Timeshock - I Want My Life Back (2 page)

Then it came to him – what about the future?
 
The machine could work either way – as how had Raymond travelled back from the past?
 
That worked – Raymond could do no harm in the future – he could live out the rest of his life and learn to forget about what he had done.
 
But how far in the future?
 
Nigel didn't want an irate Raymond attacking him in his 80s – so it needed to be much more than 50 years.
 
Nigel decided – 100 years in the future – that would do.

Subtly Nigel sabotaged the machine to make it push Raymond 100 years in the future and then fail.
 

“I am close to fixing the machine – but I need to know where my family are before I complete it,” stated Nigel as confidently as he could manage.

Raymond moved towards the side of the room and opened a door to the basement.
 
“They are down there – when I am gone you can free them.”

“I want to see them!” demanded Nigel.

Raymond raised his knife and beckoned Nigel to go ahead of him down the stairs to the basement.
 
Walking down the creaking wooden steps Nigel saw Natalie and his children tied up, blind-folded and gagged in the corner of the room.
 
They were clearly still alive though the sight angered Nigel far more than he expected.
 
Some doubt had been running through his mind as to whether it was fair to strand Raymond in the future, but this sight dispelled that doubt instantaneously.

“I've seen enough,” Nigel said turning to go up the stairs. Raymond backed up the stairs and they both went towards the machine.
   
Nigel finished his final tweaks to the time machine and stood back.
 
“All done – all yours – now leave me alone.”

Raymond stood on the base of the time machine and adjusted a control on it to go back 10 years.
 
Nigel had rewired the machine to go forward 100 years instead and had managed to conceal his duplicity.
 
Raymond pressed the blue activation button and suddenly the whole machine disappeared.

Nigel was instantly filled with many conflicting emotions.
 
Raymond was gone.
 
He rushed down the stairs to the basement and untied Natalie. Just as he was untying the first of his children - Nathan - he heard a noise upstairs.

Suddenly the basement door swung open and to Nigel's horror he saw Raymond.
 
How was this possible, Nigel thought?
 
Raymond seemed older and he was holding what looked like a toy ray gun. “You will pay for what you did to me, Nigel Saunders!” shouted Raymond.
 

Raymond aimed the gun at Natalie and pulled the trigger.
 
A tiny dart shot out of the gun and went straight into Natalie's chest.
 
Suddenly her skin began to become grey and gradually she disintegrated into a pile of dust.
 
Raymond fired twice again at Nigel's children and each disintegrated when they were hit.

Nigel closed his eyes and thought “This is it.”
 
But he felt nothing.

“You must live – feel the loss that I have felt - to pay for your treachery.
 
It took me 15 years but I found another time machine.
 
Now to go back and correct my life.”
 
With that Raymond disappeared upstairs.

Nigel, in an act of bravery quite out of character, rushed upstairs only to discover Raymond already in the process of disappearing on his new time machine.
 
This one was of a different design, a unit with a seat rather than a platform.
 
It seemed it was considerably better made than the machine the alternative Nigel had created.

Before Nigel could reach Raymond he was gone.
 
Nigel pulled out the piece of paper Raymond had given him earlier.
 
“I will get revenge” he muttered to himself, clutching the plans in his hand.

Over the next year and half Nigel fought through his grief and began the huge undertaking of building a brand new time machine.
 
This was not as simple as fixing the original device – there wasn't much wrong with it, it was only Raymond's lack of technical ability that meant he could not fix it.
 

Building a new machine was an order of magnitude more difficult.
 
Nigel had two advantages – he knew it could be done and that he had already done it in a parallel existence.
 
He also had the very rough plans that Raymond had given him.
 
His remaining friends and family assumed that he was just in a state of grief and paid no attention to his obsessional behaviour.

On a grey November morning Nigel finished construction of a prototype.
 
He had bought the land containing the derelict country cottage that Raymond had used to hold him hostage.
 
He assembled the time machine there as he guessed the cottage had been derelict for a long time. Nigel conducted a small test. He sent the machine on autopilot 3 minutes into the future.
 
It disappeared.
 
Nigel waited.
 
He began to worry – what if he never saw it again?
 

He really had put his whole life into creating that machine – to have to build yet another one would probably be too much for him.

Exactly 3 minutes later the machine re-appeared.
 
Nigel broke down in tears as this happened.
 
It worked!
 
Now he had to decide where to go back to – he wanted to ruin Raymond Deville's life and try to restore his own life.

Nigel set the target date of the machine for almost 12 years in the past to just before his reality's Raymond Deville had died in the car crash. Nigel thought surely Raymond would try and stop that from happening.
 

Activating his new device while seated – he had created a seated device himself this time – there was a brief pause and suddenly time began to slow down around the machine. Time was stopping and going into reverse – with accelerating speed Nigel saw the cottage become progressively less disused and eventually becoming a normal home.
 
Nigel felt embarrassed – he was going to emerge in someone's living room and this would be hard to explain. However his first priority would be to hide the machine.

The passage of reverse time slowed and suddenly came to a halt and switched back to normal time.
 
Nigel found himself right between a family's sofa and its TV.
 
Sitting on the sofa were a couple who looked understandably shocked to see a man sitting on a very hi-tech seat suddenly appear in front of them.
 
Nigel blurted out “Hello!” - he really had no idea what to say.
 
The man said “Who the hell are you?
 
How did you get here?” Nigel replied “err...science experiment...err..teleportation...local university...so sorry to interrupt you.”
 

