800226AD

Jessica had left the office late, deciding it was a nice night to walk to the meeting. It was only fifteen minutes away, maybe twenty in these boots. It was only after getting more than half way that she realised which part of town the EF met in. She suddenly became concerned that people might think she was a high class call girl, then realised there weren’t any high class call girls in this part of town. She quickened her pace anyway and tried to look as inconspicuous as she could, wearing relatively pricey clothes, in what was rumoured to be the closest there was to a slum in the city.

As she rounded a corner she almost fell into a stationary man staring at his phone, she just managed to suppress a yelp as she looked up, expecting to find an angry and possibly volatile addict looking down at her, then noticed it was actually Cheetah from the group. ‘Am I glad to see you, I thought you were about to sell me into a life of exploitation or something.’

A look of consternation crossed the face looking at her as if he hadn’t got the joke, Jessica said she had come straight from work, without remembering it wasn’t the best area of town for a woman to be in on her own. ‘Do you want me to walk the rest of the way with you?’

‘Please. Thanks.’ Although they had met a few times Jessica still wasn’t sure if Cheetah had no sense of humour or was just thinking about something else when talking to you, her gut told her it was probably a bit of both but she was glad of the company.

They proceeded along the side of the buildings, failing mortar and crumbling brickwork making up most of the structure of the walls. Jessica tried to engage her companion in small talk but he didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on any one line of thought for long before becoming distant again. After a couple more streets they headed past an opening, dark even with the streaming sunlight she had taken the walk to enjoy. ‘Ah, just the people!’ The voice was definitely from within the arch roofed tunnel leading between the buildings, but it was hard to see anything with the contrast between the bright street and the shadowy passage. ‘Please, come into my office.’ Her companion looked at her but didn’t say anything or show any signs of worry, ducking a little to fit down the alleyway. Jessica looked both ways down the street, figuring that at least her escort would bear the brunt of any kind of attack, before following.

As her eyes adjusted to the shadows she squinted a little to get used to the dimness, it turned out that the mystery man was Darwin, he was leaning against the wall of the buildings and tapping out a beat with his fingers against the bricks, as he waited for them to get close enough to hear what he had to say.

‘So pleased you could join me. As I said, I rather hoped that I would find the time to talk to both of you. You have some rather useful talents and I was hoping that you might be able to help me out.’ Jessica tried to look at Cheetah to see how he reacted, but could only see a profile in the blackness. ‘Don’t worry Miss Bryant, I just want to take advantage of your knowledge of computers. I’m okay with them but unlike you I’m not a formally qualified hacker.’

Jessica wondered how he knew her surname, dismissing it to better handle the situation at hand, and interrupted, ‘Actually if you want to be picky I’m an ethical hacker!’

‘Absolutely, as you say an ethical hacker. That’s good, because what I’m looking for is someone to help me erase some security logs which could affect the future of the planet. After all we’re here for the same things, aren’t we?’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Animals are important and we all want to protect them and, if anything, make the world a better place for them. To do that I need you to work your magic with that time machine, so the people in charge of it don’t find out we’re using it for our own means. Obviously we’ll be using it for the benefit of the planet, but I’m not sure they’ll understand that, so it would be better if we could keep it to ourselves.’

Jessica adjusted her footing and almost overbalanced, as one of her heels sunk into something which felt organic, on the ground. She didn’t look down to try and identify what it was, just put an arm out to steady herself against the wall opposite Darwin. ‘That doesn’t actually sound massively ethical to me, I think you’d be better finding someone else.’

‘But you are the perfect candidate Jessica. You have the skills, the knowledge and you also have a passion for the ecology of this planet. I really think, once you understand what we’ll be trying to do, you’ll feel happy to be a part of it.’

Jessica felt at a loss knowing the man only as Darwin, she wouldn’t acknowledge his anonymity by actually using his chosen name. ‘I have my doubts about that. I’m afraid that you can keep trying but you won’t change my mind. I must be going, I need to help Jonny set up.’ She turned to their co-conspirator,’ see you at the meeting.’ She didn’t look at Darwin as she stumbled out of the passageway, peering down to check that her boot wasn’t covered in anything untoward, then hurried on.

Darwin and Cheetah both watched her go, Darwin wasn’t really focussing but the other EF member was staring, at the bare part of her legs between the top of her boots and the bottom of her short skirt, until she disappeared from view. Turning back to face Darwin again, then waiting until the black eyes were once more focussed and alert the conversation continued, ‘What do you want me to do?’

 

***

 

Jonny accompanied Jessica all the way back to where she was parked, she was glad, both of the company and of being with someone she trusted after the incident with Darwin. She hadn’t mentioned this to Jonny as she didn’t want him to worry more than usual about her. She offered to drive him home but he said he had a couple of things to do in town.

The ride back helped her relax. She turned the radio up and tried to put the impromptu meeting with Darwin to the back of her mind, arriving home just as the sun set. Locking the car door she put a hand on the bonnet and lifted her foot up, just to check that the remains of any biological matter hadn’t adhered to the heel of her shiny boots. Thankfully they looked untarnished. She headed for the front door, reaching into her bag to search for the door key while whistling a song that had been playing.

As her index finger slipped through the hoop of the key ring somebody spoke, close to her ear. ‘Would you mind if I come in, only I’ve become a little cold out here while waiting for you?’ She nearly threw the keys across the garden, thankfully they slipped back into the bag as her arms moved of their own accord at the unexpected noise.

Jessica staggered sideways in surprise, turning so her back was against the white painted front door. Through glasses, slightly fogged up from the words spoken at such a proximity, she faced Darwin and tried to calm herself, concentrating on slowing her breathing so she could talk without her fear showing through. She had no worries about allowing the maniac inside her house, she suspected he didn’t see her as a woman so much as a resource which he could use to achieve his own goals, whatever they might be? ‘Sure thing, hang on, I just need to find my keys again.’ She fumbled in her handbag, thinking she would probably be better off with a slightly less gargantuan one if she wanted to find anything quickly. She drew them out and, after a couple of attempts, managed to get the key into the keyhole and turned it in the right direction.

She typed in the alarm code and calmly put her bag down behind the door, as Darwin entered, standing in the hall surveying the inside of her house as if he were considering its worth. She forced herself to be nice, after deciding that there was probably nothing to be gained from acting otherwise. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Darwin didn’t respond but walked into the sitting room and assessed it with a clinical precision, his black eyes mechanistically moving from item to item until he appeared to be happy that his inventory was complete. Jessica followed him through, not wanting to sit in case it made him feel more superior than he already considered himself to be.

Finally he looked straight at her, his eyes like holes into another universe. It was difficult not to stare straight at them without forgetting what you were meant to be saying. She wondered if that was part of the reason he had such power over people. He seemed to be waiting until his thoughts had assembled themselves into a sentence. ‘I’m not sure you gave my earlier proposition the consideration it should have warranted Miss Bryant. Perhaps now would be a good time for you to review the facts and, perhaps, think about the possible consequences of refusing to work with us.’

Jessica crossed her arms and stood upright, the heels made her a couple of inches taller than Darwin and she hoped this made her seem a bit more imposing than she felt. ‘First of all, could you tell me how you know my surname? When I’m convinced that nobody I know would have told you what it is. Secondly, how can I review the facts when I don’t have any of them? As you can understand, that goes for the consequences too.’ She stood her ground as Darwin walked towards her, a shiver went down her spine as he brushed past, making no attempt to alter his course.

He stood next to the bench, between the kitchen and living room. She turned to face him. ‘If you’d care to step over here I can reveal some of those details to you.’ He pulled an A5 envelope out of his jacket pocket and waited for Jessica to move, she did so and he gazed down for a second before looking into her green eyes. ‘In answer to your first question, I talked to our contact on the inside of the time machine project. It’s been discovered that of the many hypotheses put forward about time travel, the one which seems to hold up on experimentation suggests it’s not possible to change the time line sufficiently with any one action to alter the present. I’d like to test that hypothesis by making a number of changes throughout history, to see if it has any effect on our present environment and the state of the planet. Obviously we can put conditions back as they were if anything untoward occurs.’

He looked down at the envelope again, almost smiling, which was more unnerving than his usual scowl. ‘Now, in response to the other part of your question, hopefully that has given you enough of the facts to make a judgement. However, in case you are still in two minds perhaps these will help you come to a decision.’ He opened the envelope. As the pump of the fish tank was the only other sound in the room the noise of the seal coming unstuck was strangely disquieting. He pulled a small stack of photographic paper from within and looked at the top image, before placing the pile down on the worktop.

Jessica looked at the first picture, just as Darwin put his hand over it and took it away, saying it wasn’t meant to be with the others. Then he spread the remaining pictures out. There was no mistaking the fact that the picture he had withdrawn had been taken within the confines of Jessica’s house. Her look of shock was obvious, but Darwin made no further mention of it, she suspected he would deny what it was if pushed any further. She managed to tear her gaze away from the envelope, finally looking down at the other pictures which made her eyes widen, her heart beat faster and her stomach start to churn.

‘As you can see these pictures are of a personal nature. If they were released they could perhaps injure the pride, if not the social standing and career prospects of someone we are both close to. It might be a good time for me to take a seat. Give you a few moments to reflect on these details so you can come to a decision.’ He stepped away from the counter and left Jessica staring at the photographs.

She stayed still for some time, tentatively moving one of the pictures, followed by another and another. However she moved them it made no difference to the impact they were having on her. She was unsure whether to take it seriously or if it was just a really professional hacking together of a couple of unrelated pictures, but there were no tell-tale signs of alteration, and she knew the location well enough to know it was real. She turned and leant against the unforgiving marble surface, giving a big sigh before talking again. ‘Well, I guess I don’t have a lot of option but to say yes, I’ll help you. But only on the understanding that this stays between the two of us. You can’t tell anybody about this. Tell me where and when I have to be, I’ll do my best to erase the data.’

Darwin gave another of his unpleasant smiles, ‘It’s a bit of a shame really, I think they’re quite flattering, perhaps with some better lighting they could make some money. Oh, you can keep them by the way, I have plenty of copies.’ He stood up and started towards the door before putting a hand on the frame and turning back to face her, the scar on the side of his head seeming more obvious as his face was caught within a spotlight. ‘It could be worse you know! Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.’ Jessica heard the front door close behind him, gathered the pictures into a bundle and, clutching them at arm’s length, slumped down in her favourite chair.

 

***

 

The details of the next jump were spread on the small desk in front of Peter. He realised he had been staring at them for ten minutes without taking in any of the information. He manoeuvred the uncomfortable seat around far enough to look through the bathroom door and watched Andrea brushing her teeth, oblivious of the fact he was staring. When she was done she put a glass under the stream of water, swilled some around her mouth and spat, finally she put both hands under the taps and vigorously rinsed her face. When she finished drying herself she noticed him. ‘What’s up mister?’

He looked down at the papers again. ‘I’m still not happy about this whole thing. It wouldn’t be so bad if I believed everyone was here for the same reasons.’ He placed his fist under his chin and continued to look at the document.

‘Masterson? He sounds fairly straight up to me. I wouldn’t have thought someone so stiff could bend the truth without snapping themselves in half.’ She sat on the bed near to her husband, placing a placating hand on his back.

‘I’m still not sure about Masterson, but I don’t feel comfortable with the others either. Celia and Mike seem okay, but I think they’re naïve if they don’t expect the technology to be misused. That guy Moulder isn’t right either, I think there’s more to him than meets the eye, I don’t like the way he’s so distant all the time. He seems a smart bloke and I don’t think he’s as socially inept as he’d like us to believe. And if there’s not something going on between Emily and Mike then I’m less metrosexual than I thought!’

Andrea raised an eyebrow at the last comment, checking out her husband’s two day stubble growth and unkempt appearance, ‘I’m pretty sure you’ve misunderstood that word! Anyhow, Michael and Celia seem in control to me, they may not have had a lot of dealings with the military before,’ she glanced away from the papers on the desk and they looked at each other for a moment, ‘unlike some people, but they seem to know how to control the information about their machine, I’m not sure anyone else could figure it out in any case. As I say, I don’t think Masterson wants access to the full workings of the thing. Yet, at least!’ Peter’s grey eyes dropped until they were staring vaguely at Andrea’s hand resting on his leg, ‘And maybe David is just quiet. Some people are you know.’ She smiled, but Peter missed it, ‘I think he might just be one of those people who aren’t big on, well, people.’

Peter appeared not to notice she hadn’t mentioned Emily and Michael’s relationship. She mentally crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t bring it up again. ‘I know, I know. It’s just that I can’t make myself comfortable with the idea that we won’t affect anything by stomping around, crushing insects and stuff. Personally I’d prefer it if we didn’t come back from a jump to find out everyone is dressed in kilts, or speaking Danish.’ He lay down on the bed, placing his head on her knee, she automatically started running her hands through his short hair and he relaxed, slightly.

Andrea shuffled across to get comfortable, ‘It’s not like you to worry about these things. I don’t think you need to be so bothered. I’m sure there won’t be problems if Celia says there won’t. She’s a smart girl that one.’ Peter rolled over so he was looking up at Andrea’s face, her sky coloured eyes looked concerned as she continued. ‘Anyway, imagine what you’ll be able to find out if we keep going. We might have some pretty snazzy technologies today, but don’t you think we might learn something if you could have a look at how the Romans built the aqueducts, or at the original Antikythera mechanism. They’ve still never really figured out how the Japanese swordsmiths made their weapons. If you see it for yourself you could bring some of the ideas back and make things better.’ She stopped for a while, seeing his consternation. ‘Alternatively you could make us super rich. Either way!’

He finally smiled. ‘All right, all right. You’ve persuaded me, but if anything goes wrong I’m not sticking around. I’d prefer it if you came with me but we’ll get to that when it happens.’ His hand moved, from where it was resting on his stomach to her waist. He pulled her down on to the bed, rolling over so he could look into her eyes. ‘If I’m going to help bring about the end of the known universe, I may as well have some fun while we’re still here.’ He reached out and turned off the light.

 

***

 

‘Could you tell us when you’re going to hit the button this time please, Doc’?’ Peter called from the back of the truck.

‘Will do. Is everyone ready?’ There were a host of positive sounds. ‘Okay then, in three. Two. One, and now.’

Because they got a countdown everyone had tensed themselves for the shock this time but as before, the transition to more than 1,600 years ago, was seamless. Because they were concentrating they all heard the distinct, barely audible, whisper as the air pressure changed from that of a halogen lit enclosed space to a sunny clearing in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle. Andrea spoke first. ‘Well that was a bit of an anti-climax. I expected at least some pretty sparkling colours or something.’

Michael turned to look at her. ‘If you want, I could turn the ceiling light off and on a couple of times.’ Andrea pulled a face at him as she unbuckled herself to collect the monitoring kit. The team were out of the vehicle and ready to go a lot faster this time, making impressed noises as they climbed down and looked across the enormous waterway before them. The Jump Truck was surrounded on the other three sides by densely packed rainforest. Although it wasn’t actually raining it was humid enough to make clothing feel sticky and uncomfortable.

Masterson scanned the surrounds and came to a decision. He nodded at Andrea, Emily and David, ‘I think you three should head along the bank of the river, it’s the most accessible area and hopefully will get you far enough away from the truck for it not to have any affect on your readings.’ Andrea looked at the other two, shrugged and swung her bag over her shoulder.

The others were about to follow her as Pete gave a cursory glance towards the truck. ‘The mechanics look fine to me, I’m going with them.’

Robert turned to face him and was about to argue, until he saw Andrea over Peter’s shoulder gesticulating to warn that it wouldn’t be a good idea. As the four of them tramped off through the damp sandy mud, towards the thin walkway created by the flowing water, Masterson quietly mouthed the words, ‘Bloody civilians.’ Then headed to the edge of the forest to check there were no hazards the pre-jump scanner hadn’t picked up.

As the others got far enough away to speak without being overheard Peter said, ‘The guy’s a tool! He was going to argue with me, I could tell.’ Emily smiled at Andrea who patted him on the shoulder, reminded him that he actually hadn’t argued and told him not to worry about it. He kept grumbling until after they reached a small clearing and started setting up tripods and checking for signs of life.

Peter wandered towards a particularly impressive tree and seemed to be studying it intently, Emily moved over and leant against an equally gnarly one. She waited a little while to see if he would acknowledge her before starting anyway, ‘What’s up, James?’

His eyes continued their minute investigation of the tree bark, he made a sort of grunting noise before actually producing any words. ‘I’m mildly surprised you don’t already know, what with Andrea’s penchant for secrets, and by that I mean her inability to keep anything to herself.’

Emily smirked. ‘Actually to tell you the truth, I do kind of know that you’re not super pleased with the idea of jumping, I can see why, but I don’t think there’ll be any problems. I’ve actually heard quite a lot of the details of how it all works, it seems quite safe.’

‘Yes, Andrea might possibly have revealed a little about your personal conversations too.’ At this he turned to look at her and Emily could feel her cheeks warming up and changing colour to match her dyed hair. ‘Don’t worry, she only tells me the bits she can’t keep to herself.’ He grinned showing his slightly uneven teeth, Emily couldn’t help but laugh. Pete looked over at his wife, who was currently prodding a stick into a hole in a fallen tree stump to see what would come out. ‘She’s fantastic but she doesn’t see the danger in things like I do. I mean, look at her!’ Emily’s eyes followed his, to where Andrea was now putting her hand in the hole and exploring with her fingers. ‘That’s part of the reason she dresses so inappropriately too.’ He looked down at his own dark, vaguely military trousers and plain blue polo shirt. ‘She can’t get her head round the practicalities of everyday life, let alone taking a trip to the Amazon 1,600 years ago.’

Emily looked again and realised Andrea was in wellington boots, fair enough, but was then wearing a light coloured skirt, ending at the top of the boots and dragging on the ground every time she crouched down to look at anything, which was a large part of her remit. Her blouse was one of those billowing, see-through ones with a tank top underneath. There was already a dark ring of muck around the sleeve she had forced into the tree stump, but she seemed oblivious to this. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t ruin so many clothes. We have to go shopping a lot but it keeps her happy, so I try not to complain.’

‘Get chivalrous Mr James,’ Andrea called from the centre of the clearing. Peter excused himself, going to help her dismantle the small pile of equipment she had been using. Emily continued leaning against the tree, suddenly realising that David was absent. Andrea and Peter were bickering but seemed happy enough, so Emily detached herself from the undergrowth, moving to stand next to the riverbank. She looked along the waterline, which afforded a relatively uninterrupted view, but he wasn’t anywhere obvious. She was just about to turn and call back to the others when his ungainly limbs emerged from the vegetation close by.

He stepped tentatively through the muddy sand and stood next to her. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ She agreed and was about to ask where he’d been when, uncharacteristically, he continued talking. ‘Sorry I didn’t say I was going, I was sure I heard the call of a Crowned Chat-Tyrant.’ He saw the blank look on her face, ‘It’s a bird. The song sounded identical to the ones I’ve heard when we come from. I figured that couldn’t be right so I had to see if I could spot it,’ he waved a small pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. ‘There wasn’t time to tell anyone. I’ll just help the others finish packing up.’

He left Emily staring after him, wondering what kind of person would head off through impenetrable forestry 6,000 miles and 1,600 years from home. Then she remembered it was David and stopped worrying. The sun was hot and she was slightly regretting wearing the waterproof coat. She had thought this might be a good idea what with being in a rainforest, but the plastic of the coat was pressing bits of blouse against her body. Wherever it touched she could feel the dampness of her own skin. She looked down and saw that her trousers, not her smartest but serviceable if she had an impromptu business appointment, didn’t seem to be tropical climate proof either. They were covered in all kinds of sticky seeds and would need a thorough decontamination once they got back. Thankfully she had a decent pair of hiking boots, although even they were having trouble coping with the abrasive mud of this place. She decided that she might need to take a shopping trip herself when she was next able and she smiled at the thought that she might be able to have Michael come along. As the others walked past Andrea turned towards her. ‘Are you coming?’ Emily climbed across a tree stump to catch up with them.

At the truck Robert was pacing back and forth, looking out across the expanse of water and occasionally checking his watch. Michael and Celia were leaning against the heavy metal bumper, exchanging thoughts on the Jump Box’s performance so far and what improvements could be made. Masterson turned one hundred and eighty degrees to see Emily emerge noisily from the concealment of a corridor of mangroves and a mass of vines, hanging down from trees which fringed the rainforest. ‘Hurry it up, we’ve been waiting for you.’

Peter helped Andrea, then Emily, over a slippery looking fallen tree, jumping over after them. ‘You haven’t actually been waiting that long, it’s just that you weren’t spending time shifting a huge rock away from the truck’s back axle this time.’ He swung his bag through the back door of the truck, climbing in after it.

Andrea placed her bag down gently and turned back to Masterson. ‘We didn’t have any problems this time, he’s just grumpy ‘cause of the self-inflicted trip into the big outdoors. He’ll get over it!’ With that she put a foot on the rear step of the Cougar and grabbed a hand, which had emerged to help her in.

Emily didn’t climb in immediately, standing next to Robert until the others had embarked, she waited until he acknowledged her. ‘Just one thing Masterson,’ Robert turned to look her in the face, ‘Moulder disappeared after he’d finished his work, I don’t think Pete or Andrea noticed, they were packing up. He wasn’t away long, he told me he’d heard a distinctive bird call and wanted to see if he could see it. You said you wanted to know about anything unusual and I thought this might qualify!’ She turned and climbed in herself. Robert scanned around once then made an unceremonious ascent into the driver side door. A few moments later, where there had been the conspicuously manufactured straight lines of a vehicle, there was only thin air.

 

***

 

Jessica’s office was surprisingly tidy for an IT security manager. The odd piece of paper was strewn around on the inbuilt desk which ran from one side of the small room to the other, the dark and stained solid wood table top giving away the history of the oblong room. She had discovered some time ago that it used to be a chemistry lab, which explained both the lighter section of desk at one end, a replacement for a sink which used to take up about a third of the room, and the smell.

Instead of Bunsen burners and flasks of fizzy or steaming coloured liquids there were now computers, of varying shapes and sizes along the length of the wall. Each machine seemed to be busy doing something, apart from the one directly in front of her. She was staring intently at the screen, as if looking for something particular. The only thing on it at the moment was a search box with a flashing cursor. After a few moments she took her chin out of her hands and stopped resting her arms on her knees, noticing how red the skin under her tights had become where she had kept her elbows for too long, and started typing.

At first she was simply searching for names, mostly those of the group members she knew from the EF, this returned a number of results. Social network profiles, addresses, phone numbers, the usual kinds of thing. She didn’t really need to search for these people. She had carried out similar lookups each time a new member had joined, finding out if there were any reason to doubt their credentials. After a while she got to Jonny’s details, obviously he was a little more interesting…from an investigative point of view at least. He had been caught up in a number of incidents where there had been police or forces involvement, so after a bit of poking about she turned up news articles and links to less than appropriate organisations. She smiled at herself, thinking that anyone else looking at his details would think he was some kind of terrorist, rather than the rather soft, well-meaning and above all harmless individual that was actually the case. Then her smile faded as she remembered Darwin’s visit and her eyes became slightly moist. After rubbing the end of her nose she put her hands over them, being careful not to press too hard in case she got the dampness mixed up with her makeup and made a mess of her face.

She moved on. “Darwin” itself was obviously not going to come up with any meaningful results, although she tried a couple of variations such as “Darwin + pseudonym” and “Darwin + activism“, but nothing remotely relevant appeared. Her elbows automatically returned to her knees, resting on the same red patches of thigh which tingled slightly from the bone against bone contact, only separated by the layer of muscle in her legs. After a pause she grabbed a sandwich from her lunch box and gazed at the screen while she ate. Leaving the sandwich hanging out of her mouth, she moved her hands again typing in “Alan Scott”, which came back with over a million results, so she looked at the list of Alan Scotts in the surrounding counties, which at least cut the list down to around two hundred. She slowly read down, looking for any which weren’t so geographically removed as to be pointless, finally coming up with a list of fifteen. Going through the details of each one she carried out the odd “whois” query on websites and delved into their social postings, to try and weed out the false positives.

