Jim rooted about in his jacket pockets and pulled out a crumpled pamphlet. This was his passport to fortune. He uncrumpled the pamphlet and smoothed out its edges.
Time Travel for Fun and Profit
by Hugo Rune
This was the kiddie. Jim had come across it quite by chance – if there really was such a thing as chance, which Mr Rune seemed to doubt. Jim had purchased a large cod and chips and Archie Karachi of the Star of Bombay Curry Garden (and Tasty-chip Patio) had wrapped them up in this very pamphlet.
Jim had studied the pamphlet with interest. It wasn’t one of those build-your-own-time-machine science fiction jobbies, more one of your esoteric-new-age-power-of-the-mind sort of bodies. Astral bodies, probably.
Mr Rune explained, in words which the layman could understand, that time really didn’t exist at all. His premise was that the universe had always been here. It had never begun and would never end. So there was an infinite amount of ‘time’ in the past and an equally infinite amount of ‘time’ to come in the future. He drew the famous analogy of the infinitely long piece of string. If you had a piece of string that stretched endlessly from infinity to infinity, then any point you chose on that string must be its middle. You couldn’t have more infinity on one side of it than on the other. And so it was with time. Wherever you were in it, you were right at its centre. No more time behind you than in front. It made perfect sense. Time, said Mr Rune, was a purely human concept. There was no past and no future, just an infinite number of presents.
So how could a human being travel into either the past or the future? The answer was, of course, that he couldn’t. Not physically, anyway. For physical travel he’d have to travel faster than light and nothing can travel faster than light. Well, nothing except THOUGHT. It got capital letters in the pamphlet, which meant that it was important.
You can think about the sun instantly, but its light takes eight minutes to reach you. So, mentally, you can outrun light.
Rune argued (convincingly) that many people had already mastered the technique of mental time travel. These folk were, of course, the prophets. Those lucky few blessed with the powers of precognition. The Nostradamus types who could see into the future. And there had been loads of them. Mother Shipton, Edgar Cayce. Rune offered a list. These folk had travelled into the future by the power of their minds. But the trouble was that the future, which consisted of an infinite number of presents yet to come, was simply too big for the average prophet to get his head round. There was too much of it. So he got overloaded and confused and made a lot of inaccurate predictions. Rune claimed to have formulated a set of mental exercises which concentrated the mind on one tiny little bit of the future – maybe the bit that was only half an hour away.
And this was the bit that had Jim hooked. Just half an hour away. What manner of thing might there be, that if you knew it half an hour before it happened, would benefit you very much indeed?
It hadn’t taken Jim half an hour to figure it out.
The result of the National Lottery.
And so Jim sat in the sun, his eyes closed and his face contorted by the anguish of his concentration.
It was a pity that the last page of the pamphlet, the page with the actual instructions for the mental exercises, had been torn off. Somebody else had got that round their cod and chips, but Jim had been unable to find out who. Still, he gritted his teeth none the less and thought forward.
Had Jim been able to foresee the eventual outcome of these mental exercises, he would have abandoned them there and then. In fact, he would probably have abandoned gambling there and then, along with drinking and all other things that he held dear, and retired at once to a monastery.
Because Jim’s time travelling, added to John’s imminent discovery of a certain sensational disclosure and multiplied by the abominable doings of Dr Steven Malone, would equal an apocalyptic total.
And it would all begin with A Most Exciting Tale.
5
Prelude to the Most Eventful Day
Jack was scraping at his face with a razor, which, like his wit, had lost its edge a good many years before.
‘It was a close shave getting out of that little scrape,’ said Jack, as he all but finished the messy chore. ‘As smooth as a baby’s bum-tiddly-um-bum-bum,’ he continued, as he applied shreds of Kleenex to the profusion of nicks and cuts that now speckled the shaven area beneath his nose. ‘Pretty sharp,’ he went on, as he examined his sagging features in the bathroom mirror. And, ‘you’ll knock’m dead,’ he concluded, straightening his tie.
