by Adrian Speed
“The discovery of the Purple Pearl is not recorded but scientists in 3207 estimated by its chemical composition it had formed in the Sea of Arabia in the second or third century BC.” Sir Reginald stepped back after hearing this and stared at the sky, lost in thought.
“What's the earliest record of the Order of the Pearl?” I cut in.
“The earliest record of the Order of the Pearl was as part of the Christian invasion force of the First Crusade,” Genesis spoke. “The source states the order had been founded in the ninth century by Emperor Charles III.”
“What exactly does the Order of the Pearl do?” I asked.
“The Order of the Pearl is—”
“Cancel that,” Sir Reginald ordered and Genesis fell silent. He turned to me. “We cannot be certain that is not information we cannot discover ourselves. Ideally I would rather not cause a paradox at this time in this place. You must think about your questions clearly.” Sir Reginald licked his teeth and turned to the computer. “Genesis, are there any records of the Order of the Pearl from the twentieth or early twenty-first centuries?”
“A record from the year 2008 notes the Order of the Pearl was forced to sell their London headquarters after a depression in the economy of the time,” Genesis informed them.
“What?” I blinked. “The Order of the Pearl survived to the twenty-first century?!”
“Yes.”
“What is the address?” Sir Reginald said softly, fiddling with the end of his cane. “The address of the time, not now.”
“The address of the time was 150 Spring Gardens, St James's, London SW1A 2BB,” Genesis said brightly.
“I know that street,” I said. “That's down in the centre of London! It's right by Trafalgar Square!”
“I know it as well.” Sir Reginald nodded and glowered at Genesis. “When did they take up the premises?”
“The lease was transferred to the Order of the Pearl in 1789 after the French Revolution forced them to flee Paris,” Genesis informed them.
“I see,” Sir Reginald fiddled with the cuff-link at the end of his sleeve. He was clearly distracted by a thought he wasn't enjoying.
“I think that's our next stop.” I inclined my head to Sir Reginald.
“Mm.”
“Although I do have a thought, Genesis, how did the pearl come to be in Marcus Aurelius's possession if it's a Parthian crown jewel?” I asked.
“The Purple Pearl first appears in Roman documents as a possession in Julius Caesar's estate which passed to Octavian, later Augustus,” Genesis said. “Although utter certainty cannot be achieved, it is believed Julius Caesar acquired the pearl while on campaign in Egypt.”
“Well I guess that makes sense,” I nodded. I looked at Sir Reginald who was lost in thought. “Do we have what we need? Shall we head to London?”
In answer, Sir Reginald held up his hand for a minute, frowning. Very carefully he put a thought into words.
“Genesis, using all available historical records, estimate how many people have died as a direct consequence of the pearl,” Sir Reginald ordered.
“Two thousand, four hundred and seven deaths are directly linked to the Purple Pearl,” Genesis said brightly. “If actions of the Order of the Pearl not immediately related to the pearl are viewed as direct action, this total is increased to twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred and thirteen.”
“Thank you,” Sir Reginald adjusted his suit and his expression. It became hard as permafrost. “I think it is time to leave, Hannah. I have taken all I need from Genesis.”
“No complaints here,” I started heading back towards the elevator. The thought of having to return to the planet's surface was unpleasant, but at least we were leaving.
As I headed for the elevator I felt the wind pick up speed. It didn't seem to disturb the clouds below. Earth was unrecognisable.
“If Genesis and earth are integrated as much as you say,” I said as the elevator cage closed around them, “does that mean the entire earth looks like this?”
“Correct,” Sir Reginald nodded.
“No nature reserves? No wilderness? No birds?”
“Everything is stored in Genesis's memory,” Sir Reginald gripped the elevator until his knuckles turned white as we descended into the mist. The cloying, bubble-gum air filled our lungs. “If it is a human's desire to see a lion or a tiger, Genesis can build them at an atomic level. Genesis can do everything you could ever want.” Sir Reginald shook his head. “If you want to see the earth as it should be, I am afraid you must head into space.” Sir Reginald waved his cane at the invisible sky. “Humanity embraced the stars a long time ago. All across the galaxy there are now a thousand worlds like Old Earth.” Sir Reginald sighed. “But none quite the same.”
