Edward Graves: Temporal Detective

Jessica awoke early the next day, fully recharged and barely able to contain the excitement that bubbled within her. But despite the immense surge of adrenaline running through her body, she kept her eyes closed for a long while after waking. She couldn’t be sure whether what had happened the day before was just a dream or not. She could hear a soft ticking sound coming from across the room and slowly she began to open her eyes. To her joy she was not greeted by the usual sights of her bedroom. Rather than her usual Queen Double with TARDIS bed covers, she found herself lying in a large four poster bed in a comfortably sized room that had a dressing table and mirror against one wall and a grandfather clock against another. Directly across from the bed Chrystal could see a beautiful wooden wardrobe and she giggled as thoughts of Narnia entered her head. A Monet hung on the wall, in roughly the same place as her Doctor Who poster was adhered in her room.

She sat up in the bed and sorted through the events of the previous day. Edward had taken her on a tour of the streets of London. He’d synchronised his timeline with her own. She’d found out that he was four-hundred and fifty-three years old, despite the fact that it was less than thirty years since his birth. The quirks of time-travel and immortality.

Speaking of time, she thought. What time is it anyway? She looked at her watch. Edward had equipped it with a time-tuner, a device which would let her watch reset itself every time she entered a new time period. She could also keep track of her time from her own period through the use of a secondary setting, allowing her to avoid confusion. The display read 8:06am. Thirteen hours! I’ve been asleep for thirteen hours! Time travel obviously took its toll on the body.

She swung her legs off the bed and felt her bare feet sink into the plush carpet which was so different to the one in her unit. Having slept in her borrowed dress, she gathered her own clothes, including her freshly cleaned jacket and headed for the bathroom. Edward’s house was what Jessica assumed all English Terrace Houses of the era were like. It had three levels plus a basement, with an assortment of rooms and several features which would not be found in a modern house, such as a Larder. Having said that, Edward had made some minor improvements through the use of time-travel. Thankfully for Jessica, one of those improvements was a modernised bathroom with indoor plumbing. After making use of the bathroom, including a quick shower, Jessica mad her way downstairs.

She found Edward sitting in his sitting room, browsing through several newspapers that were spread across a table. “Good morning sleepy head,” he said cheerily. “I’m beginning to think that you’re not a morning person.”

Jessica tried not to yawn as she looked at her watch, “Well, it is 6am where I’m from.”

“Hmm, yes we’ll sort that when we finish our sync up. Once you’ve returned home, I’ll visit you on a time and date that corresponds to the time and date here. Then we won’t have to worry about confusion in that area.”

Jessica nodded, “Cool.” She looked at the newspapers on the table, “What are you doing anyway?”

“Job hunting,” he said as he sprang to his feet. “My current case is nearly at an end so I need to find something else to occupy my time with.”

She took a closer look at the newspapers, which were from several different cities and years. “So this is how you pick up your cases? You go around buying newspapers from throughout history? You must be missing out on a truckload of cases from the pre-Gutenberg era.”

Edward looked up at her, “Actually this is just one way in which I look for cases. Sometimes, rarely, the Temporal Council will ask for my help. But mostly ordinary people, both Archaics and Linears, come to me for assistance. I don’t mean to brag but I have got quite a reputation among the Archaic community.”

“But you said that Linears come to you too, how do they know about you?”

“Let’s just say that there are some Linears out there who have a greater understanding of the world than others,” said Edward.

This fascinated Jessica. “Really, there are normal, non-time-travelling people out there who know about this? How come it’s not public knowledge then? I mean, why does everything need to be kept secret?”

Edward scrunched up a handful of newspapers and tossed them in the unlit fireplace. “Let me ask you a question Jessica, if I may? What do you think would happen if the population at large knew that not only is time travel possible, but there exists a select group of individuals who are capable of performing this amazing feat naturally? The first possibility is that we’d be accepted by the Linears and asked to work with the governments and emergency services of the world. We’d become tools, used to help ‘make things better.’ But it doesn’t take long for a tool to become a weapon. They’d ask us nicely to help them win wars and conquer death. They’d want us to help them change history and ‘make a better future’. Many of them will believe that they are doing the right thing without realising just how stupid they’re actually being.” He paused for a moment. “You have no idea how many psychopaths and dictators have honestly thought they were doing the right thing.

