A Window into Time is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Ebook Original

Copyright © 2016 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Published in the United Kingdom by Pan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London.

ebook ISBN 9780425286494

Cover illustration: Kathleen Lynch, based on images © CHAINFOTO24/Shutterstock (buildings) and © ovi 801/Shutterstock (clock)

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1: Memory Trigger

Chapter 2: Uncle Gordon

Chapter 3: New Start

Chapter 4: The Past Is a Memory

Chapter 5: Déjà Vu

Chapter 6: Summertime Blues

Chapter 7: Memory Two

Chapter 8: Probate

Chapter 9: Long Hot Summer

Chapter 10: I Know This

Chapter 11: Off to the Office

Chapter 12: Time Line

Chapter 13: Asteroid Impact Mission

Chapter 14: Target Practice

Chapter 15: Back to Abnormal

Chapter 16: Deep Thought

Chapter 17: The End

Chapter 18: The End Paradox

Chapter 19: The Non-Paradox End

Chapter 20: After the Paradox

By Peter F. Hamilton

About the Author

Chapter 1

Memory Trigger

My name is Julian Costello Proctor, and I have The Best memory. I remember everything. Well, almost. There are some things I don’t remember because I wasn’t paying attention at the time. But that’s rare; I’m normally always paying attention. Unless something bad’s happening. And I’m used to low-level bad every day, so it would have to be really bad. Like I said, that’s rare. Thankfully.

To give you an illustration of me forgetting stuff, I’m going to start with the worst day of my life, because that’s a day when there’s a couple of big gaps in my memory.

See, I can remember all sorts of stuff right back from when I was really little. The Internet says most people have scattered memories that can be triggered by association because the way their brain stores them is completely random. But all my memories are stacked up neatly in my head. I can pull them out easily. I also have triggers, which makes my recall even faster.

I have two associative trigger recalls for the worst day ever. Well, three, actually, but the first is connected to the second, which is why it doesn’t really count—sort of like 1a and 1b.

So event number one (a) trigger that marks the day: It was my thirteenth birthday. Everyone remembers their birthdays, even ordinary people. But this birthday was reinforced by event one (b): It was David’s wedding day. David is my dad. Yes, really. He did that. Apparently no other day was possible.

“The hotel is booked up for nearly a year in advance,” he told me four months before. “Someone canceled, so we were really lucky to get this. Rachel can’t wait, and it’s not fair of me to ask her. You understand, don’t you, son?”

Understand wasn’t what I felt. The complete opposite, actually. I knew it would be Rachel who arranged it. She’d been Dad’s new girlfriend for eleven months, and she was nothing like Mum. Nothing. She wanted “a new start” for both of them. And now, thinking about it, that’s event one (c): I wasn’t invited to the wedding.

Which must make Dad’s present event one (d): a new PlayStation. I wanted a new-model Xbox. I told him that. All my games are Xbox, and they’re retro-compatible with the new model—obviously. Didn’t he think of that? Too busy thinking of Rachel, I guess. Ever since he met her I’d seen less and less of him. I was supposed to spend every second weekend, and one week in three of the school holidays, with Dad. That’s what the court decided. At the time he fought hard for that; both he and Mum spent a fortune on lawyers. Mum was always crying after every hearing. But she said she was happy with the final verdict, because a boy needs a father figure.

For the first year, he’d turn up on time for every weekend and holiday week. Then he met Rachel. She’s a personal wealth manager at his bank. After that he began to miss our weekends. I can plot his attendance rate in my head, and it’s a big decay curve going down. In the two months before the wedding, he saw me only on a single weekend. And that was the one when Rachel was on her hen weekend in Malaga.

I didn’t care. Well, that’s what I told Mum, because she was really upset about it.

So it was my thirteenth birthday. Dad was forty-four, and getting married to someone just nine years older than me. I had a PlayStation that I didn’t have any games for. And I had a party I had to go to.

I hadn’t had a birthday party for the last six years. I don’t like them. I don’t like them because other people, especially ones my age, are really stupid. And some of them are nasty with it. I’m not interested in hanging out with them.

I told Mum that, and she said I mustn’t be so prejudicial. Everyone was different. It was easy for her to say; she didn’t have to go to school with Scrap Owen and Mods Haffla.

So I didn’t do parties. Not even Laser Quest, not after Rod Johnson’s party when they scragged me behind a camouflage ditch. I cleaned my teeth three times that night, and I could still taste the mud.

But Mum insisted. “You’re only thirteen once,” she said. “You need to do something nice. Especially given what your father’s doing today. Help take your mind off it.” Sometimes I think she never believed that I remember everything. I can’t take my mind off anything; it’s not possible. My mind is always on.

Anyway, she fixed it for me to go and see the new Marvel Avengers film at the Peterborough Showcase cinema, which actually was a nice thing. The catch was, Colin Stafford and Chan Ritchol were coming with me.

I didn’t really like them, and I knew they didn’t like me. But our mums all met up while we were at school. Sometimes they’d go out at night as well. I didn’t like that; afterward, Mum always came home drunk, then spent the next day feeling sorry for herself, and I had to do all the housework and get the meals ready and stuff, which wasn’t a part of my routine.

—

Mum drove us to the cinema, which was about fifteen minutes from our house in Yaxley. We pulled up outside Chan’s house first, and Mum used the horn. It was loud and I didn’t like it. I had the passenger window open to get some air—I get carsick a lot—so it sounded even louder.

Chan and his mother came out. He looked really narked. His mum gripped his arm—tight; I could see her knuckles go all white. Chan’s mouth opened in protest.

“Now behave,” she hissed. “It’s his birthday.”

“So?” Chan grunted. Chan always talked in grunts. He was huge for his age. His dad took him to rugby club practice every Sunday morning. Boys on the other teams were all scared of him when he came charging at them to tackle.

“Be nice for once!” his mum said.

“But he’s weird.”

“He’s thirteen. You’re all awkward, sweetheart.”

“Yes, Mum.”

Chan glared at me when he got in the car.

Peterborough’s Showcase was ancient, but the screen resolution was okay, and Mum had bought us the nice leather seats at the back. Afterward, we went across the road to Pizza Hut. Mum had given me forty pounds to spend on the meal.

So: This is why other people are stupid. You’re supposed to talk at meals; having a conversation is normal. I contributed. I told them that Iron Man’s suit was all wrong, that he wouldn’t be able to fly in it.

“What?” Colin said. “He flies the whole time, dickhead.”

“There aren’t any fuel tanks,” I told him, thinking he’d get it then.

“Idiot,” Chan said. “The suit is powered by the arc reactor in his chest. It doesn’t need fuel tanks.”

“The arc reactor only provides power to the suit,” I said slowly. “It heats up the rocket exhaust.”

“So then it doesn’t need a tank,” Chan repeated.

“He’s got to use mass,” I said. “Rockets need mass to expel through their nozzle. That’s Newton’s law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Which is what makes him fly,” Colin jeered. “Rockets, innit?”

“But they need mass to work with. Either a liquid, which is stored in a tank—which the suit doesn’t have—or air like in a jet engine.”

“That’s your answer then,” Chan said. “The rockets heat up air with power from the arc reactor.”

Chan got 63 percent in last term’s science exam, and really truly believed because of that he understood science. And this wasn’t even science, just common sense.

“But the suit doesn’t have air inlets,” I explained, common-sensically. “So there’s no air for the power to heat up. It won’t work.”

After that they basically ignored me and talked about sport. I don’t like sport. I’m no good at it, and I don’t see the point in “following” football teams. Results are completely random. That’s so typical of the stupids. If they’d just listen to me, they’d learn something for once.

When our ice cream came, I sent Mum a text like she’d told me to. By the time we’d finished the ice cream, she would have driven from home to collect us. She didn’t reply, so I sent another text. She didn’t reply to that one, either. But then she doesn’t always.

We finished the ice cream, and she still hadn’t turned up. I sent another text. The waitress came over with the bill. It was thirty-eight pounds, seventy pence. I gave her both twenty-pound notes and told her to keep the change. Mum said to make sure I left a tip. The waitress was all right about us staying at the table until Mum came. They were open for another twenty minutes, she said.

Ten minutes later I phoned Mum, but she didn’t take the call.

The manager was okay about us waiting inside after they closed up, he said, but we’d have to go when he left. That was another thirty minutes. Mum still wasn’t picking up.

Chan phoned his mum, and she arrived to take us all home. She wasn’t happy about it. She insisted on coming into the house when she dropped me off. I didn’t want her to; I knew she and Mum would have angry words. I could see the way her lips were all pressed together like they get when she’s in a temper.

“I’ll just have a quick word with her,” she said as I unlocked the front door.

I called out when we were inside, but Mum didn’t answer. Chan’s mum walked into the kitchen. There was a light on in there. I was going to check the lounge when I heard her scream.

I ran to the kitchen. Chan’s mum was in the doorway, crying. She put up her arms to stop me, going: “No. No, don’t. Stop, Jules. No!”

But I barged past her and rushed in.

Mum was lying on the floor. There was a huge pool of blood around her head, which had turned nearly black. When she slipped she must have hit the back of her skull on the edge of the work surface. Our kitchen has granite work surfaces. She wasn’t breathing. Her skin was so white it could have been snow. That color is called a deathly pallor—I checked on the Internet.

That’s when I have a gap in my memory.

Next were police officers trying to talk to me. I was crying and screaming. One of them, a lady constable, was holding me and rocking me gently. She kept asking me where my dad was. But that was at eleven thirty P.M. The flight taking him to the Maldives for his honeymoon had left at six twenty that evening.

I curled up on the sofa and sobbed. There were lots of ambulance people and police going in and out of the house. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see Mum. She wasn’t Mum anymore. Just a dead body.

That’s the second gap.

I must have been asleep, because I woke up just before dawn, when Uncle Gordon arrived to take me to his house.

But apart from those two gaps I remember everything. I remember that when I went into the kitchen I saw a smear of chocolate icing on Mum’s sole. That’s what she slipped on.

That afternoon, I’d dropped a bit of chocolate icing from my birthday cake onto the kitchen floor. Mum had said not to worry, that I shouldn’t spend my birthday on my knees wiping up bits of icing. Birthdays were to be enjoyed. She’d do it later.

Obviously she didn’t.

So you see, that’s my second trigger for the day of my thirteenth birthday; and it doesn’t have any (a)’s or (b)’s or (c)’s, because it’s really simple: I killed my mum.

Chapter 2

Uncle Gordon

I like Uncle Gordon. He’s Mum’s older brother. He’s got really short hair and a beard. His hair’s always cut neat and short, because he’s got male pattern baldness, so if it was long it would make everyone notice that his forehead is huge. He’s also quite big. Because he’s tall, he doesn’t look fat. But he is putting on weight, mainly because he lives off Krusty Kreme doughnuts and hot chocolate. That plus beer and pizza.

Mum called it irresponsible living. But he just doesn’t worry about the things most people do, like what clothes he wears, and reading the news, and money, and what car he can afford, and seeing new films. He’s also quite fun. He doesn’t work, either. Not like what Mum called a proper job. He used to. He got a physics degree at university ages ago. But after he left, he played in a band. It was called Marked Card. They toured the UK, he said, and put out one album. It was so long ago it wasn’t even a CD; it was vinyl, before vinyl came back into fashion. I’ve listened to it, and it’s so bad. He keeps saying he’ll put it on a download site for retro music, but there are legal problems with doing that. All the old band members would have to agree, and none of them have talked to each other for twenty years.

“Too many artistic differences,” Uncle Gordon says. “Now, that’s real Rock and Roll.” Which is quite cool, actually.

After Marked Card broke up, he worked as a roadie for other bands. Thanks to his physics degree, he wound up handling a lot of the sound systems and spent seven years running the mixing desk at gigs.

“I earned good bread for that, man,” he told me once. “That’s how I bought my house.”

When he says house, he actually means cottage. It’s the kind estate agents call a chocolate box cottage, with stone walls, a thatched roof, and exposed beams. Which would be nice, except he hasn’t spent any money on it since he bought it. The thatched roof has been covered in a tarpaulin for the last five years, which now has its own moss. There’s no central heating, just a big iron log-burner stove in the lounge. That isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, as it only has two rooms downstairs, the lounge and kitchen, and two upstairs rooms: bedroom and bathroom.

“I haven’t managed to get hold of your father yet,” he told me when we were driving into the village where he lived.

“He’ll still be in the air,” I told him. “The flight doesn’t land for another hour.”

“I don’t suppose you remember which airline he’s using?”

“You know I do, Uncle Gordon.”

“Yeah. Just trying to keep you busy, man. I’m not very subtle, see. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” The tickets had been on Dad’s desk the last time I’d been in his London flat—Rachel’s hen weekend. I told Uncle Gordon the details—the flight numbers, the stopover in Dubai International, the time it was supposed to land at Malé.

“You’re an amazing boy, Jules, you know that, don’t you? Really amazing.”

I looked at him, and he was crying. “Thanks, Uncle Gordon. Mum always said you were the most reliable relative we had.”

“No she didn’t.”

“No,” I agreed. “She didn’t.”

We both smiled at each other. Mum loved me, but sometimes I think Uncle Gordon is the only one who comes close to understanding me.

I enjoy Uncle Gordon’s lounge. The furniture is rubbish, but he’s got three servers he’s networked, and a grid of screens above his desk.

“How’s the e-business going?” I asked.

“Fine. Do you want to go upstairs and sleep?”

“No thanks. I don’t think I would, anyway.”

“Okay, man. You know best.”

“Have you broken a million yet?”

“Sure. First week every month.”

I grinned. “In Zimbabwe dollars?”

“In Zimbabwe dollars,” he agreed.

Uncle Gordon sells audio accessories online. Not headphones and cables and stuff like you can get off Amazon; he specializes in the kind of stuff bands use. It’s what he knows best. Some of it he picks up from eBay and other Web sellers. For new stuff, he has suppliers in China and South Korea and America, and other countries as well. It’s all done by automated collect and drop management software that he runs on the servers. Some months, he does make some serious money. Most, he doesn’t.

“Has the BBC said yes this time?” I asked. Every year Uncle Gordon applies to go on The Apprentice; he wants to build the business up to rival Amazon. He hasn’t been accepted—yet.

“Nah, man,” he said sadly. “My idea’s too big. It scares them.”

“They’ll do it next year. They can’t keep turning you down.”

“I know. Jules, do you want to talk about it?”

“No. It’s in my head, Uncle Gordon. It’s never going to go away. Talking won’t help.”

“I get it. You must be starving. Let’s get some brunch.”

I hate brunch; you have either a late breakfast or an early lunch. Brunch means you’re missing a meal. It means you haven’t planned your day properly. Mum never did that. She always made sure meals came at the right time.

“Can we go down to the pub for a pizza?” I asked.

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Why? Has it changed landlords?” The landlord of the village pub is Italian. He makes The Best pizzas.

