CHRONOSCAPE Read online

  CHRONOSCAPE

  Roger Ley

  Book Title Copyright © 2017 by Roger Ley All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Roger Ley

  Cover image Kim D Lyman

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Roger Ley

  Visit my website at rogerleywrites.blogspot.co.uk

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: Aug 2017

  ISBN-13 ooo-0-0000000-1-2

  For Tony and Madeleine

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  The Characters

  Acknowledgements

  Author Page

  “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at the same time.”

  John Archibald Wheeler

  “Who controls the Past controls the Future.”

  George Orwell

  “The future is flexible, we can change it.”

  Martin Riley

  Prologue

  A few miles further down the road, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge soared majestically on concrete stilts a dozen stories above the water. Riley drove onto it but, as he reached the central span, an explosion under his car flipped it upside-down and flung it over the low parapet. Strapped in his seat, gripping the steering wheel, he began the long screaming fall to oblivion, but the fall became slower, as if the car was plunging into treacle. At first, he thought that his mind was working faster than events, that in a moment his whole life would flash before his eyes, an upload to the CosmicCloud. Still clutching the steering wheel, he watched as airbags slowly inflated all around him, obscuring his vision. He realized that time was running more and more slowly until finally it stopped all together and the car was suspended in space. Panting he looked at the Potomac River forty meters below him, there was no movement in the water, everything was still. He realized that he was weightless in his seat belt.

  “Sorry to have to leave it until the last moment, Dr Riley,” a female voice said from behind him. “If you could just unbuckle and make your way back here to the portal.”

  He looked in the driving mirror of his inverted car and saw that a flexible, multi colored membrane had replaced the whole of its rear section. It looked like a soap bubble, strange polychromatic patterns shifted over its surface. A woman of indeterminate age sat on the other side in what appeared to be another vehicle which he did not recognize. She wore a close fitting overall of pastel colors which changed and sparkled in the dimly lit interior.

  “We can’t hold this configuration indefinitely, Martin, so let’s get moving.” He sat motionless; her voice became more urgent. “If you don’t come right now I’ll have to disengage and leave you falling.”

  Realizing that he had no choice, Riley unbuckled his seat belt and pulled himself towards the rear. He was disappointed that the Colonel and his masters would think they’d won. Fuck them all anyway, he thought, as he slid through the membrane and into the future.

  Part One

  Martin Riley – The Scientist

  Chapter One

  England the 1990s

  Not another one of these bloody things thought Riley, looking at the computer screen. It was the third hoax email to arrive in his inbox that week. He called Estella over from the other side of the lab. She was his senior research assistant, although their relationship had started to overlap working hours recently.

  “Another email from my future self,” he said.

  “Somebody’s taking the piss,” she said looking over his shoulder. “Perhaps a post grad has found a back door into the system. You never know what these geniuses will get up to next.”

  “Well if I find out who’s responsible,” he said loudly, “they’ll be off the system and doing their calculations on an abacus for the foreseeable.”

  If the culprit was among his team working on one of the nearby computers, it wasn’t apparent. Nobody in the room took more than cursory notice, they all had their heads down writing, typing or plotting graphs.

  Estella pointed at the screen.

  “It’s dated 2009, almost twenty years in the future and the sender’s address is ‘[email protected]’, an American Government website by the look of it. So apparently, you’ve emailed yourself from a time when you’ll be nearly fifty years old,” she chuckled. “Why don’t you answer it and ask for a picture of your middle-aged self? We could all have a laugh.”

  Riley ignored her and read the title out loud.

  “Number three -You ought to act on this one Martin.” His finger hovered over the delete key.

  “Surely you’re going to open it,” said Estella. She was enjoying his discomfiture.

  “Well, as the first two emails were racing tips, I expect this will be the same.” He spoke quietly to her, “I can’t see how it’s being done. Those last two were winners and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is another.”

  “Well that’s not likely, is it?” she said. “Come on, I know you’re only a physicist but you must understand a bit about probabilities. Nobody can predict racing results with one hundred percent accuracy. The first two wins must have been flukes.”

  “Yes, all right, I know you’re a mathematician and good at arithmetic. So how do you explain it then?” he asked.

  “Maybe somebody’s trying to manipulate the odds? I don’t know much about horse racing but I’ve heard of doping and odds fixing. I grant you the date on the email is a mystery but that might be one of the young geniuses showing off. Anyway, what does it say?”

