“Do you think they’ll act on this?” I asked.
“Well, the last time we passed on such detailed information, they heavily tightened up security and grounded every Eastern seaboard flight for five hours. I would expect the same again.”
I said I was happy to help, and gave Rodgers the details he wanted. When he saw my phone, he was immediately very interested.
“Is that a mobile? I’ve never seen one like that before – what is it?” My phone would not be on the market for another six years, so I had to think quickly.
“Oh, this… it’s a ‘Smart phone’. Just a prototype from the Far East. My wife works for a Taiwan company, and she got it for me.
“Can I see it?” asked Rodgers. I reluctantly handed the phone over and showed him how it worked. Both he and the psychologist were stunned. “Where can I get one?” Rodgers asked.
“Umm... they should be out sometime soon.” I quickly took the phone back and put it away.
“Oh, one more thing,” Rodgers said as we left the security area, “we couldn’t find your flight – no listing for that flight number. Did you mean this one?” He showed me details of another flight to New York with a similar number.
“Yes, that’s the one,” I lied.
“We can reschedule your flight for this afternoon, if that helps; but if all East Coasts flights are grounded, you may want to reconsider your flight plans.”
I thanked Rogers for his help, and left quickly before he realised I wasn’t booked on any flight in that decade. It seemed like there was nothing more I could do to help, and went to get a coffee. If I wasn’t meant to interfere in wheels of history, then nothing I said or did would make any difference. But what if I could change history… what then?
As I sat in Starbucks stirring sugar into my Americano, with Jennifer Lopez singing ‘I’m Real’ on the café’s hi–fi, I contemplated the ability to travel back in time at will. Was this just a one–off? Did it work just for 2001, or could I return to other periods in history – or go forward into the future?
I finished my coffee, and changed the date on my phone back to September 11, 2014. Everything wobbled again. Jennifer Lopez was still singing the same song, but the décor in the café had changed. I ran to find the newsstand and checked the date: I was back! I couldn’t wait to tell Niki all about this – it was going to blow her mind.
***
Two
When I got back to the present, the first thing I wanted to know was whether or not history had been changed by my intervention. I was in for a big surprise.
I’d called Niki just after I’d returned from Heathrow and took her out for dinner – with my iPad in tow. We ordered food, and I brought up present day photographs of New York City on the screen from the Internet.
“Oh–my–god! Just take a look at this Nik!” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Niki looked casually at the screen.
“It’s New York City – so what?” she said.
“Yes, it’s New York City – with the World Trade Centre twin towers!”
“Are you okay Joe?”
“I’m fine – I’m more than fine – I’m wonderful! Just hold on one second – you are just not going to believe this…” I searched for the pictures of the destruction of the World Trade Centre I’d downloaded from the Internet ten years ago: the two planes flying into the twin towers, people running from the buildings, and the final collapse. “That’s strange…”
“What is it?”
“My pictures – they’ve all gone. I had some photographs showing the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, and now they’ve gone…” Suddenly something clicked with Niki.
“Joe, I’ve just remembered something. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but when I was at school in September 2001, I received a very strange phone call from a man about a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre…”
It was unbelievable – the call I’d made to Niki from the airport when she was at school was now in present consciousness… it had become reality!
“That was me! I called you from Heathrow airport that day!”
“What are you talking about? How could it be you? You never knew me then – it was years before we met. But this guy definitely knew me – no question.” This was fantastic… my mind was doing summersaults… the implications of this were staggering. Niki noticed that my mind was suddenly in a very different place from hers. “Joe?”
“That man – did he give you his name?”
“I don’t think so – not that I remember. He just said he was a friend of my father’s. But that was the weird thing, when I talked to Baba later he’d no idea who that could be. None of his friends would know which school I was in… and no–one asked him. Anyway, the attack never happened, so he must have been a crank.”
“Or the man convinced the authorities that it was a real threat, and they stopped it happening.”
“Yeah, well, they didn’t stop the assassinations, did they?”
“Assassinations? What assassinations?”
“Bush and Blair of course.”
I suddenly froze. I sat and listened whilst Niki explained how US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had been killed by terrorists in 2002. The two leaders met at Bush’s Texas Ranch in April that year, and were killed instantly when suicide bombers breached security.
“But why am I telling you this Joe – how could you have forgotten that?
“So what about the Iraq invasion?”
“What Iraq invasion?”
“The one to look for weapons of mass destruction?”
“Joe, you’ve been totally weird since you got back. I think you need a rest.”
