Faster Than Light
by Alasdair McPherson
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: A psychiatrist meets up with an old patient who is not as old as he should be!
_____________________________________________________________________
I have just had a strange experience. I have been to identify the body of a man I briefly knew thirty-five years ago. He was still alive when he reached the shore on the island of Eigg off the west coast of Scotland but he died in the helicopter on the way to hospital. Finger prints and blood samples indicated that he had been a patient of mine – one of my first – soon after I got a position as psychiatrist in what were then called ‘lunatic asylums’.
Now I have reached retiring age: this is to be my final official duty.
I knew him at once in the morgue. You see, he had not changed in the intervening years. When I treated him he was about forty years old and despite the passage of time the cadaver can have been no more than fifty.
He came to us from a police cell. He had been picked up, naked, at the side of a road in Surrey. Unlike most of our patients his memory was intact: the problem was that they were the memories of someone else. The man who properly owned the memories died when his home burned to the ground. I was still checking his story when he absconded. He was no danger to himself or others so security was lax and he simply walked away one night taking a few pounds of petty cash that was kept in the office.
All he left behind was an account of what he claimed had happened to him that he had written at my request. I hardly remember reading it at the time but I dug it out of the files. I have left it just as he wrote it thirty-five years ago:
Part One: Abduction
I went to pieces after my wife died. For twenty years she had remained loyal even when my closest friends and all my colleagues had condemned my ideas as crazy. I neglected her dreadfully, leaving her at home in the good years while I attended conferences all over the world and shutting her out of my room and my thoughts when my ideas were ridiculed.
It would be comforting to think that I would have changed, become reconciled to my isolation and devoted to her the time she deserved. Before either of us could find out, she was diagnosed with cancer and died before I could come to terms with the disease or my impending loss. We have no children – I was too selfish to give up any of her attention to another.
After the funeral I returned to our home, locked the outer doors and went back into my room with the door firmly shut. I suppose it fostered the illusion that she was still out there cooking and cleaning ready, as always, to listen to my troubles and assure me of my worth.
The complexities of time were occupying every waking hour as they had done for years. I could, you must understand, see no reason why time should not obey the same rules as other physical phenomena. In particular it should be possible to move back and forward in the time dimension rather than being rooted to one spot. After all you would think it ridiculous to stand still unable to move right or left along a line.
It was years since I had made any progress and I now spent the hours shut in my room re-reading my own work and the work of others hoping that some idea would emerge that would ignite further inspiration. Sometimes I would sit for hours weeping in combined frustration and bitter anger against my detractors. I know that scientists are supposed to remain detached and objective but my emotions have always been actively churning just below my controlled facade. The truth is that I had no one to blame but myself: I was just not clever enough to see the solution.
I have always had a good appetite so I emerged every week or so to buy groceries at the local supermarket. Despite my lifetime’s obsession with the subject I took little notice of time and only the supermarket remains open twenty-four hours a day. Canned goods and frozen meals were my staples and I bought as much as I could carry on these rare forays.
One evening as I was entering the shop at about 11 pm, I was stopped by a small, nondescript man:
“Dr. Graham,” he said, stepping into my path and forcing me to stop. “I can prove that time can go backwards.”
It had been so long since I had spoken to anyone that I had to clear my throat several times before I could reply.
“It is unkind of you to mock me. You know my name so you must know that I have searched for such a proof for thirty years.” My voice began to tremble and I could feel tears gathering at the back of my eyes. “Please go away and leave me to my misery.”
“Come with us and I will show you the proof,” he replied, taking my arm and turning me towards two men who had been standing close to my shoulder like gaolers throughout the exchange.
With my interlocutor leading and flanked by the two other men, I let myself be led to a large, black car. I got in between the guards while the man who had spoken leant over and pushed a needle into my upper arm through my coat.
