Except now it’s not so simple.
After months of self-reflection whilst I was living with Jane, trying to understand what on earth was happening to me, I came to the realisation that the relationship problems I once had with Sarah in my old world were caused by our inability and my longing to have a son.
And now…now I have a son in this world! Kenneth.
I feel torn.
Now I don’t just think of Sarah and Keira and Nicole. I also think of Kenneth.
And then I think of Kenneth’s mother, the Sarah I know in this world, with more affection than before.
Is it because she has now borne me a son? The son that my real wife could never give me?
Or is it out of guilt and admiration because she has brought up my son single handed for the past eight years. Without me.
A scary thought then hits me: ‘Has she met someone else? Is another man helping to bring up my son?’
“You look troubled,” I hear the Professor ask. He’s been sitting there quietly as my mind has wandered off again. Watching me. Waiting for my focus to come back into the room.
“I think I want to leave as soon as I can, if you don’t mind.” I hear myself replying, which almost catches my conscious-self by surprise. “I need to go back to London. My future - and my past, if that can be the future for me again - is there!”
“And what will you do when you get there? All the underground stations are closed. For the foreseeable future. You can’t get on the Jubilee Line and make the jump back to your world.” the Professor probes.
“Maybe that’s not the only way the portal can open up for me. You said yourself that I’m the main event. I won’t miss the jump. It can only happen when I’m around, and it will happen where I am. Just because it happened on the tube all the times in the past, who’s to say it might not happen above ground, somewhere else, too?”
The Professor nods, whilst making a funny shape with his mouth and musing over my words.
“You may be right, you may be right. But, in spite of everything I said about this before, my gut feeling is now that actually, the portal will only open up for you down there beneath the ground in those tunnels. Why? I don’t know. But, James, I think that until the underground opens again, you won’t be going back to your world. Or to the past where you came from.”
“Maybe. I mean, you’re probably right. But that gives me time then, surely? Time to get to know Kenneth? And to be with Sarah again… here… in this world… if I can only just find a way to get her to take me back again.”
“Perhaps, and who knows, if you can find a way back into her heart again, maybe she’ll persuade you to stay. Here. In this world with us?”
“Do you think she’ll see me? I mean, when she hears what happened to me…surely she’ll give me a second chance?”
“I cannot tell, James my boy. The affairs of the heart are something I was never able to master. And now I’m too old to worry about it anymore. All I can say, is that you have to be careful with her. If, somehow, you persuade her to take you back, don’t break her heart a second time.”
“I won’t. I promise you.”
“It’s not me you need to promise, my boy. If you find her, you need to promise her!”
Now it’s my turn to sit there nodding.
Hoping.
Longing for Kenneth and Sarah.
We sit in silence for quite a while, warmed by the whisky.
“Okay,” I eventually speak again. “Against all my instincts I’ll visit Jane first, I suppose. Get it out of the way, and so you don’t nag me about it later. I know I need to find out what it is that she has for me that’s so important. I can’t think what it is, but it’s beginning to nag me what it could be. I also need to go home to my mum’s house and visit her grave. And then, when that’s done, and my head is clear, I’ll find a way to see Sarah and Kenneth. I know you think it’s too soon. But it’s the only thing that’s important to me, and it can’t wait any longer. I’ve already had to wait eight years…”
The Professor laughs, and raises his glass of whisky, “To your adventures in London. And may they all go well!”
I return the toast, and slowly swallow the rest of my malt, allowing it to linger at the back of my tongue for a while before committing it completely down to my stomach.
“So, James, how did the video-call go with the Home Secretary? And may I ask, did you talk about anything interesting?” the Professor enquires.
I can tell he’s been dying to ask for ages, and it’s to his credit he’s managed to hold back for so long.
“I shouldn’t really tell you. But, given that you’re my only friend in this whole world, and that I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you, I think I could just possibly ignore what she said and spill the beans to you. For the price of another glass of the good stuff?”
Over the next few minutes I give the Professor the gist of the call and her request, omitting the bit about her being drunk and to blame for the crash.
I watch the Professor shift uncomfortably in his chair a few times, before getting up and starting to pace the room.
“What she’s asking is wrong. It cannot and must not be done. And there’s good reason to believe that even if you could somehow go back in time and meet her just before she was going to get into the car just prior to the crash, that you would physically not be able to stop her. It’s what we call the ‘Consistency Principle’, which ensures that all actions a time-traveller may enact whilst visiting the past, must themselves be consistent with past history.”
“You mean, that just before I would try to open my mouth and speak to her, the universe would conspire against me and ensure that I had a heart attack?”
“Or you fell over, or she didn’t see you, or another car hit you and knocked you over first. It could be any of a million different things, but the bottom line would be that given that today our history is just that, our history, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, but your time-line of your future actions could never intersect with our historical time-lines in the past in such a way as to alter the future. The past, once in the past, will always remain consistent with the future.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Not completely. It’s just a theory, my boy. Just a theory. If it’s wrong, and you do go back into the past and meet her, maybe you’ll just cause the future to be erased. And perhaps millions of people alive today will just suddenly vanish, or drop down dead in the street. Because of you and what you do in your future in our past.”
