Anyway, I naturally didn’t want her to use the phone to travel you–know–where, particularly as we’d specifically agreed to only travel together. And she agreed it was a stupid idea to go back and try to save her old friend. But, I had this horrible nagging feeling in my gut about this, so I called my phone from hers (which she’d left in our bedroom).
“I’m sorry, the number you have called cannot be reached just now…”
Shit! I knew what this meant. I was beside myself with growing annoyance all morning, and by the time I heard the key in the front door at midday, I was ready to explode.
“Niki, we agreed – you agreed – we’d only go together, never on our own… I can’t believe you’ve done this!”
“Happy birthday darling!”
“What?”
She handed me a gift–wrapped box in blue and white paper, with a matching ribbon and bow.
“Oh, I’d forgotten,” I said slowly.
“Well, go on… open it!”
As I was tearing open the paper and opening the box, Niki apologized for taking my phone by mistake. She didn’t want me to wake up and ask her where she was going. She’d just popped the phone in her bag, and hadn’t realized it was switched off – hence the reason I couldn’t call her. Inside the box I found a very fetching blue pullover (my favourite colour – being a Chelsea supporter), and The Time Machine by HG Wells.
“Thanks baby, that’s so nice.” I kissed her and we hugged warmly. Then she pulled away a little.
“So what was that ‘only going together’ speech about?” I looked at her with a guilty grimace. “Oh Joe, you didn’t think I’d do that! You really thought I’d taken the phone to go time–travelling… to see my old boyfriend?” I couldn’t deny what I thought.
“I’m sorry, Nik, I just reacted… it all seemed to fit…”
“Trust, Joe, remember? What we based our marriage on?”
I admitted she was right, and I was wrong. So that afternoon I couldn’t help thinking I owed her the chance to at least try to stop her old flame topping himself. After all, if we get it wrong, we can always go back and do it all over again. I think.
***
Seven
When Niki was going out with Steve, they were both thirteen. So it wasn’t some big relationship thing – just first love curiosity more than anything else. And I don’t think there was so much love about it either, though she would say otherwise. Anyway, at the time Niki lived with her folks in South Kensington, and attended Henrietta Barnett School in Hampstead, North London. Very posh. (Rather different from the government comprehensive school I went to). Steve was at Whitefield School, a mixed comprehensive also in North London, and his home was no more than quarter of a mile from Henrietta Barnett. They were destined to meet. Well, in our current universe.
“What if you two had never met?” I said to Niki the next day.
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, imagine if you’d never known Steve… you wouldn’t be concerned about him, would you?
“But that wouldn’t stop the pressure on Steve – from his parents. He’d still kill himself!”
“True – and at this exact moment in time, both you and I know that. But if I went back in time, I could make sure your paths never crossed. You’d have no memory of ever knowing Steve, so no concern about one of the thousands of suicides that happen in the UK every year. Right?”
Niki stared at me, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you said that Joe! Ignorance is bliss, is that it? And anyway, it was you who gave me the lecture yesterday about travelling alone!”
I had to admit she was right – again. I was just playing with an idea, that was all. I knew what we had to do, and I’d every intention of seeing it through – for Niki’s benefit. So I gave her the green light, and Niki was happy. Then we got scheming.
Plan A was for Niki to talk to her younger self – posing as some long–lost relative who knew all about the relationship with Steve. Once Niki junior knew all about the intense pressures Steve was under from his parents, and the fact that he was actually contemplating suicide, then she was bound do something about it. Meanwhile, I would talk to Steve’s parents. That was going to be harder. How could I introduce myself and then say, ‘Oh by the way – your son it going to kill himself if you don’t take your foot off the pedal’? Mmm… In the end, we thought it might be better if I talked to Social Services – pretending to be a concerned neighbour, or something like that.
Plan B was for both of us to meet up with Steve and Niki junior and say, ‘Hi – we’re from the future!’ That’s only if we get desperate, of course.
That night, after going over the details, we took deep breaths, held hands, set the phone’s date to 19 May, 1996 and waited. It didn’t work quite how we imagined.
“Who are you?” We were standing in an apartment which looked like ours, but it wasn’t ours. “Well? What are you doing in my flat?” Whilst Niki gave the middle–aged man an apologetic smile, I quickly switched the date back to the present and we were suddenly back home. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t moved into that apartment until 2004.
“What now?” asked Niki.
“We go to your old school, I guess, and jump from there.”
As we emerged from Golders Green tube station, a thought suddenly struck me. I stopped in the street, and turned to Niki. “Just a minute...”
“What is it?”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me, and I’d just like to get it clear in my mind.” We were standing in the rain, under my black umbrella. It was September, I think. This time–travel thing was beginning to mess with my sense of dates. “You remember when I phoned you at school from Heathrow in 2011?”
“Yes…”
“That phone call became part of your new reality – along with the death of your mum, and the two presidents, right?”
“Okay, if you say so Joe – but you know I’m still finding that difficult – even though I’ve got Mama back now. What’s your point?”
