Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times)

by Mark Lawrence

  A series of grunts and affirmatives.

  ‘Three, two, one, action!’ Old Mia shouted.

  Old Mia and Elton hit the buttons that would wipe Young Mia and Young Nick’s memories back to the moment of Nick’s turning on the lights. A second later Elton hit all the light switches and slipped the memory band from Nick’s head just as Mia slipped the other band from her younger self’s head. Mia and Elton then withdrew rapidly.

  Both Mia and Nick were on their own travels through time in that moment. Their memory of the last forty minutes had been erased. We had sent them back to the crucial moment simply by playing with their memories. It might seem a cheap trick compared to actually moving backward through time. But time is just a different kind of illusion. Though one seems fundamental and the other a human conceit, they are in fact deeply connected. Memory and time, time and memory. The universe doesn’t care about time. We care about time. Because we remember.

  In the next instant, a disoriented young Nick came stumbling through the chairs towards me and with a roar of effort managed to haul the already dead Ian Rust off me. At which point I hit the corpse with my hammer again.

  Having done my job, I lay back against the chair pretending to be dying while Nick checked on Mia, who before the memory wipe had washed her drying blood off her own neck and replaced it with fresh fake blood from the supply Old Mia had brought along for Mr Arnot.

  Soon enough, with no taser wires to distract Mia, both she and Nick were fussing over me and asking questions. My answers led them back to Mr Arnot who Mia hadn’t yet seen, and they both stood contemplating his apparently dead body in silent horror.

  ‘Mia . . .’ I lifted a hand to the hilt jutting from my side. My voice fell lower still. ‘I can’t speak to her. But you will, Nick. You’ll understand.’

  ‘You never did have a plan to go back,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I whispered heroically.

  ‘You need to be in hospital . . .’

  I shook my head. A trip to hospital was the last thing I wanted. ‘The two of you have to erase today from your minds, Nick. It’s important. You can’t know these things. They’ll poison you both.’

  ‘But . . . I die here?’ He looked horrified, and I knew exactly how he felt.

  ‘I knew this was the end for me, but I didn’t know how. I’m not brave enough to have done it knowing all the details, and to let it happen just as you saw it. Rub those memories out.’

  ‘Christ.’ Mia knelt beside me. ‘Nick? You came back to do this . . . for me?’ The way she looked at me then was the first time I could really see my Mia in those eyes. ‘You came here to die for me?’

  I coughed and looked away. I tried to offer alternatives that might take the sharp edges off for her. ‘Maybe my cancer returned. Maybe I found out after I came back that time travel may only work on living things, but they don’t live long afterwards. It’s not a gentle process. The truth is that neither of you should know what I gave up or why. Neither of you want to know.’ I lay back and tried not to over-act the death scene. I knew my Mia was crouched not far away, judging me from the perspective of a successful film actress. I sucked in a breath I intended to hold until they were gone and used part of it to whisper, ‘I’ve given you what you need. Take away the memories. Give yourself back your future. Live your lives.’ A little grandiose, maybe, but not bad for off the cuff. Young Mia had tears in her eyes. The other Mia was probably crouched behind a table trying not to laugh.

  CHAPTER 23

  1986

  Young Mia and Nick hurried off and out of the restaurant doors, away to their rendezvous with John, Simon and Elton. I now viewed all three of those young men in a very different light, part of a decades-old conspiracy that Mia and I had instigated and yet been wholly ignorant of until this night.

  Mr Arnot helped Mia bring in her substitute corpse while I ran off to put the bag with the memory bands back into the bushes where Young Nick would be expecting to find them. After that we waited until all five of the teenagers had headed off in search of a taxi, and then brought in the corpse that was to stand in for me.

  Between the three of us we staged a convincing crime scene and removed as much as we could of any evidence that pointed towards a different story.

  And, finally, we went home: Mr Arnot to his millions and me and Mia to her luxury Richmond flat overlooking the Thames.

  ‘Are we safe now?’ Mia had asked. ‘From the paradox, I mean.’

  ‘Everything I remembered happening has happened. Young Nick has seen exactly what I saw. His life should unfold the same way mine has. Sure, from our side of the curtain, those events look totally different and have a whole new interpretation, but from his side, and in my memory, nothing has changed.’

  We lay in bed that night watching the stars in the black sky over the river. Even in London a few stars shine bright enough to be seen.

  I watched them for hours with Mia sleeping beside me. Mia who had saved me from myself and then come back to save herself, weaving a deeper and wider illusion of her own around the one that I had tried to fool myself with.

  I thought about where and when we might go next. Where and when our story had started and the time and place it might end. It seemed to me that those weren’t questions that could be answered, however much you knew. The stories of our lives don’t behave themselves; they don’t have clear beginnings, and even death isn’t a clear end. We just do what we can, we take what kindness and joy we find along the way, we ride the rapids as best we’re able.

  Time and memory. Memory and time. The forking of timelines might seem to take away meaning from our own path, but surely it’s the ultimate comfort. We can look at ourselves and say that this isn’t everything we are. We know now that all of us are explored across an infinity of universes, and that’s the big kind of infinity, not one of those pokey countable infinities. We are all of us endless. Every possibility gets its chance. The best and the worst of us walk the stage. All of our choices sampled. Every mistake made and avoided.

  I lay there and I wasn’t sure of my past or my future. But I was sure of my present, and it was good.

  ‘Hey.’ Mia rolled sleepily against me. ‘Still awake?’

  ‘I am. Can’t sleep.’ I put an arm around her. ‘We did good today. I’m so glad Mr Arnot didn’t die.’

  ‘And you,’ she mumbled, stroking a hand across my arm.

  ‘Me, too,’ I agreed. ‘But I owe Mr Arnot. After all, it was him who told me to kiss the girl.’

  ‘Silly.’ Mia snorted and kissed me. ‘I told him to say that. Some things you just can’t leave to chance.’

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I'd like to thank Jack Butler and his team for welcoming me to 47North, and to thank Jack along with Emma Coode and Julie Crisp for their work in editing the trilogy. I'm also indebted to Hatty Stiles for getting so many eyes on the books in a series of great launches.

  As always, I’m very grateful to Agnes Meszaros for her continued help and feedback. As my beta reader she's never shy to challenge me when she thinks something can be improved or I'm being a little lazy. At the same time her passion and enthusiasm made working on the story even more enjoyable.

  I should also thank, as ever, my agent, Ian Drury, and the team at Sheil Land.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2010 Nick Williams

  Before becoming an author, Mark Lawrence was a research scientist for twenty years, working on artificial intelligence. He is a dual national, with both British and American citizenship, and has held secret-level clearance with both governments. At one point, he was qualified to say, ‘This isn’t rocket science – oh wait, it actually is.’

  He is the author of the Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns), the Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key and The Wheel of Osheim) and the Book of the Ancestor series (Red Sister, Grey Sister and Holy Sister).

  Lawrence, Dispel Illusion (Impossible Times)