This line of thought led me to some unfinished business. Following my intervention in the World Trade Center bombings, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi were now very much alive in our new World, and had formed the Libyan–Iraq Alliance. No–one knew where this new coalition would lead, but it was pretty much accepted that both countries had secretly begun making nuclear weapons. With discontent and uprisings in other Arab countries – notably Syria and Egypt–things didn’t look too good in the Middle East. I concluded that we should take a leap forward to the future to see where all this was leading, and the possible impact on the World. With this information, perhaps we could warn our governments of what the future had in store for us.
The big question now was: how far did we need to jump forward in time? But before answering that question, something very strange happened the next day.
I was just coming out of the bathroom, and there in the lounge, sitting on the sofa, was me and Niki! I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Shit!”
“Sorry to startle you… it must be a shock. It’s just an experiment.”
A guy looking exactly like me was sitting with what looked exactly like Niki.
“Where’s Niki?” the man asked.
“I think you’ll find she’s sitting right next to you,” I said.
“No, I mean your Niki…” This was very, very weird.
“Oh, I see… she’s gone shopping.”
Niki2 on the sofa nodded. “She’ll be back any minute… you’d better prepare her.” Sure enough, I heard the sound of a key in the front door, and I rushed to warn Niki – but too late.
“Oh my god! Joe?”
“Over here.” She was looking at the sofa of course. I smiled and waved.
“Do I really look like that?” Niki took it a little better than me. Looking at yourself in a photograph is one thing; seeing the real, living, breathing four–dimensional you is totally different. “Why are they here?” she asked me.
“Better ask them,” I said.
“It’s an experiment,” Niki2 explained. “This feels really, really strange, doesn’t it?” We all agreed with that. The fact that Niki2 seemed to know precisely when Nik would be home told me that they must be from the future, rather than the past.
“How far back have you jumped?” I asked.
“Just two days,” Joe2 replied. “It was Sunday when we left.”
Then I had a very interesting line of thought.
“So… you know exactly what’s going to happen between now and when you jumped?”
“Pretty much,” Joe2 smiled.
“How did Chelsea do?” I asked.
“Lost two-nil to Norwich.”
“Shit!”
Then Niki made the connection. “How about the lottery? Any new millionaires?”
Niki2 and Joe2 looked knowingly at each other and smiled. “Maybe a couple,” Joe2 said. “Niki’s got the numbers you need.” Niki2 handed Nik seven numbers written down on a piece of paper. They were for the big Saturday Euromillions Lottery draw.
“It feels a bit like cheating… stealing even,” I said.
“I know exactly what you mean – that’s what I thought at first. So we talked it through yesterday – that’s tomorrow for you. But it’s not stealing – it’s an opportunity. Some people have a premonition, a sudden insight. Is that cheating? For whatever reason, we’ve been given this ability to go back and forward in time. It’s a gift, and we should use it wisely. But to use it fully, we need more time – if you see what I mean. We’ve – you’ve – got full–time jobs. We could do so much more with this ability if we weren’t working. The lottery money will provide us with that opportunity. Money will buy us freedom.”
“How much can we win?” Niki asked.
“Twelve million pounds,” Niki2 replied.
“It’s a start,” Niki replied.
“What!” I was shocked.
“It’s okay, don’t worry,” said Joe2. “Just try it – and if you think you don’t need it, give it away to charity.”
It was very strange talking to myself, but I had to admit that it all made sense. By having that money, we would have time to really do good things. The ability to go back forward in time is time–travel – not space travel. If we want to help to change things in other places in the World, we have to go there by conventional means – fly, sail, drive, whatever – and that costs money. So the next morning, Niki took the numbers to our local shop, filled in the Euromillions coupon and we sat back that night to watch our numbers come up.
As the last ball with our number was selected, we smiled at each other and kissed. “That was lucky,” I said. “I think you could do with some new jewellery baby.”
Ten
Money can have an amazing impact on your life. For me, it brought Niki suddenly back on board as far as time–travel was concerned. Her comment about destroying my phone and forgetting the whole damn business became a distant memory as soon as the lottery was mentioned; and with both of us having given our notices at work, we turned our attention to our next project. But first, some unfinished business from 1992.
Niki was keen to meet the younger version of herself (they never actually met up when we jumped before), and I wanted to try the tattoo experiment. So we jumped back to find Junior in North London, choosing a couple of days after our first jump so that our appearance would not seem so strange this time.
“Oh, it’s you,” Junior said as we met at the same school gates I’d seen her previously.
“I’m Wendy,” said Nik.
“I asked Ma about Aunt Wendy, and she said she’d never heard of you. You’re not her sister, are you?” Junior said flatly. Nik shook her head. “So who are you really?”
We looked at each other, and then I said, “We’d like to show you something…”
We took Junior to a small Tattoo parlour in East Finchley. It was a place she knew, and it seemed to be reputable. Junior had been thinking of having one done, but didn’t think her mum would accept it. In fact, she knew she wouldn’t. Nik suggested she have it done on a private part of her body, where her mum would not see it, and not to use a name.
“You mean like, ‘Steve’?” asked young Niki.
