Read by Cliff Chapman
Others might remember things differently, but if you ask me, something changed after he started time-travelling. That's not to say there was a clean break between before and after. I think he took it up because he needed something new in his life, something to give him a bit of a jolt, to broaden his horizons – a lot of us need that these days – but I reckon that's when things started to get worse.
I remember the first time, he didn't even tell me. He said he was going to China, but not the Yangtze Valley in 1931. Maybe he wasn't going to say anything at all – he was always a very private person – but when he returned, he couldn't contain it.
"The crazy thing is how similar it is," he said, drumming his long fingers across the crumbs on our shared kitchen table. "Like, I know this sounds kind of dumb, but the past doesn't feel like it's the past. You expect it's going to be, I dunno, black and white or it'll somehow feel far away and faded and ... historical! ... but it just feels like this. Like you and me here."
He was more or less the same after that trip, I'd say. Maybe in retrospect a little more absent-minded than usual, but he was definitely weird after the next journey. That was to Andhra Pradesh 1839. The morning he returned, I found him lying on the sofa staring at his reflection in the cracked screen on his phone. His carefully-labelled luggage sat obediently by him on the floor, its glittering biometric tags hanging off its body like alien earrings.
I was excited to hear what he'd seen and who he'd met. I threw questions at him, but the moment he sat up he looked exhausted. He'd start a sentence like a bird trying to take flight – "well yeah it was ... I mean it ... so I guess ..." – but then stumble back down. This was not completely out of character – it had always been difficult to get him to open up – but it was unusual. I kept trying, though, and asked him something I thought would be easier for him to talk about just to get going. The logistics of it all.
I knew some stuff about time-travelling, of course, from seeing adverts and following some of the ground protests back when the tech went public. I still see occasional thought broadcasts about it in my timelines too. The ones I subscribe to always refer to it disparagingly as "Apocalypse Tourism", because they only send people to places days before some kind of catastrophe happened. Some biblical-sized flood or cyclone or earthquake. That's the only way they can ensure travellers don't leave any kind of mark and inadvertently change the course of history.
But I was curious about how it all actually works as a tourist. The companies behind it always emphasise how closely-regulated the industry is, but some say that's bullshit. There are rumours, for example, that people are simply let loose once they reach their destinations and that, every now and then, a traveller just forgets to come home.
"Well, I mean it's hard to keep track of everyone probably, but I've never heard of anyone not returning," he said, finally engaging. "And you can't really forget to come back. They signal you really clearly 48 hours before, you know, whatever's about to happen. They make a mark in the sky, the kind of thing you wouldn't ordinarily notice, that you'd pass off as a weird cloud or something, except that they drill it into you constantly in the training. You're kind of scared you'll miss it, but then when you see it, it's really obvious."
I was pleased I'd got him to talk at least a little, but I hoped that might be the end of his time-travelling trips. They seemed to take something out of him. A couple of months later, however, he told me he was going to Aleppo 1138.
This time, it was much worse. He came back with scabs like ragged craters along his jaw and knuckles like red rope. I found him staring at his hands in the living room. I asked him if he was ok, but got nothing in response. I asked him what he'd seen on the trip, what the air smelled like, how the water tasted that long ago. He looked me up and down vacantly, like I was old piece of furniture he was half-considering buying. It was only when I put my hand on his shoulder that he really seemed to see me. I asked him again how it had been.
"Oh. Yeah, it was kind of ... amazing ...?" he said hesitantly, as if disagreeing with his own choice of words. "There was this kid ... such a smart, sweet kid. His family took me in. I'm not sure why, but they invited me to eat with them, these huge meals, every evening. I felt kind of bad, but then, that food was going to go to waste anyway pretty soon. I mean, that sounds a bit cold, but ... well ..."
He breathed in and paused, a half-formed thought dancing invisibly in front of us, for so long I wasn't sure he was still going to speak. I gave him space and let his silence fill the room.
"It's so wild living when you know none of it matters," he continued softly after a few moments, "that your footprint, all your footprints, will be completely ... washed away." His voice faded into the carpet until it felt as if the drumbeat from the flat below had crept up like the rising tide and subsumed us. "But they have no idea what's about to happen," he whispered as if to himself. "You feel so sorry for them."
