The Time Travellers User Guide

CHAPTER TWO

The sensation of time travel was an amazing rush. The only way I can describe it was like experiencing an all-over tingling autonomous sensory meridian response type of feeling, followed at once by an intense glowing warmth that radiated upward from the base of my spine."Hello!" I said radiantly when I appeared in the past and saw myself sitting on the sofa, my mouth hanging open limply as I stuffed it with Really Cheesy Wotsits.

"I'm from your future," I said. "Tomorrow evening you're going to try time traveling for the first time. You can call me Dave if you like. Oh, and before you say anything... Mushroom Flavoured Dog's Milk Yogurt..."

"How did you know what I was going to say?" Charlie said incredulously."Because, from my perspective, I said it myself yesterday."

"Well, if you have come all the way from the future, you better have brought some winning lottery numbers with you!"

And so, the evening went on, with me now adopting the role of Dave. It was pretty much an exact rerun of my experience the day before. The only difference was that Charlie took a commanding lead in FIFA on the Xbox. I guess I was still suffering from the effects of drinking too much Rose Gold champagne tomorrow evening. Also, on this occasion, I decided that it would probably be best if we didn't go into town. Instead, we had a marathon session watching the best episodes of seasons 1 and 2 of *Battlestar Galactica* while smoking, drinking, and talking. Speaking to Charlie gave me the opportunity to further discuss what we were going to do with the money from our imminent lottery win. Talking has always had a powerful effect when it comes to helping me shape and develop ideas. Before we got too inebriated, we decided to use the opportunity of the two of us being together to check out some of the other features of the time-traveling watch in more detail. Working on the principle that two heads were better than one, we started out on a mission of scientific discovery.

My head was still full of questions about the device and its origins. The watch was very slick and had all the hallmarks of a well-developed, mass-produced, mass-market product. So why hadn't I come across other time travelers such as myself? The only explanation I could think of was that I hadn't because I hadn't. The universe that I came from continued to exist somewhere in the multiverse. In this universe, no time travel had ever occurred. The moment I started mucking around, I moved, in effect, to a different universe. This was the one I would eventually and nostalgically refer to as the prime universe, at least from my perspective. Due to the infinite nature of reality, it would be very unlikely for two-time travelers to find themselves in the same one. Unless they did.

It was Charlie who suggested that we should see what would happen if we both paused time at the same time. Given that we were safe in the confines of our own home, it seemed less of a risk than my previous experience of this evening yesterday, so we stood back to back as both of us located the Stop Clock setting on the device on our respective wrists.

"On the count of three... 1, 2, 3!" We both hit pause at approximately the same time. I turned around and so did Charlie.

"Is it working?" he said impatiently.

"I dunno. Let's have a look outside." We both rushed over to the window of our flat and looked out at the world outside. A pigeon in flight was frozen swooping directly past our apartment block. On the road below, an articulated lorry was stuck motionless and a couple of static children were kicking an empty fizzy drink can around, which was now in the air between them, still and unmoving.

I didn't understand how this was possible. The problem was, although we had both pressed the pause button at approximately the same time, if you were to zoom in on that time frame, increasing the resolution from seconds to tenths of seconds, to milliseconds and fractions of a millisecond, then there was no way that Charlie pressed the pause button at exactly the same time that I did. The sound of me speaking the words "On the count of 3" would take time to reach Charlie's ears; his reaction time would be different from mine and probably faster, as I had drunk more alcohol than he had. I explained this to Charlie, and he suggested we try the experiment again, the difference being that he would pause time first.

This time, Charlie counted himself down (his finger poised over the pause button) and just before the count of three, I tossed my keys into the air. After he pressed the button, they hung motionless, frozen in the air. I hadn't pressed the pause button at all, but clearly, I wasn't frozen in time. So that was it! Wearing the device must be responsible for preventing me from being frozen along with the rest of the world. Suddenly a creeping realization occurred to me. This could be the answer to Fermi's paradox as it relates to time travel. What if the only people that could see other time travelers were other time travelers?

This was an alarming thought, but it made a lot of sense. The activities of time travelers wouldn't be at all obvious to the general population of the world. They wouldn't have any awareness of changes to the timeline. So, what would happen if Charlie was on the other side of the world and paused time? We ran another quick experiment and proved even if Charlie was at the off-license at the end of the street and paused time, time still paused for me at exactly the same time. So, pausing time came at a price... It was a surefire method of letting any other time travelers in your timeline know you were out there...

