1.
Jack Farley
sat on a rock with his small son overlooking the stone circle in the fields
below them. “Why do we talk differently from all the others father?” his son
asked him.
“Because I
taught you to speak as I did so that you can listen to the story I am about to
tell you and you will pass it onto to your own children. They then will pass it
on to their children and so on, until the tale that I tell you reaches the
right generation to carry out what needs to be done, so I can get back to my
own time,” Jack said.
“Can you
tell me the story?” asked his son, dressed in animal skins.
“Yes, it is
time, listen very carefully as you need to pass this story on, I will tell it
as it happened, or as it will happen, hopefully.”
2.
“My name is
Jack Farley, I am a past area sales manager for Tykon, a heavy plant machine
producer, done it for a few years now and I love the job, takes me all over the
time but sometimes, going back too far can be a pain in the arse, assignments
back before our communications network was established can be lonely and
without contact back to HQ it can be nerving.
I have no
family, it would be impossible to get married and have kids with all this
travelling that the job involves. It suits me down to the ground, I’ve always
wanted to be a high flyer in business and that means I never would have time
for kids.
So, one day
I get this very important assignment which means I will be going back a long
way. So I was up early to beat the traffic, I get dressed; take off in my pod,
stopping at Tarbucks for a quick coffee and to call the office to tell them I
was on my way.
Running late
I got caught in the bottle neck at tunnel 6, rush hour again. The radio tells
me there has been an accident between junctions 2030 and 2020 and the traffic
is nose to tail for over 7 years. Why people all have to leave for their
journey at the same sort of time is beyond me really, it’s not like we are
travelling distance rather we are travelling through time so it really doesn’t
matter what time you leave, you get to your destination at the same time
anyway. I guess it’s just human nature; we can’t change the habits of a
lifetime. When, years ago, people travelled distance they all wanted to get
there early, I can understand that but the habit of getting up, having
breakfast and then getting into their vehicles has never faded. I could have
waited until after the rush hour but I needed to push on, an important business
deal was about to be signed; a job that would structure the company for life, I
couldn’t wait around as I was in anticipation of the result.
Since Dr
Emmett Brown’s company, DEB’s commercial release of the flux capacitor the
market has been flooded with prospective time travelling tourists and the time
tunnels that used to be empty save for scientists and businessmen like myself
have now been filled with millions of delivery vans, youngsters out on a beano
to more liberal time zones like the 1960s and 1990s or old age pensioners holidaying
in past paradises. Needless to say the
congestion is becoming a problem and as other tunnels are constructed it only
leads to more people being able to afford cheap time travel packages.
So I sigh as
the traffic comes to a grinding halt just past the 2030 turn off and take a sip
of my coffee, this is going to be one
hell of a long journey. People always flock here to see the last flickers
of the ozone layer disappearing and the solar rays bursting through. It’s quite
sick really watching all those innocent people fry but it is a historic event
and gives people faith in the new artificial atmosphere.
A pod with
floral purple cushions and a box of disposable handkerchiefs on the passenger
shelf pulls off into the hard shoulder. The grey tops inside pile out and sit
on the bank sharing out cucumber sandwiches and French Fancies. A delivery
driver beeps his horn in frustration; he cannot get past; why, if he is on
performance related pay like most of them are he doesn’t simply pull off the
tunnel an hour or so sooner in order to get there earlier hasn’t registered in
his feeble excuse for a brain. He beeps again, waving a mid-finger at the aging
folks on the hard shoulder.
The traffic
moves forward a couple of months and then grinds to a stop again, I hit the
steering wheel, why did I not just wait until this traffic had cleared I think
to myself. That is when I spot a lone young man with crusty dreadlocks and a
big backpack standing on the 2027 slip road holding his thumb out for a lift.
Usually I avoid hitchhikers like the plague, bunch of freeloading skivers with
nothing better to be doing than hassling people for lifts to festivals, this
guy is probably looking for a lift back to 1969, they all want to witness
Woodstock; get a haircut and get a
fucking job I say to myself as he stands there hopeful for a lift.
Then I think
about the long journey ahead, it wouldn’t be so bad if I pick him up so that I
can have some company even if it’s just for a few decades, I might be able to
convert him to become a businessman like myself. So I stop and pick him up.
“Hi,” he says through his dirty bearded mouth, “thanks mate!” I’m not his
“mate” but I smile anyway and allow him to throw his muddy backpack on my clean
backseat and jump into the passenger seat.
“Where are you
heading to mate?” I ask him in his own broken language, regretting my decision
and hoping it wasn’t too late, hopefully he wanted dropping off at the illegal
warehouse parties of the 1990s.