Uncle Gordon rolled one of his own cigarettes; he says he uses spinach leaves instead of tobacco. “Naa. Just a bit of a problem with my slate. I’ve not got much of the old folding stuff right now, see.”

“I’m sorry.”

He lit the cigarette. “Don’t be. There’s some frozen oven chips, and I’ve got some eggs.”

“That’s fine.”

So breakfast was egg and chips. The eggs were from the hens he keeps in a big coop he built on the front lawn. It’s a bit crude, made from wood posts that don’t match. He’s always getting letters from the parish council about “appearances” and “aesthetics of the village.” “Bunch of twats,” Uncle Gordon calls them. “Retired men with way too much time on their hands. It’s people like them who started the Nazi party, you know.”

That’s not really true; I checked on the Internet. But Uncle Gordon stands up for himself. I like that. I want to be like him when I grow up, standing up to Scrap Owen and Mods Haffla. But with a proper job in science, inventing something that helps people everywhere, not just some consumerist gadget.

Uncle Gordon finally got through to Dad at the honeymoon hotel just after they arrived.

“Oh Christ, son, I’m so sorry,” Dad said when Uncle Gordon handed me the phone. “How are you?”

“I’m with Uncle Gordon.”

“I know that but…are you okay?”

People always ask that when something serious happens. I think they see characters on TV doing it and believe they have to do the same. What does it matter to someone else how I feel? (Unless they’re trying to hurt me, in which case it makes them happy.) And what good does knowing make? It’s not like they can do anything to change it. Especially when I was in Lincolnshire and they were in the Maldives.

“I’ll be all right. The police told me it was instant. Mum didn’t suffer. They said that was good.”

“Okay, son, you hang tight there, okay? Remember, it’s smart to be strong. You’re my boy, and I’ll come home soon, and we’ll get through this together, okay? You won’t be alone. Promise. I’ll get tickets on the first plane out of here.”

I heard her. Rachel. Faint and in the background. She said: “Really? Dave, we just got here.”

“Shut it,” Dad said to her. I could tell he was turned away from the phone.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I’ll find out about flights right away. You can rely on me, son.”

Uncle Gordon brought the wrong socks. Before we left our house, he’d shoved some of my clothes into the bag I used when I went to visit Dad—one of those small ones that just fit in the overhead lockers in airplanes.

He saw me sitting on the edge of the sofa bed we’d unfolded to give me somewhere to sleep that night. I was holding up the socks, two pairs.

“How are you getting on there, man?” he asked, his voice all soft and full of concern.

“You brought Tuesday and Friday,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

I held up the socks. I always have the socks that have the days of the week written on them. Mum knew I like them, so she bought them from Marks & Spencer specially; with the day on them, there’s no getting them messed up, or having odd socks. “Tuesday,” I said, shaking the Tuesday pair for emphasis. “Tomorrow’s Monday.”

“Oh, man, I don’t think Monday’s going to mind.”

“I mind,” I told him loudly. “It’s not right. It’s Monday tomorrow, and I haven’t got Monday socks.”

When I say stuff like that, about how things should be ordered properly, people look at me like I’m a stupid, not them. Uncle Gordon didn’t. He looked upset, because he knew it was important to me. “I’m sorry, man,” he said and came and sat down beside me.

“It’s Monday,” I told him. I thought I was going to cry.

He put his arm around my shoulder. “Tell you what. Tomorrow morning, you go all reckless and wild. Be sockless! I’ll do it, too, okay? The pair of us together, that’ll be matching, see? And we’ll take a trip into town and see if we can find some Monday socks. Hell, we’ll find a whole week of socks. That way you’ll be covered.”

I leaned in against him, and he gave me a gentle pat. Nobody understands me as good as Uncle Gordon. I know that’s a fact, because I remember how everyone treats me.

Chapter 3

New Start

Dad didn’t get a flight back for three days. Every plane out of Malé was all booked up, apparently. The flight took a day, so he didn’t land at Heathrow until really late Thursday, so he and Rachel stayed in an airport hotel that night and then came up to get me the next day.

There weren’t many people at the funeral. Eleven of us, actually. Me, Uncle Gordon, Dad and Rachel, and some of Mum’s friends from Yaxley, like Chan’s mother. It was at Marholm cemetery just outside Peterborough. At the end of the service, they played “Jerusalem” by K. D. Lang, which Mum liked, and the curtains closed around the coffin.

I had to sit down then. I was crying so hard it made my legs weak. And I knew everyone would be looking at me, which made it even worse—like they were all crowding around me the way people did with Victorian freaks at the circus. I could hear these noises coming from my mouth, as if an animal were dying somewhere. I hate doing that, but I couldn’t help it. I hated being me. I hated the world for what it was doing to me.

I hated everything.

The rest of the service was one of those memory gaps. After it was all over, it was just me and Dad sitting in the front row of the chapel. Everyone else had left.

Dad looked at me and said: “You okay?”

I told him: “Yes.” Even though I wanted to throw up.

“We’ll scatter her ashes in Burghley wood. She always liked the park there.”

“Okay.” I didn’t tell him they wouldn’t be her ashes, not really; it might upset him. Crematoriums don’t burn coffins individually. They wait until the end of the week and burn them all together, because that’s more cost-effective. And even then, the remains they give to families in the urns are mostly wood ash from the stack of coffins, because a body is 90 percent water. It’s on the Internet.

—

Dad’s flat was on Tottenham Road, Islington. It was a two-bedroom flat in a nice-looking old house, with a big (for London) lounge, and a kitchen diner that cost as much as a car.

Mum always called it his playboy pad. I don’t know why; it’s not like it looked out over the Thames or had a helipad or anything. Dad said it was very expensive, and Islington was a premium address. I thought the more money you spent on property, the bigger it was. I worked out the floor space; it was less than half of our house in Yaxley, but apparently it cost twice as much.

Dad should know all about that. As well as owning five properties in London, he’s a partner in a real-estate agency, which he started with two friends. He says his business plan is to own half of Islington by the time he’s fifty-five, then he’ll hand it all to me and retire. It was going to be when he was fifty, but the recession and austerity pushed it back five years.

The second bedroom was supposed to be his home office, but they put an Ikea bed in there for me. I brought some of my stuff down from Mum’s house, but I had to keep it in a stack of plastic storage boxes, as there was no space for any other furniture.

Rachel didn’t like me being in the flat. Their bedroom was next to mine. I overheard them sometimes at night. She would say stuff like: “Of course I don’t mind. I just wasn’t expecting this right after we were married, that’s all.” And: “He’s a nice boy. I’m sure he’ll be lovely when I get to know him better.”

She looked at me, when she thought I couldn’t see her doing it. It was sort of a look that said: I know I’ve got to put up with you, but I don’t have to like it.

After I’d been there a week, I asked Dad: “Rachel doesn’t want me here, does she?”

And he answered: “You’re my son. This is your home.”

Which is the way politicians weasel their way out of answering questions they don’t like: They give an answer to a slightly different question they’ve made up in their heads. I see it a lot on the telly.

One night I heard Rachel say: “He could go and live with your parents.”

I’d been streaming a new Arrow episode on my tablet, so I paused it and took off my headphones so I could listen.

“In Spain? You’re kidding.” But my dad didn’t say it with much conviction, almost like he’d considered it as well.

“It would do him good, Dave. He’d get to see something of the world.”

“He’s thirteen and his mum’s just died. Give him a break. Besides, he can’t handle big changes well. You know that.”

“Yeah.” She sighed.

It was quiet for a minute, then their bed started creaking. Rachel giggled. I put my headphones back on and turned up the volume.

I was kind of expecting life to be worse in London. If you keep telling yourself something’s going to be bad, then there’s a chance it might not be quite as bad as you’ve convinced yourself it’s going to be, which makes it easier to live with.

I didn’t mind too much about living at the flat with Dad and Rachel. They went out a lot at night, so I could watch whatever I wanted and surf the Internet.

Trouble was, I’d only thought about living at the flat, not the rest of it. Turns out being crammed in with Dad and Rachel was the best part of London. I had to go to school again.

Dad was good about it. He gave me time after the funeral, and even took some days off himself to be with me. We didn’t do much. I wanted to surf the Internet, but we played some games. I’d brought his PlayStation present with me, and we played Destiny and FIFA (which I don’t like; it’s football), which were the games that came with it. After a couple of hours he got bored, and we watched some films on Netflix. I stayed in the flat by myself for the rest of the week and watched the shows I wanted—old stuff like Stargate and House, MD, which was great. I like House; he’s smarter than everyone else, and he’s not scared to show it. I’m going to act like that when I’m older.

Then the next week I went to St. George’s. I don’t know why; it was only three weeks until summer holiday. But Dad said it would be good for me, like a taster, so when I went back after summer holiday I’d know the people there and the school routine, which would help me, and that way I’d have a proper school year without problems.

I don’t know what he was expecting, but schools are pretty much the same everywhere. Full of stupid people who don’t like me. Instead of Scrap Owen and Mods Haffla I now had Jeff Murphy and Kenan Abbot. Most of the teachers were okay—they kept the other kids from buzzing me in lessons—though I didn’t like Mr. Reham, the principal. He was always talking in what Uncle Gordon calls psycho-bollock-speak, telling me and Dad that I would have to “reestablish a normality reference,” and how “the school will provide Julian with a fully holistic interactivity agenda of support functions.”

I think my dad agreed with Uncle Gordon about Mr. Reham; I could tell it from the way he said less and less during the interview. But St. George’s agreed to take me first because Dad’s flat was well inside the catchment area and second (so Dad said) because of my SAT scores from my old school. “There’s going to be a new academy opening up around here next year. St. George’s is going to be in competition with them for smart pupils like you, son.”

“Couldn’t I just homeschool?” I asked that evening.

Dad and Rachel exchanged a glance—one of those where she warns him not to give in to me. When he gets hit by them he always collapses and does what she wants. “I’m not really the best person to teach you, son, not the academic stuff. Life lessons is more my thing. I’m going to take you down the local boozer as soon as you’re old enough.” He winked. “Probably a bit before that, eh?”

“I don’t need you to do the teaching,” I explained. “The syllabus and all the lessons are on the Internet. I can access it. You can check how many hours I do each day.” One advantage of living in London is the unreal broadband speed—especially when you have a cable connection, like my dad’s flat had.

“You have to go to school, son,” he said. “I might have a word with the principal about getting you assessed next term, when you’ve settled in, so they put you on the gifted kids list.”

“It’s not ‘gifted’ anymore, Dad; that discriminates against everyone else. It’s ‘high ability’ now. And, anyway, my memory didn’t qualify me for it.”

“Political correctness gone mad,” he muttered. “It was your attitude, son, not your memory; that’s why you missed out last year. Remember, we talked about this? But you’re older now, so maybe you’ll do better this time.”

I hate it when Dad (and Mum—’coz she used to) asks “Do you remember?” when he’s trying to make a point. It’s just insulting. He knows I remember everything.

So I went back to school, for three whole nightmare weeks.

And it was in the second week that I remembered something that had never happened.

Chapter 4

The Past Is a Memory

It was the bus that did it. Which makes it a trigger, I suppose. I was walking to school. It was raining that morning; it had been raining all night. There were big puddles everywhere, and the street was packed tight with cars and lorries and bikes and buses. One drove right through a puddle next to the pavement where I was walking and sent up a huge splash. I was wearing a coat, but it still soaked my trousers. They laughed, all the other kids walking to school—the ordinaries and the stupids. I could hear them, but all I remembered was another time a bus had done that. On the same road but in winter.

Only I’d never been on that road in winter. I knew it was winter because the leaves were falling off the trees and jamming up the gutter and drains—which is why there were even bigger puddles then. And it was late afternoon, with all the lights shining out of the shops, and rain blurring the headlights. And the road was different somehow.

That bit took me awhile to work out, as the memory was only a few seconds. Me getting soaked, doing the whole shaking-my-arms thing, like the way a dog shakes to get water out of its fur. And I yelled “Arsehole!” at the car. That was weird. I’m normally too scared to shout like that in public. When I get angry and do finally shout, the stupids laugh at me. But in the memory, no one laughed at me. Everyone was too busy scurrying past on their way home.

It’s really strange having a memory that isn’t your own. Some people say they hear voices in their head. Normally nutters, who try to claim the voices told them to commit a crime, like serial killers. That way they get sent to a cushy prison, which is a mental hospital, too, and they get doctors and nurses fussing around them all day, and a room to themselves, and nice food; stuff that gets the tabloid sites all wound up with them, saying it’s a travesty of justice.

I thought the memory might be my version of voices. It wasn’t me, but I knew the chill when the puddle water hit, so that part was definitely real. But the sweatshirt on the arms of the not-me was dark blue, and I’d never had a dark-blue sweatshirt. It’s like a school one. St. George’s pupils wore a green one. But the trousers in the memory were gray, which were school trousers. And the not-me was definitely taller.

Then there was the road. There was something about it that wasn’t right—on top of the whole thing about it not being my memory. I kept playing it over in my mind and saw the people around me. They were ordinary, all wrapped up in coats and carrying bags. But the coats were like really old-fashioned. Nobody wears coats like that anymore.

I concentrated on the cars. They were all old models, too. Three of them were close enough for me to read the number plates. Right now, number plates in England start with two letters, which are the area code, followed by two numbers, which are the age identifier, then three more letters, which are picked at random. Like this: DF64KUS. The numbers on the street I remembered weren’t anything like that. They had a letter, three numbers, then three more letters, like this: W358AJP.

In the flat that night, I looked it up on the Internet. Having number plates on a car in the UK only became compulsory in 1904. Since then, the government has changed the sequence several times—first in 1932, then 1963, again in 1982, and finally the current one in 2001. They had to do it because the old sequences kept running out of combinations.

The number plates in the not-mine memory were all from the pre-2001 change. Two of the cars had a T at the start, while the one closest to me had a W. W was for the year 2000, so this not-mine memory was from at least the year 2000.

To start with, I did think that maybe the memory was from back when I was an infant, being pushed around in a pram, and that the puddle splash was a memory trigger. But it couldn’t have been. First off, I was definitely wearing a blue sweatshirt in the memory, and I was walking, and I was taller than I am now. Second, I hadn’t been born in 2000.

Chapter 5

Déjà Vu

I thought about what I remembered. I thought about it really hard. People say I never know what’s going on around me, which is just so ridiculously untrue. I always know. So there had to be a reason for me remembering something I wasn’t even alive for.

“I think I’ve had a brain seizure,” I told Dad the next morning at breakfast.

Rachel made a snorting kind of noise. She was sitting opposite me at the table, eating her muesli. Every morning she eats the same thing: two hundred milliliters of green tea, fifty grams of muesli with skimmed milk, a reduced-sugar muffin, and three vitamin supplement tablets. It’s part of her healthy living process. She nags Dad to eat properly, too, so he was having toast and orange juice—but I know he sometimes stops off at the pub on the way home from the office, and in the bin there’s packets of chips that he shoves down to the bottom under all the other rubbish so she doesn’t see them.

