“A friend of Joe’s you say? I’d swear you were his twin,” the man said.
“Younger brother,” I replied, “Jim Cooper.” Normally I would do the social thing and shake hands in such a situation; but seeing the state of the man and the apartment, I kept my hands firmly in my pockets. “I’ve lost touch with Joe, and wondered if you had a forwarding address?”
The man, who introduced himself as Ed, then said “Oh, just a sec…” and went to a desk drawer, searching through a stack of papers. “I know it’s here somewhere…” After a few minutes, he found a dirty looking handwritten A4 sheet, which could well have been the paper Joe2 gave him several years ago. “This is it,” he said handing me the sheet. I took it from Ed, making a mental note to disinfect my hands later.
I thanked the man, wished him well, and began walking down the stairs towards the ground floor. But a few steps down, a thought struck me – right out of the blue.
“Ed, if you could turn back time, what would you do differently?” He said, without hesitation, “I wouldn’t have run that red light.”
*
It was just a short walk for Niki from Hyde Park to her parents’ home. She had hoped for three things: first that they were still alive and well; second, they hadn’t moved from the family home; and third, at least one of them was home.
She rang the bell with some trepidation. She was acutely aware that she was ten years younger, and her parents ten years older, and that could be difficult to explain. And what if Niki2 was with them? How would Gloria deal with two Nikis? Fortunately, Niki wasn’t there – but she was in for another shock.
“Hello? Can I help you?” Niki’s father, Tang, opened the door, but clearly didn’t recognise her. Had she changed so much in all these years?
“It’s me, Ling Ling, Baba.”
He looked very puzzled. “Do I know you?” he asked.
Just then, she heard Gloria’s voice from behind the door. “It’s okay Tang, it’s Ling Ling – our daughter, remember… come in dear.”
Niki entered the house and was hugged by her mother. “I’m sorry, but he’s not getting any better. I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s exactly what the doctors said would happen. But it’s hard to take. At least he still recognises me. Anyway, come and sit down – I’ll make some tea.” Niki took a seat in the lounge and looked around. Everything was much the same as it was ten years before, except older looking. And then came the second big shock. “I guess Joe’s looking after the baby?”
Niki looked quickly around the room, and saw a lot more pictures of Joe and herself – and a baby girl! ‘Oh–my–god!’ she whispered. ‘She’s beautiful!’
Gloria brought in a pot of green tea and two cups. “Her birthday can’t be far away,” she said.
“No, that’s right,” she bluffed. “Not long to go now.”
“Are you managing okay?” Gloria asked, pouring the tea. “I can always take her for you.”
“Thanks,” Niki said, picking up her cup. And then Gloria saw her clearly for the first time since she arrived.
“Ling Ling – you look wonderful… years younger! What have you been doing?” In contrast, Gloria looked several years older.
“Oh, you know, that’s motherhood for you… and a new diet. And Joe treated me to a weekend at a new health spa in Hampstead.”
“Well, it’s worked wonders… you must give me the address.”
Somehow, Niki had to find out where Niki and Joe were living now – and Gloria had just given her an idea.
“Sure… in fact, if you give me your address book, ma, I’ll write it down for you.”
Gloria went over to a desk and pulled out a black ring–bound book and handed it to Niki with a smile. “And don’t forget the phone number,” she said. As Niki opened the book, she managed to knock over her tea.
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
Gloria immediately leapt up, and went to the kitchen to get a cloth, giving Niki time to search the book for her future address. She ripped out the relevant page, stuffing it into her pocket. “So clumsy of me, ma, thank you,” she said as Gloria mopped up the tea from the floor.
“Not to worry, dear – it happens.” Niki finished writing down a fictitious address and phone number in Hampstead and handed the book back to her mother. “Thank you – I’ll phone them later.”
“Good – but maybe not today,” Niki added quickly, “they’re closed on Sundays.”
After some small talk about the baby and Joe, which Niki did her best to deal with, she made her excuses and left – heading off for her future home in West Acton.
*
As I should have expected, the house where Niki and I would live in the near future was a big one. Well, we were multi–millionaires ten years ago – and who knows how much money we’d accumulated in the intervening time. I found my way to the front door, and rang the impressive bell. After a few seconds, I heard footsteps, and Niki2 came to the door, a little breathless.
“Sorry, I was feeding Mei Mei,” she said. (Mei Mei?) Okay, we must have bought a cat, I thought. But I was in for a big shock. I followed Niki2 towards what was a large living room, and there on the ample sofa sat a baby girl in a pink jump suit!
“Oh, that Mei Mei!” I exclaimed.
For the first time, Niki looked straight at me. “Joe, your hair… and your clothes…” and then it dawned on her. “Oh my god – you’re not Joe! I mean, you are but you’re not… where’s my Joe – and why are you here?”
“I think we need to talk,” I said. Just then, the doorbell rang. “That’s probably him,” I said.
“You’d better hide,” Niki advised.
I heard the door open and then Niki’s voice – and then Niki’s voice again, and I suddenly realised it was my Niki.
