She didn’t say anything to me about what to eat, so I made myself scrambled eggs or boiled eggs. Then I had toast as well. Mum always said breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Dad muted the TV, which was showing the twenty-four-hour BBC news. I don’t like the news. It’s always about things going wrong, or politicians, or conflicts. They never show any engineering projects or science research apart from climate change, which Uncle Gordon says is all a conspiracy so government can increase taxes. If I was running the newsroom, I’d show people good stuff so everyone would be happier. There are online news sites that only report success. If you check their Web traffic rates, they’re not very successful. Uncle Gordon laughed for ages when I told him that.
“What makes you think that, Jules?” Dad asked.
“It’s stuff I’ve seen. I didn’t actually see it.”
“That sounds a bit like a paradox there, son.”
“I didn’t see it; it’s a memory.”
“What is?”
“I got soaked by a bus driving through a puddle.”
“Is that why your school trousers were in the laundry last night?” Rachel asked. “They were soaked.”
“Yes,” I said, “but that’s not what I remember.”
They both stopped eating to look at me.
“So what do you remember?” Dad asked.
“A bus splashed a puddle on me yesterday. It was a trigger. I remember a bus doing the same thing before.”
“When?”
“I don’t know exactly. I think it was 2000; the number plates I remember back that up.”
“Okay,” Dad said very slowly. “Jules, son…you can’t remember anything from 2000. You weren’t born.”
“I know. That’s what I’m saying. It might be a brain seizure.”
“Are the other kids giving you a hard time at school?” Rachel asked quickly.
“Well, not so much. There’s a few boys that don’t like me. Totally mutual.”
“And it’s games today, isn’t it?” she said.
“I’m not trying to get out of school!”
“Probably a bad dream,” Dad said. “The doctor said you might have them.”
“What doctor?”
Dad gave Rachel a guilty glance. He cleared his throat. “That one I asked if you wanted to go and see. You know, to talk about your mum.”
I couldn’t believe it. After the funeral, Dad asked me if I wanted to go and see a therapist. I’d said no—obviously. Psychiatrists can only help if they’re smarter than their patients, and there’s not going to be one who could ever figure me out, so talking to one would be a complete waste of time. Embarrassing, too. So now Dad was saying he did go and see one, anyway—behind my back. Great!
“I just checked with her,” he said. “That’s all. She said it might take you awhile to get over it.”
“I’m never going to get over it,” I shouted. “I will always remember it. I can’t forget. You know this. You know!”
“Grief can affect people in strange ways, that’s all I’m saying, son.”
“This isn’t grief. This is a memory that isn’t mine. Why don’t you listen?”
“I am listening,” he said in that over-calm voice he puts on when he’s angry. “And I’m worried about you.”
“You don’t believe me,” I said.
“I believe something is wrong, and we need to find out what. Do you want to see a doctor?”
I slouched back down and shrugged. There was no way medical tests like MRI scans could find out why I had someone else’s memory. And the idiot psychiatrist wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. “No.” I shook my head. “I’m fine. I’ll go and play games at school.”
Rachel gave a tiny nod of satisfaction. Manipulating her is so ridiculously easy.
Chapter 6
Summertime Blues
There were another nine days of school before St. George’s broke up for summer. I did my best to avoid Jeff Murphy and Kenan Abbot. They didn’t seem to realize. Which is hardly surprising. See, they had schedules that dictate a lot of their day even though they were too stupid to know they had a routine. I knew where they lived, so QED I knew what roads they used to get to school and I also knew their timetable. It’s like the showdown at the end of Terminator 2, when Arnie’s been knocked down in the metal foundry, and you think he’s out of it; then his vision comes up with: Rerouting. Alternate Power. And the CPU chip that’s his brain shows a circuit map where the power feed changes direction. Well, that’s what I did. Depending on time, location, and their timetable, I simply changed direction and avoided them before contact. Smooth and easy, like I had a digital brain, too.
Obviously I couldn’t anticipate random positioning factors, so I did encounter them occasionally, but I certainly managed to make those nine days a lot easier.
After term ended, I had six days before we went on holiday. I walked along the BusSplash Road every day. That’s what I called it now: BusSplash Road. Important places always get named after the events that happened there, and this was going to be the most major event of the twenty-first century. The memory had to be some kind of timequake. You can alter the fabric of spacetime with exotic matter, which is what physicists call negative energy. There’s a lot of Internet sites on the subject. I mean, really: A Lot.
I worked out that someone in the future must have experimented with exotic matter and caused a crack in time that I saw through. I’m not quite sure how I saw through someone else’s eyes, but: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Everyone knows that. It’s one of the most famous quotes ever, right up there along with: I am your father.
See, I thought about it for days. And if you used Sherlock Holmes logic, there was no other explanation. For a few seconds, I was a really weird kind of time traveler.
That was why the road would be renamed. Because it’s the most important thing that happened in Islington. Ever.