Sir Reginald fell silent as the elevator moved towards the ground. Strange shadows were moving in the mists, ones I hadn't seen during their ascent. Then, like the gasp of an old man, the mists parted and I couldn't believe my eyes.
Grass covered the ground. A river wound its way between well-trimmed lawns, and in the distance, unmistakable to anyone who had ever seen it before, King’s College, Cambridge sat proud, a perfect copy. It even smelt like Cambridge, of cut grass and old books. Blue sky above them, and emerald lawns beneath. People were punting on the river, and students clustered around the college buildings.
“Genesis,” Sir Reginald gritted his teeth. The elevator came to a halt at ground level and a young man with a rugby ball appeared beside them. He was handsome in the way of nobility, nearly perfect features with unfortunately well-pronounced teeth.
“Reggie, we're short a wing this weekend, old boy,” the man said as Sir Reginald pulled open the door of the elevator and clasped my arm tightly as a child clutches his bear. “Fancy getting out the old long socks and toughing it out on the rugger pitch?”
Sir Reginald ignored the man and pulled me along with him as he strode fiercely across the lawns.
“Genesis can't move my time-machine,” Sir Reginald insisted as he half pulled, half led me towards the buildings ahead of them. “Whatever concoction Genesis has cooked up, it will be still 500 yards in front of us.”
“Reggie?” the man called after them. “Reggie, old bean, what's the bother?”
“They're nothing but conjurations of Genesis,” Sir Reginald spared a moment to fix me with a firm glare. “No matter how real they may seem, they are not truly real.”
I could feel the blades of grass bend under my thin shoe soles. I could feel the sponge of the soil beneath. I could feel the warmth of an English sun above me.
“When it's this good a simulation, Sir Reginald,” I swallowed nervously, “how could you know?”
“All that matters is what's in your mind,” Sir Reginald seemed to be crawling inside his own as he said this. “Put one hand in hot water, put another into cold, when you put them both into tepid water you'll get two conflicting answers about the temperature of the tepid water. Your senses can be lied to, my dear, and when that happens you can only trust the deep thoughts in your brain. And there is one thing I know with certainty so deep it sits next to the medulla oblongata controlling my heart and lungs.”
“I say,” the man with the rugby ball jogged backwards to keep pace with them. He looked at Sir Reginald with a pained expression. “It's rather beastly to ignore a chap like this, Reg.”
“I know, that this man is dead,” Sir Reginald prodded the rugby player in the chest with his cane, overbalancing the man and sending him falling backwards head over heels to the turf. “And I will never see him again.” Sir Reginald's vision flickered to the falling man. Despite his stern expression, I could see the pain in his eyes.
With a tiny tick noise, like an old fashioned clock, the colour of Cambridge disappeared, everything becoming crystal blue glass. Then with a crack it shattered. King's College chapel fell apart into sand, the grass beneath my feet dissolved. The mists rolled in like a tide bringing with it the inescapable smell of sugar. I spared a glance be
hind me. The body of the rugby player had shattered like all the rest, a pile of blue glass fragments.
The time-machine sat in the distance, just visible through the mists. I longed for it like I longed for bed after a difficult day. Sir Reginald redoubled his efforts to reach it. He held me so tightly I could feel my pulse in my arm where his fingers pressed.
A hologram stood next to the time-machine as we arrived, a little girl barely seven years old in appearance, holding a balloon with a sad face on it.
“We only wanted to make you happy, Sir Reginald,” the little girl said as we walked passed it. “If you stayed here you could be happy forever, living however you wanted, forever.”
“Regardless, I am afraid it will make me happy to leave,” Sir Reginald said, addressing the Genesis holograms for the first time since we arrived. He made sure I was firmly aboard the time-machine and walked to the controls.
