by Jason Ayres
This didn’t go unnoticed by Alice, who confronted him over it one day in the lab, as he was eagerly explaining to her about plans for his next trip.
“I’ve been analysing all the stats I’ve got on the various universes I’ve been to,” he said, “and I’ve discovered something really interesting.”
“What’s that?” said Alice, barely attempting to feign interest. Once as excited as he was by all their work, she was feeling increasingly jaded at whiling away her life listening to Josh’s sole topic of conversation.
He didn’t notice the obvious boredom in her voice, but then he rarely did. He was so fond of talking nineteen to the dozen about his favourite subject that he was usually oblivious to her reaction. She had become a sounding board, someone to nod and ask questions in the right places. It gave him time to breathe during his many lengthy monologues.
Pausing only to take a sip from the glass water bottle in his right hand, he eagerly launched into telling her about his latest discovery.
“It’s more than interesting, fascinating in fact. I’ve spotted something really unusual that seems to have taken place in the past, causing multiple universes to be created from a single point in space and time. Allow me to elaborate.”
He loved nothing better than a demonstration, an analogy, or a combination of the two. Draining the last of the water from his glass bottle, he held it out in front of him and dropped it on the solid, wooden floor of the lab. Instantly it shattered, with a crashing sound that sent tiny shards of glass in every direction.
“What did you do that for?” said Alice, annoyed.
“It was all part of the presentation. Susie, can you clean that up please?”
The robot cat that sat in the corner of their lab and doubled as a cleaner meowed electronically in acknowledgement. Gliding swiftly and silently across the floor, it began scooping up the larger pieces of glass with its metallic tongue.
“Good girl,” said Josh, before continuing. “Now, at the precise moment when that bottle hit the floor, it split into thousands of tiny fragments, spreading outwards in a shock wave from the centre. Now what if something similar could happen with the universe?”
“What would you suggest dropping it on?” asked Alice slightly sarcastically.
“That was just an analogy,” replied Josh. “To illustrate that I’ve identified a single point in space/time where a similar sort of effect seems to have taken place, creating multiple universes. And what’s even more interesting is that about half of them seem to exist not only at the point of creation, but also solely in the past – almost as if they are stretching backwards in time from that point, not forwards.”
“And you want to find out how this happened, I suppose?” asked Alice.
“Of course,” he replied, enthusiastically. “That’s the whole point of a mystery. It’s there to be solved.”
A whirring sound began, akin to that of an automatic hand dryer, as Susie sucked in the remaining shards of glass using her futuristic hoovering skills. A few seconds later there was a ping sound and a hatch opened on the robot cat’s back.
“Clean up complete,” announced Susie in a feline voice. “Bottle reconstituted containing 99.89% of the original material.”
The reassembled bottle, looking as good as new, emerged from the hatch on Susie’s back. Recycling had come a long way by 2055 and this was just another piece of technological wizardry that was commonplace in these times.
“Thank you, Susie,” remarked Josh, and the cat purred its acknowledgement.
“Look, Josh,” said Alice. “I know how much you enjoy all this, but seriously, don’t you think it’s about time we started to take a back seat from it? We’re in our fifties, for goodness’ sake. We’ve been doing this now for three decades, and I, for one, could do with a break.”
“But there’s so much still to discover, and so many more worlds to explore,” protested Josh.
“That’s as may be,” replied Alice, “but quite frankly, I’d like to spend a little more time exploring this one and in this time. Can’t we knock all this on the head for a bit and go off on a long holiday somewhere? Maybe even travel around the world? I want to do it now, before we get too old.”
“There’s no need to worry about getting old anymore,” said Josh. “Not with the technology we’ve got now. I’m planning on living another hundred years at least. Possibly forever, if the technology to upload brains arrives in time.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. The average lifespan was already well over a hundred, and Buckingham Palace had recently had to employ extra staff to keep up with sending out all the cards. People were replacing their worn-out parts as easily as they changed spark plugs in a car. Nearly every vital organ could be replaced by organically grown replacements, incredibly advanced manufactured replicas, or hybrids of the two.
Only the brain could not be directly replaced, but the trials Josh was referring to about uploading a whole brain into a computer or robot body were at an advanced stage. Such were the incredible complexities of the body’s most vital organ there were still many hurdles to overcome, but the human race was rapidly reaching the point where immortality was becoming possible.
“Really?” asked Alice. “I’m not sure I want to live forever if it means sitting in this lab for all eternity tinkering with time travel. In fact, I’m not sure that everyone living forever is a great idea in any case. We’ve got ten billion people on the planet already. How are we going to feed them all?”
“People have been saying the world is overpopulated for over a century, but we’re managing alright, aren’t we?” said Josh. “There are a lot less starving people in the world than when I was a kid. I used to read dystopian sci-fi books when I was growing up which painted gloomy pictures of a futuristic world at war, fighting over basic resources like water. None of that has come true. Look at the advances we’ve made! You’ve only got to look at the Sahara Desert to see that.”