I awoke clear-headed and all at once if I may put it that way – there was no period of grogginess or confusion. I was immediately aware that I was in a small boat crossing a slightly choppy stretch of water. There were seagulls calling overhead and what I can only describe as the memory of a smell of fish. It seemed obvious that I was on the open sea rather than an inland lake being carried in what had once been a fishing boat. Since my home is more than fifty kilometres from the sea, I had clearly been unconscious for some time.
My mouth was dry and I was hungry. Had it not been for these two things I might have lain quietly and been carried who knows where; my state of mind was that I might as well be here (wherever “here” is) than back in the fusty room I had lived in for so long. Looking back it is strange that I had no fear for the future but neither did I have much hope that it would be better than the recent past. Strangest of all was the clarity of my thoughts: my body was sluggish but my mind seemed to be working faster than normal.
After a number of harrumphs I managed to ask: “May I have a glass of water and something to eat, please?”
“You’re awake, man?” An unmistakably Scottish island voice replied and, a second later its owner appeared dressed in the uniform of tattered Guernsey, faded jeans and Wellingtons turned over at the top. He held out a tin cup and, when I reached for it and missed by some inches, he held it to my lips until I could take it from him.
He turned away whistling variations on the theme of ‘Marie’s Wedding’. When he came back minutes later he handed me two slices of thick white bread struggling to contain four or five rashers of bacon. If the Gods really do feast on ambrosia they have been short-changed – nothing approaches a bacon butty when it comes to awarding the prize for best food!
Fed and feeling more alive than for months, I got up from the settle where I had wakened and went up a short companion way into the wheelhouse. This was accomplished slowly and carefully since my body was still rather reluctant to obey my commands!
We were passing a low headland about fifty metres off to the right. To the left there was nothing but open water with ripples occasionally showing a white top. When I looked back to the right we had cleared the headland and were entering a bay with a jetty and an old boathouse. Behind the boathouse the land rose gently to a ridge perhaps a kilometre from the shore. There was no sign of a habitable house, and neither telephone wires nor electricity pylons.
“This’ll be your home from now on,” the boatman smiled. “Its no’ as bad as it looks.”
As we approached the jetty two men in kilts and deerstalkers came out of the boathouse. They looked like stage Scotsmen in a downmarket London production but they carried modern pump-action shotguns under their arms. The moment we touched the jetty they came on board and hustled me ashore. The boatman selected reverse before my feet touched the ground and he was half way back to the headland before we reached the boathouse.
Inside, the boathouse contained the usual clutter of oars, floats and bits of net in a variety of colours. One of the vaudeville Scots turned inside the door and lifted a lobster pot that had seen better days. As he did so a section of the floor lifted revealing broad steps leading into a well-lit passage. My first thought was to wonder why the stacks of debris did not tumble off as the floor rose – I have noticed before that faced with two phenomena that defy explanation the human mind will fix on the more trivial.
“Down you go then, mate.” The accent was more Bow Bells than Brigadoon.
So down I wandered pleased to find that my equilibrium was more or less back to normal.
As I stepped off the bottom step I was met by the nondescript man who had accosted me in the supermarket car park.
“I’m Doctor Williamson, Doctor Graham. Please let me show you around your new home. You should take it easy this evening and be fresh for your meeting with the Director tomorrow morning.”
With that, he set off down a long corridor passing several steel doors with wired metal viewing panels set at such a height that I could only see the ceilings of the rooms we passed. After a few minutes walking we entered a section of corridor that was carpeted and had framed prints on the walls.
“That was the magic workshops we passed,” Dr Williamson said over his shoulder. “Now we are in the living and recreational area. Please come through here.” And with that he opened a door and held it for me to pass through.
We entered a smaller corridor tastefully decorated with flowers on occasional tables along the walls. We passed three or four doors on either side then we came to an area where the corridor widened. A large coffee table with a few magazines scattered on the surface was surrounded by comfortable looking chairs and settees. Against one wall a dresser held a coffee maker and a tray of cups.
