by Jason Ayres
Settled in his room, he picked up the newspaper again and read the tributes to the dead rockstar. Most of the first eight pages were taken up by dedications to him. This sort of coverage was only reserved for major stars, so why had Josh never heard of him?
Reading on, he discovered that the mysterious Andy Green had become a huge global star after winning a TV reality show in the early noughties. Looking through his pictures, he again had the uncanny feeling that he had met the man before. When he read in the obituary that the deceased was from his own home town, he suddenly realised who he was.
He did know him and his name was indeed Andy Green but he was no rockstar in Josh’s world. He was just a lowlife drunk, the sort that could be found propping up the bars in any town. Josh remembered that this Andy had been more or less a permanent fixture at the bar in The Red Lion back in the days before the Black Winter.
He had also been one of the first people to enter the time bubble, observed by Josh and Charlie on the very first day they had discovered it. So how was it that he was now apparently a dead rockstar?
Further down the article, Josh found something even more unsettling. Apparently Prime Minister Ed Miliband had paid tribute to the star, saying his music had been inspirational to him during his early political career. It was the sort of guff all politicians came out with on such occasions, but it wasn’t Miliband’s sincerity or lack of it that concerned Josh.
It was the fact that Ed Miliband was Prime Minister that stood out. The evidence now was irrefutable. The damaged tachyometer wasn’t just taking him back in time; it was taking him to other universes as well. Was this a result of the splintering effect of what had happened in the hospital? If so, did he have any hope of ever getting back? He couldn’t hope for any rescue from Alice now. Even if she was looking for him, how could she know which universe he was in?
What had caused this universe to deviate from the path his own had? How had Andy become a rockstar, and how had Ed Miliband become Prime Minister? Was it down to something he or one of his other selves had done?
For the first time since he had started on this lifelong quest to conquer the secrets of time travel, he began to experience feelings of regret and fear. The realisation that he might be trapped in the past forever was bringing negative emotions to the fore. Alice had warned him over and over to be careful but he had been blasé about it and now he had paid the price. Things had got seriously out of hand.
He lay back on the bed, close to tears at his predicament. All these years of tinkering and experimenting and where had it got him? Lost in the past, in another universe, with a device that could only send him further and further back in time each time he used it. Next time it would be sixteen days, then thirty-two. If the time he was in now seemed unfamiliar, what was it going to be like when he started travelling back further into history – perhaps to a time before he had even been born? And how different might some of the other universes turn out to be?
The prospects were frightening. In his head, he started to make a few mental calculations based on the assumption of the doubling of each trip. Within five more jumps he would be more than a year in the past. Another five would take him back into the 20th century. The prospects of finding any assistance that far back in time would be remote.
If he was going to get out of this, he needed to find help sooner rather than later. By far his best hope would be to track down his younger self in the current universe to explain his predicament. Then, perhaps his counterpart could come back from the future to help him, just as he had helped his own younger self that time with the helicopter.
It was the only plan he had on the table for the moment, and was certainly a better choice than taking another trip with the tachyometer. Only if he could not get help in this world would he use it again.
Since it seemed he was going to be staying for a while, he needed to sort out a few things, not least of which was a fresh set of clothes and some toiletries. He would go into town, get what he needed, have a decent meal with a much-needed bottle of wine, then come back and enjoy a nice, long soak in the bath and a decent night’s sleep. Seeking out his younger self could wait until tomorrow.
The following morning, suitably refreshed, he left the hotel, booking himself in for another night as a precaution. With no idea what the day would hold he was unsure if he would be coming back or not.
He packed as much stuff as he could squeeze into his backpack, leaving most of his dirty clothes behind. If he managed to find a way home today, he wasn’t going to be bothered about them.
He walked through the centre of Oxford, and made his way to the station to catch the train to his home town. His plan was to go straight to his family home. If his life here hadn’t deviated from his own, then that was where his younger self ought to be. He would be twenty-three years old and living back at home, prior to getting a flat with Alice a year or two later.
It was Saturday and he didn’t have to wait long for a train. Getting a seat proved out of the question, though. The train was packed with visitors to the designer shopping mall outside his town. It attracted thousands of people every day from all over the world.
Josh was a little nervous about knocking on the door of his family home. Would they recognise him? They had no reason to. Although there might be a family resemblance, there was no reason whatsoever why any of them could even contemplate the possibility of an older version of him turning up out of the blue.
Was going straight to the front door the right idea or not? Might it not be better to wait for Josh to go out? Possibly, that would avoid any awkward conversations with other members of the family. But it was cold, and he was impatient. He had come this far: he couldn’t wait any longer.
In 2024, Josh’s family had lived on Magnolia Avenue in a large, detached house. It was a new build completed a few years previously and had cost over half a million pounds. His father had his own building business and had done well enough out of it for them to afford it.