After twenty minutes of searching the list looked sadly short, the final Alan Scott also failed to be who she was looking for and Jessica was left looking at a list of men she didn’t know. Andy poked his head round the door. Andy was a slightly too keen manager, who occasionally found a reason to come into try and make his employees lives more fulfilling. ‘Hey Jess, have you thought about joining us for a trip to the pub this afternoon, you remember its Kevin’s leaving drinks.’ Andy was the only person she knew who failed to listen to her when she told him to call her Jessica, she liked her name and it grated every time she heard the shortened version.

It took a moment to disentangle her thoughts from the web of search expressions she had been running through and look at the shiny headed man, who beamed with self-importance. ‘Is Kevin leaving? I’d totally forgotten.’ Kevin was one of the dinosaurs from the server team, who seemed to have spent his whole career moaning about how things were better in the old days, or making inappropriate remarks about Jessica’s mode of attire. ‘Actually I’m afraid I’m wrapped up in something important Andy, I’ll see if I can make it over later on.’ She turned back to the computer screen and started typing again, in an attempt to let him know the conversation was over.

‘Okay Jess, see you later then.’ He also had the unpleasant habit of using your name at the start of every sentence, just to make it clear he was talking at you. Jessica continued staring straight forward, in the vain hope that he’d get the hint. After ten seconds or so he seemed to and she heard him conversing with someone in the corridor outside, by the sound of it another manager, as they were talking, quite openly, about reorganising the department. She drifted back into full concentration and tried another couple of searches for anyone matching Darwin’s details, before sighing and returning to some work which actually pertained to her job.

8002BF99

Originally published in the Times newspaper.

Crop failures threaten Far East livelihood

…for the third year running there has been an unprecedented influx of pests throughout much of north west China and Southern Mongolia, these include insects such as the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) and the rice weevil (Sitophilus oryzae) as well as the weed Echinochloa crusgali and diseases like sheath blight and the rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe grisea).

It is not known why there has been a sudden increase in the number of pests affecting rice production however what is very clear is that, with China cultivating 33% of the world’s rice, prices will rise by a lot more than the 20% we have seen since the first “year of poverty“, as the then Chinese Vice-President Ming Wei presciently voiced his concerns two harvests ago.

In his official press release, the Eton and Cambridge educated Minister of Agriculture for the People’s Republic of China, Liao Yin stated “We will do our best to control prices, both within and outside our country, by imposing limits on exports of rice and rice related products. Our first priority is ensuring Chinese citizens have sufficient supplies in order to avert a famine situation. However there will obviously be a knock on effect in terms of costs and there may need to be a concerted worldwide push towards frugality, until we have had time to develop coping strategies and a way to resolve this misfortune.”

The Mongolian Minister of Food and Agriculture, Batkhuyag Dsorig was more reticent telling The Times “We are feeling very positive that the problems are short term and [we] will be having a better harvest next year once the…

 

***

 

Jonny stared at the door as it shut behind Jessica. She told him she had something important to do so she needed to leave early. Looking a little agitated as she told him, she swiftly tied the waistband of her raincoat, almost running through the drab doorway. Usually the order of departure from the meetings was everyone else first, Jessica and Jonny last. However, tonight he was left on his own in the cloying air of the underground space as the last few people departed. He eventually remembered to stop looking at the door and sorted the remaining pieces of paper into one just about manageable pile, which he hugged to his chest so as not to drop it.

He reached the light switch and was wondering how to free up a limb without dropping anything, in order to turn it off. He had almost extricated a hand and was about to reach up when something made him stop. He turned and scanned across the room, trying to see anything unusual. A voice said ‘Do you want me to get the lights?’ Darwin stepped out from behind one of the concrete pillars, which effectively made the room a good place to remain unseen.

‘What are you doing here?’ Jonny couldn’t help but sound a little angry at this intrusion into his privacy.

‘I simply wanted to have a quiet word with you, away from the rest of the group. Is that okay?’

Jonny placed his hand back over the pile of papers, so he didn’t have to concentrate on keeping it from falling. ‘Actually its fine, I wanted to speak to you anyway.’ Darwin didn’t say anything, he merely stood motionless waiting for Jonny to continue, ‘I don’t know specifically what it is you have planned for my group,’ he carefully stressed the word “my” to remind Darwin who was the chairman, ‘but I’ve heard some of the others talking about what you’ve been asking them to do and, I may be extrapolating but, some of the plans seem a little, um, extreme.’

Darwin pushed his wire rimmed glasses back up his nose, he was wearing a dark pinstriped business suit with his hands buried in his trouser pockets, as he leaned nonchalantly on the pillar. ‘Oh, Mr Dent. I’m sure if you knew what my scheme was leading to you’d be only too happy to embrace it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea that I give you the detailed schedule of works. It might be best if you were, at least, one step removed from what we’re doing. So as not to allow anything to be revealed in the wrong circles.’ He straightened up, adjusted the thin black tie around his neck and walked towards Jonny, until he was standing a little too close for comfort. Jonny could feel the dampness of Darwin’s breath, he turned slightly, in case he sneezed or coughed and so Darwin wouldn’t inadvertently spit into his mouth while talking.

‘Actually Mr, um, Mr, um. Darwin, I think it might be best if you left our group, perhaps create your own. Jessica and I have discussed this, we both think it would be better if you didn’t come again. You seem to have a very good plan for what you wish to do. I’m sure with a bit of searching you could assemble a team of people who want exactly the same things as you do.’

‘Ah yes, Miss Bryant. She’s such a nice girl.’ He patted a hand on Jonny’s shoulder and winked at him. ‘However I’ve also had a chat with her and it turns out that she’s willing to help me with my work. In fact she almost insisted after our discussion, you’d be amazed at what people are willing to offer if you have the right bargaining tools,’ he smirked.

‘I don’t know what you said to her but I think you should leave Jessica out of your, um, operations. If anything happens to her, well…’ Jonny didn’t know how to finish the sentence so he lapsed into silence and stepped backwards to make some space between himself and his intense assailant. The rounded pin of the light switch touched his shoulder blade, but he managed to keep from moving forward or pressing back against the ancient metal, which would be as likely as not to snap off. He knew his attempts at sounding menacing ended up as a kind of sad pleading but he tried anyway, ‘It’s probably a good idea if you just don’t come back to our next meeting.’

The two men were the same height, although Darwin was of a slightly heavier build than Jonny they were still eye to eye. Jonny felt uncomfortable, even having put a little more distance between the two of them, but it was worse when he looked into Darwin’s vacuum-of-space eyes. He looked down again, seeing the top of a 1987 tour photograph of Hüsker Dü on his t-shirt beneath the paperwork he was still clutching to his chest. He didn’t look up again, if he did he knew he would have trouble turning away from Darwin’s merciless stare. ‘Actually I think that perhaps I will come back, I already have a good selection of people from your group,’ his mouth almost curled into a smile at this, ‘interested in developing my ideas and making the world a better place.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘As far as your friend Jessica is concerned you might want to be judicious about who and what you tell to people. After all she lives in an unwholesome part of town, you can never be too sure what type of miscreants she might run into as she goes about her daily business. You must be worried for her safety when you think of what kind of trouble she could end up in stepping out of her door. Anyway I have to go now, people to do, places to see.’ He sidestepped and was gone.

Jonny stood, staring out of the same door he had watched Jessica exit through ten minutes before and considered Darwin’s words. He knew what the bad part of town was like. He lived in it! He also knew that Jessica lived in probably the most agreeable place in a ten mile radius. He wandered whether he should give her a call to check everything was okay, but then decided she probably already knew what kind of danger she was in. He stood for a while longer staring at shadows then bent down to flick up the light switch with his shoulder blade and reached out for the door with the hand he had freed from the paperwork. Of the two of them Darwin was obviously better at threats!

 

***

 

It felt a little strange for Celia to have some down time, but this is what she suddenly found herself with. The next jump was tomorrow. Michael had told her to get some rest as he wanted to run some of his own figures on the computers. She had agreed, grudgingly, to go find something else to do and drifted away feeling slightly at a loss.

The first task she had undertaken had been to go back to her room and take a long and slightly too hot shower, to wash off the accumulated detritus of a few days working non-stop, both in the lab and out in the wilds of spacetime. While being pummelled by the jets of steaming water she considered how strange it was that time travel had turned so quickly into a routine exercise for the team. On the last trip travelling more than a thousand years back had seemed like another day at the office, more or less.

She turned the shower off, opened the bevelled glass door, reaching around the corner for the towel hanging on a hook. She stepped out of the small white tiled cubicle, dried herself off and went to search through the drawers, which the military obviously thought were all that were necessary to keep your clothing tidy and organised. The word she would have used for said storage was “minimalist”. In the end she picked one of her newer, tighter pairs of jeans, which she thought did good things for her bottom. She threw on a slightly older top which was bright red. Possibly a little too bright for her currently blonde hair, but it had matched her previously dyed colouring when she had bought it. The top had triangular cut outs, on the right side and on the opposite side over her shoulder blade, which was nice when you were in somewhere like this where the heating seemed to be left on, no matter what the weather was doing outside.

After having very little opportunity to get ready recently, she spent some quality time with her makeup, doing a more professional job of it. Foundation. Then dark grey, almost black in fact, eye liner feathering out to become lighter further from her eyes. Mascara, black, obviously! Then a good ten minutes going through her limited supply of lipsticks and applying a particularly vivid red one.

Finally she put on a worn pair of Doc Martens, stepped out of her room and looked either way down the corridor before deciding to head for the common room, to see if anyone was mooching about there like she was about to. Sadly when she got there the room was empty, but she had no particular plan so poured herself a really strong cup of coffee to try and wake herself up. The shower had made her more than a touch sleepy and her skin was slowly recovering, after being almost of a colour to match her top. Sitting on one of the not quite comfy seats, her eyes alighted on a copy of the Times newspaper on the coffee table in front of her. She picked it up and started leafing through, to see what was happening in the outside world.

As per normal there seemed to be lots of people arguing about irrelevant political, religious and theoretical concepts. As well as lots of people taking the arguments a step too far and actually physically harming, or killing each other, and unfortunate innocent bystanders. These were some of the only things that affected Celia Evans’s almost permanent smile, which returned quickly as she remembered a line from a comic book she had read over and over, many years ago. It went something like “why can’t everybody just, y’know, be friends and everything?” Before her thoughts could return to genuine unnecessary violence she zoned out, thinking about the fictitious, extremely unnecessary but highly amusing violence in the comic, dropping the paper back on to the table while reminiscing to herself, for no other reason than to pass some time.

She was still staring into space when Michael walked through the door and got himself a drink from the machine. ‘Alright Evans, what are you doing? Relaxing, I hope.’

Celia drifted out of her memories and greeted him, trying to project an air of relaxation. ‘Yes Mike, I was just daydreaming. It’s amazing what kind of information your brain stores isn’t it?’

Michael looked at her in a funny way and sat down in the chair opposite, waiting for his hot chocolate to cool enough to start drinking it. His clear blue eyes dropped to look at the paper in front of Celia, ‘Reading that were you? Not good, eh?’

Celia looked at the headline, “Crop failures threaten Far East livelihood” and her brow crinkled. ‘Actually no. It just dropped open on that page, it’s not what I think, is it?’ Michael indicated he wasn’t sure what she thought it was. ‘Hang on a minute then,’ and she picked the paper up again, lapsing into silence.

Michael started slurping at his drink, trying to dissipate the heat a little, this didn’t seem to incur any reaction from Celia so he continued, looking at the fixtures and fittings around the room while she was caught up in the words and pictures. He wondered what exactly “it” was, that Celia was thinking about. As she read on she seemed to look less and less comfortable and her milky skin became paler still. She reached the end of the article and looked up, directly into Michael’s eyes, ‘Shit!’

‘What is it Evans?’

‘I think it might have something to do with us, here.’ She turned the article to face him. ‘Read it, properly!’ She emphasised the last word with a heavy sigh then watched as Michael took it in, reaching the end and then continuing to stare at it. He didn’t look up but said, ‘Have you checked the results from the QSG recently?’

‘Every damned trip.’ She sounded defensive, even though Cooke hadn’t said it with an accusatory tone. ‘Have you finished in the lab yet?’

‘I have now! Sorry you didn’t get to relax all day, I still think you need to rest but I guess this is too big not to worry about.’ He threw the rest of his drink down the waste pipe of the coffee machine, crumpled up the plastic cup and launched it into the recycling, as he left the room closely followed by Celia.

 

***

 

Once again Masterson watched Andrea, David and Emily head out into the bush. They were now about 164,000 years in the past, which seemed like a long time, until you were actually there standing in the middle of what would one day be the southern tip of Mozambique. This time they were at least on some easily navigable terrain, which meant he didn’t have to worry about reconnaissance as he could see them no matter how far they ranged. David had assured him that, amongst other jobs, he had spent a couple of years being a tour guide in South Africa so should be able to deal with all but the most uncooperative of wildlife. Masterson had furnished him with a tranquilizer gun anyway, just to be on the safe side and he had grudgingly taken it, slung over his shoulder.

Robert kept his eyes fixed on the three moving figures in the distance while managing to scan around his own surrounds, as he approached the truck, where Michael was vigorously typing commands into the laptop on his knee, it was plugged into the Jump Box and the two devices were busily exchanging data. Celia was sitting next to him doing something similar with her measuring device. ‘In case you’re both wondering, the reason Peter James isn’t here is because he is,’ he paused for a moment to get the two physicists to look up from their screens, ‘considering his future with the project. I thought it was probably better that he wasn’t actively involved in the jumps while he was doing so.’

Michael turned back to the screen first, but spoke as he resumed his typing. ‘By that I assume you mean he might be leaving the team. Would that be a completely voluntary decision?’

Masterson turned away from the cab looking back towards the other contingent of the group, this meant his voice was slightly muted and his expression wasn’t visible. ‘I believe that he isn’t comfortable with the overall safety of the project. He also has his doubts as to whether the aims of the project, and those of the funding bodies who pay our wages, meet up with his own. So the decision itself was definitely his own. But, when it came to his inclusion or otherwise on this trip, I considered my experience in the safety and previous performance of the Cougar, against that of Mr James, and found my confidence to be lacking more in the latter than the former.’

‘How does Andrea feel about that?’ Celia stopped typing and looked around as she said this, to see if it would warrant any visible reaction. It didn’t.

‘Don’t worry Miss Evans, Andrea has spent enough time with that man to know what’s best for the team. For him and for herself. They’ve discussed the matter at great length and have come to an agreement about it.’ Masterson turned back to them and looked to see if any further questions would be asked. When neither of them looked up from their keyboards he closed the door, heading off towards a nearby narrow trunked tree, which offered a little shade from the heat of the late afternoon sun. He stared towards David, Andrea and Emily, who appeared to be reaching the end of their measurements.

Michael hit the Enter key with a small flourish to signify he’d finished typing. He moved the machine further forward on his knee and turned in his seat to face Celia. ‘Well Evans, have you found anything unusual yet? I’ve gone through every diagnostic I can come up with and everything seems fine in the Jump Box itself.’

Celia mimicked Michael’s final key press, turning away from her own screen. Her eyes seemed to focus on Masterson, still standing motionless in the tree’s limited cover. ‘Snap, the numbers are within what I would expect the standard deviation to show. Even for such a big jump. Honestly though, I’m still not entirely certain what the Gauge’s numbers are actually representing, in real world terms. I’m certain it’s giving us the information we want but I have a suspicion it may also be measuring some things I haven’t even considered, from a physical standpoint. I think when we get back we need to run these figures in parallel to try and come up with a unified way of processing the data, to give more accurate results.

She turned away from the window to look at Michael, as he remembered what he hadn’t had the time to bring up earlier. ‘I couldn’t help noticing, this is the first day since we met that I’ve seen your face in its natural state, so to speak. You were in the lab before me this morning and you don’t look like you’ve been getting much sleep. Are you okay?’

Celia hunched sideways to glance in the wing mirror. After a moment she said, ‘I was going to argue but I can see what you mean.’ Silence descended until she had finished inspecting her countenance. ‘This stuff is so important I thought I needed to get an early start, so I did. I had to make sure my calculations were right, and that the story we saw in the paper is actually a coincidence rather than something more worrying.’

‘You know you don’t have to do this all by yourself. The whole thing is down to me in the first place, so ask if you need help.’ Celia gave one of her happy go lucky grins, to show she wouldn’t leave him wanting and they started discussing how they could merge the datasets.

The others had finished their work and were just passing Masterson. He gave a final glance at the landscape and turned to follow them. David was the first to reach the door as Robert asked if there were any problems, he made a couple of remarks about it being too hot to work but Masterson was more interested to see that Andrea raised her eyebrows, nodding to confirm that the three of them had been with each other from the start to the finish of this trip. He breathed an internal sigh of relief and helped them get themselves and their equipment back in the truck before closing the door, then jogging effortlessly to the front and climbing into the drivers’ side, shortly before the hulking vehicle slid out of time.

 

***

 

It was nearly half past three and it had been a tough day for Kerry. The café had been busier than she could remember. Thankfully it had been slowly emptying over the last twenty minutes or so and she was finally able to wipe over the last few tables as their occupants left, mostly without so much as a nod, let alone acknowledging her existence in any way. She finally sat down and breathed a sigh of relief, just as the bell rang over the door, signalling the entrance of a slightly unusual couple who came in and sat down, at a table which was still damp from the disinfectant she’d sprayed on it five minutes before.

The pair were about the same height, although the woman was wearing ridiculous heels which made her a few inches taller than the bloke. As Kerry made herself look busy she continued to inspect them and started to think that maybe they weren’t actually together. The woman was around her own age and looked kind of like a secretary. Actually maybe not, because the clothes she wore looked too expensive, even for a well-paid personal assistant. If anything, Kerry thought that she wouldn’t have looked out of place as a football club manager, or one of those women who tell a board of directors how to run their business. Although maybe her first instinct had been right, as the skirt was a little too short and the heels a tad too pointy and high.

The man on the other hand looked like he had just left a punk concert. His hair was quite long and although it was clean he had it tied back in a ponytail. His t-shirt had a picture of some indistinct looking men holding guitars and sprawled across each other, their instruments and a stage. He was in black jeans and beaten up trainers. The coat he wore over the t-shirt was knee length and military looking, but with various iconic peace signs artfully scrawled across large sections of the material. Kerry headed over to the table and took their order. Two coffees, not the most exciting request but at least it wouldn’t take her long to fix up. Then she could sit down for five minutes with her notepad.

After seeing them up close she was even less sure of what to make of their situation. It seemed like the man was in charge of the “meeting”, but he certainly didn’t look like he should be giving instructions to someone holding a handbag that probably cost more than all his clothes put together. If her other suspicion proved right she didn’t see how he could afford the services of a woman that looked like five minutes of her time would cost, well…more than her handbag! She smiled as she delivered the drinks to their table and turned, leaving them to whatever their odd-couple discussion might entail.

‘I don’t know what to do about it Jessica. Frankly the man seems to have most of the group in the palm of his hand. Whatever he has planned I’m fairly certain it can’t be good.’ Jessica shuffled in her seat but didn’t add to the conversation. ‘I’m also worried for our safety to be honest, I wouldn’t put physical violence beyond the man. My suspicion would be he’ll use any means at his disposal to get what he wants.’ At this comment Jessica looked even more uncomfortable and turned her green eyes away, towards the woman who had served their drinks. Jonny kept staring at the place where her eyes had been, her caramel coloured hair was now in front of him and he found it difficult to know what to say next. He wondered if Darwin had already threatened her, he decided to ask outright. ‘Jessica, you haven’t really looked at me since we met today. Is it me, or has Darwin been intimidating you? What’s wrong?’

Jonny waited for Jessica to respond and was about to push her to speak when she finally returned his stare. ‘Sorry Jonny, I’ve been having some issues, I’ve needed time to think about them but I think I’ve worked it all out now.’

‘What kind of issues, surely you can tell me about them?’

Jessica stared at her coffee and shook her head, ‘I didn’t think I should come to you about this, it kind of involves you.’

A shiver seemed to run down Jonny’s spine. ‘Involves me, but how? Does it have something to do with that bastard Darwin? I didn’t know if he was for real. You know he told me you might be harmed if I didn’t keep the group going with him as a part of it, when I tried to tell him to leave. I couldn’t stand the thought so I just went along with it and haven’t challenged him since.’

Jessica finally looked him full in the face, ‘Oh Jonny, I don’t know what to do. I wanted to come to you so much but I didn’t think you’d manage very well with what he told me. I didn’t know how to react myself.’ She gulped some air down before continuing. ‘Darwin asked me to help with his plan, I think he’s going to use the machine to go back in time and cause disasters. He wants me to wipe its logs so the trips can’t be traced.’

‘I hope you turned him down.’

‘I did. That’s where the problems started. He confronted me again, he came to my house and told me if I didn’t help he’d release pictures of you. He showed me some pictures Jonny, I couldn’t let him do it. I had to agree.’

Jonny looked slightly awkward, as if something was scratching at the edge of his consciousness, but was fighting with himself as to whether he should ask or not. ‘What do you mean? What pictures?’ Jessica reached into her handbag, drew out a brown A5 envelope and pushed it across the table. Jonny stared at it, his hands were buried in his coat pockets and they stayed there for an appreciable time. Eventually he stopped staring and stirred, tentatively his hands reached out and lifted the envelope, as if he was afraid of what might be in there. It was obvious from the weight and feel of it that there were photographs inside. ‘Have you seen what’s in here?’ Jessica nodded her head gently and a look of concern flittered across her face.

The envelope was a fresh one, the adhesive undisturbed. She had used it so there was no chance that the contents would fall out. Jonny stuck the corner of a bitten fingernail underneath the flap, gripping it between his finger and thumb, slowly pulling to try and minimise the amount of noise he made opening it. Jessica sat patiently on the other side of the table, the worry still palpable on her face. Jonny inched one of his delicately thin fingers into the envelope, carefully pulling a single picture up from the pile. Jessica couldn’t look at his face as the image was revealed to him. Her eyes alighted on the clock near the door of the café and lost focus as she waited for him to speak again.

Jonny’s face was frozen but the colour drained out of it. He pushed the picture back into the packet. His breathing had intensified and he wiped the sleeve of his ancient jacket across his forehead, which had become damp with perspiration. He remained silent but before Jessica could say anything he sprang up and was through the door, without looking back. Because she hadn’t been concentrating it took her too long to come round and call for him. He was gone.

She grabbed her jacket and stood up throwing some coins onto the table before reaching the door in no time at all, but when she opened it and called his name he was nowhere to be seen.

 

***

 

Masterson was glaring at the newspaper clippings on the unpolished grainy surface of his bare desk, his forearms resting lightly on the wood and his hands almost framing the words and images of environmental problems around the world. There was a firm knock on the door and he called for Cooke and Evans to enter. He had asked them to come twenty minutes ago but they told him there was something important they had to finish first, so he spent the intervening time removing bits of paper from the folder they were stored in and laying them upon the table one by one, after reading through each in turn. For the second time!

Michael gallantly offered the chair to Celia, she feigned offence and declined so they both stood on the opposite side of Robert’s desk, waiting for the reason behind their summoning to be revealed. ‘What’s going on?’ Was all he said!

They looked at each other, Celia turned back first. ‘Specifically?’

‘I mean with these.’ He pointed at the desk and they looked at the articles he had spread upon it. ‘Have we done this? It’s just that there appear to be an awful lot of bad things happening in places we’ve visited, which are making some major issues for the people who live there.’

‘No, definitely not!’ The two answered in unison but Michael continued alone. ‘I’d be lying if I said we know for sure, but since Evans saw the first article the other day we’ve been cross checking the data from the Quantum State Gauge and the Jump Box and trying to extrapolate any inconsistencies. I’m afraid there aren’t any, all the figures add up and seem to support each other. I’m afraid it must be something else causing this.’ He looked towards Celia searching for support and she nodded her head in agreement.

Is there any way we can prove your theories? It’s just that I’m suspecting that before long questions may be asked by the people who have been supporting this project. It’d be nice if we had some answers when they come calling.’