A young man sitting in an armchair put down the New Scientist and rose to meet us.
“This is George,” Dr Williamson said waving an arm. “He will look after you – show you your room, the mess hall, the library – that sort of thing. He is a sort of graduate student.”
George smiled at me: “Cup of coffee – or tea, or, well, anything really hot or cold.” His voice was almost without accent and rather lighter and higher pitched than I would have expected from a broad-shouldered man over six feet tall. By the time the amenities had been settled, George and I were alone, Dr Williamson having gone as quietly as he had arrived.
My mind was beginning to speculate again as the drug wore off: it seemed to have made me uncritical, unquestioning in a way that was very unlike my normal behaviour.
As rational thought came back I became aware of just how tired I was. After several attempts to start a conversation, George gave me his amiable smile: “Time for bed, I think. Everything you need is in your room and I will call for you in the morning to take you to breakfast and then to the Directors office. Just let me say what an honour it is for me to work with you.”
Part Two: Introductions
My room was about the size of a hotel suite with a large double bed. When George left me, I simply undressed and crawled under the covers, falling asleep as my head touched the pillow. Now it was morning and diffused daylight was showing the pastel coloured walls displaying my pictures! The only window was very high up and about three metres long but less than thirty centimetres high.
There were two internal doors; the left hand one opened into an opulent bathroom where my shaving gear and toiletries were laid out. I set the taps running and left the bath filling while I explored the right hand door. It opened into a study and it came as no real surprise to find all my books filling the bookcase and all in their proper places. I do mean my books – when I checked, I found all the marginal notes that I scribble when I am reading.
After a bath and a shave I dressed in one of my suits that was hanging neatly in the wardrobe. Then I went back to the study and looked at my desk and filing cabinets. All the small items had been removed there from my home: the desk was a good copy but it lacked the stains and scratches I had inflicted on the original over the years.
I was still checking my belongings when George arrived to take me to breakfast. A man and woman rose from the table when we entered the dining room and left with a friendly nod. George and I sat in companionable silence while we gorged on an excellent breakfast of bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms and black pudding. George was easy company as we paid the food the respect it deserved.
We had just poured a second cup of coffee and I was about to start an inquisition when George stood up so quickly that his chair toppled over backwards. His face went very red and he was clearly agitated so I guessed that someone important had entered. I stood up slowly and turned to greet our visitor.
“Professor Janes! – but it can’t be. You are dead: you were drowned in a boating accident off Skye. It must be eight years ago now.”
He smiled and winked at George: “Get me a coffee and then make yourself scarce: Doctor Graham and I have a lot of catching up to do!”
“I was not drowned, as you can plainly see, just reported missing presumed drowned. We decided to leave the door open in case I needed to get back to the real world. The story would have been that I had been picked up by a Russian trawler suffering from loss of memory.
“Your departure is much more permanent, I’m afraid. You were careless with a match – smoking in bed, I understand – and your charred remains were found in the ashes that are all that remain of that cosy little cottage of yours.”
Professor Janes had been my mentor when I was doing my thesis and it was he who stimulated what became my obsessive interest in time. We had kept in touch until his reported death. Now my mind was in a whirl since it was clear that not only was he alive, he was looking years younger than at our last meeting all those years ago.
“This life obviously agrees with you, sir. You look younger than me!”
“But I am younger than you; about five years younger than you at present, although I change quite a bit. Didn’t Williamson explain to you that we can move backwards and forwards in time?”
I sat down again rather abruptly and Professor Janes sat beside me and put his arm around my shoulder.
Part Three: Be careful what you wish for
“This island was acquired by the government in the nineteen-twenties for some obscure purpose but the Great Depression meant that there was no money for the project. It lay empty until, during the Second War, some bright spark in Whitehall got it going again. All the building dates from that time, although they have improved the plumbing I am glad to say.
