A Window into Time (Novella) (10 page)

Looking back after seventy years, I still wonder. Am I right? Was Uncle Gordon (wherever his soul is now) right? Is consciousness nothing more than a window into time?

I'm not religious, but I sincerely believe that we have a soul—one that goes on in some way after our body dies. As to when and where it goes—Well, that I'm about to discover.

Here's two things I discovered after I saved Michael: One, Michael only lived because the paramedics got to him so fast. Me squeezing on his bullet wound didn't help at all, despite what the Internet says. Of course, I was the one who phoned the emergency services before it happened, thus making sure they got there in time, but I can't take credit for that. It doesn't matter because, fact two—Docklands has a phenomenal amount of CCTV surveillance.

Boy-with-a-catapult-taking-out-lunatic-shooter played on every news show on the planet from multiple angles. The YouTube video got eighteen million hits in the first twenty-four hours. Then someone did a mash with a silly music track. That got thirty-two million hits.

Rachel had the front pages of me framed, and eventually hung them all the way up the stairs in the new Wimbledon house.

I got to go to lunch with the prime minister—I took Dad and Rachel and Uncle Gordon.

I got a citizen's bravery award at a big ceremony at a really plush hotel. Barney and Gran flew in from Spain for that one.

Vladimir McCann received a ten-year sentence in a psychiatric prison. He was released after seven, and spent the rest of his life in and out of various medical institutions before dying of an overdose fifteen years later.

Michael spent five days in hospital before going home and made a full recovery. He and Jyoti got married in Vegas the next week. Exclusive pictures were sold to a magazine for a five-figure sum. He used that money to make stock market investments. Their baby was born eight months later. A boy. They called him Julian.

That's not just embarrassing, it's completely weird.

I changed the time line, yet I still live. How can that be?

I really hate paradox.

Or maybe I was just as crazy as Vladimir back in those days, and it was all part of my grief process. I certainly never remembered any more of Michael's life after that—not that I saw a lot of him afterward. But when I did, it triggered nothing.

He was GeneFood's major backer at the start. By then, those early stock market investments of his had made him a billionaire, and his venture capital company funded a lot of tech start-ups. I'd started GeneFood a couple of years after I got my genetics doctorate. It was a hell of a ride. Michael cashed in his shares five years later, when their value had increased 3,000 percent.

That whole crazy episode was what shifted my interest from physics to biotechnology. I mean, what's the point of studying quantum cosmology when the universe is underpinned by strange spirituality? So I went into genetics and set up GeneFood. You see, I still wanted to invent something that would help the world. Just not a gadget.

And, boy, did I succeed.

Turning my head is painful now; the nurses have piled the pillows up around me. But I can do it if I take it slowly.

“Careful, Grandpa.”

I smile at Ian. He's a good lad, him. He shouldn't have to sit at my bedside watching me die.

“I'm okay,” I reassure him. And—wow—my voice sounds dreadful. But then, breathing is really difficult now. They are
not
shoving air tubes down my throat. I won that argument a month ago (well, my lawyers did). No drugs. No resuscitation.

I just want to see it one last time. The bedroom window looks down across the cliffs to the Cornish coastline beyond. It's a fabulous view. Even fifty years back, the house cost a fortune—worth it, though. The Atlantic waves are rolling in, breaking on the rocks in tremendous white spumes. And out there, a kilometer from the shore, the surface of the water is green from huge fields of seawheat.

It feeds a billion people now, they tell me. And it costs practically nothing. I made varieties for every climate, from the poles to the tropics.

I helped people.

Something tightens in my chest. I smile as my eyes close, and now I'm finally going to know. The blackness engulfs me, and so I die—

Of all the things, I didn't expect reincarnation to be painful. Logically, I shouldn't be aware of much at birth: an abrupt immersion into alien air and light, taking my first breath and crying. A mother's welcome embrace.

This
hurts
!

I can barely breathe. My body is shuddering around like I'm being electrocuted. And the pain isn't letting up one iota; it hurts like hell. Wait, did I just say that out loud? Newborn babies can't talk.

I open my eyes. Of all the things (2), I wasn't expecting to see my own face from seventy years ago staring down at me. Damn, I look terrified—poor me. I have a really bad dress sense, too. And then thirteen-year-old Julian Costello Proctor is looking up serenely into the sky, waiting for—

Oh, I remember what he's waiting for. Paradox to strike with all the might of a dinosaur-killer asteroid.

I really hate paradox. But this universe is definitely strange. I think it has a sense of humor, too. Bet Jack Haldane never knew that.

Anxious paramedics are shouting at me, but I can't make out what they're saying. On the ground next to me, underneath three burly security wardens, Vladimir McCann is screaming like—well, like a demented man whose murderous plan just got foiled.

Then one of the paramedics meanders back into focus. “You are one lucky bloke,” he shouts with a smile. “Someone called us just in time.”

I know. I did. Seventy years ago. And I remember every single day of those years. Ah! Including stock market figures. Well done, past-life-me Julian; but now my name is Michael Finsen (again!), and I have The Best memory.

Great North Road

Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories

A Window into Time

Pandora's Star

Judas Unchained

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void

The Evolutionary Void

The Reality Dysfunction

The Neutronium Alchemist

The Naked God

Mindstar Rising

A Quantum Murder

The Nano Flower

Fallen Dragon

Misspent Youth

A Second Chance at Eden

The Confederation Handbook

The Abyss Beyond Dreams

A Night Without Stars

PHOTO: © PETER EYRE/LRPS

P
ETER
F. H
AMILTON
is the author of numerous novels, including
The Evolutionary Void, The Temporal Void, The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora's Star, Fallen Dragon,
and the acclaimed epic Night's Dawn trilogy (
The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist,
and
The Naked God
). He lives with his family in England.

peterfhamilton.co.uk

Facebook.com/​PeterFHamilton

@PeterFHamilton1