Celia shrugged. Cooke looked down at the clippings again for inspiration, his eyebrows creased before he answered. ‘Perhaps. It might be possible to carry out an experiment by jumping to one of the places we’ve already been and carrying out some more detailed measurements with the QSG. The only problem being that each time we go to the same place we may inadvertently be affecting the original measurements, so we might get slightly skewed results for prior trips. I’ll have to look into it a little more, give me until tomorrow and I’ll have a more definitive answer for you.’ He stood up and left the office but was so engrossed in his thoughts he didn’t dismiss himself.

 

***

 

Celia smiled sheepishly at Masterson, not quite knowing if she should excuse herself to go help Michael with his research. While she was deciding what to do Robert stopped staring at the papers and looked directly at her. ‘There is something you might be able to do for me Celia.’ She was surprised he had managed to use her first name without looking uncomfortable. She kept her black edged eyes pointed at him until he went on, ‘but before I ask, I’m starving and I haven’t eaten anything since I got up. Is it okay if we go grab a bite to eat from the mess?’

She wasn’t sure quite what to make of this, but frankly he was in charge so she didn’t feel like she had a great deal of choice, muttering something about having had an early lunch herself today. She knew it was slightly pointless with the personality deficient Colonel, but tried to make small talk as they walked. He was surprisingly forthcoming, for a change, as if he had finally relaxed into his position as their scientifically underdeveloped leader. He revealed more about himself than she had found out in all their previous exchanges, even down to his preference for fieldwork and his slight, but obvious discomfort at being made to work with non-forces staff.

After they had visited the cafeteria, exchanging pleasantries with Peter and Andrea who were sitting at a table with drinks and a crossword puzzle in front of them arguing about 11 down, they retired to Masterson’s office again. As Celia was about to sit he motioned towards a door in the wall of the office, which she hadn’t previously noticed, and suggested that they’d be more comfortable in proper seats. She was surprised to find his living quarters on the other side of the door and even more surprised to find that his room was bigger than any of the cubicles the rest of them were sleeping in, his table could almost fit four people round it! He settled himself into a seat, which had actual padding on it. As she sat down she found it wasn’t made of spiky bits like all the other chairs in this place.

‘Do you think those two ever have a conversation that isn’t an argument?’

Celia had to rewind her memory to realise he was talking about Andrea and Peter. ‘Actually, I read somewhere that the fieriest relationships tend to be the most passionate. Although with those two it wouldn’t surprise me if they fought and…’ she hesitated, realising she was about to say something crude and quickly found an alliterative replacement, ‘…fornicated at the same time.’ Robert smiled. ‘Anyway, I assume that now you’ve started to replace some of those missing nutrients you might be wanting to cut to the chase?’

His expression was one of confusion, as he tried to remember what it was that had brought them here. ‘Oh yes,’ it finally came back, ‘would you like a drink, by the way? I have a relatively okay bottle of red wine which should go with this chilli,’ Celia looked a little surprised but Robert pretended not to notice. ‘Or if it’s more to your liking there’s a six pack of lager in the fridge.’

‘Ah, chilli and lager, how can I say no.’ She winked at him and he wheeled his seat back a metre reaching into the fridge, which was integrated into the cupboards, under the small work surface which took up most of one side of the room. Wheeling back he plonked a can in front of her, asking if she wanted a glass. ‘No thanks, I’ll do the bloke thing if it’s all the same to you,’ and she cracked it open, taking a swig to try and wash some of the heat away. ‘Does this mean I’m better off with a drink for what you’re about to tell me?’

Robert looked up from his beer and nearly smiled. ‘It might help actually. I’m sure you know there’s something not quite right with what’s happening at the moment. I’ve been considering all possible causes and there’s one that I keep coming back to, again and again.’ Celia paused her eating for a moment, picked up her drink and held it in anticipation, waiting for whatever was coming next. ‘If the data is okay, as far as you’re concerned, I suspect there’s an outside influence and the only thing I can come up with is infiltration.’

‘What, like a spy?’

‘Yes, or at least someone in the team who doesn’t necessarily have the same goals as the rest of us. Don’t worry, I know it’s not you and I’m certain it’s not Michael. But figuring out who else it isn’t is proving to be a little difficult. I wondered if you might be able to do a slightly more in depth trawl of the Jump Box logs to see if there are any unauthorised excursions, or any activity we might be missing somehow?’

Celia tipped the can up to pour some more of the beer into her mouth and thought. Robert sat patiently until she was ready. ‘Well I don’t believe it could be Andrea, although Peter is, oh!’ She realised that the Jameses were partners and wondered if marital connection was enough to foster such collusion. She decided not to pursue that line of reasoning, or she would lose the trust she had built up with the people she now considered to be her friends. Robert shrugged. ‘You could be right though, we’ve been checking the figures but we’ve only been emptying out the data we need to cross reference against. I was thinking we’d have noticed the truck being absent, but of course we wouldn’t. It’s a time machine, isn’t it! I’ll start now.’

Robert looked a little startled, ‘No.’ He surprised himself with the suddenness of his response, but then managed to look a little more relaxed. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do it now. Michael’s already working on the Box so you won’t be able to, you may as well finish your meal, and in any case I’ve just opened another beer and I’m not one for drinking alone, so you’d better hang around or I’ll have to pour it away.’

‘Well that would be a terrible waste wouldn’t it? Fine, I don’t have anywhere else to be and it’s not the easiest place for a socialite like me to party.’ Celia carefully adjusted her top, it was a nice top but she probably would have chosen one with less structure and a bit more give if she had known she would be eating in polite company, or at least with Robert! She slowly looked around the room, which contained a surprising number of home comforts for a man who said he preferred to be outdoors. Her gaze alighted upon a badly mangled book that looked on the verge of falling to pieces. It was resting on the blocky, oak coffee table in front of the two-seater sofa, which faced a cabinet housing a minimally styled music system. The book was A Brief History of Time.

She stood up and walked over to inspect the book, excusing herself for leaving the table by telling the truth, that she needed to stop sitting down or her seams would likely come unstitched from the tension. ‘Are you reading this?’

‘I figured I should try and brush up on my physics. After all, that’s what we’re doing here. It was the only copy I could find. It’s Michael’s and it appears to have seen better days. Possibly better decades!’

‘You know I read it once, cover to cover, when I was about seventeen. I got as far as chapter seven before realising I was out of my depth.’

‘You did better than me, I’m at four and I’m not certain what’s happening.’

Celia gave Robert a look, letting him know she hadn’t missed the pun but wasn’t going to justify it. ‘When I look at it now there are still things I can’t understand, but if you want me to try and translate it into plain English for you let me know.’ Robert stood up and came over to remind himself where he had got to, agreeing to take her up on that offer. Celia then tried returning to the earlier topic, of which member of the team might be acting out of accordance with the guidelines they had put together, to stop any kind of spacetime interference. The two of them sat down on the sofa holding their cans of drink, as Robert picked up a remote control and turned the radio on.

The next time Celia looked at her watch she was surprised to find it was nearing ten o’clock. Robert looked a little concerned as her blue eyes, framed by dark painted eyelids, opened up in consternation and he asked if she was okay. ‘I didn’t realise what the time was. I need to be up early in the morning and I’ve drunk ever so slightly too much. I have to go, sorry.’ She wasn’t sure why she apologised and it had the effect of making Robert look vaguely embarrassed.

‘No, don’t apologise. I shouldn’t have taken up so much of your time. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ and he led the way to, then opened the door for her to step through. As she rushed back to her room along the dreary corridors she wondered what, if anything, had just happened. Then tried to concentrate on what she needed to do tomorrow. Robert was left, framed in the opening to his room, scratching his head.

800324D9

Originally published in the Independent newspaper.

Columbia’s driest summer in recorded history

…Almost worse than the intense heat the South West of the country has been experiencing are the unprecedented heavy downpours of rain, with over 300mm recorded over three separate 24 hour periods in the past month which, when interspersed with the effects of the extreme temperatures, has led to sudden flash floods and landslides causing towns and villages to be engulfed by rivers of mud or, in one instance, almost completely annihilated by a startling and unexpected onslaught of water.

The village of Puerto Nariño, a settlement on the southernmost tip of the country lost all of its traditional wooden, thatched buildings and a large number of the brick built businesses and residences were also washed into the Amazon, which flows past the lower edge of the settlement where it meets the border of Peru. Luckily this happened during the villagers’ working day and most residents didn’t come to harm, due to the larger percentage of the community being boat faring and involved in bartering and exchange with other communities scattered along the riversides.

Only five villagers have not been accounted for since the flood. The local council released a statement that this is the worst tragedy ever to befall the town…

 

***

 

Celia thought that if the computer keyboard in front of her had been a musical one she’d be playing something quite complicated, probably classical. Her fingers raced across the keys, hardly waiting for the resulting characters to be displayed on screen before starting the rat-a-tat hammering again.

She was almost done with outputting the logs from the Jump Box, which she would be able to load into something a little more user friendly than the bespoke interface, so she could start searching for any unusual records amongst those she was already aware of.

There was an absence of sound as she sat back, waiting for the machine to finish outputting numbers, so she sang a few words from a song which had been going round in her head all day. The cursor hopped to the bottom of the screen to await further commands. She scooted across the floor on her chair, a bad habit which she’d picked up from Michael over the last four months. Sitting in front of another computer she logged in, copying the data to a backup before starting any work on it.

As soon as the hard drive light stopped flashing she loaded the first file, looking through the results to check they aligned with those from the server. She sighed as the data was exported to a spread sheet, still the fastest way of checking the numbers. After getting the results side by side she jumped to the last entry.

The screen looked strange somehow, the bottom rows of numbers from the Jump Box and the server didn’t quite line up. She looked again, just to check, but there was definitely a disparity. At first she scrolled slowly up the screen, checking line by line that everything was out by a single row. She wondered briefly if she was having some kind of problem with her vision but after giving her eyes a quick rub and looking at some printouts, to check they were okay, her confidence returned and she scrolled through pages instead of lines. After a few minutes of watching the characters move up the screen she got bored and went back to the start of the spread sheet, slowly moving the selection right until she found where the columns from the two datasets met. She moved the active cell to the bottom of the screen, continuing until a sudden inconsistency leaped out a few thousand lines in. ‘Well that can’t be right!’ She said to herself, because no one else was there to hear her say it.

She trundled over to her own desk, opening the middle drawer and getting out a small notebook, with a hairband around the middle to secure it. She removed the elastic and made a messy pony tail of her hair, leaving blonde streaks hanging around her eyes where it wasn’t long enough. She opened the book, flicking through to find the correct page. Each sheet contained a brief written account of what had happened every day since she arrived, with the date neatly blocked out at the top left corner. She rolled back to the computer, looking at the date field again to make sure it read the same electronically and on the paper.

She wrote the exact time as stated on the screen in her book, then carefully closed all the windows and shut the computer down, before standing up and rocking her shoulders back-and-forth to try and loosen them up a bit, then she picked up the portable interface for the Jump Box and did a decent impression of a sprinter all the way to the hangar where the truck resided.

This time she wanted to be plugged in directly, rather than getting the data second hand so to speak, through the assorted leads and cables it traversed to get to the lab. She haphazardly pulled herself into the cab, still short of breath from the impromptu run, and plugged the cable directly into the port in the centre of the dashboard. The controller took a while to start up, during which time Celia nervously bit her lip and tapped out the tune she had been singing on the flat surface of the console with her fingers.

The screen came up with Michael’s rather dry welcome message, which simply read, “welcome”. No capitals and no further instructions, not that she needed them! Her fingers started their own beat on the keys and after a few minutes she rubbed the bridge of her nose in thought, typing a couple of final instructions. The missing result reappeared in an unpleasantly garbled state on the screen. She sat up straight, thinking for a few moments, then realised she could probably use the same method to check if there were any other missing entries. Her key presses started off slowly, then sped up as she figured out exactly what was required. After ten minutes of typing and waiting there was a list of items, not easy to read on the small screen but clear enough. She saved the output, turned off and unplugged the interface then ran back to the lab, being careful not to trip over with the minimal but not easily replaceable machine in her hands.

She settled back in the chair, which hadn’t quite cooled down from when she left and idly wondered what the leather effect material was actually made from, while turning everything on, plugging the console into the PC and waiting for the two devices to recognise each other. She took a sip of the blackcurrant squash left next to the monitor, eyes fixed on the screen. It seemed to take an age to sort itself out but she tried to be patient and absently stroked the Jump Box interface, murmuring soothing sounds to try coaxing it into hurrying up. Shortly everything was powered up, connected and waiting for something to happen. Celia copied the newly created missing-entry file across to the computer, crossed her fingers and opened it up.

Her hands distractedly moved to rest on her skin, through the ripped material of the jeans she only wore today because she knew she wouldn’t be seeing anyone else. There appeared to be a lot more lines of results than she expected. Once again she scrolled down the screen, looking at each row in turn. She suddenly realised what was wrong with the numbers and involuntarily glanced round the laboratory to see if anyone was there. She started pounding through whole pages at a time then, as the bottom of the data got closer, she slowed down and scrolled line-by-line.

It took some time, double checking to make sure her suspicion was correct. She stared at the digits and tentatively reached across the desk, patting around until she located the handset piece of the desk phone. Her eyes were glued to the screen. She lifted up the receiver and put it to her ear and dialled the number by touch alone. Patiently she waited for the recipient to finish answering. ‘It’s Celia, I need to see you. Now.’ The person on the other end of the line spoke briefly. ‘Yes, I do mean immediately. Get Cooke too, it’s important. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

She wrote down the characters from the screen in her little book. Putting the pad in her jeans it caught on the frayed edge around her back pocket, so she wiggled it about until it slipped in. Standing up she turned the remaining equipment off and made sure everything was in its correct place, then left the room shutting, then locking the door behind herself.

 

***

 

Robert looked up from the book splayed open on his desk, as the door opened. It was Cooke. ‘Please, take a seat.’ Michael sat down, noticing that Masterson had managed to find another chair since the last time he’d been here. Before he got himself comfortable there was another knock at the door and Evans stepped in, without waiting for acknowledgement. She collapsed on the new seat, breathing heavily. Michael and Robert stared at her wondering why she was out of breath. They waited anxiously until she was ready to talk.

‘I don’t know if you’re aware Mike but Robert asked me to go through the log files to look for inconsistencies, errors or omissions. That’s what I’ve been doing since I got up this morning. First I tried comparing the Jump Box data with what we upload to the server after the jumps. I thought it was okay until I realised the two sets of results were one record out. After a bit of searching I found the row which wasn’t there.’ Both of the men appeared to be trying to find a way to tell her you couldn’t find something which wasn’t there. ‘You know what I mean! Anyway, I had to download the full records from the Jump Box and go through them to identify what I was after. It took a while but I managed it. How many jumps do you reckon we’ve made so far using the truck?’

Robert looked at Michael, who answered without really thinking about it, ‘Five. I can list when and where if you want?’ Masterson nodded in agreement.

‘Okay then, how many trips do you think the Jump Truck has made?’

This time Robert, feeling quite confidant said, ‘Five, obviously!’

Michael looked towards Robert and with a strange sense of premonition stated, ‘More than five I bet.’ He turned to Celia and urged her to go on.

‘Fourteen.’

Masterson and Cooke stared at her. Neither of them seemed inclined to be the first to speak, so Celia reached round and pulled the notebook out of her pocket, inelegantly fighting to get it past the loose material at the top. Opening it to the page the notes were on she continued, ‘The first jump we didn’t know about was just a spatial one, not through time. The others were to the locations our team jumped to, only adjusting the date and time so it didn’t turn up while we were there. Each of the jumps to China and Ecuador was bracketed by another jump, to the same place the first unauthorised jump was, with no temporal offset again. Looks like the truck was taken to pick some people up and then to do something where we had been.’

Masterson fidgeted in his seat as if trying to get comfortable with these facts. ‘So what you’re telling us is that someone has been borrowing the Jump Truck and visiting our jump sites?’

‘Yep, that’s pretty much it.’

Celia put her notebook down on the desk, Michael reached over to pick it up and slowly looked at what she had written. ‘What does this mean?’ He held the page up in front of her, pointing at some of the quickly scrawled text.

Celia looked at it, then took the book from his grasp. ‘All of the data I managed to recover was in the format I’d been expecting, you know dates, times, coordinates, quantum measurements, whatever, but the final entry I recovered was never in the Jump Box logs and that’s what it said.’

She turned the pad towards Robert, with her thumb pointing at the letters Michael had asked about. Robert reached out and took it from her, focussing on the words. ‘”help us. j.b.” This was the last entry?’ He said it out loud to make sure he had read the hurriedly scrawled text correctly and Celia nodded.

‘Yes. I’m guessing it was done quickly so whoever wrote it wasn’t seen. I think someone is being made to take part in these activities against their better judgement. For one thing, if they had wanted to it looks like they were savvy enough to have wiped these logs so there was no trace. I think the text at the end is a clue, possibly at great personal expense. What are we going to do?’

Both Celia and Michael looked to Robert while he considered the best course of action. It didn’t take him long. ‘We keep jumping, at least until we find the infiltrator. We don’t want to let them know we’ve discovered what they’re doing. Michael, do you think we’ll be able to fix the problems they’ve caused?’ Cooke shrugged, suggesting that he hadn’t realised there could even be problems, so Masterson’s guess was as good as his. ‘Okay, in that case could I speak to you for a few minutes, alone?’ He glanced at Celia to let her know he no longer required her presence. As she left the room she heard Robert start talking. ‘I have a suspicion I know who’s behind this, but I think I need your help…’ She closed the door, realising she didn’t know what to do, so she decided to finish off the day of rest, which had been unceremoniously interrupted before she’d got going with some really energetic relaxing.

 

***

 

Alan was trying his best to be inconspicuous in the small room, but the ginger hair and green eyes pinned on top of a six foot frame made him a kind of beacon. He had seen Jessica looking at him a few times tonight. He suspected she was trying to catch his attention and that she had some information he might find useful, which was a shame because she was actually more attractive, and in his opinion better dressed than any of the other people in the basement room. It would have been nice if it was just his company she was seeking out. He eventually managed to disengage himself from the tiny and almost unstoppable “Python”, who had been telling him about a package trip she once took to the Amazon rainforest, where she saw all kinds of unusual animals which she had spent the last ten minutes listing.

He reached the corner of the room. ‘No Jonny tonight?’ He asked, with at least genuine looking concern on his face.

‘He’s not feeling very well.’ This, at least, was probably true. Jessica wondered if, or when Jonny might contact her again and resolved right then to find him and tell him everything was okay between them. She dropped the pitch and volume of her voice, ‘I’m glad you came over, I’ve been trying to catch your attention. That Ruth’s a bit of a talker, isn’t she!’ Alan smiled a fraught, weary smile from the animal descriptions still ringing in his ears. ‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m a little worried about you. Has Darwin talked to you yet?’ Her eyes flitted from side to side, only rarely resting on Alan for any amount of time.

‘Should he have?’ Alan seemed slightly confused by Jessica’s statement, expressing concern for his welfare.

‘Well, it’s just that. I’m not really sure how to say this. I’ve been doing some, um, research on our groups’ members since Darwin joined and I’ve found quite a lot of information about everyone, apart from Darwin…and you! I’m a little concerned that Darwin may have been doing something similar. I think he might possibly want to investigate further about the fact that you’re a bit of a ghost, internet-presence wise.’ She went on, ‘He’s trying to organise a project, getting members of the group to take part in,’ she looked uncomfortable for a moment, ‘whether they want to or not. I think he might be hoping to draw on your experiences.’ Suddenly she went very quiet, Alan looked up to see Darwin slowly snaking through the small throng of environmental fanatics. ‘I’ll speak to you later,’ she blurted and Alan watched her skirt the room, surprisingly steadily, to say her heels made her almost as tall as he was. Her dark grey, figure hugging dress seemed like it should limit her movement more than it did.

He was still staring at her when Darwin sidled up to him, catching his attention by standing a little too close, directly in front of his field of view. ‘Ah, Mr Scott. I’ve been meaning to speak to you for a while now.’ Alan stood his ground and waited to see how Darwin would continue. ‘If it’s alright I would prefer not to talk here, it’s a little,’ he paused, searching for the right word, ‘exposed.’

‘Yeah, no worries. Give me a time and a place, I’m available pretty much whenever.’

Darwin reached into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing, the material of which was similar to that of Jessica’s dress. The juxtaposition in Alan’s mind’s eye was both disconcerting and slightly unpleasant. He pulled a small notebook out and with great precision transcribed the name of something, which Alan could only assume must be a place to meet, a time and date, ripped the sheet out and handed it over. ‘You should be able to find this place easily enough, it’s quite local. I‘ll see you then.’ Before Alan could respond Darwin turned and left the room, tailing the last few members of the group who had been loitering and gossiping.

 

***

 

Celia stepped into the common room, hoping to find Robert and Michael alone there. She started talking but juddered to a halt when she noticed Andrea, sitting in a comfy chair on the far side reading the paper. Andrea looked up but Robert interposed, ‘It’s okay, you can talk in front of Andrea, she’s been cleared.’

Celia breathed a sigh of relief, at being able to talk openly to Andrea again and composed herself to start from where she left off. ‘I’ve looked at the wiped records in more detail, I’m a little worried there are further jumps which have been removed a little more thoroughly. The intervals seem to be around the mid to late eighteenth century. All in or around Britain.’

‘Do you have the details of the jump sites?’ She handed some print-outs to Cooke, who inspected the contents. They read like a list of bar codes to Robert, who was sitting next to him. After an appreciable time Michael turned to Robert. ‘I’m fairly confident I have an idea of what these are.’ Masterson’s questioning glance prompted Cooke to continue. ‘The most important occurrence in Britain between these dates was the Industrial Revolution, I think they’ve been trying to slow down the technological innovation that it hailed. My suspicion would be, they didn’t see any noticeable difference because the timeline settled itself. It was only a couple of hundred years ago, not long enough for things to really change between then and now. It looks like we were right though, about going further back and making more of a difference. However, if we jumped forward a few thousand years I think things wouldn’t be as advanced as they should be. We need to go to where and when they’ve been and fix these problems.’

Celia had already turned towards her friend, having worked out what this actually meant, and smiled, watching Robert’s face as he internally wrangled with himself about the best way of approaching the challenging situation. Slowly he turned to look at Andrea as well. She was concertedly staring at the newspaper, which had been lifted up in front of her face. Robert coughed, there was no noticeable movement from behind the broadsheet. After a few seconds he realised she wasn’t going to give in that easily. He turned to Michael. ‘Do you think there’s any way to corroborate this?’

‘We could do with someone who knows about engineering. To tell us whether these jumps are likely to be important, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe someone with an idea of how to repair whatever technology has been sabotaged.’ Cooke also turned towards the pair of hands clutching the edges of the newspaper.

Robert sighed and walked over to where he was being summarily ignored. He stood, looking down at the face of Mrs Peter James which continued to stare at the text directly in front of her eyes. ‘Andrea.’ There was a continuation of the silence for about ten seconds, then the paper was carefully folded up and placed on the seat next to her. She looked up at him with a serene expression. ‘Your husband may be able to save the future of mankind. Do you think he would be willing to lend his expertise to the project again?’

Andrea kept her arms folded and fixed her stare a little past the side of Robert’s face, so as not to have to look at him. ‘I suspect that depends on how abjectly you’re willing to prostrate yourself in front of him.’ Celia was impressed that Andrea managed to keep a straight face. Masterson muttered a few words about expecting something like that, apologised and left the room with his head drooping like a sad puppy dog.

As soon as they were sure he was out of earshot Michael said, ‘That was cruel!’ The two women burst out laughing.

8003442D

The doorbell sounded its asynchronous buzz, which brought Jonny back to reality from the nice place he had been holed up in for the previous hour while meditating. Thankfully he was fairly clear headed from the session and was able to roll off the bed and get through the door by reflex alone, without needing to open the curtains to find his way. He put his hands over his eyes as he stepped into the small hallway, to acclimatise himself to the un-shaded light bulb. He automatically smoothed down the loose piece of wallpaper next to the button as he pressed it down, putting his mouth near to the microphone, which hadn’t worked properly for at least a year. ‘Hello, who is it please?’

