Am I Dead?

by C. P. IRVINE, IAN

  “And if I don’t hear from you soon... then I guess you’ll have gone.” She adds.

  I hope she’s right.

  ------------------

  I eat an evening meal. Have some wine. Try to watch a movie on the I-Vision, but I can’t really concentrate, so I give up.

  I go to bed.

  Sleep comes and collects me very quickly.

  Mercifully.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Ring, Ring. Good News.

  My SP rings at twenty past two in the morning. I’m in a deep sleep, dreaming of being at home with Keira and Nicole. We’re playing Monopoly. Keira is winning. I think she’s cheating, but I don’t know for sure. Somehow she’s managed to buy all the best properties, and she shrieks with laughter and excitement every time Nicole or I land on one of them.

  In the background I can hear a shrill ringing. It’s incessant. I excuse myself from the girls and start looking round the house... eventually I find a brick... a big red brick with a glowing green button on it. I pick up the brick and press the green button.

  I hear a voice, and put the brick against my ear.

  It’s the Professor.

  “Are you awake?” he asks, stupidly.

  “Yes, I had to get up to answer the brick... sorry, the phone.” I reply.

  “It’s sometime in the next two to four weeks!” he shouts at me. “We just got the answer back. We’ve run several different calculations based on slightly different permutations of the core parameters, and they all came back targeting a similar time-zone, and the major area of overlap is between two and four weeks from now.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask, now fully awake.

  “Totally, my boy. I’d tell you to pack and get your passport ready, but... ”

  “Are you coming down to watch again? To be here?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it until now, but if you’ve got nothing better to do, then please come.”

  “Hmmm. Now, that’s a difficult one. Should I stay and work on the Zero-PIK project to try and find an energy solution that might save the whole of mankind from death and destruction, or should I come and watch my friend jump through time and space?” he jokes. But he has a point.

  “Well, I suppose if you could narrow it down a bit and try and predict more accurately when it may happen, then you might be able to find a little time for a friend?” I argue.

  “Aha… yes… Narrowing down the timeframes further is probably not possible. We’ve really done our best already. But, can I think about it? I would really love to come down… it would be wonderful… but… I’m also not so sure I want to meet the other you again. When you leave, he comes back. Once was really enough. But… let me see. Perhaps I can juggle a few things.”

  We say good night. The Professor goes to bed, but for me, the evening is over.

  I don’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.

  I’m too excited.

  After lying in bed for an hour, thinking, I get up and move through to my office.

  I study the timetable for the reopening of the underground, and on a separate piece of paper I map out a timetable for how, over the coming weeks, I am going to religiously make daily trips back and forward on the Jubilee Line during the time it is being tested. Once the testing stops, and the line opens as normal, I plan how I will make at least three trips a day: morning, afternoon and evening - backwards and forwards between Baker Street and Lewisham North.

  That should be enough. If the portal is going to open up on any one of those days, I am not going to miss it. I remember what the Professor told me before: I am the main event… the portal will not open up when I am not there, but equally I have to be there for the portal to open up! It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, I suppose.

  I have to be there to enable the jump to happen, but that possibility of a jump only exists during specific timeframes. I can’t afford to miss it!

  ------------------

  Over the next few days, I awake each morning with almost fervent anticipation. I’m consumed by excitement. Hope. Nervousness.

  Any time soon, I could be going home!

  The days rush by. I try to bury any thoughts about Sarah and Kenneth, and I focus on plans and preparations for going home.

  Before I leave this world, I feel that I should do what I can to repair and improve anything I can in my mum’s house, so I have several shipments of materials delivered there, and I start spending more and more time at the house, working on it. Fixing things. Repairing. Plastering. Decorating. I get little sleep, and work long hours, but I worry that there may not be enough time to get it all done before I leave, so I work harder, and harder.

  I also try to meet some clients with Richard, and start working actively for the partnership.

  After a very friendly video call with Rachel one day - who seems to be a very nice and clever person, a real catch for the Agency - my renewed career starts with my attendance at the Friday group-video conference.

  I recognise a lot of people, and a lot of those recognise me. It’s quite wonderful to see so many friendly faces again. Unfortunately, I discover that four people in the firm have died of ‘The ‘18’, including Alice, the receptionist who was a good friend of mine and of whom I was very fond. I find the news that she is now dead very disturbing. Like my mother, I only just saw her alive just over a month ago. And now she’s gone, apparently having died over a year ago.

  While I am still struggling with this news, I am also informed that quite a few of the others in the firm are no longer with the company, having been let go as victims of the recession caused by the pandemic.

  I know that, at first glance, if I’m going home to my world and leaving this all behind, then working so hard at the agency makes little obvious sense. The answer is, of course, that it’s my Plan B. If the jump doesn’t happen... if I don’t get to go home, then I will have at least started to build a new life here.

