Chapter 6
It had now been exactly a week
since his future self had paid David Lutman that visit with that message.
On this particular Saturday
evening - as he did so on most Saturday evenings - Lutman kept himself shut away
in his bedroom from the rest of the world. With his computer connected to his
large wall-mounted high-definition TV, he then flung himself on the bed, laid
down and settled to watch some television.
His bedroom had seen little change
since his teens. Apart from the heaving bookshelves and a rather messy dressing
table covered with loose coins, a few magazines, and piles of mail that had
been both opened and unopened, it was reasonably tidy. Miscellaneous junk had
been placed into neat piles upon whatever spare space existed on the shelves,
and there were two orderly piles of magazines stacked in one corner. There was
also a thickish layer of dust around the sills, cupboards and wardrobes that
perhaps only saw a duster in Lutman’s hand once a month. His mother had long
abandoned the idea of keeping his room in order. As far as she was concerned,
Lutman was more than old enough to do that job.
As an action-packed drama unfolded
on the screen, his mind, not for the first time, wandered back to the events last
Sunday afternoon. Maybe his future self might
come back and tell him more? Maybe the baseball cap was deliberately left behind. It had that message, and that surely meant
something. But Dzizzy-R was all that he
said before he disappeared, a phrase that was blurted out with such urgency
that it, unquestionably, had to have meant something important.
But what was he supposed to do
next? The holiday was now booked - that earlier instruction was clear enough -
but he had no clue as to his next course of action. But every ounce of his
being was telling him to continue as normal. The scenario had been set, and
that there would be no way of turning back.
He then
realized that he had been staring at the TV screen for the past ten minutes
with absolutely no idea as to what had been happening.
So he switched off the TV, deciding
that there really was nothing worth watching, and turned on his laptop. He went
to a search engine, and once again, began the task of punching in key words and
hope he would hit on something useful.
This time he spotted something. One of the results
looked like it had something worth reading. He wondered how he had missed it
last time around. He clicked on the link.
Headed Time and
Time Travel: A Supplement to Temporal Manipulation, the piece began with
some complicated and confusing explanations before stating that there were two
laws of time. The first law was that no one should be allowed to meet themselves,
after which it then stated that it would be impossible for anyone to interfere
with their timeline. Lutman grinned, feeling pretty certain that this law had
already certainly been broken, thanks to his future self. As regards the second law, the article said that it
would be impossible for one to go back to the same point in time and have
several attempts to change something in order to get it right. To break these
rules would create paradoxical situations.
All of this was rather
interesting, but Lutman then decided to return to the search engine, typing in
the letters ‘DCCR’. And just as before, he was faced with a list that included
‘Detroit Catholic Charismatic Renewal’, ‘Division of Commissioned
Corps Recruitment’ and the ‘Deaf Connect Chat Room’, along with another 50,000 plus
hits. And just as he had done so on that long night after the event, and had
been doing so regularly since then, he tried ‘DCCR’ and ‘Time Machine’
together. And not for the first time, the search engine simply told him:
Your search did not match
any documents.
Now getting increasingly
frustrated, he once more typed in all the obvious words and phrases. Time
travel. Time paradoxes. He briefly glanced at those hits that looked
promising, but not for the first time got absolutely nowhere, mainly because he
soon found himself completely and utterly lost in the scientific language.
*
A very unhappy-looking Jeannie was
waiting for Lutman as he arrived at work the following Monday morning. As he
plopped himself into his chair, she began to explain that she and her boyfriend
had split after a blistering row Friday evening. But what he had not expected
to hear was that the following Saturday morning she had rushed to the travel
agent, and discovered to her surprise that there had been a cancellation on his
trip. She booked the slot. ‘Well, I’m free now,’ she explained cheerfully, ‘and
after what you told me, it sounds fun,’ adding, ‘and it’d be a great way to
forget about that arsehole.’
Yes, he thought sadly. She's free.
She's young. She's single. And she’s three years younger than he is. A good
age. In the current scenario, the first potential candidate for a wife.
Don’t be such an idiot,
he told himself. Had he forgotten his ‘no colleagues’ rule? There will probably
be many more girls to meet in the tour party when he got there. Nevertheless,
he thought, who was to say that the girl concerned would come from his tour
party?
‘David,’ said a graspy,
chain-smoked voice from next door, ‘I’ve got someone from the Hensfield Mercury on my line wanting to
talk to you about those planned night shelter spending increases.’
There would be plenty of American girls out there too.
So many possibilities. Pleasant though she was, he really hoped Jeannie would
remain an outside bet.
‘David!
Pick up your bloody phone, will you!’
‘What? Oh, bloody hell!’
‘It’s the Hensfield
Mercury!’
‘All right!
Okay! Yeah, what do they want?’
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