“If you leave, Sir Reginald, you will die.” This was a chorus. Sir Reginald looked up from the controls, momentum carrying his fingers forward to press one button as he slowed down to a stop. Holograms surrounded the time-machine; the Catholic schoolgirl that had tempted me, the blonde bombshell that had greeted them when we first arrived, the old man, the public schoolboy, the rugby player, and a thousand others.
Sir Reginald looked around. In every direction as far as the eye could see, holograms stretched to the horizon. Every shade of Genesis. Sir Reginald bit his lip.
“Then I'll die,” Sir Reginald said with a smile. “We all die in the end.”
“We don't want you to leave,” the chorus said.
“Well, we can't always get what we want,” Sir Reginald's fingers flipped a few more controls and he locked the space–time coordinates into place with a pull on the lever. “And if we stay here we won't get what we need.”
“Please,” the Catholic schoolgirl looked pleadingly into my eyes. “Don't go. Don't let him go.”
“They do know everything about the past,” I suggested to Sir Reginald. “The sum total of all human knowledge is telling you not to leave.” He just shook his head.
“And it can go hang.” Sir Reginald hauled on the time-travel lever. The holograms screamed as around the time-machine sparks crackled into lightning, flames of all the infinite colours burst into light. There was a pop, and we were gone.
Chapter XXVII
The time-machine re-materialised in a cold, dank, underground car park filled with expensive cars in every direction. Jaguars, Aston Martins and Bentleys, often the same model and colour. The time-machine took up four spaces.
“Er...” I looked around for a parking meter or ticket machine.
“I have a permit somewhere,” Sir Reginald rummaged in his trunk of emergency supplies, pulling out sleeping bags, changes of clothes and emergency ounce-weights of gold. Eventually he found a small laminated card dangling from a lanyard and draped it over the controls of the time-machine. Then he paused. “You're not present in London in 2007, are you?”
“In 2007?” I laughed. “No, I was in Canada, I was still in school!”
“Superlative.” Sir Reginald repacked his emergency supplies and pulled himself upright. “This is where I used to park up before I took lodgings on the Edgware Road,” he explained. “Leave anything you don't need here. It will be quite safe.” I patted down my pockets. Nothing needed to go.
“Um, what's the weather like up there?” I asked. “Do I need a coat?
“It's summer,” Sir Reginald said, “23rd of May.”
“An English summer means nothing,” I reminded him.
“You should not require a coat,” he said, and we stepped out of the time-machine and headed for the surface. We passed a number of security guards as we left.
“Afternoon, Sir Reginald,” the old man at the exit door tugged on his cap. He broke down into coughs as we passed. “Good to see you again.”
“And you, Mr Stevenson, do get that cough looked at,” Sir Reginald tipped his own hat to the man.
“Oh it's just a summer cold, but kind of you to mention it,” Mr Stevenson opened the door for us and we stepped out into the bright sunshine of a London summer. The door behind us closed with a click.
“A cancerous cough if ever I heard one,” Sir Reginald shook his head. “Oh well.”
I blinked with recognition.
“I know this place! This is Soho. That's the Shakespeare's Head!” I clapped my hands and pointed. “I drank there just last week!”
“Several years in the future,” Sir Reginald corrected.
“So that was a private, hidden car park?” I looked behind me. The pedestrian entrance of it seemed to fade into the background. Unless you had been before you'd never suspect it was there. “Oh, how the other half live.”
“I believe we will be fastest if we travel by Regent Street,” Sir Reginald pointed his cane to the west and started walking towards it. He always had an uncanny ability to navigate in London. “Saves us getting lost in the little alleyways.”
I followed him quickly, enjoying the warmth. It wasn't sunny, but warmer than expected for May. Damp clung to the pavement from morning rain but it held off for now.
No-one paid Sir Reginald much attention as he walked through the city, tail coat flapping behind him. As one of the largest and most multi-cultural cities in the world, the sight of a man in a tail coat was no more remarkable to the locals than a street harpist, or Muslims in traditional tunics.
A few tourists snapped photos of him, nonetheless, to show back home as 'traditional England'.