Jessica could see the truth there. Time travel could be a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. Most people just wouldn’t be able to see the dangers until it was too late.

“What’s the second possibility?” she asked.

“Simple” he said. “If the first thought is ‘how can we use it?’ Then what’s the next thought you think someone might have after discovering something new and powerful?”

Jesssica realised immediately what he meant, it was the problem which had plagued the thinking of mankind since the dawn of time. When you find something new there are two questions to ask, ‘how can we use it?’ and...

“How can we kill it?” she said slowly.

Edward gave a grim smile. “Exactly. It’s the oldest and most primal fear of our species; the fear of the unknown. Especially if it can be used as a weapon. If we made ourselves known then the Linears would either want to use us or kill us, plain and simple.”

“Ok,” said Jessica, “I guess I can see the need for secrecy then.”

Suddenly Edward grabbed her hand, “I’m sorry, how rude of me! I didn’t even ask how you slept in the guest room, what a terrible host I am! I hope everything was to your liking up there.”

“Yeah, it was fine” said Jessica. “I slept like a baby actually, I didn’t even realise how tired I was.”

“Yes, I imagine you’re feeling quite hungry too.”

Jessica put her hand to her stomach. It rumbled. “Now that you mention it...”

“Well how about I fix you some breakfast then.” He spoke as he walked out of the room. “Breakfast and then your next lesson,” he called out.

Edward made her a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and pancakes with tea to wash it down. Then when she was done they moved into the Library again, where Edward taught her about temporal defences. He taught her how to shield her timeline so that it couldn’t be tampered with by outside forces, well not easily anyway. This would prevent her being killed as a baby and the like. He also taught her how to shield her home, workplace and anywhere else where she did not want intruders. That was all pretty easy really and simply entailed her entering Timespace, which was just a matter of willing herself there with a good level of concentration, then setting up certain mental and metaphysical barriers.

“OK,” said Edward, “before we move on to Fluxing, you need to understand the three main laws of time.”

“I would have thought that there’d be a lot more than three,” said Jessica.

“There are one-hundred and twenty-seven of them,” said Edward.

“Oh,” said Jessica.

“But fortunately, there are only three which you really need to know off the top of your head. They’re usually called the Cardinal Laws of Time or just the Three Laws.”

“An Archaic must not deliberately, or through inaction, bring harm to a human?” Jessica ventured.

“No,” said Edward, “but I will give you a high-five for the Assimov reference.” He did. “The First Law of Time is the Law of Temporal Displacement: A Time-Traveller must return to their own point in the timeline within forty-two hours. As I told you before, this is to reduce the risk of creating paradoxes, which could have devastating consequences for the timeline.”

Jessica looked up from her notepad. “So what happens if you don’t return in time?

Edward made a strange face, like he was picturing a particularly disturbing image in his head. “Let’s just say it wouldn’t be good. Have you ever seen the Back to the Future trilogy?

“Of course,” said Jessica.

“Well, it’d be a lot worse than anything that happened in any of those movies, that’s for sure.”

“How much worse?” She asked hesitantly.

“Try to imagine the entire timeline unravelling and eventually imploding in on itself as all of history slowly falls apart into a big primordial mess.”

Jessica just stared with a shocked look on her face. “Oh. So that kind of worse then.”

“People just don’t realise how important they are in the grand scheme of things. Everything we do and every decision we make has repercussions which affect the future. While we Archaics are outside of our own time zones we’re temporarily shielded from the consequences of our actions. It’s like the universe pauses causality for a while, well at least that of events that are directly related to us. But if we don’t return to our natural places in time then the whole chain of cause and effect becomes infected. The effects of this vary depending on the life that the person lived or would have lived. It can range from changing events to destroying the universe.”

“Has that ever actually happened before?” she asked.

“No, never.” Edward said. “Well, maybe once or twice.”

“Once or twice!”

“Well it obviously wasn’t that bad was it? You didn’t seem to notice.”

Jessica got the feeling that Edward wasn’t going to elaborate on this. She was right.

“Next, the Second Law of Time: The Law of Non-Interference. We cannot do anything, deliberately or accidentally, to alter the timeline from its original course; no changing the past or the future.”

“Right,” said Jessica, “I’d better not go back in time and kill Hitler.”