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 bunch 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 unbelievably 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.

After breakfast we all got in the car and drove north up the A1 to Peterborough. Dad wanted to get the Yaxley house sorted out ready to sell, which meant we had to empty it. I didn’t want to go back; just about everything there would be a memory trigger. But I didn’t want anyone else sorting through my stuff, either.

—

I figured messaging Michael must be a paradox—or maybe a subparadox, because it’s hardly a biggie—so the universe wouldn’t allow it. If Michael had stopped Kenan from assaulting me, then it wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have hurt my ankle falling over in the park. I wouldn’t have his memory and he wouldn’t have mine.

There’s something called causality that seriously means time travel can’t happen. It’s like the hard science explanation of paradox. There’s plenty of academic papers about causality published on the Internet, but they’re like really technical.

But causality wasn’t the thing stopping Michael Finsen from answering my Facebook friend request; ignoring me was his own decision. Maybe he wasn’t a nice person after all and didn’t want to save me.

Second thought: Michael Finsen wouldn’t know what year/month/day it was when Kenan and his crew went for me. Next time I got a memory of his, I was going to say the date, time, and place where I was out loud. Then if he got my memory, he’d know. If I do it right, I’d probably turn around and he’d be there. How cool would that be?

—

Uncle Gordon had been sorting out the house in Yaxley. Supposedly.

We arrived there midmorning, and the garage was full of boxes. Trouble was, they were all empty. Uncle Gordon was meant to have put all the house contents in them ready for collection by a local auction company, which was doing a house clearance for us—at one o’clock.

He’d brought the boxes but hadn’t packed them.

“Yeah, sorry about that, fella,” he told Dad when he met us in the lounge. “I’ve been kinda busy. Big order for Andries.”

“For what?” Dad said. I could see how angry he was, but he was making an effort to stay calm. He knows how much I like Uncle Gordon.

“Andries. This new acid-grunge band out of Leeds. They’re touring next month, seventeen dates. Gonna be big. Not the sort of folding I can turn down.”

“Did you pack anything?” Rachel asked in exasperation.

“Uh”—Uncle Gordon scratched the back of his head as he glanced around—“I made an inventory.”

I was pretty sure he hadn’t. I could see everything was in exactly the same place it had been when I left.

“Good,” Dad said. “Where is it?”

“Man! I left it at home. Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said before Dad got really angry. “I know what’s in every room. I can write a new one.” I got my tablet out and sat down.

“You can’t know everything in a whole house,” Rachel said.

“Whoa, you don’t know your stepson very well, do you?” Uncle Gordon told her.

She gave Dad a very direct stare, expecting to be backed up. For once, he just shrugged.

“Write it out, Jules,” Dad told me. “Two lists. Stuff we can send to auction, and everything else we can bag for the dumpster.” He glared at Uncle Gordon. “There is a dumpster coming, isn’t there?”

“Absolutely!”

“When?” Rachel asked.

“Next week.” With his back to her, he pulled a big mock-worried face at me.

I grinned back and started typing. I do like my uncle Gordon.

I didn’t go into Mum’s bedroom or the kitchen—I figured the memory triggers would be strongest there. Rachel took a roll of black bin bags up there and filled them with Mum’s clothes. I typed out all Mum’s jewelry, including her wedding and engagement rings.

Dad and Uncle Gordon started clearing the lounge, putting it all into the boxes. There were lots of books, and the good crockery in a cabinet, and ornaments, and pictures.

The estate agent arrived at midday, and Dad started showing him around. I could hear them arguing at lot. Dad was telling him how much the house should be valued at, and he knew because that’s what he did in London. The agent kept telling Dad that Yaxley didn’t have London prices.

Uncle Gordon leaned over my shoulder as I was typing out the kitchen list. “Uh, maybe scratch that, man,” he said, pointing at the air fryer. “Mine was broken.”

He didn’t have one. “Mum would have wanted you to have it,” I told him. “Anything else broken?”

“The toaster.”

“Right.”

“Kettle, coffeemaker, food processor, juicer, some plates, cutlery.”

I started removing items.

“I don’t have the dumpster company’s phone number on me,” he said sheepishly. “Could you look one up for me?”

“Sure.” I opened a Web browser app.

“You’re a lifesaver, Jules. I owe you.”

“That’s okay. How’s the business? That Andries contract sounds good.”

“Ah, you know: another month, another million.”

“In Zimbabwe dollars?”

He gave me a fond grin. “The most reliable currency in the world. Know why?”

“You can never devalue it.”

“Because there’s nothing left to devalue.”

“Uncle Gordon?”

“Whatsup?”

“You did physics. Is time travel really possible?”

“No. Causality prevents it in real life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still love all the Back to the Future films.”

“Right.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just wondered, that’s all.”

“She’s dead, Jules. You can’t change that.”

“I know.” Actually, I hadn’t thought of that. Not at all.

He gave me a hug. “How’re you doing?”

“Usual. School’s bad.” I shrugged.

“You want me to come down to London and deliver some clobberence?”

“Some what?”

“Clobberence. It’s like consequence but delivered by a baseball bat.”

“No! Really, Uncle Gordon, no.”

“Hey, I can still handle myself, no worries. Especially against some punk kids. I helped security backstage at a Duran Duran concert once, you know, back in the eighties when they were massive. Man, those teenage girls. When they got their hands on you, they knew which bits to squeeze to make a guy’s eyes water, you dig what I’m saying?”

I started typing again, staring intently at the tablet. “I get it, Uncle Gordon. Thanks.”

“I don’t like people picking on you.”

“School’s always bad. I’m used to it.”

“But you shouldn’t be used to it, Jules,” he said softly. “That is so wrong.”

“It’s okay. It’s only for a few more years, then I’ll be at university and the stupids will be nowhere.”

“You are beautiful, Jules, so beautiful. I see so much of her in you.”

I was blushing, but it was good embarrassment. I hadn’t known there was such a thing. That’s Uncle Gordon for you: The Best.

Dad had one last argument with the estate agent, and the poor man left.

“He looked happy,” Uncle Gordon said.

“He’s an idiot,” Dad said, all grumpy. “I’m not settling for less than four hundred K.”

“Maybe you should just rent the place out like all the others,” Uncle Gordon said. “That way you’ll get the mortgage paid off, and Jules will have a house when he’s twenty.”

“Really?” I asked.

Dad gave Uncle Gordon a curt glance. “I paid for this house,” he said. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to keep those payments going after we separated. It’s been really tough.”

“It has,” Rachel chimed in, nodding approvingly as she leaned against him.

“Once this place is sold along with the flat, we can move into something better in London,” Dad said.

“Well, that’s all you’re getting,” Uncle Gordon said. “I’m the executor, right? Jules is named as the sole beneficiary in her will, and I’ll make damn sure he gets everything he’s entitled to.”

“That money could help him a lot right now,” Dad said.

“Help you out, you mean,” Uncle Gordon replied quickly.

“What money?” I asked.

“Your mum had life insurance, Jules.”

“I paid the premiums,” Dad said.

“The court had to order you to,” Uncle Gordon said. “It was for your wife and son, man. Why did they have to order that, hey?”

“You have no idea what divorce lawyers are like. They put both of us through hell.”

“I certainly know what yours did.”

I’d never seen Uncle Gordon angry before. It was quite impressive—in a scary way. Maybe I should tell him where Kenan Abbot lived, after all.

A van’s horn sounded outside. It was the auction house people. Dad and Uncle Gordon stopped glaring at each other. Rachel took Dad’s arm, and they went outside to speak to the van driver and his mate.

“Your dad’s a good man, Jules,” Uncle Gordon said. “Don’t ever think different. We’re all still shook up over your mum. And this day is right emotional for everyone.”

“I know.”

“Come on, let’s go up to your room. You need to pack all your stuff to take down to London.”

I was surprised when I went back up to my old bedroom. Physically it hadn’t changed, of course. But now it looked drab somehow. I didn’t want to take the clothes that were still in the drawers. They’d all been tight on me when I left for London. First pair of trousers I tried on were five centimeters short above the ankle.

“Growth spurt, huh?” Uncle Gordon said sympathetically.

“I suppose.” The same went for everything else. Old toys that were for kids a lot younger. My books were mostly YA, too, and I’d stopped reading that stuff ages ago.

In the end I only carried one box out to the car, and that was barely half full. The men from the auction house were loading furniture into the van. I thought it might bother me, seeing my old home broken up like this, but it didn’t. That part of my life was over. Most of the time all I could think about now were Michael’s memories, and how that was going to change everything.

I watched Uncle Gordon load a box of food from the freezer into the boot of his car.

“How much is the life insurance?” I asked him.

He produced a mild frown. “Not like you to talk about money, Jules.”

“I know. But how much?”

“I think the policy is for a hundred thousand.”

“What?” A hundred thousand pounds! I was so shocked I could only grunt.

“It’s a logical amount. It’s supposed to take care of you until you’re old enough to start earning the readies for yourself. Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you get it properly. Pay your tuition fees when it’s time for you to go to university, and all that nonsense. Mind, you’ll be surprised how depressingly fast it’ll go.”

“Is that much enough to buy a high-energy physics lab?”

“Er, I don’t think so, nah.”

“But I could maybe rent one?” I asked urgently.

“I guess. Yeah, sure. Why not.”

“That’s brilliant.”

“Okay, I’m biting. Why?”

I shrugged, trying to appear all nonchalant. “It’s what I want to do. Invent something that’ll help the whole world.”

“Good for you, Jules. Good for you.”

I was so happy. I’d been right about what was happening. Future-me doesn’t even need to send now-me lottery numbers. With that kind of money, I could start experimenting with exotic matter up there in the future.

Oh yeah. I’m going to be the inventor of time travel!

Chapter 9

Long Hot Summer

By Monday morning, Michael Finsen still hadn’t replied. I sent him another message. Then, just to be sure—in case I didn’t actually have his subconscious recognition in my head—I sent Michael Finsen(2) a message from Big Russell as well; he was the other Michael Finsen on Facebook that was about the right age.

An hour later Michael Finsen(2) replied: Hi. Who are you?

So I sent: I was the striker in the local league team back in 2008/9. We played against each other.

Sorry, pal, I never played football for anyone.

Do you know another Michael Finsen? Same age as you?

No.

I think he lives in Docklands.

Got to go. Have a nice life.

I didn’t want to ask, but I had no choice now: Back in 2009, did you ever have a strange memory about a boy running?

Blocking you now.

Which was rude. Although it made me happy he wasn’t the right Michael Finsen. If you’re asked out-of-the-ordinary questions, any intelligent person would be curious and keep the conversation going. I figured (2) was a stupid. There are so many of them. Sometimes I wonder how the world keeps running. There are so many complicated pieces of machinery out there that are essential, and the stupids can’t keep them going by themselves. If smart people are in the minority, doesn’t that make us slaves to the majority stupids?

The weather was nice, so I used my smartcard and visited Docklands. I hadn’t been before. I didn’t realize it was so big. There was a lot more than just the skyscrapers in the middle. I caught the Northern line from Angel, then switched to the DLR line at Monument. As I didn’t really know where I was going, I just sat there and decided to ride it all the way to Beckton at the end of the line. Then when we got to Canning Town I started to recognize the buildings outside. That was exciting. Knowing the buildings must be part of Michael Finsen’s memories.

We went through Canning Town, and I could see the cable car over the Thames. The O2 dome was squatting on the other side of the river. It was a comforting sight, like you get when you’ve been away for a while and glimpse your home in the distance.

The train rolled into Royal Victoria station. And I knew it! I hurried off the train. I knew which way to turn for the exit coming out of the carriage. I knew when to get my smartcard out ready. Outside was all big modern buildings, with the cable car station on the other side of the road. I turned away from it and started walking west, above the water.

There were fenced-off building sites and new residential blocks along the side of the river. One of them was lined with balconies, giving the flat owners a view of the dome.

That was the one. I knew it because Mike knew it.

Mike remembered.

At night, out on the balcony, the dome on the other side of the Thames is always lit up, and you can see the cable cars strung out above the river like fat wobbly stars.

We still need furniture for the second bedroom. Right now it’s full of boxes we’ve both brought with us. Jyoti’s are all the same, white cardboard that can be recycled. They’re taped up and neatly labeled. I stuffed everything from my old place into appliance boxes, and I didn’t have enough so they’re overflowing. We’ll have to go through everything and see what’s duplicated, then dump the extra. I’m assuming most of what we’ll junk is going to be mine. Jyoti’s things are much better quality—and stylish, too. Like her.

I finish plugging in the kettle and walk out of the galley kitchen. The living room is all new furniture we chose together. Well…she chose it; I just paid my half. It’s not quite what I’d have gone for, but I gotta admit it’s ten times better than my old furniture, which doesn’t belong here at all. Jyoti favors dark reds and grays, which is very stylish. The furniture suits the flat perfectly. She could do interior decoration for a living if she wanted to. But she’s the greatest doctor ever.

She’s standing beside the big patio window that faces the Thames, and the twilight frames her perfectly. She is gorgeous. And the king-sized bed is new, too. The delivery guys had a load of trouble carrying that inside. I can’t wait to christen it tonight.

“Come here you,” she says with a big smile.

I walk over the floor, and she holds her hands out to me. We kiss.

Urrgh.

I did say the date and time out loud, and that I was just outside Royal Victoria station in Docklands. But it was pointless. It’s where Michael Finsen lives. He’s there every day. If he received my memory of being there, it’s nothing new or different.

When I turned around, he wasn’t standing there watching me with a knowing smile. There was no Pleased to finally meet you, Jules.

I walked back into Royal Victoria station and rode the trains back to Islington. I needed to think this through more.

—

Two days later we flew to Spain. Our airplane was an Airbus A320. I checked online, and it used fly-by-wire control systems. I followed the links. The joysticks were electronic; they didn’t move together. I didn’t like that. When we got onboard, I told Rachel.

“Right,” she said.

Clearly she didn’t understand what that meant.

“It means if the pilot and copilot move their joysticks in different directions, they don’t know; they can’t feel what the other is doing,” I explained. “And it can confuse the computers. That’s why an Airbus crashed into the ocean in 2009. Before computers, the joysticks were always mechanically linked.”

“Okay,” she said. “Why don’t you put your seatbelt on now?”

“They had three qualified pilots onboard, because it was such a long flight from Rio to Paris. It didn’t do them any good.”

“Jules,” Dad said. “Enough about air disasters, thanks.”

“But this is the same flight control system. Airbus standardized all its aircraft cockpits.”

“Do your seatbelt up. Keep quiet.”

I could see the man and woman sitting on the other side of the aisle. They were both staring at me, frowning.

A flight attendant came over. “Is there a problem?”

“No, thank you,” Dad said. “We’re fine.”