  If I do end up staying, I still have to make myself a better person, and a father that Kenneth could potentially one day be proud of.

  And of course, there is the main event. The gradual reopening of the Jubilee Line.

  I visit every day.

  It becomes my religion.

  At first just once a day, but then, as soon as it becomes possible, each morning. Each afternoon. And each evening.

  Three times a day.

  According to the Professor, a week or so should pass from when he called to inform me of the results of his new calculations, before anything of significance is truly expected to happen. However, I want to err on the side of caution, and not later feel guilty for not respecting any missed opportunities properly.

  Days roll into weeks. I get more and more tired. The excitement begins to wane.

  A certain monotony sets in.

  Caroline stops by to see me several times. Each time she does I feel a mixture of emotions: I’m still attracted to her... her beautiful, startling blue eyes, her curvy figure, her intelligence. But I try not to look at her and think of the baby.

  Already I feel like a traitor. Planning to run away from my child, through space and time, never to return.

  And each time I recognise the edge of a wave of depression heading towards me, I run to Jane. She becomes the harbour where I shelter from the winds, and the rain. And each time I spend the night with her - or perhaps a few stolen hours one afternoon now the girls are back at school - I like her more and more.

  Funny. Gorgeous. Sexy. Erotic... not too much, just right. Intelligent. Caring. And a good mother to her girls.

  But, as the days pass, I think increasingly of Sarah and Keira and Nicole, and I long for the opportunity to go home!

  But nothing happens for three weeks.

  And then it all happens at once.

  Chapter Fifty Five

  It’s Wednesday afternoon, three and a half weeks after my phone call with the Professor.

  During
that time, I’ve been on the Jubilee Line a million times, anticipating and hoping for something, but experiencing nothing.

  I haven’t felt a thing.

  Apart from days of intense anticipation which led ultimately to a trough of disappointment and doubt, I have felt no additional tingling of my nerves, no raising of my hairs on my arms or neck. No sensations at all that the world was slowing down around me, that a time-portal was opening up, and that the jump was about to happen.

  Nada.

  Nicht.

  Nowt.

  During those times on the underground, as I travel from one station to the other, backwards and forwards between stations and where the strongest likelihood of any jump occurring is, my mind begins to wander.

  I think of the things that I will do when I get home. Of Sarah. Keira and Nicole. I long to hold them all in my arms at the same time. Squeeze them all. Kiss them all. Talk to them. Go for walks. Take them swimming. Visit the theatre. Watch them perform in their school plays. Cook them dinner. Play games with them at home. Buy them Christmas presents. Chase them when they haven’t done their homework. Take them out to activities and run a taxi service, picking them up from their friends.

  Basically, be a father to them again, and catching up on all the things I have missed out on.

  One day my mind wanders to the gold coins that lie waiting to be discovered beneath the rock in Scotland. Obviously, I will retrieve that treasure with Sarah and the children at the earliest possible moment, and with the fortune I will make from it, I will secure my family’s future, and future proof it against them ever losing their father again.

  It’s while I am imagining counting all the coins after we retrieve them from the wee burn that a flash of genius occurs to me.

  What about all the other treasures discovered and reported in this world in the past eight years?

  This leads to me doing quite a lot of homework in the evenings, where I search the internet on my laptop, trying to find any articles which give details on new publicised discoveries of treasure.

  I find several large ones of significance in the UK.

  In 2014, a man with a metal detector discovered a Saxon hoard of treasure worth four million pounds. The treasure was recovered and sold to the British Museum. I visit the museum one afternoon, and discover enough details from the exhibition to learn where the treasure was buried, and where I should look for it, if in my world it has not yet been discovered.

  Then, there is also a hoard of gold coins from the middle ages discovered in the Borders area of Scotland on the edge of a field. I do some research and find out roughly where that was too.

  Along with details of a Viking hoard found buried near an old church on the east coast of England, and a Roman Villa, which when it was excavated contained several priceless statues made of marble, along with jewellery and a significant hoard of silver and gold coinage.

  When I’m looking through the reports, I focus on finding those where details are given revealing where the discoveries were made. I eventually choose about five discoveries, all made in the past eight years. The sum total of the value of the treasure is about forty million pounds. All of them have been in the ground for hundreds, if not thousands of years, so given that both my worlds share a common past, the likelihood of the treasures still being buried in my world and as yet being undiscovered there, is pretty high.

  Essentially, all I need to do is memorise as best I can where the treasures were buried or found, and then once I get back to my world, dig them up as fast as possible before someone else accidentally discovers them on that timeline!

  It’s a brilliant plan. And if it works, Sarah and my family will never have to worry about anything ever again. Except just how to spend so much money.

  As the days roll by, my life adopts a strange routine, a mixture of time-portal seeking, treasure hunting and working.

