We had repeated problems with the old man who lived in the old house at the edge of the new estate. There were always complaints about noise, strange odours, bright flashes of light.
The house was a massive old thing built of stone and it had been there long before the estate had been built, or even the scattering of houses that existed before the estate in that area.
Part of my job at the local council was dealing with these endless complaints. I remember the morning well; I put on my cheap nylon shirt and fixed a tie around my neck, as I was required to do, put on my cheap suit and went to catch the bus as usual.
I felt somehow horribly depressed and I was seriously considering visiting a doctor and getting a prescription of something or other; anything that might help.
I sat on the bus watching the serried rows of nearly identical houses pass by, and then the shops and takeaways of the town, with their massive garish printed signs, most of them rather rundown except for the outlets of chain stores interspersed between them.
The people walking past looked glum.
This is modern Britain, I thought to myself. Monstrous in its ugliness.
But no, I’m probably inventing memories here. I probably didn’t think that. At the time, I probably accepted it all as normal. It was normal, and if anyone objected, there was always a doctor ready to treat the chemical imbalance in their brain.
At the office, Simon told me there’d been another complaint about Featherstone.
“He’s up to his old tricks.” said Simon. “The next step is going to be court proceedings.”
“I’ll go and have a word with him.” I said.
“That didn’t do any good last time.” said Simon. “Mark my words, he’s going to end up losing his house over this.”
“That’s not going to happen.” I said.
“It’s happened before.” said Simon. “That family over by the river. They got so many fines that had to sell up just to pay them. Just as well. Absolute nuisance the lot of them.”
“Leave it to me.” I said. “I’m sure he’ll see sense.”
I went immediately to Featherstone’s house, walking all the way to save having to wait for a bus, and knocked on the door.
There was an enormous intermittent buzzing coming from inside the house, and flashes of intensely bright light that lit up the windows.
I had to knock four times and shout a bit before he eventually answered.
Featherstone always unsettled me. He had piercing blue eyes, undimmed by age, that seemed to bore right into me and take in my entire soul in a single glance. It wasn’t that he was in any way aggressive, but rather that he seemed to possess an uncanny intelligence that saw into the heart of everything and everyone.
“We’ve had more complaints.” I said. “Listen, this is getting really serious. I’m trying to hold them off but they’re going to take you to court if this carries on much longer. You know, we’ve seen people lose their whole house because they couldn’t afford the fines and people kept complaining —”
He held up a hand to silence me.
“I need your help with something.” he said. “Come in.”
“We’re not supposed to —” I began, but he swiftly interjected with a resounding “Nonsense! Can’t help an old man in his own house? Never heard of such a thing.”
Inside I froze to the spot out of sheer astonishment. Where I expected the far wall of the living room was instead a massive construction of metal wires and pipes, with a kind of layered metal grid in the middle of it all, taking up most of the wall.
“What is this?” I asked him.
“No time to explain.” he said. “Here, you stand by this panel of switches. If I disappear, I want you to press this switch, then that one, then increase the power here to maximum. Have you got that?”
“Disappear?” I asked, faintly.
“Tell me what I just said.”
I repeated his instructions and he nodded in satisfaction.
“Perfect.” he said.
Then he began to flick various switches and fiddle with dials.
“What are you doing?”
“Powering it up. It’s very fortunate you’re here. I can’t risk attempting temporal transmigration again without you.”
“Temporal transmigration?”
“You’ll understand everything shortly. Lives depend on what we’re about to do here.”
“I have to get back to the council.”
“Nonsense.” he said again, more quietly this time. “A man of your talents wasted at the council? It’s quite out of the question.”
The metal grills began to glow with an unearthly green. Soon I thought I could discern shapes moving about behind the grills, presumably in the kitchen at the back of the house.
“What are we looking at here?” I said.
“Watch.” said Featherstone, and gradually the green glow died away and I saw a horrible sight.
I was looking into a room containing four people who seemed in an awful state; a man and a woman and young two girls. Presumably they were all one family.