“I was just explaining there’s a fatal design flaw in the plane’s avionics,” I told her.

“Jules!” Rachel hissed.

“It’s okay.” The flight attendant gave us a bright smile. I’d never seen teeth so white before. “All our planes undergo regular maintenance,” she said to me. “You’ll be quite safe.”

“Not if we crash. Statistically, very few people survive a crash.”

“Jules!” Dad growled. “Be quiet. Now. I mean it.”

The flight attendant winked at me. “It’s okay. I saw the flight plan the captain filed, there’s no crash scheduled for today.”

I think she was being sarcastic. Or possibly patronizing—that’s always a hard one to call. Two things. One, she’s a cabin flight attendant; I don’t believe she would get to see the actual flight plan. One (b): unless she was having an affair with the captain, in which case he might have tried to impress her by showing it to her. (The tabloid sites say airline pilots and flight attendants are always having affairs.) Two, she said scheduled, which made me wonder if she actually did know we weren’t going to crash—and there’s only one way that could happen. She was getting future memories from someone, the same as me. Two (b), future-me was sending her the information about not crashing to reassure now-me. But why wasn’t he sending that to me?

“Do you remember the future, then?” I asked her.

She did this strange double blink and frowned at the same time. Then she turned to Dad. “We do offer counseling for nervous fliers, sir. It’s a new service. I can see if we could get you on a later flight if your son would like to use it.”

“We’re just fine, thank you,” Dad said in a strained voice. “Because Jules is going to Shut Up now, aren’t you, son?”

“But she said—”

“SHUT UP.”

I could feel my cheeks go all hot that way they do when I blush. I looked down at my knees so I didn’t have to see everyone staring at me. I hate that. They were all stupid and don’t like that I’m smarter than them.

“You’ve got to pull yourself together, Jules,” Rachel said. “It’s just a flight to Spain.”

I didn’t say anything, just sort of hunched up tighter in my seat. There was a safety briefing before we took off. Which was pointless, as far as I was concerned; it was purely to reassure the stupids. The cabin crew went through all the stuff about life belts and oxygen masks, then told you to go into the brace position if there was an emergency landing.

I looked at Rachel, but she was reading a magazine and deliberately ignoring me. I wondered if she knew that the brace position isn’t to help you survive; the airline only wants you to do it because it helps protect the human skull on impact. That way, it makes it easier to identify your corpse from dental records.

I thought about telling her but decided not to.

—

Victoria and Barney, Dad’s mother and father, were waiting for us at the Malaga airport.

Grandma gave a huge shriek in the arrivals hall and flung her arms around me. She was wearing a bright-pink blouse and some kind of beige safari suit. Big gold necklaces clinked around her neck, and her wrists were covered by gold bracelets. Grandma looked like an upmarket fortune-teller, and she smelled of very sweet perfume. I couldn’t escape the smell. She wouldn’t let go.

“My little boy, my little boy,” she kept calling as she hugged me. “How are you? You coping all right? I’ve been praying for you every day since…you know. It happened.”

“I’m okay, Gran.”

“You poor thing! You’re going to have a fab time here, I’ll make sure of that.”

She finally let go before I started coughing from the smell. Then Granddad moved in. He had more gold chains than Gran, and a lot of thick gold rings on his fingers as well. He did look a bit like Dad, except he’s wider, and shorter, and a bit stooped—sort of the goblin version of Dad.

“Hey there, champ,” he said as he mock-boxed me. “You holding up there? You’re a good lad, you.” I flinched. He’s got scars on his fists. Last time I saw him he was always telling me about fights he got into when he was younger. His company used to run several pubs in the East End of London. Tough man’s game, he called it.

Then he hugged me, even tighter than Gran. “Sorry about your mum, lad,” he said quietly.

“Thanks,” I said, just as quietly.

He went on to give Rachel an equally strong hug—him and Gran went to the wedding. “How’s my lovely new daughter-in-law, then? Give us a kiss.”

“Doing all right, Barney,” she said, and wiggled free.

“How was the flight, love?” Gran asked.

Rachel looked away from me. “I need a drink,” she said.

“Oh I know,” Gran said. “They cram you in so tight these days. I don’t know how they get away with it. I really don’t.”

“It’s the CAA,” I told her. “They analyze the passenger seating density and work out evacuation statistics.”

“Oh Jules, you’re so clever,” Gran said with a smile. “Don’t know where you get that from—not Barney’s side of the family, that’s for sure.” She laughed loud again.

“Oi,” Barney said. “I got plenty of smarts, me. Let’s get you all back to the villa, then. Swimming pool’s ready for you, Jules.”

“Oh great, thanks.”

“And you can get yourself into a nice bikini, Rachel. Hey! That’ll be all right.” He rubbed his hands and smirked like a pedo.

“Cheeky!” Gran exclaimed and slapped his arm. “He don’t mean no harm, girl,” she told Rachel.

“Yes,” Rachel said. She’d wound her arm around Dad like a boa constrictor gripping a goat.

It was amazing. I’d never felt any sympathy for Rachel before, but Barney can be a bit overwhelming. Intimidating, if I’m honest.

He and Grandma live on the edge of a golf course just north of Marbella. And I do mean on the edge. The wall at the end of their garden is the boundary of the fifth hole’s fairway. Grandpa has a garage for his golf buggy; the swing-up door opens directly onto the course, and he plays every day. The whole perimeter is lined with villas just like it. They’re all owned by British expats.

But it does have a small pool. Swimming is the one thing I do like; not that I want to race or anything.

“You’re so skinny,” Gran exclaimed after I’d jumped in. “Rachel, don’t you feed him properly?”

“He eats loads,” Rachel protested.

“I do, Gran,” I assured her.

“I’ll cook you some proper meals while you’re here, Jules, don’t you worry.”

That evening, Barney came into my room. “Got you a little present,” he told me, holding up a slim white box. “Sorry we couldn’t make it to the funeral, lad; I’ve got all sorts of tax rubbish going on back home, have to watch how many days I spent in the UK. But this’ll help take your mind off things. You deserve something nice right now.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Grandpa,” I told him, but he wasn’t listening.

“Grandpa! Gawd help us. I keep telling you, lad, call me Barney. Go on then, open it.”

It was the latest-model MacBook Pro, with a fifteen-inch screen that had amazing resolution. “Seriously? For me?”

“Aww. That’s the smile I remember belongs on your face. ’Course it’s for you, lad. Only fair. Is it what you wanted?”

“Yes! It’s brilliant. Thank you, Barney.” My tablet was old and slow and had practically no memory left.

He gave me a hug. “You’re a good lad, you. Go on then, you get on with your fancy computing stuff. I expect you to make a million for me by the time you’re sixteen. Bloke what invented Facebook did, and you’re smarter than him.”

I spent half an hour setting the laptop up with my email and preferences. Still no reply to Big Russell’s Facebook messages—I’d sent six now. I opened a new file, gave it a password lock, and called it: Michael Finsen.

Chapter 10

I Know This

I started with the facts. Stuff like his age, and the flat number, and that he’d moved in there with Jyoti Tanark—it was a joint mortgage. She was half Egyptian, I remembered that. I think I’d gotten even more of his subconscious memory this time.

He worked at GTB Venture, which had an office in Docklands close to Canada Square, where the biggest skyscrapers were. They were angel investors. I looked that up, and it meant they put money into tech start-up companies. Michael worked in their assessment division, working out if the technology was going to be worth developing and if it could make a profit.

Here’s a thought: Future-me was doing all these brain-to-brain time-traveling memories to demonstrate to Michael that my exotic matter technology worked, so it was worth GBT Venture investing in it. That was completely logical, and not a paradox at all. And that would explain why future-me chose him.

It took time to enter everything I knew, but Barney has decent broadband; he uses it to stream the sports he can’t get on his premium satellite package. The morning after I got the laptop, I sat on a sun lounger by the pool calling up all kinds of sites (the battery life is really good). The more data I could tabulate like a real scientist would, the more chance I would have of understanding what was happening.

As soon as we finished breakfast that morning, Dad and Barney took the buggy out for a round of golf. Gran told them they had to be back for lunch. “And not pissed, either,” she shouted after them as they vanished into the buggy garage. Then she went out to get food. “Decent portions,” she said, squinting at me as she left.

That gave me hours to do uninterrupted research with nobody questioning what I was doing. Rachel was sunbathing at the other end of the patio, not that she’d ever bother asking me what I was doing.

Showing an interest in someone is part one of caring about them.

I opened a browser and called up the block of flats by Royal Victoria station where Michael lives. The developers had a site with virtual tours of a “typical” flat, with mocked-up window views that made the O2 look even bigger—I suppose stupids fall for things like that. There were three local estate agents with flats in the block for sale; they cost over half a million pounds. Best of all was the land registry office, which listed all the property deals in the UK; Michael had bought the Docklands flat twenty-two months ago—a joint mortgage with Jyoti. So that confirmed when his last memory came from.

That was really satisfying for me. I was like Sherlock Holmes closing on a murder suspect. Better than that, it meant I wasn’t imagining any of this. Mum’s death hadn’t made me insane; it was all real.

I went on to GBT Venture’s site. It was surprisingly small and didn’t have any useful data. Arty pictures and flowery sentences that don’t actually mean anything—corporate puff, as Uncle Gordon calls it. I thought companies liked to brag about how big and successful they were. But nowadays everyone hates banks and The City, so I suppose GBT Venture was trying to keep a low profile.

I actually found more concrete information about Jyoti Tanark than I did Michael. I remembered she was a junior partner in a GP surgery group in Woolwich. Their website was one of those patient-friendly ones, giving lots of information about their staff. It told me she trained with the practice as a GP registrar and joined as a full-time GP two and a half years ago. She was the practice leader in inflamed joints; she spoke fluent Arabic, and her hobbies included reading and badminton.

There was a nice picture of her, smiling at the camera. Obviously that triggered the memory of her standing in the flat, framed by the window, holding her arms out to me/Michael. The smile on her face was a lot less forced than in the photo. It was like a scene from one of those rom-com films I used to watch with Mum—they were her favorite after she and Dad separated.

I realized how pretty Jyoti is; no wonder Michael didn’t stay with Karen. Jyoti’s got thick dark hair that comes down over her shoulders, and large brown eyes. She’s smart, too, and funny, and they have the same taste in music (it’s all old rubbish, from like five or six years ago). Michael was so proud and delighted that she was his girlfriend. When he was looking at her, he just kept thinking: She’s the one.

And she kissed him. That memory keeps replaying in the front of my head. It’s not completely gross, having someone else’s tongue in your mouth. Michael rather liked it. Kissing a girlfriend is pleasant. I imagine it’s the same effect adults get from drinking alcohol: The sensation is mild, but it goes everywhere.

I glanced over at Rachel, who was lying on a sun lounger in a scarlet bikini. Actually, she’s very pretty, too. Her face is heart-shaped, which gives her a dainty chin. Her eyes are blue-gray, and her hair is blond—genuine blond; it doesn’t come from a bottle like most of the women on TV. I know that because her makeup and hair product bottles take up every surface in the bathroom. She’s a bit taller than me, almost as tall as Dad. And she’s a fitness bunny (that’s what she calls herself); she goes to her gym three or four nights a week after work. I could see how toned she was from all that exercise; her legs and tummy were all lean muscle.

“What?” she asked, pushing her sunglasses up to look at me.

I blushed a bit, because I must have been staring. “Nothing. Taking a break, that’s all.”

“What are you surfing?”

“Flats in Docklands.”

“Really, why?”

“You and Dad said we were going to sell up and move to somewhere better.”

“Oh. Yeah, well, Jules, I don’t think Docklands is where we’ll be going.”

“Where do you want to go then?”

“Not sure. Maybe south of the river. Somewhere nice, a place with a garden, maybe, and more bedrooms.” She pursed her lips. “Might need them eventually.”

“Okay, I’ll look south then.”

“You don’t mind moving again?”

“No. I won’t have to go to St. George’s.”

She sat up. “Is it really bad?”

I shrugged. “All schools are. I’m used to it.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You know your dad will do everything he can to help, don’t you? You just have to tell him what’s wrong.”

“I know.”

“I’ll help, too, if I can. If you want me to.”

“Okay. Uh, thanks.”

“I know it’s not easy for you, but I do want us to be friends, Jules. I love your dad.”

“I get it.”

She gave me a small grin and sipped some iced juice. “All right then. I’m going to get me some more sun before Barney gets back. I’ll be washing eye-skids off for hours if he sees me out here like this.”

I blushed again. “Right. Good idea.”

She turned over so she was lying on her front, then unclipped her bikini strap so it wouldn’t interfere with her tan.

It was really hot out there on the patio.

I wondered if Dad loved her as much as Michael loved Jyoti. I’d never thought about it before because thinking those kind of things is difficult for me. I suppose Rachel’s as pretty as Mum, and a lot younger. She must love Dad; otherwise she wouldn’t have married him. And she said they wanted a house with more bedrooms. That must mean they were going to have children, which is also why you get married. I never thought of that, either: me with a brother or sister—well, half brother, half sister. That would be weird. I don’t even know how I’d feel about that. Hopefully I’ll be at university doing my physics degree by the time that happens, so I won’t have to get involved.

Chapter 11

Off to the Office

Spain wasn’t as bad as I’d been expecting. Actually, I got quite a surprise out there, and what made it even more remarkable was that it came from Barney.

Dad and Rachel went out clubbing every night. But three evenings, we all went out to dinner together first. Going plush, Gran called it. We got taxis down to Puerto Banus each time. Barney said it was the posh end of Marbella. I think he was right. The streets were so full of supercars it was like being on the set of Top Gear. People wore clothes that you normally only saw on mannequins in windows of exclusive shops. And all the white people were so dark—either murky orange or a really weird brown like their skin was coffee-stained. The older they were, the darker the shade and the more wrinkles they had—same as Barney.

There were whole streets that were mostly bars and restaurants and clubs. Everything was so much cleaner and smarter than back home. I kind of saw why my grandparents liked living here, and the warmth was supposed to make it easier if you had arthritis—which all old people have.

We went to Cono’s on the first night. It had a huge open courtyard in the middle, with a fountain right at the center. The vines overhead were combined with tiny lights, like bright stars in the leaves. It was kind of cool, and Barney got all excited when he saw some Premier League footballers at a table down the other end. The girls sitting with them had dresses a lot shorter than the one Rachel wore. And I’d thought that was small enough. They were younger than Rachel, too, like they could’ve been senior pupils at St. George’s.

“You going to have a beer then, lad?” Barney asked me with a laugh as we sat down.

“You leave Jules alone,” Gran told him.

“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t like beer.”

“You’ve tried some then, lad? Good on you.”

“I don’t like the smell,” I told him. “Olfactory response is a strong indicator of taste.”

“Blimy. A Proctor who doesn’t like beer. Can’t have that. We’ll have to break you in slowly, eh, lad? Start you off on some ladybeer.”

