The Time Squeeze

“Never travel beyond 12.44 GMT on 4^th May 2346,” my mother told me the day I got my first time machine.

 

She needn’t have bothered, I was well aware of the Lost Zone, the period of time after which nobody returns, the time the human race ends. “The time time ends,” my friend Jed always described it. “It’s clearly not just the end of the world, or people would be able to get back, it must be some sort of time vacuum.”

 

With the future disappearing I tried revisiting my favourite year, 2236, the year I turned 18. It was a year of constant parties, great clubs and fantastic bands. However, going back wasn’t the fun I expected, as I couldn’t revisit any of the great gigs or parties I’d been to, in case I bumped into myself and did the ‘big kaboom’.

 

The ‘big kaboom’ is a very real phenomenon, I’ve seen it happen, the meeting of two selves from the same timeline. There’s a massive blast of energy, an explosion that looks big enough to end the world, like four simultaneous nuclear bombs exploding in the same room, yet afterwards everything is left exactly the same, but for the gap where the kaboomees once stood.

 

They say that there are sick, rich fuckers who deliberately trick ignorant pre-time-travellers into kabooming, just for the kick of watching it. “Here, ignorant 20^th century person, borrow my time machine and you can go back and watch your own wedding, watch the most important day of your life from the outside. What a thrill for you.”

 

Kaboom.

 

A sick trick, but I will say that it IS THE MOST SPECTACULAR SIGHT, like watching the end of the world. And if it does happen at a wedding then this has the added bonus of free food and drink, not to mention the pre-time-travel bridesmaids in awe of your technology. “Hey young lady, would you like me to take you to the twentythird century. We can try out my hover-bed.”

 

So I was in 2236, but I wasn’t, I couldn’t see my friends, my girlfriends, couldn’t visit my favourite haunts. Couldn’t do anything. So I was bored, with nowhere to go, without a time to call my own. It was at this timely moment Jed suggested we should both travel back to Pre-London.

 

“Pre-London?” I said, “What’s that?”

 

“A new colony that’s just being set up a few thousand years into the Cenozoic Era.”

 

“The Ceonzoic Era? But that’s the era where mammals first grew, millions of years before the dawn of man.”

 

“Exactly. The idea is to get as far a way as possible from the human era, as it’s gradually squeezing itself out of its own timeline through too much time travel. By setting up a new colony, long before mankind evolved, we can start afresh. No danger of screwing your ancestors and becoming your own great, great, great, grandfather, your ancestors won’t have evolved yet.”

 

“But nothing will have evolved. None of our main food types, sheep, pigs, corn.”

 

Jed grinned. “Exactly, we’ll have to export everything back. And, you’ll realise, there’s no fuel – not enough compressed animals and plants to make coal, oil, nothing like that. An amazing opportunity for an entrepreneur.”

 

“Selling what?”

 

“Anything the energy companies want. I’ve got contacts in a couple of fledgling energy companies, there’s a fortune to be made making sure they’ve got all the kit they need.”

 

“Why do you need me?”

“Because there are more opportunities than I can manage. I’m going into peat, but there’s money to be made in wind, solar power, anything.”

 

Peat?

 

“Yeah, peat. It’s manmade, or at least it can be. All you need to do is go back a thousand years before Pre-London, chop all the trees down, plant some moss and wait for nature to run its course. Then pop back to a thousand years later and you have enough peat to make your fortune.”

 

So that’s what we did. At first most of my work was as a getter for the energy companies, fetching technology from the future, wind turbines, solar panels, generators, everything you need to create power in a world that hasn’t evolved yet. Within a few years I was employing 150 staff and had over a hundred machines.

 

Within a couple of years, however, the energy companies were well established and self-sufficient. Everything they needed had been acquired, and the industry existed to make things in the present without constantly fetching from our future. However, though we had power, the fledgling society lacked pretty much anything else. Nothing had evolved yet. Sure we’d taken the main food crops with us, but people soon wanted a wider selection of plants, an ecosystem that would sustain itself. And if you want an ecosystem with a million different plants and animals there was only one way of getting it, you had to bring it back from the future, one species at a time.

 

 

However, though I had my company of time-travellers I stopped visiting the future. My own time had disappeared, my childhood days would now never happen, they were absorbed in the time-squeeze and I had no desire to visit ancient history. By this time pre-time was more advanced than any civilisation surviving in our future.

 

“Never travel beyond 17.33 GMT on 27^th July 2216,” Jed told me one day.  “The Lost Zone is growing. They’re calling it the Time Squeeze.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve already lost a dozen staff and machines. How can the future disappear like that? I mean I haven’t even been born. How can my birth just disappear like that?”

 

“Time is being squeezed. Every time trip strips a layer of reality away. The future is fading away like a memory.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

 

“It happens,” Jed shrugged. “Moving an entire city back in time, it’s warped the future big time.”

 

“Don’t you mind?” I said, incredulous as his casual manner.

 

“Na, it’s all here now innit. Pre-history is the place to be.”

 

This was true. Anyone who was anyone was here. Even my favourite club, the 24^th Century Disco, had followed its members back in time to the Cenozoic Era. And our tech was vastly advanced of anything left in the future. The future was a dead zone, long live pre-history.

 

All went well for a time. Though modern history had disappeared, I could still go back and fetch the animals and plants needed to populate the New Human Era, as it was now being called. Cats, ants, spiders, grasses, ferns, the demand was insatiable, the new world would only be sustainable if we could export enough of future to last.

 

But the Lost Zone continued to grow. “Never travel beyond 7pm on the 3^rd December 737,” Jed told me one day.  

 

Well I already knew that. I’d had to shut the business when all but two of my fleet failed to come back. These were only saved because I’d lent them to Jed to help with his peat production, and consequently they’d gone back in time instead of forward.

 

“How’s it possible?” I said. “I mean, time ceases before time travel’s been discovered. The entire population of Pre-London were born in an era that no longer exists. It doesn’t make sense.”

 

“It’s what happens when you muck about with time. We’ve just squeezed away the future.”

 

“So we’re stuck here, forever, doomed to spend the rest of our lives in the Cenozoic Era.”

 

“Na, that’s not going to happen.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“The Time Squeeze hasn’t stopped. The future’s still disappearing. Time’s receding like and old man’s hairline. Come this time next year there won’t be a this time next year.”

 

“So we’ll die.”

 

“Die? God no, we’ll never have existed. Five, ten years time the human race will never have happened. The Earth will just stop, kaboom, it will never have been.”

 

I took a beer from the fridge and opened it. We said nothing for a while, which gave me time to think. I was stuck in Pre-London with barely a penny to my name, with nothing to look forward to but the kaboom to end all kabooms.

 

“So,” I said eventually, “A pretty good time to get into the insurance industry. No worry of having to make payouts.”

 

“Good thinking,” Jed said, “People always need insurance. We could go into business together.”

 

“Why not,” I said, “it’s the last thing we’ll ever do.”

 

We clicked beer bottles. Happy days.