The girls were ashen-grey and lay emaciated on flimsy mattresses on the floor. The woman was trying to do something involving a tall plastic container and some dirty water, and the man was pacing about ranting about something. The woman had lost part of her blonde hair and was covered in scaly patches of sore skin, but it was the man who appeared in the worst state of all of them. He was bald apart from some wispy bits of hair and he was covered in festering yellowish sores.
Featherstone put his hands out as if feeling for a pane of glass between us and them and his hands seemed to land on something solid.
“I think I can get through.” he said, and he seemed to try to push himself forwards, but after a few brief moments he said, “Damn! It’s still too strong.”
He fell back, almost as if repelled by an invisible force, staggering to keep his balance, and the nightmare vision abruptly disappeared.
“Who are they?” I said. “We have to help them!”
“That’s what I’m trying to do!” he said. “I just can’t seem to manage to get to them. The temporal shuttling is too strong.”
“Temporal —”
He turned to face me.
“These people are living in the future. I came upon them quite by accident, while attempting to build the portal. Evidently a terrible war has taken place. They’re suffering radiation sickness and they’re starving. I could help them, if only I could get to them. I’m so close! If only I had more energy. More power. I need a power station, ideally.”
“The future?” I said. “How is it possible?”
He started flapping and looking for pens and paper.
“Sit down.” he said. “I’ll explain it.”
He spent two hours attempting to explain to me how his machine worked. I kept trying to leave, then he’d say something so outlandish that I had to sit down again, out of curiosity, and on it went for a whole two hours.
I was jolted out of the spell by my phone going off. It was Simon, asking where I was.
“I have to go.” I said.
“I need your help.” he said. “You’re the only person I’ve told about all this. Go to work and hand in your notice. I have plenty of money; you needn’t worry about that.”
“I’m not a scientist.”
He clapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re made of the right stuff.” he said. “I can see it. Quit your job and come and work for me. You can see I’m on the verge of something big, and those people are depending on us. Besides, I need power, and you understand how things work. You know how to make things happen. Together, we can get the apparatus working.”
I went away in a daze, hardly understanding what I’d just seen.
For the rest of the day at work I got nothing done at all, but no-one noticed. Actually I could have gone weeks in that job doing nothing and no-one would have noticed.
I wasn’t going to hand in my notice though. That seemed absolutely mad.
The next day I went to work as usual.
“Mindy wants to prosecute Featherstone.” said Simon, almost as soon as I’d got through the door, and he handed me a sheaf of papers. “Can you process it?”
Something in me snapped.
“Sure.” I said, and I took the papers immediately to the shredder and started feeding them in.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said Simon.
“I’m resigning.” I said. “Today. Without notice. They can keep my last pay packet if it makes them happy.”
“Paul, what’s got into you?” said Simon. “You can’t throw away your whole career here, just like that. In two years you could go up a whole pay grade, get more responsibility.”
“Hard pass.” I said, feeding the last of the papers into the shredder.
Then I scribbled a resignation letter on a piece of paper that I’d only half-shredded, went to Mindy’s office and slapped it down on her desk. Then I walked out, shouting “Bye, Simon!”
I suppose I had stored up a certain amount of resentment over the years.
I went straight to Featherstone’s house. An enormous bang rang out as I walked up the driveway, making the fence of Featherstone’s property vibrate.
I knocked on the door, and Featherstone appeared, all smiles.
“Do come in.” he said. “I knew you’d see sense.”
“I’ll run out of money in about a month.” I said.
“Don’t worry about that, dear boy.” he said.
“What was that explosion I heard?”
“A slight inequality in pressure between the target zone and the Earth. The automatic systems cut it off before it could do any harm. Don’t worry about it. Entirely innocuous.”
“Listen here, Featherstone, I’d be honoured to work for you, but you have to understand, they’re literally about to issue you a court summons. These explosions and weird odours and flashes of light are frightening the horses. People are getting restless and perturbed.”
The expression on his face changed instantly.
“I see.” he said. “Oh dear, imagine that, taking me to court! Whatever am I to do?”
I was about to console him and offer advice, then I realised he was being sarcastic.
“As a matter of fact, I’m working on a solution. Right now, I need you to help me put together a gigantic capacitor bank, to supply the power we need.”