“On what?”

“Ladybeer: a shandy, lad. A shandy.”

“Oh.”

“He’ll be all right,” Dad said to Barney.

“Now, you make sure you order a starter as well as a dessert,” Gran told me. “I still think you’re too thin.”

I opened the menu. It was huge, and mainly fish, which is the biggest cause of food poisoning (apart from rice in takeaways), but fortunately all the dishes had an English translation underneath so I could avoid the really dangerous bits.

Barney clapped his hands loudly. “Come on, come on, garson; a man can die of thirst in here.”

“Behave,” Gran said in a sharp voice.

“It’s all right, girl; they all know me in here. They should mind.” He turned to me, suddenly solemn. “I knew what it was like here before they built this town.”

“Do you?”

“Ooh, Jules,” Gran said, patting my hand. “You should listen to this. It’s right spooky.”

“Soon as we came here,” Barney said, “I knew it. I knew the land, the hills, the shore. Didn’t I, girl?”

“He did,” Gran agreed. “Very first time, when we drove in along the coast road, he said to me: Girl, he said, there’s some big rocks around the next corner. And do you know what?”

“There were some big rocks around the corner?” I asked.

“There were, Jules. No word of lie.”

“I remember it from decades ago,” Barney said. “Turn of the century, like—last century; when this was just empty land. Banus built the marina back in the early seventies, and the rest of the developments sprouted out after that, until you reach what you got today. So I reckon I must have lived here in an earlier life. I picked up Spanish dead quick, too. Like it’s my second language.”

I just stared at him in shock. “What else do you remember?”

“The land. I remember the land. And the sea. It was hard times back then. I reckon I fought in the civil war.”

“Which side?” Dad muttered.

“You can laugh, son,” Barney said stiffly, “but it’s real, Jules. I swear it.”

“Do you have a good memory, Barney?” I asked. It was amazing. I’d never thought anyone else in the family had a memory like mine, especially not Barney.

“Best there is.” He twitched a grin. “Never forgot a debt back in the day, did I?” He nudged Gran.

“He didn’t,” Gran agreed.

“I still remember them now. All the amounts, down to the last penny.”

“I remember everything, too,” I told him. “The last time you visited us in Yaxley, three years seven months ago, you were wearing Levi’s jeans and a green shirt, with black-and-yellow Reebok trainers.”

“Blimey!” Barney grunted.

“And, Gran, you were in an orange blouse and a black cardigan with silver ladybug buttons. Your handbag was leopardskin with a gold chain strap.”

“I remember that handbag,” she exclaimed. “I’ve still got it somewhere. Years out of season now,” she confided to Rachel.

“And you, lad, had red shorts and a T-shirt with them daft Minions on it,” Barney said smugly. “The ones off’ve the film.”

“I did. Yes!”

Barney gave Dad a sly glance. “Jules, I think the brains skipped a generation.”

Rachel was looking at me with a very surprised expression. “Do you really remember everything?”

I nodded. “Yes. I keep telling you I do.” Seventeen times in total, now.

“What about you, Dave?” she asked Dad. “Can you do it?”

“Not quite like that,” he said with an irritated grimace.

“So did you have a past life?” I asked Barney.

“No other way to explain it, lad.”

“That makes him a Buddhist,” Dad said with a chuckle. “Imagine that.”

“I’m not a bleeding Buddhist. They all come back as dogs or spiders or something.”

“Only if you’ve been a bad boy,” Gran said knowingly. “So right now he should be a toad. A big fat one.”

Barney gave me a cheerful smile. “Ignore them, lad. We know the truth, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do.”

—

The Monday after we got back, I went to the office. Michael Finsen’s office. It was in a long concrete-and-glass building just off Canada Square. I hung around on the pavement on the other side of the road. There were a lot of companies with offices in the building; it was incredibly busy. Everybody went in and out through the main entrance.

Watching it, I remembered how Michael hated the revolving door in the middle; he always used one of the ordinary doors on either side. There were people in dark suits standing outside, with the Secret Service earpieces—the ones with the coils of clear plastic tubing that vanished down into their collars. They smiled at the people going in, who were all dressed in expensive suits. The only difference among them was their ties, like they were all in competition to have the brightest one.

I caught one of the security people glancing over at me a couple of times, but she didn’t start talking into her suit cuff like they do in the films. I felt a lot safer in Docklands than I did in Islington; it’s like a Kenan Abbot exclusion zone. His type simply didn’t belong here.

Michael Finsen came out of the building (using a side door) at twelve thirty-seven. It was the face I’d recognized in the Facebook photos. He was really real! My legs went all tingly and weak, the same sensation you get with vertigo (I used to get it on fairground rides; when I was younger, Dad took me on the rides until I cried so much Mum stopped him).

Michael was with a couple of colleagues. They set off across Jubilee Park, talking and laughing together. It must be nice to have friends like that, people you enjoy being with.

Then Michael looked around, and he wasn’t smiling. I froze. I thought he’d realized who I was. But he just kept scanning all the people on the street.

And I remembered why: Vladimir McCann. Mike’s memory made me shiver.

Jyoti is already in bed when I come out of the bathroom. She is sitting up with her laptop on her knees, frowning at the screen. The light glints off the diamond in her engagement ring. She never takes it off, not even at night.

I slip under the duvet and snuggle up beside her. Her frown only gets deeper, which isn’t good.

“What’s up, babe?” I ask.

She sighs and closes up the laptop. “Someone from before.”

“Before?”

I get the disgruntled look she always spikes me with when I’ve said something truly dumb.

“Before you.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He’s called Vladimir McCann. It wasn’t serious, not like you.” She gives me a small smile and squeezes my arm. “We went out for a few months, that’s all. He wasn’t…right.”

I look at her laptop. “What happened to him?”

“He’s not well. Mentally, I mean.”

“What?”

She reluctantly opens the laptop for me. It’s her Facebook page. I start to read what Vladimir has written in her Visitor Posts.

She’s right. He is ill. It’s all nonsense—most of it incoherent, disconnected from reality. But in among the bizarre paragraphs about how the world is falling apart are disturbing passages. Personal ones. About how she knows what she’s done is wrong. About how she shouldn’t have left him. How that weekend they spent in Portsmouth will haunt him, and that is entirely her fault.

“We never even went to Portsmouth,” she tells me sadly.

The end of it is a long rant about how badly he is suffering now that he can see the truth. How that suffering wouldn’t end. How she will have to face up to what she’s done, and that will be dark for her. Very dark.

“I’m going to the police,” I tell her.

Chapter 12

Time Line

When I got home, I tried to go onto Jyoti’s Facebook page to check it, but she’d closed it down.

I remembered the date Vladimir posted his tirade—three months and eight days ago. The post was actually quite scary. Even the stupids have a kind of logic to their behavior, which is easy for someone smarter, like me, to discern. Then there are criminals, who are actually clinical psychopaths, which doesn’t mean they go around hacking people apart the way films depict them (Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me see the ones with Sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter even though they’re classics, but I know the plot; there are literally thousands of spoiler reviews on the Internet). Their neurochemistry means they simply don’t empathize and conform with normal human social constraints (looking at you: Kenan Abbot & Scrap Owen). That’s why they turn to crime; they don’t see anything wrong with stealing or threatening other people. Interestingly, the top 1 percent of them wind up running companies or banks or going into politics. People always misclassify them and call them ruthless; they’re not. They simply see an advantage for themselves and take it without any regard for the consequences. It’s their nature.

Again, I can understand them.

Vladimir McCann was not stupid or psychopathic. Michael Finsen was right; Vladimir was flat-out mad.

I went on Vladimir’s Facebook page. His posts there were even worse than the one he wrote on Jyoti’s page. It was very hard for me to follow his writing. There was nothing rational there. But he did mention his medication. Mainly when he wasn’t taking it. Oops, forgot again, he was always saying. Or: These new tabs make everything dull, I can’t think proper. Or They space me out too much. A couple of times he talked about being sectioned. Logging on from inside my padded cell. Which couldn’t be right; I’m sure mental hospitals don’t allow patients Internet access.

I couldn’t tell what was true or not. You can’t analyze something like that; there’s no reference point. I wouldn’t like it if he’d sent me anything like that. So no wonder Michael was worried and angry.

And Michael and Jyoti were engaged now. That was something nice to come out of this, I supposed.

“How good are the anti-stalking laws?” I asked Dad that night.

He gave me a very surprised look and just said: “Why?”

This time I’d worked out what to say in advance. It was no good me trying to explain what had been happening. Dad and Rachel don’t understand anything that happens outside their view of the world; their brains aren’t big enough. So I wasn’t lying to them, just explaining in a way they’d understand. “I saw this strange man today. He was in the Angel Center. I think he was following a woman. She didn’t know. He was hanging around outside the shops when she went in, and he sat by himself in Wagamama when she went in to meet some friends. It was kind of creepy.”

“Did you tell her?” Rachel asked me.

“No. I couldn’t be sure. It might have been coincidence.”

“You didn’t think so, though, did you?” Dad said.

I shook my head. “No. He was acting all weird. But that’s just what I thought. The police need solid evidence, don’t they?”

“Okay, well, the next time you see something like that, tell the mall’s security people. They’ll know how to deal with it.”

“Ha,” Rachel grunted. “This is what it’s like being a woman, Jules. You get some right creeps on the street these days. Harassment is getting worse all the time.”

“But if she’d complained, would the stalking laws protect her?” I asked.

“Not if he’s a complete loon,” Dad said. “But they’re good enough to warn most people off.”

I went back to Docklands the next day. This time I disguised myself so the building security people wouldn’t recognize me. A red T-shirt now, and shorts (yesterday I had a green T-shirt and jeans); I never wear red on Tuesdays, so it was pretty radical. I couldn’t bring myself not to wear socks in my sneakers, but I did roll them all the way down so it looked like I wasn’t. I borrowed Rachel’s baseball cap, the one with her gym logo on the front. Then I finished it off with sunglasses.

Dad was just going out to work when he saw me. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Out.”

“Well, try and avoid those boys from school, okay?”

“Sure.”

His mouth opened, like he was going to say something more. But he just looked at my clothes again and shrugged. “See you tonight.”

I stayed in the flat for a couple of hours, searching the Internet for any files on Vladimir McCann. But he was as bad as Michael when it came to filling in his Facebook details; all it said was that he lived in London. He wasn’t reliable enough for me to believe it. Not without a confirmed cross-reference.

But there wasn’t anything on him. He must have been one of those people who lived off the grid.

Thinking about it, I supposed I did, too. I’d never signed on to any social media site. I don’t have any friends to message or share photos with, so there’s no point.

Now that I knew more about Michael, I thought about sending him a new message, but I decided against it. It’s logical: I could just walk up to him and say hello. This gave me the advantage. If he did know who I was, taking security precautions didn’t matter; if he didn’t know, then he would probably think I’m some kind of weirdo stalker like Vladimir, and he’d likely be all super-sensitive about that, so security was important. By security I mean not saying who I was or where I lived.

There’s a special technique you can use for getting people to tell you stuff without them realizing what they’re doing. It’s simple enough. I’d go up to him looking all confident and say something like: “Hi, you’re Michael, aren’t you? My dad says you used to play football in his league.” That way he’d think he knows me and start talking.

According to the Internet, it’s called soft-sideways interrogation. The most famous example ever is Neville Chamberlain, who was prime minister just before World War Two. He was in a lift in Harrods when a posh young girl and her nanny got in. The girl politely said hello to him and looked very familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember her name. So he asked her if her father was still in the same job, thinking she’d say what the job was so he could work out who she was. She replied: “Yes, he’s still king.” It was Princess Elizabeth.

Maybe I won’t use that technique.

Though, actually, Chamberlain did get to find out who she was.

I arrived outside Michael’s office at twelve twenty-five. The same security people were on the entrance. The woman who had looked at me a couple of times yesterday didn’t pay any attention to me today. She wore different earrings—small purple ones with the circular peace symbol, which the Internet says was designed by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I thought it was odd that someone from security would wear those.

Michael Finsen came out for lunch at twelve thirty-seven. I liked that. He clearly knew the importance of routine and how easy it makes life.

I hadn’t even started following him when I began remembering his trip to the police station.

It wasn’t Mike’s happiest memory.

I go into the reception area, which is so much smaller than I’d expected, given the size of the station. It’s a long way in from the big glass doors, making it oddly dark. The desk is surrounded by thick security glass, and the door beside it has a keypad so you can’t get any farther into the building.

There’s a community service officer in a high-viz jacket sitting at the back of the reception, using a computer. I know the cliché about police officers looking younger as you get older, but he can’t be more than twenty-two. It doesn’t inspire me with confidence.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he asks.

You can start by going and getting a real police officer out here for me to talk to, I think. “One of my fiancée’s old boyfriends is threatening her,” I tell him.

“In what way?”

Seriously? Do you not understand the word threat? “He posted this on her Facebook page.” I hold up my smartphone, which is showing the Visitor Post.

He takes it from me and starts to read. It takes him a long time—longer than it should. The way his face is all creased up, I keep expecting his lips to move silently as he reads.

When he finally finishes, he looks up and says: “There’s no threat there, sir.”

“What?”

“It’s odd, granted, but he doesn’t actually threaten her with anything.”

“You’re kidding! He says she’s going to come to a dark end. It’s right there.”

“But he doesn’t specifically say he’s going to harm her. It’s more like a prediction based on what happened in Portsmouth.”

“They never went to Portsmouth.”

“I see.” He purses his lips. “Has there been anything else?”

“Well, not yet, no. That’s why I’m here, so you can stop it getting out of hand.”

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t a cause for any kind of police action.”

“You mean you won’t even talk to him?”

“We have no reason to.”

“This is a joke! What are you here for, then? What’s the point of having police? You’re all useless.”

He points to a big poster on the wall, one that says any abusive behavior toward police personnel will be dealt with severely, and may result in civil court action.

“Oh for…” I take my phone back off him and turn to leave.

“I can give you an incident number, sir,” he says.

“What?”

“An incident number for your complaint. That makes it all official, see. So if he bothers your fiancée again, it will be considered as showing a pattern of harassment. Then we may be able to take action.”

Almost! I almost just walk out. But instead, I take a breath and say: “Fine. Give me the number, then.”

Chapter 13

Asteroid Impact Mission

I was shocked—exactly the same as Michael had been, though perhaps with not quite so much anger thrown in.

What use are the police? I didn’t expect them to send an armed tactical team around to Vladimir’s house straightaway, but this? A crime number? The tabloid sites are right: We are sliding into anarchy.

Michael couldn’t even slam the door as he left. He tried, but it had dampening hinges.

I sat in the flat by myself for the rest of the afternoon, thinking about what I remembered and what to do about it. Future-me was obviously revealing Michael’s life to now-me for a reason, but I simply couldn’t see what it was. Not yet. I still needed more data.