The voice coming back through the intercom sounded metallic, ‘Let me in Jonny, it’s Jessica.’ Jonny stepped back, letting go of the button. Unbidden, the rudest word he knew sprang from his lips. He struggled with himself, then hesitantly reached up for the other button and held it down. He heard the front door slam itself shut and stepped back, putting hands to his temples to stop all the shouting in his head. The footsteps coming up the stairs suggested she was in the unfeasibly high heeled boots she insisted on wearing when it was just the two of them. He wondered blankly if she did it on purpose, as she gently tapped on the door to his flat.

He attempted to compose himself, retying his pony tail and shaking his hands out to get some life back into them. He undid the chain and unbolted the deadlock, the handle turned and the door protested slightly as it was pushed open from the other side. Jessica stepped into the hallway, looking everywhere but at Jonny. ‘You really need to do this place up mate!’

He was surprised that this was the first thing she said to him. ‘I’ve tried to get the landlords to do something about the décor, but they say that’s not included in the lease and tenants aren’t allowed to redecorate.’ He felt a little more confidant now because the conversation wasn’t anywhere near where he had been fearing it would head. ‘I’ve actually stuck a few new pictures up since you were here last time, to try and brighten it up a bit.’ He led the way through to the living room, ‘Do you like them?’

Jessica put a hand on one hip and stared at the rectangles of bright colours, on the wall over the sofa and between the two wooden framed, single glazed windows. She smiled, ‘That’s exactly what I would have done in here. They’re nice.’ She turned towards him with a big warm smile on her face. ‘Are you going to get me a coffee or do I need to beg?’ Jonny kowtowed his way out of the room and she heard him scrabbling about in the kitchen cupboards next door, as the kettle started hissing away to itself.

After a few minutes Jonny returned, holding two big steaming mugs and an unopened packet of chocolate biscuits, which were clamped under his arm. He put one of the cups in front of Jessica and sat down next to her on the sofa, staring for a little too long at the mug. Or possibly her knee, it was a little hard to tell. He tried to think of something to say but could only come up with weather related topics so he thought a little longer. Before he could find a subject Jessica said, ‘So, how are you mister?’

Jonny stared forlornly at his tea and started absent-mindedly fiddling with the tab at the top of the biscuits before actually opening them, taking one out and making a small incisor shaped cavity in it. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know how I feel.’ He nearly raised his eyes to look into Jessica’s but couldn’t quite bring himself to and they dropped to the floor again. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you, it’s just that, I couldn’t think of how to…’ his voice trailed off as he realised he didn’t know exactly what it was he didn’t know how to do.

Jessica took a mouthful of the coffee, it was hot but not burning. She reached an arm towards him and put her finger under his chin, so she could lift his head up to look at her. ‘Jonny, I’ve realised something since Darwin showed me those pictures,’ Jonny winced, Jessica ignored him. ‘What I’ve realised is that while I may not have been comfortable seeing those images, the reason for that isn’t what you might think. It’s because I care so much about you and don’t think I could bare to see you get hurt.’ Jonny was used to hearing women talk about him like a brother, so he wasn’t too surprised to hear her say this. Jessica looked confused but then realisation dawned as to why he hadn’t reacted, so she thought she better get the hammer out. ‘When I say I care for you, I’ve discovered that I don’t mean platonically. I really like you. Like I think you like me, you idiot!’

Jonny’s eyes continued to gaze at the carpet, he took another bite from his biscuit and then laid it on the table, where it hung precariously over the edge. After he’d finished chewing he took a gulp of tea, then rested the cup next to the biscuit. Finally, with his face close to blank, he looked at her. ‘You mean you did like me! Surely not still, after what Darwin showed you? I’m not right Jessica.’ He put his hands one on top of the other, then put them between his knees.

Jessica reached out and grabbed his closest hand, then put it on her thigh. As Jonny looked up in surprise she smiled at him, ‘Of course you’re not right, I always knew you were hiding something important from me. It’s just that I know what it is now, so I can finally tell you how I feel without expecting a surprise revelation that I might not want to hear.’

‘But surely this is what you were expecting?’

‘Jonny, you’re a fool! There are any number of things that would be less preferable than what he showed me.’ She leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips, Jonny just stared at her. ‘Anyway, right now this isn’t important,’ Jonny looked like he was about to suggest that actually it was, but Jessica went on. ‘Darwin is still hijacking our group, and our lives. I think we need to do something about it, and I have an idea what.’ She emptied the rest of the coffee into her mouth and stood up, taking both of the empty cups and the almost untouched biscuits through to the kitchen, putting the washing in the sink then, after searching through a couple, finding the right cupboard for the biscuits. ‘Here, take my hand.’ Jonny looked at her, expecting something more but she only waited with her arm held out towards him, until he tentatively clasped his fingers around her own. ‘Right, now we’re going for a walk, come on.’ She grabbed Jonny and pulled him towards and through the front door.

 

***

 

For a change Michael was lying on his bed alone. Emily had needed to go and have some kind of girlie chat with Celia and Andrea, so he had picked up the book from his bedside table, untouched for goodness knows how long, opened it up shaking the bookmark on to the bed beside him and tried to remember what was meant to be happening.

The storyline had just about resolved itself and he remembered why he had been enjoying it, when the silence was quietly demolished by a knock at the door. Michael resignedly put the book down on the bed, resting open over the bookmark and stepped towards the door, finding Robert outside, looking from side to side as he came in. ‘I have a plan but I need you to tell me if it’ll work or not.’

Michael had to think for a moment before figuring out what Robert was talking about, ‘You mean to find the infiltrator?’

‘Yes. Do you think it would be dangerous to send someone back in time, to join the group that I think is responsible for these unofficial jumps? So they can check that my suspicions are right?’

‘From what we’ve learned so far I don’t think it would cause any major problems. Just out of interest who do you think is responsible and who are you planning on sending back?’

The guy I’m sending is a colleague of mine. His name is Ian Brookfield, he’s a Captain in one of my units. I’ve been posted with him more times than anyone else and I trust him with my life. Rather handily he also has qualifications in environmental science so he should fit in nicely. The group I want him to join is called the EARTH Force, have you heard of them?’ Michael shook his head. ‘They’re a worldwide organisation of environmental activists who want to reduce humans’ impact on the planet. They used to be quite harmless but they seem to have changed their tack in the past year or two. They’ve become quite troublesome to a number of large international companies, who allegedly produce a lot of waste and toxic pollutants. There’s a particular branch I think are responsible for our problems, but I need to make sure it’s them before we can disband them and find out exactly what they’ve been doing, from the horse’s mouth so to speak.’

‘How far back do you want to send this Brookfield?’

‘It needs to be long enough that he has time to get involved before they start using the Jump Box, I think about six months.’

Michael rubbed the days’ worth of stubble on his chin and stared at the wall while he was thinking. ‘Okay then. I think it’ll be fine but he needs to be well briefed, so he knows he can’t make any assumptions based on what he knows about the future, and isn’t allowed to take advantage of what he does know.’

‘You mean like lottery ticket numbers, that sort of thing?’

‘Roughly speaking yes. If he reveals himself in any way it could jeopardise his own well-being and the mission. You said you trust him, do you think he’s well enough disciplined to be able to keep from revealing anything about what he might know?’

Masterson nodded, ‘He’s been undercover before, when you do that your ability to act outside of your normal sphere of experience can be the difference between life and death. We’ll give him a fake name, set him up with somewhere to live and give him an invented background, so he seems genuine to them.’

‘Okay, when do you think he’ll be able to start?’

‘It could be a week or two. He’ll need to be withdrawn from whatever he’s doing at the moment before I can bring him in.’

‘The reason I ask is, I don’t think it would be a good idea for him to report back until after he’s been sent into the past, it could have some…odd effects! So the sooner he can be trained and transported, the better.’

‘I’ll go make some calls. If you could write up guidelines for what he should and shouldn’t do it’ll make it quicker to get started when he’s available.’ Michael said that wouldn’t be a problem and after shutting the door behind Masterson he sat at his desk, picked up a pen and started the list.

 

***

 

The door opened smoothly, which surprised Jonny as the corners of the wood were scuffed and bare of paint. He was expecting at least a squeak that called for an oiling of the hinges, but it swung back without protest. He walked into the room, which was small but functional. He couldn’t help but notice the double bed taking up most of the footprint of the floor, but tried to put any thoughts of sleeping arrangements out of his mind. He poked his head into the small bathroom, which didn’t really justify the name as there was no bath, a simple glass shower screen was all that sectioned the tiled room up. The sink was probably big enough to do whatever was necessary, but was a little too close to the toilet for comfort and hygiene.

Taking a look through the window, a grey sky hung overhead with little chance of improvement. The edge of a park nearby stretched off between rows of houses and offices. He sat on the bed and fiddled with the television to see if he could find anything remotely worth watching, while he waited for Jessica to reappear from the involved discussion she had been having with the receptionist, to make sure she had everything she needed. He didn’t have to wait long.

‘You found the room then?’ She had given Jonny one of the room key cards and kept the other one for herself. Jonny nodded and turned off the TV, which only appeared to be showing severe worldwide weather reports anyway. ‘I first stayed here when I was going to the interview for my job you know, I needed somewhere to sleep so I was fresh the next day and this place was close and seemed to have everything I required. Then I realised they have a pretty solid network and don’t ask too many questions, so I kept it in my speed dial.’

Jonny smiled but Jessica could see he wasn’t really following her. ‘Did you understand any of what I was telling you on the way here?’ He sheepishly shook his head. Jessica took a seat beside him on the bed. They looked at each other’s reflections in the mirror, which was above the desk the television inhabited. Jessica started again, but without the technical detail. ‘Well we know Darwin is obviously a real person, we’ve met him for one thing and have some experience of how he works. That’s why we’re here rather than at yours or mine. I’m sure both are bugged in some way, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me crawling around searching for the damned things.’

‘I’m with you so far, it’s the next bit I’m not that clear on.’

‘Okay, so the guy doesn’t have anything like my level of computer know how, which means my kit at home is safe, it’s all encrypted and locked down so there’s no way he could get at it. What I need to do is get into my PC, so I can use it to help me sift through data and return likely results, which might give us hints as to the man’s identity.’

‘Surely we need to be at your house then?’

‘Ah, but like I say he’s watching us, so what I’ll do is fire up this beauty,’ she reached into a bag and produced a slick looking laptop, which she had plugged in and online before Jonny really had a chance to see what she was doing, ‘and VPN to my home network.’ Jonny’s face got that look again. ‘I mean set it up so I can work on the machine at home, as if I’m sat at it! It means I have all the processing power I need without having to be physically in front of the computer in my house. It’s quite cool…’ She looked a little ashamed after saying this, ‘If you like that sort of thing!’

Jonny had never really seen Jessica work before so he stayed next to her, watching supple fingers move faster over the keyboard than he would be able to think of things to write. Initially she seemed to be starting things up, then suddenly the desktop background changed and she announced she was in. She began opening programs and typing things which were way beyond his comprehension. After a while she stopped. ‘Right, I’ve got it trying to recognise images that match his and cross referencing that against criminal activities. Now we can get on to the slightly less exciting task of physically searching for him. My guess would be he’s not using the name Darwin in any other capacity than to keep himself anonymous within our group, so there’s no point searching for that again. When did he first get in contact with you about joining?’

Jonny reached into the inside of his jacket and came out clutching a handful of imprecisely folded, crumpled bits of paper. He knelt down on the floor next to the bed and started placing them, one at a time, on the covers, checking each one as he did so. Somewhere in the middle of the pile he let out a small exclamation and tried to flatten one of the notes out as he handed it to Jessica. She read ‘”email new group member, wouldn’t give name??? August 14”. Is that when he first contacted you?’

Jonny nodded, ‘It was a weird email to be honest, I should have known there was something up with him there and then, but I was trying to be inclusive, you know?’

‘Yes Jonny, I know! That’s cool, we can start our search for the guy from that date backwards and see if we can find anything useful.’

Initially she searched through sites for other local groups with similar sorts of people, to see if anyone had been having similar problems with any members. Nothing! Then tried looking at news stories relating to illegal activities in the local area, still nothing. Jonny started throwing suggestions now he was getting the hang of what they were looking for, but none of their ideas seemed to return anything of value.

After about an hour Jessica snapped the laptop lid shut, rather startling Jonny out of his current meditative line of thought. ‘I’m hungry, and we have all night. Do you want to go and get something to eat?’

‘Um, sure. What can I get you?’

Jessica pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and then lightly hit herself on the middle of the forehead, ‘I mean both of us, together! You seem to think you’re a burden Jonny,’ he looked awkward at the thought. ‘You’re not, I want to spend time with you. I thought I’d made that clear. They do a good bean burger in the bar. I think you’ll like it, come on.’

‘But I don’t have any money.’

‘If you’re going to be a kept man you need to get used to having me pay for you,’ he spluttered but Jessica put her hand up. ‘Stop your moaning. I have money and there’s no way I’m going to live at your place, so you’ll just have to suck it up and try to enjoy it.’ She opened the door and stepped through, dragging Jonny by the hand. He wondered if she was going to continue being so domineering and realised that he’d probably quite enjoy it if that was the case, giving himself a half smile as he was steered towards the stairs.

80038236

Peter was relaxing on the sofa, which felt nice. Sure, he was worried about Andrea’s safety, and the fact that the world might be ripped to pieces at any time with no warning, but for the moment he was feeling okay. Music was filling the room from the well-concealed speakers placed around the periphery. He wasn’t sure what he was listening to, it was one of Andrea’s girly albums, but it involved relaxing piano sounds, an acoustic guitar and a gentle rhythm section tapping along in the background, while a young lady pretended to be a fifties jazz singer.

His repose was interrupted by a soft knock at the front door. He stilled the melody, turned off the stereo and placed the remote control down on the table as he hauled himself out of the seat and shuffled along the hallway, straightening one of the ceremonial swords hanging along the wall as he passed. He was not entirely surprised when he opened the door to find Michael standing on the doorstep, looking furtive. ‘Hey Mike, come on in. Would you like a drink?’ Michael’s nerves seemed to fade a little at the onslaught of congeniality and he stepped through the doorway, removing the jacket he was unnecessarily wearing, more out of habit than because the sudden onset of warm weather required it.

He was ushered into the sitting room where a drink was forced into his hands as he was pushed into a comfy seat. ‘How are you, how’s the project going, how’s Andrea?’ Peter suddenly realised he was perhaps being a little over excitable and tried to bring the conversation back on track, ‘Sorry, I’ve been cooped up here while Andrea’s been flitting off across the spacetime continuum and I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about jumping. What can I do for you?’

Cooke sipped the drink he hadn’t asked for, almost spitting it back into the glass when he discovered it was some kind of wildly strong spirit. He concentrated and swallowed, then cautiously placed it on the table. ‘The others don’t know I’m here but I think we need you back James. There’s a new problem and you might be the only one who has the skill to help.’ Peter put his own tumbler, still half full of the light brown liquid, down and gave Michael his full attention. ‘The terrorists have been jumping back to places and times where important industrial discoveries were made. They seem to be disrupting the breakthroughs so they never happened. I think it’s going to make things bad, I mean worse than they are already.’

Peter put his hand on top of his head. His hair had grown since Michael had last seen him and it looked like it needed a good comb, or possibly even a wash. ‘So what’s going to happen?’

Cooke picked up his drink again, taking a slightly larger gulp of the liquid now he was prepared for the taste, and the burning sensation as it poured down his throat. He placed the glass back on the table, drumming his fingers next to it without realising what he was doing. After a moment he looked down at his tapping digits and stopped suddenly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a clue,’ he looked embarrassed by his response. ‘I suspect we might start having issues with any kind of technology developed in the last hundred and fifty years. Perhaps mechanical faults, maybe loss of technical knowledge, possibly something else I haven’t considered or could comprehend.’

Peter raised an eyebrow, ‘Not good then?’ Michael shook his head. ‘Is it earth shattering?’

Michael shrugged, ‘I don’t think it’ll destroy the planet but it might not be much fun round here until we fix it.’ Then, as if thinking out loud he quietly mumbled something about why the Jump Truck was still working, but then trailed off into silence.

Peter filled his glass again and waited an appropriate amount of time to see if Cooke was going to elaborate. When it was obvious he wasn’t, James threw the rest of the spirit down his throat and sat back in his chair smiling, ‘Good. In that case you can go back to the base and tell Masterson that I’ll happily come back, assuming he comes here himself and asks me nicely.’ He shuffled about as if to get more comfortable, then made it apparent he was there for the duration.

Cooke emptied the glass and placed it down on the table one last time. ‘You’re sure that’s your final answer?’ James nodded his head, putting the glass under his nose to breathe in the stringent aroma. ‘Okay, well in that case I guess I’ll have to find a way to persuade Masterson to make the ultimate sacrifice. Hopefully you’ll hear from him sometime soon. I’ll be seeing you.’ Peter watched him leave the room and heard the definitive sound of the door being pulled shut. He reached out to pick up the previously discarded remote control, turned the stereo back on and hit the play button as he leant back again. Searching to find the song he was listening to before the interruption.

 

***

 

As usual, Alan had turned up at least ten minutes early. Unfortunately today that meant he was standing on a street corner in light drizzle. He looked at his watch and hoped he wouldn’t have to wait much longer, as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He swivelled round to find himself looking down into Darwin’s unnaturally dark eyes, ‘This way please, Mr Scott. There’s somewhere a little dryer which may stop us from catching our death.’ Alan walked beside him along the street, then followed down an alley with a number of identical looking doors along either side. Darwin stopped at one of them, pulling a key from his jacket pocket. Opening the door he allowed Alan to enter first. The room was small and seemed to be a storage container. There wasn’t a great deal in it but the things that were there looked out of place, considering it was Darwin who seemed to own it. Things like a child’s trike and a stylish standard lamp. Alan tried to make himself comfortable on the edge of a set of drawers, and waited for Darwin to finish closing the door.

‘I wish to invite you to join some of us, on a mission to do something worthwhile.’ Scott expected him to go on but he didn’t until prompted further. ‘You will of course remember the truck, which was delivered into the group’s hands,’ Alan nodded. ‘Well, it turns out that it’s quite useful. We’ve already had a number of successful jaunts to several places and times. To make the world a better place to live in. I’ve been considering your own skills and I believe it is now time for you to accompany us on one of these excursions. Is this something you’d like to be part of?’

Alan folded his arms, ‘Could you give me any more information at all? Will I be risking life and limb, or just stepping into wildly unchartered and dangerous territories? If what we heard is actually the case then it’s a time machine and you could be going to last week or the last century. I would imagine that the safety of a trip is proportional to the distance you travel backwards in time.’

Darwin placed his hands in his jacket pocket and thought for a moment. It made him look like a manager about to give a discourse on whatever was currently taking his fancy. He stared directly into Alan’s eyes, as if searching for an answer to whatever he was thinking about. This seemed to help him make a decision, ‘Because I’m inviting you anyway I can’t see the harm in telling you what we are doing. It will be around one hundred years ago. We’re going to an area in China, near Beijing, to attempt to make the residents consider leaving the city. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but there are people from wall to wall. Our idea is that, if the people are more geographically distributed there won’t be such a progression of land clearance and deforestation, as well as the ecological and environmental damage that precipitates. We’re attempting to make the present a more pleasant place to live, by reducing the impact of man’s ongoing victimisation of the planet before it’s actually happened.’

Alan was supporting himself with both hands resting on the drawers. He started drumming his fingers and looked towards the pale white polystyrene ceiling tiles as he was thinking. He dropped his eyes to meet Darwin’s pools of darkness, which appeared blacker than usual in the harsh strip lighting of this room. ‘I think I’d actually quite like to visit the Orient. Do I need to do anything to prepare?’

Darwin shook his head, ‘Just dress for relatively temperate conditions and make sure you don’t tell anybody. If this became public I fear there could be some repercussions for the group, and those of us involved. We don’t really want that!’

Alan was ushered out of the small room and the door was carefully locked behind them. Darwin walked next to him until they reached the main street again. ‘So you think we can really make a difference doing this?’

‘Mr Scott, I think that with a little vision we can change the world. I’ll contact you soon to let you know when and where to meet for the trip. See you at the meeting’ Darwin turned away and, unless Alan’s ears were playing tricks on him, seemed to be whistling a merry tune as he headed down the road. Alan took one last look down the row of storage units, as if searching for some further clues as to what was going on, shrugged his shoulders then followed the other man towards the meeting place.

 

***

 

Robert was slowly coming to terms with the fact that a large amount of his work now seemed to involve knocking on peoples’ doors and talking to them about their feelings and emotions. It wasn’t what he was used to! This time he had been summoned by Celia and was just inspecting his short uneven fingernails as she opened the door. ‘Come in Rob, sorry it’s a bit of a state in here.’ As he entered the room he saw what she meant. There were papers strewn across every conceivable surface, most of which had hand written annotations alongside the printed text. Robert glanced at a couple as he tried to find an empty space to stand, none of them seemed to say anything remotely comprehensible. In the end he settled for the seat near the table which only had a single sheet of paper on it.

He felt a little silly having bothered when Celia strode across, and through the papers towards him, kicking up a blizzard of physics and computing figures. ‘I pulled all this data back from the Quantum State Gauge, I’ve been checking through it and then checking again. You wouldn’t believe how well hidden some of the numbers were.’ She continued to talk and Robert started looking around the room thinking that there were very few adornments, apart from a picture of Celia hugging a man and a woman, who he assumed were probably her parents. His vision slowly roamed through the clutter of documents, focussing on the small details such as the clothes visible through the parted cupboard doors and the toothbrush plunged head first in a glass at the side of the sink. Then he noticed the open drawer, which he realised he probably shouldn’t be looking at.

He quickly turned his gaze away from the satin and lace, which he almost found himself studying and looked back towards Celia. He hoped he wasn’t revealing his embarrassment. She stared at him and it took a moment for Robert to realise that he had zoned out a number of sentences back with no idea about what she had been saying.

‘You weren’t listening were you?’ While not exactly an allegation there was a hint of exasperation in her voice.

‘I was with you all the way up to…actually no, sorry. You started talking about file systems and I couldn’t stay focussed.’

Celia flattened her hair down, which wasn’t really necessary as it was in a ponytail. She sat down on the bed next to Robert’s chair, crumpling a number of the accumulated readouts as she did so. ‘Actually you’re probably right, I wasn’t giving you the most interesting parts of what I’ve found, let me start again. The only way the Jump Truck could have been used by anyone but us is if someone from the team took it! Whoever it is obviously understands the controls, and has very specific details of where and when they want to go. It could only be somebody who has been with us. No one else even knows the thing exists, let alone how to use it.’

Robert rested his elbows on the table and looked at his reflection in the mirror. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much what we thought. Okay, in that case I need to make a couple of phone calls to confirm our next move. Although, to be honest I’ve already discussed this with Cooke and we’re in agreement. I just need the say so from above to do what we want to do.’

Celia stood up and scrunched across the room towards the doorway, Masterson followed and reached for the handle. He hadn’t noticed she was already holding it. His fingers closed around her hand and as they did so there was a soft, but obvious intake of breath from Celia. Their hands catapulted away in unison. They looked at each other for a moment, before Robert reached out again and opened the door, stepping through without another word.

As he walked off down the corridor he saw Andrea coming towards him and raised his hand to his forehead in acknowledgment. As Andrea passed him Celia shouted, ‘That’s what you get for nosing around my underwear, you pervert.’ He managed not to falter in any way, just kept on walking until he got back to his office. Sitting down at his desk he smiled to himself, then shook his head and patted his pockets down until he found his phone. He trawled through the numbers, eventually hitting the call button.

 

***

 

Alan knocked on the door. When it opened he found himself staring at the almost obese frame of Fox, from the EF. ‘This is obviously the right place then, can I come in matey? I was invited by Darwin.’ Fox stepped back opening the door. Alan entered, what appeared to be a disused garage. There was a pit in the floor where a mechanic would stand while looking at the underside of a car, although the workings of the hydraulic lift were in pieces and strewn about within the hole. Most of the EF group were standing on the opposite side of the small abyss. Alan raised his hand and said ‘hi’ but everybody seemed on edge, as if they weren’t sure whether they should be there or not.

Standing behind them he saw Jessica. The look on her face showed she didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity, she looked resigned to it though, leaning against a bench where a laptop stood. Without further directives Alan strolled over to stand at the end of the line of people, next to Giraffe who gave a curt, offhanded nod of greeting, then continued staring at the entrance.