“1914,” he
tells me, what on earth does he want to do back then I think but I nod and he
sits back, “busy on the tunnel today isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it
always is,” I reply.
“All these
time tourists, sad really,” he says. Now I am sorry, he may not be the
stereotype holiday maker but he is, more or less a tourist himself, he doesn’t
time travel for business, he’s just bumming about getting his kicks. “So, when
are you off to?” he asks, typically making small talk and without any real
interest.
“2600 BC,” I
tell him.
“Wow!” he
screams, “what are you doing that far back?”
“Well, I
work for a machine company, selling heavy building equipment. I want to get the
pagans to buy a heavy-duty crane in order to lift the stones in the
construction of Stonehenge,” I tell him, taking another sip of my coffee.
He grins,
“That is like, crazy man!”
I smile
back, “well, they need it and the purchase of the crane will secure the company
name for hundreds of years to come. Sure it will not bring much money into the
firm but it’s a crucial marketing strategy against our nearest competitors.”
He nods, “crazy,
man.”
Not really
interested why he wants to stop at 1914 I thought it best to ask him why
anyway, “why 1914, not many festivals happen back then?”
“Oh no, I’m
not off to a festival,” he grins, “I’m a freedom fighter on a peace making mission.”
“Oh right,
how does that work then?”
“Yeah man,
when I get there I got to get straight to Sarajevo and find a man called Gavrilo
Princip, he was a Bosnian Serb and a member of a secret military society known
as the Black Hand. He assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand which led to the
Great War of 1914 and in turn led to the uprising of the Nazi Party in Germany
which started the Second World War.”
“Oh right,”
I said, surprised by his answer, “why?”
“I’m going
to kill him before he carries out the attack thus putting an end to both world
wars. Billions of people will be saved,” he proudly announced.
I was
shocked, it was just this sort of messing around with the time continuum that
led to so much confusion and alteration in our own time, costing taxpayers
billions in funding the agency that had to put it right again. This sort of
thing was, and for good reason, highly illegal and so I pointed this out him.
He seemed sad, “I have to do something, I cannot let all those people die,” he
wailed.
“That is not
the point I told him, upsetting the timeline in such a degree would have
serious repercussions. Who knows what might happen, I mean the failure to
advance in technology in the way that the world wars allowed humankind could
mean that time travel never gets invented and the tunnels will close around us,
trapping us in our destination time,” I told him, adding “you fucking idiot,”
for good measure.
“Oh right
and introducing the pagans to crane technology is not corrupting the timeline
then?” he asked.
“No, not in
same way, it has already happened,” I told him sternly, “I cannot let you do
this.” I was right I had to stop him, our way of life depended on it.
“You know
the album Peace in our Time, the 1987
hit album from John Lennon? Well that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t kill
Mark David Chapman, Lennon’s assassin in 1980 would it? That album changed the
way people thought about war and peace, never did any harm to kill him did it?”
he questioned.
“That is not
in the same ball park,” I informed him, “you can’t compare it. You can’t change
history like this, it’s the golden rule of time travel not to tamper with the
past, look at the Marty McFly, with his brother fading from the photo, remember
that? Yoko Ono might think you’re a hero but the time cops will have you strung
up for this one. I cannot let you do this.”
Just then,
as I was thinking about how I could stop him, we were passing the junction for
1920 he went to open the door, the time winds howled outside as I was just
picking up speed after the traffic jam. I tried to press the central locking
system control but it was too late, “I have to do this,” he claimed and leapt
from my moving vehicle. In my mirror I saw him roll over to the embankment and
lie lifeless on the floor. Hopefully he was dead, I thought, unless if he was
to get another lift he would probably not mention his mission and it was only a
six year trip to his exit.
“Fucking
space cadet!” I yelled, “That hippy-time-meddling mother fucker!” I yelled even
louder. After some time though the whole event was forgotten about, he was
obviously dead and I could get on with my assignment without concern.
3.
Hundreds of
pagan workers walking to and fro across the downs, slowly pushing great rocks
on pulley-systems made from small wheels, puffing and panting as they went were
the scenes my eyes were blessed with as soon as I exited the tunnel. “Great!” I
told myself, my rival company had clearly not got here yet, they were sure to
be interested in the plans I carried in a long tube under my arms. I locked the
pod, securing the invisibility shield and went on my way to find the top dog in
charge of this construction.