One interesting thing, though. Whenever I saw Michael, I received more of his memory; he must be a visual trigger. And yesterday he’d been looking around for Vladimir. So there was still a stalker problem. Future-me must be wanting now-me to help. Somehow. I really needed more information to add to the file.

The next day I wore a pale-blue hoodie and black trousers to go to Docklands. Not that I had to worry about the security people. Now I that knew his routine, I waited in Jubilee Park, out of sight from the office entrance.

Michael went to lunch at twelve forty-one—so, slightly later today, then. It was just him and one other bloke this time. I sat on a bench and watched the pair of them go past. I guessed they were talking about work; both of them were looking very serious, and there was plenty of hand-waving.

And I’d been right. Just the sight of him was bringing back another memory. I was remembering the time not long ago when Michael caught sight of Vladimir—

—then I wasn’t remembering anything at all, because I was looking across Jubilee Park at one of the big curving entrances to the Tube station and saw him standing just inside the arch. Vladimir McCann! Right in front of me. He was stalking Michael.

—

I left right away. Dad’s advice wasn’t going to help. By the time I got to the security people outside Michael’s office and told them, Vladimir would be gone, and they’d be super-suspicious about me.

The new Michael memory was from three and a half weeks ago. I know that because Michael was sitting in a coffee shop in Docklands reading the paper, so I knew the date the stories were from, just before school term finished.

Some animal instinct makes me look up from the news about an East London MP’s expenses scandal and there is that piece of scum Vladimir, standing outside the window, looking in at me. Scruffy little nonentity in his mid-thirties, with thinning brown hair that hasn’t been washed for a while, and stubble that isn’t yet a beard. Baggy gray-green corduroy trousers and a suit jacket that is several years out of style, with sleeves that are all creases. He isn’t making any attempt to hide, just staring in at me.

Some of the other customers have noticed him. They nudge one another uncomfortably. Vladimir doesn’t quite come over as a typical homeless type, but he is disturbing enough to rattle the cozy mums having their coffee break after getting the kids to school.

So now what do I do? Go out and confront him? Just sit tight? I have to admit, some part of my brain is playing an enjoyable fantasy of me marching out there and smashing the crap out of him. But he is a genuine nutter; Jyoti had to shut her Facebook page down after that second rant he posted. Not that the police did anything about that, either. Idiots!

We stare at each other for a few seconds. I keep my expression completely emotionless, then I fold my paper up, keeping eye contact with him. When I stand up, there is a flicker of panic on his face, and he turns away. I walk to the door, all calm and cool. I’m not going to shout or threaten, I am determined about that, but I am going to do my best to be utterly intimidating. Hopefully even his junked-up brain will have enough basic animal self-preservation instinct left that he’ll know not to come near either of us again.

By the time I get outside, he is twenty yards away. I don’t chase after him; that would be stupid. But I do keep that level expression in place. And—yes!—he looks back, seeing me all unruffled and cold-eyed. I swear he starts walking even faster after that.

That’s right, freak, run. Go plague your therapist.

When I finished writing all that up in the Michael Finsen file, I read it back carefully. What Michael did in the coffee shop, trying to alarm Vladimir…I don’t think he thought that through properly at all. I mean, the other day when I saw him for the first time, he was still checking to see if Vladimir was still stalking him. So (1) he now knows that quite clearly wasn’t the end of it, even though he missed seeing Vladimir today. (2) How come Vladimir (2a) knew who he was, and (2b) knew where he was?

Obviously Vladimir is being a whole lot more active than just sending out weird Facebook posts. He’d discovered that Michael was Jyoti’s new boyfriend, discovered either where Michael worked or, more worrying, where they both lived. Now, I did the same thing quite easily, because I have Michael’s memories. But to do that without insider knowledge is more difficult by a whole order of magnitude. You’ve got to be seriously obsessed to accomplish that.

And Vladimir hasn’t stopped following Michael about. It was so creepy seeing him there at the Tube station. I mean, it was weird when I saw Michael for the first time, but this was frightening and weird. What did Vladimir want? Or did he even want anything? He was in the middle of some kind of breakdown, so he wasn’t rational.

I wondered if he was going to mug Michael or, worse, put him in hospital? Maybe he thought if he got rid of Michael, then he stood a chance of getting Jyoti back. From what I knew, I didn’t think so. For a start, they were engaged. But perhaps Vladimir didn’t know that.

I opened my laptop and went on to my Big Russell Facebook page. I stared at it for a long time, trying to decide if I should help.

I pictured Vladimir as a dinosaur-killer asteroid—one big enough to wipe out all the life on Earth if it crashes into us. Like the voice-over says at the start of Armageddon: It’s happened before, and it will happen again. But here’s the thing. If an asteroid ten kilometers in diameter is streaking toward Earth, it’s very difficult to knock it out of the way when it’s close—say, inside the moon’s orbit (like they did in Armageddon). By then, it’s too big and too close and too fast. That much inertia is way too difficult to alter, even if you hit it with a dozen nukes. So if you look up what NASA suggests, you’ll see they want to target it with smaller kinetic impacts while it’s a lot farther out, which only delivers a tiny change of course. That way, by the time it reaches Earth, the course change has grown enough that it sails harmlessly past us. They’re even researching how to do it: a joint mission with the European Space Agency called AIDA, scheduled for a 2020 launch.

That was what Vladimir needed. Right now he’s this massive ball of anger and madness heading straight for Michael; and nukes (common sense / the police) wouldn’t stop him. But a small kinetic impact now, before it got out of hand, should deflect him.

I figured this was it. This was the reason I was getting Michael’s memories; future-me remembered where they take me (Jubilee Park this lunchtime). Seeing Vladimir today was such a small subtle thing. It made me the tiny, early kinetic impact, the deflector who averted catastrophe. If I intervened, Michael Finsen could go ahead and lead a normal untroubled life.

So Big Russell sent a message to Vladimir McCann’s Facebook page: Hi, I heard Jyoti and Michael are engaged. That’s really good news. In the future, they will be happy together. We should all wish them well and let them get on with their new life.

That should do it.

Chapter 14

Target Practice

Dad and Rachel were going away to Ibiza for a long weekend with a whole bunch of their friends—well, mainly her friends.

“Sorry, son, that’s a nonstarter,” Dad said on Wednesday evening when I asked if I could stay in the flat by myself. “We arranged this little break months ago. Can’t get out of it, and it’s not fair to Rachel to try.”

“I get it.”

“You don’t mind staying with Uncle Gordon, do you?”

“No.” Which was true. What I did resent was missing seeing Michael every lunchtime. I was learning so much from his memories. What I wanted now was more details dating between Vladimir’s second Facebook post and now. I wouldn’t get that if I was stuck up in Lincolnshire with Uncle Gordon. On the other hand, it was only until next Tuesday. In espionage, patterns betray you to enemy agents all the time, and I had been going to Docklands on a regular basis.

I took an hour to pack that night, making sure I had enough clothes, and that they were the right ones, and then added extra in case of emergencies, like Dad’s plane crashing. They were flying in an Airbus again.

I was checking Big Russell’s Facebook page in bed when I heard Rachel say: “Can’t he go by himself? Gordon will be there to pick him up.”

“Ha!” Dad grunted. “That stoner couldn’t pick himself up off the floor.”

Vladimir hadn’t replied to Big Russell’s message. I put my headphones on and started streaming Supergirl.

Dad came with me on the train to Peterborough. Uncle Gordon was waiting for me on the other side of the station ticket barrier. Dad gave me a hug and said, “Call me if you need me. I’ll have my phone on the whole time. Promise.”

I hugged him back; it was hard to let go. I guess Dad was my new normal now. Actually, he was my only normal.

Even with my memory, I miss Mum.

“Don’t forget to charge the phone at night,” I told him when I let go. “Put it on before you go to sleep.”

His mouth did a funny little half smile. “I’ll remember, Jules.” Then he went back out on the platform and caught the train that was going back to London. He’d only been in the station for seven minutes.

Uncle Gordon took the sleeping bag off me and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked to his car. “How you doing, Jules?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“I heard there’s an offer on the house.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to swing by for a last look?”

“No point,” I told him. “It’s in my head.”

He nodded slowly. “She’s in there as well, isn’t she?”

“Of course.”

“I’m glad you’ve still got her, Jules. That’s nice.”

We arrived at the car and put all my luggage in the boot. “I’ll remember you when you’re dead,” I told him reassuringly.

Uncle Gordon laughed. “Good to know.”

His kitchen was even more cluttered now that he had all Mum’s old appliances. The lounge was hot, hotter than it’d been in Spain.

“Got to keep the wood burner on,” he said with a shrug. “That’s what heats the hot water.”

He went to get lunch ready. I opened my MacBook and used the cottage Wi-Fi to log in to Facebook.

Vladimir McCann > Big Russell.

I know you. Liar! I know what you are. Liar! They will never be happy in the future. Liar! They will never be happy anywhere. Liar! She is my eternal love, she has been my love a thousand times in a thousand lives already. Don’t you understand that, you maniac? I am Mark Antony and she is my Cleopatra; I am JFK and she is my Marilyn; I am Captain Kirk and she is my green-skinned alien dancer. She will be mine a thousand times again in the real future of every life I will live. You cannot stop this, for our love is blessed by gods and angels alike. Don’t try to lie to me again. Don’t try to hide. You are nothing. I laugh at you. You are the darkness at the end of time. I am the light. I am the truth. You will know me. You will know my wrath.

I closed it down fast.

“Chicken soup all right? The tins are still in date,” Uncle Gordon called from the kitchen.

I nodded.

He came into the lounge. “Chicken soup—Aw, Jules, what’s wrong, man?”

“I’m wrong,” I stammered. Talking was hard. My throat had all tightened up. I was crying. “I got it wrong. I don’t do that. I’m not wrong. How did it happen?”

“Naa.” He sat on the sofa beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. “You don’t get nothing wrong, Jules. There’s just a few bumps on every road, that’s all. I think you hit one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s okay to get worked up about your mum. It’s only been a couple of months. I’m never going to forget her, and I don’t have anything like your memory.”

“All right,” I mumbled.

“I’m glad you’re here, Jules. Here is where you get to chill and be yourself, understand? You don’t have to put a brave face on everything. You can be real here, man.”

“Thanks, Uncle Gordon.”

“All right then.” He gave me a big squeeze. “Chicken soup it is. I’d give you something else that’d help, but you’re not really old enough, and your dad would kill me.”

“Uncle Gordon,” I said when he got up.

“Yeah, man?”

“I won’t ever want any of that, thanks. Mum was really against drugs.”

“Er—what?”

“I know that’s not really spinach you grow in your greenhouse. I am thirteen, Uncle Gordon.”

“Riiiight.” He grinned, then laughed. “I love it. Nothing gets past you, ’coz you are the best, Jules. Really, the best.”

I started to tidy up the sofa bed. The whole place was a complete tip. Even as I was doing it, I had trouble focusing. Vladimir was coming to get me. I would know his wrath, he said. I sat down and opened the MacBook again. I closed down Big Russell’s Facebook page, then canceled the Gmail account. Just to be certain, I ran a virus check as well. The MacBook was clean. Vladimir had no way of tracing me now, I was sure.

When I’d finished, I felt a bit safer. It was frightening, though. If he did trace the IP address (somehow; maybe friends in that hacker group Anonymous?), there’s no way he could know it was me. But he might think it was Dad. If he was good enough to hack the IP, he would be able to check who lived at the flat, so he’d see no one called Russell was there. So I guessed it would be okay.

I heard Uncle Gordon yell angrily from the kitchen. I yelped in fright: He’s here already, Vladimir has found me!

There was a strange twang sound, and Uncle Gordon was shouting: “Get out of it, you little sod! There’s plenty more of those coming your way. Go pee on someone else’s garden.”

I was shaking badly when I peered around the door. I saw Uncle Gordon standing by the back door, which was open. He was holding a thick black plastic catapult.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Bloody cats. This village is under siege from them. They come in my garden and crap all over the potato beds.” He turned back to the open door and raised his fist. “I eat those potatoes, you know.”

“Cats?”

“Yeah. There’s a whole load of mad old cat women around here, they let them run about all over the place.”

I stared at the catapult. It was quite big, and the elastic was thick and powerful. “Won’t that hurt them?”

“That’s the idea, Jules. I only use gravel, mind. It’s ball bearings that are lethal. Hell, put one of those in a top-of-the-range catapult and they’re like bullets. Gravel’s milder, but any cats get hit by gravel, they think twice about trespassing here again, dig? It stings like a bastard.”

Which wasn’t very nice. Cats are pets, and you can’t keep them inside like you can dogs. But I suppose if they’re using his garden as a toilet, he’s entitled to take precautions. Especially as he eats the potatoes.

Actually, I eat those potatoes, too.

My stomach gurgled in reaction, and I felt mildly sick. “You do wash your vegetables, don’t you?” I asked.

“ ’Course I do.”

I saw the small pile of gravel on the work surface near the door; the stones were bigger than I expected. “Where did you get the catapult from? It looks…dangerous.”

“Ah ha! You haven’t seen my new toy yet, have you?”

Uncle Gordon had a 3-D printer.

“I got it to make my own specialist cable clips,” he told me as it buzzed away behind his servers, creating a new batch of clips. “But the Internet has a million files of stuff you can print, including catapults. You need to buy the elastic, mind. Can’t print that. Not yet anyhow.”

“People have printed guns,” I told him.

“Bloody hell. Well, we’re not printing a gun, Jules. What else do you fancy? I’ve only got black plastic, mind. Darth Vader, maybe?”

“A catapult like yours,” I told him straightaway.

We made three that afternoon. It was brilliant. Uncle Gordon showed me the design program, and we customized them for me. The handle on the first was too big for my fingers; then we adjusted the length. We wound up with one that was modeled exactly on my grip.

There was some elastic left over from his, which we used. Then I went out into the garden to practice. Uncle Gordon set up some old plastic milk cartons for me to shoot. Pulling the elastic back for the first time and taking aim, I felt like Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games arena. So slick and cool.

The first four shots missed completely. Uncle Gordon told me to move closer. I managed to hit a bottle on the seventh go.

I think they must use a lot of CGI to help Jennifer Lawrence in the films. That or catapults aren’t as accurate as her bow and arrow. The gravel doesn’t help; the stone is always an irregular shape, which throws everything off.

After ten minutes, Uncle Gordon went into his shed and produced a box of one-centimeter ball bearings. “These won’t tumble in flight,” he said confidently. “Good for your confidence when you’re training.”

We made a new target. First we rigged up an old blanket between wooden posts to capture the ball bearings—like sandbags on a firing range. Then we got one of his giant marrows from the garden and propped it up in front of the blanket.

He was right. Ball bearings are much better projectiles than gravel. I learned how to draw the elastic back level, centering it between the fork prongs. Then you had to hold it steady when you released; I’d been flinching a lot before.

