He continued. “Every now and then, anomalies, bumps and folds appear in what is usually straight. When an event coincides with this anomaly, it can affect how someone might perceive that event. Scientists don't know how time travel happens, but they do not doubt that it should be possible. People just don't know how to do it yet.”
Jake nodded, as if he knew exactly what was going on. Time was not to be understood as a piece of paper or a ribbon, whatever that was supposed to mean. His confusion was clearly showing again, and Will noticed it.
“Maybe I’m not explaining this very well,” he said. He pulled out a piece of ribbon from a small cupboard by his chair. After a few more seconds of rummaging, he found a piece of string. He then held up the ribbon and continued. “People seem to believe that time is a smooth sequence of events that happen all around us. This is not true. For a start, time is just how we as a race measure events and the aligning of the planets. In that sense, time doesn’t really exist. Are you following me?”
Jake was following, but he felt like he was falling some way behind the conversation.
“Time is just a unit of measurement, and isn’t a ribbon or a piece of paper,” Jake said, trying to prove he was listening.
“Exactly!” Will confirmed, very enthusiastically. Jake found this man to be very unusual. He was the kind of person Jake would usually humour, and then learn to ignore at every subsequent meeting. However, he knew he needed to understand this conversation, because lives might depend on it. For him to listen carefully he needed to ignore the fact that this man met every requirement of the geek stereotype, and would have easily been the kind of person Jake would have picked on in school. His mind was prone to wandering, but he could tune it to a conversation when necessary, and this was one of those times.
Jake just thought to himself that he’d put a great deal of faith in a guy he knew very little about. There had never been any formal introduction. There was no proof that Will was who he said he was. He didn’t even know the name of Will’s wife. This man was unusual, but so was Jake’s current situation. Somehow, Will fitted into this part of Jake's life like a perfectly formed piece of a jigsaw puzzle. All of this seemed a little bit too rehearsed to Jake. He could see that this was not the first time Will had tried to explain all of this. It was almost a pre-prepared monologue for anyone who would listen to his ramblings. Jake felt for a few seconds like a willing victim.
“For the sake of this conversation, we’ll assume time is the actual passing of time, not just a measurement,” Will said, and Jake knew he’d have been confused by just that statement just an hour ago. “But, the passing of time isn’t like a ribbon,” Will went on, putting the ribbon to one side. “It’s more like this piece of string. It isn’t smooth, but has a texture and bumps to it. It consists of various strands woven together, allowing a traveller to find an event if they could navigate through time.”
“So time is not smooth, but rough, and there's a kind of pattern to it?”
“There is definitely a kind of pattern. By learning how to recognise the patterns in space-time, you learn how to navigate to any point in history you care to go to.” He paused again, and looked at Jake, who was nodding away.
“That's incredible,” Jake exclaimed. “So if we know the theory why has no one managed to do this yet, and why does time travel only happen by chance?”
“It seems to be more difficult to apply this theory than anyone has thought.”
“So it remains a theory that no one on earth can put into practice.”
“Indeed. Regarding the part of all of this that involves you: The part that comes down to chance. There appears to be some powerful force behind the passing of time, which has the ability to intercede and cause the alteration of events and time. This can include the ability to change how an entity travels through time. This power can cause people to move forwards and backwards through time. Let me explain what this force is doing to you.” He raised the piece of string again, and held both ends together, forming a kind of loop, pointing at specific points, indicating Jake's journey through time. “You have hit a glitch and a fold in space-time. The glitch has caused you to encounter a fold. Each fold takes you back one day. Each day you revisit, you change. The reincarnation of this day replaces the original incarnation. All of this hangs on the earliest point in space-time you change. So far, nearly a week has been changed, which week has been transplanted in place of the original. Thus replacement occurs in space-time.”
Will described this further, using the string in his hands. “Let’s say your life up to this point currently goes to the end of this string. It will go further, but this is to give you a better understanding of this.”
Jake nodded.
“If you were travelling along this string, and a single strand of the last section was folded over, you’d continue to move forward, when actually you’re moving backwards. It’s something like that happening every day, with only you on this strand, and thus the only person in this kind of loop.”
Jake was starting to make sense of this, which scared him a little bit. He had never needed to spend this long talking to someone so obsessed with science, but he could see it was essential that he heard what Will Spalder had to say. He continued to listen, without interrupting.
“This particular scenario in which you find yourself has been repeated several times. It has been studied, and has even been given a name. It is known as the Time and Event Replacement Phenomenon, or just the Replacement Phenomenon. Sadly no one has come up with a punchy name for it yet.”
Jake decided that despite a requirement to listen without interrupting, he needed another break from this conversation to make sense of it inside his head. He broke free to use the bathroom, ready to return to Will’s unusual monologue.