My intervention had had a lot more impact than I could have imagined – and I was just learning the extent of it. Everything is connected: change one thing, you change many others. No Bush or Blair meant no Iraq invasion, which implied that Saddam Hussein was still very much alive – and still in power. Gordon Brown became Prime Minister after Blair’s death until 2005, when David Cameron was elected leader of the country. In the US, Hilary Clinton was now President – no Barack Obama. But at least there was no change to our personal lives – or so I thought.
As we walked home, I changed the subject and asked Niki how her parents were. She gave me an incredulous look.
“Parents?”
“Mum and dad.”
“If this is sick joke Joe, it’s really not funny…”
“I don’t understand,” I said. She stopped and looked at me, staring intently at my face.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“That Mama died in 2005.”
When we got home, I listened with a mixture of horror and amazement whilst Niki told me how her mother had been shopping in the City in July 2005 when terrorist bombs were detonated on buses and underground trains. The July bombings were part of the history I knew. But by changing a leader, you can change other things – including responses to terrorist threats. One of the bombs detected and immobilized by the Special Branch under the government I had known, was missed by the British authorities in the new history version, and it was that particular bomb that had killed Niki’s mother Gloria.
“Niki, I know this will sound completely crazy,” I said, “but I think there’s a way we can bring Gloria back.”
***
Three
That night I reflected on what had been an unbelievable day. I still had no real idea of how I’d been able to go back in time and impact World events; yet the undeniable truth was that I’d done exactly that. The twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City stood as concrete proof of my intervention, and the three thousand or so lives that had been saved indicated to me that my actions had been completely justified.
On the other hand, I had just killed one US President, a British Prime Minister, Niki’s mother Gloria – and god knows who else. Then there was an Iraq with Sad
dam Hussein still in power. Was that for the best? If this extraordinary experience was not just a one–off, and I could travel back in time and alter history at will, I must consider all the possible consequences before playing god in future.
My first priority now, though, was to undo the death of Gloria – and that of the fifty other people who died on 7th July, 2005 in London. I suppose I should also try to stop the assassination of Bush and Blair in 2002… but there was no rush for that.
The fact that Niki was blissfully unaware of the World changes I’d engineered made me realize that I could continually change the course of history, and no–one would be any the wiser. In fact, if someone other than me travelled back in time and changed the past, I’d also be totally unaware of anything amiss. It was as if there were many alternate versions of reality, and each one was as valid as the next. Mindboggling.
The next question was how to explain all this to Niki. However hard it was, I just had to try to tell her what had happened at the airport – and what was possible.
*
Niki was born in Shanghai and moved to England with her parents when her father landed a job at the Chinese Embassy in London. She was just seven years old when they emigrated and consequently grew up with both British and Chinese cultures. She attended British schools in London, and was soon fluent in both Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and English. Early on, she developed an avid interest in Western literature, and devoured books written by the likes of Kafka, Somerset Maugham, TS Eliot, and Milan Kundera. She is far wider read than I am – and will ever be. It was through an interest in books that we met one February evening in 2007 – at the Institute Francais in South Kensington. We were both attending the launch of a French Psychologist’s book ‘Talking of Love on the Edge of a Precipice.’ Niki was there because of her love of words, and I was there because of my love of free French wine.
When I spotted her in the front row, the wine suddenly took a back seat. What was an attractive Chinese twenty–something doing at a French book launch, I wondered? A few dates later, I knew exactly why she was there – for passion. Ling Ling (her Chinese name) was the most thoughtful and passionate woman I had ever met, and I wanted to spend every waking moment with her. It didn’t take me long to realize that she was the One.
Getting to know her parents took longer. They were fairly traditional, and my suggestion that I could meet them on Chinese New Year’s Eve later that month, was greeted with an icy stare and shake of Niki’s head. “Only if you marry me first,” she said. And so I did, spending Chinese New Year 2008 as part of the family. Her mum and dad were fluent in English, fortunately, but I thought I should try out some of the Mandarin Chinese Niki had taught me. Calling her mother a horse might not have been the best start, but they seemed to take it well.
*
“Just imagine,” I said as we sat having coffee the morning after I’d been to Heathrow, “if you could go back in time and change history. Say, for instance, you could stop Columbus sailing for America, or assassinate Adolf Hitler before he came to power. If you later returned to the present, do you think that anyone would realise that things had changed? I mean, supposing Hitler had been stopped very early on, say he died in his twenties, there couldn’t be any movies or photographs of the Nazi atrocities that took place – because in the new version of history, they didn’t happen! ” Niki looked serious for a moment, contemplating the idea. She was used to my hare–brained way of thinking, and had learned when she should take me seriously and when she shouldn’t. On this occasion, she knew my idea was completely bonkers, but considered it just the same.
“Well, if someone killed Hitler before the second World War, and they was no–one to replace him, then I guess the war would never happen.” Niki observed.
