You know what comes next don’t you?
Yeah, they started dying. It was my fault. Probably some virus or germ I carried along with me. What did I just say about man’s interference..?
By hey! If I hadn’t, then we wouldn’t be here!
I thought long and hard about my next trip. I wanted to do something really useful to balance out the whole destroying an ecosystem thing. So, I finally decided on a quick jaunt into the future.
The future? Much as you would expect. Flying cars, giant insular city communities constructed in the middle of weather in turmoil and raised sea levels on a planet injured and scarred by brutal conflict.
Still, on the bright side, they have cool spaceships, moon bases and colonies on Mars. No aliens, unfortunately, but I probably hadn’t gone far enough forward to meet any.
Anyway, back to the point. I found what I went to the future for, and brought it back with me. What had I gone looking for? The AIDS vaccine.
I decided to take it back to the early twentieth century and nip the disease in the bud.
Do you know what a vaccine is?
Put into simple terms, it is a small amount of the actual virus, enough to bolster the body’s immune system. How was I to know that introducing a vaccine to a virus that did not yet exist would cause so much bother?
Look, I’m sorry. But at least we know there’ll be cure in the end, eh?
At this point, you would be telling yourself that this time travel thing is a bad idea. Meddling with things that shouldn’t be meddled with, that sort of thing. Not me. I put it down to bad luck, and figured third time lucky was the rule. Bad luck.
Maybe I should have said ‘Bad timing’?
For a while after that, things got better, though it would be pointless for me to tell you what I achieved. When you think of it, any war I may have stopped, any disaster averted or assassination I foiled would, by definition, never have happened, so you wouldn’t have heard of it.
No, I’m not stupid. I am now very wealthy, after my many successful investments, as well as a sizeable lottery jackpot. Okay, a few sizeable lottery jackpots. These I figured as payment for my many good deeds.
Maybe it was karma, but after the lottery wins, stuff started to go wrong.
I introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love, John to Yoko, John to Ringo, Chas to Dave, Jack to Jackie. And to Marilyn. And a few others besides.
I told Barbara Cartland she looked good in pink.
What? The Kennedy assassination? Yeah, I know who did it. But trust me -
you do not want to know. You can see me in that film, by the way. I’m standing behind the guy with the umbrella.
But that’s only the half of it. How do you live with the knowledge that you helped to split up the Beatles? Or worse, helped Wings stay together for an extra year?
How can a man come back from that? Can he redeem himself after suggesting to Abraham Lincoln that he needed a night out at the theatre?
After too many such incidents, I realised that my jaunts back and forth were causing more problems than they were solving.
Yes, I tried to put it right; went back to a few of my mistakes, but ended up making them worse. That’s where the Kennedy thing comes in. The book depository window and the grassy knoll? Those were both me.. What a mess.
Kennedy, Lincoln, AIDS, Arch Duke Ferdinand and more. I killed a lot of people trying to do the right thing.
But how do I put all of that right?
It took me a while, but eventually, I arrived at the obvious answer. The solution was to stop myself before I built the thing.
But the application… when was the best time to stop myself?
I remember the exact moment that I had the idea. It seemed like yesterday; it seemed like a thousand years ago. It was probably both.
How do I stop myself?
I remember the exact moment. Looking down on the circuit board city. New York below me on September 11th.
How do I stop myself?
………………………………………………
Richmond Clements is originally from N Ireland and now living in Northern Scotland. He is co-editor at FutureQuake Press, whose titles include the Eagle Award nominated FutureQuake and 2000AD fanzine Zarjaz. He has written numerous comic strips and the graphic novels Turning Tiger, Ketsueki and Pirates of the Lost World.
Cleanup on Deck 7
Claire Simpson
“Attention, all hands. We have an incursion on deck seven, starboard. I repeat, an incursion on deck seven, starboard. Initiate emergency procedures. Red alert.”
Being on her first tour of duty, Janitor Grade One Nakata still had a tendency to get lost in the endless corridors of the Lightspeed Warrior. So when the announcement came over the comms she had to double-check the signs to see where she was. ‘Deck 7: Starboard Aft’. Great.
What did the janitorial manual say about Arachnid incursions? Get back to base, stay out of the way, prepare for major clean-up operations afterwards. That was it. Seventeen pages about shifting unruly grease spots and nothing about what to do when a breach happened in front of you.
The growing shadows on the wall ahead were not the cavalry riding in to save her, judging by the shapes. Nakata dived blindly for the nearest door and hurled herself through, slapping at the button to close it behind her.
A store cupboard. Fantastic. She could never find the damn things when she needed them and now she was stuck in one. Better try to settle her breathing and hope they didn’t figure out she was in here. “Nakata.” The communicator at her waist crackled. Janitor Grade Two Dimitrov. “Report in, Nakata. Where are you?”
“Deck seven, starboard aft,” she whispered, trying not to attract the attention of anything outside. “I can’t really-”
“Say again, Nakata.” Dimitrov didn’t do quiet. “Where the hell are you?” Nakata lifted the communicator and spoke as loudly as she dared. “I’m in a cupboard on deck seven, starboard aft,” she said. “There are hostiles right outside. I’ll join you as soon as I’m-”