  Riley clicked his mouse, and they both read, “Darkling Spy–Aintree two o’clock.”

  “I need to think about this,” he said as he stood and walked towards his office.

  “So, what are you going to do?” Estella had followed him.

  “Go down to the bookies tomorrow morning and put a fiver on ‘Darkling Spy’ to win at Aintree.” He braced himself for her reaction.

  “You are joking, surely you’re not going along with this?”

  “Go back to your sums.”

  The first hoax email had arrived on Wednesday and he’d deleted it as soon as he’d read it. When the second arrived on Thursday afternoon he’d
checked into it at his local newsagent’s. Mr Singh had told Riley which paper to buy and shown him the racing pages.

  “Nobody wins but the bookies,” he’d muttered, his turban emphasizing the wobbly sideways headshake, that didn’t have a European body language equivalent. Riley had agreed with him, folded the paper and taken it home. Sure enough, the second tip, “Midnight Swimmer” had won at Yarmouth on the previous day. A little investigation and a quick search of his deleted emails folder had revealed that the first tip, “Hoarse in the Morning” had also been a winner.

  The next morning was a Saturday and despite the memory of Estella’s gentle derision, he went ahead with his plan. He didn’t want to risk other members of the physics faculty seeing him go into a betting shop, so he wore a hat and scarf by way of disguise. The bookie’s shop was near his Cambridge flat. He walked along the rainy street and stopped outside it, hoping to appear casual, as he looked around to see that no one he knew was on the street. Feeling awkward and unsure he pushed open the door and went in. The scarf was itchy on his neck, the hat felt unnatural, he smelt the sweaty tension in the air. He’d never been inside a betting shop before, illogically he’d expected all the other punters to be bigger than him, but they seemed to be an average lot. Riley was not a big man, and he felt self-conscious about his bitten fingernails and nervy disposition, but nobody took any notice of him as he approached the counter and put a tenner to win on his horse. The race wouldn’t start for half an hour so he bought a coffee from the machine and sat reading a paper and keeping his head down, trying not to call attention to himself.

  Riley soon forgot the nasty lukewarm coffee in its paper cup as the race was announced on the TV above his head. He’d never had a bet on before, the personal involvement made such a difference, he was instantly transfixed as the starting gates opened and the horses and their riders exploded out and onto the track. The horses galloped bunched together at first, but as they began to separate he started shouting along with the other customers, his heart racing in his chest. Darkling Spy came into the home straight and broke away from the leaders. The other punters around him were urging their horses on, but Riley’s was ahead and he was screaming louder than the rest as it finished first, at four to one. He was stunned at the excitement and the exhilaration he felt at winning, he stood panting and staring, this was nearly as good as sex. He’d had no idea what he’d been missing. How would he explain it to Estella? Should he even try?

  Around him the losers, muttering, tore up their betting slips. They turned their backs on the screen and returned to their racing pages. This could become addictive, he thought as he took a deep breath and mopped his face with a handkerchief.

  He was surprised and pleased by the result but now the emails puzzled him even more, three wins couldn’t be a coincidence. Two maybe, but not three, the sender was either predicting the future or knobbling the horses.

  He stepped up to the counter, handed his betting slip through the grill and took the small bundle of notes from the assistant.

  “There you are dear; first time lucky, don’t spend it all at once.” She smiled to herself as she picked up her knitting.

  Riley counted the money as he moved over to the side of the shop. He hated that it was so obvious that he was a betting virgin? He put the notes into his wallet, making sure that they were in the right order, all the same way up and all the same way around, with no folded over corners. The other, older punters, sat and rustled their newspapers, cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they squinted at the tiny lettering of the racing pages. Riley coughed as their tobacco smoke caught in his throat and, still feeling conspicuous, he adjusted his unfamiliar hat and scarf before leaving the shop and walking home.

  In their flat on Pound Hill he made tea and held the mug to warm his hands. He stared out of the kitchen window and thought about the emails. An indistinct reflection looked back at him and he tried to imagine lines on its face and grey hair. Martin Riley aged fifty. Surely he wasn’t really sending emails to himself from the future?

  When Estella got home from the gym he took out his wallet and, with a flourish, placed his winnings on the kitchen table.

  “Ta-dah, another winner,” he said.

  “No, really?” she looked perplexed. “This is getting mysterious, what do you thinks happening? Perhaps it’s a doping ring, but why would they want you to put bets on and why would they pretend to send emails from the future? Surely they’d just approach you in the street or the pub?”