“You have a way with words, Professor. Very charming. And confusing.”
“But, my boy. There is perhaps another alternative. One that was first proposed by the late Hugh Everett at Princeton in 1957, and then worked on by one of my friends, David Deutsch, who was at Oxford. If you adopt the Quantum Physics view of ‘multiverses” and “many worlds”, the idea is that if you ever succeed in going back in time, that you actually end up in another world, a parallel world. And once you’re there, you can do whatever you want. You could, for example, take a machine gun and go round killing not only your grandfather, but all your other relatives, friends and enemies too. Since you’ve come from a different world, and a different future, killing your grandfather and family in the parallel world wouldn’t affect you. You weren’t born there and you come from a different future!”
“Are you suggesting what I think you are?” I ask the Professor, the light dawning on me.
“Perhaps. At this point in time, we don’t know if you will be able to get home to your world. And if you do, we don’t know at what point in time you will arrive. It could be the equivalent of now, the future, or sometime in the past. We simply don’t know. But, if, for example, James my boy, you did manage to travel back in time to your world, then perhaps you can then meet the Home Secretary and warn her about not going to Turkey. However, not only do we not know if she ever will go to Turkey, but we also don’t know when that will be, or even if she did go, what
the effect would be. She may not have a car accident. She may not be so seriously injured. Who knows? Yours is a different world, and what happens there may have different causes, effects, and outcomes than they do here.”
I nod. In my world, wherever that is now, the likelihood is that the Home Secretary not only can probably still walk, but that she also doesn’t become Home Secretary ever. She’s probably gone down another life path altogether.
“There’s something else I should say, my boy, with regard to this whole business of you travelling backwards in time.” The Professor says, standing up, and stretching.
“You know, James, that when we spoke about this eight years ago, we focussed mainly on this issue of travelling between the parallel words? Yes? Well, over the past few years, some very clever theoreticians have taken some work done in the early nineteen-nineties and progressed it all a little further. The initial work had come with new solutions to Einstein’s relativity equations which suggested that loops in the four-dimensional structure of space-time could exist. In the original work, they called these loops ‘Closed Timelike Curves’, or CTC’s for short.”
The Professor looks across at me, interested to see if I had ever heard of them. I shake my head.
“Well, a very clever chap in Ingolstadt in Germany did some recent work on CTCs and has proposed that not only do these CTCs provide a pathway for matter to travel back in time, but they can also go forward, too. In a loop. Circulating around and around. Backwards and forwards. Confined to the loop.”
“What sort of matter?” I ask. “Small atoms, or humans too?” I ask, hinting at the obvious. When a human travels back in time, it’s sort of really important that when he or she pops out into another time zone that all the matter is reassembled into exactly the same structure as before it left. Otherwise, instead of a living, breathing human, you just end up with a pile of sticky sludge!
“That, my boy, is a very good question. Herr Professor Georg Hofmeir has not been very clear on that yet. He mentioned in his second paper, that perhaps the transport of biological matter which makes up living organisms could theoretically be possible, but was not able to provide any clarity on how large a mass of such biological matter could be transported. And we all know, do we not, James my boy, that there is a big difference between a small fly, and a large human!”
“And… not only that…,” I add, “there’s the small question of ‘life’ and what that is. I mean, even if it were possible to transfer a pile of matter in the shape of a living animal from one time to another, how do we know if that matter will arrive still containing that spark of life, whatever ‘life’ is, or if that animal will be alive, or….or if it will arrive completely correctly assembled with all the bits and pieces in the right places to make up an animal, but devoid of life itself? That is, it looks exactly like an animal, but there’s no spark inside. What happens if matter can be transported back and forth, but ‘life’ can’t.”
“Exactly, my boy. Exactly!” the Professor laughs. He’s really enjoying this. This is the stuff that he lives and dies for. Although, hopefully, admittedly, less of the dying bit.
I laugh to myself.
“Dr Georg Hofmeir? From Ingolstadt?” I say aloud. “There’s a certain irony in that. That’s where Mary Shelley set the novel ‘Frankenstein’ where she took a dead body, and brought it to life with electricity!”
“I’ve met him, actually.” The Professor adds. “He’s a very nice man. Very clever. I hear he’s still working now. He’s almost seventy five, but he’s still coming up with new equations and ideas all the time.”
“This Dr Hofmeir sounds just like you, not retiring and taking any time off! Anyway, Maybe we should contact him and invite him to join your group?” I suggest, half-seriously.
The Professor turns to me, his face suddenly becoming very serious.
“Sadly, I don’t think that would be allowed. He’s a Bavarian. Very proud. And our Government would not want other nationalities working on the project. Yet. It’s a purely UK affair.”