“His idea was that magic worked when people believed in it. If you could eliminate scepticism, he argued, magic would happen. He brought a group of men and women to this island and cut off all communication with the rest of the world: no newspapers, no radio, nothing. They lived out their lives here and had children who have themselves gone on to have offspring.
“They had no success with the original group, although they were little more than children when they came here, but the magic started to happen with the first generation born on the island. Now the adepts can perform spells even on sceptics.
“Williamson gave you a sedative in the car but it was a magician who cast the spell that made you cooperative and clear-headed when you woke. He let the spell lapse when you arrived because you are no use to me under that sort of mind management.
“We have a small team working at the moment to make sure that the police and coroner believe our little charade of your immolation. They wanted to put an old sheep in your bed but I insisted on a human corpse – I didn’t want anyone reviewing the evidence once the spell had lapsed!
“But on with the story. The success with the magic project got us thinking of other areas where scepticism could inhibit progress. Remember how we used to rail against the scientific establishment for the ready acceptance of Einstein’s strictures on the speed of light? I had a fair amount of influence in government circles at that time so I was able to convince a very shadowy committee to let me set up this group to play around with notions of time.
“George was born on the island and is a magician as well as a scientist while Williamson, who has a rather pedestrian brain, keeps us in touch with the outside world. He does not understand enough to make him a security risk.”
Part Four: The proposition
“I have gone as far as I can, more or less on my own. Now I need you to move the project towards its conclusions. I know how you have struggled under the scornful narrow-mindedness of other scientists. Can you imagine how your ideas will blossom in the atmosphere of expectation that will surround you here?”
“What exactly is our project?”
“I’m glad you called it ‘our’ project,” he grinned.
“The goals aren’t written down anywhere – it doesn’t do to be too specific when politicians are involved! To put it simply: I want you to design and build an engine that can propel a craft at super-light speeds. The first stage should aim for five times light speed so that we can explore the spiral arm that hosts the sun.”
I laughed, with more hysteria than humour: “You are mad – stark staring loony. Magic is real? You can move back and forwards in time? I suppose the tooth fairy has a room down the hall and no doubt Santa is in the north wing with his elves.”
Janes looked more taken aback than troubled by my outburst but his expression changed as I enumerated all the well-established scientific facts that undermined his assertions. First he became bewildered, then angry and, finally, like a man whose pet dog has bitten him. I was still finding arguments to demolish him when he looked over my shoulder and nodded. I followed his gaze in time to see Williamson pushing a needle into my upper arm.
Part Five: A non-person
This time when I came round I felt confused and sick – obviously no one had cast a spell to help me this time! I was naked and with nothing to identify me. I told my story to the police, of course, but that only got me out of a cell into a closed ward in a mental hospital.
The problem is that the person I claim to be is dead and buried having set himself on fire while smoking in bed. My blood and finger prints are not on file; my dentist produced records that matched the corpse; even my friends had not seen me for so long that the most they were prepared to say was that I bore a certain resemblance to Doctor Graham.
The irony is that the more I think about it the more I see that Professor Janes might have been on to something. All he had done, after all, was to take my own ideas to their logical conclusion! My scepticism amounted to a lack of self-belief: who knows what I might achieve working with a supportive group.
I am not considered dangerous so I can easily get out of the ward. The island is off the west of Scotland so I will go up there to look for the distinctive headland I saw when I was eating my bacon butty. I might even recognise the boatman if I see him.
What do I have to lose? If Janes is right he might even send me back in time so I can tell my wife how much I regret my neglect.
The last confirmed sighting of my patient before he turned up on the beach on Eigg was when he bought a train ticket to Kyle thirty-five years before. I have no rational explanation for what happened. You have the facts so you can make up your own mind whether people can travel back and forward in time.
One final strange thing: at the time he was in my care supermarkets did not open twenty-four hours a day!
Swearwords: None.
Description: A psychiatrist meets up with an old patient who is not as old as he should be!
