Free Time Leap by Steve Howrie Page B

nice
evening...’ ” I quoted.
    “… and the
alternative unattractive…”
    “‘ Parking
will be impossible…’ ”
    “… then
we swayed them
into the right decision.”
    I thought
about it for a minute. What Niki said made a lot of sense; but were
we making value judgements based on the limited information we had?
Naturally, it seemed we were doing the right thing to stop the death of Jean
Withers – without question; but without knowing all the consequences of any
intervention, could we really put our hands on our hearts and say
that we were doing the right thing? If Jean Withers turned out to
be a mass murderer, then maybe we should have let things be? Better
one man suffering a loss than countless others. In the same way,
how do we know that humankind would be better without World War
Two? I voiced this concern to Niki. She didn’t like it.
    “ So your idea
is to do what – sit back and do nothing? We’ll never know if this
is the right thing until we try . And if we mess it up, we can
still go back and reverse it all. What have we got to
lose?”
    “ Okay, I know
where you’re going with this,” I said at last. “But if we go to the
government with our World War Two story, no–one’s going to believe
us. They’ll either just brand us as harmless nutcases, or lock us
up and throw away the key.”
    “ Yes, exactly…
that’s why we don’t have to say anything!”
    “ Come
again?”
    “ We show, not
tell. Isn’t that what they say when you’re writing a good story?
All we have to do is present the evidence.”
    “ What
evidence?”
    “ There’s
mountains of it! Old newspapers, photographs, video
footage.”
    And then I realised how
simple this was. Show, not tell. I leant back in my chair and
considered it. How many war movies, documentaries, articles, audio
recordings, books and magazines had been produced about the Second
World War? It must have been one of the most documented wars of all
time – there really was tons of the stuff! And seeing this
evidence, surely no sane person could just ignore it… could
they?
    “ We don’t need
to say a single word,” Niki continued.
    “ I have to
say, Nik, it’s a brilliant idea… and it keeps us in the clear. But
where will they think all this stuff came from?”
    “ It doesn’t
matter… as long as they believe it.”
    *
    Introducing artefacts
into the past from the future could have big effects on not just
the past, but the present as well – and they might not be
beneficial effects. But as Niki had pointed out, we could always go
back in time and reverse whatever we’d done. I wasn’t totally
convinced it would be that easy, but I went along with the idea
anyway.
    Having decided that our
plan was to simply deposit documentary evidence of the Nazi
expansion and World War Two at a British government office, two
questions had to be addressed: one, exactly what materials to take;
and two, exactly where and when we should do this. The first
question was more difficult than we had imagined.
    “ We can’t take
those!” I exclaimed when Niki brought her boxed set of Second World
War DVDs into the lounge the next morning.
    “ Why not?” she
asked.
    “ How will they
play them?”
    “ On this ,” she answered,
lifting up a DVD player. I couldn’t believe she was
serious.
    “ What – take
that back to 1935?”
    “ You’re so
quick Joe.”
    “ But… but… we
can’t!”
    “ Why
not?”
    I explained that we could
advance the development of digital technology by sixty years by
taking the player, but she wasn’t put off.
    “ Great!” she
said, piling more DVDs on the coffee table and going back to the
bedroom for more. “That’s another bonus!”
    “ I was really
thinking of old newspapers,” I called into the bedroom.
    “ Oh Joe,
you’re so boring!” she exclaimed bringing in her “Band of Brothers”
boxed set.
    “ And that’s
fiction!” I blurted.
    In the end, she did agree
to restrict the evidence to actual war