Jack’s wife, a beauty in her late forties, sliced bread in the kitchenette and worried quietly to herself. Worrying was good for her; it kept her mind off her problems.
Jack came down the stairs two at a time. ‘Good morning, wife,’ he said, limping painfully into the breakfast area.
‘Good morning, Jack,’ said Jack’s wife. ‘And how would you like your eggs this morning?’
‘I would like them many, speckled and various,’ said Jack. ‘Ranging – free ranging, in fact – from those of the mythical Roc to those of the pygmy heron of Upper Sumatra.’
‘They are on your plate,’ said Jack’s wife. ‘Make of them what you will.’
It was going to be the most eventful day in Jack’s long and uneventful life, but he did not as yet know this.
The Excitement Hots Up
‘How would you like your tea, dear?’ asked Jack’s wife.
Jack worried a lot about her. Almost as much, in his own special way, as she did about him. Why does she say these things? he worried. Does she do it simply to annoy me? Or does she, perchance, believe that I am a different person every morning? Or possibly she is being unfaithful. Jack worried a lot about this.
‘Sugar, dear?’ asked Jack’s wife.
‘Twelve lumps please,’ said Jack.
Jack’s wife popped the usual two into his cup and stirred them with the usual spoon. And then she returned to her slicing and worrying.
Jack buttered up a slice of toast. ‘You’re a lovely bit of toast,’ he told it. ‘Would you like to come to the pictures on Friday night?’
In Jack’s front garden a postman clung to the roof of Jack’s porch. ‘Treed by a ruddy lurcher,’ he complained. ‘Or was it a Dane?’
And Grows Hotter Still
‘I must be off to work now,’ said Jack.
‘Don’t forget your sandwiches, dear.’
Jack thrust the brown paper packet into his briefcase. ‘The price of butter is scandalous,’ he told his wife. ‘But not to worry, eh?’ And he kissed her lightly on the cheek, hoisted his trilby hat onto his head, shrugged on his camel-hair coat, tucked his case beneath his arm, picked up his umbrella and departed.
‘Morning, postie,’ said Jack to the figure cowering on the roof of his porch. ‘I didn’t know it was raining.’
‘Raining?’
‘Well, as they say, any porch in a storm.’
‘Most amusing,’ said the postman, who considered it anything but. ‘I thought you told me your dog didn’t bite.’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Jack.
‘But it nearly had my leg off
‘That isn’t my dog,’ said Jack. ‘It belongs to the wife.’
Tension Mounts on the Bus
The 8.15 bus was crowded with 8.15 passengers.
‘Morning, conductor,’ said Jack.
‘Morning, Jack,’ said the conductor. ‘Your mate Bill’s up the front.’
Jack craned his neck and bulldozered his eyebrows. ‘Morning, my mate Bill,’ he cried.
‘Morning, Jack,’ Bill shouted back. ‘And how are you today?’
‘Fair to middling,’ called Jack. ‘Fair to middle-diddle-diddling.’
‘I’m very pleased to hear it.’ Bill returned to his study of the Daily Sketch. GIANT SPIDER CARRIES OFF WIDOW, ran the banner headline. She was probably asking for it anyway, thought Bill as his gaze left the tabloid and moved slowly up the legs of a particularly well-desig
ned teenage schoolgirl. Shouldn’t be allowed, his thought continued.
And meanwhile at Jack’s house the postman was giving it to Jack’s wife doggy style upon the kitchen floor.
‘This lino needs a dose of Flash,’ worried the wife of Jack.
Two stops on Jack got a seat. ‘We’re running thirty-five seconds late this morning,’ he informed a fellow traveller.
‘Thirty-five seconds late for what?’ asked the traveller, whose name was John Omally.
‘For work.’
‘But I’m not going to work.’
‘Where then?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘But this is the 8.15 bus.’
‘It was the 7.30 bus when I got onto it.’
‘Ah, I see.’ The conversation was interrupted by the sound of a thirteen-year-old fist striking Bill in the face.
