Time Machine Needed
by Mark Kirkbride
The doors hissed open and Stuart quickly found a seat. Honeysuckle that must have escaped from someone’s back garden grew on the bank at the end of the platform. A bee helicoptered from pouch to pouch. He had left his book at home, so got out his phone. He normally used it only for work. As the train departed and the platform slid away, he opened up Facebook, and immediately gasped.
Zoe stared back at him from a snap from their day on the coast with a caption he’d obviously written that must have struck him as humorous at the time: ‘Life’s a beach.’ Unseen algorithms had added, ‘ON THIS DAY 4 years ago.’ He had the option to share the post again. He wasn’t going to, but then something made him add: ‘Time machine needed...’ and he hit Share.
A few weeks after their day trip, he’d been a suspect in her disappearance. Neighbours had heard them in a row that afternoon. An old woman claimed to have seen him running after Zoe up an alleyway not long after the shouting. If it hadn’t been for CCTV footage of him filling up his car nine miles away at the time, he might even have been convicted without the presence of a body. Apart from work, he’d kept himself to himself, pretty much, since, and certainly didn’t expect any response to his reshared post.
So he was surprised when, in his lunchbreak, he found he had a notification. A total stranger had left a comment: ‘You don’t know me, but I’ve been following your case.’
Case? thought Stuart. He thinks I’m guilty!
Then he read on: ‘I think I can help. Direct Message me.’
Help? Help me what? Stuart checked out the man’s page and, like his, it didn’t have a photo or anything remotely personal, just a few random posts that didn’t mean anything to him.
He was inclined not to bother but had nothing to lose, so fired off a message: ‘Hi, Gareth, you said to DM you...’
* * *
It had been a long journey with plenty of time to think and even make a U-turn if he wanted, but Stuart had kept on moving forward because that is all one could do, and he continued to do so now, getting out of the car and walking up the short driveway towards the detached house with a grey Vauxhall Vivaro parked in front of the flaky garage door and piles of mangled metal and busted electronics where the garden should be.
While he couldn’t quite believe what Gareth claimed to be able to make possible, he couldn’t work out what the independent inventor stood to gain. He hadn’t been asked for any payment or any personal details apart from the coordinates for and time of a specific conversation in the past. Gareth said he simply wanted to help and do for others what he had achieved for himself. Closure.
He welcomed Stuart inside with a smile and warm handshake and led him through to the well-lit garage via a connecting door. In the centre was a giant metal cube that stood just shy of the ceiling, so couldn’t have fitted through the garage’s opening. Gareth must have built it there.
Stuart squeezed down one side to the rear, where the housing hummed and gave off heat like the back of a fridge, before squeezing around the other side. Also like a fridge, the cubicle had a light on inside. Stuart peered through the open doorway. At the back was another door, shut, with a small traffic light unit mounted next to it.
Gareth joined him. ‘So I’ve synched up the doorways,’ he said. ‘And it’s a straightforward insertion and extraction. Make sure you close the inner door behind you, open it when you leave. The time lock will stay open for five minutes. By the time the town hall clock chimes three, you need to be out of there.’
Stuart nodded.
‘I just want to check we’re fully up to scratch,’ said Gareth. ‘I know we’ve been through all this but I need to make sure you’re not expecting any more than I can deliver.’
‘Of course,’ said Stuart, ‘what you’re offering to do is already more than I, or anyone, could reasonably expect.’ If you can pull it off, he thought.
‘Okay, good,’ said Gareth. ‘And one last time, why do you want to go back?’
‘Well, as I mentioned, we parted on a row, one of those ridiculous ones. But heated. I slammed the door and everything. Then when I got home, she’d gone. She had a dental appointment and never made it. She must have got kidnapped on the way and presumably killed, though the police never found a body, or anything at all. It’s like she vanished. I just want to go back and say the things I should have said. So I don’t have this heavy weight on my heart, crushing the life out of me.’
‘Just that? Say a few words and leave?’
‘Absolutely.’ Stuart nodded vehemently. ‘Just that, nothing more.’
‘Good.’ Gareth smiled. ‘Just checking.’ He glanced at Stuart’s light blue chambray shirt, khaki chinos and brown shoes. ‘And you’re wearing identical clothes to the ones you wore that day?’
‘Yes, the trousers are the same ones... with the belt out a notch. Everything else is a perfect match.’
‘And your hair style’s the same? It’s easy to forget that one.’
‘Yes, absolutely. I’ve even dyed it a touch.’
‘And your watch is set to “local” time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ve set arrival for fifteen minutes after the argument. You’re popping back just to say what needs to be said so that you can move on from there, rather than be stuck. It was the best use I could think of for all this.’ He gestured at the time portal as he took a step crabwise.
Stuart placed one foot inside, turned back. ‘Can I hug her, kiss her?’
‘Yes, but don’t get carried away, don’t linger. And stick to the script. Don’t say anything out of character or let her think that you’re anything other than you as you were then. Certainly don’t allude to you now, or since. That’d only confuse her and distract from the whole point of your visit.’
Stuart nodded. ‘Got it.’