_____________________________________________________________________
I have just had a strange experience. I have been to identify the body of a man I briefly knew thirty-five years ago. He was still alive when he reached the shore on the island of Eigg off the west coast of Scotland but he died in the helicopter on the way to hospital. Finger prints and blood samples indicated that he had been a patient of mine – one of my first – soon after I got a position as psychiatrist in what were then called ‘lunatic asylums’.
Now I have reached retiring age: this is to be my final official duty.
I knew him at once in the morgue. You see, he had not changed in the intervening years. When I treated him he was about forty years old and despite the passage of time the cadaver can have been no more than fifty.
He came to us from a police cell. He had been picked up, naked, at the side of a road in Surrey. Unlike most of our patients his memory was intact: the problem was that they were the memories of someone else. The man who properly owned the memories died when his home burned to the ground. I was still checking his story when he absconded. He was no danger to himself or others so security was lax and he simply walked away one night taking a few pounds of petty cash that was kept in the office.
All he left behind was an account of what he claimed had happened to him that he had written at my request. I hardly remember reading it at the time but I dug it out of the files. I have left it just as he wrote it thirty-five years ago:
Part One: Abduction
I went to pieces after my wife died. For twenty years she had remained loyal even when my closest friends and all my colleagues had condemned my ideas as crazy. I neglected her dreadfully, leaving her at home in the good years while I attended conferences all over the world and shutting her out of my room and my thoughts when my ideas were ridiculed.
It would be comforting to think that I would have changed, become reconciled to my isolation and devoted to her the time she deserved. Before either of us could find out, she was diagnosed with cancer and died before I could come to terms with the disease or my impending loss. We have no children – I was too selfish to give up any of her attention to another.
After the funeral I returned to our home, locked the outer doors and went back into my room with the door firmly shut. I suppose it fostered the illusion that she was still out there cooking and cleaning ready, as always, to listen to my troubles and assure me of my worth.
The complexities of time were occupying every waking hour as they had done for years. I could, you must understand, see no reason why time should not obey the same rules as other physical phenomena. In particular it should be possible to move back and forward in the time dimension rather than being rooted to one spot. After all you would think it ridiculous to stand still unable to move right or left along a line.
It was years since I had made any progress and I now spent the hours shut in my room re-reading my own work and the work of others hoping that some idea would emerge that would ignite further inspiration. Sometimes I would sit for hours weeping in combined frustration and bitter anger against my detractors. I know that scientists are supposed to remain detached and objective but my emotions have always been actively churning just below my controlled facade. The truth is that I had no one to blame but myself: I was just not clever enough to see the solution.
I have always had a good appetite so I emerged every week or so to buy groceries at the local supermarket. Despite my lifetime’s obsession with the subject I took little notice of time and only the supermarket remains open twenty-four hours a day. Canned goods and frozen meals were my staples and I bought as much as I could carry on these rare forays.
One evening as I was entering the shop at about 11 pm, I was stopped by a small, nondescript man:
“Dr. Graham,” he said, stepping into my path and forcing me to stop. “I can prove that time can go backwards.”
It had been so long since I had spoken to anyone that I had to clear my throat several times before I could reply.
“It is unkind of you to mock me. You know my name so you must know that I have searched for such a proof for thirty years.” My voice began to tremble and I could feel tears gathering at the back of my eyes. “Please go away and leave me to my misery.”
“Come with us and I will show you the proof,” he replied, taking my arm and turning me towards two men who had been standing close to my shoulder like gaolers throughout the exchange.
With my interlocutor leading and flanked by the two other men, I let myself be led to a large, black car. I got in between the guards while the man who had spoken leant over and pushed a needle into my upper arm through my coat.
I awoke clear-headed and all at once if I may put it that way – there was no period of grogginess or confusion. I was immediately aware that I was in a small boat crossing a slightly choppy stretch of water. There were seagulls calling overhead and what I can only describe as the memory of a smell of fish. It seemed obvious that I was on the open sea rather than an inland lake being carried in what had once been a fishing boat. Since my home is more than fifty kilometres from the sea, I had clearly been unconscious for some time.