Now I just had to work out how it happened.
One thing I thought, which was my favorite theory: Maybe it was me up there in the future, experimenting with exotic matter, because I know it will work. That’s not quite a temporal paradox—I think. Supersmart people like Stephen Hawking always say time travel isn’t possible because what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather—you wouldn’t get born so you can’t exist to travel back to murder him. Paradox, see? So, time travel can’t happen.
I don’t understand why that’s the example they give. Why would anyone want to kill their own grandfather? Unless he was Hitler, I suppose.
Whatever. In the future I could be like this amazing scientist with a cool laboratory, same as Tony Stark. If I am, the smart thing to do would be to send now-me a list of share prices from the future, so I could invest money in start-ups that are tiny today but grow into the next Google or Apple in ten years’ time. That way I’ll have enough money to pay for the experiments.
The only flaw with that was that I didn’t have any money to invest in start-ups. Future-me would have to send now-me a winning lottery number instead. Which I’ll definitely remember I’ll have to do—which isn’t a paradox. So it could work.
I walked up and down BusSplash Road, waiting for it to happen again. That was okay for a couple of days. I’d do it three or four times a day, taking it slow. There were differences apart from the number plates that I checked out. Simple ones, like the trees were smaller back in the not-me memory. The shops had changed, too; several in the memory must have shut down, like the big video rental store, which was an organic bakery now. It was strange seeing the ones that were still there. I stared in through the windows, checking if they’d grown shabby since or if they’d prospered. Some of the shopkeepers started to stare back, and I’d move on. I don’t think they were suspicious.
On the third day I got hit by a random positioning factor. Kenan Abbot was walking down BusSplash Road and saw me. He was with his crew—a whole bu
nch of stupids who crowded around me. Sharp facing. Which is just a dumb name for standing in front of someone and acting all tough and shouting things like: “What ’choo at, bruv?”
“It’s a Julian, look.”
“Julian—kinda handle is that?”
“Ain’t you’s street, ’dis. Woz you doin’ here?”
I didn’t answer. It wouldn’t have mattered what I’d said. They were standing so close they were jostling into me.
“Dem is right kak treaders, man. You poor?”
They laughed at each other every time one of them sneered at me, to show they were all solid—a real dim-witted loud false laugh. It was as fake as their gangsta-speak. They don’t talk like that when they’re at St. George’s.
I knew all that—that they’re bullies, that they’re cowards. But it was London. Young crews are all high on drugs. Rival kids get stabbed all the time because of turf wars; it says so on the tabloid sites. And I was alone. And death is so stupidly easy, with pain more so. There were no teachers to stop them, and no police because they don’t walk the local beat protecting people anymore; they just persecute motorists to rake in money from speeding fines. And I was frightened. Really frightened. And my mum was dead.
“Julian, he got him a special needer badge, bruv.”
“Yeah?”
“Tru.”
“I see you is real.”
“Take my phone,” I told them. I was crying. Trying to pull the phone out of my pocket. If they got my phone they might run off with it, and fence it for more drugs or something.
Kenan suddenly yelled: “OMG, you is vile!” And his face twisted up into shock and disbelief. He started shrieking with this cruel laugh that blocked out every other sound. “Julian, you is pissed yourself!”
And then they were all laughing and pointing at my trousers, which were wet because I was so scared I’d urinated.
“Julian specially needs to piss.”
“Pissed hisself! Pissed hisself!”
It was a chant, growing louder and louder. Their laughter was like a wolf pack howling at the moon.
I pushed through them blindly. Running. Running I didn’t care where. All the jeering faded away behind me.
Other people on BusSplash Road were shouting now, calling out as I stumbled past. I’m not good at running. I’m not good at any sport. It was hard to breathe. I could hardly see through the tears.
Then I was off BusSplash Road, staggering through a little park. I got off the path. There were people on the path. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want anyone to see me.
My foot caught on something. This sharp hot pain flared in my ankle, and I went sprawling on the grass.
And there it was, another memory that didn’t belong to me.
I tumble onto the grass from a very dodgy tackle—are you effing blind, ref?—my legs smeared with mud, and cold with it. And the ball gets kicked out of their half toward our goal.
“You okay, Mike?” Hooper asks.
He doesn’t really care, I can tell; he is jogging on, looking back over his shoulder.
“I’m on it,” I tell him, and scramble up. My ankle is tender, but to hell with that. The other team is slamming our goal like a hornet swarm, and Al Mamun isn’t exactly the greatest goalie in the league. I start running for the penalty box to give the defenders some help. Our supporters along the touchline give a mocking cheer at my heroics, all ten of them: three wives, four girlfriends (Karen gives me this half-sympathetic smile as I go past), and Chaz from the pub, along with some of Gary’s mates. Still, at least the other team has only managed eight supporters.
The whistle blows just as I arrive. Their star striker—Russell, in his late twenties and a previously unknown species of landwhale—has kicked the ball over the back line.