So Jake discovered that he was not alone in travelling through time. Others had done it, changed things for the better, and had even named the process. He felt less alone than he had felt at the start of the day. He felt as though there might be some hope for the future, assuming he could correct the past.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jake looked at his watch on the way back to the lounge. He had been away from home for a little over an hour. If this conversation went on much longer, he'd need to call Amy and say he'd run into a friend, and that he'd be home shortly.
He walked into the lounge, and found Will staring at a single sheet of paper in his hand. Jake was about to ask what it was, but assumed he would find out if it was important to Jake's objectives.
“So I’m the latest person to have been introduced to this Replacement Phenomenon.” Jake said, expecting that to be enough to tear Will away from the paper he was so intent on reading. Will just sat there, looking at that sheet of paper.
Jake wondered what it was that Will held in his hand that drew his attention so completely. Just as Jake opened his mouth to ask, Will’s head shot up as if he’d woken up from a snooze he wasn’t entitled to. “Sorry, Jake. You said something?” Will asked.
“Yes I did. So you’re saying I’m the latest in this craze of the replacement thing,” he said.
“Correct… Except this isn’t a trend. A trend is usually a short-run thing. This is a phenomenon that has been around for a long time,” Will answered.
“How long is a long time when you're dealing with its measurement?” Jake asked.
“Maybe it’s as old as the earth. It may be even older,” he responded.
Jake was thinking hard about all of this. “So I’m just the latest in a long line of special people to move backwards through time?” he questioned, getting more confused the longer the conversation went on.
“Tell me something about your family, Jake,” Will requested. Jake wasn't sure he heard that right. That seemed to be such a random, sudden shift in conversation that he thought he had misheard what Will said. “My family?" Jake asked.
“Yes. I know nothing about them. This whole thing started when you shouted into the sky when your fa
mily had been killed. It helps to put things into context when I know something about who you are protecting.”
Jake's brow creased with his face now wearing a look of confusion. In their conversation today, and their conversation yesterday, Jake hadn't mentioned his shouting into the night sky, nor had he said his family was actually killed. Maybe he had said more during the previous day than he remembered. He must have said something along those lines, and he couldn't recall everything he had said in the past day or two, especially when the previous day had ended in the way that it did. “My wife Amy, and I, have been happily married for nearly ten years,” he said.
“Happily married for nearly ten, but how many altogether?” Will asked with a big grin on his face.
“We've been happily married the entire time actually,” he replied with a slight smile. His face straightened again and he continued. “I have two sons named Jason and James.”
“And how old are they?” Will asked, seeming genuinely interested.
“Jason is eight, and James is six.”
“Sounds like a wonderful family. Do you get to spend a lot of time with them?” Will asked.
“Not as much as I would like. It was quite a relief to know I had the chance to see them again when I thought I'd lost them.” Jake was glad for the chance to talk to someone about the things he'd thought and felt over the past few days. The more he spoke, the more he felt as if a weight was being lifted from his shoulders.
He could feel his shoulders drop a little as he let go of some of the tension which had been building up for nearly a week. He was a little concerned that the only person he could talk to about emotion and pressure was a stranger who was obsessed with time travel. There was silence for another couple of seconds. Jake welcomed it. There had not been any real quiet in Jake's life for quite a while.
Jake thought he would change the direction of the conversation himself this time, but only slightly. “So how long will this replacement last?”
“How long is a piece of string?” Will answered with a look of resignation on his face. Jake wasn’t sure if he was referring to his own time-space analogy, or if the comment was just a coincidence. “It will take as long as it has to take for you to change what needs to be changed.”
Jake felt his shoulders slump again. “You must be able to give me some idea. Will it last another week, a month, a year?” he asked, feeling himself getting more desperate for some kind of straight answer. “You told me something about why I'm doing this yesterday. When did this drug and weapon thing start?”
“You’re not going to like my answer,” Will warned.
“Liking it has nothing to do with having to hear it,” Jake responded.
“The man responsible for all these trades…” Will paused, took a breath, and continued. “His nickname is The Iron Man. Obviously derived from his surname, Ironside – first name Paul. He's an unconscionable man who makes millions from criminal activity. He forces others to work for him, and occasionally treats these people like pawns in a game of Chess. He carefully calculates his criminal activity, and impulsively plays sport with these people's lives. More than once law enforcement have visited a scene after a trade and found the remnants of some kind of death game between his victims. He's a very cold human being who does not care in the slightest for others. All of law enforcement are desperate to catch this man and stop the terror he causes.”
“Are these law enforcement people close to catching him?”
“They get close from time to time. He has been tracked by the CID as well as other Specialist Services, with help from the SAS for the past three years. They believe he started the chain shortly before that time.” Jake’s shoulders slumped further. He could not believe he might have to go backwards day-by-day for three years or more.
“Three years could be substantially cut short,” Will added. “It seems that if you can break the chain and prevent Paul Ironside from restarting that chain somehow, you will, more than likely, return to normal.”
