The Time Bubble Box Set

by Jason Ayres

  “Honestly,” she continued, “the reason for my bad sleep is that I keep getting this recurrent nightmare. It’s been happening nearly every night lately.”

  This piqued Alice’s interest, causing her to forget her earlier jealousy. She, too, had been experiencing strange and repeated dreams. Perhaps she and Lauren did have something in common after all.

  “Can you describe it?” she asked.

  “Well, I know this probably sounds silly, but it all goes back to when we had the Black Winter and I got taken prisoner by Dan’s gang at the Army camp.”

  Lauren described the details of the alternative ending of the dream in which she was killed by Dan. As she did so, the others listened intently. When she finished, Alice was ready to add her story.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, you are not the only one. I’ve been having a recurrent dream for years about something that happened back around that time, and it, too, has an ending that differs from reality.”

  This was news to Josh who said, “You never mentioned this before.”

  “Well, it’s just a dream, isn’t it?” replied Alice. “Dreams are private, and besides, I really don’t think you would have liked how mine turned out.”

  “Try me,” said Josh.

  “OK, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. As I said, my dream also dates back to the Black Winter, specifically the day when the version of you from the future appeared to rescue me in the helicopter.”

  The others already knew about the mysterious appearance of the future time-travelling Josh, so this was no surprise to them.

  “In my dream, your future self never turned up to rescue us. We ended up stranded in the cave where the second time bubble was with the tide coming in.”

  “And then what happened?” asked Josh.

  “Well, as you know, only one person can enter a time bubble at a time, so you talked me into going. My leg was hurt so there was no other option. You said not to worry. You were confident you could make it back to St Ives and that you would be waiting for me when I returned, a few months later.”

  “And was I?” asked Josh.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Alice. “You really don’t want to hear this next bit.”

  “Trust me, I do,” said Josh, “in the interests of research.”

  “OK, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is the bit where the dream turns into a nightmare. When I emerged from the bubble, several months later, the snow had gone, but you were still there. Or rather, what was left of your body was after the seagulls had got at it. You had clearly never left the cave and either drowned or froze to death. There, I said it wasn’t pleasant.”

  “Bloody seagulls,” said Josh, trying to make light of it. “I suppose they must have been hungry with no tourists around to steal ice creams off.”

  “But these are only dreams that both of you are having,” said Kaylee. “None of this is real. We wouldn’t all be sat here now if it were.”

  “It all seems very real when I dream it,” said Alice. “It’s more vivid than any other dream I have ever had. I hadn’t given that much thought to it before tonight. I just dismissed it as some sort of reaction to the trauma and worry of that time, but having heard what Lauren said, I now wonder if there’re more to it.”

  “Can you remember any more details?” asked Josh.

  “Oh, there’s more, a lot more,” replied Alice. “As the years have passed, the dreams have got longer, including events in the years following that time in the cave. These dreams seem to run in time with our world, but take place in a strange, alternate reality where you did die in that cave and my life has carried on without you. This is another reason I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “It’s OK,” said Josh. “I know I’m not dead, any more than Lauren is. Not in this reality, anyway. But there could be more to this than meets the eye. I want to know more.”

  “Are you sure? It can wait until later if you want,” said Alice. “I’m not sure everyone wants to hear about my dreams all night.”

  “I think we do,” said Hannah, and the intense looks on the faces around the table suggested the others did, too. They were finding all of this fascinating.

  “Definitely,” said Josh. “There’s no need to sugar-coat it. I’m a big boy now, don’t leave anything out.”

  Alice sighed and continued. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  She continued, describing how in her dreamworld she had left the university after Josh’s death, accepting a research post with a large technology firm based out in Australia. There she had met and married a local man and had two children.

  If Josh was at all disturbed by this, he didn’t let on. With the wine flowing, it was actually Alice who started to become emotional.

  “It’s been so hard for me, all these years, trying for a baby and failing. Then, when I go to sleep, I have my two children in my dreams. They seem so real to me that often when I wake up and they are not there, it makes me cry.”

  She began to sob now, prompting Kaylee who was seated next to her to lean over and give her a hug. It was unusual for Alice to display emotion like this: she was normally so cool and reserved.

  Then Josh said something unexpected.

  “Those children could be real.”

  Chapter Four

  July 2040

  “How can they be?” asked Charlie, recognising the pensive look on Josh’s face as his brow furrowed. He knew that his friend was about to come out with one of his renowned theories.

  “These dreams about other realities could be down to the consequences of time-travelling into the past,” said Josh. “You know all about the multiverse theory, Charlie, we’ve discussed it before.”

  “He might, but we don’t,” said Hannah. “Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us?”

  Noting the eager look on Josh’s face, Charlie added, “Yes, go on, I can see you’re dying to.”

  Josh was never happier than when given a captive audience to elaborate on his ideas. Such opportunities were rare; it was only in his present company that he was able to command an audience. Taking a large swig of wine to lubricate his palate, he began.