“Apart from you. Who is actually from the Czech Republic?”
“Ah…well, that’s another thing that I should tell you about, James. I’ve got British citizenship now! I’m English!”
“Congratulations. Which means you can now vote. Tell me, when you were given your citizenship, did someone contact you and tell you the great British secret about whether it’s correct to pour the milk into the cup before or after the tea?”
--------------------
It’s several hours more before we realise how late it has become, and we decide to go to bed. We’ve agreed that first thing in the morning I will contact the number I was given with the Blue Pass to find out how and when I can go back down to London.
It’s been an interesting night. A good conversation.
As I lie in bed, enjoying the buzz that I have from the whisky we’ve been drinking all night, I think again about my Sarahs: the one in this world, and my wife in the other.
For the past year I have been focussed on one thing only…to get back to Sarah as soon as I possibly could. To get back to my children. Who are both now eight years older. I have missed some of the most important years of their lives!
As sleep edges ever closer, my last thoughts of the day are a realisation that all my thoughts of stepping through a portal and moving side-ways in time back to my home world could now all be completely redundant. I am currently living in a parallel world, eight years ahead of my time. Potentially with no route back to my own world, and with most theories saying that travelling backwards through time, is not possible.
So, unless fate has a trick up its sleeve, and another very special trip planned for me, I could be here for a long time to come.
Not only is tomorrow another day, it’s also another world.
Chapter Twenty Two
The next morning I awake with a start. A strange sound is coming from outside. I jump from my bed, and rush to the window, amazed by what I see when I get there.
Less than thirty metres from the cottage a large stag is standing on a boulder, calling across the valley to other deer. I watch as he does it two or three times.
Majestic. Beautiful.
Free.
For a moment he bows his head, and he seems to look across towards me. Our eyes meet. The Stag stands rigid, like a statue, maintaining his ground, unblinking.
Then in an instant he quickly turns and bounds away.
One moment he is there and the next he is gone.
.
The encounter leaves me feeling strangely unnerved. For a moment I felt like a voyeur, peering into the Stag’s life. A stranger. Unwelcome. Intruding. And I realise that is how I feel just now.
I shouldn’t be here.
This is not my world.
And I need to leave.
After grabbing some coffee and a quick bowl of muesli from the kitchen, I settle down in the lounge and use the Professor’s landline to call the number I have been given by the Professor for Blue Pass owners.
After giving a few credentials, identifying myself and answering a few questions, I’m informed that the best way for me to travel back to London is once again by helicopter. The trip will have to be approved by someone more senior in the food chain, but they’ll get back to me when it’s done.
“Will an approval by the Home Secretary help?” I ask.
“That would certainly do the trick, if you can arrange it,” comes the reply.
“Okay, then please leave it with me. Just contact me once it’s done to let me know what time I have to be ready by.”
--------------------
Getting approval for my helicopter ride is not the only reason I need to contact the Home Secretary. Overnight I’ve realised that I need to speak to her again anyway.
As forewarned, when I call the number she left me, after answering a number of questions, I am then also challenged for a security code word, which I readily answer as “Instanbul”.
&n
bsp; A few moments later, I am once again speaking with Caroline Pearce. From the tone in her voice, she seems genuinely pleased to be speaking with me again.
“James! What a surprise! How are you? Is everything okay? Do you need my help at all?”
“Home Secretary…Yes, I do. Thank you… First of all,.. I was hoping that I may be able to request that the helicopter could perhaps collect me, perhaps tomorrow, … and take me back to London?”
“Certainly, I’ll help arrange that for you…”
“Excellent. Thank you…And, Home Secretary… There’s something else too… I’ve been thinking…”
“Caroline, please. Call me Caroline!” she interrupts.
“Caroline, thank you. Actually… you see, I was thinking about what you have asked me to do for you, should I ever, you know, manage to travel backwards in time. The Professor and I were up last night into the wee small hours, discussing what that might mean, and if it were possible…”
“And? Does the Professor think it might be possible?”
“Truthfully? He thinks it’s highly unlikely. However, given that everything so far that has happened to me is all equally fantastical, who’s to say it won’t happen?” I pause, before committing myself. “Now, I’m not in a position to promise anything, and I also haven’t decided what I would do if by such a trick of fate I do manage to travel back in time, but, and this is the thing, if it does happen, and I do decide to track you down and try to warn you, then I’ll need you to give me some private or privileged information that will startle the ‘you’ I meet into listening to me and taking me seriously.”
“What do you mean, James? I don’t quite understand…”
“Okay, let me explain. Imagine it’s eight years ago and a man just approaches you in the street, or calls you on the telephone, and then comes up with some ridiculous story about being a time-traveller and being instructed to warn you about not travelling to Turkey…would you take him seriously? Or would you call your police contacts and have him arrested? Or get a restraining order taken out against him in the courts?”
Am I Dead? Page 14