Steam Submarine Zelf

  ~

  My headache was returning as I tried to figure out this puzzle, and a mood of despair gripped me. My mouth seemed to blurt out the truth without my consent or foreknowledge, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. How do you expect me to solve this when I can’t even remember who I am or where I came from?”

  His eyebrows lifted, but a veil came over his expression at the same time, and I felt as though some sort of chance or opportunity had passed me by, though what it might be I couldn’t guess.

  The fellow addressed me again wearing a quizzical expression. “Well,” he said, “If you can’t remember anything, you might want to be drawing on the latest news at least...”

  It appeared that he wanted to see if he might jog my memory! I nodded vociferously, it must have been a pitiful sight.

  The man said, “The Government of India act was passed - the longest act of Parliament ever - they’re going to reprint it, apparently, in two sections. Our monarch’s health hasn’t been two hundred percent lately - that old injury’s troubling the doctors somewhat - they can’t seem to do much. And in Germanischenland that nasty fellow Hister is on the rise... And that business about there being life on the moon, that they saw on the teleoscope - turns out it was all one dastardly hoax.”

  I shook my head again. “What injury?” I remember feeling a fondness for England’s Queen. I had heard stories about her, or knew of her, or some sort of thing like that.

  “What?... Surely you remember the silver jubilee celebrations? In May. Crowds in the streets, everybody waving flags about and singing maniacally, like those mechanical singing toy robots one can buy?And him saying, ‘I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow.’”

  I said, “Silver jubilee? That’s twenty five years isn’t it? The Queen began to reign in 1827, did she not? Good grief. That would make it 1852. So it’s a whole year since...” Since what I didn’t know. But something still seemed out of place.

  “Queen? No, no, dear boy. King. King George the fifth. What, did you think Victoria’s in charge? Goodness grievous, lad. That was thirty years ago.”

  I dropped my fork and fell backwards in surprise, knocking my plate off the table so that it clattered onto the floor and stumbling to stop my chair from falling over. All the other guests began staring at our table. “But that would mean it is... the turn of the century, at least... How can that be? The earliest it could possibly be is... nineteen hundred and one. And I’m still a child. Oh! And who is this George? Edward I know. But George?”

  “My dear boy, it is Nineteen hundred and thirty five.... And what would you be? Thirteen? Fifteen years old?... I can see that it’s all Turkish to you. You don’t need to be afraid. Perhaps you are wondering if you are slightly... delusional.” And then he reached forwards slightly, but I flinched backwards.

  For a moment I hesitated, for I hadn’t understood the word ‘delusional’. But then I realized what it must mean - someone in the grip of a delusion, a fancy, a false impression of the mind.

  And in a flash I realised that if this modern world was anything like the eighteen fifties, the place they would put delusional people - that is, those society judged to be insane - was not a very nice place. A sanatorium, or even worse, an asylum.

  He lurched forwards again and grabbed for my hand as he blurted, “I might know some people who can help you! Loss of memory is not uncommon when…” But I wasn’t staying there waiting for a well-intentioned doctor of the psyche to put me in chains, I wasn’t standing there waiting for them to lock me up in a madhouse for the rest of my natural life.

  I wrenched my hand out of his control and leapt away from his grasping, clutching fingers. I sprinted out from the coffee shop and into the streets. He leapt out after me clumsily, crying out, “No, you have the wrong idea! It's alright! I don’t want to hurt you! I won't put you in Bedla-”

  But I was gone already.