‘I never touched her,’ cried Bill as the bus conductor fought his way through the standing passengers to grasp him by the collar. ‘A man is innocent until proved guilty,’ he complained as the conductor flung him off at the next set of traffic lights.
‘It’s the same thing every day,’ said Jack to his fellow traveller.
‘Not for me it isn’t,’ said John. ‘For I live the kind of life that most men only dream about. A riotous succession of society get-togethers, country weekends, operatic first nights and charity functions.’
‘Really?’ said Jack.
‘True as true,’ said Omally. ‘Then there’s the skateboarding, the sky-diving and the riding of the big surf. Not to mention the North Sea oil drilling.’
‘North Sea oil drilling?’
‘I told you not to mention that.’
‘Sorry.’ Jack scratched at his hat. ‘Do you do any crop spraying at all?’
‘Heaps, and Formula One motor racing too.’ Omally pulled off his cycle clips and adjusted his socks. ‘And I’m judging the Miss World competition this afternoon.’
‘That must be interesting.’
‘Extremely,’ said Omally. ‘As long as you don’t have to sit next to Tony Blackburn or Michael Aspel.’
The bus shuddered to a halt, regrouping its standing cargo at the front end in an untidy scrum. As the struggling passengers regained their feet and began to dust themselves down, the driver put his foot down and they all bundled towards the rear.
A lady in a straw hat fell upon Omally.
‘Is this a regular occurrence?’ asked John.
‘Sometimes we lose one or two at the roundabout,’ said Jack. ‘Although I don’t recall there ever being any fatalities.’
‘What about that dwarf the big bad butcher fell on last month?’ said the lady in the straw hat.
‘Oh yes, there was him.’
‘And that Zulu who went up in a puff of smoke.’
‘That was spontaneous human combustion. That could have happened anywhere.’
‘This is my stop,’ said Omally.
‘It’s very nice,’ said the lady in the straw hat. ‘How much did you have to pay for it?’
‘Give my regards to Tony and Michael,’ called Jack as Omally slipped off without paying.
The 65 bus swung over the Great West Road and headed south towards Brentford. In its path there might well have been a giant spider of outlandish proportions, its mutated mind set upon world domination. But upon this day, as upon others past, there wasn’t.
But this was to be the most eventful day in Jack’s long and uneventful life, although he still, as yet, did not know it.
The Tension Almost Reaches Breaking Point
‘Good morning, Jack,’ said Jack’s boss, Leslie. ‘And how is your lovely wife?’
Jack looked at his watch. ‘She’ll be making the postman’s breakfast about now,’ he said. ‘And how is your handsome husband?’
‘Still delivering the Queen’s mail.’
A thought entered Jack’s head, but finding itself all alone in there it left by the emergency exit.
‘Now, Jack,’ said Leslie, boss of Jack. ‘We have a very important despatch to make today and it must be handled with great care. We wouldn’t want there to be any more unfortunate mistakes, now would we?’
‘No we wouldn’t,’ said Jack. ‘No-skiddly-oh-po-po.’
Leslie, Jack’s boss, smiled upon her subordinate. She was a tall woman, slim, sleek, svelte. Brown-eyed and black-haired and carrying about with her that aura of a woman who knows exactly where she’s going.
‘I’m going to the toilet now,’ said Leslie, boss of Jack. ‘And when I get back I want to see you with your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Well...’ said Jack.
Nail-Biting Stuff
The company Jack worked for was called SURFIN’ UFO. As far as Jack had been able to ascertain during his ten years of service, it had something to do with despatching fragile and precious cargoes from one place to another. The UFO part meant United Freight Operations, but the significance of the SURFIN’ bit was lost on Jack.
Jack was the manager of the actual despatching department. He was, in fact, the only employee in this department. There had been some cutbacks. Once there had been lads with hair and tattoos, cavorting about on fork-lift trucks. Lads who read the Sun and smelled of cigarettes and the morning after. But now there was only Jack. And Jack didn’t smoke or read the Sun. His office was a little glass partitioned-off corner of a vast warehouse. A vast and empty warehouse.