Alan thought about trying to make conversation but before he got a chance the door opened, then shut behind Darwin, who moved over to the opposite side of the pit. There was a tarpaulin sack over his shoulder and his usual business suit had been swapped, for something you might expect to see trekking through the undergrowth on a nature program. ‘Please, help yourselves to whatever you fancy from the bag. Hopefully there’s enough here for everyone.’ He tossed the bag over the gap for Crocodile to catch. Carefully opening it he removed what appeared to be an air horn, he passed it to the unimposing, childlike figure of Python, who took out a couple of canisters, which to Alan looked suspiciously like smoke grenades. The mysterious bundle proceeded down the shabby looking line-up, each person took out things you might expect to find on football terraces, or possibly at a South American carnival. It was finally handed to Alan, who reached in and wasn’t surprised to find there was only one item left.

His hand closed around something which felt worryingly like the barrel of a gun. Upon extracting it the gun shaped object almost met with his expectations, but instead of dull, grey metal it was bright orange and had a barrel that made it look like a toy. ‘A flare gun?’ He asked nobody in particular, staring at the bright, plastic instrument.

Darwin looked at his watch and stepped to the side of the hole in the ground, ‘If you could prepare yourselves, I believe our transport will be turning up shortly.’ There appeared to be no particular movement, or change in the demeanour of the assembled group and Alan was just beginning to wonder what they were waiting for, when there was a noise like somebody’s hand being run down their trouser leg and the light from the window was blocked, due to a large green truck suddenly filling most of the space in the room. Alan stepped back in surprise but the others stood resiliently, as if they had been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. Some of them even started smiling as the massive object presented itself.

Darwin moved to the rear of the vehicle and opened the door, the line of people filtered in and took up the seats lining the walls of the truck. Alan clambered in last and took a seat next to the woman who called herself Hare. He whispered, ‘What do we do now?’ She turned an untrusting gaze on him, saying he just needed to follow instructions if he didn’t want Darwin’s attention. Out of the window he could see Jessica, looking unimpressed. Her body language indicated that she would leave if given half the chance. He thought it strange that no one was staying to make sure she didn’t do just that when there was the same, barely noticeable swish and the view out of the windows was no longer a darkened garage but a misty, early morning vista of somewhere else entirely. Alan said, ‘Whoa’, but quietly enough for no one to notice.

He was pushed out of the truck by the pressure of people trying to exit behind him. He found himself standing in a landscape which was distinctly oriental. The trees had that spindly, crooked look you only see in old paintings on blue crockery and there was a certain angularity about the mountains, which faded towards the cloudy horizon. He stood, dumbstruck, until Darwin placed himself in front of the small crowd and pointed into the middle distance, towards an apparently diminutive conurbation. ‘You know what you have to do, get to it.’

Alan stood for a while, unsure of himself, but the rest of the group headed towards the edge of the town. Looking again, he realised the buildings he could see sprawled off into the mist. The place actually had the feeling of a much larger settlement. He followed the rest of them until they came to a halt about twenty metres away from a surrounding wall, which had a gaping hole in it, as if it had been the target of a controlled explosion.

After the group had assembled and were all present and correct the tallest member, who had without a hint of irony picked the name Giraffe, and seemed to be second in command after Darwin, almost whispered a command. ‘As much noise and disturbance as you can, we’re trying to scare these people away.’ Immediately smoke bombs were hurled through the gap, swiftly followed by the deafening noise of air horns, spotlights burning brightly through the smoke and mist, then finally as he got the idea, Alan’s flare gun charges sent up above the festival of sound and light.

It had looked like a quiet and sparsely populated area when they were standing back. Up close though, there was a flood of people from each of the buildings and side streets, scattering, screeching and pushing each other to be out of the way, of what must have seemed to be the end of days. Although only five minutes passed from the start to the end of the disturbance it felt like much longer, goodness knows what if must have been like for those on the other side of the wall.

Once the smoke cleared and the gas ran out from the horns, Giraffe moved forward, past the fractured stones into the opening beyond. The streets seemed to be deserted and he spent a few minutes making sure this was actually the case, pushing open doors and tossing a few rocks down passageways as he went. He returned almost as quickly as he had disappeared, motioning for everybody to follow him. When they were back at the truck the doors were already open and everyone climbed back in. Alan caught part of the conversation Giraffe was having with Darwin, which seemed to be reporting that all was as it should be, with the likelihood of return to the area slim and the chances of the story of mystical powers acting on the city being quickly circulated. Alan watched carefully as Darwin stayed alone outside the truck fiddling with a box, which he retrieved from one of the deep pockets in the side of his trouser legs. Upon opening it there was a flurry of wings and a multitude of small insects fluttered into the air. He climbed back in the vehicle. ‘Well done,’ was all he deigned to say before taking a seat and signalling to leave.

 

***

 

Alan was sitting in the same place as before. He made an effort to try and be observant as the truck returned to the present. He was disappointed to find there was no more to the trip than previously experienced and they were back without any excitement. As his eyes refocused in the dim light of the garage he found himself looking at the face of Jessica, who still had the same hangdog expression which was there when they left. In fact, not a single thing had changed about her in the twenty or so minutes the whole excursion had taken. She was even standing with her hands where they had been, which seemed a little weird.

The truck emptied of its passengers and Giraffe spoke again, ‘Don’t forget to adjust your watches back to the correct time.’ He pointed at a plain faced clock on the wall.

Alan looked at the clock, then at his own timepiece, a nicely solid and robust thing which he rarely had to check. There was a twenty five minute difference! It took him less time to adjust the thing than it did to realise what had actually caused the disparity. ‘Bloody hell, we time travelled didn’t we?’ The question wasn’t aimed at anybody and if it weren’t for Jessica, still looking dismayed, no one would have responded. She nodded her head, then immediately turned to pick up the laptop from the desk. Quietly, with Darwin watching her every move, she climbed into the cab of the truck, sat down in the passenger seat and plugged an old fashioned looking cable hanging from the laptop into a socket she had to search for, due to it being secreted on the underside of the seats.

The small group of people standing around waited to be dismissed by Darwin, who seemed to control them without needing to voice any orders. After a couple of minutes Jessica climbed gracefully out of the door, packing the laptop into its case. When this was done she stood, immobile, not daring to draw any further attention to herself. Darwin looked across the group and nodded to himself with an air of self-satisfaction. ‘Thank you, you’ve all done a wonderful job. Especially you Miss Bryant.’ His black eyes focused directly on Jessica, she seemed to curl in upon herself in defence. ‘Before you return to wherever it is you came from,’ he looked straight at Alan as he said this, which gave Alan the uncomfortable feeling he was having his mind searched, ‘I’d just like to give you an idea of the next phase of our work. What?’

This was directed at Alan. A couple of the onlookers were staring in disbelief because he was holding his hand up, as if trying to gain a teacher’s attention. He put his hand down. ‘I just wanted to ask where this thing came from? ‘He pointed at the truck, still looming over them. ‘I mean, it’s pretty special, it’s like something from a movie. If this technology was made open source it could make the world a better place.’

The almost-smile on Darwin’s face had returned to its usual state, of blank scowl. ‘As you say, it is impressive technology. I think its details and whereabouts should stay classified, it can be used much more effectively the fewer people who know about it. Go on?’

Again Alan had his hand raised. ‘Couldn’t a machine like this be used to transport goods and services to areas in need of humanitarian aid, all these floods and droughts and whatever could be fixed using something like this?’

Darwin stared at him for slightly longer than was comfortable, before continuing. ‘You don’t seem to understand Aardwolf that these issues are themselves caused by humanity. The human race is a scourge on the planet, it needs to be controlled not sustained…’ He stopped talking, as if trying to calm himself down. After he had regained his composure he carried on, ‘Which leads me nicely on to what I was trying to say, before I was rudely interrupted. This past couple of million years Homo sapiens have been using this planet, like it belongs to them and is purely for their own pillaging and desecration. I believe we are in the very lucky position of having a chance to do something about that. This machine,’ he patted the heavy bumper at the rear of the truck, ‘gives us the ability to reinstate the natural order of things, by which I mean remove the plague of annihilation altogether.’

A couple of members of the group shot furtive glances back and forth amongst themselves, unsure whether they were understanding what he was saying. Darwin was oblivious and stared at the clock on the wall behind them, as if reading what he was saying from its face. ‘With this we can go back to before the dawn of civilisation and halt man’s progress across the planet before it starts.’ Now even the slower members of the group were looking a little worried at the direction Darwin’s train of thought appeared to be careering wildly towards. ‘Like the other trips we’ve made we won’t have to hurt anybody. We just need to, perhaps, steer the locals into acting or thinking in a certain way. It shouldn’t be too difficult to suggest that the people, or at least the precursors of people that we meet, don’t actually take it into their heads to strike out for pastures new, just stay where they are to have a nice quiet life. Really, again?’

Alan lowered his hand back to his side and dared to glance along the line of people standing next to him. ‘I could be wrong about this, but if we do that, doesn’t it mean that all of us, and in fact everything and everyone we’ve ever known, will cease to exist? That sounds a little bit like we’re committing mass genocide by proxy. Just because we’re not going to physically harm anybody it doesn’t mean we won’t be killing billions of people. Or is that just me?’ He looked down the line once more and saw that it was, apparently, just him. Or at least no one else seemed to be raising any concerns over the situation. Even Jessica, who was normally so vibrant and articulate, was just staring at the floor.

Darwin rubbed his forehead with the open palm of his hand, revealing the end of the scar running up his arm under the sleeve of his olive coloured shirt. He slowly lowered his hand, almost mirroring his interrogators previous movement and looked straight into Alan’s eyes. ‘You are very astute. Yes, it does indeed mean that the world as we know it will be gone for us and everyone who lives on it. However, all I’m suggesting is that we give life to a whole planet’s worth of new ecosystems and inhabitants. It seems like more than a fair exchange to me! I will consider the best way of accomplishing this and get in touch with those of you who are necessary for its implementation. Naturally you can’t inform anyone of this, or there will be implications for yourself, your family or your place in our organisation.’ That seemed to be all he had to say and with a nod to Giraffe he signalled that the show was over.

Jessica left first, followed promptly by everyone else. As Alan skirted the front bumper of the truck it vanished. He managed not to stumble or let out any sort of exclamation this time, it was still quite shocking to have something which was so imposing suddenly not exist right next to you. After stepping into the cool clear light of day he stood and watched the others dissipate, then considered what his next move should be.

8003B390

Part Three

FUTURE

‘Celia’s figures definitely seem to suggest that’s the case. But how do we find out if they’re telling us what we think we know?’ Robert sat in his chair, not actually scratching his chin but giving the overall impression of someone who would be doing just that, if they weren’t so deep in their own thoughts.

Michael was standing a little way behind the chair, staring at the expanse of wood in the centre of Robert’s desk. As if reacting to Robert’s influence he actually rubbed his hand across his chin. The days’ worth of stubble, that seemed to be a fixture on his face at the moment, made a scratchy sound. He got that look in his eye, which Masterson now recognised as signalling the start of an idea. ‘What is it?’ Robert asked.

Michael looked slightly startled, then relaxed again. ‘I think I may have the beginnings of a way to check our hunch. I might need to do a few calculations before we do it, to make sure it isn’t going to rip the fabric of reality into really small pieces.’ Masterson nodded his head expecting Michael to stride purposefully out of the room. Instead he pulled out the seat and sat opposite him. ‘Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?’

‘Old school!’ He pulled one of his desk drawers open and handed a notepad and a beaten up ballpoint to the other man, who found a blank page and started to scribble furiously. Masterson looked at what he was doing, it was both upside down and resembled a bad photocopy of a nest of crane flies, so he stared up at the ceiling until the other man attracted his attention again.

‘I think it’ll be safe. I’ll need to do a bit of cross checking before we go but the idea is sound.’

Masterson sat waiting for a few moments then realised he needed to prompt. ‘You haven’t actually told me what your idea is?’

Michael looked thoughtful, then smiled. ‘Oh yes, sorry about that. I think we need to go forward in time a couple of weeks and download the logs of the Jump Box, to see where it’s going between now and then. It might also give us a good idea of how to proceed.’

Robert looked sightlessly at the roof tiles again. ‘Isn’t that going to affect the future? Or the future of the future? Or whatever? I would have thought the possibility of running into ourselves might cause some kind of paradox.’

‘Well at least I know you’ve been concentrating.’ Cooke swept his hand through the short hair on his head, ‘You’re spot on if you’re talking theoretical physics but after what Evans and I have discovered on the jumps we’ve made, it appears some of the theory books may need to have some practical amendments. If we organise it right we shouldn’t meet anyone anyway. After all we’re going to know we’ll be there, so we can arrange not to be there, if you see what I mean!’

‘Right, when will we be ready then?’

Cooke looked down at the notepad, then at the lid of the cheap pen he had left lying beside it. ‘We have the Russia jump tomorrow so I think we should get that out of the way first. Maybe the day after. That should give Evans and me enough time to figure out the quantum mechanics of the whole thing. I’ll let you know at the end of tomorrow, if that’s okay?’

‘Fine. Are you all prepared, for the jump?’

‘Should be. The girls seem to have found a likely location and know what they want to look for, we just need to pin down the date.’

‘About that,’ Masterson clenched his fist slightly, ‘we need to land on top of the site we’re going to. The whole team needs to stay together, we don’t want anyone wandering off to investigate the surroundings or getting lost until we’re sure what’s going on.’

‘Okay, thanks Masterson. I’ll go find Evans and see if we can get started.’ He put the pen down, stood up and left the room. Robert put the top back on it, then picked up and turned over the notepad so it was the right way up. Nope, that didn’t help at all. It still looked like secret code, so he ripped the pages out and headed out of his office to find a shredder.

 

***

 

Driving up to the perimeter he realised it had been a while since he’d been back. He always felt comfortable returning to HQ, like he was back home. He slowed down to speak to the guard on duty, as he wound his window down the young Second Lieutenant looked a little surprised to find a Colonel in an unmarked car, which he was driving himself. He quickly came round and saluted. Robert returned the greeting, ‘I’m here for Captain Ian Brookfield. Could you call through, tell him Colonel Masterson has arrived.’ It felt weird not saying thank you, after spending so long having to bow and scrape to the undisciplined personalities of the team, but he knew he would miss it once the Jump Project was over. That was assuming the universe hadn’t ceased to exist by that point, which he conceded was probably not top on his list of possible outcomes.

He parked near the rec’ rooms and didn’t bother to lock the car as he entered the building. He had arranged to meet Ian in the table tennis room, because it could be booked and was private. Plus, it helped them talk if they had something to do with their hands. He was a couple of minutes early and Ian wasn’t there yet so he laid his folder down on a bench at the side of the room and perused the paddles laying there, finally selecting a sticky one which would allow him to get a good spin on the ball. He knew Ian couldn’t play those shots back.

He was slightly startled when a voice said, ‘Reporting for duty, sir.’ The man standing in front of him was only shorter than he was by three centimetres and was just as, if not more imposing in his fatigues. ‘How’s it going Bob? I heard you’re into some real head-twisting stuff, although no one would actually tell me what.’ While he was talking he had looked through the rag-tag collection of paddles and found one to his liking. ‘Five or seven games mate?’

Robert threw the ball up and down, as if juggling with one hand. ‘I need to get back, we’ll just have a bit of a knock around while we talk.’ He threw the ball up one last time and drove it across the table with a tricky topspin. The ball bounced back and forth between them for a while before Robert relaxed enough to start talking again. ‘You’re right, you probably wouldn’t believe what I’ve been doing since I saw you last. It’s all getting a bit complicated. Which is why I got in touch, I need a hand.’ He sliced the ball and as it hit the table it almost span back to his side of the net, Ian was there before he was ready and hammered it down towards the corner of the table, farthest from Robert’s reach. It bounced off the wall behind him, landing at his feet. ‘One-love then. You’ve been practising haven’t you?’ He said, bending down to retrieve the ball. ‘What have you been up to anyway?’ He tossed the ball over the table so Brookfield could serve it back at him.

Ian flung the ball up in the air with a flourish, then served at the same corner of the table he had won the point on. ‘Been in Angola again,’ Robert asked if anything had changed, ‘You know what they say, “Virtus Unita Fortiori”, or at least it would be if they were united. A lot of in-fighting and arguments.’

‘Same old, same old then!’ Masterson said as he put a deadly topspin on the ball, which hit the table then sped past Brookfield’s near static paddle. ‘One-all. How much have you heard about what I’m involved in?’

Ian bounced his paddle on top of the ball until it ricocheted into his waiting hand, then threw it back across the table. ‘Frankly it all seems to be a lot more hush-hush than normal. I’ve heard a couple of unsubstantiated rumours, nothing concrete.’ Robert played a backhand which almost beat him, at the same time he prompted for details of the rumours. ‘Well, it all sounds a bit far-fetched, but one of the guys said something about time travel. There was another good one last week about teleportation, which I suppose is slightly less fantastical, still pretty daft. I have to say, I’m intrigued to find out what it actually is that you’re up to. I’m sure I’ll be disappointed.’

He imbued the ball with the full speed of his outstretched arm and it hit the very edge of the table, Masterson managed to twist it back into play and righted himself with a small amount of effort. ‘Funny,’ he replied, ‘I thought it had been kept under wraps better than that.’ He played the same straight arm shot Ian had just attempted, then watched the ball spin off the edge of the table to bounce on the floor, before rolling to a halt in the corner of the room. Ian hadn’t moved and was standing at the other end of the table staring at him dumbfounded, so Robert walked around and collected the ball, placing it carefully on the table in front of his friend. ‘One-two. What I’m going to ask you is a bit of an odd one actually. I know you like the undercover stuff, pretending to be someone else, this will be like that but without the back-up you’re used to. There won’t be any support at all because no one will know you’re there.’ He raised his paddle to slow a vicious smash, which volleyed off his defence and bounced up to the roof.

‘Two, one. I’m intrigued, do go on,’ said Ian, back in the swing of things and grinning at the result of his last shot, catching the ball as it landed on his side of the table.

Robert returned his next serve with a little effort. ‘It won’t be too different to other jobs you’ve done for me, apart from you’ll be starting the mission six months ago. That’s why you can’t contact me, or anyone else for help. We won’t even know you’re there and it might mess spacetime up in some weird ways, for all I can make out our physicists seem to know. I need you to infiltrate a group called the EARTH Force. They’re environmental terrorists. We think they’ve been causing havoc with crops and…’ he stepped back and parried a fast ball ‘…living conditions. You know, all that stuff the journalists have been lapping up recently about the end of the world.’

Ian reached over the table and walloped the ball down so hard it bounced over Robert’s head. ‘Three, one. Let me just check, you did say “six months ago” didn’t you? So I’ll be going back in time and starting the mission, while I’m still in Africa! That’s weird and I have to say, I’d find it hard to believe if it weren’t you telling me.’

‘Frankly Ian, I think I’d find it hard to take even if it were you telling me. That’s why the file,’ he nodded his head towards the folder laying on the table nearby, as he managed to backspin the ball enough to be out of Ian’s reach, ‘has details of the technology. Three, two. My serve. As well as full profiles on what’s been found out about how to contact the group we think is involved. What we need you to do is inveigle your way in and be part of it, for as long as it takes to find out who the members are, what their involvement in the activities are and how they’re doing it.’ He returned the ball, it hit the net and rolled back towards him so he placed the paddle down on top of it and looked at his colleague, who he also considered to be one of his oldest and closest friends. ‘Four, two. You win. I’ve already relieved you of your other duties and made arrangements for you to take a couple of months off when you return. The only condition is that you can’t hand the report in before you’ve been sent back, that’s why we’ve given you half a year. It should be enough time to pick apart the details of the group, without leaving you twiddling your thumbs for too long afterwards.’

Ian stepped around the table, placing his paddle back amongst the collection at the side of the room, then picked up the report Robert had brought. He leant against the low bench and flicked idly through the enclosed papers, stopping occasionally to inspect one in more detail. ‘Jonathan Dent?’ He looked up to see what his colleague had to say.

‘Fairly harmless. A pacifist and a bit of an animal rights nut, not a dangerous one though. But we think someone else has taken hold of the group and is turning it into something more…unpleasant. However we’ve had difficulty identifying who that is and why they’re doing it. Once you’re sure you can come back to fill in the blanks.’

The folder was closed and Ian walked over to Masterson extending a hand, which was shaken vigorously. Robert put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘You’ve got forty eight hours to prepare yourself, there are instructions on where to meet me and what you need to bring.’ He dropped his hands back to his side.

The other man brought his own hand up in a rough approximation of a salute, which was how they generally left each other’s presence. ‘Righty-ho, I’ll see you soon then Boss. I’ll have the report on your desk as soon as I can which, frankly, shouldn’t be too long by the sound of it!’ Robert smiled, then turned and left his friend to his thoughts.

 

***

 

The reflection from the snow covered ground was almost blinding. The team were all wrapped in anything and everything they could lay their hands on. There were a few small trees and shrubs protruding up in places, but for the most part the landscape would best be described as “tundra”. Celia didn’t feel like she had put on enough layers as she shouted through the harsh, screeching breeze. ‘How much longer are you going to be?’

Andrea looked up briefly, then back at her instruments. ‘I’m finished. I just need to get the damn things packed up. What about Dave?’

‘Yeah, he’s done too, Emily’s just helping him get his stuff back in the truck. Bob and Mike are keeping an eye on a herd of, what we can only guess are, mammoths, heading in this general direction. Have you seen them?’

Andrea gave a nod which was barely perceptible through the accumulated things swathed around her head and neck. The effort of talking had tired them both so they hopped from one foot to the other in a hopeless attempt to keep warm, as they grasped with swaddled hands at the straps of the cases laying on the floor, heaving them towards the Cougar, which was no more than ten feet away but seemed much further under the glacial conditions.

Finally they pulled themselves into the Jump Truck, David reached across their prone forms to wrench the hatch shut against the pulling fingers of the arctic wind. After a couple of moments of heavy breathing the girls got themselves strapped in. Celia was the last to get herself secured and looked at Michael, ‘Go. Now!’ Suddenly the howl was gone and the bright unnatural light seemed subdued, in comparison with where they had been moments before. Moulder opened the door at the back of the truck and the team piled out and started peeling their layers off, until they were just wearing clothes which were far more appropriate for a modern heated building, rather than a prehistoric frosty wilderness. Emily noticed Michael staring at her as she removed her jumper, so she shimmied as she pulled it up over her head. He gave her a smile, suggesting he was pleased with what he’d seen, but then turned to Masterson as if he hadn’t noticed anything. This was sadly the way their relationship had to be while they were working together, under the strictest instructions from the Colonel.

Masterson waited until the final person had disrobed. ‘I hope you’re all feeling a little warmer now but, to be fair, Andrea did warn you that it would be “bloody cold”, if I can quote directly. You all did a good job there and I think we managed to ensure our influence was within acceptable limits. You all know what we wanted was to keep our effect on the area to a minimum, to ensure there aren’t any lasting effects from the actual act of jumping, I’m confident we did just that. Now Celia and Michael can do their checks and we’ll have a better idea of what’s happening. Thanks for that, feel free to relax for a couple of days until we’re sure, then we can get back to the project.’ Robert picked up the pile of garments at his feet and headed out of the door.

David repeated Rob’s action and grabbed his clothes, with no move to fold them, then sidled out of the room. Emily watched him go, closely followed by Andrea who seemed intent on getting anywhere else.

Celia looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor, neatly folding the heavy coat she had been wearing and placed the other things one-by-one on top of it. Hardly slowing in her task she started talking, ‘That was a weird one, wasn’t it?’

Michael tried to compact his pile down, so he could actually pick it up and place it under an arm, ‘What, the jump? Well we had to do it really didn’t we, otherwise we wouldn’t have any data from a situation where we didn’t affect the surrounding environment.’

‘Not that Mike, I mean the way that jump felt. It was like everyone knew Masterson was watching us but no one wanted to say, and we did know why he was watching! He could have done a better job of hiding it.’ After she was satisfied with the neatness of her clothes she picked them up and said goodbye, leaving Michael and Emily alone, staring at each other.

