Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYa Anthology
Page 23
You hated it when we first moved here, and for the longest time, I sign, and then I thought things got better. Because you have these friends that I’d kill for, and you always seemed to know exactly where you wanted to go. I shake my head. But I’ve seen you start to accept the bad things about being here, like that people won’t even try to get to know you, because they won’t reach farther than they have to.
I can hear the others in the observation room down below, their echoing voices getting louder as they make their way through the corridor.
I want you to come back, I tell him, but I don’t think this place will ever be your home again.
King takes my hand, squeezes it as we watch Ravi, Em and Adelaide file out to meet the sunlight. And I can’t imagine what King must be thinking while he’s looking at them, except that maybe they were the only people in this town worth knowing — mostly because they made an effort to know him right back.
And before we have to climb down from this dome, and meet his friends so they can all say goodbye to our tiny speck of a town in the distance. Before we all pile back into the old Holden Commodore, and drive King home for the last time. Before my brother gets on a plane and takes a trip he’s been planning since he was my age, with no end in sight.
Before all that — I tap him on the shoulder and tell him, There are giants in Iceland.
What?
They make them out of the pylons.
He smiles and raises an eyebrow. Is that true?
I don’t know — I flatten and fist my hand — Find out for me, I say.
To enter, tell us in twenty-five words or less why YOU deserve to win an exclusive time-travel package consisting of five (5) ten-minute Time Journeys, return flights to Sydney from your nearest capital city, accommodation at the Novotel on Darling Harbour, and transfers to and from the Time Travel Agency™.
Okay, first of all, I want to say that twenty-five words are nowhere near enough. I intend to use a lot more. You should forgive me for this because look how many words you use to describe this competition! There are, like, fifty or something!
Not like fifty. Exactly fifty. I just counted. That’s a minute of my life I’ll never get back. UNLESS I GO BACK IN TIME! To get the minute back!
Which is why I deserve to win this competition.
And that concludes my entry.
Ha-ha.
No. I haven’t even started on the reason I deserve to win. It’s a sound and noble reason with educational overtones. Also, as you will eventually see, choosing me will benefit you guys as well. It’s what I like to call a win-win.
I made that expression up, by the way: win-win.
Ha-ha, no, I didn’t. But that’s the kind of thing my dad does all the time: he takes a cliché and acts like he invented it. ‘You know what I just realised,’ he says, in a voice like he can’t quite believe where this sentence is heading, but he’s pretty sure we’ll all drop to the floor and cry out with amazement when we hear. ‘I just realised that every cloud has a silver lining.’
Then Mum goes, ‘Yeah, there’s a poet named John Milton, had that exact same thought about four hundred years ago?’
It never embarrasses Dad. He just steps up his amazement. ‘No way! What are the chances? Milton and I, eh? Two peas in a pod. Hey, did you hear that, everyone? Two peas in a pod! Whoa! What a metaphor! So vivid!’
Another thing I would like to say, before I get started, is that I will not need return flights to Sydney, thanks, as I am already IN Sydney. However, it seems fair, as the winner, that I get some flights. Otherwise, you guys will be like, ‘SCORE! We save money on flights! Let’s have an office party with the leftover cash and buy all the cakes and the beer!’ Not cool, guys. Not cool.
You can give me flights to a capital city of my own choice instead. Melbourne seems nice in the TV ads. So elegant and swishy, with mood lighting. Or Honolulu would work? You don’t specify that it has to be a capital city in Australia. There are plenty of capitals out there. New York? Paris? Anyway, we can sort that out when I win. We can iron out the details.
Finally, I live on Wynton Road in Neutral Bay, which means I am a four-minute walk to the Time Travel Agency™. So it would make zero sense for me to stay in Darling Harbour and get ‘transferred’ back to where I started. But before you start fist-bumping (‘Score! We save cash on her hotel! Office party, here we come after all!’), please note that I’ll stay at the Novotel another time. I’ll take some friends from school and we’ll make a night of it.
