Time Leap (7 page)

This line of thought led
me to some unfinished business. Following my intervention in the
World Trade Center bombings, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi
were now very much alive in our new World, and had formed the
Libyan–Iraq Alliance. No–one knew where this new coalition would
lead, but it was pretty much accepted that both countries had
secretly begun making nuclear weapons. With discontent and
uprisings in other Arab countries – notably Syria and Egypt–things
didn’t look too good in the Middle East. I concluded that we should
take a leap forward to the future to see where all this was
leading, and the possible impact on the World. With this
information, perhaps we could warn our governments of what the
future had in store for us.

The big question now was:
how far did we need to jump forward in time? But before answering
that question, something very strange happened the next
day.

I was just coming out of
the bathroom, and there in the lounge, sitting on the sofa, was me
and Niki! I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Shit!”

“
Sorry to
startle you… it must be a shock. It’s just an
experiment.”

A guy looking exactly
like me was sitting with what looked exactly like Niki.

“
Where’s
Niki?” the man asked.

“
I think
you’ll find she’s sitting right next to you,” I said.

“
No, I
mean
your
Niki…”
This was very, very weird.

“
Oh, I see…
she’s gone shopping.”

Niki2 on the sofa nodded.
“She’ll be back any minute… you’d better prepare her.” Sure enough,
I heard the sound of a key in the front door, and I rushed to warn
Niki – but too late.

“
Oh my god!
Joe?”

“
Over here.”
She was looking at the sofa of course. I smiled and
waved.

“
Do I really
look like that?” Niki took it a little better than me. Looking at
yourself in a photograph is one thing; seeing the real, living,
breathing four–dimensional you is totally different. “Why are they
here?” she asked me.

“
Better ask
them,” I said.

“
It’s an
experiment,” Niki2 explained. “This feels really, really strange,
doesn’t it?” We all agreed with that. The fact that Niki2 seemed to
know precisely when Nik would be home told me that they must be
from the future, rather than the past.

“
How far back
have you jumped?” I asked.

“
Just two
days,” Joe2 replied. “It was Sunday when we left.”

Then I had a very
interesting line of thought.

“
So… you know
exactly what’s going to happen between now and when you
jumped?”

“
Pretty much,”
Joe2 smiled.

“
How did
Chelsea do?” I asked.

“
Lost two-nil
to Norwich.”

“
Shit!”

Then Niki made the
connection. “How about the lottery? Any new
millionaires?”

Niki2 and Joe2 looked
knowingly at each other and smiled. “Maybe a couple,” Joe2 said.
“Niki’s got the numbers you need.” Niki2 handed Nik seven numbers
written down on a piece of paper. They were for the big Saturday
Euromillions Lottery draw.

“
It feels a
bit like cheating… stealing even,” I said.

“
I know
exactly what you mean – that’s what I thought at first. So we
talked it through yesterday – that’s tomorrow for you. But it’s not
stealing – it’s an opportunity. Some people have a premonition, a
sudden insight. Is that cheating? For whatever reason, we’ve been
given this ability to go back and forward in time. It’s a gift, and
we should use it wisely. But to use it fully, we need more time –
if you see what I mean. We’ve – you’ve – got full–time jobs. We
could do so much more with this ability if we weren’t working. The
lottery money will provide us with that opportunity. Money will buy
us freedom.”

“
How much can
we win?” Niki asked.

“
Twelve
million pounds,” Niki2 replied.

“
It’s a
start,” Niki replied.

“
What!” I was
shocked.

“
It’s okay,
don’t worry,” said Joe2. “Just try it – and if you think you don’t
need it, give it away to charity.”

It was very strange
talking to myself, but I had to admit that it all made sense. By
having that money, we would have time to really do good things. The
ability to go back forward in time is time–travel – not space
travel. If we want to help to change things in other places in the
World, we have to go there by conventional means – fly, sail,
drive, whatever – and that costs money. So the next morning, Niki
took the numbers to our local shop, filled in the Euromillions
coupon and we sat back that night to watch our numbers come
up.

As the last ball with our
number was selected, we smiled at each other and kissed. “That was
lucky,” I said. “I think you could do with some new jewellery
baby.”

Ten

Money can have an amazing
impact on your life. For me, it brought Niki suddenly back on board
as far as time–travel was concerned. Her comment about destroying
my phone and forgetting the whole damn business became a distant
memory as soon as the lottery was mentioned; and with both of us
having given our notices at work, we turned our attention to our
next project. But first, some unfinished business from
1992.

Niki was keen to meet the
younger version of herself (they never actually met up when we
jumped before), and I wanted to try the tattoo experiment. So we
jumped back to find Junior in North London, choosing a couple of
days after our first jump so that our appearance would not seem so
strange this time.

“
Oh, it’s
you,” Junior said as we met at the same school gates I’d seen her
previously.

“
I’m Wendy,”
said Nik.

“
I asked Ma
about Aunt Wendy, and she said she’d never heard of you. You’re not
her sister, are you?” Junior said flatly. Nik shook her head. “So
who are you really?”

We looked at each other,
and then I said, “We’d like to show you something…”

We took Junior to a small
Tattoo parlour in East Finchley. It was a place she knew, and it
seemed to be reputable. Junior had been thinking of having one
done, but didn’t think her mum would accept it. In fact, she knew
she wouldn’t. Nik suggested she have it done on a private part of
her body, where her mum would not see it, and not to use a
name.

“
You mean
like, ‘Steve’?” asked young Niki.

“
Definitely
not Steve,” I said.

“
But I love
him!”