“That’s right,” he said as he straightened his cravat, “we can’t right every wrong ever written. We can however, act to stop the timeline from being altered or to set it back on course. Now we come to The Third Law of Time: The Law of Personal Linearity. Essentially, we aren’t permitted to return to points in time and space where we run the risk of meeting ourselves. If you were to do that then you’d be caught in an Intrinsic Loop. The two selves would collapse in on each other and said person’s own timeline would fold in on itself.”

“And the universe the implode, right?” Jessica added.

Edward shook his head lightly, “Actually no. An Intrinsic Loop is dangerous to the individual involved but luckily it is self-contained. Because it’s localised to one timeline, the universe puts it in a sort of quarantine, cutting it off from the rest of time and space. Once that happens the individual ceases to exist in space and time, as if they never existed at all.”

“Yikes, nasty!” said Jessica. “So what actually happens to the poor guy or girl once their Timeline’s folded in on itself?”

Edward dusted some lint from his sleeve. “No one really knows, it’s hard to say for sure. It’s most likely that they would simply cease to be; they’re consciousness and physical form will evaporate and coalesce into something else. Although it is also possible that they could go in surviving in one way or another, inside some sort of bubble universe or alternate dimension outside of our own. Hopefully neither you nor I shall ever have to find out.”

Jessica finished scribbling notes in her notebook, then stuck her pen behind her ear and read aloud a summary what she had written. “Back home in forty-two hours, don’t mess with the past or future and don’t meet your past self, gotcha. You know, that really is Sci-Fi time travel 101.”

“Yes and for good reason. Time is delicate and in constant state of flux, but also perfectly balanced. Make no mistake Jessica, Time is bigger than all of us, we do not have control over Time, we are merely able to move through it a little more efficiently than others. But when it comes down to it, Time is an organism which allows us to live inside of it and that is why we need to treat it with respect.”

Jessica nodded and then said, “I’ve noticed that you sometime refer to the Timeline, Timestream, Timespace and sometimes just Time. Is there some sort of difference?”

“Yes there is,” said Edward. “By ‘Time’ I mean, just what it sounds like, time in general. The Timestream refers to the natural flow of time, from the beginning to the end. Timelines are the entirety of an individual’s life, from beginning to end. The Timelines are part of the greater Timestream. Finally Timespace, as you’ve seen, is an overlap between Time and Space; an extra dimension through which we can take shortcuts through the Timeline.”

Jessica scratched away on her notepad, furiously trying to get all of this down. “There isn’t going to be a test, is there?”

“Not a theoretical one,” said Edward, “but I think it is time for a practical examination. I want you to try Fluxing two minutes into the future.”

Jessica blinked and placed her pen and paper down on the desk besides her. “OK,” she said, “sure. It can’t be that hard, right?”

“That’s the spirit,” said Edward. Then he stepped to the middle of the room and drew a large X with some chalk. He grabbed Jessica by the shoulders and steered her to the spot.

“You could have just told me where to stand.”

“Yes, I suppose that I could have,” he said thoughtfully.

Jessica started feeling a little anxious. “If I wind up stuck one hundred million years in the past, you have to rescue me before I become T-Rex food. Deal?”

“Of course,” said Edward. “I’d never miss the chance to rescue a damsel in distress; it helps me build up my hero reputation. Oh and T-Rex didn’t exist one hundred million years ago, just so you know.”

“Is it hard being such a pedantic know-it-all, or does it come naturally?”

“You know, it does require more work than most people imagine,” said Edward. “Speaking of work, let’s get started. Are you ready?”

Jessica shook her body loose and then said, “Ready.”

“OK now close your eyes and clear your mind,” said Edward.

Jessica closed her eyes and pushed everything to the back of her mind, allowing only Edward’s voice to enter her head. She felt him rest his hands gently on her arms and his voice came from just behind her left ear.

“Time is motion,” he said. “It carries us from one point to another and if we focus, we can feel it all around us. Reach out with your senses, feel Time flowing all around you; all over you; through you.” Edward’s voice was little more than a whisper now and it was moving around her, steady and deliberate. “Feel it lapping at the back of your senses, like the gentlest of waves touching the shoreline.”

Jessica could feel the faintest of motions somewhere at the back of her mind. It was an odd sensation, unlike anything she had ever felt before. She went to say something, but she felt a finger press gently to her lips. “Shush, focus,” he said softly.