“Oh, midfield’s back to help, look,” Hooper says, laughing, as I limp to a halt. “Panic over, lads. Nice tea break, Mike?”
I flick him a V-sign and get into position as Al Mamun looks around nervously to see who he should kick the ball to.
Not me, not me, I try to tell him mentally. My ankle is really quite bad, and—
Of course he kicks it to me.
Chapter 7
Memory Two
That night I heard Rachel ask: “Dave, how long do you think this is going to last?”
“Ease off, darling,” Dad replied. “Boys aren’t kind to anyone outside the norm. It must have been awful for him out there. I bet they were from the sink estate.”
“You need to get him an education statement.”
“When term starts I’ll have him assessed, sure. I’ve already spoken to the principal about it. But it won’t help outside school.”
“His clothes were a right mess.”
“He’ll be okay. He just needs to avoid those lads.”
“They weren’t lads, Dave. You’re showing your age. Nobody today is a lad.”
“I know.”
“Really? Down with the kids, huh?’
“Going down with something.”
Rachel giggled. Their bed started squeaking.
I pulled my headphones on and streamed the new episode of Big Bang Theory.
Michael. That’s who the not-me memory came from. There was more memory this time, not just a quick glimpse of BusSplash Road like before. I could remember what Michael was thinking. For a start, he’s called Michael Finsen, age…mid-twenties, I estimated. Or he was when he played that football game. There’s no way I could work out exactly what year he was playing. I was sure it was late autumn, though. I remember the ground wasn’t all hard like it was after a frost, and there were still a few brown leaves left on the trees. I was pleased with myself for working that out. It’s the way Sherlock Holmes would have analyzed the memory.
But I wasn’t sure where. I’d never seen that park before. It was big. There were no houses visible, just trees and two more football pitches—they both had teams playing. There was a background sound of traffic, like London always has.
And it was all men playing. No kids. Michael knew the supporters—wives and girlfriends and friends from the pub, which was more solid evidence he was a grown-up. Michael had a girlfriend: Karen. She had short auburn hair and a nice round face. The memory didn’t have her second name—he just thought of her as Karen—and I guessed she was about twenty-one (I’m not good at guessing age for old people). He liked the way she smiled at him. Which was embarrassing enough to watch, let alone having that memory in my head forever.
If Michael was in his teens in 2000, when he got splashed by the bus (say seventeen), he’d be in his early thirties now. He was in his mid-twenties in the second memory; therefore the football game must have taken place around 2009, give or take a year. So I supposed he and Karen were married now.
When I got home afterward and shoved all my clothes in the laundry basket, I put his name into Google. There were plenty of people with the same name on Facebook, but that didn’t do me any good. See, I overlooked one important fact. The memory didn’t have his face in it. Unless I got another memory that included him staring into a mirror, I wouldn’t know what he looked like.
After I realized that, I went through the Facebook pages, anyway, and checked the relationship status on each of them. No Michael Finsen was married to anyone called Karen. There were five Michael Finsens in London. Two of them were about the right age, assuming I’d deduced everything properly. And one did look familiar—it was very weird. I know I hadn’t seen him before, but as soon as I checked his Facebook photos (there were only seven, and three had him in them) I was sure I had. So there was now some part of his subconscious memory in my head that recognized him for me. Which was really spooky.
The Facebook page said he worked in finance and lived in Docklands. He hadn’t filled in the rest of it. He hadn’t updated it in over eighteen months. Who does that?
When Big Bang Theory finished, I suddenly wondered if this brain-to-brain time travel was two-way. Did he have my memory? That would be un
believably awful. I was running from Kenan Abbot and his crew. So that’s all Michael Finsen would know about me. I didn’t want him to know anything about me, let alone what happened this afternoon.
Later: He couldn’t have a memory of me. If he did, he would have been there on BusSplash Road to stop Kenan. Any decent law-abiding person would stop a gang assault, surely. He seemed pretty normal. And if he did work in finance, he’d be middle-class. He’d alert the police.
Later again: Maybe he wasn’t there because he was sectioned and locked up in a mental ward. It was all right for me; I could use the Internet to look things up that have happened to him—his life is history to me. But for him, back when he was playing that football match, most of my life hadn’t happened. So if he told people he’d seen a vision of the future, they would have thought he was crazy.
I checked the Internet; there’s no list of all the insane people locked up in the UK. There must be one somewhere, the Internet has all the information the human race owns, but I couldn’t find it.
I opened a new Gmail account, calling it Big Russell, and used that to set up a Facebook page in the same name, making up lots of details. I even put in some random pictures of London I ripped from Instagram to make it look authentic. Then I sent Michael Finsen a friend request from it. I was hoping he’d think it was coming from the striker on the other football team and answer.
I fell asleep waiting for him to reply.
Chapter 8
Probate
Michael Finsen still hadn’t replied by Saturday morning, so I sent him another friend request from Big Russell.