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There was more applause, and she sat down. There was a longer pause, so Jimmy-G stood up again.
“My name is Jimmy-G, and I would have worked alongside both Shazza and Friday. I would have been time-engine policy director from 2014 until 2032, when a gravity surge in the auxiliary Time Room dumped me in the forty-fifth century. I was stuck there for sixteen years and upon my return ran the enloopment facilities. These days I work in retail and have a happy if unexciting life with a good wife and a fine son. I don’t see him graduate, though, since I die in mysterious circumstances in 2040.”
He sat down again, and, heartened by his contribution, the remainder of the ex–potential timeworkers joined in. There was someone who would have worked as part of the Retrosnatch Squad who was unhappily not going to see his sixtieth year due to a car accident, and a youthful Bendix Scintilla, whose future self we had met a few years back when he was giving a ChronoGuard recruitment talk. He was eighteen and would now work in engineering until vanishing without trace in Kettering not long before his fifty-fifth birthday. Braxton’s son Gordon was also here, to give a much-needed positive take on the proceedings. He was slated to suffer a fatal time aggregation when his gravity suit leaked, first day at cadet school. Now he gets to be fifty-six. He wasn’t the only one. A girl named Lauren would have been fed alive to pterosaur infants next April during an assignment in the Cretaceous that went badly wrong, but now she succumbs to gruppling bongitiasis at age forty-four.
“Go, me!” she announced happily at the end of it. “I would have suffered a fatal time aggregation,” said another attendee, “twenty-two years from now. Now I die falling from the roof while attempting to adjust the TV aerial—on exactly the same day. Whoop-de-do.”
“What was the program you would be wanting to watch?” The attendee looked at his summary. “Er . . . a repeat of, The Very Best of ‘The Adrian Lush Show Repeats Again,’ Part 7. Serious bummer.”
In this way those in the room told of their differing destinies, and we offered as many encouraging noises as we could, although the practical help this afforded was questionable. The last person to speak was Gavin Watkins.
“I might be unique in this room,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “in that according to my summary, I would not have been a distinguished member of the ChronoGuard. After an early career helping to map the twenty-fifth century, I see that my later career seems to consist mostly of disciplinary hearings and suspensions. Bored and in need of cash due to an expensive Precambrian tourism habit, I accept a hefty bribe in 2028 to undertake an illegal eradication.”
“What sort of bribe?” said someone.
“A Titian—The Battle of Cadore.”
“You hate Titian,” said someone else. “You’d have had nowhere to hang it.”
“I change my mind and grow to love him, apparently,” said Gavin, “and I guess I must have had somewhere to hang it . . . moron.”
“Okay, okay,” said Jimmy-G soothingly, “this won’t happen, and what’s more, it won’t happen twenty-four years from now. Go on, Gavin.”
“Right. Well, I was caught—we all were, of course—and spent two years in an enloopment facility before being released due to a technicality. Not a great career, but better than what I get now. Friday Next will murder me in three days’ time!”
There was a sharp intake of breath as he said it, and he glared at Friday.
“Why are you going to kill me, Friday? Because I insulted your mum and sister?”
Friday took a deep breath and stood up to face Gavin.
“I don’t know. I have no real motive. But you can stop me. Take a random Tube ride. You can be anywhere on the planet in under six hours. If I can’t find you, it won’t happen.”
“As soon as my destiny papers arrived, my parents put me on the Deep Drop to Sydney,” said Gavin. “I checked in under a false name to a crappy motel near Dame Edna International. I even hid in the cupboard. My summarization papers hadn’t changed—you were still due to kill me. So I came home. If I was going to be murdered, I’d rather it happened near family and friends.”
“Friends?” said Shazza.
“Family then. Body repatriations are pricey these days, and they always seem to go astray.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” said Friday.
“You will,” said Gavin, “and what’s more I know for a fact you won’t get away with it.”
“It’s Tuesday night,” returned Friday, “and I’ve got sixty-six hours to figure out a way to bend the eventline.”
“Maybe the eventline did bend,” said Shazza thoughtfully. “It’s possible that once you were in the hotel cupboard, your Letter of Destiny changed to say you survived. You probably then wondered why you had flown all that way to hide in a cupboard, but as soon as you returned, so did your death.”
Everyone fell silent at this. Shazza was right. It was entirely possible that the eventline was vibrating like a rubber band and that what was written on the Letters of Destiny right now was not what had been on them even ten seconds ago.
“Okay, then,” said Friday, “I need to find a way of permanently changing our destinies. Right now things don’t look very good.”
There was silence after this, and Jimmy-G thought it a good time to call the meeting to an end and to meet again the same place next week, unless the smiting went ahead, in which case he’d let everyone know. The small party dispersed without much talk; the proceedings had been pretty joyless. Gavin glared at us both as he filed out, and as Jimmy-G walked up to speak to us, I noted Mr. Chowdry pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he turned to leave.
“That was seriously strange,” said Friday as we walked back to the car. Shazza was with us, as she and Friday were going to have a drink together to see if any of their future spark could be preignited, and Jimmy-G was with us because his car was parked next to ours.
“Time-travel stuff generally is.”
“No,” said Friday, “I mean murderously seriously strange.”
