The Replacement Phenomenon

  Several minutes had passed, and Jake continued to lie there staring at the ceiling. He thought of the many people who had experienced this time travelling experience before him. He thought of how many disasters had been prevented. He thought of car crashes, earthquakes, and other incidents where people had miraculously escaped without injury, or where casualties had been much lower than expected. He thought about stories of a stranger coming out of nowhere to save a life, disasters, and lucky escapes. How many of these were the result of pure good fortune, and how many were the direct result of the replacement phenomenon?

  He wondered why this series of events had been considered important enough for him to be called to fix things. It wasn't a world-changing event. He only ever wanted to repeat one day, but he thought about what he'd actually said. His exact words had been “I wish I could turn back time!" He decided he needed to be more specific in his wishes in the future.

  Jake couldn't switch off, forget everything, and get back to sleep. He had been lying there without sleep for nearly an hour. All he could do was get up and actually do something.

  He decided to get up and do a little bit of research of his own on the subject he couldn't stop thinking about. He walked to the study, turned on his computer to the usual beep, and found his regular web search engine within a couple of minutes.

  He typed in “reliving days” and received results of no apparent relevance. He then typed in “replacement phenomenon” and thought he would see what results were shown. Initially he found very little on his chosen subject. The list contained several references to dentistry and medical research about organs and tissue damage. He added words such as time and travel, and found one or two listings that seemed relevant. He clicked on the first link and braced himself for what he was about to see.

  He found a small personal web site that had an introduction to time replacement and a detailed account of someone's own experience. The explanation for time and event replacement was simple, and much like an abbreviated version of the explanation he had heard the previous day from Will Spalder. He had spent a considerable amount of time on the Internet in recent years, and seemed to have finally found something that he thought was worth the effort of reading. He read several screens worth of text about this man's experience.

  He worked at a local university, where new structures were going up all the time. The university was rapidly expanding, and was constantly building to keep up. One day he discovered a student looking up at a half completed building for several minutes. He asked if anything was wrong, but the kid said he was an architecture student. This man thought nothing of it and returned to work, only to discover in the evening that the same student had jumped from the top of that new building and died on impact.

  The man woke up the next day to find that it wasn't really the next day at all, but the same day again. When he saw that student he tried to reason with him and persuade him not to take any drastic action, but the young student wouldn't listen. He spent most of the rest of the day trying to tighten up security, and make the police aware of what the student might do. All of his efforts worked, and the kid survived. He was able to finally get through to him and the student was now the head of a successful company, and was enjoying life.

  It seemed that every time this replacement phenomenon occurred, it righted a wrong which would have otherwise remained. Every instance of it was not world changing, or incredibly dramatic.

  He found other stories, some of which led to the saving of many people, some just to prevent serious injury to another. This phenomenon covered everything from global disasters to people losing their jobs.

  There was certainly no set pattern to any of this. Some people's travels lasted one day, others two days, and yet others who doubled back through time involuntarily for several weeks.

  Jake looked at the time in the upper right hand corner of the screen and decided he would view one more web site before returning to the bedroom to get ready for the day ahead. He clicked on the last link on that page of search results, and froze when he saw the page that came up on the screen.

  Below the large bold words, “My Replacement Experience” Jake saw a large black and white picture. It was grainy, but it was obvious who the subject was. It was William Spalder. The picture looked as if it was forty or more years old, but Will still looked exactly the same as he had yesterday. He thought perhaps it was simply a bad picture.

  He read the story, discovering that a woman's experience had happened in June of 1958. She had spent a week moving backwards through time and had run into the man pictured, even though he did not tell her his name. He explained replacement in the exact same way as he had done to Jake. This was surreal. He was clearly not old enough to have even been born then, but there he was. This man now had some explaining to do, but now was not the time to interrogate him.

  Although the Internet was not always the best source of reliable information, Jake had not found any instances of time travel or replacement before 1958. Will had said it had been around as long as the earth, but no proof of that existed as far as Jake could see. Maybe older accounts of this phenomenon would be recorded in paper archives somewhere. Maybe other events had happened but had not been documented. He had no way of knowing the truth of it all.

  More puzzling was this man's involvement in what appeared to be the first occurrence of this phenomenon. He needed answers, but figured he would get them at some point in the future, or at some point in the past.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Amy seemed quite happy that her husband had accompanied her on a clothes shopping trip. Although they were surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a noisy shopping centre, Jake enjoyed the peace and quiet of shopping without the children. Lynn had volunteered to babysit when Jake had spoken to her that morning, and they could hardly refuse the offer. The first time the Saturday had rolled around Amy was quite happy to take the boys with her and to spend some time picking out some new clothes for them. It seemed Jake’s agreeing to go shopping had persuaded her to treat the whole shopping trip differently. It was now an opportunity for a couple of hours that didn’t involve either of them chasing after kids and helping them find toilets every few minutes.