“Definitely not Steve,” I said.
“But I love him!”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. But tattoos can last for ever… are you sure that your love will last that long?” Nik replied.
We took at look at the shop’s catalogue – they had hundreds of different designs in all sorts of shapes and colours. In the end, Junior selected a small red rose and asked to have ‘Niki’ written underneath it. It was going to be at the top of her thigh, near her bum, and I looked away whilst it was being done.
After a few minutes, Nik turned to me and whispered.
“Joe – something’s happening! I can feel it…” She moved away from Junior and lifted her skirt. There on her thigh the same red rose was appearing like magic. It was incredible!”
“That’s, that’s… amazing!” I said.
When it was finished, Junior showed Nik her finished article.
“It’s beautiful. Nik replied, “thank you for giving it to me.”
“To you?” Junior queried.
“Yes – take a look.” She lifted her skirt to show the same tattoo.
“You’ve got the same! But yours looks a little older. When did you have it done?”
“Oh, about sixteen years ago,” Nik smiled.
Junior stared into Nik’s eyes. “I know who you are,” she said, “but I don’t understand it.”
“You will,” I said. “Sometime in the future, you’ll know everything. But now we have to go…”
“I want to go with you!” Junior suddenly exclaimed, grabbing Nik’s hand.
“You can’t – it’s not your time. You’re needed here. Without you, I am nothing… so look after yourself – and follow your dreams.” Nik released her hand from Junior’s whilst I changed the date on the phone, holding Nik’s
hand tightly.
“See you in the future,” I said. And we were gone.
***
Eleven
Having proved that whatever physical changes we make to ourselves in the past can affect us in the present, we now turned our thoughts to bigger matters.
I’d voiced my concerns to Niki about the current Middle East situation and how I thought it would be a good idea to jump forward to the future to see where this was leading. Having bumped off both Bush and Blair because of my intervention in the past, I felt a little bit responsible for the new World situation and thought our first priority was to put matters straight in this area. Niki agreed.
However, whilst jumping back to the past means entering a known universe (to the finest detail), venturing into the future is entirely different. Okay, if we don’t go too far forward, we can be pretty certain that building are going to get taller, populations are going to increase, and money will be worth less. Or even worthless one day. But once we make bigger jumps into the future, it gets more difficult. The treatment of our environment (forest and ozone depletion, pollution of air, sea and land); hunting certain species of animals to extinction (or merely destroying their habitats); use and reliance on fossil fuels, and the melting of the polar ice–caps… etc etc could all add up to not only a changed World, but one in which Man may not even exist.
However, we didn’t think we’d have to jump so very far forward in time to see the effects of the present Hussein–Gaddafi alliance. Niki suggested ten year jumps, which sounded reasonable. Having decided when, the next thing to decide was ‘where.’ Obviously, London was most convenient, but we couldn’t be sure we’d be living in the same apartment in ten years’ time, and we didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack again by just appearing from nowhere. So instead, we thought about a location that would change very little over a period of, say, fifty years – and Hyde Park came to mind. It seemed unlikely that anyone’s going to be given planning permission to build a supermarket on Hyde Park in the near future (it’s protected area), so that seemed a safe bet.
“What should we take with us?” Niki asked on the morning of our planned jump. It was a good question, but I didn’t really know how to answer it.
“It’s difficult to say…”
“What about a gun?”
“A gun!”
“Yeah… we don’t know how dangerous it’s going to be in the future.”
“Well to start with, I don’t know where we’d get one…”
“That’s easy.”
“It is?”
“You find a gun shop, jump back one day, steal a gun, and then jump forward to the present.”
“You want to steal a real gun?” I said.
“Not me, you.”
I explained that guns are kept in locked cupboards… you can’t just walk in and pick one up – not in England. And anyway, I’ve never used a gun before – and neither had Niki. In the end we decided to take a big kitchen knife and the pepper spray she bought last year after a few street robberies were reported in the area, plus our IDs and a bit of food and drink – and some money.
Having packed everything we thought we needed, we took the tube to Lancaster Gate and found a suitable spot for our trip – close to a tree in the Italian Gardens of the Park. When no–one was around, I changed my phone’s date to exactly ten years in the future, held Niki’s hand, smiled at her and pressed ‘save’.
After the jump, we found that the tree was larger, which was good because it prevented us from being seen by anyone. We emerged cautiously, to find the weather warmer and a few more people around the park. Apart from that, nothing seemed so very different.
“I’ll get a paper,” I said to Niki. A newspaper seemed to be an obvious way to check World events. But as I made my way out of the garden, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“I thought I’d find you here,” a voice said – my voice.
I’d come face to face with myself before – in our apartment when my other self had jumped back to give us the lottery results; but this time there were ten years separating us, not just one day. Naturally, I looked a little older: several more wrinkles, a different hairstyle, and different clothes (presumably more contemporary, although the style looked like one from the 1940s). Apart from that, it was me.