(Cheer up. I’ll bake you a cake for your office party.)
That was a pretty big introduction. Interestingly, I always get my school essays returned with huge, red circles around the opening paragraphs and scrawled across the margin: Get to the point!
On the plus side, I have built up suspense. By now you must be desperate to know the reason I deserve to win your time-travel package.
To answer that question, let me take you back in time.
Ha-ha.
But no, seriously, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
We’re going to this morning. So. Not far.
It was a mild and cloudy morning.
It was the morning Taylor Morgan came to school with the quadratic formula tattooed on her arm. (‘Totes indestructible cheat plan. They can’t make me wash it off ’cause it can’t be washed off,’ she said. ‘They could make you cover it?’ I reasoned. ‘Holy crap. Didn’t think of that. Oh well, I know it now. Intense pain association, right?’)
And, finally, it was the morning my Year 9 history class went on an excursion to the Time Travel Agency™. Each of us took five (5) ten-minute Time Journeys.
‘Whoa!’ is what you are saying right now. ‘You’ve already been on Time Journeys? And you want to win more?! No chance!’
And you’re about to shred my competition entry. Forgetting that I offered to bake you a cake.
Stay away from the shredder until you’ve heard my story! There is a point, and I intend to reach it.
Back to this morning.
We knew we were going on the excursion, of course. It wasn’t like Ms Watson said, ‘Surprise! Today, we time travel! Am I the best teacher ever or what?’ and we all whooped and gave her flowers.
No, as you will recall, the Time Travel Agency™ offered all the local high schools free trial packages to ‘celebrate’ its opening in our neighbourhood. Our school was the only one to take up the offer. Some parents complained that this was a ‘disgraceful waste of school time’, but most laughed, made us promise to take photos and signed the permission slips.
So all Ms Watson said this morning was, ‘Best behaviour on the walk over, please.’ But she didn’t sound that invested.
No offence, but many jokes were made about time travel on the walk. Ms Watson pretended not to hear, or maybe she was distracted. She was really bothered by how short a ‘window of time’ the lights stayed green at crossings, and by the way the class ‘straggled’ so that we kept missing the ‘windows’, and by the way we kept tripping from the path onto the road because we were laughing so hard at the jokes being made at the expense of your agency.
‘Honestly, what is it that keeps you people alive in your day-to-day lives?’ Ms Watson asked. Nobody answered her. It was too complex a scientific and philosophical question.
We arrived at the agency at 10 a.m.
Now, I will say that I like your shopfront. Some might have gone for a big, blazing sign like, The Time Travel Agency! with fireworks exploding from each letter. Like, to indicate the excitement of movement through time! Others might have used a historical font, The Time Travel Agency, with pictures of carriages and gentlemen in top hats.
But you just have that white screen and the tiny, neat: TIME TRAVEL AGENCY. PLEASE ENTER, alongside a stack of pamphlets setting out your price list.
There are maybe twenty of us in the class, and we were all suddenly silent, staring at this shopfront.
Still, there is something about the idea of a time-travel ag
ency sitting on Military Road between a sushi place and a 7-Eleven, cars and buses crawling by, half-heartedly honking their horns, that splits right through a moment of doubt like this. By the time Ms Watson pushed open the door we were laughing again.
You’ve got a great colour scheme in your reception area. Black and orange, and all dim and moody, like Melbourne. Striking! Surprising after the understated shopfront, too.
A woman in black-framed spectacles stepped out from behind the reception desk and welcomed us. She had a hip look and a warm smile and we stared at her, interested to find that this sort of woman would agree to work in time travel.
‘Kara,’ she said and Kara Ripley said, ‘Yes?’ in a trembling and astonished voice. But it turned out the receptionist’s name was Kara. She was just introducing herself. Our Kara was, like, ‘OMG, I thought you must have travelled back in time to find out my name in an alternate universe and that this was, like the twenty-fifth time we’d got here, and we’re in a loop where you’ll just keep finding out all our names!’