The ball bearings didn’t just hit the marrow. They actually penetrated it and got stuck inside the pulp—which was kind of scary but fun. I kept shooting until I could hit the marrow every time.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he said eventually.

My arms ached. I’d been using the catapult for ninety minutes. I felt really pleased with myself. I’m never any good at physical sports stuff, which is why I hate them. But this I could do properly. If mad Vladimir stalked me now, he’d never know what hit him.

We had pizza and chips for supper. Afterward, Uncle Gordon lit one of his spinach cigarettes, then flicked through the Freeview TV channels until he found a repeat of Big Bang Theory. I don’t like watching repeats. There’s no point, especially not with sitcoms. A joke is never funny the second time you hear it. And I remember all the dialogue. But Uncle Gordon chuckled away at it.

“We’ll work on distance tomorrow,” he said.

“Sounds good.”

“You just have to keep steady. Need to build up your muscles a bit for that, Jules.”

I never thought of myself as weak, but I know my coordination isn’t the best. “Rachel has a gym membership,” I told him.

“I would never have guessed.”

“Really?”

“Sarcasm, Jules, sarcasm. You should deploy it more often; it’s a shield against life.” He took a deep drag. The smoke was awful, all sickly, which made my stomach churn. I couldn’t find any studies on whether it’s carcinogenic like tobacco, but I’m reasonably sure it must be.

“What I was thinking was she could take me to her gym and I could do the exercises with her.”

“So you’ll be working out with Rachel, eh?” He winked at me. “I like your thinking.”

“Uncle Gordon?”

“Yep?”

“Do you think reincarnation is real?”

“Whoa, deep thoughts there, man. Is this about your mum again? If it’s true, she’ll be back as someone wonderful, a heart surgeon or a teacher. Something like that.”

“But is it real?”

Uncle Gordon muted the TV. “Okay, here’s something for you, Jules: The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. It’s a very famous quote. Do you know who said it?”

“No.”

“Jack Haldane; he was a British Indian geneticist and evolutionary biologist. One of the smartest people of his time—of any time, come to that. A proper radical, not like the Twitterstorm idiots you get today. And you know what? He was right, too. The more we delve into the quantum structure of the universe, the less we understand. Consider this: Every human culture, no matter how separate their origins, has legends and beliefs about an afterlife and soul. How did that come about, huh, unless there’s a grain of truth in it?”

“I suppose so.”

“That’s right, man, truth is a universal constant. Remember that—oh, ’course you will.” He got to his feet, swaying about, then started up the stairs. “G’night, Jules.”

“ ’Night, Uncle Gordon.”

“Wait, you deserve a full and honest answer.” He turned and gave me a dazed smile. “Personally, I believe consciousness is just a window into time.”

Chapter 15

Back to Abnormal

Dad and Rachel didn’t die in a plane crash, so he came to collect me on Monday evening. I was waiting on the platform when his train pulled in.

“Well, you look happy,” he said.

“It’s been good,” I told him.

He gave Uncle Gordon a vaguely perplexed look. Uncle Gordon touched two fingers to his forehead in salute. I think it was sarcasm.

The train back to Kings Cross departed nine minutes later. “Did you have a good time?” I asked once we’d found our seats. They were prebooked; I know it’s Rachel who does that for him.

“Ate too much, drank too much, danced too much,” he said with a grin.

I smiled. “Is that all?”

Dad’s expression was funny. I suppose that’s what I must look like when I’m trying to work out if someone’s being ironic. “Uh, that’s all I’m going to tell you about, yes.” He put a hand on my knee and squeezed fondly. “So what did you two get up to?”

“Uncle Gordon’s got a three-D printer. He makes all his own plastic ties and clips now.”

“Sounds…interesting.”

“No it doesn’t. But I want one for Christmas. Please, Dad, you can print anything on them. They’re the future.”

“Okay, then. How expensive are they?”

“Depends what sort you get. I made a list for you.”

“Of course you did.”

I didn’t mention the catapult and box of ball bearings I’d packed in my suitcase. I’d practiced a lot over the weekend, and I was a really good shot now. I checked online, and the Olympics didn’t have a catapult category, which was a shame. Everyone at St. George’s would have been amazed if I’d represented the UK.

That night, Dad and Rachel went to bed early. They were both tired, they said. I unpacked and put my dirty clothes in the laundry basket. The catapult went in my bedside cabinet along with the ball bearings. Having it that close made me feel properly safe. If Vladimir broke in to massacre us, he’d be sorry.

I had to wear two hoodies to go to Docklands on Tuesday. My catapult went into the pocket on the inside one, then I zipped the outer one over it so nobody could see it. The Internet gave me a long list of weapons you’re not allowed to carry in the UK, like knives and hand claws, hollow Kubotans, shuriken (throwing stars), kusari, all sorts of martial arts stuff. And no one under eighteen is allowed to buy or carry air rifles and crossbows. But, legally, catapults are classified as toys—which is really dumb. By Sunday evening, my shots were taking big chunks out of Uncle Gordon’s marrows. I didn’t want to chance a police officer or the office security people seeing it. If they did, they might use search and seizure laws and decide the catapult was an offensive weapon. So if I got arrested, it would be up to the court to decide if I had reasonable circumstances to be carrying a catapult. Which I did, obviously, but they’d have to know about Vladimir to understand that. That might be difficult for a stupid to accept.

So even though it was midsummer, I wore two hoodies. I was very careful in Docklands. I got there early—twelve o’clock—and scouted Jubilee Park for any sign of Vladimir. I covered the broad walkway beside the water, and checked the Tube station twice. He wasn’t there. After that, I relaxed a bit and hung around for Michael.

At twelve thirty-eight, Michael and three colleagues came strolling along, talking away about deals and reports. I decided to be very daring and walked straight for them but in the opposite direction, so I actually passed him less than a meter away. He never noticed me, but I remembered this huge surge of emotion he experienced, so strong it took my breath away. Hardly surprising considering what Jyoti told him.

I can feel my eyes watering right there in the middle of the Chinese restaurant, and I don’t care.

“What?” I ask in a real croaky voice.

Jyoti smiles at me across the table. She looks amazing, wearing a purple satin dress that clings to her like static, light glinting off her gold necklace. She never needs to wear much makeup, she’s so naturally beautiful, but she’s dusted on a few highlights so that she looks especially gorgeous tonight.

“Blue line,” she says with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “No mistake.”

“You mean…really?”

“Yes. I’m pregnant.”

I reach over the table and grip both her hands and kiss her. “Really?”

She laughs at how foolish I am. “Yes. The tests are pretty much infallible. I took three.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Yes.” She gives me a concerned look. “You’re not upset, are you? I know this isn’t quite the sequence of events we had in mind.”

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Uh—apart from you.”

She laughs again. “So…big question.”

“What?”

“Do we bring the wedding forward?”

“Oh, hell. Your parents.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“No, but—Oh, whatever. Yes, let’s do it. Let’s get married right away. Hey! We could do Vegas.”

“OMG! You did not just say that!”

“Yes, I did. Come on, how many people do you know who’ve actually done that?”

She giggles delightedly. “It’s crazy. Nobody does Vegas.”

“So we will. It’ll be special and unique.”

“Mike!”

But I can see she is intrigued by the idea. It is such a magical meal. My brain is melting out of my ears; I am being deliriously stupid I am so happy. Having a baby together will be utterly wonderful. She’ll be a perfect mother. If it’s a boy I can take him to Arsenal matches with me—don’t say that out loud! But…“Is it a boy?”

She rolls her eyes. “You have to have a scan to know that. It’s way too early.”

“Oh, right.”

“Do you mind which…? Wait! Are you thinking about taking a boy to football matches?”

“No!”

Her mouth makes a great big O, and she throws her napkin at me. “Michael Finsen! You were!”

“Well, maybe a little.”

She laughs hysterically.

I don’t know what we eat. I don’t taste any of it. Not this night. And I swear off alcohol for the whole pregnancy to be supportive. We only just make the theater in time—and the ushers never let you in after the performance starts. Opening night of Nobody’s Freedom, too. The tickets cost me a fortune. It’s about a funny dystopian world in the future, or something. At least I think it’s a comedy; Jo Brand is in it. But I’m not watching. I just sit there with my arm around Jyoti, staring at her until she tells me to stop. But I can’t. She is my world.

I’m going to be a dad!

I was giddy all the way back to Islington. All Michael’s emotions were reverberating around inside my skull like waves of chaos. They were so strong. I could believe I was in love with Jyoti, too. And a baby’s on the way, which is genuinely wonderful. Just thinking about that made me smile like some gormless stupid.

Seriously weird.

When I got back to the flat, I had to sit down and try to get my head calm. That turned out to be uncomfortably easy. I thought about what Vladimir would do when he found out and my skin went cold. He’d gone full-digital-berserk just from Big Russell’s innocuous deflection message. This was off-the-map psycho territory.

I opened the MacBook and looked up when the opening night for Nobody’s Freedom was.

I said seeing Vladimir at Jubilee Park was frightening. I was wrong. That was nothing. Not compared with this.

The opening night for Nobody’s Freedom was tomorrow.

Chapter 16

Deep Thought

If I was getting Michael’s memories from the future as well as the past, then it was genuine time travel. Future-me had obviously perfected his time machine. Or maybe not. I still couldn’t get my head around paradox. If I turned up at the Chinese restaurant tomorrow and interrupted their meal, I’d be changing the future—or rather, my memory of the future. But if it was changed, then where did the one I remembered come from?

I didn’t understand.

Logically, paradox—the whole causality thing—makes time travel impossible. Any kind of time travel, physically moving ahead or behind in a DeLorean or a Tardis, or the mind-to-mind stuff I’ve been subjected to.

So once again: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Time travel was not logical. But it was happening to me. That was incontrovertible.

But how?

All I had left was Jack Haldane and the stranger-than-imaginable universe theory. I looked him up on the Internet. He was a seriously impressive man who had incredible principles, and stuck with them no matter what, for his whole life. And do you know what? There was another quote of his that just resonated with me as soon as I read it on the screen: It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter.

He believed in souls, too.

Vladimir claimed he’d lived many lives before and would live again. It’s driven him insane.

Barney remembered a past life.

I remembered another life: Michael’s. But Barney and I have abnormally superb memories. Suppose, just suppose, we really did get reincarnated. Normally, humans didn’t remember that, or it was there haunting the subconscious like a vague dream. Haldane’s strange universe was simply censoring our minds to protect us, because knowing that…you end up like Vladimir. That is true causality. The knowledge is too big for a stupid to cope with. That there is no spiritual afterlife, no heaven or hell. You just keep coming back to live a human life for all eternity.

Oh yes. Yes! Because: Consciousness is just a window into time. Who says you have to live your reincarnated lives in a linear fashion? Not this universe.

I used to be Michael Finsen. And when that body died, my soul came back as Julian Costello Proctor.

It’s strange coming back and living in parallel with who you were. Stranger than we can imagine.

But that worked. It fit with what happened. It explained everything.

I know how the universe works. I’m the smartest person who has ever lived, and lived, and lived…

Mum’s not dead, not really; not her soul. I don’t know where in time she is relative to me now, but she’s somewhen. She always has been, and always will be. That’s such a comfort. It’s a strange feeling, too, knowing what I do. I suppose my biological animal body part must affect my soul, my true self. Is that what existing is all about? To live is to experience. To experience is to live.

That’s the kind of thing Uncle Gordon would say.

After smoking a spinach cigarette.

I was going to go and see Michael and Jyoti at the Chinese restaurant tomorrow. That was the final confirmation. If they were there, physical and real, and doing what I remember, then I was not hallucinating or crazy like Vladimir. It would be an absolute proof.

And besides, I am/was Michael Finsen. I had every right to be there and be told I’m going to be a father.

Chapter 17

The End

I texted Dad at lunchtime.

I got a ticket for the new James Bond, 5:30 showing. It’s over 2 h + 30 min of adverts. I’ll be home about 8:30. OK?

You sure about that? Dad texted back. You all right out by yourself at night? I can come and get you when it finishes.

8:30 isn’t night. I’ll be fine.

Well, all right. Any problems, txt me. I’ll come get you.

Thanks.

Enjoy yourself.

I put the phone in my pocket and went to see the film. That way, I’d be able to tell Dad and Rachel all about it when I got back from the Chinese restaurant, and my cover story would remain intact.

I would make a good Secret Service agent. But I still wanted to make the world a better place with smart inventions, and with my super-knowledge I could do that for real now.

After the film, I took the Tube to Leicester Square. Chinatown was just behind it—a long pedestrian road with nothing but Chinese restaurants and Chinese stores. There were these big elaborate colorful gates at the end, and they’d strung lanterns everywhere.

I don’t like Chinese food. First there’s the rice problem, and everything is so slippery. I can’t use chopsticks, either, and it’s embarrassing having to ask for proper cutlery every time.

I didn’t want to go into the restaurant to wait for Michael and Jyoti, because then I’d have to order something. So I stood just down the road and waited for them. Michael had booked a table for six o’clock so they could get to the theater in Shaftsbury Avenue in plenty of time for Nobody’s Freedom at seven thirty.

I had my phone out, pretending to read it so I didn’t seem suspicious. There were a lot of people in Chinatown. I didn’t see Michael and Jyoti at first.

Then Vladimir walked past me. I gasped.

And then The Worst thing happened. He stopped and slowly looked around. Vladimir McCann was staring right at me. He frowned, like he was dragging up the memory of who I was from some deep place in his brain.

Does he know I’m Big Russell?

I ran. I was scared. I had to get clear. My soul is immortal, but my Julian body certainly isn’t. I didn’t want to die! I didn’t care that I was banging into people. I knocked into Jyoti as I went. Her face only registered when I was past. I glanced back and saw Michael giving me an angry glance as he steadied her. Behind him, Vladimir was still frowning at me, but he was turning now, trying to avoid being seen by his stalking targets.

Just for a moment Michael and I were looking right at each other, but I didn’t stop running. I was frightened what Vladimir would do.

After all, Michael remembered coming out of the office just after twelve thirty.

It’s going to be a short lunch; the bank’s base interest rise this morning has caught everyone by surprise. The stock market is going wild, and the rise is throwing a dozen deals we’ve got in the pipeline. They all have to be reviewed, and there is no time. There never is in this business. And it just has to be now, after last night and Jyoti telling me she’s pregnant. It’s damn hard to concentrate on anything right now.

I’m on the steps outside the building’s main entrance when I hear a siren in the distance—police or ambulance, I can never tell. Behind me, Nancy the door warden calls out: “Hey, you! Yes, you. I know you. What are you doing?” Then she’s yelling in shock. Something heavy thuds onto the ground. I turn around. Vladimir McCann is standing two yards behind me. His arm is held out, a revolver in his hand, pointing at my head.

I freeze.

He snarls in fury. Lurches. Fires.