My mouth was dry and I was hungry. Had it not been for these two things I might have lain quietly and been carried who knows where; my state of mind was that I might as well be here (wherever “here” is) than back in the fusty room I had lived in for so long. Looking back it is strange that I had no fear for the future but neither did I have much hope that it would be better than the recent past. Strangest of all was the clarity of my thoughts: my body was sluggish but my mind seemed to be working faster than normal.
After a number of harrumphs I managed to ask: “May I have a glass of water and something to eat, please?”
“You’re awake, man?” An unmistakably Scottish island voice replied and, a second later its owner appeared dressed in the uniform of tattered Guernsey, faded jeans and Wellingtons turned over at the top. He held out a tin cup and, when I reached for it and missed by some inches, he held it to my lips until I could take it from him.
He turned away whistling variations on the theme of ‘Marie’s Wedding’. When he came back minutes later he handed me two slices of thick white bread struggling to contain four or five rashers of bacon. If the Gods really do feast on ambrosia they have been short-changed – nothing approaches a bacon butty when it comes to awarding the prize for best food!
Fed and feeling more alive than for months, I got up from the settle where I had wakened and went up a short companion way into the wheelhouse. This was accomplished slowly and carefully since my body was still rather reluctant to obey my commands!
We were passing a low headland about fifty metres off to the right. To the left there was nothing but open water with ripples occasionally showing a white top. When I looked back to the right we had cleared the headland and were entering a bay with a jetty and an old boathouse. Behind the boathouse the land rose gently to a ridge perhaps a kilometre from the shore. There was no sign of a habitable house, and neither telephone wires nor electricity pylons.
“This’ll be your home from now on,” the boatman smiled. “Its no’ as bad as it looks.”
As we approached the jetty two men in kilts and deerstalkers came out of the boathouse. They looked like stage Scotsmen in a downmarket London production but they carried modern pump-action shotguns under their arms. The moment we touched the jetty they came on board and hustled me ashore. The boatman selected reverse before my feet touched the ground and he was half way back to the headland before we reached the boathouse.
Inside, the boathouse contained the usual clutter of oars, floats and bits of net in a variety of colours. One of the vaudeville Scots turned inside the door and lifted a lobster pot that had seen better days. As he did so a section of the floor lifted revealing broad steps leading into a well-lit passage. My first thought was to wonder why the stacks of debris did not tumble off as the floor rose – I have noticed before that faced with two phenomena that defy explanation the human mind will fix on the more trivial.
“Down you go then, mate.” The accent was more Bow Bells than Brigadoon.
So down I wandered pleased to find that my equilibrium was more or less back to normal.
As I stepped off the bottom step I was met by the nondescript man who had accosted me in the supermarket car park.
“I’m Doctor Williamson, Doctor Graham. Please let me show you around your new home. You should take it easy this evening and be fresh for your meeting with the Director tomorrow morning.”
With that, he set off down a long corridor passing several steel doors with wired metal viewing panels set at such a height that I could only see the ceilings of the rooms we passed. After a few minutes walking we entered a section of corridor that was carpeted and had framed prints on the walls.
“That was the magic workshops we passed,” Dr Williamson said over his shoulder. “Now we are in the living and recreational area. Please come through here.” And with that he opened a door and held it for me to pass through.
We entered a smaller corridor tastefully decorated with flowers on occasional tables along the walls. We passed three or four doors on either side then we came to an area where the corridor widened. A large coffee table with a few magazines scattered on the surface was surrounded by comfortable looking chairs and settees. Against one wall a dresser held a coffee maker and a tray of cups.
A young man sitting in an armchair put down the New Scientist and rose to meet us.