It was when he came home laden with beer, fags, and a comprehensive selection of snacks and sweets, that we decided to try another experiment to confirm the findings in the last one. I pressed the infinity symbol on the clasp of my watch and confirmed on-screen that I wanted to remove it. I placed my watch carefully on the table. I felt naked without it. Charlie then paused time. At least he told me he was going to. All that happened from my perspective was that he suddenly jumped from where he was standing to a few feet to the left. He was laughing mischievously. I put a hand to my face, as it felt a bit greasy, and when I looked at my fingertips, there was paint on them. I walked directly to the bathroom and discovered that Charlie had done a rather impressive job of painting a tiger face on me.

"When did you learn to do that?" I asked as I genuinely admired his handiwork. I had no idea that I had these sorts of skills.

"Well, practice makes perfect. I had to cycle into town and pop into ASDA to get the face paints and break into Waterstones to get a How to Face Paint like a Pro Book. It only took me four attempts at painting to get it right!"

"How long was I on pause for?" I asked, bewildered by the whole experience.

"About two and a half hours. The trouble with pause is that nothing works. I could have done it much faster if I could have watched a YouTube how-to video. But the problem is nothing electrical functions while the world is on pause."

"Good job you found a bike!"

"You won't believe what smashed glass is like when the world is on pause. It's really weird, like there's no gravity... When it smashes, it just floats in a motionless cloud. You have to push it out of the way to get past."

After complimenting Charlie again on his newfound face painting skills, I went to the bathroom and washed it off while I had a soak in the bath for an hour. I felt I needed to get some alone time from myself before we continued to experiment with our watches. I was excited but also a little anxious about having access to all of this power, literally at my fingertips. I think that one of the ways I had of dealing with the anxiety was to evaluate and check what the device could do. I needed to try to understand it. I felt refreshed after my soak and was ready to continue with the science.

An interesting side effect of time skipping and moving at the same time was that we, in effect, became ghosts that could walk through walls. Ethereal beings of no substance. It was a very strange experience. Subjectively, I still had a body with arms and hands I could wave in front of my face and legs I could walk on. I just couldn't touch anything while time skipping. Solid objects passed through me as though I was a cloud of gas. In this state, Charlie and I found that we weren't visible on film. It was like we were moving through a different dimension, identical to the real world, just completely unreal. I realized I could move inside machines to see how they worked. I was able to test this theory by sticking my head inside the boiler in the kitchen. It was like being in a video game in which the collision detection had been disabled.

The only fixed limit there seemed to be on my movement was that I always walked on the ground. This confused me to begin with as I didn't understand why such an arbitrary limitation had been applied. However, it was Charlie who pointed out that this was probably a feature and not a limitation. It was designed to keep a time traveler safe. It certainly seemed that many of the features of the device had been designed specifically to mitigate the risks of time travel, which had the potential to be a very dangerous business indeed. Jumping a long distance backward or forwards in time blindly could put a time traveler in an almost infinite range of danger. The main risk would be materializing in the path of a rapidly moving object. There was also the real risk that the topology of the time traveler's local environment may have changed dramatically in the past or the future. I found myself wondering what would happen if I jumped back in time 200 years while standing on the observation deck of the Empire State building in New York. Maybe I would need to pack a parachute? However, given that the device clearly had some incredibly advanced AI technology on board, I wondered if this was really necessary... It made me wonder if the company that had made it was terrified of lawsuits. Perhaps the AI future it came from was entirely risk averse?

Our final experiment of the evening was to test what would happen if the topology of the local environment changed while the device was fast forwarding or rewinding time. Charlie stood on a kitchen chair while he fast-forwarded time at 1/10th of normal speed. From my perspective, the moment Charlie began to fast forward time, he instantly vanished. I then moved the chair. Charlie then reappeared, standing on the floor in the spot where the chair was.

"So how was it for you then?" I asked as I tried to make sense of what was happening.

"I could see you slowly removing the chair," he said. "However, I didn't fall to the ground; I sort of floated downwards."

"I don't understand why you disappeared. Where did you disappear to?"