I worked for the professor for six months, mainly helping him to assemble a huge power supply. During that time he received ever-more threatening letters from the council and various parts of the legal system. Every time I raised the topic, he brushed it aside. He entirely ignored a court summons and after that I fully expected the police to turn up at any moment.
Eventually they did, two of them, but he refused to answer the door. They went away, but I knew they’d be back.
Meanwhile we periodically looked in on the family he’d found. Their suffering was horrible to watch. Every week they looked worse than the last, and we could do nothing to help them, try as we might.
At the end of six months, they mostly just lay on their beds, dying, covered in weeping sores.
Featherstone and I got rather glum.
“There must be something we’ve missed.” he said. “The apparatus is so close to working.”
But if there was something we had missed, we had no idea what it was.
That night I had a dream. I was walking on a distant planet, surrounded by strange vegetation. I saw the ruins of an ancient advanced civilisation and the graves of creatures that looked nothing like anything that can be found on the Earth.
Gradually, as I approached waking, I began to question how I’d got there. I realised we had used Featherstone’s apparatus as a portal not to the future, but to the far-side of the galaxy.
I jumped out of bed, full of excitement. When I arrived at Featherstone’s house I saw police milling about outside, so I made a detour and got in via the back.
Featherstone was sitting watching the family dying through the portal, rubbing the sides of his face with his hands, as if wrestling with terrible thoughts.
“Featherstone!” I said. “I’ve got it!”
“I fear it’s too late for them.” he said, miserably. “Medical science can’t help them now.”
“Our medical science, maybe not.” I said. “But what if we use the portal to find an advanced civilisation in the present time, and use their technology?”
I could see the thought had made an impact on him. He sat bolt upright, rather resembling a hare.
“Any civilisation that’s developed that kind of technology may pose a grave danger to humanity.” he said, thoughtfully.
“We find a civilisation that’s ended. The ruins of a civilisation. But highly advanced. If we can view their apparatus at close hand, maybe we can replicate it.”
“That might actually work. We’d need to fix up an automatic computer system that scans one distant planet after another, till we find the one we want.”
“How long do you think they’ll last for?” I said, eyeing the terrible sight of the dying family.
“Two weeks if we’re lucky.” said Featherstone.
“Then we’d better get to work.”
Now even I was actively collaborating in ignoring the police. I knew very well they’d get a warrant and might burst in at any time. I could only hope we’d have enough time to make significant progress first.
It seemed a faint hope. Even if we managed to find the remains of an advanced civilisation, how would we manage to comprehend its works rapidly enough to save the family?
Eventually the police would break down the door and probably confiscate whatever they found. Featherstone had made himself too much of a nuisance for too long. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they suspected him of murdering people. They’d probably break down the door during the day rather than at night, and they’d probably warn him first. We’d have time to shut down the portal, if it was open, but no more.
We set to work to reconfigure the portal to look around our galaxy at the present time, although what can be said to exist contemporaneously and what exists in the past or the future becomes a matter for philosophers and physicist to conjecture with, when dealing with immense distances. Featherstone’s apparatus somehow got around the usual laws of physics in ways that I didn’t fully grasp, although he had been giving me tutorials on physics and on his findings.
We set up a computer system that could analyse light coming in through the portal, and from that infer atmospheric pressure and the composition of atmospheric gasses. Featherstone though we needed somewhere with an atmosphere much like our own, except containing traces of certain pollutants and various radioactive emanations which he believed would remain present in the air after the death of a civilisation.
Eventually, incredibly—although, the incredible by then had almost ceased to astonish me—we found what we were looking for; a planet with an extremely promising atmosphere. At a certain point on the planet’s surface we found the smouldering remains of a forest of some sort. Featherstone thought a fire must have got started by lightning, and he thought we might find ancient ruins there that might otherwise be obscured by trees and vegetation. I suggested we look around the edge of the burnt area, where perhaps buildings might have survived the fire, but where the vegetation might still have burned away.
“We’ll open the portal at ground level and see if we can find anything interesting.” he said.
The portal opened onto what looked like a kind of hellish wasteland. The fire had caused vast devastation over many hundreds of square miles. We began to run along the edge of it at enormous speed, watching carefully for signs of the ruins of our hypothesised civilisation.