That sounded a little bit better to Jake. “So if I tracked down this Ironside and got him arrested and stopped D.I Arnold’s involvement, I will have prevented the latest attacks, and the chain will be broken,” Jake said, expecting a reply.
“Most likely, that will happen. That is, unless another possibility is true.” Jake's eyes widened. He prompted Will to go on. “No one is sure this is a chain, and not a tree. If it is a tree, you may have cut off every branch of this tree to stop it.”
“Is any of this good news for me?” Jake asked, growing more and more downhearted.
“Yes, I think so. I believe it to be a simple chain that you can break. In any case, if you get Ironside, you'll stop everything. You'll cut off his schemes at the source.” Will had one last thing to add. “The problem with this is that most of this country's law enforcement has been trying to do just that for years.”
Jake was beginning to wish this guy didn’t bother finishing expressing his thoughts. If he just stopped two sentences before he wanted to, then he would dispel so much more good news, and very little bad news.
“There must be an average for those who have experienced this process?” Jake asked. “How long did it last for them?”
“Well, it has varied, in the accounts I've read about it. For some people it lasted just a day or two, for others, it lasted a couple of weeks,” Will said in response.
“Sounds simple. Take this a day at a time until I fix everything.”
“Exactly.”
“What can you tell me about the other times this has happened? You mentioned the aftermath of September eleventh. What other examples are there?”
“Just think of an event in history, and someone probably replaced most or part of it. Have you ever heard of some disaster on the news, with a death count much lower than people expected?”
“Probably because of a replacement,” Jake answered. He had some answers to his current predicament, but he still had questions, one in particular about being drawn to a futile exercise. Maybe Will had more answers. “Can you answer me one more question?”
“I can certainly try,” Will said.
“I feel drawn to save the other victims of all of this. If I'm constantly travelling backwards, what benefit is there in me saving people every day?”
“You feel like your efforts are futile because you can't see the results?”
“I suppose that's what I'm saying.”
“What happens when you relive a day, based on what I've explained today?”
“The new version of the day replaces the previous version.”
“So what happens to the people you've saved if you don't succeed in breaking the chain?”
“They live for another day, I suppose.”
“Indeed they do!” Will said enthusiastically. “You've just answered your own question.”
“So, I don't see what I'm causing because I'm still going backwards.”
“But you're still driven to succeed because you can save those you weren't able to save the first time round.”
“And if I succeed in breaking this chain then those who I have saved will be permanently free, rather than temporarily spared.”
“Exactly.”
Jake looked at the clock on the mantel piece. It was time to go. Any longer and Amy would start wondering what had happened to him. “I’ve got to get going, so if there’s anything else I should know…” he said, half as a question.
“Well, there’s something else. Déjà vu,” Will answered.
“Déjà vu?”
“Yes. This phenomenon provides an explanation for déjà vu. You see, when people have a feeling that they’ve done that exact thing before, they probably have. As time passes memories are formed in the brain. When time rewinds, it returns to a point where those memories don’t yet exist. The mind frequently struggles with the forming and removing of these memories, causing some actions to echo what has been experienced before.” Jake had stopped listening towards the end. His
brain had received enough information for one morning. He excused himself, thanked Will Spalder and ran home at a gentle pace before his family would start wondering where he had been.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The rest of Jake's Sunday was spent mulling over the information which had been thrust in his direction that morning. He was wholly unprepared for the sheer volume of information dispensed. He imagined it was the learning equivalent of standing by with a bucket to catch the discharge of a fire hose at full force.
He spent the remainder of his day with his family. During every activity undertaken, his mind was on what he needed to do so that his life would return to normal and his family would be safe.
Tomorrow for him would be a crucial day. He needed to stop his wife, and everyone else involved, reporting the drug sale they had witnessed.
He needed to eventually stop D.I Arnold from becoming involved, and find a way to bring down the entire drug and weapon trade chain he had been told about.
As for the day at hand, all Jake would do was try to kick back and relax with his wife and two children, regardless of what was going through his head.
CHAPTER 13
Saturday 24th January, 8:00am
Jake lay in bed, his eyes wide open. Everyone else in the house was still asleep, and his alarm was set to go off in about an hour. He didn’t see himself falling asleep again in that time.
Today was such an important day. He was busy thinking and there was so much he needed to figure out. He didn’t know where Amy went on Saturday, or where this drugs trade took place. He could ask Amy what she was planning on doing, and where she was planning on going, or he could just go with her. The latter seemed like the most sensible solution.
He thought about Detective Inspector Arnold. He still did not know this man’s first name, but decided it wasn’t important. When he had come face to face with that man several days ago, he had come out believing he was a bad guy. He had decided as he finished the day in a police holding cell that the man who had put him there was pure evil. He had misjudged him. D.I Arnold had merely been pulled into this whole thing, and was doing what he believed he had to do to protect his family. He didn’t know what threat was made against the corrupt policeman, but he guessed that he would certainly find out over the coming days.