He was talking about the advanced terraforming techniques that were transforming places like the Sahara into lush, tropical paradises. They produced not only incredibly high yields of genetically modified crops, designed specifically for those environments, but new places to live, too. The Africa of starving millions that popstars had once banded together to raise money for was a distant memory.
“There’s only so much room,” said Alice. “We’re bound to run out of space eventually. It’s not just the people, it’s the robots, too: there will be as many of them as there are of us at the rate we’re going.”
“Why should we run out of space?” asked Josh. “Don’t forget about Mars, there are over a million people there already and that’s just the beginning. Why can’t we spread out across the galaxy? There’s room for all.”
“It takes weeks to get to Mars: how are we going to travel to other stars?” asked Alice.
“The technology will come,” replied Josh. “It always does. There are no limits to what we can achieve.”
There was no point arguing with him, decided Alice. He always had an answer for everything. But she refused to be outmanoeuvred.
“Grr, you always do this,” she protested.
“Do what?” he asked.
“You try and side-track me with all your clever arguments. I don’t care whether we are going to live forever or not, I want a break from all of this. Like I said before, I want a holiday and a long one – six months at least and preferably a year. It’s not like we can’t afford it with the money Oxford have been paying us all these years. It’s about time we enjoyed spending some of it. We’ve no kids and no responsibilities. What’s to stop us?”
She had his full attention now that Josh could see she was serious.
“How soon were you thinking of us going on this trip?” he asked. He wasn’t feeling happy about this at all and it showed in his voice. Anything that took him away from his precious adventures with the tachyometer was to be avoided.
“As soon as possible,” said Alice. She decided to g
rab the bull by the horns. “In fact, how does next week grab you?”
“I can’t go next week,” said Josh, aghast at the thought of being dragged away from his work so soon.
“Why not?” she persisted, “It’s the end of the academic year and we are both due a sabbatical. There’s absolutely no reason we can’t go, other than your addiction to that thing.” She gestured towards the tachyometer, which lay on the desk.
“But…” began Josh.
“There are no buts,” said Alice firmly. “I’ve already made my mind up. I’m going, whether you join me or not. Now you need to make a decision: what’s more important, me, or this? If it’s the latter, then you had better stay here. But don’t be under any illusions. If you let me go alone I can’t guarantee I’ll come back.”
Shocked at her ultimatum, Josh realised he was going to have to come to a compromise. Maybe she was right. He knew how obsessive he had become. Perhaps he ought to have some time away from this. And there was nothing to stop him taking the tachyometer along with him. Maybe they could both take one and then if they did travel the world, he could suggest exploring the history of some of places they would visit, first-hand.
“OK,” he conceded. “I’ll go. But before I do, I want to go back to that point in time I told you about earlier, where the universe seemed to splinter. I’ve established the exact time and date, and I want to find out what happened there on that day to cause it. Allow me to do that at least. Then we can go.”
“I guess that’s fair enough,” she conceded. “When were you planning to go?”
“Well, there’s no time like the present, is there?” said Josh. “Or do I mean the past?”
Alice groaned and rolled her eyes. “Do you know, that’s about the hundredth time you’ve made that joke? It’s getting really boring now.”
Slightly hurt, Josh replied, saying, “Wow, you really do need a break from this, don’t you?”
“Just a tad: did I make it that obvious?”
There was no denying it, he was going to have to take a back seat from this for a while and dedicate some time to her. At least he had the compromise of one last adventure to look forward to first. He had better make the most of it.
“Lame jokes aside, I’m ready to leave right now,” he said.
“I thought you might be,” she said. “You wouldn’t have worn your retro outfit today if you weren’t planning on jaunting off to the past.”
He was wearing a classic VANS T-shirt, of a design that had endured for decades. It was his favourite item of time-travelling gear because he could wear it to virtually any date in the past century without looking out of place. His outfit was completed by a pair of jeans, again an item immune to changes in fashion, and a classic pair of Dunlop trainers. He had learned from a couple of scrapes in his earlier time travels that it was always useful to have a decent pair of running shoes just in case.
“I just need to put my coat on,” he added, taking down a thick parka jacket from the hatstand next to the lab door. He would look odd if he went outside currently wearing this, as it was completely at odds with the heatwave which Oxford was currently basking in.
“I take it the weather’s not so nice where you are going, then?” she enquired.
“Alas not,” he said. “Destination: January 2025. It’s going to be absolutely freezing.”
“Money?” she enquired.
“All sorted,” he said, reaching into the pocket of the parka and pulling out a wallet. He opened it to show her a thick wad of polymer notes, with the image of Queen Elizabeth II on the front.
“I’m an old hand at this now,” he boasted. “I’ve got all the bases covered.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. There had been a number of mishaps involving currency and clothing during his early trips through time, but he had learned from those experiences.
“There is one thing that does worry me,” she added. “This business you’ve described about universes fragmenting. What if you get caught up in the middle of it? What if you are inside that bottle when it breaks? I doubt whether there is going to be some cosmic version of Susie out there ready to scrape you up and put you back together. And assuming you even survive, you could end up anywhere.”