“This is George,” Dr Williamson said waving an arm. “He will look after you – show you your room, the mess hall, the library – that sort of thing. He is a sort of graduate student.”
George smiled at me: “Cup of coffee – or tea, or, well, anything really hot or cold.” His voice was almost without accent and rather lighter and higher pitched than I would have expected from a broad-shouldered man over six feet tall. By the time the amenities had been settled, George and I were alone, Dr Williamson having gone as quietly as he had arrived.
My mind was beginning to speculate again as the drug wore off: it seemed to have made me uncritical, unquestioning in a way that was very unlike my normal behaviour.
As rational thought came back I became aware of just how tired I was. After several attempts to start a conversation, George gave me his amiable smile: “Time for bed, I think. Everything you need is in your room and I will call for you in the morning to take you to breakfast and then to the Directors office. Just let me say what an honour it is for me to work with you.”
Part Two: Introductions
My room was about the size of a hotel suite with a large double bed. When George left me, I simply undressed and crawled under the covers, falling asleep as my head touched the pillow. Now it was morning and diffused daylight was showing the pastel coloured walls displaying my pictures! The only window was very high up and about three metres long but less than thirty centimetres high.
There were two internal doors; the left hand one opened into an opulent bathroom where my shaving gear and toiletries were laid out. I set the taps running and left the bath filling while I explored the right hand door. It opened into a study and it came as no real surprise to find all my books filling the bookcase and all in their proper places. I do mean my books – when I checked, I found all the marginal notes that I scribble when I am reading.
After a bath and a shave I dressed in one of my suits that was hanging neatly in the wardrobe. Then I went back to the study and looked at my desk and filing cabinets. All the small items had been removed there from my home: the desk was a good copy but it lacked the stains and scratches I had inflicted on the original over the years.
I was still checking my belongings when George arrived to take me to breakfast. A man and woman rose from the table when we entered the dining room and left with a friendly nod. George and I sat in companionable silence while we gorged on an excellent breakfast of bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms and black pudding. George was easy company as we paid the food the respect it deserved.
We had just poured a second cup of coffee and I was about to start an inquisition when George stood up so quickly that his chair toppled over backwards. His face went very red and he was clearly agitated so I guessed that someone important had entered. I stood up slowly and turned to greet our visitor.
“Professor Janes! – but it can’t be. You are dead: you were drowned in a boating accident off Skye. It must be eight years ago now.”
He smiled and winked at George: “Get me a coffee and then make yourself scarce: Doctor Graham and I have a lot of catching up to do!”
“I was not drowned, as you can plainly see, just reported missing presumed drowned. We decided to leave the door open in case I needed to get back to the real world. The story would have been that I had been picked up by a Russian trawler suffering from loss of memory.
“Your departure is much more permanent, I’m afraid. You were careless with a match – smoking in bed, I understand – and your charred remains were found in the ashes that are all that remain of that cosy little cottage of yours.”
Professor Janes had been my mentor when I was doing my thesis and it was he who stimulated what became my obsessive interest in time. We had kept in touch until his reported death. Now my mind was in a whirl since it was clear that not only was he alive, he was looking years younger than at our last meeting all those years ago.
“This life obviously agrees with you, sir. You look younger than me!”
“But I am younger than you; about five years younger than you at present, although I change quite a bit. Didn’t Williamson explain to you that we can move backwards and forwards in time?”
I sat down again rather abruptly and Professor Janes sat beside me and put his arm around my shoulder.
Part Three: Be careful what you wish for
“This island was acquired by the government in the nineteen-twenties for some obscure purpose but the Great Depression meant that there was no money for the project. It lay empty until, during the Second War, some bright spark in Whitehall got it going again. All the building dates from that time, although they have improved the plumbing I am glad to say.
“His idea was that magic worked when people believed in it. If you could eliminate scepticism, he argued, magic would happen. He brought a group of men and women to this island and cut off all communication with the rest of the world: no newspapers, no radio, nothing. They lived out their lives here and had children who have themselves gone on to have offspring.