He never told me what happened in Aleppo 1138 and, for the following few weeks, I didn't see much of him. When I did see him, it felt like his mind was fixed on something far off in the distance or perhaps on nowhere at all. If we were both in the flat, we'd sometimes sit together not really talking. I wasn't sure if he cared or, half the time, noticed I was there or not, but then once or twice, I caught him staring at me with this deep pitying look.
At one point, I decided I should tell him to stop time-travelling, that I thought it was no good for him. I figured I might as well try to say something, but then our paths never crossed for long enough or it never felt like the right moment. Then, a couple of weeks later, I came home to find a note on the kitchen table. He'd gone to Hiroshima 1945.
After that trip, he was even more distant. I could only tell he'd been home if he left a tap running or if I spotted the remains of a takeaway meal on his bedroom floor. Once, I pushed open his door and saw his guitar bent out of shape like an old man, its neck splintered and its body only held together by the metal strings. When I confronted him, he looked puzzled. "Why does it matter?" he asked with what seemed like genuine curiosity, gazing benevolently at me like I was a child.
Then I didn't see him at all for about a month. I tried calling him but with no luck. Our friends tried to reassure me. He'd always needed his own space and people go AWOL a lot these days, they said. But this was a long time for someone to be out of contact.
I was starting to get properly worried, wondering what I should do, until he turned up again yesterday out of the blue. He was just there, sitting in the sunlit living room, rotating the broken guitar in his hands and grinning at it like it was some great riddle to solve. He looked tired and yet somehow brighter and more awake than I'd seen him for months. His cheeks had picked up some of the yellow from the sun. He hugged me.
I wanted to ask him how he was and where he'd been, but I didn't want to break the spell and risk him retreating back into himself, and so I acted like everything was normal. I suggested that, since it was such a nice day, we take advantage and go for a walk on the heath, like we used to. He said it was one of the best ideas he'd ever heard.
We talked intermittently about not very much as we walked up the hill – the flowers, the birds and drones, the funny dogs than ran across our path – before reaching the summit, where we sat overlooking London in the warm breeze.
I figured he must've started taking some kind of medication or getting therapy, but decided not to ask him just yet. Now he seemed so much better though, I realised there was so much else I wanted to talk to him about. How it feels to time-travel, to live with people with no purpose in a world you know is about to be destroyed. Whether he was still planning to do more trips; they say they're adding new destinations all the time and they're getting more and more recent. Beira 2019. Tuvalu, Chittagong, Port Louis 2020. I wanted to tell him I'd missed him, that I'd been worrying about him.
But I held my tongue. The moment felt too delicate and I figured there'd be plenty of other chances to talk, or at least that's what I told myself. Either way, I was wrong. I don't know if he was pretending to be better for my sake, but just as I was about to suggest we keep moving, having run our fingers through the cool grass long enough, he jumped up and pointed into the distance beyond the wind turbines.
"There you go!" he said, wide-eyed and beaming. "There, the funny curve on the horizon where the orange meets the green? You see it? It looks like it's shimmering, like a giant fish scale, but if you keep your eye on it you'll see it's not actually changing at all. 48 hours that means. I told you it was obvious ... Why ... why aren't you looking?"
He turned and stared at me, his brow crumpling slowly in confusion and then disappointment like I was the crazy one for refusing to stand up and follow his outstretched finger. I couldn't move or speak. It took every bit of willpower I had just to look back at him. We held each other's gaze for what felt like an age – brothers-in-arms and strangers at the same time, tears collecting faster than words ever would – before he shook his head, bowed at me oddly and hurried away.
I don't know where he went, but he didn't come home last night and half his stuff is gone.
(c) Wan Shinfah, 2019
Wan Shinfah is a character and three Chinese characters.
Cliff Chapman's credits include Dirk Maggs's new Audible adaptation of Alien III by William Gibson, Blake's 7 (forthcoming) and Pathfinder Legends for Big Finish, & over 20 roles for Games Workshop's Black Library, available on CD, download and Audible. He is currently directing Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors at the Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man.
Comments