Time Leap by Steve Howrie Read Free Book Online Page A

likes you big time,” I said. “We’ve got a chance
there.”
    “ How did you
get on with Junior?” she asked.
    “ Close to Plan
B,” I said.
    *
    Plan B didn’t turn out to
be as straightforward as I thought. For one thing, how do you prove
you’re from the future? I did think of taking Steve and Junior to
our present (their future) to show them what it will be like; but I
couldn’t take Steve, of course… he doesn’t exist in our present.
But maybe I could take Junior?
    That evening, Nik and I
decided to stay in 1996 for a couple of hours longer and went out
for dinner at a restaurant she used to frequent when she was at
school. (A place that has since become a Bookmakers). After we’d
ordered, and were sipping some wine, I told Nik my idea of taking
Junior to our present time to prove that we had time
travelled.
    “ I don’t think
we have to go that far, she said.”
    “ It’s just an
idea,” I said.
    “ No, I mean
they only need to go to the day after Steve kills himself. Maybe
seeing the newspaper headline of his death will be a big enough
shock for them. ”
    “ Right… but
you said ‘they’ and ‘them.’ Only Niki can go into the future, not
Steve.”
    “ Why
not?”
    “ Well, for one
thing, because he’ll be dead!”
    “ So you’re
saying that we can only travel back or forward to times when we’re
actually living? That would mean you couldn’t go back to the last
war, or forward to the year 3000.”
    I thought about that for
a moment, and realised that Nik was right. When we jump we seem to
be different entities from our duplicates. We can interact with
them, and it appears we exist independently from them.
    “ I’ve just had
a strange thought,” I said.
    “ Yeah?”
    “ What if I
travel back in time, and then take a younger version of myself to a
different time period again, where we find another, even younger
version of me. Three Joes existing at one time, in the same space…
is that possible?”
    “ It may be
possible, Joe, but I’m not sure I could handle more than one of
you.”
     
    ***

Nine
     
    Back at home, something
had been bothering me. I was mentally going over what Steve had
said the day before, and it didn’t add up. Usually, those who talk
about suicide don’t actually do it. It’s more of a cry for help
than anything else. People who really want to end their own lives
don’t broadcast their intentions – that would only make people try
to talk them out of it, and that’s the last thing that real suicide
cases want.
    “ There must be
something else – something that pushes Steve over the edge,” I said
to Niki as we lay in bed the next morning. We’d jumped back home
the previous night after dinner, and I couldn’t help thinking of
our next step.
    “ Why d’you say
that?” she asked. I explained my thoughts, and then she said
something very interesting. “Well, perhaps we’ve stopped him doing
it already.”
    “ Come
again?”
    “ Well, when
you talk about a problem and get it out of your system, that’s
often the solution. That’s why psychologists get people to talk
about what’s worrying them, isn’t it?”
    Niki was right. Simply by
us being there, and listening and being sympathetic to Steve, we
may have already changed history, in which case there was nothing
else we needed to do. Possibly.
    “ If you’re
right, there’s an easy way to find out,” I said getting out of bed
and going to my laptop. “Let’s see if the guy is still
alive…”
    We were in for a big
shock.
    It took a little while to
find information on Steve Watts, but when we finally found what we
were looking for, we stared at the web pages, and then each other,
without speaking. Eventually, I said, “Now what?”
    “ Nothing,”
Niki said going to the bathroom, “it’s over.”
    According to what we
read, Steve Watts had not killed himself in 1996 – we had
accomplished what we set out to achieve. But he had died in a car
accident in 2002, at the age of