“So people’s memories would have to be different?” I added.
“I guess so. But this is just speculation based on the idea of time travel Joe… and we know that can’t happen!”
Just then I received a text message on my mobile.
“What are you doing with that?” Niki asked.
“With what?”
“That old phone.”
“What do you mean ‘old’ – you bought it for me two weeks ago – for my birthday.”
“No no, not that one. Let me see…” She curiously handled the phone as if it was an ancient artefact. “This must be at least five years old – where did you get it?”
I then realized that I’d changed not just events, but technology too. By showing my phone to the security officer at the airport, the idea for Android phones had leapt six years ahead of time. If mobile phone technology could be pushed forward five or six years just by someone seeing my smart–phone, what else could I inadvertently change?
“Let me look at yours,” I said. I was gobsmacked. Niki’s Xtreme99, as it was called, was out of this World. I was completely bedazzled by its functions, simplicity of design and appearance.
“You look as though you’ve never seen one before Joe!” I had to admit I hadn’t. Then it was time to tell Nik my idea.
“I’d like to take you on a trip,” I said.
“Where to?”
“To London… July 2005.”
“Okay, I’ve got a good imagination.”
“Great! Well, just give me a second…” I altered the date on my phone from 12 September 2014 to 6 July 2005 – one day before the July bombings in London. I experienced the same wobble as at the airport, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the lounge of our apartment – on my own! What did I do wrong? I changed the date back to the present.
“Joe! Where did you go?”
“Into the future.”
“Don’t say that… it sounds crazy.”
“What happened after I said, ‘Just give me a second’?” I asked.
“You were doing something on your phone, and I looked out the window. Then when I looked back you were gone. Something’s happened to you Joe and I’m worried. You’ve been very strange ever since you came back from the airport. Did you bang your head when you were away yesterday? Maybe you should see a doctor.”
I then realised that only things physically connected to the phone would be transported in time. “Ok, take my hand, will you.”
“Are we going to the hospital?”
With the other hand I changed the date on the phone again to 6/7/2005.
“No, I’m going to show you that I’m not crazy…”
***
Four
“What was that?”
“You mean the wobble?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what happens. Take a look outside…”
Niki went to the window. “What am I looking for?”
“I dunno… look at the cars. Anything unusual?”
“Something’s not right… but I don’t know what.”
“Look at the registration plates,” I said. “What year are we on?”
“The latest code is sixty–two, I think. Yes, I’m sure of it: sixty–two.”
“See any?”
“No – not yet.”
Whilst Niki was looking at car registration plates, I took a look around the apartment. It seemed very different – like a bachelor pad. A tad messy. Mmm… beer cans on the floor, and rubbish bins overflowing. Niki would never allow that. Things were ‘missing’ – no recent CD’s or videos, no flat–screen TV, and no plants. We’d definitely gone back in time. “Any luck Niki?” I called to her.
“No – the latest I can see is fifty–five.”
“Ok, have a look around the flat for any of your things...”
“What do you mean? What sort of things?”
“Anything – clothes, plants – anything you brought with you when you moved in.”
She gave me a very quizzical look, and then noticed the television.”
“Where’s our new TV? And my plants?”
“Exactly. Just take a look, will you?”
She came back after a few min
utes. “There’s nothing there! Where have you put them?”
“I’ll tell you later. We’ve got to go and see your dad now – and we don’t have much time.
*
Niki’s parents lived in South Kensington, near Hyde Park. As usual, we took the Northern line and changed at King’s Cross to the Circle line. Niki was increasingly getting agitated. What she’d seen in the apartment didn’t make any sense to her, and she was troubled. On top of that, it was a very warm July in 2005, and we had left a rather cool September in 2014. On the tube, I tried to tell her gently what had happened, but naturally it was difficult for her to assimilate – as it had been for me. After all, it’s not every day that you travel back in time. As we walked out of South Kensington Station into the warm July air, I grabbed a morning paper.
“Take a look at this?”
“Why?”
“You’ll see…”
She scanned the pages as we briskly walked along Kensington High Street, then she stopped and turned to me. “It’s out of date.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Why did you buy an old newspaper?”
“I didn’t – this is today’s date. Come on.”
We reached her parents’ home, and rang the bell. Her father answered the door.
“Niki … is that you? You look different… are you okay? And who is this?”
“Hello Mr Ling, I’m Joe – a friend of Niki’s. May we come in?”
“Yes, of course – please come on in, I’ll make some tea.”
As we entered the house, she looked closely at her father. “Baba – you’re looking great – so much younger! What have you been doing?”
“Oh, nothing special – working at the Embassy as usual…”
“But I thought…”