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
Four months in. She was lying in bed unable to sleep with her black and white mind having made a rare foray into the murky world of theoretical science. She was confused and that confusion caused irritation. She wished she had not even started thinking about it but the thought was there. She tossed and turned, huffed and puffed and finally sat up to scowl at the room before marching from her room to knock on Ben’s door.
‘You up?’ she asked.
‘Huh?’ Ben said. He was still awake, lying on his bed, and showed surprise at the soft knock and her tone, implying a sense of urgency. ‘Er, yeah . . .’
‘Thank fuck,’ she said, marching into his room and not stopping until she reached the end of his bed, where she plonked down and lifted a hand as though ready to make a point. He scooted his legs out of the way and sat up. His eyes flicked to her body and the fact that she was wearing only a bra and a pair of tight-fitting shorts.
‘Right, you’re smart as fuck,’ she said, still holding that hand out. ‘So . . . if I went back and killed me as a baby, would I still be here? And would it be me that went back and killed the baby me? And how would that work because I would have been killed as a baby by the me later but then how would I go back and kill myself as a baby if I died as a baby?’
‘What the fuck?’
The planets aligned. The ambience. The surprise at her marching into his room in her underwear and the convoluted question all served to bring his faculties back in one glorious, beautiful moment of full cognitive function.
‘Is it possible?’
‘What?’ He snorted a laugh and shook his head. ‘Is what possible?’
‘Listen,’ she said, whacking his bare leg gently and only then registering that he was also wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. ‘So right . . . I’m a baby, okay? I go back and . . . so . . . I’m me now and I go back and kill me the baby . . . can I do that?’
‘Er . . . fuck,’ he said, thinking hard. The room was dark. His light was off and only the soft glow from her bedside lamp was spilling in. ‘Er . . . yeah, yeah it must be possible but . . .’
‘But how?’ She asked in that tone that instantly demanded the answer. ‘If I was dead as a baby how could I go back and kill me?’
‘That’s kinda straying into parallel world theory but yeah . . . think it through . . . by the very fact that you could go back and kill yourself as a baby means that it is possible. So if it is possible then yes, you could do it.’
‘Eh?’ she said, shaking her head in confusion.