And then, something caught my attention. I wasn’t sure what I had seen; it had flitted by far too quickly, but I felt it was something important.
I remember reading once that people who learn certain sorts of card games requiring skill can learn to get better at the games by unconsciously perceiving patterns before they are even able to consciously articulate those patterns, so I believe the unconscious is, in some sense, quicker at certain types of perception than the conscious. For this reason, I am never quick to dismiss “gut feelings”, which may simply arise from the unconscious perception of real patterns.
We slowed the portal’s speed and wound it back, then proceeded gradually forwards.
To our absolute astonishment, we saw a figure walking along through the smouldering remains of the fire poking at things with a stick. This was no alien, but a human being, wearing a mixture of what looked like clothes of his own making combined with the ragged and repeatedly-repaired remains of clothing from our own era. In spite of all that, he appeared well-nourished and more or less healthy.
We stopped the portal in front of him. On the ground were pieces of some kind of strange device, which he was examining and turning over.
“If only we could get through the portal.” said Featherstone.
At that moment, the man happened to start off towards us, and instead of walking past the portal, he walked right through it. Suddenly there he was, in Featherstone’s living room, gasping for air and staggering in confusion.
“Good Heavens!” said the man. “You got it working!”
“Who are you?” said Featherstone.
“Don’t you know?” said the man.
“We’ve no idea.” I said.
“I thought you were looking for me.” said the man.
“Absolutely not.” said Featherstone. “We don’t know who you are.”
“Oh.” he said. “Well, just as well. This technology is dangerous. What year is it and where am I?”
The man explained that he had developed a kind of portal similar to our own, and had been marooned on a distant planet for five years, during which time he had fought off many horrifying creatures and had learned mostly by trial and error which plants and animals he could safely eat, poisoning himself repeatedly in the process, but somehow managing to survive.
His name was Goff, which was short for Godfrey. When he had stepped through our portal, he had thought we were working with his friends, who he believed were searching for him. This would, of course, mean that his friends had shared the secret of the portal technology with other people, and he was relieved to find that, in fact, only we knew how the portal worked—and possibly his friends, if they had ever succeeded in getting Goff’s old portal working again, because apparently it had suffered some sort of mishap.
The planet on which he had been marooned had indeed once hosted a highly-advanced civilisation, which Goff had investigated very extensively, with the mind of a first-class scholar.
This civilisation, he said, had once consisted of creatures that looked nothing like human beings, or even any sort of creature to be found on the Earth, but were immensely intelligent. Portal technology had ruined them, and they had used it to wage war on each other until one final battle was fought, with nuclear weapons.
By then, the portal technology had become taboo, and most references to it had been deliberately destroyed. If any portal remained on the planet, Goff hadn’t been able to find it. He believed the last remaining portals had been destroyed in the nuclear war.
He was working on building a portal using his own theories, and had expected to be able to return to the Earth soon, but was having trouble finding all the parts he needed. That was why he had set fire to a forest, with the intent of uncovering old buildings that might contain whatever he required.
“I don’t understand how you were able to walk through the portal.” said Featherstone.
“Well, it’s quite simple.” said Goff. “You’ve got it the wrong way round.”
He proceeded to show us exactly how to reconfigure the portal so that it would actually work. Goff hadn’t got as far in his own research as travelling through time, and he was amazed when we told him about the family we had found, living far into the distant future.
“We need drugs that can treat radiation sickness and the results of advanced radiation exposure,” said Featherstone, “combined with starvation and dehydration, and probably heavy metal poisoning.”
“That technology exists on my planet.” said Goff, who seemingly now considered himself the owner of the alien planet.
“Will it work on humans, if the aliens looked nothing like us?” I asked him.
“Oh yes.” said Goff. “It works at the cellular level, repairing damage by intelligently copying healthy cells. How do you think I’ve remained in good health? You should have seen me three years ago. I was very close to death.”
“Then we can rescue those people.” I said.
“We must set to work immediately.” said Featherstone. “You must show us were to find this technology you speak of.”
A week later, we’d reconfigured the portal so that it actually worked, and we’d collected the technology we needed from the ancient ruins that littered the planet.