"Why don't we read the effing manual?" he said as he probed and prodded the device on his wrist. "Here we go!" he said as he found the section he was looking for. "Here's what it says in the user guide: Time Skipping temporarily places the user into a NULL parallel synchronous dimension. The device overlays a real-time three-dimensional projection of the current timeline onto the NULL dimension. The onboard AI populates the NULL dimension with topological data gathered from the surroundings of the user in the present timeline. This prevents the user subjectively experiencing falling through the floor while still being able to avoid impact with objects in the present timeline, which are merely projections in the NULL dimension. It also allows the user to interact with simulations of physical surfaces, such as stairs and ladders, hills, and holes, in order to get themselves into the correct location. The NULL pocket dimension will actively prevent the user from coming to any physical harm. Once the user finishes Time Skipping, the device de-initializes the NULL dimension, which has the effect of placing the user in situ in the present timeline, with the proviso that the environment is safe for the user... Ok, I sort of think I understand what it's talking about. Oh, hang on, there is a bit more... Please see the section on AI safety controls for more information about the restrictions applied to de-initialization of the NULL dimension."

"Ok, so when we are fast forwarding or rewinding, we are in some sort of VR world?"

"I think it's more like some super-advanced form of augmented reality."

When I woke up the next morning, I was laying on the sofa with a pounding hangover. Charlie had already left the flat. Presumably, to buy the lottery ticket as well as some bacon and eggs, sausages, and beans. It was then another thought occurred to me. I took out my wallet and checked that the lottery ticket that I had bought myself was still tucked in there safely. I looked at the serial number emblazoned across the top of it. Would Charlie return with a ticket with the same serial number? I doubted it. When I had bought my ticket, there had been a handful of customers in front of me and some of them had purchased lottery tickets. Charlie would need to get to the shop at exactly the same time that I did, in order to get the same ticket from the lottery ticket machine. It then occurred to me that the ticket that I had was probably no longer valid, as another ticket would now exist with exactly the same serial number. There were a billion and one tiny differences between the world I was in now and the world that I had been in with Dave. It dawned on me that the ticket I had in my hands was probably only valid in *my* Dave's universe.

The flat was looking like a bomb site, littered with ash trays, crisp packets, chocolate bar wrappers, and roached Rizla packets, so I decided to have a tidy up and hoovered for a bit, as I tried to collect my thoughts. Could I control what universe I jumped back to? I didn't see how. It all seemed to hinge on Charlie and the lottery ticket he was now out buying. If the serial numbers on his ticket were different to mine, then this would mean that I was in a different universe to the one I had come from. Furthermore, I began to suspect that there was no way for me to get back to that exact universe. If I jumped forward to this evening, I would be jumping into the future of my current timeline, not the future of my past timeline. I could never meet my Dave again, because I was now Dave. But what would that Dave think of me? I'd run off with his lottery ticket. It would certainly have pissed me off if Charlie did that to me.Charlie clattered back into the flat while I was still running the hoover around:

"Fancy some bacon and eggs?" he said, waving a carrier bag at me.

"Yes, please!" I spoke. "Did you get the lottery ticket?"

"Yes," said Charlie as he checked that the ticket was still tucked away safely in his wallet. "So, how long are you staying?" he said bluntly.

"Never mind that. Show me the ticket that you have just bought."

Charlie fished around in his pocket and eventually found the ticket. I whipped my ticket out of my wallet and we both looked at the pair of lottery tickets, comparing and contrasting them, both with the same lottery numbers, but both with different serial numbers and different barcodes.

"I don't get it," Charlie said. "How come you've already got a lottery ticket?"

"I've got a lottery ticket, because I'm you from yesterday's today. The trouble is the ticket I now have belongs in another universe," I said.

"I wonder what would happen if you tried to redeem it?" Charlie said thoughtfully.

"It would flag up as fraud, I guess. There must be some sort of checksum with the numbers that generate the unique serial. Anyway, the main thing is we now have a winning lottery ticket."

"I'll put it over here," he said as he placed the lottery ticket under the mouse mat on my computer desk. "So, when are you going to go back to the future then?" he added.

"I'm not," I said. "I think the only way I can even get to enjoy that lottery win is to stay here and claim it!"

"But don't you have to go back to the future so that you can jump back to the past so we can meet for the first time?"