Jack hung up his hat and coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. And then he sat down at his desk. It was an all-but-empty desk. Empty but for a telephone, a single package and a single piece of paper.
Jack perused this.
DESPATCH NOTE
SURFIN’ UFO 1462
UNIT 4 + 2
OLDDOCK BUSINESS PARK
HORSEFERRY LANE, BRENTFORD
DATE: 23.5.97
VAT REG: 435 9424 666
TO:
NAME: DR STEVEN MALONE
ADDRESS: KETHER HOUSE
BUTTS ESTATE
BRENTFORD
FROM:
NAME: PROF. GUSTAV BOINEY
ADDRESS: INC TECH
LOS ALAMOS
NEVADA,USA
CONTENTS: ISOTOPES.
HERMETICALLY SEALED.
DO NOT OPEN FRAGILE FRAGILE FRAGILE
Jack picked up the package and rattled it against his ear. Dr Steven Malone was SURFIN’ UFO’s only client nowadays. Stuff came to him from all over the world. From Turin, from Vienna, from Los Alamos and Latvia. Always by the most unlikely route and always under the tightest security.
Jack’s job today would be to call up the local road haulage firm, impress upon them the highly important nature of the package and the need for its speedy and secure delivery, and then await the arrival of the van, sign numerous documents, hand over the package and return to his desk.
Jack picked up the telephone and tapped out numbers. Somewhere not too far away a phone began to ring.
And then a voice said, ‘Yo, Leo Felix, who’s dis?’
‘Hello-skiddly-bo,’ said Jack.
‘Yo, Jack, my man. How’s it ‘anging?’
‘The bus was late today,’ said Jack.
‘What? The ol’ 8.15? That is truly dredd.’ A Rastafarian chuckle gurgled in Jack’s ear.
A Veritable Cliff-hanger
‘Can you pick up a package for immediate delivery to Dr Steven Malone?’ asked Jack.
‘Not ‘ceptin’ you pay your damn bill, Babylon.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, replacing the receiver.
Action All the Way
‘Mr Felix says he won’t pick up the package unless his bill is paid,’ said Jack to his boss Leslie, who had just returned from the toilet.
And Now Things Really Start to Happen
‘You will just have to deliver the package yourself,’ said the boss of Jack. ‘Do you think you can manage that?’
‘On foot?’ asked Jack. ‘And without an a
rmed guard?’
‘It’s only two streets away.’
‘But Mr Felix led me to believe it was in another Brentford, somewhere in Ethiopia. Which is why his company have been charging such exhorbitant fees for delivery’
Leslie arched her eyebrows and bridged her nose. ‘Off on your way,’ she said.
A Roller-coaster Ride to Hell
Jack trudged along Horseferry Lane, past the Shrunken Head and up to the High Street. He looked both ways before crossing and reached the other side in safety. There he sat down upon the bench outside Budgens and studied his A-Z.
A lady in a straw hat sat down beside him. ‘Are you lost?’ she asked Jack.
Jack clutched his package to his chest. ‘Certainly not,’ he told her.
‘Only I get lost sometimes. I have who’ja vu.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the opposite of deja vu. I can be in the middle of the supermarket and suddenly I get this feeling, I’ve never been here before.’
‘I have to go,’ said Jack. ‘I have a very important package to deliver.’
‘The doctor’s put me on a course of placebos,’ said the lady in the straw hat. ‘But I don’t take them. I’m saving them all up for a mock suicide attempt.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Jack.
‘Goodbye,’ said the lady in the straw hat.
How Much More Can We Take?
Jack tugged upon a brass bell pull. Somewhere within a brass bell rang and presently the front door opened.
Jack found himself gazing up at a gaunt black and white figure who bore an uncanny resemblance to the Sidney Paget drawings of Sherlock Holmes.
‘Dr Steven Malone?’ asked Jack.
‘No,’ said the figure, ‘he lives next door.’