As Josh approached the house where he had spent his late teenage years, he recognised his father’s van outside, which had Geoff Gardner and Son, General Builders printed along the side.
That was a promising start. The son didn’t refer to Josh, but rather his elder brother. He had taken over the business after his father had died, and was still running it in the 2050s, along with his own son.
Josh had mixed feelings about the possibility of seeing his parents again. Both had died many years ago and he had only visited them once in the past since he had begun time-travelling. That was to attend their wedding day in 1992 and Josh had found the whole experience so bittersweet that he had decided not to do so again.
Now circumstances had led him to their door, but it wasn’t them he had come to see. Ideally he wanted to avoid them. His father would be bound to want to know who this middle-aged man was calling for his son on Saturday lunchtime. He always wanted to know everybody’s business. Attempting to explain the truth would be pointless – he knew his father would dismiss him as a conman, his usual take on people he didn’t know or trust.
Josh noticed that the front garden looked a bit of a mess. There were weeds growing all over the lawn which surprised him. His father had always kept it immaculate. Hoping this wasn’t a sign of anything untoward he strode up to the front door and rang the bell.
It took an age for anyone to answer and when the door opened, as expected by Josh’s father, he was shocked by what he saw.
“Who are you? What do you want?” bellowed his father.
The blunt manner and aggressive questioning weren’t completely out of character for his father, who had always been blunt in his approach to people. But his appearance was all wrong.
He looked dishevelled, tired and much older than Josh had expected. He was also in his dressing gown, which was unheard of for his father at this time of day. He had always been an early riser, a keen devotee of that old proverb ‘the early bird catches the worm’.
It seemed he had
let himself go, just as much as he had neglected the front lawn. Josh would need to tread carefully.
“I’m a friend of Josh’s,” he said, swiftly adding, “from the university” by way of explanation.
“Are you taking the piss?” replied his father. “What are you, some sort of journalist, after a cheap story? You people make me sick.”
“No, honestly, I’m a good friend of his,” replied Josh. This conversation wasn’t going according to plan at all. “I’m a lecturer at the university. We’ve been working together on a project.”
“If you really were a friend of Josh’s, you would know he’s not here. He’s not been here for a long time.”
“Where is he, then?” replied Josh.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” replied his father, almost trembling. Josh had never seen him looking this upset. He had been a tough, powerful man with a strong voice to match, but now his tone was wavering.
“Are you alright, Dad,” blurted out Josh, without thinking.
“Dad?” exclaimed his father angrily. “What sort of sicko are you? Get off my property now, or I’ll call the police.”
With that, the door was slammed firmly in his face, leaving Josh to ponder the little exchange that had just taken place.
Something had clearly deviated seriously off-track here. Had something bad happened to him in this timeline? That would certainly explain why his father had been so upset. It hadn’t helped matters that he had accidentally called him “Dad”. It was something that had just come naturally to him, without even thinking about it.
Despite this little faux pas, his father hadn’t recognised him, but then why would he? What reason would he have for expecting a middle-aged version of his youthful son to turn up on his doorstep? Josh was used to this sort of thing, it was an invariable consequence of time-travelling, but it was beyond the experience of the vast majority of people.
It was only as he turned and walked away from the house that he saw something that added some perspective to the conversation. On the back of his father’s van was a missing person poster which read:
Have you seen this man – missing since June 2024.
Phone 01869 734825 with any information.
The photo was inevitably of Josh’s younger self. For whatever reason, he had gone missing in this universe. Now he needed to find out why. Was it something to do with time travel? It would seem the most likely explanation and there were precedents.
He couldn’t try and get any more information from his father after the earlier conversation, but there was someone else in the town that might be able to shed some light on the situation.
Ten minutes later, he was standing at the front door of Charlie’s childhood home. This would have been a couple of years before he and Kaylee had got married. They had been living together in Charlie’s mother’s house at the time, trying to save the money for a deposit on a house.
When the door opened, Josh was relieved to see a perfectly normal and youthful-looking Charlie standing right in front of him. Perhaps he would have more luck here.
“Alright, Charlie?” he said confidently. “Guess who?”
Unlike Josh’s father, Charlie realised who he was right away.
“Josh! Oh my God, you did find a way back, then. But look at you! You’re an old man!”
Josh didn’t know where Charlie thought he had been, but clearly there were two different stories going on here, an inevitable consequence of getting your universes mixed up, it seemed.
“Can I come in?” he asked. “And put some coffee on, I could really do with one.”
Charlie led the way through to the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anyone else about.
“Are we alone?” asked Josh.
“Yes, Kaylee and Mum have gone Christmas shopping,” replied Charlie.
“That’s handy,” replied Josh. “It gives us a chance to talk – and we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“We certainly have,” said Charlie. “How did you get back? And why did it take you so long?”
“I think this is going to be a very long explanation,” replied Josh. “And possibly not the one you were expecting.”