  “Well, what was it Sherlock Holmes said? Something like, ‘When you have eliminated all the impossibilities then whatever’s left must be the truth, however improbable.’ For the sake of argument, we could assume that my future self really is sending messages back, and see where that leads us? We should consider the means, the motivation and the opportunity.”

  “Well the motivations a cinch,” said Estella. “He wants you to make him rich by betting on the gee-gees. Having the means implies access to equipment that can send messages twenty years into the past, perhaps you’ll invent it. The opportunity would only present itself if he could do it secretly or with the approval of whoever owns the Time Machine unless he owns it.”

  “Or else something criminal is going on.” They stared at each other for a few moments.

  “Let’s talk about it in the pub, I’m famished,” she said.

  In the bedroom, hours later, he lay staring at the Victorian plasterwork around the ceiling rose high above their bed. Their clothes were scattered over the floor but he was losing the plot as far as lovemaking was concerned. Estella was blonde, voluptuous and intelligent; well-rounded in all respects with well-developed physical appetites.

  “I can tell you’re not concentrating,” she said. She sat back. “You’re still thinking about the emails, aren’t you?” she was slightly breathless. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead, she pushed her hair back from where it was sticking.

  “What, you mean the emails from the future that are predicting the results of horse races, and might make me a millionaire? No, not really, I was wondering what to have for breakfast! Of course, I’m thinking about the emails, I can’t think about anything else.”

  She flopped down on her front next to him.

  “So, let’s talk about it,” she said.

  “Well, assuming this isn’t a hoax of some sort, it all makes sense. The racing tips have certainly got my attention; they’re a quick, simple and legal way of getting rich. At the same time, they prove their own authenticity. It’s very logical. I feel quite proud of my future self for being so imaginative.”

  “Something tells me you need to be careful Martin. We should keep this to ourselves. If you get any more tips, save the winnings and don’t flash the money around.”

  “The trouble is that temporal messaging must lead to problems with causality,” he said. “What if I killed my grandfather and all those other paradoxes?”

  “Temporal Messaging, I like the sound of that, it rolls off the tongue, TM, very good,” she said.

  “But interfering with the past will alter the future,” he insisted.

  “Well, as long as it makes us rich, why worry about it? What was it Mae West said? ‘I’ve tried rich and I’ve tried poor. Rich is better.’ ” She closed her eyes and her breathing began to slow and deepen. They’d made quite a night of it at the Cricketers.

  Us, rich, he thought as he drifted off to sleep. He dreamed of horses galloping backwards towards the starting grid with smiling, high kicking dancing girls throwing handfuls of bank notes into the air.

  The next morning, they sat in a local café, nursing headaches over a late breakfast.

  “If TM is real then how is it being done?” he asked. “I mean, there’s a Nobel Prize in it if we can work that out.”

  “Tachyons,” said Estella poking at her Eggs Benedict. “Don’t they travel faster than light? They could carry information back through time just like photons and electrons do through space.”

&
nbsp; “Tachyons are hypothetical particles that have never been observed,” said Riley primly. “What about wormholes?”

  “Another hypothetical concept,” she said. “Anyway, they connect different points in space.”

  “No, they connect different points in space-time, so they might connect different points in space or time or both. So, you can connect the same point to itself in the past or the future if you only have a wormhole.”

  “A Time Tunnel,” said Estella pulling a theatrical expression and waggling the fingers of both her hands in his face. “What about sending people through it?” she said, sitting back.

  “No, the energies needed to control one that big would be astronomical. It might be possible to find one at microscopic level and then send information through it, using short wave radiation.”

  “It sounds as far-fetched as tachyons,” she said as she lifted a forkful of egg.

  “Not really, wormholes are allowed by general relativity and there has been serious talk of them existing at the quantum scale, they might connect everywhere to everywhen. Infinite numbers of the little buggers, our problem would be to detect them; they’re so small, if they exist at all.”

  “Well perhaps you’ll send yourself a message explaining how to catch one and control it,” said Estella, taking a sip of tea.

  “That interferes with causality, where would the knowledge have originated? I think he wants me to work it out for myself. But knowing it’s possible makes a problem much easier to solve.”

  Over the next week he waited to see if anybody he worked with mentioned horse racing but no one did. There was no hoaxer, and every few days another TM arrived in his email account.