“Once you can feel it, focus on Fluxing into it. Feel the frequency of time as it flows over you and try to match it – become one with it. Let your body resonate with it.”

She began to feel a physical sensation, as the seconds flowed over her skin. She did her best to focus on the way it felt and tried to match her body to it. She couldn’t explain it, but it all felt so natural to her.

“Once you’re in Timespace, visualise where and when you want to be and go there - just move through the intervening time as easily as you would through physical space.”

He body began to vibrate and she felt warm, blue energy flowing over her body and permeating every particle of her being. She opened her eyes and saw the room become engulfed in the familiar azure light. She began to float forwards and the room stretched out in an impossible way, narrowing towards a pinpoint on the horizon. It wasn’t just one room though, there were hundreds of them. Well, kind of. They were all Edward’s library, conjoined and flowing from one to another in an endless, seamless chain. Each was identical, well nearly. She could see Edward standing in each one and after every dozen or so he seemed to be a slightly different position.

It was then that she realised that each room was how the library existed at a particular second, stretching out towards infinity behind and before her. Everything around her vibrated, as did she and she could feel a strange frequency to it all. It was like she was more in tune this time, like her own resonance matched that of the space around her. She began to drift forward and she could feel the frequency change, like she was an antenna and she was being adjusted.

She took a deep breath and focused on her destination again. Two minutes into the future. The endless line of libraies began gliding silently beneath her with only the softest displacement of blue energy.

She could see Edward moving in stop-motion, leaving the room for a length of time, returning with his watch in his hand and then moving to stand right in front of her. He was smiling and looking directly into her eyes and then she felt a pulse push through her stomach and there was a bright flash of blue-white light and her feet were planted firmly on the floor, centimetres from Edward. Her body stoped vibrating and the blue energy dissipated instantly.

“Welcome back,” said Edward. “Did you enjoy your trip?”

Jessica wavered a bit, her feet felt a little unsteady. She tilted a little too far back but her right foot caught her weight just in time. Edward extended a hand to offer assistance but she assured him that she was fine.

“That was amazing!” she said. “It was kind of like the ending of Interstellar. And I’ll tell you what, it’s a lot better when you’re actually in control of it and you’re not just being pulled through history like a fish on a hook.”

“I think that you’d make a very cute fish,” said Edward. “But hopefully this is how you’ll Flux from now on; in full control. Now how about you have a go at going backwards? Go back two minutes in time, but go to your bedroom wait for me to meet you there.”

“Wait, my bedroom?” asked Jessica.

“Yes, well I get the feeling that you’ll be spending a fair bit of time here in the future, so you might as well have your own room. If you didn’t like the one that you slept in last night then I can offer you another one.”

“No,” said Jessica, surprised, “it’s great, thank you!”

Edward nodded, “You’re welcome. But I can’t believe that that was the only part of my instructions that you found confusing.”

Again, she closed her eyes and focused on matching her resonance with the flow of time around her. She felt the now familiar wash of Temporal Energy flow through her body and opened her eyes to blue, fluctuating world of Timespace.

She turned around and looked at the infinite number of identical libraries stretching out into the past. This time however, after the appropriate version of the room had slid effortlessly under her feet and she could see her past self, bathed in blue light, she drifted out of the room and up the stairs. She passed through the closed doors of her room like a ghost and with an effort of will, she passed back into the physical world, her feet touching down with a soft thud. She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her and once again, she stumbled back a little, but was able to catch herself on the bed post. She took a few deep breathes and then straightened herself out just as Edward entered the room.

“Excellent,” he said, “another success, I see.”

“Yeah,” she said a little shakily, “but it kind of takes it out of you, eh?”

“You’ll get used to it with time. Now, do you think you have enough left in you to get back to where you started from, roughly,” he checked his watch, “one minute from now?”

She took a deep breath, nodded and then smiled. “Piece of cake.”

By the time she returned to her unit that night she felt like a professional time traveller. She had practiced with Edward for hours, gradually taking bigger and bigger leaps into the past and future. So when the time came to return home she was completely confident in her ability. Well...mostly confident.

Jessica stumbled into her room and laid spreadeagled on her bed, still in her clothes. Time-travel really did tke it out of you. She was still finding it hard to believe what had happened over the last few days, or was it the last few centuries? Who knew? All she knew at that moment was that she was tired as hell and the only place she wanted to travel to, was dreamland.