Over the next half-hour, Josh summarised everything that had happened, right back to their original adventures with the time bubble.
“So that’s how I ended up here,” he concluded.
“Fascinating,” said Charlie, “absolutely fascinating. There are so many parallels between our worlds, yet so many differences, too.”
It was time for Charlie to tell the story from his perspective. He explained how, at first, things had followed the same path here as they had in Josh’s universe. The two of them had discovered the time bubble back in October 2018, just as Josh remembered, but in this timeline, events had played out differently.
The first point of difference they could find in their own timelines revolved around Andy Green. He had been one of the first people to fall into the original bubble, but here that hadn’t happened. He no longer lived in the town in 2018, as he was busy finding fame and fortune elsewhere on the planet.
“The rockstar lifestyle didn’t do him any good, did it?” remarked Charlie. “Dead because of drink and drugs like so many others.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly take it easy on the booze in my universe either,” replied Josh. “Nor did he last much longer. In just a few years from now he’ll fall over drunk in the snow and freeze to death.”
As they continued to compare notes, they examined how the timeline had changed more and more from that point onwards. The Time Bubble Team still existed, albeit in a reduced capacity. Kaylee had not gone missing in this timeline and consequently the police had never become involved. Charlie had never had any dealings with Hannah who consequently had never met Peter. Charlie confirmed the inevitable consequences of this, which was that Peter had died of leukaemia during their final year of A Levels.
The time bubble had, however, proved troublesome in other ways, leading the reduced team to conclude that it had to be shut down. This had resulted in Josh deciding to enter the bubble in June 2024, with the aim of travelling to the future to find a way to disable it.
He had by that time begun working with Professor Hamilton who had agreed to help. Charlie didn’t know all the technical details, but between them, they had seemed confident of success. If all had gone well, Josh would have returned to this time, the same age as when he left, leaving nobody any the wiser.
“That’s why I asked why you had been gone so long,” said Charlie. “I assumed you’d become stuck in the future and not been able to make it back for decades, hence why you now look so older. But since you aren’t him and after all you’ve told me, I’m starting to wonder if the other you will make it back at all. Is it possible if he did try to come back from the future that he ended up in the wrong universe?”
“Virtually anything’s possible judging by my experiences over the last few days,” replied Josh. “So when I failed to reappear, did you say anything to my family? I saw my dad earlier – he’s in a pretty bad way.”
“What could we say?” asked Charlie. “At first we thought you might be back in a few days, but the longer it went on, the harder it got. And you know what your dad’s like. What would he have said if we’d rolled up and told him all this? I know it’s hard for them, but at least now we know it didn’t work, we can stop him jumping again, assuming he comes out safe and sound in January 2030.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that,” said Josh, recalling that, in January 2030, the tunnel would be under several metres of snow. He was almost certain the Black Winter would still happen whatever other changes had occurred to the timeline. It fell into the category of events on a cosmic scale that no amount of tinkering down here on the surface of the planet could change.
“So, what are you going to do now?” asked Charlie.
“Well, I thought about going to see Professor Hamilton to see if he could help, but he’s not going to be around for a fe
w weeks yet. He always used to go back to Scotland for Christmas and Hogmanay. I’m not sure he’ll be able to help me anyway. He retired long before I started having any success with the time travel experiments, so it’s not like he’s going to have the solution. I think I’m going to have to make another jump and hope next time I can find my other self.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” said Charlie.
“There is something you could do for me, actually,” said Josh. “When your Josh does eventually reappear, can you tell him everything I’ve told you? Even if I’m not in this time or this universe, if I can spread the word around the multiverse, then maybe rescue might be forthcoming at some point. Have you got a scanner on your phone?”
“Of course,” replied Charlie.
“OK, then can you take a copy of all of these notes and pass them on to him?”
He produced his notebooks, detailing all his trips in time and the different universes he had visited.
“There’s a lot here,” remarked Charlie.
“I know, but it could prove vital. I know it’s a long shot, but I’ve got to explore every possible way of getting home.”
“Do you want to stick around for a while?” asked Charlie. “Kaylee and Mum will be back soon.”
“It’s probably best I don’t,” said Josh. “Obviously I’d love to see Kaylee again, but how would we explain my presence to your mum? I assume she’s in the dark about the time bubble, just as in my universe?”
“She is,” said Charlie. “Yes, I can see how that could cause some awkward questions.”
Josh had enjoyed chatting with Charlie and wasn’t in any great rush to leap on to the next universe. There would be no harm spending another night here with so much uncertainty ahead.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m staying at a small hotel in Oxford and have booked in for tonight already. How about I delay my next jump until tomorrow morning? Then you, Kaylee and I can meet up for a bite to eat tonight. It’ll give me a chance to tell you about some more of my adventures. I’m also fascinated by some of the other differences I’ve noticed between your universe and mine – Ed Miliband being PM for a start. Maybe we can figure out how they came about.”