  Jake’s reservations about going along with Amy on such shopping trips were based on his limited stamina. He couldn’t much stand shopping for more than half an hour. His feet, back and mind was not able to handle much more than thirty minutes of retail therapy. It boggled the mind how some women treated it almost like a sport or a hobby when all Jake felt was a stiffness creeping into his back from standing around in female clothing departments. To Jake shopping was something that needed to be done when someone was running out of food or their clothes were wearing out. This was not something Jake could ever do for fun.

  It seemed that Amy still did not own enough pairs of shoes, a fact that Jake swore could not possibly be true. At the last count Jake thought Amy had enough shoes to wear a different pair every day for about a month. Jake probably had three pairs: One smart black pair, one casual pair of slip on shoes, and one old pair that were falling to pieces, which he wore for gardening and DIY projects. That seemed to be enough to go with every outfit he had, or that he could even think of wearing. This was clearly a guy thing, and he was willing to consider the other side of things. There was a growing attitude among men that an interest in clothing and shoes was not only acceptable, but that it was becoming increasingly necessary. This was not a view Jake felt he could ever share. He was a follower of comfort over fashion.

  With a lot of women Jake had known, every time they bought any part of a new outfit, they needed to buy new accessories and shoes to go with it. Jake knew he would never understand why this was the case, so he just let his wife buy whatever she liked within budget.

  Several times during their trawl from shop to shop, Amy offered to spend some time looking for something for Jake, but he refused. He wanted to keep everything as close as he could to how Amy experienced that day the fi
rst time around, despite not having the children with them. There was a fear that he would miss something important because he was busy looking at sweatshirts or new jeans that he didn't need anyway. He also feared that the day had also changed significantly because Amy was not being worn out by their children’s shopping antics. Maybe she would miss the trade she witnessed because she was not standing by a children’s shop or stopping to buy a treat for the boys if they were behaving themselves. He hoped that she would still keep to a similar pattern and he could witness what he needed to witness. He did, however, think of the upside if Amy and the children did not witness the trade that sparked a murder streak. If she didn’t see it she would not report it. If she did not report it then his family was safe. All of a sudden Jake was determined to keep Amy so busy that she did not witness the trade, wherever it was due to take place.

  Jake had never taken the time to admire the vast expanse that was the relatively local indoor shopping centre named the MetroCentre. He looked around it as they sat in a food court in the central pavilion surrounded by approximately ten different concession stands offering everything from hot dogs to sandwiches and even fried chicken. The sit down offered a welcome break from the slow walking and standing around of the previous two hours. Above him was an angled glass roof made entirely of glass. Surrounding it was corridors lined with famous shops, each corridor with a glass roof shedding light on every corner of the centre. He was facing away from the area that had once been home to Metroland, one of the largest indoor theme parks in the country. The section had been redeveloped and was now named The MetroCentre Qube. Rather than being home to a Ferris wheel, a pirate ship and a roller-coaster, the Qube boasted several big name restaurants, a family fun section that included ten-pin bowling, and a new ten screen cinema that included 3D and IMAX screens. It was the first cinema of its kind in the North East of England.

  Built on an old waterlogged ash dump, the MetroCentre had built its reputation on being the biggest. Opening in 1986 it was the biggest out of town indoor shopping centre in Europe. As newer shopping centres opened elsewhere, the MetroCentre expanded to reclaim its title. It now contained almost 350 shops over an area of almost two million square feet. In addition to this title, Metroland, opening in 1988 was the largest indoor theme park in the country. While being positively massive, the centre was treated almost like four separate malls joined together, each one colour-coded as either red, yellow green or blue. In addition to the mass-produced feel, there were three smaller themed malls. One with an Ancient Roman feel, one built like an old British cobbled street, and one built like a typical Mediterranean village. Although the place was more than twenty years old, it was still as popular as ever, especially when January sales were underway.

  Jake sat the other side of a small table from Amy and glanced around the central pavilion. He looked around him and paused when he noticed a figure he recognised. This person was standing by the entrance of a catalogue shop a short distance away. It was the woman he had saved from a speeding car several days earlier. She was carrying a couple of bags from some of the most high-class shops within that centre.

  “Are you enjoying your sandwich?” Jake heard Amy’s question. “You seem to be enjoying the smell of it while looking at attractive women nearby,” she added in a sarcastic tone, with a smile on her face. Jake didn’t speak in response, but put on an over-the-top shocked look at his wife’s accusation.

  He looked around the food court and was not surprised to see the man whom he had witnessed being blown up in his own car just two days before.

  Jake could also see several strategically positioned men wearing dark glasses seated nearby. One was reading a newspaper, and another seemed to be pretending to talk on a mobile phone. It looked like something was about to happen here, and whatever it was, it would be well observed by more people than the organisers expected.

  Interrupting his thoughts, two men in suits, each carrying a briefcase, sat down four tables away. Jake tried to watch what was going on, constantly looking elsewhere so they wouldn’t think he was spying on them.