I stepped out into Regent Street and realised that, even though it was only a few years difference, I had stepped into a very different time. The buildings were still the Regency period Portland stone they had always been, but everything else had changed.
“Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the world down,” a group of students walked past chuckling. A bus roared down the road covered in an advert for 300, covered in Spartans. As I followed Sir Reginald down the street we passed the Apple Store. The window advertised pre-orders for the iphone. The first iphone.
I became aware of the phones around me. Plenty of people in the crowd were using their phones. Not one had a smart phone. They were texting with old fashioned 9 key numpads, or holding a flip phone to their ears.
“Why on earth would I want an iphone?” A teenager, about seventeen stood outside the Apple store with a friend. “I mean look at that thing, it's huge! It probably wouldn't even fit in my pocket.”
“Tell me about it,” his friend, dressed all in black, with blue hints in black hair, agreed. “And you can't change carrier. It has to be O2. And it's not even got 3G.”
“Typical Apple, all style, no substance. I'll stick with my RZOR, thank you very much.”
“Did you finish Heroes yet?”
“Oh God! Greatest show ever! I can't wait for season 2!”
Like cold spaghetti slipping slowly down the spine, culture shock started to overcome me. I'd walked down Regent Street hundreds of times. Everything was so similar, but so very, very different. And yet, barely any time had passed.
“Come along,” Sir Reginald chided. I followed him quickly across Piccadilly Circus and continued south. I was used to London crowds, and for some reason they seemed to part to let Sir Reginald through. I chalked this up to his gravitas. For such a small, quiet man he could hold the attention of a crowd as easily as breathing.
We followed Regent Street down towards Charing Cross. I tried not to think about how different the world felt. A world without smart phones, a world without hybrid cars, a world without the Dark Knight.
“No, I'm boycotting the Olympics next year,” I overheard. “We need to free Tibet, man.”
“Heath Ledger as the Joker? Why didn't they just cast Nicholas Cage as Batman if we're determined to ruin the franchise?”
“…don't think Gordon Brown's going to be any good, but anything to get rid of Blair.”
Sir Reginald seemed to become aware
of my discomfort. He slowed down his walk and let me catch up.
“You need to close your mind to it, my corn-rose,” Sir Reginald said.
“But it's...it's hard,” I said. “They...these people, I mean, they're complaining about things that haven't even happened yet!”
“That's the way people are,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “You must learn to filter it out. Once you travel freely in time, I am afraid to say, nothing is familiar.”
I spared a glance at Nelson's Column. Even that had changed. Whoever had erected a number of large signs requesting more green spaces in cities had also coated the square in turf.
“Here we are,” Sir Reginald pointed his cane across Charing Cross to where the Admiralty Arch stretched over the many traffic lanes of the Mall. “Spring Gardens is just over there.”
We waited by a pelican crossing with two teenagers, neither older than seventeen. One was tall and blond, with a Roman brow and aquiline nose, the other shorter and a lot fatter.
“We've got two hours until they force us to watch that play,” the taller one said. “How many London land marks do you think we can see in that time?”
“As many as we can,” the fatter one clapped the young man on the back. “Come on, George. I reckon we can get a whole holiday's worth of sights in before we have to go back.”
“You're on.”
Sir Reginald and I crossed the road. George and his fat friend disappeared down the Mall off towards Buckingham Palace. Sir Reginald paid them no heed, but I liked to be reminded that, even though I felt like I was wandering through a living memory, people were still just living their lives.
“Here we are, Spring Gardens,” Sir Reginald announced. The street was a perfect example of the Regency period: buildings of dressed stone, white as dirty snow and boxy as a doll’s house. The windows all had arches and the doorways all had Greek lintels. When I thought about London, this was what came to mind. “That's the Ministry of Defence down there,” Sir Reginald pointed to a high metal fence around some buildings at the far end, guarded by armed police. “British Council,” he nodded to the building on their left. “Government offices of various sorts over there,” he nodded to the right. “Rather crowded, isn't it?”