Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue
- 2046
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- About the Author
A bottle of beer is pushed into his hand. He looks up, startled and shocked at confirmation of the date and that time travel exists, and that he died, and that he saw dinosaurs, and that the world ends in the year 2111. The man who gave him the newspaper laughs again and motions for Ben to drink the beer. Ben freezes. The music booming. The lights flashing. Noise and sensations everywhere. He died. It happened. The man moves in to lift Ben’s hand up as though helping him to drink. Ben drinks. He drinks the beer as the man and his friends applaud in delight. Ben keeps drinking. He guzzles the warm, fizzy beer down because he is dead. He died. He will never see Steph again. He will never see his family or his home again. Homesickness hits. Despair sinks in. He drinks more. Suddenly so thirsty. He empties the bottle and lowers it from his mouth. The man takes it away and pushes another one in.
‘Obrigado,’ Ben shouts. The man says something fast, laughing and smiling. Ben laughs back at him. It’s funny. All of this is funny. ‘I’m dead,’ Ben tells him. The man and his friends laugh. ‘I DIED,’ Ben tells them. They laugh again. Ben laughs too and drinks the beer as a single tear falls from his eye to roll down his cheek. A hand on his shoulder. Safa at his side. She leans over him to stare at the front page of the newspaper and spots the date. She doesn’t know that Fevereiro is ‘February’ but the rest is obvious. She smiles at him, seeing the tear but thinking it’s a bead of sweat trickling down.
A beer is pushed into her hands. She sees it coming and takes it with a smile and a nod, spotting the boxes of beer at the group’s feet. She sips the warm liquid and stares round. Harry and Roland come over. Beers pushed into their hands as the group sees that the nice man who asked for the newspaper is joined by his friends. Roland frets. This is interaction. This could damage the timeline. Harry drinks his beer and stares suspiciously at the most beautiful woman he has ever seen dancing nearby.
Ben drinks. He drinks the beer in the hot, humid air of Rio de Janeiro on the fourteenth of February nineteen ninety-nine and knows he is dead. He died. He doesn’t exist.
Sixteen
Sixteen
Three austere, sterile rooms. Concrete walls. Concrete floors and ceilings. A single metal-framed bed in each room.