Time

Andrew Miller

Tea-Time

August 11, 2020

Things aren’t made the way they used to be. Take time: time used to have a much nicer quality than it does today. And light: when was the last time you got proper light? And something seemed to have happened to all the spaces, like they’d been… sort of shrunk down and actual space taken out of them… So it really wasn’t his fault when he stopped time.

He was trying to build time machine, okay? Never mind why. He had his reasons. He hadn’t meant to rip a hole in the fabric of causality. He just wanted to go back and make things right. Instead of just having them seem to go more and more wrong. And now there was a gaping lapis-edged void twinkling with stars and infinite blackness facing him from across the workshop, and he couldn’t get to the kettle or the sink. Never travel through time without a cup of tea – he thought he’d read that somewhere. Or else the thought had occurred to him in one of those times in the wee small hours, when the world is all your own. The other thing, of course, was that there was… like a “time ghost” blocking his way.

She was beautiful. Not just ordinarily beautiful, but beautiful in the way that lines of blue light flowed through the air like the most perfect sketch of a person, etched in time. She echoed with life.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said, stepping in front of the rip. ‘This rift is not stable. It needs to heal and disappear. Then time will resume, and it will be as if it never happened.’

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

The time-ghost smiled. ‘Not a bad question to ask, in the circumstances. I am a might-have-been, an if-only, a shadow of a memory – a spirit of being.’

He looked at her, disbelieving. ‘But—’

‘Oh, I’m as human as the next man,’ she said, glancing at him as if she was beginning to enjoy herself. ‘And who knows,’ she added with a twinkle, ‘we might even have known each other at some point in time and space, through the byways of being. Somewhere, anyway. You have another question?’

‘Um, would you like a cup of tea?’

The spirit nodded with satisfaction. ‘Ah, another very good question.’

‘It’s just – can you… sort of reach the kettle and the teabags? I can’t without crossing the rift.’

‘I believe I can,’ she said with a smile. ‘We shall have a cup of tea,’ she said moving about among the tea things, ‘since you so graciously offered.’

He was a little unsure if she was making fun of him. She turned towards him amid the tinkling of spoons and cups. ‘And we shall talk of many things. Of life and time, and might-have-beens.’

He didn’t quite know what to say to that.

‘Now, tell me,’ she said floating closer and handing him a gently steaming cup and saucer. ‘Why do you seek to travel the temporal plane? Why do you risk everything?’

There was a long silence.

She looked up from her cup. Then she nodded and reached up a finger to brush away a tear.

He felt the ghostlike touch under his eye and a tingling frisson like a perfect moment.

‘I think I begin to understand,’ she said. She patted his hand. ‘Drink up, before it gets cold. Never underestimate the importance of a good cup of tea to the process of time-travel.’

He looked up sharply. She had her cup held over her face, but he got the feeling there was an inscrutable smile twitching across her features.

*

The teacups were on the sideboard. The spirit was looking brighter. She was glancing back at the rift and then at him. She appeared to reach a decision.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘take my hand, and we’ll walk awhile. The repairman probably won’t get round to this rift for a while. And who knows, maybe we’ll even bump into a few people along the way.’

He looked at her. ‘Do I have to come back afterwards?’

She glanced back. ‘We can talk about it. Can I borrow a scarf? The infinite void gets a bit chilly round about now.’

He lent her his scarf. The faded wool seemed to suit the time-spirit. The outlines of light in the air seemed to fill out a bit when she put it on, gaining solidity and colour. ‘Ready?’ she said. He nodded.

They drew back the way she explained to him, took a leaping dancing step towards the rift, and disappeared in a twinkle like a pair of stars fluttering in the air for a moment. One happy moment.

You take them where you can get them.

Tee-Time, Part 2: The Missing Links

They say in space nobody can hear you scream. It seems an odd thing to drop into conversation. They also say that in the boundless stars there are places that would give cosmographers and quantum physicists everywhere conniption fits simply by existing.

One of those stood below: It looked a little like a golf course, a grassy fairway in the stars, surrounded by strange trees rooted into the fabric of the cosmos where, of all things, figures that looked suspiciously like knights in armour (some of them wearing what looked suspiciously like plus-fours) were clanking around the fairway crying ‘Fore!’ You’ve got to have some sympathy for the poor academic physicists at times like this. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen.

These are the Missing Links. Some call them a fairway to heaven. Which, considering that in a little pocket dimension such as this, the weather is still pretty Earth-like, seems a little unwise. A sudden thunderstorm and a well-placed lightning bolt can often offend, after all.

The Links are also right smack near the Och Aye Nebula – those tartan bands of coloured stars that twinkle away into eternity. How could it be otherwise?[1]

And from down below there was a tingling, a sense of something about to unfold …

*

Two stars twinkled in the air for a moment. Two figures materialised, spinning in a kind of dance step and then whirling around in an impromptu waltz.

It’s not entirely clear who trod on the golf ball that someone had left carelessly lying there.

Or who struck the other ball that came spinning through the air just then and hit the young man squarely on the head.

What was clear were the cries as he and the twinkly young lady with the scarf got tangled together and ended up rolling down the incline to the lake.

They say if you’re going to get anywhere in life, you’ve got to be prepared to make a splash.

*

‘Get out of there at once, sir! Get out of the lake, I say!’

He looked up blearily. Or was that blurrily? A man in armour and close-cut golfing-trousers was glaring at him from the shoreline and brandishing a golf club at him.

‘Oh, leave him alone, Lance. It’s just a boy, just some kid turned up out of the ether. He’s not doing you any harm.’

‘We’ll just see about that.’

The “boy” tried to think. There had been a girl, hadn’t there? ’S funny. He couldn’t remember that much else about her.

And she seemed to have disappeared.

‘Well, all right, then,’ the knight apparently known as Lance was saying, ‘let’s see his membership card. You do have one, I presume, sir? Come on, speak up.’

‘I … uh …’

‘As I thought.’ (He wasn’t sure why, but there was a gleeful edge to “Lance’s” voice that “the boy” didn’t like.) ‘Throw him into space!’

‘Lance! Steady on—’

The boy started suddenly in the water. He thought he’d felt a sudden pressure in his back pocket. Like something had just been placed in it.

He reached back and held it up.

‘Is this what you mean?’

‘There, you see, Lance, just because you haven’t seen him before. Boy seems to have his membership.’ The other knight leaned forward and offered him a hand. ‘Come along, lad, let’s get you dried out back at the clubhouse.’

Lance was fuming, but there wasn’t much he could do, apparently. ‘We’ll see about this,’ he was muttering.

The boy caught something about rules and challenges. He had a feeling he should be paying this more attention, but right now he couldn’t think to. The other knight clapped a companionable, armoured hand on his shoulder (ow) and murmured something meant to be reassuring.

Funny thing was, he was sure there had been a girl. She had been beautiful, he remembered that. And kind. And … And as he turned back to the water – and as a fish chose that moment to slide down out of his trouser leg – he could have sworn there was a face in the water. It smiled, and then it winked at him.

Then it vanished in the rippling surface of the water, and he caught the light of the sun twinkling on the horizon. When he looked back, the face was gone.

Guess it was just par for the course …

Though the Honourable and Ancient Knights of the Course (known by other names, but hereafter known as the club) had petitioned for the big glowy advertising sign for The Fluttering Tartan bar and grill (“The Best Chocolate Malts This Side of the Milky Way!”) to be moved further out.

Although, this might just be because Lancelot complained that the light got in his eyes when he missed an important approach shot competing in the Christmas Day tournament.