“Relax,” said Josh. “I’ll be fine. As long as I’ve got the tachyometer then I can make my way back. And you’ve got the spare here. If I don’t come back, come and rescue me.”
“What, and risk getting shattered in the exploding bottle, too?” she said. “No thanks.”
“I’ll show you exactly where I’m going and when. I’ll arrive before the event takes place. If it all goes wrong and I don’t come back, all you need to do is get there early and warn me. Screen on.”
At these words, one whole wall of the lab lit up with a map of Oxford on it. To the east of the city was a large red cross.
“X marks the spot,” he said.
She looked closely at the map. “That’s the John Radcliffe, isn’t it?”
“Got it in one,” he said. “To be precise, it’s somewhere on level 6, close to where the men’s ward used to be.”
“I still think this whole expedition sounds dangerous, almost as if you’re putting yourself into the path of an F5 tornado,” she said. “Do you really have to go there?”
“I have to find out what happened on that day,” he insisted. “It’s a pivotal point between the universes. I’ll never be able to relax if I don’t get to the bottom of it.”
Alice knew there was no way to dissuade him: there never was when he got like this.
“Go on then,” she said. “But this has to be the last time, for a long time. We’re taking a year off after this, and that’s final.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, already scheming ways to get around it. Yes, she wanted a year off, but he didn’t have to come straight back after his trip to the hospital, did he? He could go off exploring other universes for a few weeks and come back at his leisure.
Maybe he could get the travelling bug out of his system if he gorged on it for a bit. As long as he made sure he returned to the lab a few minutes after he had left, she would be none the wiser.
“And you still want me to come and look for you if you get lost?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Josh, handing her one of the spare tachyometers. “Use this one to get there. I’ve set it for five minutes before I arrive. It will set you down outside in the hospital gardens, hopefully unseen as it will be night-time. Then just wait for me to appear. And don’t forget to wear some warm clothes.”
He handed her a sheet of paper with the precise details of the location of the X on the map. Then handing her the third tachyometer, he added, “And bring this one along, too, so we can both get back just in case anything’s amiss with mine and that’s why I haven’t returned.”
“How long do you want me to wait before I come to look for you?” she asked.
“If I’m not back here by this time tomorrow, then something’s gone wrong,” he said. “Not that it will,” he added. “I’m an old hand at this now. What could possibly go wrong?”
As always he was confident – too confident perhaps. In a few hours’ time he may have cause to regret these hastily spoken words.
Chapter Eight
January 2025
He materialised late at night in the gardens of the hospital, just as planned.
Acclimatised as he was to July temperatures, the cold January air was more of a shock to his system than he had expected. There was a strong breeze and even with the thick coat he was wearing, he felt the cold air slicing into him. Shivering, he pulled the hood of the parka over his head.
Of Alice, there was no sign. He had hoped that would be the case. If she hadn’t come after him, then it was reasonable to assume nothing could have gone wrong. He thought she had been worrying over nothing. Before she knew it, he would be back in the lab, safe and sound, barely minutes after he had left.
It might be minutes for her, but from his persp
ective, it wouldn’t be for a good few weeks. After he was finished investigating what had occurred here, he planned to go off exploring at his leisure. If Alice was going to force him to go on this sabbatical, then he was damned sure he was going to make the most of this trip while he could.
He was well prepared for an extended stay in the past. He had over two thousand pounds in currency on him, in the twenty-pound notes appropriate to the time. These were simple to forge with 2055 technology. No one had ever questioned their authenticity on his previous trips back to this time period. Technically it was a crime, but not one he was going to lose any sleep over.
Two grand was more than enough to keep him going for a couple of weeks. And if he needed more, it wouldn’t be a problem getting hold of some. Defrauding cashpoints was another little application he had built into the tachyometer. Their security was primitive by the standards of Josh’s time. He didn’t feel any qualms about obtaining money in this way, either. As far as he was concerned, rich banks who could pay their bosses multimillion pound salaries could afford to finance him on his trips.
The only downside to these cashpoint raids was that he needed to make himself pretty scarce afterwards, knowing his actions would be captured on the local CCTV. Being thrown in prison minus the tachyometer was not something he aspired to.
For that reason, he kept cashpoint scamming to a minimum and utilised a few other dishonest practices he had developed during his previous time travels. Dining out at Oxford’s finest restaurants wasn’t cheap – unless you had a tachyometer of course. Josh wasn’t averse to enjoying the best of the menu and the wine list, before excusing himself to the nip to the gents. At this point he would conveniently vanish from the scene. Again, it was stealing, but he considered it justified in the interests of “research”.
Standing outside the hospital, he was filled with ever greater confidence due to Alice’s non-appearance. Eager to get out of the cold, he began to make his way towards the brightly lit hospital entrance at the far end of the garden. It was very quiet and there didn’t seem to be anyone around at all, but that was hardly surprising considering it was 2am in the middle of winter.