The muzzle flash is as bright as the sun. Pain stabs into me. Then there is only blackness—

Chapter 18

The End Paradox

I was shivering when I got back to the flat. Remembering Michael’s death had lowered my body temperature to ice.

Dad came out of the bedroom, tying his dressing gown belt. “You’re back early.” Then he took one look at me and said: “What’s happened, Jules?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

Rachel appeared, a concerned expression on her face. She was in her dressing gown as well. “You look terrible. Was it those kids again?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Sit here,” Dad said.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t have any strength left. I sat on the lounge settee.

“It was those kids, wasn’t it?” Dad said angrily. He was examining my clothes, trying to find evidence of me being mugged.

Rachel put the Braun electric thermometer in my ear.

“Did you change the sleeve?” I asked anxiously. Used sleeves have lots of bacteria; they can cause serious ear infections.

“Yes.” She smiled. “Not too bad, then.”

The thermometer bleeped.

“What is it?” I asked.

Rachel read the display and pursed her lips. “Slightly high.”

That surprised me. I was so cold. “I’m okay, really.”

“What rating was the film?” Dad asked.

“Twelve A,” I told him.

“Was there something bad in it?”

I shrugged. “Somebody died. A lot of people actually.”

“Oh, Jules.” He gave me a hug. “Maybe James Bond wasn’t the right thing for you to go and see, not right now. Too soon, huh.”

“You poor thing,” Rachel said sympathetically.

“I’m all right.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“I think I just want to go to bed now, thanks.”

“You have to eat something. Your gran will be angry with me if you skip a meal.”

“I’ll have a hot chocolate,” I told her.

Dad sat beside me while Rachel put a mug of milk in the microwave. Microwaves break up all kinds of protein molecules, which wrecks milk’s nutritional value—but she meant well.

“Just the film that bothered you?” he asked quietly.

I nodded.

“All right. But I’d like to go with you to the next one, okay?”

“Okay.”

He leaned in close. “And don’t mention the microwaved milk. Please?”

I gave him an astonished look.

“You’re my son,” he said with a lopsided smile. “I do listen to you, even though I screwed up with the PlayStation.”

I thought I might start crying.

Rachel stirred chocolate powder into the milk and brought the mug over to me.

“Thank you, Rachel. That’s very kind of you.”

I think she looked as shocked as I felt.

I got into my pajamas and went to bed. I didn’t open my laptop, but I did check that the catapult was still there. It was.

Vladimir McCann was a murderer. Rather…he will be. He’s going to kill Michael.

I suppose that’s when my soul is born into this Julian body. So it shouldn’t bother me. After all, I’m living this life because of that murder.

But Michael and Jyoti are expecting a baby. I loved Jyoti when I was Michael. I don’t think love like that will ever happen to me in this life. We could have spent decades together. All that love will be lost now. Never to exist. That’s not fair. There’s so much suffering in the world already, what right does Vladimir have to take away a piece of genuine happiness from anyone, let alone me?

Jyoti will be devastated. And the baby. What will happen to the baby? It’ll never know its father. It’ll never know me.

Worse, my Julian life starts after Michael dies, so I never knew my own child. The baby won’t know that its father’s soul is alive. And even if it did, as Julian I can never be a proper father to it. I still miss Mum terribly, and I know her soul is safe and sound somewhen. Michael’s baby won’t have even that small comfort.

There’s only one thing I can do. The right thing: stop Vladimir before he shoots Michael. In the memory, Michael heard Nancy call out—she’s the security woman on the door, the one with CND earrings. She said I know you just before Vladimir fired the gun. She must have recognized him. But she wasn’t quick enough. If I’m there, I can let her know earlier, in time to stop it.

That way Michael will live. Which might be a slight problem. My soul leaves his body to live in me. What’s going to happen if he doesn’t die on time? Does that mean I don’t get born?

It’s a paradox. I really hate paradox.

But there’s only one way to find out.

—

The news the next morning was all about the Bank of England’s announcement that it was increasing the base interest rate by a quarter percent.

“Finally!” Dad exclaimed as he was eating his breakfast toast. “Savings are going to have a purpose again.”

“Going to be busy this morning,” Rachel agreed cheerfully. “The City will go bananas over this news.” She popped a vitamin pill. “How are you feeling now, Jules?”

“Fine, thanks.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. The reporter on the morning news was standing outside the Bank of England, talking excitedly. People were hurrying past in the background, their faces all creased up and urgent.

“Take it easy today, okay?” Dad said to me. “What are you going to do?”

“Maybe some schoolwork. I want to get well ahead on the science curriculum before term starts.”

“All right. I’ll try and get home early, okay?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

“Good lad, you.”

I wonder if he realizes how much like Barney he sounds sometimes?

I took my time getting ready. Two hoodies again, the catapult in my inside pocket. I put the ball bearings into a plastic box, the type you get to keep food fresh. I laced my trainers up twice, making sure the bow was tight. Phone fully charged—after all, someone’s going to have to call the police.

I left the flat just before eleven. I couldn’t risk being late. Even if the Tube and DLR packed up completely, I could still get there in a bus or taxi.

The underground and the DLR worked just fine. I rode the elevator up out of Canada Square station at ten to twelve. Forty minutes to go.

My limbs weren’t working so well. Every part of me had that horrible vertigo tingle. I was going to change the time line. Which was a physics impossibility. Paradox.

When Robert Oppenheimer tested the first atom bomb, the scientists who built it were worried the explosion would trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere that would destroy the world. Could me creating paradox destroy the whole universe?

I started walking along the road outside Michael’s office at twenty past twelve, searching for Vladimir. I couldn’t see him anywhere. But I remembered him, and time was catching up with that memory.

Then I realized actually seeing him didn’t matter. I knew he was there; it was that simple. I headed straight for the entrance to Michael’s office, pulled out my phone, and dialed 999.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“There’s a man with a gun,” I said. “He’s shooting another man. There’s blood and everything. Help, please. We need police and ambulances. Now!”

“Where are you? What is your name?”

“Jubilee Park Docklands. Hurry!”

“What’s your name—”

I’d reached the steps in front of the big revolving door. “Hurry! He’s going to kill him,” I shouted into the phone.

The people around me started to stare, concern registering. Somewhere behind me, I could hear a siren. That was awfully quick. And Michael was coming out of the sliding door. I started to run toward him. Vladimir was there, waiting calmly. Ten meters away.

I tugged the catapult out.

“Hey, you!”

I gaped in surprise. It was Nancy the door warden, glaring down at me.

She started down the steps. “Yes, you, I know you.”

“No, no, no,” I groaned. I’m not the bad guy! The memory was happening right in front of me. I had to stop it. I tugged frantically at the box of ball bearings in my other pocket. They came free, but I lost my grip and the box tumbled out of my hand.

Nancy was two meters away, reaching for me. “What are you doing?”

The expression on her face is one of my clearest-ever memories. That disapproving frown turning to a comic mask of surprise and panic. She stepped on the ball bearings and flailed about, her arms windmilling wildly. Down she went, as if she’d been rugby-tackled. And behind her, Vladimir was raising his arm, the pistol coming up.

I dropped to my knees and snatched up a ball bearing. Took aim, pulling the elastic back as Michael turned to see what the commotion was about.

I fired. The ball bearing hit Vladimir on the side of the head. He bellowed in pain and jerked about in reaction. His finger pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Michael in the side of his chest, spinning him around. Blood sprayed out. So much blood! And then Michael was falling.

But Vladimir was turning, one hand held against his head where the ball bearing had struck. All around me people were screaming and ducking down for cover.

I was still on my knees, scrambling around for another ball bearing.

Vladimir saw me and started. “You!” His face was bright red, suffused with a terrible rage. I was so scared I almost urinated. He lifted his pistol.

I let go of the elastic. The ball bearing hit him square on the forehead. He flipped backward like a gymnast, his feet actually leaving the ground before he crashed down.

Three of the building security people pounced on him.

The only sound in Docklands was the siren.

I ran up the steps to Michael. He was lying there inertly on the top step, blood spreading out from his wound. His mouth was flapping about like a fish in air.

I knelt beside him and clamped my hand on the wound. Pressure. You always needed to keep pressure on a wound like that. It says so on the Internet.

His blood was horribly warm as it leaked out all over my hand. I could feel bile rising. But his gulping was getting slower—then his limbs started to shake.

I screamed.

Nancy appeared at my side, tipping his head back and opening his mouth. “He’s having a seizure.”

The siren stopped. There was an ambulance at the bottom of the stairs. Two paramedics were racing toward us.

I got pushed aside just as his motions slowed and…stopped. The paramedics took over from Nancy, and she came to stand beside me, her arm going around my shoulder. There was a big pressure dressing, and an IV bag, and an oxygen mask. They cut Michael’s shirt open and put defibrillator paddles on his chest.

Michael spasmed back to life, and he sucked down a big breath of oxygen. “Hell, that hurts.” His eyes flickered open.

“He’s alive,” I said numbly.

“Yes,” Nancy said. “I can’t believe how quickly the ambulance got here.”

I looked up into the sky, waiting calmly for paradox to strike, to not exist anymore, or for the universe to end…

Neither happened.

Chapter 19

The Non-Paradox End

Looking back after seventy years, I still wonder. Am I right? Was Uncle Gordon (wherever his soul is now) right? Is consciousness nothing more than a window into time?

I’m not religious, but I sincerely believe that we have a soul—one that goes on in some way after our body dies. As to when and where it goes—Well, that I’m about to discover.

Here’s two things I discovered after I saved Michael: One, Michael only lived because the paramedics got to him so fast. Me squeezing on his bullet wound didn’t help at all, despite what the Internet says. Of course, I was the one who phoned the emergency services before it happened, thus making sure they got there in time, but I can’t take credit for that. It doesn’t matter because, fact two—Docklands has a phenomenal amount of CCTV surveillance.

Boy-with-a-catapult-taking-out-lunatic-shooter played on every news show on the planet from multiple angles. The YouTube video got eighteen million hits in the first twenty-four hours. Then someone did a mash with a silly music track. That got thirty-two million hits.

Rachel had the front pages of me framed, and eventually hung them all the way up the stairs in the new Wimbledon house.

I got to go to lunch with the prime minister—I took Dad and Rachel and Uncle Gordon.

I got a citizen’s bravery award at a big ceremony at a really plush hotel. Barney and Gran flew in from Spain for that one.

Vladimir McCann received a ten-year sentence in a psychiatric prison. He was released after seven, and spent the rest of his life in and out of various medical institutions before dying of an overdose fifteen years later.

Michael spent five days in hospital before going home and made a full recovery. He and Jyoti got married in Vegas the next week. Exclusive pictures were sold to a magazine for a five-figure sum. He used that money to make stock market investments. Their baby was born eight months later. A boy. They called him Julian.

That’s not just embarrassing, it’s completely weird.

I changed the time line, yet I still live. How can that be?

I really hate paradox.

Or maybe I was just as crazy as Vladimir back in those days, and it was all part of my grief process. I certainly never remembered any more of Michael’s life after that—not that I saw a lot of him afterward. But when I did, it triggered nothing.

He was GeneFood’s major backer at the start. By then, those early stock market investments of his had made him a billionaire, and his venture capital company funded a lot of tech start-ups. I’d started GeneFood a couple of years after I got my genetics doctorate. It was a hell of a ride. Michael cashed in his shares five years later, when their value had increased 3,000 percent.

—

That whole crazy episode was what shifted my interest from physics to biotechnology. I mean, what’s the point of studying quantum cosmology when the universe is underpinned by strange spirituality? So I went into genetics and set up GeneFood. You see, I still wanted to invent something that would help the world. Just not a gadget.

And, boy, did I succeed.

Turning my head is painful now; the nurses have piled the pillows up around me. But I can do it if I take it slowly.

“Careful, Grandpa.”

I smile at Ian. He’s a good lad, him. He shouldn’t have to sit at my bedside watching me die.

“I’m okay,” I reassure him. And—wow—my voice sounds dreadful. But then, breathing is really difficult now. They are not shoving air tubes down my throat. I won that argument a month ago (well, my lawyers did). No drugs. No resuscitation.

I just want to see it one last time. The bedroom window looks down across the cliffs to the Cornish coastline beyond. It’s a fabulous view. Even fifty years back, the house cost a fortune—worth it, though. The Atlantic waves are rolling in, breaking on the rocks in tremendous white spumes. And out there, a kilometer from the shore, the surface of the water is green from huge fields of seawheat.

It feeds a billion people now, they tell me. And it costs practically nothing. I made varieties for every climate, from the poles to the tropics.

I helped people.

Something tightens in my chest. I smile as my eyes close, and now I’m finally going to know. The blackness engulfs me, and so I die—

Chapter 20

After the Paradox

Of all the things, I didn’t expect reincarnation to be painful. Logically, I shouldn’t be aware of much at birth: an abrupt immersion into alien air and light, taking my first breath and crying. A mother’s welcome embrace.

This hurts!

I can barely breathe. My body is shuddering around like I’m being electrocuted. And the pain isn’t letting up one iota; it hurts like hell. Wait, did I just say that out loud? Newborn babies can’t talk.

I open my eyes. Of all the things (2), I wasn’t expecting to see my own face from seventy years ago staring down at me. Damn, I look terrified—poor me. I have a really bad dress sense, too. And then thirteen-year-old Julian Costello Proctor is looking up serenely into the sky, waiting for—

Oh, I remember what he’s waiting for. Paradox to strike with all the might of a dinosaur-killer asteroid.

I really hate paradox. But this universe is definitely strange. I think it has a sense of humor, too. Bet Jack Haldane never knew that.

Anxious paramedics are shouting at me, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. On the ground next to me, underneath three burly security wardens, Vladimir McCann is screaming like—well, like a demented man whose murderous plan just got foiled.

Then one of the paramedics meanders back into focus. “You are one lucky bloke,” he shouts with a smile. “Someone called us just in time.”

I know. I did. Seventy years ago. And I remember every single day of those years. Ah! Including stock market figures. Well done, past-life-me Julian; but now my name is Michael Finsen (again!), and I have The Best memory.

BY PETER F. HAMILTON

Great North Road

Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories

A Window into Time

Pandora’s Star

Judas Unchained

The Void Trilogy

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void

The Evolutionary Void

The Night’s Dawn Trilogy

The Reality Dysfunction

The Neutronium Alchemist

The Naked God

The Greg Mandel Trilogy

Mindstar Rising

A Quantum Murder

The Nano Flower

Fallen Dragon

Misspent Youth

A Second Chance at Eden

The Confederation Handbook

The Abyss Beyond Dreams

A Night Without Stars

PHOTO: © PETER EYRE/LRPS

PETER F. HAMILTON is the author of numerous novels, including The Evolutionary Void, The Temporal Void, The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora’s Star, Fallen Dragon, and the acclaimed epic Night’s Dawn trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God). He lives with his family in England.

peterfhamilton.co.uk

Facebook.com/PeterFHamilton

@PeterFHamilton1

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