  I begin to worry that I may have missed the jump. In spite of everything the Professor has said. Or maybe his calculations have been wrong again. There must be a million different factors that could affect his equations, or throw a spanner in his time-travel model.

  Maybe it’s now just too much to hope for that he could predict any occurrence of the portal with any degree of accuracy. Or even at all.

  Perhaps I just have to get used to a life of underground travelling, continuous hoping and disappointment, never knowing when or perhaps even if, it will happen at all.

  A bizarre thought occurs to me one day: what if it wasn’t ‘me’ that went back in time and pushed the other version of me from my world to this one? Could it be possible that there is another, third James, somewhere in another dimension, and it was he who travelled to W1 from his ‘W3’? If so, does that mean that I may actually be stuck here for ever?

  It’s Tuesday afternoon when this pessimistic thought worms its way into my consciousness and then begins to wriggle around and around inside my brain. Doubt. Fear. Dread. Uncertainty. Nervousness. Confusion.

  I don’t sleep much on the Tuesday night.

  On Wednesday, as I travel for the third time back to Waterloo aboard a Jubilee Line Train, I realise I have to stop doubting and force myself not to continuously wonder ‘what if’ this or ‘what if’ that.

  I have to block out the negativity. I must remain positive. I must believe…

  The train I am travelling on is now pulling into the station at Lewisham North for the fourth time this morning.

  Like everyone else now travelling on the tubes I am wearing a thick, protective face mask, but even if it wasn’t mandatory to do so, I would have done it anyway to keep out the grime and soot and tiny metallic particles that thicken the air and slowly suffocate passengers to death.

  I am just beginning to cough, when the train doors start to open. I’m so used to this happening… without anything happening… that I behave complacently and reach into my pocket for my handkerchief so that I can blow my nose, and clear the gook and underground nostril mud.

  As I pull out the handkerchief from my pocket, it pulls out a twenty euro note that I had stuffed into my pocket and it falls to the floor.

  Holding onto the handle by the door to steady myself, I bend down to pick up the money. As I do so, I feel dizzy, and a little odd.

  Clasping the note in my fingers, I steady myself and then slowly stand up. Another wave of dizziness rolls over me, and for a moment, a brief moment, my vision goes fuzzy and cloudy.

  I blink, and take a deep breath.

  I’m still facing the doors, which are now fully open and just about to close. I blink again, my eyesight still not clear. My heart begins to race…

  Ahead of me, through the door, on the platform wall, I notice that words on the sign shimmer, the letters of the name Lewisham North fading in and out, the words they form becoming momentarily unclear.

  It all happens incredibly fast, and lasts only for a fraction of time, but… the word Lewisham seems to be replaced with another…

  The word ‘Canary’ seems to flicker into existence, hang in the air for a moment, then fade away.

  My heart skips a beat…

  Did I just see that?

  Or did I just imagine it…?

  I cough, blink, blink again.

  The doors are now closing.

  Stepping forward, I press my face against the side of the carriage, and stare at the sign.

  ‘Lewisham North.’

  The train begins to move, lurching forward, and soon we are travelling along the tunnel, gathering speed, leaving the station behind.

  I stare back at it, my heart pounding in my chest, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

  As we enter the next tunnel, and the world outside the train carriage is consumed by darkness, I laugh.

  For the first time in weeks, I am happy.

  All the doubt about the Professor and his calculations has been misplaced.

  He was right. It’s happening! The Portal is beginning to open up.

  For a moment, for the brie
fest, tiniest moment in time, as the tube train doors opened, the world outside the train was transformed from Lewisham North to Canary Wharf!

  It wasn’t long enough for me to step through… it would not have been possible, even if I had been paying more attention.

  But I know that over the next few days or weeks, the portal will reappear several times more, with the time during which the portal between my worlds exists becoming longer and longer each time, until eventually it will last long enough for me to step through the door from this world to the next.

  That will happen once or twice. After that, the length of time during which the portal exists will start to decrease again, and eventually it will be gone, along with any opportunity to step from this world back to mine.

  But I won’t miss it.

  I’ve done this before. Twice. I am now a seasoned, experienced space-time-traveller. I know the score. Understand the protocol.

  I will not fuck up this opportunity.

  In a matter of hours, days, or possibly weeks, I am going home!

  Chapter Fifty Six

  An unwelcome phone call

  I spend the next few hours travelling backward and forward, backward and forward, and then backward and bloody forward again. Over and over again. At first I do so full of renewed expectation and hope, excitement and anticipation.

  But slowly, with each non-event after the other, the excitement wanes and boredom and hunger take over.

  I’ve been here before. In the build up to the jump that brought me to this world. A few false alarms before the main event.

  It becomes obvious that it’s not going to happen today.

  Perhaps tomorrow, or the next, or maybe next week.

  But soon. Very soon.