‘Good. I just need to make sure.’ Gareth tapped a keypad on a panel on the side, which bleeped. ‘So you step inside, I close the outside door behind you and then, when that light changes to green, you go through the inner door.’ He paused. ‘Remember, when you hear the clock start to chime, get out of there straight away. You can’t afford to stick around without raising suspicion, and you certainly don’t want to bump into your original self. You’d be in doppelganger territory, at the centre of a rupture in time. Not to mention a schizophrenic break.’
‘Right.’
‘Good. In you go.’
Stuart stepped into the booth. Gareth closed the door behind him with a clunk and tapped on the side.
An alarm buzzed. The traffic light changed to amber.
Stuart sucked in a breath, with a hitch. What if this is real? He took a step forward to stand in front of the door at the back.
The alarm buzzed again and the light changed to green.
Stuart exhaled, with a slight quaver. He opened the door. Instead of the housing at the back of Gareth’s machine, he saw a room three or four times the size of the garage. Even though he’d sold the house and a family of four now lived there, the lounge was exactly as he remembered it then with the patio doors closed and all of his and Zoe’s old furniture back in place and pictures that he distinctly remembered taking down and packing, like the two Peter Scotts still in their Bubble Wrap at the top of the cupboard in his flat, up on the walls again here.
He stepped through the portal.
* * *
‘Yes?’ said Zoe, icily.
He suppressed his grin and adjusted to the moment, not long after the argument. He’d taken a day off work to spend it with her and then agreed to meet a client. ‘I—’
‘Yes?’ She remained on the sofa with one hand in the other.
‘I just wanted to say sorry,’ he said, ‘and to tell you I love you.’ ‘And I always will,’ he added. He’d gone off script already.
‘That’s very dramatic,’ she said, shuffling in her seat.
‘I just didn’t want us to end... part,’ he corrected himself, ‘like that.’
‘Yes, it does all seem a bit silly,’ said Zoe, voice softening. ‘I’m glad you came back.’
He headed further into the lounge, away from the door to the hallway, and his exit.
‘Come here.’ He stretched out his arms.
Zoe stood up, came towards him, smiling now, and he embraced her.
She lifted her mouth to his. He leaned in, knowing that would be too much, yet powerless to resist. She pressed her lips to his. He returned the kiss and inhaled — tasted — her.
Drowning, suffocating in sweetness, he pulled away, then immediately hugged her, tightly, instead. Placing his ear to hers and hearing tinnitus or the ocean as if from a seashell, he lifted his arm and checked his watch: just over two minutes left.
‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘I know you need to go.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘It’s not like we won’t have this evening,’ she said, chuckling. ‘I’ve got my appointment anyway.’
‘Don’t go,’ he said.
She stepped back. ‘What? Why?’
‘Come away with me,’ Stuart blurted out. Could Gareth hear him? He hoped not.
‘Well, we’re going away properly next month, aren’t we?’ she said, laughing.
He checked his watch again. It was under two minutes now. How could the time go so quickly?
‘Zoe, Zoe, listen to me,’ he whispered. ‘What if I told you something bad was going to happen to one of us.’
‘What? Who? And how can you know?’
‘Because it happened in the past.’
‘What? But that doesn’t—’
He clutched her hands. ‘Zoe, sweetheart, do you trust me?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I do.’
‘Then come away with me now.’
‘O...K,’ she said.
‘Good, my darling. We just need to get... No, I can’t.’ He couldn’t fetch the car keys because he couldn’t go up the hallway and he didn’t want to let her go alone.
No, wait, his other self had taken the car anyway. He hadn’t thought this through. He hadn’t intended to abscond. He just didn’t have anything waiting for him in the present. In this present he had everything. He had Zoe. They just needed to get away from here. It didn’t matter where. Just as far away as possible. Not to flee from a crime but to stop one happening.
The town hall clock rang out. ‘Quick, come on.’ He opened the patio door.
‘This... this is crazy,’ she said stepping out after him.
‘I know. But we love each other, and that’s all that matters. Nothing else does.’
They ran up the back garden, past the honeysuckle, and out of the gate.
* * *
Stuart got home two hours later. He’d stopped fizzing since their argument and hoped she had too.
‘Zoe,’ he called.
She wasn’t in the lounge or the kitchen. Maybe she was having a lie-down.
He checked upstairs. ‘Zoe?’ he called, going from room to room. Where is she? She should be home by now.
He ran downstairs and back into the lounge. The patio doors hung open. ‘Zoe?’ he called, rushing outside. ‘Zoe!’
Five hours later, he phoned the police. Four days later, he was in police custody.
* * *
Four years later, he’d taken his seat on the train and was checking Facebook when he saw Zoe’s picture staring back at him under the heading ‘ON THIS DAY...’ He shared the post again but not before adding ‘Time machine needed.’
The next time he checked his phone, during his lunch break, he saw that he had a comment from a stranger: ‘You don’t know me but I’ve been following your case.’
Case? thought Stuart. He thinks I did it!
Then he read on.
Copyright © 2024 by Mark Kirkbride