“They had no success with the original group, although they were little more than children when they came here, but the magic started to happen with the first generation born on the island. Now the adepts can perform spells even on sceptics.
“Williamson gave you a sedative in the car but it was a magician who cast the spell that made you cooperative and clear-headed when you woke. He let the spell lapse when you arrived because you are no use to me under that sort of mind management.
“We have a small team working at the moment to make sure that the police and coroner believe our little charade of your immolation. They wanted to put an old sheep in your bed but I insisted on a human corpse – I didn’t want anyone reviewing the evidence once the spell had lapsed!
“But on with the story. The success with the magic project got us thinking of other areas where scepticism could inhibit progress. Remember how we used to rail against the scientific establishment for the ready acceptance of Einstein’s strictures on the speed of light? I had a fair amount of influence in government circles at that time so I was able to convince a very shadowy committee to let me set up this group to play around with notions of time.
“George was born on the island and is a magician as well as a scientist while Williamson, who has a rather pedestrian brain, keeps us in touch with the outside world. He does not understand enough to make him a security risk.”
Part Four: The proposition
“I have gone as far as I can, more or less on my own. Now I need you to move the project towards its conclusions. I know how you have struggled under the scornful narrow-mindedness of other scientists. Can you imagine how your ideas will blossom in the atmosphere of expectation that will surround you here?”
“What exactly is our project?”
“I’m glad you called it ‘our’ project,” he grinned.
“The goals aren’t written down anywhere – it doesn’t do to be too specific when politicians are involved! To put it simply: I want you to design and build an engine that can propel a craft at super-light speeds. The first stage should aim for five times light speed so that we can explore the spiral arm that hosts the sun.”
I laughed, with more hysteria than humour: “You are mad – stark staring loony. Magic is real? You can move back and forwards in time? I suppose the tooth fairy has a room down the hall and no doubt Santa is in the north wing with his elves.”
Janes looked more taken aback than troubled by my outburst but his expression changed as I enumerated all the well-established scientific facts that undermined his assertions. First he became bewildered, then angry and, finally, like a man whose pet dog has bitten him. I was still finding arguments to demolish him when he looked over my shoulder and nodded. I followed his gaze in time to see Williamson pushing a needle into my upper arm.
Part Five: A non-person
This time when I came round I felt confused and sick – obviously no one had cast a spell to help me this time! I was naked and with nothing to identify me. I told my story to the police, of course, but that only got me out of a cell into a closed ward in a mental hospital.
The problem is that the person I claim to be is dead and buried having set himself on fire while smoking in bed. My blood and finger prints are not on file; my dentist produced records that matched the corpse; even my friends had not seen me for so long that the most they were prepared to say was that I bore a certain resemblance to Doctor Graham.
The irony is that the more I think about it the more I see that Professor Janes might have been on to something. All he had done, after all, was to take my own ideas to their logical conclusion! My scepticism amounted to a lack of self-belief: who knows what I might achieve working with a supportive group.
I am not considered dangerous so I can easily get out of the ward. The island is off the west of Scotland so I will go up there to look for the distinctive headland I saw when I was eating my bacon butty. I might even recognise the boatman if I see him.
What do I have to lose? If Janes is right he might even send me back in time so I can tell my wife how much I regret my neglect.
The last confirmed sighting of my patient before he turned up on the beach on Eigg was when he bought a train ticket to Kyle thirty-five years before. I have no rational explanation for what happened. You have the facts so you can make up your own mind whether people can travel back and forward in time.
One final strange thing: at the time he was in my care supermarkets did not open twenty-four hours a day!
About the Author
Originally from Dalmuir, Alasdair McPherson is now retired and living in exile in Lincolnshire.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.
He says he has always wanted to write, but life got in the way until recently. He has already penned two novels and is now trying his hand at short stories.