“
Yes, I’m sure
you do. But tattoos can last for ever… are you sure that your love
will last that long?” Nik replied.

We took at look at the
shop’s catalogue – they had hundreds of different designs in all
sorts of shapes and colours. In the end, Junior selected a small
red rose and asked to have ‘Niki’ written underneath it. It was
going to be at the top of her thigh, near her bum, and I looked
away whilst it was being done.

After a few minutes, Nik
turned to me and whispered.

“
Joe –
something’s happening! I can feel it…” She moved away from Junior
and lifted her skirt. There on her thigh the same red rose was
appearing like magic. It was incredible!”

“
That’s,
that’s… amazing!” I said.

When it was finished,
Junior showed Nik her finished article.

“
It’s
beautiful. Nik replied, “thank you for giving it to me.”

“
To you?”
Junior queried.

“
Yes – take a
look.” She lifted her skirt to show the same tattoo.

“
You’ve got
the same! But yours looks a little older. When did you have it
done?”

“
Oh, about
sixteen years ago,” Nik smiled.

Junior stared into Nik’s
eyes. “I know who you are,” she said, “but I don’t understand
it.”

“
You will,” I
said. “Sometime in the future, you’ll know everything. But now we
have to go…”

“
I want to go
with you!” Junior suddenly exclaimed, grabbing Nik’s
hand.

“
You can’t –
it’s not your time. You’re needed here. Without you, I am nothing…
so look after yourself – and follow your dreams.” Nik released her
hand from Junior’s whilst I changed the date on the phone, holding
Nik’s hand tightly.

“
See you in
the future,” I said. And we were gone.

***

Eleven

Having proved that
whatever physical changes we make to ourselves in the past can
affect us in the present, we now turned our thoughts to bigger
matters.

I’d voiced my concerns to
Niki about the current Middle East situation and how I thought it
would be a good idea to jump forward to the future to see where
this was leading. Having bumped off both Bush and Blair because of
my intervention in the past, I felt a little bit responsible for
the new World situation and thought our first priority was to put
matters straight in this area. Niki agreed.

However, whilst jumping
back to the past means entering a known universe (to the finest
detail), venturing into the future is entirely different. Okay, if
we don’t go too far forward, we can be pretty certain that building
are going to get taller, populations are going to increase, and
money will be worth less. Or even worthless one day. But once we
make bigger jumps into the future, it gets more difficult. The
treatment of our environment (forest and ozone depletion, pollution
of air, sea and land); hunting certain species of animals to
extinction (or merely destroying their habitats); use and reliance
on fossil fuels, and the melting of the polar ice–caps… etc etc
could all add up to not only a changed World, but one in which Man
may not even exist.

However, we didn’t think
we’d have to jump so very far forward in time to see the effects of
the present Hussein–Gaddafi alliance. Niki suggested ten year
jumps, which sounded reasonable. Having decided when, the next
thing to decide was ‘where.’ Obviously, London was most convenient,
but we couldn’t be sure we’d be living in the same apartment in ten
years’ time, and we didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack again
by just appearing from nowhere. So instead, we thought about a
location that would change very little over a period of, say, fifty
years – and Hyde Park came to mind. It seemed unlikely that
anyone’s going to be given planning permission to build a
supermarket on Hyde Park in the near future (it’s protected area),
so that seemed a safe bet.

“
What should
we take with us?” Niki asked on the morning of our planned jump. It
was a good question, but I didn’t really know how to answer
it.

“
It’s
difficult to say…”

“
What about a
gun?”

“
A
gun!”

“
Yeah… we
don’t know how dangerous it’s going to be in the
future.”

“
Well to start
with, I don’t know where we’d get one…”

“
That’s
easy.”

“
It
is?”

“
You find a
gun shop, jump back one day, steal a gun, and then jump forward to
the present.”

“
You want
to
steal
a real
gun?” I said.

“
Not me,
you.”

I explained that guns are
kept in locked cupboards… you can’t just walk in and pick one up –
not in England. And anyway, I’ve never used a gun before – and
neither had Niki. In the end we decided to take a big kitchen knife
and the pepper spray she bought last year after a few street
robberies were reported in the area, plus our IDs and a bit of food
and drink – and some money.

Having packed everything
we thought we needed, we took the tube to Lancaster Gate and found
a suitable spot for our trip – close to a tree in the Italian
Gardens of the Park. When no–one was around, I changed my phone’s
date to exactly ten years in the future, held Niki’s hand, smiled
at her and pressed ‘save’.

After the jump, we found
that the tree was larger, which was good because it prevented us
from being seen by anyone. We emerged cautiously, to find the
weather warmer and a few more people around the park. Apart from
that, nothing seemed so very different.

“
I’ll get a
paper,” I said to Niki. A newspaper seemed to be an obvious way to
check World events. But as I made my way out of the garden, I
nearly jumped out of my skin.

“
I thought I’d
find you here,” a voice said – my voice.

I’d come face to face
with myself before – in our apartment when my other self had jumped
back to give us the lottery results; but this time there were ten
years separating us, not just one day. Naturally, I looked a little
older: several more wrinkles, a different hairstyle, and different
clothes (presumably more contemporary, although the style looked
like one from the 1940s). Apart from that, it was me.

“
If you’re
looking for a newspaper, don’t bother. Nothing’s changed very much.
Oh, except the currency. You’ll need Euros now mate. You don’t have
any, do you?” I had to admit I hadn’t, and he took out a 500 euro
note and handed it to me. “Inflation’s gone crazy… that’s about
fifty quid in old money.” Then he asked if Niki was with
me.