  “The multiverse theory is that there may be an infinite number of universes, based on every possible eventuality that could ever happen. So to demonstrate, if I drink this glass of wine now…”

  He lifted the glass to his lips and took a swig of Chianti.

  “Then that happened in this universe. But if I decided not to take a drink, then in theory there’s another universe somewhere where I didn’t.”

  “Now you mention it, I have heard something about this before,” said Hannah. “It was years ago, in one of those Professor Brian Cox documentaries.”

  “Yeah, I remember that too,” said Kaylee.

  It seemed most of them understood the concept with the exception of the youngest member of the party, who now spoke up.

  “But that’s impossible, surely? Our universe alone is so massive, how could there be room for any more?” Jess had a look of disbelief on her face.

  “You’re being constrained by thinking about it in purely physical terms,” replied Josh. “Our minds just can’t comprehend the sheer size and scale of what we are talking about. So let’s try and put it in more understandable terms.”

  “Dumb it down for me, you mean?” asked Jess.

  “Not at all,” he replied. “Just try and look at it another way. Do you remember at school, those maps of atoms that looked like little solar systems? Well, what if they really were? Not just solar systems, but entire universes? Imagine that, every single atom was an entire universe fitting inside ours. Do you know how many atoms there are in the universe?”

  “Trillions and trillions, I guess,” answered Jess.

  “A lot more than that,” said Josh, taking another swig of wine to lubricate his overactive vocal cords. “I just drank trillions and trillions of atoms in that one sip.”

  “Does anyone know exactly how many?”
asked Hannah.

  “Actually we do. It’s something scientists have been trying to calculate for centuries, and since the mid-2030s we’ve known it precisely, to as much detail as Pi. I can’t rattle off the exact number offhand, but it’s a very long number that begins with a 1 followed by a further 82 digits. That’s an awful lot of atoms. Can you get your head around a number that size?”

  “Well, I can picture a number with 82 digits in it,” said Jess.

  “That’s the easy part,” said Josh. “Actually getting your head around what that number actually means is the mind-stretching part.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s say I can,” said Jess. “What comes next?”

  “OK, imagine that there were that many mini-universes inside ours,” said Josh. “Next, imagine our universe is also only the size of an atom inside an even vaster universe also containing that huge number of universes inside it. And so on and so on.”

  “I think I’m starting to struggle with this,” said Jess.

  “I’m not surprised,” replied Josh. “The whole concept becomes mind-boggling, but if you want to try and visualise it, imagine a set of Russian dolls, where each set of universes fits into the next doll up.”

  This was all getting a bit much for one of the other guests, who had lost the plot long before the Russian doll analogy.

  “My head hurts,” chipped in Lauren. “I think I need more vodka. Where’s Mario when you need him.”

  After a pause to order more drinks, Lauren was content to let the conversation continue as she sipped on her vodka.

  “So where are you going with all this?” asked Hannah. “Do you believe these infinite universes exist?”

  “I’m not sure that they do, in the sense that I have just described,” said Josh. “I don’t know, for example, whether deciding to drink or not to drink my wine really does mean both possibilities exist.”

  “What, you mean there might not be one universe where you are a pisshead and one where you aren’t?” suggested Charlie.

  This created laughter from the others, including Alice. She had got over her emotional moment a few minutes earlier.

  “The truth is, we just don’t know,” said Josh. “It’s all just theory. It’s just as possible that there was only one universe, initially, but then something happened within the structure of that universe to begin creating duplicates. And the most likely cause I can think of is time travel.”

  He cast his eye around the room for something to help support his argument. These things were always best explained with analogies and props, such as that of the Russian dolls. Over on some shelves next to the wine racks were various bits and pieces of bric-a-brac that had accumulated there during the past sixty years. Then he spotted the perfect thing to demonstrate his point.

  “Back in a minute,” he said.

  Josh got up, walked across the room to the shelves, and picked up a small cube, adorned with faded coloured stickers in a 3x3 pattern.

  “It may not be as complex as my Russian doll suggestion,” he said, returning to the table. “Let’s try something a little simpler.”

  “What is that?” asked Jess, looking at the object in his hand.

  “It’s a Rubik’s Cube,” said Josh. “They were very popular in the 1980s but I haven’t seen one for years. It’s a puzzle, see?”

  He rotated one of the sides and handed it to Jess. “You have to make all the colours the same on each side. Here, have a try.”

  Jess began to fiddle around with the cube as Josh carried on talking.

  “Now, how many individual cubes are there within the whole thing?” asked Josh.

  “That’s easy,” said Jess. “It’s 3x3x3, so that’s 27.”

  “Spot on,” said Josh. “So, let’s imagine our universe is the cube right in the centre – the only one that you can’t see. Then imagine someone travelled back in time, twice, and created two alternate universes and placed them either side. You would now have three universes.”

  “OK, got that,” replied Jess.