The receptionist looked at her for a long moment and then she said, ‘No.’
After that she asked us to follow her into a briefing room with a podium, and she gave us a quick summary of the Time Travel Agency™. How it was started by the cosmologist, Professor Eliza Raskdfjsa, when she discovered the key to time bending, and how Neutral Bay was the flagship store, but eventually the professor hoped to have agencies all over the world, and how her mission was to make time travel an affordable, comfortable option for everyone.
We already knew all this because of the articles in the Herald and the Telegraph and all the talk on Twitter and Tumblr, etcetera, and here I might gently remind you that this coverage has universally mocked and savaged Professor Raskdfjsa, the agency and time travel itself.
Put simply, nobody believes in it.
Anyhow, next, Kara-the-receptionist warned us about ‘time lag’. ‘You may experience mild dizziness and confusion,’ she said. ‘Don’t be alarmed. They fade. We’ve found that the symptoms are minimised if a single time destination is visited in any twenty-four-hour period, and if that visit is split into ten-minute increments with short breaks to rehydrate.’ The agency only offered journeys to the past, not the future, she said, and we would each get our own time booth, and —
‘Why not the future?’ Ari Dadash asked.
‘Because this is a history class,’ Ms Watson scolded him. ‘Not science fiction. Don’t interrupt.’
‘In fact, the agency doesn’t offer trips to the future,’ Kara said. ‘The future hasn’t happened yet. Nowhere to go.’
‘If you can travel backwards in time,’ Lila Saraya declared, ‘you can travel forward. Basic physics.’
Kara smiled at her. ‘A lot of our ideas about time travel come from movies,’ she said. ‘For example, I bet you think you’ll be able to change the past while you’re visiting? You will not.’
‘Did you hear that, everybody?’ Ms Watson put in. ‘No messing around with the past! You will interfere with the space–time continuum!’
At the podium, Kara scratched her ear. ‘Mess around with the past as much as you like, actually. The space–time continuum is rock-solid. My point is that your actions can’t affect it. No matter what you do back then, the present will stay the same.’
A voice spoke up. A soft, low voice. The sort of voice that makes feathers slide up and down your spine, and fireflies zing around your stomach. Take note of this voice. It belongs to Noah Brackman.
‘This is a big part of why people doubt your agency,’ Noah said (in his voice). ‘If nothing changes, you haven’t really been there, have you? I mean, at most, it’s all in your subconscious?’
There was a brief, startled silence. Noah had just changed the rules. None of us actually believed in time travel (except maybe Kara Ripley), but that was something we joked and smirked about between ourselves, not brought up with the agency employees!
Ms Watson was frowning. ‘Noah,’ she said. ‘These people have kindly offered us a free trial of their program! If they have the technology to provide you with an immersive historical experience, we will play along.’
Kara smiled again but in a sad, weary way. She turned to Noah. ‘Of course you can’t change the past,’ she said. ‘It’s already happened.’
Then she pointed at the door behind us. ‘Booths are down the corridor to the left. Time destinations have been locked in: all within your teacher’s preferred frame. England in the seventeenth century. Right, Ms Watson?’
‘Ha. Trolled,’ Farrell Kafji said. ‘Wrong century. We’re doing the sixteen hundreds.’
We all explained to him how centuries work while Ms Watson sighed at the ceiling.
‘Wait,’ said Taylor Morgan. ‘Is this safe? I mean, will we get the plague?’ She held up her new tattoo. ‘I don’t want this getting infected.’
So maybe Taylor Morgan believed in time travel, too.
‘Perfectly safe,’ Kara said. ‘We’ve had people stabbed on their journey! They feel it, but in the present, nothing has happened to them, so they come back fine.’
‘That,’ said Noah, ‘is another reason.’
Kara seemed not to hear him. ‘Everyone get settled in a booth. I’ll seal the doors and send you on your way. Happy travels!’
Now, I’ve been pretty honest with you in this entry so far. You probably appreciate that. So I may as well continue with the honesty.
