COMPLETE THE CIRCLE, Chapter 2

Chapter 2

For several minutes David Lutman could only sit stock still on the edge of his bed, still trying to absorb all that had just happened.

The baseball cap he was now holding firmly with both hands – a green baseball cap that was still damp from the sweaty hand that had originally clasped it – was proof that what he had just seen had been very real. But he was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the whole experience, and it was nausea that, just like his counterpart, compelled him to go over to the open window and breathe in the cold September air.

After recovering, and now feeling a sense of purpose, he flung the cap onto the bed and reached across to grab the Rand McNally road atlas that lay on top of a stack of other atlases, along with a large number of A3 & A4 books that occupied the top shelf of his large, untidily-stacked bookcase. He opened the atlas, and inside was a copy of the latest StatesTrek holiday brochure that he obtained a few weeks earlier. He then turned the page that covered the tours on the West Coast of the United States. Lutman had been thinking about a trip there for some time but had been still some way from making a decision: after all, as he had often reminded himself, he had been there for the last two years in succession.

StatesTrek was a holiday company that was specifically aimed at younger people, or for those who preferred a more physical holiday rather than simply relaxing. Their tours would bring together groups of around twelve like-minded individuals from all over the world, and together were accompanied by an American guide. Then they would all travel in a minibus for the whole tour, with most night stops spent under canvas. Lutman had taken such a trip to New England and Canada last year, and had also visited California on his first visit to the States. For him, this was the kind of holiday that offered him an escape from the increasingly mundane routine of his nine to five office job.

And he had also long decided that it was a far better way of finding a like-minded female.

Even David Lutman would readily admit that inside he was a shy, single, and introverted individual. His interests were limited to activities that largely kept him at home, such as reading factual books and magazines, watching DVDs, satellite television, and endless surfing on his laptop. In one sense he was happy living with this lifestyle, but was painfully aware of the frustrations that all this imposed on him, and that all of this was self-inflicted. He lived with his parents, something he kept to himself mainly through fear, regret, and embarrassment. Although he did not have a girlfriend, he had experienced intimate female companionship through friends and colleagues at work. But he had very recently acquired another problem in that his shyness had become exceptionally worse. Although his profession meant that he had to maintain a persona of professionally-polished expressiveness for the media and public, he now had many problems as regards building any kind of romantic relationship with the opposite sex thanks to a painful incident which he secretly believed he was responsible for.  

He had now made up his mind that the girl he really wanted would not be British. Not one from work, his city, or anywhere else in the country. None of them appealed to him anymore. In his view - and as far as he was concerned, in his experience - all these women wanted to do were things that he did not. They would always suggest taking him to places where he would feel intensively shy or desperately uncomfortable such as going to hot, sweaty, crowded, noisy night clubs that involved staying up until the early hours of the morning, and probably being made to drink copious amounts of alcohol along with the inevitable negative effects it had on both himself and everyone else. But his lifestyle was not all about seclusion; once a week he would go out with friends for beers in quiet villages or town pubs, but at all times preferring to keep his distance from the city.

From his experience on those trips to New England and California, none of the free and single girls from around the world were night clubbers or heavy drinkers. He felt comfortable in their presence, and so making up his mind that it would be on these tours where he would find a permanent relationship. But even those girls still lacked that certain something he longed for that he so deeply wanted. Now this visit from his future self did appeare to offer him some hope and as a consequence he felt uplifted. Excited even. Was he really about to meet his future wife? But then why would his double tell him this? And what was so important that he had to be given this information?  And how was he able to travel through time? He then looked at the baseball cap. This was definitely not in his imagination. What was the last thing his doppelgänger said before his abrupt departure? DCCR? Dzizzy R? Or what? What on earth did DCCR mean?

He shot up from his bed, flung the atlas and brochure onto the floor and grabbed his laptop from the shelf. He booted it up, opened a search engine, typed in 'time travel' and was disappointed to get several million suggestions, even though he had fully expected this. He tried to narrow down the search fields, adding words such as ‘future’, ‘past’, ‘machine’, ‘theory’, anything that might give even a grain of a clue to what all this was about. When he eventually looked at his bedroom window there was a noticeable orange glow outside and the black sky had turned noticeably bluer. It was not the end of the day: it was the beginning of a new one.

So David Lutman shut down his computer. He then lay flat out on his bed, exhausted.

Chapter 3 >