The three of us sat in the lounge with the two girls talking like twin sisters and drooling over the baby, and Nik saying she couldn’t wait to have one – and then realising that it was hers, but not for a few years time. Phew!
“Joe,” she said to me,” can we have a baby as soon as we get back home?”
“No we can’t!” I exclaimed.
“Why not?”
“It’ll mess up the future! Joe and Niki’s kid will suddenly be about nine years older… and they might even end up with two children…”
“That’s okay,” Niki2 replied, with Nik nodding in agreement.
“And anyway, we’re not going anywhere if we can’t find Joe and get my phone back.”
We told Niki all about the meeting in the park, and how Joe had taken my phone, and how we were now very much stuck in the future.
“I told him not to do it – he knew I was against the idea; but he kept saying there was no other option. And he knows he shouldn’t use the phone on his own. God knows where he is now…” Just then, there was the sound of a key in the door. It was Joe.
“Whoa! You two don’t hang about!” he exclaimed as he entered the lounge and saw me and Nik.
“You’re in big trouble,” Niki2 told him.
“What? I think we need a drink to celebrate,” he said.
“Celebrate what?” I asked.
Joe when over to a drinks cabernet behind a small bar and picked out a bottle of expensive–looking French Medoc and four crystal wine glasses. “To celebrate this,” he said, holding out two identically–looking mobile phones – one of which was mine.
“But how did you…?” Niki2 started to ask. And then Joe2 told us something truly amazing.
***
Thirteen
I sat on the sofa looking at my phone, marvelling at its power. Joe – a future me – had lost the phone’s wonderful time–bending power after getting it repaired. He couldn’t un–repair it without going back in time; and he couldn’t go back in time now because the phone had been repaired. The only solution, he surmised, was to wait until a younger Joe – me in this case – went forward into the future. He would ‘borrow’ the mobile from me and take it to go back to a time bef
ore the phone stopped working.
“The problem began about six months ago when Mei Mei picked up the phone and threw it across the room,” Joe2 was telling us. “The screen stopped working, and I had to get it fixed. The repair took away its power, and I realised that I’d have to wait until your visit to the future.”
“And we knew that date because we’d done the jump ourselves,” Niki2 added.
“That’s right. So with your phone, I jumped to the morning that Mei Mei picked up the phone, and simply put it out of reach. So now, here’s the two working phones – yours and mine.”
I was wide–eyed. Now there were two time–travelling mobile phones.
“Does this mean that we can duplicate phones, and create as many clones as we like?”
“I don’t think so,” Joe2 said. “We only have two now because there’s two of us here.”
We were all quiet for a moment, and then Niki said, “I think it’s time for us to go.” It was a very strange farewell. We were leaving ourselves behind, plus a baby that would be ours in ten year’s time, everything else being equal. We felt like a very close–knit family as we said our goodbyes, and Nik gave Mei Mei a big hug and kiss. “See you in the future,” she promised.
As we were walking away from the big house (which, we were glad to know, would be ours fairly soon), I remembered some unfinished business, and with an apology went back to the house.
“Joe,” I said, “You remember the guy who bought our apartment?”
“Yeah, sure… Mr Withers wasn’t it? Why d’you ask?”
“What happened to his wife?”
“Oh, that was a sad case. I think it was three years ago… beginning of November I think… right Niki?”
“Yeah, November fifth – my birthday… our birthday,” she said smiling at Nik. “We were in Italy, remember Joe?”
“That’s right. The Withers were going to a Bonfire Party for Guy Fawkes that evening. I don’t know the details, but they were in a car accident. Ed had minor injuries, but his wife was pronounced dead at the scene. He was naturally very cut up about it, poor bloke.”
“Okay, thanks Joe,” I smiled.
“Good luck,” he smiled back.
*
We remained ten years in the future whilst I explained my idea to Niki, then we headed off to our ‘old’ apartment in Finchley. Once there, I set the date to November fifth, three years previously. I pressed the flat’s intercom, and this time a woman answered.
“Hello?”
“Mrs Withers, this is Joe Cooper and my wife Niki… can we talk to you for a minute?”
“This will be interesting,” Niki said to me as we climbed the stairs to the flat.
“Oh, you two must be frozen!” Mrs Withers exclaimed as she opened the door. We were still dressed for the summer in jeans and tee–shirts, and I had to admit it was a tad chilly outside. Mrs Withers, whose first name was Jean, invited us in and called to Ed to join us. We sat on a very familiar sofa in a very familiar looking living room, which was in a very different condition from the one I had visited three years later.
“How’s everything in the new house?” Jean asked as she poured some tea. I noticed how well and happy they both looked, and I knew that what I had in mind was something we must do, without making it sound crazy.”
“It’s good,” said Niki.
“Such a big house for two people,” Jean continued.
“Well, there might be a new addition coming soon,” Niki added with a smile.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Jean exclaimed.
“I suppose you’ll be off to a Bonfire party tonight then Ed?” I said, changing the subject. Ed and Jean looked at each other.
