Free Time Leap by Steve Howrie Page A

asked Niki
as we lay in bed back home.
    “ What do you
mean? That’s what you’re like now!”
    “ But Joe is
such a pain in the arse – and so arrogant!” I exclaimed.
    “ Welcome to
the real World!” For someone who is Chinese and is supposed to care
about ‘face,’ she doesn’t seem to care very much about mine at
times. “But you do seem pretty smart in the future,” she
added.
    We’d been very pensive
about things since our brief trip to the future. Seeing ourselves
in ten years’ time with the big house and baby girl had had a big
affect on both of us. In terms of what we’d set out to achieve, our
trip to the future had achieved very little; but we had fixed
things for ourselves in the future, and kept Ed & Jean Withers
together.
    Now, we concluded, we
should turn our attention to another project – in the hope that we
could do something worthwhile on a bigger scale. After all, we’d
won the lottery (more than once) and given up our jobs so we could
concentrate on ‘saving the World’ full–time using the wonderful
gift of the time–travelling mobile phone. So far, apart from what
we’d done yesterday, we’d stopped a terrorist attack which claimed
the lives of three thousand people; brought Niki’s mum Gloria back
to life (having caused her death); prevented the suicide attempt of
one young man – and that was about it. Considering the power we had
in our hands, this was relatively small fry.
    When we’d previously
talked about having a big impact on worldwide events, we’d always
come back to the same thing: it’s too risky. Assassinating evil
dictators was a great idea in principle; but if you think about it,
a lot of trained killers had tried to eliminate people like Adolf
Hitler – and failed. So what chance did us amateurs have? Getting
killed or even caught was not really an option.
    In the end, we decided to
sleep on it and talk again the next day: we had a lot to talk
about.
    ***

Fifteen
     
    The next
morning, Niki bounced into the lounge looking very excited.
    “ You look like
you’ve just won the lottery… again,” I said. “What’s
up?”
    “ I think I
know how we can stop World War Two,” she smiled.
    “ Okay, so
who’s going to pull the trigger – you or me?” I replied. “I’m
intrigued.”
    Nik sat down on the chair
facing me, looking closely into my eyes.
    “ Neither of
us. You remember how you stopped the nine–eleven terrorist attacks,
simply by talking to airport security – telling them what was going
to happen that day?”
    “ Well, of
course… it’s not something I’m likely to forget... unless of course
we change the past again.”
    “ And we
stopped Steve killing himself when he was thirteen – just by
talking to him.”
    “ Right…”
    By now, Niki had no doubt
that I did indeed avert a disaster in New York City in 1991, even
though within her altered memories there was no recollection of a
terrorist attack in the first place. The averting of an event that
hasn’t yet happened is really something you either need to take on
trust, or totally dismiss. In Niki’s case, she’d had her own
experience of time–travel, which really put beyond any doubt the
idea that I dreamt up aeroplanes flying into the twin towers of the
World Trade Center – an idea she now subscribed to
wholeheartedly.
    “ So,” I said
eventually, “what’s your plan?”
    She smiled
into my eyes and said, “I think we can stop all the atrocities of
World War Two, the holocaust and everything, just by telling the
government exactly what is going to happen if Hitler and the Nazi’s aren’t
stopped. We don’t have to kill anyone, Joe; we just give them the
information. Remember when we talked to the Withers
recently…”
    “ You mean
seven years in the future?”
    “ Yes. Well, we
didn’t actually stop them driving to the Bonfire party that evening… they still had
that choice to do it… but by making the walk look
attractive…
    “‘ It’s a