Michael hoisted the slightly damp pile of material under his arm and Emily picked hers up, at arms-length, allowing the thawing snowflakes to drip between her fingers onto the floor. ‘Are you free Cooke?’ Michael nodded his head without really listening. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ He nodded, he hadn’t caught Emily’s unsubtle hint so she decided to get blatant, ‘Cool, let’s head back to yours and get naked then.’ His eyes finally fell on her and with no further prompting he walked over, hooked his arm through her own and shared a smile as they headed off for some privacy.

 

***

 

Jonny felt a thrill run down his spine as he entered the lobby of the hotel, picked up the envelope he knew would be waiting for him, with a swipe card and a scrawled note with the room number inside, then waited outside the lifts like he was having an illicit liaison which, in a way, he was. However the only person they were hiding from was Darwin. The thought sent a more sinister shiver running through him. The doors slid open after what seemed like an eternity and he stepped inside, pressing the button for the seventh floor. He waited patiently, then followed the signs and let himself into the room. It was the same one they had been in before and he closed the door, securing the chain so they wouldn’t be interrupted.

‘Making sure I can’t get out, are you?’ He turned and smiled to see Jessica, who looked oblivious to his presence, stretched out on the bed and staring at her laptop, which was precariously balanced on a tray appropriated from the room. This explained why there was a teapot, cups, saucers and other drink making paraphernalia on the table next to the small television. She turned over, Jonny couldn’t help but notice she was dressed down compared to normal. Her hair was in a ponytail and although the general appearance, tights, skirt and top was not dissimilar to usual, the skirt and top were not ones you’d generally see at a business meeting. She had a plain white t-shirt, which was slightly more than figure hugging, the top of this overlapped the tube of material over her hips and thighs which almost reached her knees, seeming to cling to the stockings underneath by force of willpower alone. Without turning from her machine she said, ‘Once you’ve stopped staring you can come and look at this.’

Jonny looked at the back of his own hands, like they might inspire him in how to respond, they didn’t offer any such assistance so he went with all he could find in his slightly unfocussed mind. ‘You do look amazing though.’ He kicked his scruffy shoes off into the empty cupboard next to the door, noticing a shiny pair of high heels neatly lined up there already, then maneuvered himself down onto the bed beside the person he still couldn’t quite believe was also attracted to him. ‘Have you found something then?’

Jessica turned towards him and planted a kiss on his lips, which he was less than prepared for, then turned back without further ado to the screen. A couple of windows disappeared from view to reveal an ageing story on a local news website. She turned back to face Jonny. ‘I’m afraid I have, and I don’t really know what to make of it. I almost feel sorry for the psychopathic maniac now, which isn’t what I was expecting. It’s no wonder my home PC didn’t find anything, he’s never even had a caution! I was rather hoping it would be a black and white thing where we’re the good guys and he’s some kind of crazy super-villain, but real life is never that easy. Here, read this.’

Jonny put his elbows on the bed and focussed his attention on the small display, his eyes moved back and forth across the words, occasionally glancing at the picture in the corner of the screen. As he read on his expression changed from its usual slightly vacant, cheerful amiability. Creases appeared around his eyes and his forehead crinkled. When he was done he rolled over and sat up at the foot of the bed, looking at himself in the mirror. Jessica shuffled forward until she was beside him, holding on to the bottom of her skirt to keep it from riding up. Jonny looked at her reflected gaze. ‘They might be mitigating circumstances but we still can’t let him get away with it.’

Jessica put her arm around him, ‘I don’t think we have to. You know he’s been making me remove the records from the machine before it goes back, so they can’t tell that anyone has been playing with it, each time it’s returned to the rightful owners. I put in some hints when I started working on it. Hopefully they were smart enough to find them, but he’s been watching me more lately so I haven’t been able to do it again.’

Jonny turned away from her mirror image to look into her eyes, which were only a couple of inches away from his own. ‘You have some kind of plan though, don’t you? I can tell from the way the corner of your mouth’s turned up.’ He touched the edge of her lips with the tip of his finger while grasping her free hand with his own.

She squeezed back, glancing out of the window at the dismal skyline, then surprised Jonny by derailing the conversation train and pointing it in a different direction. ‘This weather’s been rubbish hasn’t it?’ He followed her gaze and tried to find anything of interest to see through the murky window, there was nothing obvious to focus on. He agreed that it had been a bit cold and wet recently. She went on, ‘I’ve been fancying a change of scene for a while. Maybe somewhere with a little more sun, sea and sand. What do you think?’

He tried to catch up with the conversation but failed and said so, ‘What do I think of what? I’m not sure I’m with you.’

She smiled at him and decided he probably wouldn’t figure out what she was talking about. ‘If he doesn’t have me then he can’t wipe the logs of the computer in the truck. With his experience he could track us if we hid out locally, so I thought maybe we should go on an extended break. To somewhere pleasant. And a long-long way away, so we can unwind and forget about our worries for a while. If I go the logs will stay put after the next trip, the owners of the machine will be able to find out where it’s been going more easily.’

Jonny’s mouth had dropped open while he was listening to her. ‘I think it would be better if you went on your own, wouldn’t it make him more suspicious if we disappear together?’

‘You don’t fool me Dent, this is the money thing again, isn’t it?’ Jonny looked slightly shamefaced but didn’t deny it. ‘I’ve told you, we’re in this together. What’s mine is yours and whatever, so stop moaning, get your kit off and jump in the shower with me.’ She hopped off the bed and pirouetted into the bathroom. Jonny shrugged at his reflection staring back at him, then peeled off his t-shirt as he scampered enthusiastically after her.

80041154

The cavernous room in which the Jump Truck was stored seemed strangely tranquil when no one was there. With the lights off there was only a dim, green cast from the fire exit sign hanging over the big double doors. Because the room was large there was a constant echo, bouncing back and forth around the vehicle. The repetitive sound had hints of the sea about it but with no one there to reflect on this, it just kept up its Brownian motion of particles around the empty space.

Without the doors opening, the area was suddenly a little brighter than it had been and the tone of the silence changed. A thin beam of light bobbed across the floor then over a couple of the walls. Destroying the serenity completely a female voice said, ‘This is the future then? Doesn’t seem much different to me,’ and Robert walked out of the frame which the three of them had used on their initial travails across spacetime, leaving Cooke checking the controls of the small machine and Evans hitting her own torch against her hand to get it to turn on, which it eventually did, stuttering to life just as Robert found the switch for the overhead lights, making it an unnecessary expenditure of energy. She shrugged, turned it off and put it back in her jacket pocket. Robert glanced back towards them, then slid between the double doors to keep an eye out for anything which might disturb their work.

They had appeared right next to the nearside of the truck. Celia quickly swung the passenger door open and climbed in, carrying a laptop. Before long numbers were flashing across the screen as the computer made a virtual copy of every bit and byte that was stored, or had been erased on the Jump Box. She glanced out of the driver side window as she waited for the task to finish, waving at Michael who winked at her, which she thought was a little out of character for him. She looked down at the screen again, then spotted something out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Cooke, on her right. A curious expression passed across her features as her head turned from side to side, seeing one Mike, then another. After a few moments of confusion she leaped out of the open door and ran to the front of the truck to stand between the two men, or man, as she concluded would be the right way to handle the challenging situational vocabulary. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She said.

In unison the two Cookes responded, ‘Who, me?’ and then started laughing, as the newer…or possibly older arrival said, ‘I knew I was going to say that.’

The Michael who had travelled forward in time with Celia five minutes before was still smiling, staring at his doppelgänger. He asked Celia to excuse himself and the mirror image men stepped around her, walking into the shadow of a shelf stacked high with protective clothing at the far side of the room. Celia was in two minds as to whether she should allow him to speak to himself, but then the fire doors opened again and Masterson strode back in, skirting the truck to reach her. ‘How much longer is this going to take?’

‘Oh, I’d completely forgotten. I’ll just check.’ She returned to the cab of the truck and pulled herself back in, Robert asked where Cooke was as she scanned the characters on the screen. She wasn’t sure how, or if she should respond, but then came up with a useful half-truth. ‘He’s over there talking to himself.’ Robert relaxed a little, after knowing Michael for any amount of time this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing for him to be doing. He turned back to continue surveying the entrance for any signs of life.

Within a couple of minutes the screen stopped scrolling and a cursor flashed up, signalling that the operation was over. Celia unplugged the machine, turned to climb out of the high seat and was surprised to find Robert standing in front of her, holding out his arm to help her down. She thought about shooing him away, but realised it was the most gallant thing to happen to her in goodness knows how long. So she took the proffered hand and stepped out, taking care not to let go of the laptop as she did so. When she was down she realised that she was standing uncomfortably close to Robert. He seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same moment, as they stepped away from each other, him turning to look towards the shelves she had said Michael was behind and her slotting the computer into the small bag, which had been attached to the three person Jump Frame they made the trip in.

She moved back to the front of the truck and stood beside Robert. ‘Are you finished over there?’ she called, in response to which came two muffled voices. She looked towards Masterson whose face appeared puzzled, as if his ears were deceiving him. Then Michael walked out from behind the shelving, shortly followed by Michael. For the first time since she had met him Robert seemed unable to comprehend the situation that was unfolding in front of them. His mouth hung limply open and he kept looking from one man to the other, until they got up to within touching distance. Then, without warning he said in a loud and clear voice, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

The two Michaels stepped back a little and, as before, said, “Who, me?’ and chuckled, then one of them went on, ‘That’ll never get old. Sorry Masterson, I worked something out last week and I think it may be important.’ Robert looked expectant and the Michael who was two weeks younger took over. ‘It appears the technological interference that has been taking place is a little more important than we first thought, you need to get James back. He needs to go with you guys on the jumps and fix things before they get too much worse.’ He pointed at the older version of himself. ‘Cooke here has been a little surprised to find that some of our kit seems to have been failing in odd ways. It turns out he can’t find anyone to fix it, people seem to have forgotten the technical details. He’s having to do on the fly repairs himself.’

Masterson thought for a moment, ‘How does he still know how to repair them?’

The other Cooke turned away from contemplating his younger countenance, ‘It seems like those of us who’ve been travelling back and forth across the depths of spacetime in our little truck have retained any knowledge they may have had, from the very first jump they went on. Somehow we’re excluded from the effects of the degradation that’s taking place.’

Celia and Robert looked at the two men, then at each other. Silence reigned while this news was smashing about inside their heads. Evans was the first to work out the possible consequences. ‘Doesn’t that mean any of the devices we’ve had on board when we’ve jumped will be affected in the same way?’ Future Michael shrugged, ‘Because if that’s the case, the QSG will have been measuring the state of the original reality we jumped from. It’s no wonder the figures don’t show any inconsistencies.’

Masterson stared blankly at the floor for a second, then looked up sharply. ‘We have to get back and get working on this as soon as we can.’

Celia glanced at their own Michael, who seemed to be thinking about whether he should speak or not, then decided just to go for it. ‘Michael’s given me some suggestions which, frankly, I’d have thought of myself given long enough,’ he smirked at this time sequitur. ‘I think we might be able to come up with a way of setting a kind of immoveable base measurement, which shouldn’t change even if we jump. But we’ll have to work on it.’ He looked at Celia who nodded in agreement at the implied task.’

Future Michael stepped away and winked at his past-self, ‘I’ll be seeing you then, Cooke.’ He headed towards the door and exited, without looking back. An uncertain look crossed Celia’s face but she didn’t say anything and the three visitors squeezed themselves into the small frame, which disappeared leaving the room bathed in the echoing silence again.

 

***

 

The black car pulled up outside the house, the door opened stiffly and Robert stepped out into the faintly misty air. He leaned back in and suggested a good place for the driver to park while he was busy. After he closed the door the car rolled slowly towards the end of the street, manoeuvring around another vehicle to find a space.

Robert turned mechanically towards the house and approached the front door. He rubbed his temples then raised his hand to knock on the middle of the obscure glass filling the top half of the door. He faltered and drew it back, murmuring something which included the phrase, ‘What on earth do I say?’ He seemed to be frozen while deciding how to proceed.

The slightest of noises came from inside the house and that seemed to bring him out of his reflection, he tapped the glass three times and stood, almost to attention, bracing himself for the inevitable turning of the handle and the look of distaste which would likely greet him.

It turned out he was only disappointed in one of the two respects, there was the click of keys being turned in the lock and the door handle turned, followed closely by the door swinging open to reveal Peter James, wearing a red flannelette dressing gown and grinning an evil grin, which showed his slightly uneven teeth. This could have meant any number of things, Robert suspected it was a kind of challenge.

‘Can I help you Bob?’

Masterson stood, immobile, trying magnificently to make it look like he was in control of the situation. ‘Actually, it’s a possibility Peter. We have an unforeseen situation which requires the kind of specialist attention you might be able to provide.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Can I come in?’

James stood back and held his arm out to shepherd Robert in the right direction. The hallway was a pleasant magnolia derivative and had a couple of small oriental styled swords hanging up. The living room was a large, open space. On the hearth over the fire was a much larger blade, ‘That’s impressive,’ Robert said, pointing towards the sword.

‘It’s a dao. Or at least a copy of a relatively early one from the Han dynasty, used by the cavalry at the time. It was their standard weapon. Nice, isn’t it? Take a seat, I’ll just be a minute’. He left the room, reappearing before too long in a pair of olive coloured cargo trousers and a black polo shirt. He plonked himself down in a seat so they were almost facing each other. ‘Right then, first things first, how’s my wife? Then you can tell me what’s going on!’

Robert mentally kicked himself at his own wrong footedness, for not having expected James to ask how Andrea was. After all they hadn’t seen each other since Peter left, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise. ‘She’s fine, I think she’s relatively happy at some of the stuff she’s been finding, and don’t worry, the team haven’t had any further incidents while we’ve been jumping. It’s all gone pretty smoothly, sort of…’ He left the unfinished declaration hanging to see if Peter would take the bait.

Although he was bloody minded he was still inquisitive enough to have to ask. ‘Go on then, what’s happening?’

Robert noticed that Peter was now sitting forward and guessed he wouldn’t have to work very hard to draw him back into the project, but he kept his guard up. ‘We’re not entirely sure what’s been done but we have an idea that you might be able to give us more details. It looks like a terrorist group have been using the Jump Truck to go back in time and make changes to things, to try and disrupt modern technology.’ Robert waved his hands, to indicate he wanted to know how this was happening, so Masterson took some time explaining the situation. ‘Anyway, we’ve had to do a lot of digging through the data to figure out where and when they’ve been going, but we finally have a list.’ He passed a sheet of paper to the engineer and waited.

As James looked down the list his eyes got wider and he looked more and more astonished. ‘You know what these dates and places are don’t you?’ Robert shrugged and suggested they had an idea. ‘All of these are places and times that major technological or industrial leaps forward were made. If someone has disrupted these it could mean the end of society as we know it. Hang on though, you said this has already happened, so they can’t have made any changes or everything would be different?’

‘Do you remember what Michael said? The further you go back in time, the bigger the impact you have on the future. Even then it can be unpredictable. We think these changes probably won’t have a massive effect on present day conditions, but in a few thousand years’ time conditions could be much worse than they should be!’

Peter seemed to relax at this news, ‘So we don’t actually have to worry then, do we? Things will sort themselves out.’

‘Well, according to Michael and Celia’s best guesses they might not. It’s possible that we’re in a sort of grace period, where the consequences haven’t fully taken hold yet. If and when the future is inextricably changed it might have a knock on effect and destroy, well, everything!’

‘What kind of grace period are we talking about?’

‘Uncertain, but it’s probable we’ll soon see some kind of introductory problems, like failing power supplies. More worryingly though, they suggested there might be unusual weather conditions.’ He looked at the bland, off-white sky visible through the window, then looked back at Peter.

‘So we probably don’t have a huge amount of time then! Do you suppose we have enough time for you to apologise, then ask me nicely to join the project again?’

Masterson put an elbow on his knee and placed his head in his hand. After a short interval he ruffled his hair and looked up at Peter. ‘Mr James, I apologise for the way I discounted your ideas without consideration and didn’t show you the respect that your knowledge and skills merit. Please would you forgive me, in order that you can return to work on the project and, hopefully, save the planet from a future marred by environmental terrorists.’

Peter was smiling, obviously enjoying the moment but, thankfully didn’t drag it out for too long. He stood up motioning for Robert to follow him, went into the hallway, pulled on some sturdy boots, grabbed his coat from the hanger next to the door and said, ‘I accept your apology. It’ll be a pleasure to be working with almost the whole team again.’ Masterson ignored the obvious suggestion that he was the “almost”. ‘Let’s go, before the world ends.’

 

***

 

The mechanism of the lock made a small rattling noise as the keys were turned. The door opened little by little, as Jessica tentatively stepped into her own hallway. Jonny trailed in behind her, closing the door. ‘You’re sure, are you?’

Jessica tried to act a little more confidently as she headed towards her bedroom, ‘Craig is a reliable bloke and he has his fingers in a lot more pies than I really want to know about. If he says he’s cleaned the house of bugs, or “surveillance devices”, or whatever he called them, then we can be sure there isn’t anything in the house monitoring our activities.’ As if to prove the point she pulled off her top as she stepped through the doorway.

Jonny was still unsure as to how forward he should be, so he stood in the hallway shuffling his feet and staring at the light fitting above his head, while he waited for Jessica to finish changing her clothes and pack a couple of bags for the flights. After a couple of minutes Jessica called through, ‘What are you doing out there, come and give me a hand will you.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, which wasn’t tied back for a change and walked in, to find the bed covered with all manner of jackets, tops, trousers, skirts, dresses, boots and shoes. ‘What do you think?’ When Jonny looked unsure as to her meaning she continued, ‘I mean what should I take with me? I suddenly have the feeling that I may possibly have overdone it, while kitting out my wardrobe.’

Jonny stared in fascination at the items laid out in front of him, seeming surprised to find sections of the bed covered by things which weren’t just dark coloured business cuts. Jessica noticed his wonder and asked if he thought she should take the shiny things with them. ‘Well, it’s pretty hot where we’re headed and they certainly look, um, small! I’m sure that kind of thing would fit in quite nicely, with the added bonus that you can get them all into your suitcase without actually taking up any room.’ He made himself comfortable in a chair near the cupboard and nodded or shook his head at Jessica, who placed the things in the suitcase or threw them haphazardly into the corner of the room.

He was quite enjoying the exercise but eventually she held up the final item, a pair of patent knee length boots with a particularly high and spiky heel, which he vigorously nodded his head to. She put them in then picked up a cosmetics bag, which handily filled the remaining space, and zipped the whole thing shut with a bit of leaning-on-the-top assistance from Jonny. When she had finished they sat next to each other and Jonny finally built up the courage to put his arm around her waist, planting a kiss on her cheek as they relaxed for a moment. ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’

Jessica mirrored his arm movement so they were holding on to each other, then put her head on his shoulder. ‘I don’t really see what else we can do, and frankly I’ve been wanting to get away now for a good while but haven’t had the impetus and also, I couldn’t leave. You were here!’

Jonny smiled, ‘In that case, let’s get going beautiful. He detached himself, turned and heaved the case off the bed, wheeling it out of the room towards the stairs.

When she caught up with him he was at the front door. ‘What about your stuff Jonny?’

He grabbed her hand as they left and walked towards the car, which was parked on the road facing away from the house for easy access to the boot. ‘Don’t worry, I picked it up when we booked the flights on my, what did you call it, “ancient piece of crap”? Nearly all my stuff is at the hotel now. If my bag wasn’t canvas it’d need to be bigger than yours. You might like some of my stuff, I’ll have to show you it.’ Jessica’s mouth hung open as Jonny heaved the bag into the small boot, shuffling it around to ease it in. He closed the boot with the utmost care and gave her a hug as he went past, then hopped in the passenger side. After she climbed in he looked into her eyes, ‘I think I’ve finally come to terms with the idea of being a kept man, all I need do is supply you with whatever you ask for and try to keep myself looking pretty.’ He fluttered his eyelashes comically, ‘To be honest it’s exactly what I’ve wanted since we met, I’m just a little amazed at the circumstances that have brought it about.’

Jessica turned the engine over until the car purred into life, pulled the seatbelt across and plugged it in then put her hand on Jonny’s knee. ‘Don’t you get carried away young man, you just remember who wears the trousers in this relationship,’ and with a raised eyebrow she wiggled the gearstick into place and the car tyres screeched along the road, as they sped away from the house for the last time.

7FFF7722

The road terminated in a dead end, a plain brick wall. The bricks were all different colours, as if they had been acquired in a host of places then shaken around to mix them up before being assembled. The weather wasn’t exactly miserable but a greyish pall hung over the closely packed buildings. The scene was made only marginally more pleasing to the eye when a cumbersome looking olive-green truck appeared, as if by sleight of hand. Although the occupants of the truck were well aware of the fact there was no one there to see their clever trick.

After a spurt of inactivity the rear doors swung open and a man climbed out. He was tall and well-built, wearing a heavy, dark coat which came down past his knees. The boots he sported looked well worn, but were almost silent as he turned to speak to the other occupants of the vehicle. ‘This is certainly the strangest thing I’ve ever done. You’re sure this thing’s right, are you?’ He raised his sleeve and pointed at the timepiece on his wrist.

A voice from within responded, ‘As near as any watch. There should be a clock on the high street you can check it against if you don’t trust me.’

‘It’s not you Bob, it’s the technology.’ There was a muffled sound of affront from further inside the truck, it was ignored by both men. ‘In that case I guess I’ll see you in six months’ time, hopefully I’ll be able to find out all the details you’re after.’

‘As long as you discover the lead on this, and where we can find him. We should be able to do the rest when you get back. Good luck Ian, not that you’ll need it. This should be easy compared to that one in Tajikistan. At least you can pop to the shops for a Coke here if you get thirsty.’

There was a lull in the conversation then the man standing behind the truck gave an exaggerated salute and headed away. He turned round as he reached the end of the street but there was just an ugly wall and a space, where there had previously been a Mastiff truck. He let out a surprised sigh, turned the corner and followed the route he had been given, while he went over his assumed identity, consulting his learned mental map for the nearest place he could stop for a drink and a bite to eat, while he was thinking.

 

***

 

‘What do you think will happen?’ Michael was suddenly aware his mind had been wandering, while he lazily stared at the sinuous patterns Emily’s red hair made as it snaked across his chest. Then he realised this was the first thing she had said to him for some considerable time, so he relaxed.

‘Give me some context here, gorgeous?’

Emily shuffled further under the covers, craning her neck to look in his eyes. ‘I mean the whole spacetime continuum thing. Is the world going to end? Or will we be left in some weird parallel reality? Or will nothing change? If anyone can hazard a guess, it’s you.’ She obviously found her new position to be preferable as she made no further attempt to relocate.

Michael reached out and smoothed her hair across his stomach, so he could continue to admire the waves of unnaturally claret coloured strands. He started to run his hands through it, at which her tension seemed to succumb a little. ‘To be honest it’s a little hard to say, but if you ask me, I think that there have probably been similar natural phenomena in the past, it’s just that no one’s been around to witness them so they’ve never been recorded.’ Michael laid his head back and stared at a rainbow, reflected on the ceiling from the bevelled edges of the mirror over the desk. He felt slightly dishonest, even though he wasn’t actually lying. Robert had told him that he and Celia mustn’t discuss the situation with other members of the team, so he was doing his best to make sweeping statements which didn’t actually reveal anything about what was going on. ‘How do you feel, are you okay?’

There was no movement below him, so he raised his head from the comfort of the pillow to see whether Emily was listening. He saw her chest rise and fall, but not slowly enough to signal she had fallen asleep. He waited, without trying to hurry her, eventually she moved her head from where it rested lightly on his belly. Quietly and slowly she spoke, ‘I’m not sure, all this stuff is so far out of my comfort zone, I don’t really know what to make of any of it. If you’re asking how I feel, then it’s a lot safer with you here.’ Her head seemed to press further into his prone stomach, her words became indistinct as she continued. ‘You seem so calm about everything. It makes me feel like there’s no need to worry. I think I…’ Her voice trailed off, as if she was unsure whether to continue.