It was the only thing he could think of, but actually it served him well.
 

The couple, thankfully, were reasonably scientifically savvy so were amazed.
 

“Really – teleportation?
 
Where were you trying to go to?”
 

“Just across my lab.
 
I must have calibrated it wrongly – I went a lot further!” bluffed Nigel.
 
“Let me not disturb you any more.”
 

“What is your name? – I want to tell people I knew the man who discovered teleportation!” cried the man.
 
“Nigel..err..Smith”. Nigel almost blurted out his real name without thinking.
 
Nigel then made his excuses and wheeled his time machine out of the cottage and towards the village.

More than a few people enquired about the time machine Nigel was pushing around the village – he told them it was a new exercise machine he had purchased.
 
While most people didn't believe him they weren't really that concerned.
 
He booked a room in the local hotel and checked the date.
 
He had indeed come back exactly the right amount of time – just a few months under 12 years.
 

He had come back a month before the crash which killed Raymond and his sister. He guessed that Raymond would have come back only a day or two earlier than the crash and he wanted to be there before Raymond could change anything.
   

Nigel had planned things fairly well – he ensured all the currency he had was issued over twelve years ago – he had rigged up a cash card that could take money out of the primitive ATMs of the time and he tried to make sure his clothing was as bland as possible – jeans and an anonymous coloured t-shirt and jumper.
 
He had also acquired a gun – not as deadly as Raymond's weapon but hopefully adequate given the element of surprise he would have.
 

For the next few days Nigel laid low.
 
He didn’t want to be noticed as he worried about the effect he was having on the future.
 
He had not appreciated how much things had changed in ten years.
 
There were no smart phones, no Facebook and no Twitter.
 
Certain things remained the same - people complaining about the weather; men chasing women; people getting older and eating and drinking too much.
 

The hotel room was sparse and cheap but thankfully secure.
 
No one seemed that bothered by the time machine because it did indeed look like some kind of exercise machine.
 
Nigel was worried every day that room service would damage it in some way, so he always tried to be around when his room was cleaned, even though the hotel staff hated him for it.

As the days drifted on, Nigel formulated a plan - he would follow Raymond’s sister so that he could intercept and kill the older Raymond before he could attempt to save her.
 
He had looked up where Amanda Deville lived on the Internet before he went back in time.
 
He hired a car and parked across the street from her flat.
 
He was somewhat surprised that she was a strikingly attractive woman - long blonde hair, a pretty face matched by a very tall sleek figure.
   
Nigel felt a bit uncomfortable with his observations but he knew that tomorrow she and her brother were due to die in a car crash.
 
Abruptly, Nigel heard someone tap on his car window.
 
It was the younger Raymond.
 
He did not look happy.

Nigel rolled the window down.
 
Raymond spoke “I don’t know who you are but leave my sister alone!” Nigel said “What?”

The younger Raymond was getting aggressive. “We’ve seen you stalking her - you are old enough to be her dad, you sick pervert.
 
Get lost!”
 
He started scrapping his key along the side of the rental car.
 
“Look , I’m not interested in your sister,” a flustered Nigel blurted out.
 
“Oh, so you like men then, do you?
 
Well I’m not interested in you either!”, the younger Raymond shouted.

“Look, I’m sorry but I’m not stalking either of you.
 
It’s not either of you I am interested in.”
 
As the younger Raymond was banging the side of the car with his hands, Nigel drove off.
 
He felt so stupid.
 
Firstly, it was going to be extremely difficult to work out when the older Raymond would intervene and secondly, if the younger Raymond saw him again he would probably attack him.

Nigel needed another plan - he decided to watch the country cottage he had arrived in.
 
He knew that Raymond would go there.
 
He hoped he hadn’t already arrived but it was the only chance he had. It was too risky to try and interfere with the younger Raymond and his sister - he had to dispose of the older Raymond independently.

After arriving near the cottage, Nigel parked the car and walked up a hill nearby finding a great vantage point on which to hide and observe.
 
Hours and hours passed before he heard screaming from inside the cottage.
 
Nigel couldn’t see what was happening, so he went down to hide behind some bushes near the building.
 
After a few minutes he saw Raymond rushing out of the cottage.
 
He looked younger than Nigel remembered him being in the basement.

Nigel got his gun ready and prepared himself.
 
A clean, short range shot to the body should do the trick.
 
Nigel had acquired the gun via criminal contacts he had made since Natalie had died, but had not had a chance to test it.
 
He just hoped that it would work.
 

It seemed like an eternity before Raymond was close enough to Nigel for him to take a shot confidently.
 
Raymond walked up the road slowly towards where Nigel hid.

Nigel steadied his shaking hand and tried not to make any noise.
 
Raymond seemed fairly oblivious to anything.
 
Slowly and surely he moved closer and closer to Nigel.
 
Then for a split second, Raymond was only a few feet away from Nigel.
 

Nigel pulled the trigger.

The gun fired hitting Raymond.
 
He fell to the ground as the bullet ripped a massive hole in his chest.
 
Nigel was shocked by how messy things were - it never looked like this in the movies.
 
Blood was gushing everywhere.

Nigel got up from his hiding place and walked up to Raymond’s body. Raymond was in a very bad way but was still alive.
 
He looked up at Nigel and mouthed “Why?” to him.
 
Nigel was really confused by this.
 
“You know why - you killed my wife.”
 
Raymond looked confused and in total agony.