You know how I laughingly mentioned that Kara Ripley and Taylor Morgan maybe believed in time travel?
Well, so did I.
Not completely, you understand. It was more that my mind was like a peach. The fruit part was going: Ha-ha, total scam! Oh well, have fun anyway, while the stone in the middle whispered: Wait, this could be real.
I had no basis for that stone’s whisper. I just wanted it to be real. Time travel! So cool! Plus, I like the pictures of Professor Raskdfjsa in the papers. Her face, her clothes, her eyebrows, her bangles — everything about her, basically, is a shrug.
Print whatever you like about me, she seems to be saying. I know the truth. Shrug.
So when I got into that booth, I was trembling. England in the seventeenth century? It would be noisy! Smelly. I might get kicked in the face by a horse!
That was my main concern, really. Landing in the path of a horse and getting kicked in the face. Sure, I might come back intact, but in the moment, a broken nose would hurt.
Also, the plague seemed like it might have more serious implications than an infected tattoo.
I’d like to compliment you on your booths. Slick whites and chromes, but so comfortable. There was a monitor with keyboard and headphones, a bottle of water in a holder, a muesli bar leaning up against this. Also, surprisingly, a pink post-it note with a scribbled number on it, and a set of keys on a Pokémon keyring.
I sat in the reclining leather chair, put on the headphones, and admired the font on the screen. Here is what it said:
Destination: Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, 10 January 1643, 8.35 p —
A cursor blinked after the ‘p’.
It wasn’t finished.
I leaned forward, touched the keyboard, and typed ‘m’. So now, as you will have guessed, it said:
Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, 10 January 1643, 8.35 p.m.
I thought about that. 8.35 p.m. January. In England? That was winter. It would be freezing, and dark!
With respect, Ms Watson, you’re an idiot (I thought to myself, respectfully).
I leaned forward and typed again. So now it said:
Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, 10 June 1643, 2.35 p.m.
‘Stand by,’ said the voice of Kara through a loudspeaker, ‘doors closing.’
Hiss went the doors, and I heard the hiss echo up and down the corridor.
My heart really wanted my attention. It was like a little puppy scrambling all over my chest.
I looked down at my clothes. We’d been told to wear ‘casual’ rather t
han our uniforms. I was wearing jeans! A T-shirt that said, Save it for the Subterraneans, which I’d stolen from my brother’s closet! Very hip and enigmatic, sure, much like Melbourne, but how would it look to the good folk of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire?
They’d totally stare at me! And maybe throw rocks?
Also, what if I got trapped in the past? Why had nobody addressed that issue? At the very least we should have been provided with a stack of seventeenth-century currency and a help line!
‘In one minute,’ piped Kara through the loudspeaker, ‘your journey will commence. If you have any concerns, please press the red button marked HELP.’
I reached for the red button.
My hand paused.
I looked at the screen. At the keyboard. Back at my hand.
‘Time destinations have been locked in,’ Kara had said. Not in my booth, they hadn’t been. I just changed it. I considered the pink post-it note and the Pokémon keyring. They had a left-behind feeling about them. Someone was interrupted, I realised, before they’d finished here.
My heart stopped jumping around. It sat still, blinking at me. So did the cursor on the screen.
‘Twenty seconds till departure.’
I leaned forward, deleted, typed at high speed —
‘Departing! Now!’
The booth lit up and blasted sideways: 32 Wynton Road, Neutral Bay, NSW, Australia, 23 May 2016, 4.25 p.m.
And that’s where I went.
To my own home.
On a Monday afternoon, two weeks ago.
I landed just inside the front door. My dog, Babstock, lying on the carpet, seemed surprised and amused to see me. He got straight up, pressed his nose to my stomach, wagged his tail a bit, and lay back down. You know your way around, he seemed to say.
I headed to the stairs.
Whoa, is what you’re saying right now. (You should stop saying that.) And you’re thinking I’m a right wuss. Scared of a little kick in the face from a horse! Scared of a touch of the plague! And so on.