She lay silently again and Michael kept running his hand through her hair, he suspected he knew what was coming and decided to interrupt, for better or worse. ‘I love you?’ He twisted his head to the side and looked down to see her peacefully snoozing face, her mouth showing the remnants of a smile, which faded as her breathing deepened. ‘Shit!’ Of course he had known she was exhausted. They all were. But if he could have picked a time for her to fall asleep it wouldn’t have been now. He carefully reached his hands underneath her arms and tried, ever so gently, to haul her further up the bed without rousing her. He was surprised how light her unresponsive body was, managing to get her to a reasonable height without waking her, or injuring himself. He pulled the covers up and tucked them around her relaxed shoulders, planting a kiss on her forehead as he tucked a stray strand of cherry hair behind her ear.

He reached over her to turn the light off, but instead picked up the paper, laying on the bedside table, and continued from where he had left off. He could never sleep well without reading first and this was quite an interesting piece of research, on oscillations between different flavours of neutrinos. He was pretty drained himself though and within five minutes his eyelids were meeting of their own accord. So he placed the paper down again, switched off the light, getting comfortable and quietly repeated his earlier, unheard statement. For his own benefit more than hers. ‘I love you.’

 

***

 

Once again Robert was early. This time he kept an eye on the door while searching for a usable paddle, then sat on the bench to wait for his friend. As the clock over the door’s minute hand ticked to the hour position Ian walked in. Although it had only been a day since they had met there was something different about his colleague, possibly just the merest hint of a new wrinkle around the edges of his eyes. He certainly looked more tired, but then being in the field unaided always had that effect.

Ian moved straight towards the far end of the table and picked up a well-used paddle, hefting it a couple of times before spinning it through the air and catching the handle again. He held out a file, which had “PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL” embossed across both surfaces, then picked up the ball. Masterson followed his lead, placing the folder on the bench and stepping into position. At the same time as he threw the ball up to serve, with a vaguely manic tone in his voice he began. ‘I tell you what, I’ve had quite enough of hanging out with that bunch of odd characters and, frankly, being one myself. It was all a bit surreal. Nothing like our normal missions. I’m not sure whether to thank you or hit you for dumping that one on me. Sir!’

Robert smiled at the stressed affectation at the end of the sentence and made a mental note not to try and win the game. Although to be fair, he wasn’t having to try very hard. Ian appeared to have been practising and seemed to have the upper hand. ‘Yes, I thought it might be an unusual one, any chance you can summarise?’

‘Sure,’ and the ball rocketed past Robert’s ear to win the point, ‘love, one.’ It was retrieved and Robert served again, having to concentrate to keep the rally going. ‘The group seemed fairly stable when I joined, they were small and didn’t seem to be too dangerous. Then three new people arrived. One of them was your mole, they joined before becoming part of your project. But significantly only just before. Run of the mill member really, just wanted to talk to other people with similar interests and try and make a difference, “no matter how small”.’ Masterson parried an almost fatal shot, only to have it returned with interest and hit the floor before he was ready again, ‘love, two’.

Ian continued, ‘The other was a bit of a strange one. He disrupted the dynamics, the bloke and the woman who ran it were slowly relieved of their leadership, not that you could call what they were doing that really. As soon as the truck was revealed he went about the business of subverting the group to his own ends. He secretly met with members outside the get-togethers and organised his own trips. The guy was more focussed than is healthy. He seemed to have skills in surveillance and reconnaissance that were almost military. He knew a lot about everybody and that’s how he persuaded them to conform. He followed them, took photos, recordings, anything he could do to get them to follow him. He was pretty underhanded about a lot of it. I’d have been more comfortable taking him out, but you told me not to interfere so I just watched.’

‘How was the timing? One, two.’ Robert finally won a point, sending the ball diagonally across the table and off the far wall with some force.

‘Not bad, but as you may be able to tell I had some time to spare. I joined a table tennis club and got a bit of practice in this last month.’ He smiled as the ball sailed over Masterson’s head again. ‘One, three. But you did tell me not to report until today, so I entertained myself as best as I could.’

Robert threw his paddle down on the table in mock disgust and sighed, ‘Yes, I see that! I’m going to have to up my game.’

Ian gently put his own weapon down near the net, and placed both hands on the edge of the table to lean towards his friend. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

Masterson looked the captain in the face and drummed his fingers on the table top, ‘You know how I said you could have a nice long sabbatical when this mission finished?’

Ian shrugged, ‘I kind of assumed you’d want me to clean up afterwards, I’ve already got my team in place. I was just awaiting your go ahead.’

The Colonel shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘You’ve always been just that little bit too sharp for your own good, Ian.’

Brookfield gave their customary relaxed salute as he headed for the doorway, then turned back. ‘By the way. If I never hear the name “Alan” bloody “Scott” again it’ll be too soon. I’ve had quite enough of being that man, he was far too insipid for my liking.’ Brookfield was out of the door before Robert had a chance to respond, so he lifted the report up and leant against the bench, leafing through the thin white pages.

 

***

 

Crushed between two hefty, well armoured men, who could be described using words such as “beefcake”, Celia was wondering why she had been brought along. She looked across to see Michael in a similar situation, and smiled to confirm that they were both just as uncomfortable. When Robert had told them where they were going she had assumed it would be all guns blazing and flashing lights leading the way, in fact the drive was quite serene, stopping at all the red lights and allowing people to cross the road in front of them as they went. There was another identical people carrier in front of theirs, into which Masterson had climbed, instructing them to take the rearmost one.

The short convoy slowly wound its way through less and less reputable parts of town until it pulled up outside a block of terraced houses, each subdivided into two flats. The doors of the car in front opened and six men, similar to those flanking Michael and herself, climbed out. Robert looked different to normal in the dark, heavy clothing and acted like part of the team, rather than the thoughtful, introspective man she had got to know. It was a little disconcerting. He seemed to be deep in conversation with one of the other men, the only other individual in the collective that was easily recognisable due to the shock of natural ginger hair that showed in places underneath his helmet. Celia turned back to Michael. ‘I feel a little underdressed,’ Cooke smiled back at her this time.

The men on either side of them also climbed, gracefully for their bulk, out of the car and joined their companions. Then they all entered the building, although exactly how they had managed to get the front door open, without smashing it down, she hadn’t seen. The two physicists waited patiently, without talking, until Celia could bear the silence no longer. ‘Do you have any idea why they brought us with them? We seem rather surplus to requirements.’

Cooke glanced towards the door, still standing wide open. ‘Well, my guess would be… Ah, in fact I think we’re about to find out, come on,’ and he opened the door, sliding onto the pavement. Celia looked towards the house to see a black clad figure disappearing through the doorway. She hopped out and followed Michael in.

The exterior of the house was, perhaps, a little worn but the stairway and the hall, leading off to the upstairs apartments, could have done with some kind of incendiary to clean them up. The entrance to the living area was not much better, although it did at least look like someone had attempted to spruce it up with some pictures and a little paint on the woodchip wallpaper. It hadn’t helped a great deal! They were led through a door on the right into a sitting room, which also doubled as a computer room. An old, faded beige box, plugged straight into a decrepit looking router was carelessly set up in one corner. The redheaded military man was standing with Robert. They appeared to be discussing something, but as Evans and Cooke were shown in Robert turned to Celia and smiled. ‘We haven’t touched this yet as we thought it might need a more delicate hand than ours. This is Ian, by the way.’ His colleague, now separated from his headwear, nodded his orange hair towards them and gave a cheerful grin.

Celia sat in the old fashioned, unstable wooden chair in front of the keyboard. ‘You do know I don’t really do computer forensics?’ She looked up to see that they didn’t care particularly.

Masterson rubbed his chin slowly, ‘I just didn’t want to involve anyone more than I had to. And none of these lot,’ he gestured around the room at the men, staring into space for want of anything better to do now they had realised there wasn’t going to be any kind of action, ‘have the remotest interest in things of a technological nature. I’ve seen you playing with those computers, so I knew you were probably my best bet.’

‘Okay, well I’ll do my best. But if it gets more complicated than pressing the “any” key you might need to look for someone else.’ No one seemed to get the joke, so she reached down and depressed the yellowing power button. The computer wheezed into life. Slowly. Very slowly! After a five minute wait an image appeared, Celia had an idea while it was booting but the splash screen revealed that her suspicion was right, the operating system was in the region of three or four iterations out of date. She pressed the keys it was offering up as a method of getting to the log on prompt and two boxes were revealed. The top one had a username, which was probably the one the machine had been delivered with. It said “HOME”.

The password field below it was empty, Celia turned to Robert who gave a blank look. His colleague, looking like he wasn’t sure, suggested, ‘Jessica Rabbit?’ Celia raised an eyebrow then typed it in, leaving out the space between the words and hoped the number of characters wouldn’t be too much for the antique workstation. A message eventually appeared, suggesting that this wasn’t the correct username or password and could she please try again. This time she attempted to type the two words with a space. This didn’t work either, so she sat back in the chair, then sat up again because that wasn’t very comfortable. ‘Hang on a minute, I’m just trying to get myself into the mind-set of the kind of person who would use a computer like this.’ Robert, Michael and Ian didn’t say anything, they allowed her to think as she had asked. Eventually she reached out and very carefully tapped the Caps Lock key then wrote “JESSICA RABBIT”, and pressed the Enter key. There was a momentary pause as the screen went black.

Celia put her head in her hands thinking she had locked it up by trying too many times, but then Robert said, ‘Well done, that seems to have done it.’ She removed her hands from in front of her eyes and was unfortunate enough to have to witness a very low resolution display, with a small number of icons and an unpleasant green background. She rubbed her forehead with a finger for a second, then started investigating the files and folders on the hard drive, digging down to attempt to find anything which might reveal what it was last used for. Nothing made itself obvious, so she fired up the browser and tried to get online, after the hard drive finished whirring and clanking she looked in the favourites and selected an email site from the list, logging in with the saved email address, and the same password as before. It didn’t take her long to find what they were looking for, she showed it to the men standing around her.

Masterson turned to one of the corporals who was standing at ease. ‘Get a photograph of that,’ he nudged Ian, ‘Could you get there and intercept them before they leave.’ The other man nodded, collected half of the assembled forces staff and left, looking at his watch and grinning.

 

***

 

For some reason Masterson felt nervous, this was unusual because he had recently faced down a herd of mammoths, as well as dealing with civilians wanting better rooms. However, it was probably right that he was uncomfortable, an appointment with the top brass rarely revealed things he wished to know about. His body was poker straight, hands folded behind his back outside the unwelcoming door, staring indifferently at the eye level nameplate. It read “Brigadier S. MacAlister, MPhil”, he looked through the words to the man he knew hidden behind them. Steve was alright but, in Robert’s estimation, spent a little too much time sitting in his office reading and signing paperwork. It wasn’t his fault, that’s just what happened when you headed up the ranks these days. A voice called out, ‘Come,’ so he entered and stood at ease.

As had been the case when the Jump Project was initiated, the Brigadier was flanked by the Minister and the General, who were looking at Steve, rather than anywhere near Robert. ‘These facts are the literal truth Masterson!’ This wasn’t a question so Robert merely nodded, carefully watching his ranking officer and waited patiently. ‘We’ve decided on a course of action. This infiltrator is to be apprehended. But we want to make sure the report is substantiated, so you need to wait until he’s seen acting illicitly before taking action. Understood?’ Again Robert nodded his head. You need to ensure this happens on the next trip you take, we don’t want this business to continue any longer than it has to, now we have the answers to our…’

The Minister coughed and took over, ‘What Stephen is trying to say is, it would be best if the situation were drawn to a close before any further disruptions are made to the spacetime continuum.’ Robert almost smiled at the minister’s ability to take over a conversation, then distract attention from whatever unwelcome fact was inadvertently about to be revealed. Almost in the nick of time, but not quite early enough to save the blunder.

The General looked unpleasantly at the Brigadier so Robert decided it was time to try and save his colleague’s embarrassment. ‘That’s good sir, because I was expecting you to tell me to go back in time to kill someone’s father before they were conceived.’

The three men, as one, looked at Masterson and frowned. Steve almost breathed a sigh of relief as he reprimanded, ‘This is no time for humour Colonel. Dismissed.’ Robert stepped out of the room, wondering how many pints he was now owed by his competent, but often careless, senior officer. Deciding that he should try and catch up with him sometime soon to call in the debt.

800456F2

‘Yes, we packed our own bags. Didn’t we Simon?’ Jessica glanced sideways at Jonny, rolling her eyes. How many times had they practised calling each other by their assumed names? Jonny just wasn’t a natural liar. Which was one of the things that endeared him to her, but also a bit of a problem when taking on alternative identities.

He came around shortly, ‘Sure thing Alice, haven’t left my sight.’

The stern girl behind the desk continued with the drudgery of labelling up the bags and listing the hand luggage terms and conditions. When the bags had been dragged away by the conveyor belt she looked one last time at their passports, then handed them back to Jessica, who was obviously the one in control of the whole situation, as well as the relationship. ‘If you can proceed to the departure lounge, the flight leaves at 15:40. Enjoy your trip Mr and Mrs Hopkins.’

Jessica grabbed Jonny’s hand and quickly led him away, in case he started grinning. He followed placidly until they found a quiet corner underneath the escalators. She pushed him up against the polished stainless steel wall and, much to his surprise, kissed him on the lips. As she pulled away Jonny raised an eyebrow, ‘I’m still having trouble getting used to you with blonde hair, you look…’ He stopped for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what it was she looked like. ‘…um, blonde.’

He felt a little embarrassed at his own inarticulacy but Jessica smiled and pointed at the reflective surface behind him, ‘Have you looked in a mirror lately?’ He turned round and was still surprised to see a nearly bare face and head staring back at him, the day or two’s worth of stubble growth made him look a little like an action movie hero, or at least that’s what he chose to believe. Possibly more disconcerting was the clothing. His reflection was wearing blue jeans, dark trainers and a smart button-up shirt, next to him was a beautiful woman in an overly, and overtly, colourful summer dress and flip flops. She had suggested this change of appearance and at first Jonny had dismissed it out of hand. He had started growing his hair when he was a teenager, and was terrified at the thought of being shorn of it, but Jessica had persuaded him by bluntly stating that Darwin might find them if they didn’t go out of their way to disappear, then suggesting what kind of things Mr and Mrs Hopkins might get up to in the privacy of a hotel room in Denpasar. This swung his vote, so they had spent a night leaning over the bath dyeing her hair and removing his.

The new, visibly happy couple looked at themselves, hugged and headed towards the departure gates. Jonny held his breath as their luggage was passed through the x-ray machine. Jessica went through the scanner first and a warning light started flashing. Jonny followed through and was allowed to collect their now examined luggage, he turned back to see what was happening and felt a pang of jealousy as the burly security guard patted her down, in his estimation a little too intimately. After a couple of nerve racking moments it was identified that an unobtrusive anklet she was wearing around her bare leg had caused the alarm. The guard apologised for the inconvenience and told them to have a good flight as they locked their fingers together, aiming themselves at the departure lounge.

After browsing the books, perfumes and holiday clothes Jessica turned to Jonny, ‘I don’t know about you Simon but I always need a trip to the ladies room before getting on an aeroplane.’ He concurred and they untangled themselves, heading for their respective facilities. After washing his hands Jonny wound his way back down the long corridor, leading back to the lower level shops.

He sat on an unoccupied plastic bench, only starting to get a little edgy when five minutes had passed. His nerves were hardly soothed when a woman sat next to him and said ‘Hello jet setter, looking to join the mile high club?’ Jessica had changed her clothes and tied her hair up into a loose bun, just off centre on the back of her head. ‘Thought I’d go for another look.’ She was now wearing a pair of jeans and a slightly too tight white t-shirt, from which Jonny had difficulty averting his attention. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’ She stood up and dragged him along behind her. He let her lead the way as they weaved around the pillars, liberally scattered throughout the departure lounge.

Eventually the details of their flight were fully furnished on the big screens so they curtailed the stroll, which Jessica had hoped would be partially obscuring them from any interested parties, and headed for gate fifty seven, walking with more purpose than before. On the way a large flock of Japanese tourists were obscuring their path. They had to hold on tightly to each other’s hands so as not to be split up in the throng. As they managed to delicately extricate themselves from the wall of people, breathing a sigh of relief, they found themselves face to face with an actual wall. Jonny led the way past the crowd and around the corner towards their destination, to be drawn up short once again. ‘Hello Jonny. Hi Jessica. I think it would be prudent if you followed me.’

Both of them had to tear their gaze away from the army fatigues directly in front of their eyes to look up at a familiar, but somehow different face topped by an unkempt head of red hair. ‘Alan!’ they exclaimed together.

‘Could you please follow me, there’s something I need to discuss with you.’ Jessica’s peripheral vision picked up at least two other men, dressed in matching outfits, standing just close enough to block any route other than the one which was being offered by Alan. They were led up an escalator, into a small room just away from the main thoroughfare. They were offered seats and drinks. It wasn’t the kind of thing you expected when being escorted to an interview room in an airport, but the congenial treatment didn’t allay the concern on either of their faces. Jessica noticed Jonny’s eyes were spinning round, like a trapped animal looking for an escape route. She hoped she looked a little more composed and had this endorsed when the large ginger man started talking to her in the first instance, even though the words were obviously aimed at both of them.

‘Okay, so you’ve probably already figured this out, but my name isn’t Alan Scott and although I’ve been to a lot of places I wasn’t looking at the local wildlife, or taking photographs. My name is Ian Brookfield and I’m a Captain in a branch of the armed forces, probably not one you’d have heard of though.’ If anything, Jonny’s face became more distorted at hearing this news but Jessica did quite a good job of looking relaxed, although she didn’t feel it. The door opened and another man, of a similar solid construction to the ones already standing in the room, strode in. He sported a military haircut and brown eyes, which Jessica noticed complemented each other quite nicely. ‘This is Colonel Robert Masterson. An old friend of mine and also, you may be interested to learn, the head of a project involving a machine with some rather special features. I suspect you know what I’m talking about! Over to you, Bob.’

The man who had walked in pulled a chair out from the small wooden table in the middle of the room and sat down, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep lately. He leant an elbow on the desk and ran his hand through his bristly hair before taking in first Jonny’s appearance, then Jessica’s. He paused momentarily then scratched the side of his face, while looking at nothing in particular. Jessica was starting to wonder if she should say anything when he finally talked. ‘Thanks Ian. Yes, I’ve been heading the Jump Project. That’s the one involving the time machine.’ His sentences seemed clipped, like his mind was on something other than the here and now. ‘My friend has been acting on my behalf for the past six months. He discovered that your group has been borrowing our Jump Truck. Don’t worry, we already know how it was taken, along with the details of what’s been happening on those trips! All I want you to tell me is, what do you know about Darwin?’

The sound of the name spoken was enough to send a small shiver down Jessica’s spine, she noticed Jonny was now sitting a little more upright. The Colonel seemed to have run out of steam so she asked, ‘What do you already know?’

Ian sat on the corner of the table next to his senior officer and, thankfully, took over. ‘We’ve got pretty much everything, the only problem being we don’t know his name or address.’ He had the good grace to look slightly humiliated as he admitted this.

Jessica tried to hide her smile but gave up after a moment, ‘Let me guess, you tried to follow him, didn’t you Alan? I mean Ian, sorry, whatever your name is.’ Ian nodded awkwardly. ‘So you didn’t actually try and find anything out about the guy?’ This time a stilted shake of his head. That means you don’t actually know what happened to him?’

At this point both the Colonel and the Captain looked at her, Masterson’s face twisted to one side, ‘What do you mean?’

Jessica reached into her handbag, then stopped because there were still two armed men in the room with them who were suddenly looking nervous and touching the holsters clipped round their waists. ‘Don’t worry, the only slightly offensive thing I have in here is my lipstick.’ She pulled a device out of her bag, pressed a button then made a complicated gesture to unlock it. Soon she was browsing for something specific. She brought up a piece of text, placed the tablet on the table and angled it so the screen flipped its orientation, showing them an address. ‘That’s where he lives, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, not being able to find this out. People skills is what you need.’ She flipped the screen orientation again and clicked and swiped a few times to find what she was looking for, ‘And this is what you don’t know!’

The two men read what they were being shown. The Colonel said something, which sounded like nothing in particular, to one of the lesser men standing at ease, this prompted the man to find his phone and leave the room. Jonny was still looking uptight but he relaxed after Masterson stood up. ‘You people are worse than my team, I can see what you were talking about Ian! You can go now.’ The last sentence was aimed squarely at Jonny and Jessica. They spent very little time collecting their stuff together and ran out of the room. ‘You’re sure we can trust them?’ Ian looked down at his swiftly scribbled copy of the address, fleetingly nodding his head. ‘In that case take the men and see if you can find this Cornell.’

Brookfield saluted properly, after all there were subordinates in the room, so he thought he should at least attempt to give the impression that his friend’s rank should be respected. ‘Permission to waste five minutes before departure, sir?’ Robert raised an eyebrow, shrugged and offered the desired response, so Ian went to the corner of the room, picked up an unobtrusive bag and closed the door as he left.

At gate fifty seven Jonny was standing with his face pressed against the glass looking at the enormous aircraft that would be carrying them, into uncharted territories and hopefully a more interesting, less orthodox life. Jessica was browsing for somewhere to stay when they arrived but stopped, to look up at him. ‘You really haven’t travelled overseas before?’

Jonny gave a sort of half smile and looked back at her, ‘I just never got my backside in gear. I always fancied it though.’ He turned back to the window and watched the men on the tarmac placing anonymous bags, packages and boxes into the luggage hold of the plane. One of them dropped a case but, after checking it for holes and dents, put it back amongst the others. ‘Is it scary?’

Jessica closed her tablet, placing it in its slim case, then looked up at Jonny. ‘Is what scary?’

He turned away from his contemplation and sat down next to her. ‘Flying. You know, you hear a lot of stories about it but if you’ve never been on a plane before there’s no frame of reference. The closest I’ve been is a bus and frankly that can be a bit hairy at times.’

Jessica gave him a big affectionate smile and put her hand on his knee. ‘That is so cute! The only time I’ve ever been scared is when a plane I was on landed during a thunder storm. There was lightning flashing across the wings and out the other side, then hitting the ground. It looked scary but I found out later that a plane works as quite an effective Faraday cage.’ Jonny’s face was blank, ‘The lightning surrounds it but can’t get in. So the next time I was on a plane it was happening on I was quite excited to watch it. Don’t worry big man, I’ll hold your hand.’ She winked, then wrapped her arms around him, kissing him gently on the lips.

They were separated again by the sound of someone clearing their throat in a subtle manner. Upon breaking apart they were confronted by Ian, trying not to look too imposing, standing far enough away to remain unnoticed until he had made an effort to be. ‘Um, hi.’

Jonny lost the reticence he had formerly shown in front of the uniformed men. ‘Alan, what do you want?’

‘I understand if you’re upset, believe me I never had the intention of deceiving you both. Frankly you were the only ones in the group that didn’t freak me out.’

Jessica stood up so she was almost face to face with the big man. ‘Sorry Ian but I think what Jonny is trying to find out is, do you military types require some further assistance?’

Ian looked a little taken aback, then figured out what his presence must seem like to them, ‘Actually, no. I just wanted to say it was a pleasure working with you and I hope you can find somewhere nice to settle down and enjoy life. I…’ He shuffled his feet then continued, ‘I got you both something to say thanks for all the help. I don’t think I’d have had such a pleasant time if you weren’t running the whole thing. I’d suggest you open this when you’re not in public, hope they’re right!’ He brought his hands out from behind his back, in one of them he held a carrier bag which he handed to Jonny, who stared at it in disbelief. His other hand delved into his top pocket and produced a small envelope, which he handed to Jessica. ‘This, however, is probably worth opening now. It should make your flights a little more enjoyable! Anyway, I have to go now, people to find, etcetera. See you around,’ and with that he was gone from the waiting room and their lives.

Jonny looked at the bag in his hand, surprised himself by running his hand through the air where his hair used to be, then put the package in his hand luggage. Jessica opened the envelope and pulled out two tickets which, when shown to a nice lady standing by some rather luxurious looking doors, allowed them access to the first class lounge. This made Jonny feel slightly uncomfortable, but Jessica said she could do with a stiff drink after the last few months and dragged him after her into the lap of luxury, which they took full advantage of until they were ushered onto the plane and seated in some chairs, which looked like something a slightly eccentric designer might do if asked to come up with the “chair of the future”.