I had
changed my clothes to blend in with the locals back at the BC service station;
it was the last taste of a McDougall’s burger and fries I would be getting for
some time, I just didn’t know for how long. Before the moon was out I had made
contact with the head foreman of the site, a druid called Hawkwind, he seemed
very interested so he took me to his home where his wife feed me venison and
gave me some mead to drink. In the morning we began working on construction of
the crane according to the blueprints and he agreed to pay me a vast amount of
gold for my idea. I tried to clench the deal with a gentleman’s handshake but
he favoured sacrificing a lamb, claiming I was a gift from the sun itself. I
was chuffed, whatever he felt like thinking was fine with me, the gold would be
worth a small fortune in my time and I would have secured the company name in
prehistory. My job here was done; I thanked the tribe and walked back to the
time tunnel, I was so pleased to finally be away from these stinking,
uneducated Neanderthals.
Reaching the
hillside where I left my pod I put my hand under my robe where I secured my
invisibility shield control key and found it was gone. “Shit, where is it?” I
asked myself and scanned the ground around me. I took a walk back across my
tracks and could see it nowhere. Frustrated and annoyed I climbed the hill
again, there was an operating panel on the underside of the pod I could use to
manually switch the security system offline.
Careful not
to bump into the pod I put my hands out in front on me. Some passers-by looked
at me oddly, walking like a zombie around the hill, not that they knew what a
zombie was. I covered the whole hill and could not find the pod or the tunnel
entrance which by now should have homed in on my location automatically by mind
control. The tunnel operating system was a telepathic computer that could sense
your request to open a tunnel and automatically did so. I tried to focus my
mind, it normally did not take any real concentration but I found however much
I tried it simply just didn’t work.
The tunnel
not working I could have put down to a glitch in the system and figured it
would be operational again in seconds. However with this and the missing pod I
knew something was not right. I sat on the hillside and considered how this
could have happened. That is when I remembered, him, “that fucking hippy!”
4.
To say I was
in desperation was an understatement son; I spent the next few weeks wandering
around in hope of finding someone else from my time that was stranded too. I
found no one. I was chased away from every tribe. We live in changing times
son, the agricultural revolution is underway, they were busy turning from
hunter-gatherers into farming communities and these villages simply didn’t want
anyone like me that was incapable of looking after my own. Heck, I couldn’t
even make fire, I tried really I did but a boy from 2098 had no chance, we just
didn’t need to know how to do it. I lived off the berries and fruit I found; I
couldn’t hunt or fish even if I could make fire to cook it with.
I had
forgotten how much time had elapsed, it seemed like months and I was full of
beard and too skinny and undernourished to continue walking. I found some
cliffs and decided to end it there and then. I had come to terms with the fact that
history had been altered, although I was unsure if stopping the assassination
of Franz Ferdinand had been the root cause of it I figured it most probably
was, hell a future without “Take me Out,” “Walk Away,” and “This Fire” was bad
enough but the results of that hippies actions was far worse than the sudden
disappearance of a rock band, it had slowed the development of technology to
the point where time travel in my era was impossible. So I took a deep breath
and threw myself onto the cliffs below, perhaps if they wiped out Oasis too it
wouldn’t have been so bad.
I awoke in a
mud hut surrounded by smelly hairy men looking at me. They smiled when they saw
me and got me to drink some muddy water, it was rank. Slowly I was nursed
better by a toothless lady; she was covered with hair and stank of foul crap. She
was disgusting but was far from old; she could only have been 20 years old at a
push. When I looked past her hair and toothless smile I had to admit that she
was quite pretty. This is when I developed my plan.
It was all
so easy, all I had to do, and no matter how much I cringed at the thought, is mate
with this girl. Then I could produce offspring with which to tell this story
to. The story would be passed through the generations until it got to the year
1914, then the man of my future family line would be able to kill the hippy
that killed the assassin that should have killed Franz Ferdinand before he got
a chance to kill the assassin, allowing the assassin to kill Franz Ferdinand
and therefore begin the wars which would lead to the technology being devolved
to invent time travel and thus reopen the time tunnel where someone could come
and rescue me, simple really.
So I smiled
my best fake smile at the girl, confused she looked onto me and giggled, it was
the beginning of a relationship of which I thought I would hate at first. The
family took me under their wings; they supported me until I was well enough to
start work in the fields. So I learned to make fire, I learned how to sow the
crops and herd the livestock. I was even able to come up with the simplest of
ideas to help them with their farming. I had become a valid member of the team,
my muscles grew more than ever before, my hands became rough, and my teeth
began to rot like theirs. I took much pleasure from understanding the world as
they saw it, a life without Christianity or any other formal religion; they
believed in the things they could see and touch like the fertility of the land,
the powers of the moon and the sun. They feared that their new life of farming
would go against their beliefs. That is when I began to understand the reasons
for building the Stonehenge; it was symbolic that on the great winter solstice
the sun and the moon would meet in the square formed by the stone circle. The
moon and the sun, their gods, would be united and still bear as much importance
in their new lives as farmers as it ever did when they were hunter gatherers.
