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
‘Okay,’ he said, leaning forward towards her. ‘You’re here, right? So you can use the time machine to go back and kill the baby you. Just by the fact that is possible means that, yes, you could do it. But it would also mean that by killing the baby you, you would not cease to exist. Because if you ceased to exist at the point of killing the baby you then it would mean me and Harry never met you. Which means you never grew up, never joined the police, never got brought here and so on . . . but that would mean you would then never be here in order to go back and kill the baby you.’
‘What the fuck did you just say?’ she asked with a laugh at the utter confusion in her head.
‘No, think about it. You would have to continue to exist,’ Ben said. ‘Because otherwise you would never be here to go back and kill the baby you . . . which would mean the baby you grew up and came here . . . so that must be like parallel worlds or something.’
‘Parallel worlds?’
‘Yeah. Like . . . infinite worlds all together. See, we think of time as linear, right? That it only goes forward? But the time machine breaks that belief because we can go back . . . but what if we haven’t gone back or we have gone back but not to our past. See what I mean?’
‘No. Not one word,’ she said, no longer interested in what he said but only seeing that spark in his eyes. The same spark she saw during the first few days when he questioned everything and was working things out. The change was profound. His whole manner seemed alive and animated. The proper Ben was there.
‘So, right,’ he said and reached out to lift her hand. ‘This is you here.’ He waved her hand up and down, making her smile at the feel of it. ‘So we have Safa here now . . . but if we take Safa’ – he waved her hand again – ‘and go back to kill baby Safa . . . then maybe we are not killing the baby Safa that you were . . . but another baby Safa . . . like . . . like . . . so every time you do anything . . . anything at all, right? You make a decision and do something, but what if you made a different decision and did something else? That life continues to run.’
‘I’m so lost,’ she said, still not listening but wholly and utterly absorbed in watching him.
‘Ah okay.’ He smiled. He actually smiled. A flash of teeth showed through his beard as he waved her hand up and down. ‘So, er . . . you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is . . . is what?’
‘Er . . . have a piss.’