We devised a plan. The atmosphere of the future Earth was too dangerous for any of us to risk exposure and the family were too far gone to simply transport back to the Earth right away. Even a small change in atmospheric pressure or a sudden change in temperature might finish them off, and they were horribly contaminated. Passing through the portal was physically taxing, for a variety of reasons. We would have to approach the rescue systematically.
Peter Fripley and his wife Clara Fripley had taken steps when the threat of war had loomed on the horizon. They had spent all their savings on medications and on devices that they thought might protect them and their two girls, Lucy and Ellena.
Their friends had laughed at them, and had informed them that, were nuclear war to break out, everyone would be dead anyway, so there was little point preparing.
When the war came, they were ready.
They had survived long after all their friends and neighbours had died. They had generously shared whatever they could afford to share, while prioritising their children’s future, but in the end, nevertheless, only they had remained.
For months they had clung to life, Peter making trips out into the wasteland, braving the radiation-addled bands of thugs and the monstrous half-living creatures, many of them once beloved pets, that roamed the desolate ruins of their suburb.
Clara had worked endlessly to attempt to purify water and to prepare palatable food from whatever Peter found, and to try to buoy the spirits of Lucy and Ellena, but in the end, they had to face the fact that they were dying.
“Our last Christmas together.” rasped Peter, exhaling from radiation-scarred lungs, his arm around Clara, ignoring the pain from Clara’s clothes rubbing against his radiation sores.
By Clara’s side lay Ellena, and Lucy lay by Peter’s side. The girls were asleep. By then, they mercifully slept most of the time, waking only to cry, Clara no longer able to persuade them to eat.
When Christmas Eve arrived, they didn’t expect to make it to January. They had fought bravely, but the prospect of death now seemed almost a relief. They had accepted it, at long last.
Clara got up to try to filter water, but Peter waved at her listlessly from the bed.
“There’s no point, my love.” he said. “We’re only prolonging our pain.”
She turned around, intending to argue with him. Then something caught her eye.
“What’s that?” she rasped. “Am I hallucinating?”
Peter followed her line of sight. In the air, in the middle of the room, was a curious twinkling, as if glitter had been thrown into the air. As they watched, a thousand tiny particles seemed to shine like tiny stars. Then all at once, a large cardboard box seemed to fall from nowhere and the twinkling disappeared.
“Do you see it?” said Clara.
“I see it.” said Peter, astonished.
Clara stumbled over to the box and opened it.
Lying on top was a hand-written paper, the writing in an archaic form of English.
“It says the box contains medicine, food and water, and a portable heater.” she said numbly. “It says rescue is coming soon. We’re to take the medicine and stay put.”
“Where did it come from?” said Peter.
“From God.” said Clara, tears forming in her eyes. “Quickly, help me.”
Together they unpacked the box.
“What good is food when we can’t manage to eat?” said Peter.
The box included a tube of tiny pills, with instructions to take one every hour, and a liquid that the paper said would rehydrate them.
Peter drank some of it, expecting to begin vomiting, but instead he felt the pain in his throat magically dissipate as the liquid flowed down it.
“It’s amazing!” he said excitedly. “Here, drink some!”
Clara tried it too, with the same result.
“Wake up the girls!” she said, her eyes filled with hope for the first time in many weeks.
They roused the children; Lucy in particular was very close to death, but after drinking the liquid she smiled and asked, “Are we in Heaven now?”
“I don’t think so.” said Peter, laughing.
They shared out the tiny green pills, taking one each.
They following day they awoke feeling hungry instead of nauseous as usual, and they eagerly investigated the food in the box.
The box contains a number of packages which, when a cord was pulled, sprang open, exposing heated food.
Soon they were feasting on the contents, the girls eating cakes and tiny soft deserts while Peter tried to persuade them to eat something savoury instead.
“Let them eat what they like.” said Clara. “It’s a miracle that any of us are eating at all.”
Over the next month, more packages arrived, with further instructions to await rescue.
Their sores healed and their hair began to grow back at an astonishing pace.
“We should get out of here.” said Peter, looking through the cracks in the boarded-up window. “Find somewhere where there’s less radiation.”