“If you meet young Niki, does it mean that when we come back to the present – to our present – your memories will change, even though it’s you that’s changing the future?”
Niki screwed up her face for a moment, considering this. “Well, I suppose so… why does it matter? Is there a problem?”
From the previous two time jumps, I thought I’d been instrumental in changing the future, but that I had been unaffected. Now that Niki was about to come face–to–face with herself, I was beginning to doubt that hypothesis. If, for the sake of argument, I met myself in 2011 and cut off and destroyed a part of ‘my’ finger (the finger of my younger self), would that mean that when I jumped back to the present, I would find myself without part of that digit? Or would it happen instantaneously – my own finger being simultaneously mutilated with my doubles? The whole idea of interacting with a duplicate of oneself – albeit in a different time frame – suddenly became very interesting, and a tad disconcerting. I relayed these thoughts to Niki, and suggested that perhaps we could do a little experiment to see how things worked.
“What, you’d like me to cut off part of my finger!” she exclaimed as we began walking again.
“No – of course not! But what if there was some small change we could make to Niki junior to test the hypothesis. Nothing really damaging – but something pretty permanent.”
“What if young Niki had a tattoo?” she offered.
“Brilliant! It could be a small one – not generally visible – but it would be pretty permanent – not easy to remove without leaving a scar.” I smiled back at Niki. “Love you baby. Now all you’ve got to do is talk her into having one.”
***
Eight
We walked across Hampstead Heath on the way to the Henrietta Barnett School for Young Ladies. The idea was to meet young Niki (let’s just call her ‘Junior’) out of school and talk about Steve. We found a secluded spot on the Heath and I set the date on my phone to 19 May
1996 again. It was just after 3pm by this time. Niki held tightly onto my hand, and we both felt the usual ‘wobble’. We looked around. The park looked slightly different, owing to the different time period and season, of course, but otherwise we wouldn’t know we’d travelled sixteen years back in time. We walked in the direction of the school.
At the school gates, we waited for Junior to emerge. We weren’t the only ones waiting. “Joe, look…” Niki discretely pointed to a teenager standing about ten yards away from us, looking towards the school entrance. “It’s Steve,” she explained. This was not what we had planned.
“Okay, you take Junior, and I’ll have a word with Steve,” I whispered.
“What will you say?” That was a very good question. We hadn’t banked on this scenario, and I really didn’t want to go for the ‘We’re from the future’ plan just yet. So Niki suggested that I talk to Junior, whilst she talked to Steve. I would be one of Steve’s uncles – (Niki never met both of them). So I became – believe it or not – ‘Uncle Sam’… Steve’s uncle who lives in Leicester.
“Uncle Sam?” I said incredulously. “You can’t be serious!” Niki nodded wide–eyed. So Uncle Sam it was. Just then, Junior emerged from the school and Steve smiled in recognition. But before the two could meet, Niki headed Steve off. I just heard her say something about being Aunt Wendy from Shanghai. Wendy? And then I met Junior. Boy, was that a shock! Instantly recognisable – she really did look like a much younger version of my beloved.
“Hi Niki,” I greeted her, as she was watching Steve being led away by her future self. “Can I have a word?” Then she turned to look at me.
“Who’s that with Steve… and who are you? How do you know my name?” I gave her the Uncle Sam story, and explained that the woman leading Steve away was her long–lost aunt from Shanghai.
“You can meet her later,” I said. “I know she wants to meet you.”
“I have to go home… ma will worry,” she replied.
“No problem… can I walk with you?”
“Okay.”
As we walked back to the tube station, I told her that we were worried about Steve… that his parents were putting him under a lot of pressure over his school work, and didn’t want him to see Niki. They thought she was a distraction to his studies, and his father (being very traditional), didn’t see any future for Steve with a Chinese girl.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, clearly irritated by my interference. “And anyway, Steve is strong… he’ll stand up to his parents. I think you should leave us alone.”
She marched off towards the tube station entrance, and I called after her, “He’s going to kill himself.” Plan B was looming. She turned on her heels.
“What?”
I casually walked towards her, my hands in my pockets. “I’m sorry Niki, but it’s true. He’s threatened to kill himself – I heard it myself. And I think he’ll do it.”
“Steve would never do that – you know nothing…” She started to walk away again, and I grabbed her by the wrist.
“He will – I know he will. I can give you the date, the time and the place.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I just know… we’re family.”
“You’re crazy! Leave me alone!” she shouted and stormed off down the underground station stairs.
***
I tried to call my Niki on her mobile, but of course her number was not in existence in 1996. I guessed she’d gone with Steve to his home, and I walked in that direction. I didn’t have to look far – I found the two of them sitting on a bench in a small park.
“Hi,” I said to Steve.
“Who’s he?” he asked Niki. I couldn’t very well tell Steve I was his Uncle Sam… I think he would have seen through that one.
“I’m a friend of Wendy’s,” I said. He nodded and looked down at the floor.