After being asked a number of times if they were comfortable or needed anything for the journey they were left in peace. Jonny was still staring around the cabin in wonder but then turned to Jessica. ‘I’ve decided, I’m not worried anymore…’

 

***

 

Robert stood nervously next to the truck. He had decided to run this last trip before being ordered to confront the interloper. The pretence was that of a final calibration check of the instruments, however Robert wanted to spend the journey observing the infiltrator’s behaviour. His orders hadn’t included this, but he was used to interpreting commands from senior officers and had bent the rules on more than one occasion. His reasoning was, with the sudden disappearance of the two who ran the group there would probably be a period of upset, so there shouldn’t be any further meddling from the terrorists.

He had asked Michael to organise the details, without revealing exactly what the jump was for. What that meant however was that most of the team were sitting around, watching Cooke and Evans fiddling with pieces of equipment, so Robert had to find things for them to do. He nodded his head towards Emily and Andrea, ‘Could you two take him,’ this was directed at Peter James who had returned from his self-imposed exile, ‘and head southwards. There should be some caves which we think have markings on the walls, hopefully that will make your trip worthwhile Emily. ‘You’re with me David, there’s a stream a few hundred metres that way,’ he pointed towards a clump of woodland, ‘which we need to check for signs of introduced foreign substances.’

Moulder picked up an instrument from the back of the truck, shook his listless, greying ponytail and followed Masterson into the trees. They kept up a good pace through the scrubby undergrowth and were on location in a matter of minutes. David opened the bag he was carrying and took out a tripod, with a pole ending in a translucent plastic sensor hanging between the legs and a cable at the other end, connected to a handset. He pushed the rubberised feet into the sediment, adjusted the probe so it dangled in the water just above the riverbed, then sat on the trunk of a tree which had suffered from a serious case of storm damage and stared at the screen in his hand.

Masterson waited patiently until the small machine let out a high pitched squeal and David started packing his equipment back into its case, as he figured they may at least get some decent readings before he attempted to bring the man to justice. He realised he was starting to think like the scientists but dismissed the thought as an annoyance, to be considered when he had the time. ‘David,’ the other man looked up from his work, ‘it’s been brought to our attention that somebody in the team has been misappropriating the Jump Truck and travelling back in time to obstruct events, which could have a serious effect on the future of the planet, or from what I’ve been told the entire universe.’

Moulder continued with his work as if the news wasn’t deserving of his attention, slowly and carefully zipping up the case of the multi-meter and muttering, ‘The quality looks fine from a first scan of the numbers. The pH is okay and oxygen levels are about what I expected.’

Robert moved towards the oblivious environmental scientist and placed a hand gently on his shoulder, ‘I’m not sure you quite understood what I was saying David, the jump device has been taken by a member of our team and used by a terrorist group for illegal, or at least spacetime threatening activities. We know it was you, Moulder.’

The man lifted his head upwards and stared at the pale blue cloudiness for a moment. ‘It’s beautiful back here isn’t it? The sky I mean. I think it’d be a nice place to stay.’ He sighed and without another sound his elbow swung back into Robert’s unprepared stomach, making solid contact and knocking all the air from his lungs. Masterson stumbled backwards into a tree but quickly focussed again, to see the bag of equipment being raised off the ground and gripped firmly for a swing. Masterson, used to situations involving aggressive behaviour, forgot where he was and what he was doing and his body automatically prepared itself to deflect the blow being readied in front of him. His eyes focussed and he let his subconscious take over.

 

***

 

‘Stupid man!’ Celia grasped another grappling hook branch and pulled it out of her hair. The exclamation was intended for both Cooke and Masterson. Robert for bringing them on this pointless jump and Mike for allowing the Colonel to do so. Without slowing her pace she had a brief mental image of Robert, confidently striding through the foliage and smiled to herself, before remembering she was angry at him for putting her in this situation.

She and Cooke had completed their scans and independently come up with exactly the details they thought they should. Which in one way was good, but in another didn’t prove anything they hadn’t known already. She had some idea the jump was purely capricious on Robert’s part, she just didn’t know what had informed his decision to make this trip. As the tests had completed Emily ran up to them, alone and waving her arms. She came to a halt breathing heavily and pointing back to where the Jameses were, in the distance. ‘We’re catching the distinct whiff of smoke. Andrea thinks there’s a fire coming, possibly quite a big one in this scrub. Pete said we had to pack up so I came to tell you to put your equipment away.’

Celia had looked beyond the couple in the distance, seeing what she had assumed to be mist or low clouds, but after the suggestion was made it was obvious that it was something more treacherous. She made a quick decision, based both on the fact that Michael was more proficient at packing up, along with the fact she wanted to make sure Masterson was warned. ‘You finish up here,’ she told Cooke, ‘I’m going to get Rob and David.’ Michael nodded without turning away from the heavy, ugly looking digital display he was doing his best to unscrew from a stand, so she sprang up and ran towards the trees where the two men had disappeared from view fifteen minutes earlier. This was how she had become a walking thorn attractor.

Finally she heard sounds and assumed she was getting close, as the pre-jump scanner wouldn’t have deposited them anywhere too close to other life forms, at least ones big enough to make the sort of noises she was hearing. As she got closer still she began to wonder exactly what it was she could hear. There was definitely movement, but along with that the occasional thud and crack of something breaking, so she slowed her approach. When she guessed they were on the other side of the branches in front of her she tentatively moved one upwards, to peer through the gap. She nearly dived headlong through the vegetation when she saw Moulder standing over Robert with a raised clenched fist ready to forcefully drop into Masterson’s prone face. But before she could react Robert was up and facing his assailant.

They were definitely participating in some kind of conflict. Reasons raced through Celia’s head, like the fire and choking smoke which she suddenly remembered was approaching them. She decided she couldn’t wait long before making her presence known, but thought it would probably be better if they were allowed to finish their masculine posturing before she interrupted. She watched with a grisly attentiveness, there were broken branches and dirt kicked up from the altercation. David was obviously overshadowed by Robert’s trained fighting skills, but the environmental scientist surprised her by being quite ruthless, every time Robert seemed to be on top David would do something unexpected and wrong foot him. She assumed they would be finished directly, but nearly stepped out a couple of times when it looked like they might need splitting up.

Suddenly she was surprised to see Robert floored, by a wildly swung knee which caught him in the side of the chest. Moulder quickly reached to the ground and picked up a decent sized rock, lifting it above his head, by the look of it to strike a potentially fatal blow. Celia almost shouted, but Masterson artfully catapulted himself from the floor into David’s prone stomach. Moulder was unbalanced, pacing heavily backwards, only to be hit again by the Colonel’s oncoming shoulder. This final strike was too much for the tall man’s always limp looking body and he fell backwards towards a tree. The forest abruptly became very quiet. Celia thought to herself that they must have finished, then noticed David looking downwards towards the Thai style writing on his black t-shirt, she followed his gaze and saw the object of his attention. One of the broken branches on the storm damaged tree was in front of him, however it was still attached to the tree behind him too, and therefore had created a rather unpleasant and ragged hole through his lower intestines. Blood had already started oozing out of the wound and colouring the water of the small stream nearby, the slow flowing water became a pale crimson colour. Celia watched in shock as the man fell forwards, collapsing into an unnaturally shaped heap between the foot of the tree and the edge of the river.

Masterson stood over the prone figure as Celia let go of the branch and trod, anxiously back the way she had come. When she was far enough away she tried to shout but her voice wouldn’t come. She tried again and managed a quiet, ‘Robert. David.’ She figured it would be best to conceal her unintended voyeurism and pretend she was trying to locate the two men through the mess of trees.

She almost jumped when Robert stepped lightly out in front of her. ‘What’s up? What are you doing here?’ He looked concerned.

Celia nearly tripped over her own tongue, as she tried to stop saying anything which might give her away. ‘You need to come back. There’s a big fire headed in this direction, Peter said we need to get out of here. What the hell happened to you? Where’s David?’ She feigned surprise at the cuts and bruises which were all too obvious across his face, the back of his hands and lower arms.

She expected an explanation or remorse but Robert looked nonplussed. His expression changed slightly as he was speaking and his face became slightly more solemn. ‘There’s been an accident, there must have been something wrong with the scanner! As we were getting ready to come back we were attacked by a pack of wolves. I only managed to escape because they got to Moulder first. We need to get away from them in case they follow me.’ He grabbed her by the hand and led her rapidly through the forest.

Even if Robert had not been dragging her behind him Celia would have been speechless. In the first instance, she couldn’t believe he had despatched David and left his body in this prehistoric wasteland. Then there was the fact that he blatantly lied about what had happened. She felt numb inside and unable to think straight. She had been so sure that Robert was one of the good guys, now she didn’t know what to think anymore. So she just trailed behind him through the trees with a churning stomach and conflicting emotions fighting for dominance in her head.

When they got back to the truck the rest of the team were already strapped in. Robert gave a brief explanation of his fabricated truth, adding that there was nothing he could have done. The pall of smoke was now unmistakeable. Celia found herself sitting in her customary position, secured in her seat without remembering the act of fastening the harness. On recent jumps she had spent her time in the truck contemplating the side of Robert’s head, now she just stared through the windscreen to the grey air outside. She didn’t hear Michael’s question to everyone in the truck until he redirected it at her, ‘you there Evans? Are you ready?’ She nodded in agreement and the tone of light was suddenly electrical instead of natural. The team left the vehicle and collected their things together. Celia wandered through the doors, back to her room before anyone noticed her absence. She lay on the bed, putting her hands over her eyes, trying to process what she had seen and what it might mean.

80046BFC

Anyone who had come into contact with Oliver Cornell over the past year or so would have been surprised, to see pictures of him with his arm around a woman, or with a small boy sitting on his shoulders. Smiling in all of them. It would probably have astonished them to find him sitting with his legs resting on a footstool, drinking a cup of coffee and surfing the internet. However upon inspecting the screen they would have been less surprised, to see him in the middle of a search for historical data about food yields around the world.

He continued staring at the screen when the noise of disintegrating wood arose from the front entrance. His eyes didn’t turn away from the text, even when a number of threatening looking men took up all the empty space in his living room. One of the men, the insignia on his sleeve showing him to be a captain, stood patiently, but when there was no reaction the man, looking slightly distressed, spoke. ‘Oliver Cornell, you have endangered the lives of the people living on this planet and are to be tried in front of a group of suitably qualified technical experts then sentenced. Most likely to a secure location for the protection of yourself, along with the rest of humanity.’

The small man stayed sitting, didn’t react in any way, so the Captain scratched the top of his head through his red hair and tried something else, ‘Darwin!’ This time Cornell looked up from his computer, ‘You need to come with us. You’ve threatened the entire fabric of reality and it’s going to take some concerted effort to fix things.’ He repeated his previous statement, ‘You need to come with us. Now.’

Darwin folded the screen down, carefully placing the laptop on the ottoman. He stood up and without arguing, or even speaking, left the room accompanied by two of Masterson’s men. Ian watched him go saying, more to himself than any of the people left with him, ‘he’s going to need some serious psychological evaluation.’ He turned back to his men, barking an order. They immediately dispersed throughout the house and started searching, as per the command.

Ian supplanted Cornell in the chair and lifted the machine onto his lap, flipping the screen open to see what, if anything, he could find. He tried to ignore the bustle of activity and concentrated purely on the small display. It appeared that Cornell only used the thing for searching as there were no saved documents. He left the machine turned on and secured the lid again, so it could be handed to the IT guys back in the office for a more thorough investigation.

He got up and paced through the small neat house but all of the men seemed to be reaching the conclusion of their investigations, without anything obvious to show for it. So Brookfield headed back to the sitting room, then realised he hadn’t looked right in front of his nose. He flipped up the lid of the ottoman and found a well organised filing system, with labels including dates and locations. He looked at the two men in the room and sighed, shaking his head at them. He shouted that he had found what he needed and the soldiers emptied back into the two vans waiting outside. As Ian sat in the passenger seat he read the address on the piece of paper, pondering how he hadn’t guessed Darwin would have a business-premises that he used for work, then for what he had been doing when work no longer seemed important. The trucks pulled away, leaving the other inhabitants of the street staring at a smashed front door and wondering what on earth had just happened.

 

***

 

The atmosphere in the small building was one of calm and serenity. Each of the doorways was open when not in use, leading to identically magnolia coloured rooms with thick luxurious carpets, containing nothing more than a couple of comfortable looking armchairs. Inspecting the doors more closely it was possible to see that the locking mechanism was, perhaps, a little more ornate and robust than would be expected. The overall effect was spoiled slightly by two men, each almost as big as one of the doorways, dressed in solid black clothing and tightly gripping handguns, as if their lives depended on it.

The door they were flanking was shut. It was quite obvious that whoever was inside the room would be staying there, until a definite decision was made that they would be leaving again by someone in authority. The small glass panel three quarters of the way up the white wood gave a view of two men sitting on the comfy chairs, facing each other. One of the men, wearing a shirt which matched the decor, buttoned down to his chest and dark business trousers with smart, shiny black shoes poking out the bottom, was speaking. ‘I think perhaps if you actually talked to me it might help you to explore your feelings, Mr Cornell.’

The dismissive look on the other man’s face was particularly obvious because of the ugly scar on his right temple. He remained silent.

The psychiatrist decided to try a new line of questions, after making a swift note on the pad resting on the arm of his seat. ‘How did you get involved in the EARTH Force, Darwin?’ Although his face was steadily inert he smiled inwardly, as the other man’s gaze rose to meet his own.

‘I was looking for a way to spend my time when I happened upon a newspaper, in a café. I read it, for want of anything better to do. There was an article on the EF so I looked them up. They were exactly what I was looking for.’

‘And what were you looking for?’

Cornell put his elbow on the arm of the chair, resting his head against his hand while he thought for a moment. The analyst didn’t attempt to hurry him. ‘I guess at first I was looking for a way to change things for the better. I’m not really a people person. That’s why I became a private detective, you don’t have to be good with people, just good at keeping quiet. That was when I…’ his monologue stopped, as if he had been about to reveal something which he wasn’t comfortable talking about.

The other man ran his fingertips across his smoothly shaven chin, ‘So what did you actually get, from the group?’

Again there was silence, then words, starting slowly and speeding up as Cornell continued. ‘I don’t think I realised what I was doing at first. Then I discovered that I could really change things. So I tried to formulate a plan, for how to make the world a better place. I was slowly getting there too, you know I only had another couple of missions before I was going to try and fix things completely.’

‘How exactly would the world have improved, if your scheme had been brought to fruition?’

‘Well, you know how there are billions of people all over the surface of the planet? How they’re all living their lives, using up the Earth’s resources and generally wasting what they are lucky enough to possess?’ The psychiatrist nodded his head with a look of interest on his face. ‘Well, ultimately my trips would have led to no more humans on the planet. I guess I was lucky to be part of a group who had access to that device. As soon as we had it I knew what I needed to do, it was just a case of testing the water. After all, when you’ve lost someone…’ He stopped again, only this time his eyes misted up, it was more as if he wasn’t able to continue.

‘Ah yes, you had a family didn’t you. Can you tell me about them?’ The glazed eyes of the interviewee continued to stare at nothing, so the doctor tried asking questions relating to Oliver’s wife and child in several different ways, none of which seemed to elicit a response. That was until he had almost given up questioning while the blank face looked straight through him. He asked a question, which he thought probably wasn’t really professionally sound, but wasn’t sure what else to try. ‘What happened to them?’

There was a small change in Cornell’s posture and he started to talk, as if he wasn’t really in control or aware of what he was saying. ‘Elizabeth, that’s my wife’s name, and Luke, he’s only five, such a funny boy.’ He paused briefly, the psychiatrist, after speaking to him for some time over the past couple of days, was expecting Cornell to confess to some kind of psychotic episode and morbid, if not actual, physically and emotionally destructive behaviour to those around him, but the small frame of the other man started to judder slightly as if he were suffering from a neurological impairment. He bent over, placing his head in his hands. The words he said came out through the shield of his interlocked fingers. His voice was suddenly hoarse. ‘It was only one day.’

The statement hung in the air but was soon followed in a clearer voice, which seemed disjointed from the mouth it was emanating from, the words coming out sporadically. ‘I remember the darkness as I came round. We were taking a trip to Elizabeth’s parents’ house. They live about fifty or so miles away. It was her dad’s birthday. We were going to spend some time with him. I almost didn’t go, I’d just been offered a new case. It was worth a lot of money and I couldn’t pass it up, but I decided I’d start when we got back. It was quite an interesting case,’ Cornell seemed to lose focus and his discourse petered out.

The psychiatrist shuffled uncomfortably, the material of the chairs was starting to make him sweat as he sat listening, but he tried to ignore the occasional bead of perspiration trickling down the side of his body, under his shirt. He realised that Cornell, or the assumed personality of Darwin which he seemed to respond more willingly to, was on the brink of revealing something of himself. He was swaying back and forth between lucidity and disorientation, which is why the information was coming with a scattergun effect. He decided to steer slightly away from the obviously painful memories, hoping it would clear up the man’s thought processes again. ‘What was the case about Oliver?’

Cornell flinched at the interruption, failing to notice the use of his given name. ‘A man thought his business partner was defrauding him, I think it made the news when the full story came out, but I wasn’t involved, obviously. It turned out the guy wasn’t only channelling earnings through separate accounts to launder the money, he was also having an affair with his partner’s wife. My prospective client hadn’t known a thing about it!’ Once again there was silence.

‘You look upset about that?’

Darwin rubbed his forehead and stared at nothing in particular on the floor. ‘I was good at my job you know, the only problem being I was so good that I had to deal with all the worst people. If not directly then by observing their behaviour. Elizabeth and Luke helped keep me functioning normally, while dealing with the dregs of society.’ He looked up at the other man hoping for some recognition, which was offered freely. He reached up and scratched the ugly scar on his head, revealing the larger, matching disfigurement on his forearm.

‘You lost your guidance?’

‘We spent the day at Tony and Julia’s house, that’s her mum and dad. We were on the way back driving on the motorway and some,’ he searched for a suitably bad word but settled for descriptive instead, ‘drunk tried to overtake us. There wasn’t enough room and he hit us. The other driver had minor bruising and concussion but our car flipped.’ A heavy breath broke his sentence in two and he pointed at the mark on his still raised arm, ‘That’s how I got these. The car span on its roof for about twenty metres, rebounded off the barrier at the side of the carriageway then hit the back of another car and jumped the central reservation. The car stopped. After a truck hit it.’ This time Cornell fell silent and the man questioning him knew he wouldn’t be speaking again for some time so he quietly stood up and left Cornell to work through his tragic experience.

 

***

 

The door to the unit was of a solid construction and also belonged to a civilian facility so Ian, rather embarrassingly, had to seek out the owner of the building in order to obtain a means of entry. His soldiers snapped to attention as he came round the corner of the corridor and wiggled the key into the lock.

The scene behind the door was surprising, not least because it resembled the kind of thing you see on a police crime drama. The wall opposite the door was covered in a large piece of cork board, on top of which was a map of the world, then a blown up map of Britain. There were pictures, newspaper clippings, topographic and political maps and sections of books and scientific papers, cut out and pinned across the surface. Pieces of string were secured to each of the cuttings and snaked out to join one, or more, of the other items on the board. It looked like a spider’s web spun by a drug addled tarantula. Ian scanned the surface briefly then turned to one of his men, ‘Photograph this,’ he nodded at the wall, ‘Make sure you get close ups of every detail. Use a tripod, we need to be able to reconstruct the entire thing when we get back.’

He turned away from the massive mind map, delving into the desk drawers along the left hand wall. Most of them surrendered no useful evidence but as Brookfield was nearing the last few he lifted some pieces of paper and a second key presented itself. He held it up against the one supplied by the owner and the profiles were similar, different enough to be noticeable though. He turned round and perched on the desk, being careful to choose a spot which didn’t have paperwork neatly lined up, ordered and allocated into workflows.

He turned the key over and over, staring down at his fingers hoping that he might be able to fathom what it was for, when his lieutenant looked up from the other end of the desk where he was double checking each drawer. ‘Sir, do you not think it might be for that door, Sir?’

Ian followed his lieutenants pointing finger and realised he had completely failed to notice a second door, identical to the one which they had entered the room through, on the right hand wall. As he walked towards the newly discovered portal he turned his head and said, ‘Thanks Jim, I knew I’d appointed you for a reason.’ The key didn’t catch at all as it was eased into the keyhole and turned easily, resulting in a satisfying click as the heavy-duty latches sprung out of the frame. The door swung open invitingly.

Like the two keys, this room was similar but different to the one he had just left. It had the same dull white paint job and the same style of fittings but it was much smaller, with a large drafting table in the centre. The table was tilted away from the door. Loose paper could be seen overhanging the edges, held in place by the integrated rulers part way up the length of the desk’s surface. Ian stood in the doorway scratching his head, looking at the inner workings of the adjustable desk, before he squeezed through the gap between the wall and the table. Reaching the surface he looked down.

It took a few moments to understand what the drawing on the table described, but then he muttered a series of expletives as he removed a small camera from his top pocket and photographed everything on the board. He put the camera away and tiptoed through the gap on the other side of the board, leaving the room and locking the door again then pocketing the key and making a mental note to hand it to Robert, with instructions to get a team to remove everything within. The photographer had finished in the main office, so Ian gave the order to pack up and get out. The team swiftly disappeared leaving Ian to lock the door, again placing the key in his pocket and dialling the owner to let him know they were finished, and that the room was off limits until further notice. He saluted smartly to the Lance Corporal, left guarding the room until a clean-up team arrived, and headed for the cars.

 

***

 

‘This is the best I can do with the facts we have. If we hadn’t been tipped off as to their movements I wouldn’t have gotten this far.’

Masterson leafed through Cooke’s papers, studying a couple of the planned jump randomly to get a feel for what needed doing. ‘Looks reasonable Michael. The timescales may be a little harsh but I guess we need to get this stuff sorted as soon as.’ He looked down at a few more of the items in the list, then looked up when there was a knock on the door. ‘Come.’

Ian walked in, looking questioningly at Michael as he did so. Robert indicated that Michael was staying in the room, so he began by throwing the casual salute which Robert returned, ‘Not good I’m afraid,’ he said as he handed over a small bag. ‘This has copies of all the pictures we took on site. Encrypted of course, I’ve sent you the password.’

Masterson said, ‘Darwin’s office,’ Michael nodded his understanding.

‘The main room consisted of a pin-board which showed all the targets and locations of the EARTH Force trips and suggestions as to what they did while they were there.’

‘That should help with this,’ Cooke interrupted as he waved the papers picked up from Robert’s desk. ‘Can Celia and I get a copy of it?’ Masterson bobbed his head as permission and made a note on the pad laying on his desk.

Robert folded his arms and looked up. ‘That reminds me, the shrink called. You probably both want to know about this. It appears that Oliver Cornell had been disturbed through a massive psychological trauma. His psyche broke down and he took on a new persona. He wouldn’t answer to any name other than his assumed one. It was to do with an accident, he lost his wife and child.’ Ian looked surprised at the news that the cold, calculating, manipulative individual he had been working with could have been in a relationship, let alone had a child. ‘The damage to his personality is permanent. Unfortunately, it looks like he isn’t able to recall what’s been happening since his initial episode with any clarity. So we’re not going to be able to question him. All we have to go on is the evidence we’ve gathered.’

At this, Ian placed a hand on his breast pocket, ‘There was something else but I’d prefer to discuss it in private, if that’s okay?’ He glanced towards the scientist and Michael took the hint, pulling the door closed on his way out. ‘It was bad. Cornell had schematics for the device, look.’ He retrieved the camera, from where he had secreted it after taking the photographs, turned it on and passed it to Masterson, who scrolled through the pictures. ‘It looks like they were thinking about building their own time machine.’ He looked down at the screen as Robert was flipping through. ‘That’s an address. I assume it’s where they were attempting to assemble the thing.’

‘Okay, gather your team. Get observations on the address, then shut down whatever operation they have in progress. We need to make sure no one else has access to this.’ Ian gave a formal salute without thinking about it and stood up, leaving Masterson chewing what was left of his fingernails.