“Well, it’s funny you should say that… Jean and I were talking about exactly the same thing just before you arrived. We were wondering whether to take the car, or set off earlier and walk…”
“Walk,” I replied, my bluntness taking the Withers by surprise.
“It’s such a nice day!” Niki added to soften it. “And there’s nowhere to park in Finchley tonight.”
“Well, why don’t we all go together?” Jean suggested. “If you’ve got time...”
“Great idea!” Niki replied.
“Yes, time is something we’ve got plenty of,” I added.
***
Fourteen
“Is that really what I’m going to be like in ten years’ time?” I asked Niki as we lay in bed back home.
“What do you mean? That’s what you’re like now!”
“But Joe is such a pain in the arse – and so arrogant!” I exclaimed.
“Welcome to the real World!” For someone who is Chinese and is supposed to care about ‘face,’ she doesn’t seem to care very much about mine at times. “But you do seem pretty smart in the future,” she added.
We’d been very pensive about things since our brief trip to the future. Seeing ourselves in ten years’ time with the big house and baby girl had had a big affect on both of us. In terms of what we’d set out to achieve, our trip to the future had achieved very little; but we had fixed things for ourselves in the future, and kept Ed & Jean Withers together.
Now, we concluded, we should turn our attention to another project – in the hope that we could do something worthwhile on a bigger scale. After all, we’d won the lottery (more than once) and given up our jobs so we could concentrate on ‘saving the World’ full–time using the wonderful gift of the time–travelling mobile phone. So far, apart from what we’d done yesterday, we’d stopped a terrorist attack which claimed the lives of three thousand people; brought Niki’s mum Gloria back to life (having caused her death); prevented the suicide attempt of one young man – and that was about it. Considering the power we had in our hands, this was relatively small fry.
When we’d previously talked about having a big impact on worldwide events, we’d always come back to the same thing: it’s too risky. Assassinating evil dictators was a great idea in principle; but if you think about it, a lot of trained killers had tried to eliminate people like Adolf Hitler – and failed. So what chance did us amateurs have? Getting killed or even caught was not really an option.
In the end, we decided to sleep on it and talk again the next day: we had a lot to talk about.
***
Fifteen
The next morning, Niki bounced into the lounge looking very excited.
“You look like you’ve just won the lottery… again,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I think I know how we can stop World War Two,” she smiled.
“Okay, so who’s going to pull the trigger – you or me?” I replied. “I’m intrigued.”
Nik sat down on the chair facing me, looking closely into my eyes.
“Neither of us. You remember how you stopped the nine–eleven terrorist attacks, simply by talking to airport security – telling them what was going to happen that day?”
“Well, of course… it’s not something I’m likely to forget... unless of course we change the past again.”
“And we stopped Steve killing himself when he was thirteen – just by talking to him.”
“Right…”
By now, Niki had no doubt that I did indeed avert a disaster in New York City in 1991, even though within her altered memories there was no recollection of a terrorist attack in the first place. The averting of an event that hasn’t yet happened is really something you either need to take on trust, or totally dismiss. In Niki’s case, she’d had her own experience of time–travel, which really put beyond any doubt the idea that I dreamt up aeroplanes flying into the twin towers of the World Trade Center – an idea she now subscribed to wholeheartedly.
“So,” I said eventually, “what’s your plan?”
She smiled into my eyes and said, “I think we can stop all the atrocities of World War Two, the holocaust and everything, just by telling the government exactly what is going to happen if Hitler and the Nazi’s aren’t stopped. We don’t have to kill
anyone, Joe; we just give them the information. Remember when we talked to the Withers recently…”
“You mean seven years in the future?”
“Yes. Well, we didn’t actually stop them driving to the Bonfire party that evening… they still had that choice to do it… but by making the walk look attractive…
“‘It’s a nice evening...’” I quoted.
“…and the alternative unattractive…”
“‘Parking will be impossible…’”
“…then we swayed them into the right decision.”
I thought about it for a minute. What Niki said made a lot of sense; but were we making value judgements based on the limited information we had? Naturally, it seemed we were doing the right thing to stop the death of Jean Withers – without question; but without knowing all the consequences of any intervention, could we really put our hands on our hearts and say that we were doing the right thing? If Jean Withers turned out to be a mass murderer, then maybe we should have let things be? Better one man suffering a loss than countless others. In the same way, how do we know that humankind would be better without World War Two? I voiced this concern to Niki. She didn’t like it.
“So your idea is to do what – sit back and do nothing? We’ll never know if this is the right thing until we try. And if we mess it up, we can still go back and reverse it all. What have we got to lose?”
“Okay, I know where you’re going with this,” I said at last. “But if we go to the government with our World War Two story, no–one’s going to believe us. They’ll either just brand us as harmless nutcases, or lock us up and throw away the key.”
“Yes, exactly… that’s why we don’t have to say anything!”
“Come again?”
“We show, not tell. Isn’t that what they say when you’re writing a good story? All we have to do is present the evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“There’s mountains of it! Old newspapers, photographs, video footage.”