"No. Trust me on this. I know this for sure, we're not trapped in a loop, and you don't need to jump back in time either."

But what did I really know about this? What did either of us actually know? There were still massive questions remaining about where I would jump back to if I jumped back where I came from. Would it be the same universe I came from or a different one? Would I return to the exact moment in time that I had jumped from? Back to the Dave that I had brought back from the dead? Or would I simply jump forward in the timeline that I was already in?

We had a delicious brunch of bacon, eggs, sausage, and beans. Afterwards, I started to crave Dom Perignon Rose Gold and told Charlie that I was going to pop out and get some champagne for us to celebrate our lottery win in the evening. Just as I was getting my coat on ready to leave and say goodbye to Charlie, another version of me suddenly appeared in the living room. He materialized wearing a yellow t-shirt, clutching a burgundy leather briefcase to his chest.

"Not stopping!" he said. "Just doing a quick experiment. The pin code is our date of birth. See you later!" he said as he placed the briefcase on the table. He pressed the screen on his wrist and disappeared.

We were both quite shaken by this unexpected visit from ourselves and looked at each other, neither of us quite sure what we should do. In the few seconds that we had seen him, he didn't appear to be much older than either of us. The only clue was that he had about a week's growth of stubble on his face. I took the lead and crouched down by the briefcase and fiddled with the combination lock on the clasps at either side of it. They popped open once I entered the correct numbers and when I opened the case with a creak, we both gasped when we saw what was inside. It was stuffed with neatly and tightly packed wads of polymer £20 notes. There must have been a million pounds in the case.

"Well, that will certainly help clear up the old overdraft!" Charlie said as he picked up one of the bundles and started to rifle through it again and again. I picked up a bundle of notes of my own (about £25,000 I estimated) and tucked it into my coat pocket.

"Ok, I'm off to get some champagne. I'll see you later."

"You should be able to get a fair bit of Baby Cham for that price!" Charlie said laughing as I wandered out of the door.

Truth be told, I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a bit. It was the lottery ticket in my wallet that was bugging me. It belonged to another universe. Did I belong to that universe as well? It was almost as though the watch was reading my mind. As I walked down the street, my wrist buzzed.

It was an incoming notification from the time travel device. I squinted at my wrist, "Would you like to return to your previous jump point?" Well, would I? The question seemed to have far more existential weight than it was supposed to. On the one hand, I would. I had Dave's lottery ticket. It was useless in the universe I was in and liable to get me into a lot of trouble if I tried to redeem it. I was only just outside of my flat. If I jumped back to the exact point that I left, I could get back into the flat before Dave even knew that I left. "Would you like to return to your previous jump point?" The fact of the matter was that I would miss Charlie. In the end, I opted to confirm the notification. Yes. I would like to return to my earlier jump point. I felt a jolt and the same rush as the first time I traveled through time as I flashed to my previous jump point, which was actually a few hours in the future of an entirely different universe. I wasted no time in running up the stairs and letting myself back into the flat. I tore off my jacket and hung it up just as Dave came out of the toilet.

"So how do we actually claim a lottery win then?" Dave said.

It was a good question and one we hadn't addressed during the hours we spent discussing how to spend the money. I had no definitive answer, having never been in the situation of winning more than £10 on the lottery, which I had always collected by handing the ticket in at the newsagents where I had bought it.

"Well, we could try having a look at the back of the ticket!" I said, as I delved into my wallet and removed the ticket, making efforts to read the small print, but found it too small to read.Dave had already jumped on the computer and was busy Googling the answer. "It looks like we have to phone them. There's a number here. Do you think they will send a limo around? What are we going to do? Go together or just one of us?"

"I think it would be better if just one of us goes to claim the win," I spoke. "We need to keep the whole thing as unremarkable as possible. Identical twins are always a story. It needs to be just one of us. I'll toss you for it!" I said, reaching in my pocket and flipping a coin."

Dave called heads and won the toss. Then, all credit to him, he took full responsibility for the win. He placed the initial call and did a great job of playing the role of a shocked lottery winner. They did indeed send a limo to collect him the following day, where they whisked him away to the regional center to complete the paperwork and give him some advice about finance. Dave had strict instructions to avoid any publicity at all, as we didn't want to draw attention to what we had done. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for them to complete a balance transfer to Dave's bank account. It was a piece of cake.