Time and Time Again

Chapter 4

The kettle rumbled on the counter-top of Alice Collins' kitchen until it finally gave a click and turned itself off. 'Milk?', Alice asked. Simon nodded but didn't look up from staring at his fingers which he was rubbing together slowly and firmly on the table in front of him. Alice prepared two coffees then brought the cups to the dining table where Simon was sitting, waiting for her, clearly agitated, irritated even. 'So, how have you been?', she asked.

Simon took a moment before replying, 'Better,' he muttered, 'Alice', he said with a little nervousness.

'Yes?'

'You always believed me, didn't you?' Simon raised his eyes to meet Alice's to see a soft expression, one of sympathy rather than judgement.

'Of course I did. But you're over all that now aren't you? That was years – '

'No', Simon interrupted, 'I need to know that you believed me; what happened when I was little – and that what I tell you now is true. It was you who made me feel sane when I was clearly anything but.'

'You saw what you saw', Alice said matter-of-factly, then took a sip from her coffee.

Simon curled his hands around the hot cup Alice had placed on a plain white coaster in front of him, 'I need you to just listen; I know why all of that happened, why I could see things – people.'

'Ok', Alice replied, replacing her cup on the table and dropping her hands by her sides.

'You know I've been living back at our old house. I thought going back there and, not seeing things, would mean I was actually cured.'

'Yeah, you've told me this', Alice said.

'Well, I went in and everything was the same – it had been redecorated, but the layout I mean. Then I went up to my old bedroom and there I was. The ghost – the figure of me. Still there, aged like I have. Not ten, like it used to be.'

'Right; again, you've told me this before', Alice said, taking her coffee and taking a drink.

'I rented the room. I had to know what was going on. I followed myself,' Simon chuckled with a more macabre tone than jovial, 'Studying Physics at University.'

'Right – that's new,' she said, 'your – other self – was at University?'

'I can see what he – what I write down. It's a little indistinct but from what I've been able to read, this all makes complete sense.' Simon smiled at Alice. She recognised it as one of relief but she could see all manner of anxieties behind it.

'Physics?'

'Yes. This is all because of Alan.'

'Alan?'

'Baxter,' Simon qualified, 'my mate from school.'

'I don't remember – '

'We used to hang around together all the time'

'Oh, the lad with the curly hair?'

'That's him.'

'Whatever happened to him I wonder.'

'Prison', Simon interjected, 'I visited him a few months ago.'

'Oh', Alice said mutedly.

Simon stood up and walked to the kitchen window. Alice considered following him but decided it was best to let him have his space. 'This is the bit you won't believe, but I'll tell you anyway so you get the full picture of what I've been through.' Simon waited but Alice didn't speak. He decided not to turn and look at her, he thought her expression might put him off saying what he was desperate to tell somebody or he thought he might explode. 'On reading the things the other me was writing down – the – ghost me.' Simon paused. Alice felt the moment she was in, slow down somehow. The light through the kitchen window illuminating tiny hairs and specks of dust in the air, hitting the tiled floor, brightening a square between the sink and the oven. It was like she didn't want the next moment to come, the next words from her brother's mouth. Their relationship had always been fragile; her making sure she never said anything triggering and him being mostly insular. She felt the next time Simon spoke, everything would be different and there wouldn't be a way of going back.

'He – I – had a theory about time travel,' Simon paused again, waiting for sounds of derision or laughter or at least something negative. It didn't come so he continued, 'you see, you don't go back in time, you catch up to the past. It's the opposite of what everyone thinks.'

'Catch up?', Alice squeaked. Her voice, she was relieved to notice, was curious rather than incredulous.

'Yes,' Simon replied, turning to face his sister, at least partially confident she wanted to hear what he had to say rather than being ready to dismiss it, 'to travel in time you have to travel faster than light. Or, in the theory, faster than time. You travel so fast, you catch up to the time that's left. Like if you go to the shop at three miles per hour, I can run at five miles per hour and I'll catch you up.'

'So, how does that fit in with – '

'Thing is, to travel faster than light, you don't have to travel in distance.' Simon sat at the dining table again, pleased that Alice was engaged in what he was saying, pleased she could at least understand, eventually, what his life had been about. 'Particle acceleration,' he said excitedly, Alice nodding gingerly, 'you accelerate the particles beyond the speed of light and faster than the speed of time – whatever that is. So you're not travelling through space, you're right there. Your particles are moved one atom in every direction faster than light.'

'So you don't move from where you are, you only move through time?'

'Exactly,' Simon exclaimed, grabbing his cup and taking a drink.

'So, how does this explain what happened?'

Simon sighed and turned his eyes to his fingers which he'd started rubbing together firmly again, 'The other me presented this idea at the University. My guess is, either in the form of his – my – theory, or whatever came of it, I – he – time travelled.'

'But – ', Alice couldn't link anything she'd been told together and so, a long pause followed her initial reaction.

'The other me missed Alan. Blamed himself.'

'For what?'

'He was hit by a car and killed when he was ten years old. The other me never got over it. Best friends; he never stopped thinking about him. I guess he thought he could save him.'

'Killed?' Alice's hand went instinctively to her mouth although she knew Alan was actually in prison and not dead.

'This is my second time around. I must have time travelled back to the day Alan died because I remember having an urge to go and see him. He was playing outside his house. Me being there must have stopped him getting hit by that car. Then the next day, figures, ghostly figures everywhere – the teacher with some kind of announcement. The only person in my class that I never saw a ghost of, a – figure – of? Alan. He wasn't there the first time round,' Simon paused, 'this is my second time around and everything I've been seeing is my first time around.'

Alice looked into her nearly-empty coffee cup, starting to understand. 'If this is, as you put it, your second time around, how can you not remember the first time?'

'The only thing I can think of – although none of this is even nearly logical – is that the accelerator, or the 'time machine' whatever you want to call it, wasn't sealed.'

'Meaning?'

'Well, both the inside and the outside travelled in time. Let's say the other me was thirty when he got into the machine; instead of being 30 when he got back to 1990, he was me, ten year old me – with my ten year old brain. My memories of the next twenty years taken away – back to my ten year old brain as it was then. Same memories, same thoughts and knowledge but nothing from the following twenty years. Me at ten didn't know I'd just time travelled or that Alan was about to die. I had a weird feeling I should go and see him but that was it. I thought I could save his life and now he's in jail. I can't even go round a third time to try and fix it – the machine doesn't exist here now. I'd have to go study Physics at University. I'd have to get a GCSE in Physics to start with', Simon paused and looked Alice in the eyes, looking deep into them, trying to work out if he should tell her the rest or whether allowing everything he'd already said to sink in first was the better way to proceed.

'You had a family. You had a daughter.'