“The box says to stay where we are.” said Clara. “Let’s wait.”
The next day they were eating lunch when there was a strange sound, and a hole appeared in the wall of their living room. Through it they could see only greenish glowing mist. Then a figure stepped through the mist and into their living room. It was entirely dressed in black and wore a helmet that completely covered its face.
“I’m Goff.” it said. “I’m here to rescue you. Come with me.”
The figure stepped back into the mist, and they followed, in a daze.
They emerged into Featherstone’s living room.
“Greetings, my dear people.” said Featherstone, extending his hand to all of them one by one, the girls shaking his hand solemnly.
“Where are we?” said Peter.
“You’re still on the Earth, but well over a century before the war.” said Featherstone.
Goff removed his helmet.
“This is our dear friend and colleague, Godfrey,” said Featherstone. “and this is Paul, who helped to develop the portal technology and fended off bureaucratic interference.”
I smiled at them. I was beaming uncontrollably. It was a moment of euphoria for all of us.
They were wearing new clothes we’d sent them but they were still all horribly radioactive and would require decontamination over several months. Featherstone and Godfrey and I had all taken one of the radiation-repair pills as a precaution, since even standing near the family for a short while was like getting an x-ray.
At that moment, there was a huge pounding on the door.
We’d put thick curtains up over the window at the front and reinforced it with with steel struts, so I went upstairs and peered out from the upper floor.
Below was assembled a large collection of people from the police and the council. I recognised Simon among them.
“Hello Simon!” I said.
“Paul!” he said, surprised. “What are doing in there?”
“I work for Featherstone.” I said.
A policewoman said something in Simon’s ear. He shouted up to me.
“We’re going to break down the door if you don’t let us in.” he said. “Sorry, Paul.”
“OK, we’ll open it.” I said. “Just give me a little while.”
I shut the window as Simon was shouting something else, but I didn’t hear what.
Downstairs in the living room, I explained the situation to Featherstone, Goff, and the astonished family.
“Open the portal to my planet and we’ll move everything there.” said Goff immediately. “I know a lovely spot where we can set up a new laboratory.”
“We need living quarters, Goff.” I said, glancing at the family.
“Yes, yes, there’s old buildings there that we could easily convert into houses.” he said.
We quickly began to recalibrate the portal. Outside, the police began shouting at us through a megaphone.
Soon the portal was open, and we beheld a landscape that was indeed quite lovely. Numerous ancient small buildings dotted a green hillside, and on top of the hill stood a building somewhat resembling a cross between an observatory and a church, which Goff said would make a fine laboratory.
“Are you sure there are no existing inhabitants?” said Featherstone.
“They’re all dead.” said Goff. “There’s a bit of radiation but if we take a pill once a month we’ll be fine.”
“Then let’s get to work.” said Featherstone.
“We’ll help.” said Clara.
Peter and Clara hardly knew what was going on, but they understand the general situation in outline. They understand that we had rescued them and that people we absolutely couldn’t deal with were about to break in.
“Certainly not.” said Featherstone. “You must relax and continue your recovery.”
But they insisted on helping anyway, and soon we were collecting everything we thought might be useful, including all of Featherstone’s apparatus, and throwing it through the portal onto the grass on Goff’s planet.
The most unsettling bit of the whole procedure was when we had to throw bits of the portal technology itself onto the planet, so that we could maintain the portal from the other side, otherwise the police would discover it and soon the people of the Earth would likely suffer the same fate as the earlier inhabitants of Goff’s planet. At that point the portal could easily have inadvertently been closed, but we managed to pull it off.
We had more or less finished when we heard the sound of the door splintering off its hinges.
“Quickly! Through the portal!” said Featherstone and we dove through the portal and onto the soft grass on the other side.
The last thing we saw was a policeman staring at us in astonishment, before Featherstone pushed a button and the portal disappeared.
We lay on the grass, panting.
“Technically, it’s Christmas here.” said Goff.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, it’s four days after the shortest day of the year. On Earth, that would be Christmas.”
“Well then, Merry Christmas everyone.” said Featherstone.
“Do we get presents?” said Lucy.
“You most certainly do.” said Featherstone. “Let’s go and see what we can find.”
