Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘My wife? My child?’

Olivera nodded. Wide-eyed and very nervous. Waldstein suspected the man must have worked himself up for this moment. Must have spent the last few months at the institute, and the last few weeks here, waiting for that perfect moment to pop the question. And here it was supposedly — what this young man judged to be the perfect moment.

Waldstein sighed as he cast his mind back to fading memories of that day. That’s what he’d intended. Wasn’t it? Just one last chance to say goodbye to both of them. To tell them how much he loved them. Because he’d been far too busy to say that before the accident. Far too busy with his work. A chance to say I love you. That and, of course, a chance to demonstrate to the assembled audience of invited journalists that the Chan-Jackson Tachyon Theory — with a few alterations to neutrino channelling — could actually be put into practice.

Olivera swallowed anxiously as he waited for Waldstein to answer. Back home, back in 2054, this precise question actually had its very own name. The question was known as the Waldstein Enigma. Alternatively it was known as the Billion Dollar Question. Any journalist who squeezed the answer to that out of him was never going to have to chase down a new story again.

Waldstein turned to him. He toyed with the idea of answering this young man. Or at least telling him what he’d not managed to see.

‘Regretfully,’ he replied slowly, ‘I… never got to see them again, Joseph.’

There you are… more than I’ve ever told anyone else. He hoped the young man would be satisfied with that.

Olivera’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He was fidgeting. Licking his lips. Eager to ask the inevitable follow-on question. ‘So, what… what did you s-see, Mr Waldstein?’

Waldstein laughed softly. Shook his head. ‘Now, Joseph… let’s leave it there, shall we?’

‘I…’ Olivera’s cheeks darkened. He looked down at his feet, ashamed. Aware that he’d overstepped a line. ‘I’m s-s-sorry, sir. I — ’

‘That’s quite all right. Everyone asks eventually, Joseph. Everyone.’

The silence was uncomfortable for the younger man. Waldstein put him out of his misery. ‘I believe you have an update for me?’

‘Uh?… Uh yes! I do, sir. The AI imprints are completed now. I’ve checked them through and run simulations. They’re one hundred per cent stable.’

‘Good. Then I suppose we’re nearly ready to upload those into the units?’

‘They’re very nearly ready, sir. Full growth cycle in the next hour.’

Waldstein patted his shoulder gently, a conciliatory gesture to reassure the younger man there was no harm done just now.

Curiosity didn’t kill this cat. Did it, Mother?

‘Let’s go back inside and check on them, then.’

2001, New York

Wednesday, 12 September 2001

If you’re reading this then I guess someone, somewhere, does go through the rubbish and read every piece of paper that gets balled up and tossed away. So then, in that case, here it is — my name’s Sal.

That’s all you need to know about my name.

I’m fourteen. I think. Actually, I might be fifteen now. I’m not sure. I’m from India. And here’s the tricky bit — I’m from 2026. You read that right. Please… read on. Don’t throw this away. I’m not making that up, nor am I mad. Just go with it… for now. Please?

There’s a long story that comes before this page. But all you really need to know is that right now I feel lost. I’m scared. I’ve lost another home. We can’t go back to the archway. The place we were living in. Maddy says we can’t ever go back there. Like, ever. It’s marked, she said. Compromised. It’s no longer a secret and safe place.

So now we have nowhere to hide. It’s just us lot and an old bus-thing that Maddy calls an ‘RV’.

Jahulla, what a collection of freaks we make. There’s Maddy, she’s a nerd from 2010. This is closest to her past-life time. She was like nine or ten in 2001, so she actually remembers this year.

Then there’s Liam, he’s a ship’s steward. Or was. He was working on the Titanic. Yes. That Titanic. The one that sank in 1912. He’s really out of his depth here (ha ha). Even though we’ve been stationed back in 2001 for a few months now, he’s still like some confused old fuddah-man even though he’s technically only sixteen.

There’s Foster, who really is old. Not just acting old (like Liam). He’s ninety or something and I’m pretty sure he’s dying. He knows the most about Waldstein’s agency. He was the one who recruited each of us from our past lives. But even he doesn’t know who sent those killers after us. Someone’s found out about us, what we’re doing back here to preserve the timeline.

Then there’s this man called Rashim. He’s stuck with us for now. We pulled him out of a corrupted version of Roman times because he shouldn’t have been there. He went back there with a group of people from the year 2070.

Oh… you should know this. Really important. The world’s dying in 2070. Or about to. That’s why they came back. They wanted to start over: to give humanity a second chance to get the world right. But you can’t do that, see? You just can’t mess with history. There’s ONE WAY it goes and that’s it. Call it fate, destiny, kismet. As Foster says, ‘For good or bad, history has only one true course. You mess with that, and you’re looking at chaos… Hell itself opening up.’

(He’s actually not as wacko-mad as I’m making him sound.)

That’s why we were saved, ‘recruited’, to work for this agency set up by a man called Waldstein — he’s some billionaire inventor type from the future.

And then we have two cloned humans with computers for brains: Bob and Becks. Gorilla Guy and the Ice Queen. They’re, well, ‘special’ I suppose. Let’s leave it at that. Oh… I almost forgot, we’ve also got a robot from 2070 with us that looks like a cross between a filing cabinet and the old cartoon character from when my parents were kids, ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’. I think Rashim designed him as a joke or something.

That’s us. Like I say, a bunch of freaks and we’re trying to run for our lives across a country that’s suddenly doing a double-take at anyone who looks remotely out of the ordinary. So much for remaining deep undercover.

We’re running through an America that’s still in deep shock from what happened yesterday: 9/11. You can see it in their faces; everyone expects another terrorist bomb, another aeroplane attack.

I guess my father would say to these Americans: ‘Get jahully well used to it.’ After all… he lived through the Terror Attacks of the Twenty-teens. All those dirty bombs and suicide attacks in northern India.

Shadd-yah. When aren’t humans always killing each other?

So, we are running. I can’t say where. I won’t say where we’re going. Just in case, reader, you’re ONE OF THEM! Can’t be too careful, right? But we have a plan. Sort of. There’s a place we’re driving to and we just stopped here at this roadside shopping mall-diner-service station place. It’s been a crazy two days. A blur. One big panic after another.

I needed to write this. Get my head on a little straighter. So… there it is. Maybe our job of stopping pinchudda morons from messing with changing time is finished now. Maybe this ‘agency’ thing’s all over. Maybe all that’s left for us is just trying to stay hidden. Staying alive. I don’t know. I don’t know what the next few weeks hold for us. Jahulla, I don’t even know what the next day holds for us.

I don’t even know if these last six or so months have even been for real. Maybe it’s all been one big nightmare and I’ll wake up again in my bedroom in Mumbai and it’ll be 2026 again.