaned towards a relative on the doorstep. “Any chance of nippin’ inside and fillin’ this up with communal spirit?”
Moments later another petal storm exploded as Bertram emerged. His rented top hat was firmly pressed against his chest, his spats caked in mud due to his haste to catch Maude up.
“Pah! Benjamin bloomin’ Miller! Stupid, good for nothin’ git!”
Maude’s boots pinched at her square toes, clattering over the gravestones and in through the Thatch’s front door. They continued briskly into the women’s powder room, accompanied by the thud of the cubicle door slamming.
“’Ee could’ve turned up t’ stop it! Now look what I’ve gone and done!”
She threw herself down onto the toilet and pulled the box from her handbag. For a moment her anger subsided.
“I wonder what on Earth this is?”
“19…18...17…”
Of course it was all academic now.
For fifty-odd years Maude had knitted, darned smelly socks and generally busy-bodied her life away for the most boring man on Earth.
Bertram had lived up to all his promises.
All oily hair and diminished elan.
October 1964.
The drizzle slapped the mourners about their jowls as though in punishment for venturing out on such a day.
Reverend Thompson brushed the soil from his hands and stared at the coffin being lowered into the ground.
“Darn a bit your end, Charlie.” The ribbons gave a jolt, Bertram’s casket rutting one side of the grave. “Watch out y’ clumsy bugger! ’Ow’d you like it if someone was knockin’ your stiff about!”
“Sorry, Dad.”
Charlie Higginbotham pushed his cap back across his head and struggled beneath the weight of the box.
Judith Blueberry watched the pantomime whilst clutching her mother’s hand.
She’d no idea what was going on. The body in the coffin bore some resemblance to the silent man who’s entrance every evening foretokened her being bustled upstairs to bed. But other than that, she’d no remorse whatsoever.
Such is the resilience of being four years old.
The first shovel of soil rattled onto the coffin lid, the rasp of Reverend Thompson snoring being the only other sound to accompany the miserable scene.
Maude wondered what life would have been like if she hadn’t been so harsh on Benjamin Miller all those years before.
“3…2…1…”
A pregnant hush descended over the relatives.
For a moment the silence became so thick that you might have heard a dust mite coughing.
Then Maude blinked, gave the contraption a shake and sat upright in bed.
“Nothin’?!”
Rattle, clank, grind went the box as it was smacked against the bedpost.
She peered again.
“All these bloody years waitin’ and when it finally reaches nought, nothin’ happens. Well, bugger me with a…”
Fssst!
A flagella of electricity raced up the antenna and split into two as it reached the top.
Crack!
Static shot out from where the two strands met, darted across the room and earthed itself into Maude’s forehead.
Her eyes shot open as the electricity locked itself into the bridge of her nose.
Then with a blinding flash, Maude’s vision was swamped with colour.
Second Chances
An
other oversight of quantum physicists is the interconnectedness of all matter. In particular the relationship between molecules and temporal progression.
Let me try to explain. This might be difficult, so study the following section carefully, then discuss.
Atoms continually leave our bodies as a matter of course. They are replaced with atoms from elsewhere.
For example, your fingertip right now might be composed of matter from the teapot, from the joint you had last Sunday and from those toenail clippings hidden under your bed.
It’s reckoned that approximately every ten years all the molecules in our bodies have changed, an entirely new form filling the shape we originally occupied.
That’s why we perceive time in the fashion we do.
To make matters more complicated, strands of energy connect all matter. Not even the space between us is empty.
Understood that?
Good, because it goes some way towards explaining the effect on poor old Maude.
Travelling backwards through time bore little resemblance to Rod Taylor’s experience.
Far from remaining in the potting shed and watching the manikins over the street grow longer dresses, Maude found herself hurtling backwards all over the place.
Her journey started slowly.
The first thing that happened was Jason snatching the box from her, shoving it back between the cards and stuffing his angry head beneath the far side of the bed.
The shouts of the children outside shrivelled up into backward whoops, sucked at the lace curtains and shot off into the bushes where they’d originated.
Then everything began to gather momentum.
Soon Maude was thundering round her kitchen dragging her Zimmer frame backwards, sucking tea up from her cup into the spout of the teapot.
Faster and faster, night and day, Maude bouncing in and out of her bed with some alacrity.
To make matters worse, there was nothing she could do to stop it. She wanted to scream but her lips were rasping through reversed conversations with insect-like visitors who bowed their heads and shuffled out of the door in reverence.