  The two men lifted their briefcases onto the table, opened them, and continued their quiet conversation. After a few seconds it was obvious that both of them were carefully examining the contents of one of the cases. They seemed to almost hide behind the open lid of one of the briefcases. They were looking closely at whatever one of them had brought to the conversation, and Jake was intrigued. Despite the ambient noise of the food court, if these suited men started to talk any louder than Jake would be able to make out at least some of what they were saying.

  Both cases closed quickly and both men seemed to be getting more frustrated with each other. Their subtle and pleasant meeting was quickly becoming nothing more than an argument.

  They were now speaking loudly enough for Jake to make out some of the conversation. He heard words like agreement, money, and car park. Hearing such a fragmented argument wasn’t going to be of any use to him, even when he already knew roughly what was happening. Their argument didn’t seem to be resolving itself and it showed. It was almost at the point of getting physical.

  One of the employees of the food court was moving over, seemingly to ask them to calm down or move elsewhere. He was at the next table and getting closer, when one of the men stood up and pulled a handgun from his suit jacket.

  Jake had never seen anyone move as fast as the approaching employee. He was on the floor before the annoyed man had finished pointing the gun at his friend’s head.

  Amongst the panicked screams of passers-by, the other man calmly waved his hand at the man. He waved away the threat dismissively and pointed to the table, encouraging his associate to put down the gun.

  After what seemed like an eternity of shouting and pointing with guns, the man lowered his gun inside a near empty food court. The only people who now remained were lying on the floor. The men quickly picked up their cases and made a swift exit. Due to the sudden exhibition of weaponry, no one on the scene was keen to detain them until someone with authority arrived.

  Within seconds they were both gone, and people started to return to their tables from whatever they had been hiding behind. Those who were too afraid to watch were told by food court staff that the crazy gun-toting men had departed.

  Jake was startled when a head popped up next to his table at some speed, and then he calmed down instantly when he realised it was Amy. He was surprisingly jumpy at that moment. When the gun came out Amy must have hit the deck like everyone else. “You are either far too curious,” she said, “or you have nerves of steel.” Jake looked puzzled. She continued to explain, waving her right arm in a large haphazard circle, pointing in nearly every direction. “Everyone else here went for cover when that man pulled out a gun, but you didn’t move.”

  Jake had not even realised that he was the only one who had not moved at all during the whole incident. “You’re even still holding that sandwich in your hands,” Amy said, half laughing, nervously.

  Jake did not know what to say to that. It was true. Everyone else panicked and had ducked behind tables, chairs and pillars. Jake simply sat there, perfectly still, holding his sandwich and looking on as if he was watching a movie. Of all of his experiences during his past week, that one had seemed more surreal than anything else.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  It was only just after midday, and Jake and Amy had finished their shopping and were heading for their car, walking exhausted through the maze of corridors with various types of tiled floors. The gun incident had happened just a few minutes earlier, and unsurprisingly they had lost the desire for shopping. It seemed that almost every other visitor had come to the same decision. Jake had never had the desire to shop anyway, and he was relieved that their trip was at a premature end. He was not much of a shopper when circumstances were typical, and was even less keen on the pastime when the shopping centre was busy, or when there was a chance of being shot.

  They walked through the centre and were
soon treading the tarmac on the top of the multi-storey car park attached to the yellow section of the gigantic shopping centre. They had not spoken very much on their walk back, and finally Amy broke another uncomfortably long silence. “What do you think all of that was about?”

  “I have no idea,” said Jake, “but it didn’t look like your typical argument.”

  “Do you think we should report it to anyone? We were close to the incident and we could probably give a better description of those people than most other shoppers.”

  “You can’t move in a shopping centre without being caught on a few CCTV cameras. I'm sure our descriptions would be vague in comparison to the footage they have.”

  “You might be right.”

  “Of course I’m right. It was probably drugs or something worse that we should steer clear of getting involved in.”

  “You might be right,” she said again, apparently unaware she had just said the very same thing just a few seconds earlier. “But I still feel like we should do something about it, like we would be doing something wrong by keeping it to ourselves.”

  As they reached the car, Jake unlocked the doors with the press of a button and they climbed inside. Jake, as was traditionally the case, would drive them home. Amy was capable of driving but due to some unspoken agreement between them Jake was the usual family driver when they were both around.

  For a brief moment Jake drifted off in his own thoughts. He hoped that Amy was not going to try to persuade him to report the incident in the food court. His reason for not doing so had sounded so pathetic that even he failed to really believe it himself. In any normal circumstances he would of course encourage the reporting of anything even remotely illegal they had witnessed. The only thing that made this any different was Jake's knowledge of future events. Reporting today's activities would result in someone hunting them down. If Jake could stop Amy reporting the event in the shopping mall he would have succeeded in saving the lives of his family.