“It’s true,” he said to Niki, “everyone’s against us being together… my mum and dad, the teachers at her school… Niki’s parents.” I gave Nik a quizzical look and she nodded. Steve continued. “Even at my school, I get laughed at for having a Chinese girlfriend. They’re always calling me names and making faces.” Then he looked up at Niki. “You look so much like her… like you’re an older version. I knew you must be a relative when I saw you. The kids at school say you all look the same, but that’s stupid crap. Y’know, sometimes I think we should do what they did in China when they were in love and no–one would let them be together…”
“No no!” interrupted Niki, knowing exactly what Steve meant. “Don’t even think about it Steve. No–one does that anymore.”
“Niki’s so beautiful, and so different… I can’t bear to be without her.”
Niki and I looked at each other. Then I said, “Steve, you mustn’t think like this. It’s only going to end badly if you do…”
“Oh, and what do you know?” he snarled at me. “Who are you anyway? I’ve got to go now – mum will be worried.” He got up to go, and then turned to Nik. “It was really nice to meet you. Can we talk again? I feel I know you already.” She nodded and Steve made his way home, without looking at me.
“Wow, he likes you, Mr Prince Charming.” Nik said to me.
“Hey, you’re Chinese – you don’t do sarcasm.”
“Got it from you,” she replied.
“But he clearly does likes you big time,” I said. “We’ve got a chance there.”
“How did you get on with Junior?” she asked.
“Close to Plan B,” I said.
*
Plan B didn’t turn out to be as straightforward as I thought. For one thing, how do you prove you’re from the future? I did think of taking Steve and Junior to our present (their future) to show them what it will be like; but I couldn’t take Steve, of course… he doesn’t exist in our present. But maybe I could take Junior?
That evening, Nik and I decided to stay in 1996 for a couple of hours longer and went out for dinner at a restaurant she used to frequent when she was at school. (A place that has since become a Bookmakers). After we’d ordered, and were sipping some wine, I told Nik my idea of taking Junior to our present time to prove that we had time travelled.
“I don’t think we have to go that far, she said.”
“It’s just an idea,” I said.
“No, I mean they only need to go to the day after Steve kills himself. Maybe seeing the newspaper headline of his death will be a big enough shock for them. ”
“Right… but you said ‘they’ and ‘them.’ Only Niki can go into the future, not Steve.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, because he’ll be dead!”
“So you’re saying that we can only travel back or forward to times when we’re actually living? That would mean you couldn’t go back to the last war, or forward to the year 3000.”
I thought about that for a moment, and realised that Nik was right. When we jump we seem to be different entities from our duplicates. We can interact with them, and it appears we exist independently from them.
“I’ve just had a strange thought,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“What if I travel back in time, and then take a younger version of myself to a different time period again, where we find another, even younger version of me. Three Joes existing at one time, in the same space… is that possible?”
“It may be possible, Joe, but I’m not sure I could handle more than one of you.”
***
Nine
Back at home, something had been bothering me. I was mentally going over what Steve had said the day before, and it didn’t add up. Usually, those who talk about suicide don’t actually do it. It’s more of a cry for help than anything else. People who really want to end their own lives don’t broadcast their intentions – that would only make people try to talk them out of it, and that’s the last thing that real suicide cases want.
“There must be something else – something th
at pushes Steve over the edge,” I said to Niki as we lay in bed the next morning. We’d jumped back home the previous night after dinner, and I couldn’t help thinking of our next step.
“Why d’you say that?” she asked. I explained my thoughts, and then she said something very interesting. “Well, perhaps we’ve stopped him doing it already.”
“Come again?”
“Well, when you talk about a problem and get it out of your system, that’s often the solution. That’s why psychologists get people to talk about what’s worrying them, isn’t it?”
Niki was right. Simply by us being there, and listening and being sympathetic to Steve, we may have already changed history, in which case there was nothing else we needed to do. Possibly.
“If you’re right, there’s an easy way to find out,” I said getting out of bed and going to my laptop. “Let’s see if the guy is still alive…”
We were in for a big shock.
It took a little while to find information on Steve Watts, but when we finally found what we were looking for, we stared at the web pages, and then each other, without speaking. Eventually, I said, “Now what?”
“Nothing,” Niki said going to the bathroom, “it’s over.”
According to what we read, Steve Watts had not killed himself in 1996 – we had accomplished what we set out to achieve. But he had died in a car accident in 2002, at the age of nineteen. He’d just passed his driving test.
Negative feelings about time–travel haunted us for the next couple of days. Niki said we should just give up the whole idea – throw away the phone and never look back. But I couldn’t help thinking that our ability to make an impression on history was much more powerful that I had previously thought. Just by showing a security guard and his colleague my phone, I’d advanced technology by several years. And by listening to the troubles of a thirteen year old boy, we had stopped him taking his own life. This made me realise that perhaps it doesn’t require huge interventions in the past to make big changes. For instance, if people in the mid–1930’s had simply been aware of the consequences of the rise of Nazism, that could have been enough to have prevented the atrocities occurring – and even perhaps prevented World War Two. No need to take the dangerous path of attempting to assassinate the leaders – just give the people in power the information, the intelligence. Could this be the way forward?