Life here was
so simple; I actually began to enjoy it. The girl, Aife, her name meaning beauty had become my beauty; I wouldn’t
say it was love at first sight but I managed to overcome my 21st
century perceptions of what a young lady should look like and look past her
prehistoric features. We spent many hours staring up at the stars, I tried to
tell her that they were other suns but she did not believe me. We spent hours
just sitting by the river, swimming and fishing, knowing that in my time they
would all be polluted. We spoke but our conversations took a long time, she
often did not understand me.
Even though
we did not work well together, well we were from completely different time
zones, completely different cultures, we made love. She liked the way I was
with her; understanding of her needs sexually was something the other male
villagers just didn’t care to do. Before long, despite my horror of what I had
done by the fact this could never work between us and I did it out of need to
return to my own time rather than through love, she fell pregnant.
My life here
changed when you were born son and I treated you both like my family, trying to
hold back my desires to return to the 21st century I got on with
raising my pagan family. I watched you grow in hope that one day you would be
old enough and wise enough to take heed of this story, to understand what you
must do. You must carry this tale with you, you must tell it to your offspring
and I hope that the family chain will not be broken.
So now we
are here, at the hill where my pagan life started. If you succeed in conveying
the story and so do your spouses through the passage of time the timeline will
be fixed and the tunnel will open up before us, then I must go.”
5.
Jack and his
son watched the hill, silent in contemplation. It was clear that his son wanted
to say something important to him and several times he said, “Father…..”
“Yes?” asked
Jack.
“…..I….ermmm….I
promise to pass this story to my own children,” he said with a tear in his eye
as they both watched the wind whip up into a twirl and form a tunnel.
Suddenly
from out of the tunnel came a pod, it skidded on the grass and the figure of a
man stepped out and looked at the smelly, bearded, pagan dressed Jack sitting
on the hill, “J…J...Jack?” he asked.
“Roy?” asked
Jack in disbelief, it was his old associate from the office, the sales manager
for the 1800-1900’s.
“Damn!”
exclaimed Roy as he approached Jack, “you smell worse than you look, what the
fuck happened to you; the boss sent you away just yesterday, he wants to know
if you secured the deal?”
“Yes, I did
Roy; it’s great to see you again.”
“What? Have
you been on the piss or something?”
“Something,”
he replied, “now let’s go, my pod is out of order, you’ll have to give me
lift.”
“Yeah, no
problems, hop right in.”
Jack looked
over his shoulder, his son stood there amazed. Jack walked up to him, “Son, you
are a man now; you must look after your mother and explain to her why I had to
go.” He kissed him on his greasy hair and got into the pod.
“Who was
that?” asked Roy as he pulled into the tunnel.
“Oh, no one
important,” said Jack.
“I’ve been
out at Giza, the great Pyramid project is moving so much faster with our JCB.
This time next year the company will be in a position to give us all a fat
bonus.” Roy sped on through the tunnel, out of the BC and into the AD years.
When all of a sudden they hit heavy traffic and the lane came to a stop.
Jack thought
about his home, his air-con flat under the artificial atmosphere, he thought of
his job, the same thing day in day out, the office and all the over-egotistical
staff. He thought of everything he left behind so many years ago. Then he
grabbed Roy by the scruff of the neck, “Roy!” he shouted, “take me back, take
me back now!”
“What? I
thought you said you closed the deal?”
“No, I have
a few odds and ends to sort out, tell the boss that I’ll be a few more days.”
The pod
re-landed back on the hill where the pagan boy and his mother, Aife stood
watching in wonderment. Jack got out of the pod and run over to them, “I am
back!” he shouted and hugged them, “forget the story son, forget it all and
never tell it to another soul as long as you live!”
Roy went off
confused as the tunnel evaporated after him.
Jack walked
over the hill and watched the people gathering at the Stonehenge, solstice was
soon and the cold dark nights were drawing in. Jack huddled close to his family
to keep them warm.
WHITE SPACE VAN MAN
NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK!
Out in paperback via Amazon very soon!
Or out in eBook format via, Amazon, B&N, nook UK, iTunes, Kobo, Sony, WHSmith, R&A, and EBM and others.
US: http://www.amazon.com/White-Space-Van-Man-ebook/dp/B00C6C9J3O/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1376470977&sr=1-1
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Space-Van-Man-ebook/dp/B00C6C9J3O/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1376470977&sr=1-1
