Time Traveller claims to have saved the world in 2022, while engaging in an eerie time travelling relationship with Clair and mentally abusing a fanatic Smiths fan
Greetings, Time Traveller, welcome back to The Sewers.
Hello, sorry, what day is it?
Thursday, so I’ve heard.
Oh. When did David Bowie die?
What?
What?
January 10th, 2016.
I see.
What’s going on? When are you coming from?
Oh no, yes, I was just amending things in Uppingham. I mean Mrs. Chaired she had a car accident last Wednesday, nothing serious, but still, I had to go back and stop it from happening. She was never nice to me, so I’ve told you, but still, I wouldn’t want to see anything bad happening to her. So I went on and undid it. You might say it’s not much, but it was important for me.
So what’s David Bowie got to do with it?
Oh, no, I was just, you know, curious.
Right, what’s going on?
that’s pretty much it, really.
That’s all you’ve been doing in the past three months?
Yes. Oh, I also got a small raise in the Café I work in.
And that’s it?
Yes. I mean I also tried to stop David Bowie from dying on my girlfriend’s birthday, cos that really upset her at the time, and I see it worked, so, great.
You’ve got a girlfriend?
Yes. Tomorrow it’ll be one month. I mean one month on a straight timeline, that is.
Is it Clair?!
Yes, of course, who else?
Oh wow! That’s fantastic!
What’s fantastic about it? It’s reality.
Of course, I mean it’s great. Have you saved the world already?
Yes, I have. You can make plans for 2033, if you want. It’s all going to be alright.
Seriously? How did you do it? Does Clair know? Did you do it together?
It’s really very complex.
I’m sure it is.
Indeed. The complexity is hard to grasp, even for me as a Time Traveller.
I trust our readers ability to work their way through this mental endeavour.
Alright. So basically, right now you could say the world isn’t saved and 2032 is still looming. And that’s because we saved it in 2022. That means, of course, that in the next four years certain timelines mustn’t be tempered with.
What certain timelines?
Well mostly my own and Clair’s, and of course Roger’s. Roger was the reason I attended all those Smiths concerts in the 80’s. I recall you didn’t believe me at the time, and you called me a nihilist, but it had a purpose. Roger had to be stopped in the early 90’s in order to prevent 2032, and that’s what I did.
I see, this does sound complicated. What did Roger do? Or what would he have done?
To be honest, he didn’t do much. He’s an innocent bloke, but he became, how should I put it, some sort of a lightning rod of crucial, unconnected and unsynchronized events, which I began to grasp when I was in the 80’s.
In Smiths concerts.
Precisely. Roger was obsessed with the Smiths, he used to tell people that he went to school with Morrissey for years, but he didn’t. I checked it several times. Anyway, whenever Roger attended a Smiths concert, some intricate and complex events leading to the 2032 catastrophe had taken place. The sheer incalculability of it all was just mindboggling.
How did you figure it out?!
By accident, of course. It was in 86′, I think, that I went to a concert. I was running late, and the time travel really made me dizzy and sick, it was just a mess, I just – it was my female aspect – started throwing up and passing out in the street, right in front of the venue. And Roger saw me there and helped me up and got me some water. He wanted to take me to the hospital but I refused, for obvious reasons, of course. With me being from the future and all. Anyway, we were late, and they didn’t let us in. so we missed the concert. Roger missed the concert. And it changed the course of time and the streak of events leading to 2032. When I came back to my present back then, I saw something in the sequence of events had changed in a way that influenced 2032. I was just going by luck, by intuition, and it worked. So I set out to prevent Roger from seeing Smiths concerts in all sorts of ways.
Like how?
Well once I called him and told him I’m the police and he had to come for an investigation, for example. Once I planted weapon on him –
Oh dear –
Called in and told him his mother was in the hospital and he had to come immediately –
That’s horrible!
Locked him inside his flat and unplugged his phone. I… I feel regretful for these actions. He really lost it by 92′. He became paranoid. It’s not his fault, you know? He was a lightning rod. he was… it was for the greater good, you know?
Of course, yeah. Well it’s alright. It’s not like you killed him, right? you said his timeline is still relevant.
Yes, it is. But he’s been in and out of institutions since 92′, you know.
Shit.
They say he’s paranoid and insanely obsessed with the Smiths. But how wouldn’t he be. How wouldn’t he be. But it was – it had to be done. It stopped 2032. But sometimes I can’t help but thinking whether there could have been others ways.
Well yes. This is very difficult indeed.
Yes. The life of a Time Traveller are filled with regretful choices and chosen regrets.
Hmm.
Yes, poor Roger.
Right, and what about Clair? Tell us how it went.
Well, in 2022, which I was visiting in order to check some events following Roger’s first hospitalization in 92′, I visited my old Café, just wanted to see if they started selling the coffee pills, and to see, you know, if I still work there.
What’s coffee pills?
Oh. I’m sorry. Never mind, forget that part. Anyway, I just passed there, outside, trying to go unnoticed –
Taking coffee in pills instead of drinking it? That’s sad –
It’s better for oral hygiene. anyway, I just passed by, tried to sneak a peek, then I felt a tap on my shoulder… it was Clair. She just hugged me and said she’d missed me so much. I didn’t ask her where I was or when I left, I mean, when 2022-me did all that, cos it’s a fatal mistake to ask these things, I just went with it. She told me she’d been thinking about me a lot, it was really – like she’d been waiting for me for a long time. We spent that whole day together, she told me about the fantasy novel she was writing, she told me she had been thinking about what I told her, about the end of the world, and how I said it was a joke, and that she never actually believed me. That it was a joke that is.
Right, right.
And then, it just happened. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I told her all about 2032. She said she wanted to see it, and we saw it, together. She was so beautiful. So, so beautiful. More than she is now, in 2018! It’s all just how it’s meant to be.
Wait, are you saying your girlfriend is 2022-Clair? What about present Clair?
Well as I said, it’s complex. In 2018 she isn’t my girlfriend yet. But she will be. And in a way, she is.
But that’s all wrong, where’s 2022-you? Does 2022-Clair know that you’re from 2018?
It’s – um – it’s complex.
She doesn’t know.
No, what’s the difference, really?
So you have to time travel to 2022 to meet your girlfriend, when she’s actually right there, in your present?
Look, I’m just telling you how things went. And that’s where it stands now.
But you said your timeline mustn’t be tempered with!
Exactly. It should stay the same, exactly the same, until 2022.
If you start dating present Clair, is that like cheating on 2022-Clair?
That’ll never happen. That would disrupt the timeline in a disastrous way.
That’s so messed up.
I’m doing it to save the world, bear in mind.
It just sounds wrong though. What if your relationship with Clair in 2022 somehow prevents 2022-you from leaving Uppingham in the first place? Then the two yous would collide in 2022 and then what happens to Clair?
Yes, I have thought about it.
And?
It’s very complex. I’m still thinking about it.
Right. when’s Clair birthday?
It’s January 11th, why?
So Bowie was originally going to pass on the 11th?!
Well ah –
How come he died on the 10th then?
I really can’t talk about it.
Oh fuck, did you –
I really cannot talk about this. Lets just keep our time lines straight and untampered with.
Wow –
Time travelling isn’t for the weak of heart. We should all cherish our present time.
Yes –
Right.
Well yes. Right. We thank you and congratulate you, Time Traveller.
Cheers, be safe.
The Sewers 