“If you’re looking for a newspaper, don’t bother. Nothing’s changed very much. Oh, except the currency. You’ll need Euros now mate. You don’t have any, do you?” I had to admit I hadn’t, and he took out a 500 euro note and handed it to me. “Inflation’s gone crazy… that’s about fifty quid in old money.” Then he asked if Niki was with me.
“Yes, she is,” I said. “Just a sec…” I called towards the big tree. “Nik – I think you’d better come over here…” She appeared cautiously, and then her eyes popped: two Joes again!
“Jeez… you look so young – you both do,” Joe2 exclaimed.
“How did you find us?” Nik asked.
“Not too difficult kiddo. Would you like to meet Niki? I mean my Niki of course.” Nik nodded and Joe2 took out his mobile phone, turning his back towards us. Then we saw him shake his head, put the phone away and turn back to face us. “Battery’s dead – can I use yours mate?” At this point, alarm bells should have been ringing in my ears. But this was Joe – me – and he’d just given me 500 Euros. How could anything be wrong? I handed him my phone, and as soon as I did, realisation hit me like a lead weight.
I’d caught a glimpse of his phone when he removed it from his pocket. You get to know your own phone, and it was definitely not mine he pulled out. Somehow in my mind I had rationalised that his phone should be different – we’d gone into the future and technology had moved on. And anyway, how could there be two copies of my phone in the same place at the same time: But… but… my phone is unique, isn’t it?
“You’ve noticed my phone, right? Well, you have to move with the times, mate.”
“Then how about time–travel… how does that work now – if you’ve changed your phone?” Nik asked.
“Ah, well… you really should have asked me that before giving me the mobile. About five years ago, I had a problem with the phone. It kept locking… the touch screen didn’t work, and it became more or less useless. I didn’t want to take it for repair, but in the end I had to. After it came back, it worked again – but only as an ordinary phone.”
“So, no time jumps?” Nik asked.
“No – that was over. I did think of going back to the store and saying, ‘Hey, you’ve messed up my phone: I can’t time–travel anymore’, but they’d probably send me to the Funny Farm. In the end, I thought the only solution was to meet up with you guys…”
“…And steal my phone,” I said heavily. Nik looked aghast.
“Joe! Don’t say that! He… you… wouldn’t do that!”
“Sorry guys…” he said pressing the phone’s screen.
“Joe, no!” Nik shouted running towards him. But too late – he was gone.
“I don’t believe what just happened,” I said shaking my head.
“So now what?”
“I don’t know – I really don’t know.”
*
We left the park and found a Starbucks close by – at least that hadn’t changed. But, as Joe2 had told us, everything was in Euros now. Fortunately, though, I still had the 500 euro note he’d given me, and we used that to buy two cups of coffee. As we sat looking out the window, we reflected on what had just happened – and what we could do next.
“Unbelievable, isn’t it? Here we are, millionaires, and we feel like we’ve lost everything. How could I have been so stupid?”
“You couldn’t have known,” Nik said holding my arm.
“I suppose I might have done the same thing in his situation. In fact, I guess I did do it – ten years in the future.”
“It doesn’t matter – it’s done Joe. What we’ve got to do now is get the phone back. I don’t want to stay here in this time zone – not w
ith another Joe and Niki, and not without the phone.”
Niki was right. Somehow, we had to get the phone back from Joe – but how? Where would he go next?
“He’s got to go back to Niki – he won’t leave her,” Nik continued. “And she won’t be pleased with what he’s done, I can tell you.” I was still staring out of the window. “Joe, snap out of it! We’ve got to solve this… we’ve got to find Joe!”
I looked back at her and smiled. She was great in these situations – always positive. That was one reason I loved her.
“You’re right – sorry. You go to your parents – and I’ll try our apartment.” I doubted that they lived there anymore, but I might get a forwarding address. And Gloria and Tang might have a spare key to Joe and Niki’s new house.
***
Twelve
Our plans to see how the World would change in the near future had suddenly been put on hold - by my mistake. Without my phone, we were stranded in 2030, sharing the planet with a couple of clones of ourselves. It was not a satisfactory situation, to say the least. I suggested that Niki talk to her parents to try to locate our double’s whereabouts, whilst I returned to where we’d lived ten years earlier in the hope of discovering the same information. We were both in for a surprise.
*
Ten years previously, the entrance to our second floor apartment was above a dress shop. Today, it was above a vegetable store. Maybe a sign of the times. I pressed the buzzer of our apartment, and a man’s voice answered. It wasn’t mine.
“Yeah?”
“I’m a friend of Joe Cooper,” I said. “He used to live in your apartment… previous owner.”
“Yeah, I remember him. What’s the problem?”
“I need some information… can I come up?” The door buzzed and I pushed it open. The entrance way and stairs seemed old and neglected – which was not a surprise when I saw the apartment. The man who greeted me was unshaven and smelled of alcohol – whisky I’d guess. The flat was in a mess: plates of food on the floor, empty beer and whisky bottles, and a rubbish bin overflowing. I recalled the man’s voice, and thought that I’d met him in Finchley one time – but I could hardly recognise him now. When we’d met, I’m sure he was newly married, but I guessed that had ended some years ago. The flat definitely lacked a woman’s touch.