  “Now imagine each of those three universes spawned two more each. You’ve now got nine, one whole layer of the cube. Repeat that again and there you are, you’ve now got 27 universes, all sitting neatly alongside each other just like in this cube.”

  “But how did the extra universes get created?” asked Jess, still fiddling around with the cube, trying to make one side all yellow. “Dammit, I thought I had it then.”

  “Like I said, by time travel,” said Josh. “It would certainly explain Lauren and Alice’s dreams.”

  “I get it,” said Charlie. “Each time someone travels back in time, they create a new universe. So in the case Alice was talking about, in the original universe you died in the cave, and in the new one, you came back from the future to ensure that you didn’t.”

  “But that doesn’t work, does it?” said Jess. “If he died in the original universe, how did he manage to grow older and come back in time in the first place? He couldn’t have done that, because he was dead in the original.”

  “Yes, that does sort of shoot the theory down in flames,” admitted Josh. “You’re getting into the whole realm of paradoxes. These things are usually and conveniently glossed over in movies and TV, but there are always nit-pickers around who spot them. But there are ways of explaining it.”

  Looking at the sea of blank faces, he could see he was one step ahead of the others, which gave him a sense of satisfaction.

  “You’ve made the assumption that the universe I died in was the original. But it’s more than possible that it was just one of any number of universes I had already created through my previous time travel. Then, for some reason, in that particular universe I was unable to come back from the future that day to save myself.”

  “So there are 27 universes, then?” asked Jess, still playing with the cube and clearly getting frustrated with it.

  “Oh, there could be way more than that,” replied Josh. “I used the Rubik’s Cube just as a demonstration. There could be millions, for all we know. We don’t know how many versions of me there are time-travelling in the different universes or even if I am the only time traveller. The vast majority of this is pure guesswork.”

  “You probably weren’t the first person to travel in time,” said Charlie. “Don’t forget the time bubbles. Someone must have created them.”

  “Yes, but the two we know about only go forward in time,” said Josh. “So you can’t actually change anything in the past with them.”

  “But how did they get there in the first place?” asked Jess.

  “That’s yet another thing we don’t know. Alice and I have been analysing them to try and find out why, but we seem to be creating more questions than we are finding answers at the moment.”

  “Here’s another one to add to the list, then,” said Kaylee. “If we accept these multiple realities exist, how come not all of us are having nightmares or dreams about our other selves in the other universes?”

  “Perhaps it’s something to do with proximity to and the significance of the event that caused the split,” said Josh. “If we accept that the other universe where Alice wasn’t rescued by future me does exist, then she was right at the epicentre of the place and time where the new universe was created. Her direct involvement in the event changed her life irrevocably, which seems to have left some sort of imprint on her mind.”

  “It could be more than that,” said Alice. “Perhaps I have a direct subconscious link to my mind in the other universe that only manifests itself in my dreams. Is that possible?”

  “Who’s to say it isn’t?” said Josh. “There’s nothing to disprove it. The universes may not sit side-by-side like the squares in the Rubik’s Cube. They may all exist in the same space, in a way we can’t even imagine, but through which subconscious thought can travel.”

  “So if that explains Alice’s dream, how does it relate to mine?” asked Lauren.

  “You must have been involved in some sort of time travel
event, too,” said Josh. “Think back to the night of your dream. Did anything unusual happen?”

  “Yes,” she replied excitedly. “Oh my God, it all makes sense now. When Dan attacked me, I thought for a moment there were two of him in the room, an older one and a younger one. When I shot the younger one, the older one disappeared.”

  She paused, and looked directly at Josh. “And not only that. During the melee I looked up and I thought I saw an older version of you looking through the window.”

  “How come you’ve never mentioned any of this before?” asked Alice.

  “Well, it was all very stressful at the time and I doubted afterwards whether I had really seen what I thought I had seen at all. I had just killed a man, after all. I didn’t know anything about your time-travelling from the future at the time, so didn’t make that connection. I knew about the time bubble, of course, but that was in a fixed place, miles away from the Army camp. In the end I put it all down to hallucinations caused by post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, suddenly, it’s all starting to slot into place.”

  “It certainly is,” said Josh. “Whatever happened that night, if there were two versions of Dan there and you saw me as well, we can be pretty sure it can be put down to another time-travelling event. I don’t remember being there, though, so either it hasn’t happened yet in my personal timeline, or it was the Josh from that universe.”

  “How did an older version of Dan get there?” asked Charlie. “How did he learn to time travel?”

  “I was wondering that myself,” said Josh. “I can’t believe he could ever have figured out how to do it himself, but somehow he got there. Then there is also the question of where did he go? Why did he disappear when the younger one died? That contradicts what we said earlier.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Charlie. “Like you said before, it depends whether he was from that universe or not. If it was the same one, then it does make sense, sort of.”

  “Possibly,” said Josh. “Time travel enthusiasts have been trying to work out the nature of these paradoxes for centuries. I don’t think we are going to find all the answers tonight over this meal.”