Chapter 6 Adam “The Passenger” #3
Then we’re back in full panic mode again.
With no time to go to the shops, Jules throws open the freezer and shouts at me to tidy and vac the hallway and living room.
Nelly even surrenders her business demesne, temporarily at least, clearing her paperwork off the dining room table and laying it with our best cutlery and plates.
A frazzled half an hour later and we’re sitting down with Darius for a supper of chili lime prawns and tagliatelle that Jules has somehow miraculously cobbled together, while even more miraculously also managing to change into smart cargo trousers and a clean red T-shirt, with her hair coolly tied up, and a fresh swipe of gloss across her lips.
“God, this is so tasty,” Darius says, “it’s making me think more and more about that pop-up restaurant of yours, Jules. I take it you’re already on board with this, Ads?”
“I…um…” It’s not just Darius’s eyes on me, but Jules’s too. I’m not even sure how he knows about her idea. Something else they must have talked about last night before our fight.
“I’m really happy to help in any way I can,” he says. “Financially, or otherwise.”
I feel it then. My hackles rising. Because it’s not his place to come blithely cantering in on his charger to rechoreograph our lives, is it?
Only he doesn’t stop at Jules either. He’s on to Liam next.
Quickly winkling out of him how much he hated his degree and how much I want him to go back to uni, but how he’d much rather be in a band instead.
Obviously, I’m expecting Darius to back me up. Because he’s an adult, and a businessman, who’s worked ruthlessly hard his whole life. Meaning he and Liam have nothing in common.
“I imagine that sometimes it’s hard for dads to let go,” is what he actually says, nodding to himself over this Hallmark greeting card insight. “But if you’re not passionate about something, there’s no point in doing it, because further down the line you’re only going to quit.”
“But that’s just it,” says Liam. “I am passionate about the band.” He taps his wineglass with the little finger of his left hand, something Darius notices too.
“Sometimes having obstacles in your way, like you’ve had, that’s what gives you your edge.”
“Exactly.” Liam flashes me a glare—as if to say, See. Uncle Dar gets it. So why can’t you?
“Then maybe you and your dad need to have yourselves a little chat,” Darius says, generously nodding at me now, inviting me into their newly formed circle of trust. “To find some kind of common ground.”
I knock back my whole glass of wine just to keep myself from exploding.
I know Darius is only trying to help, but he should know better.
He was there, for God’s sake. The day Liam got hurt.
He sat up with us in the hospital and brought us coffees that whole first night.
He knows how bloody awful it was and how long it took Liam to get his confidence back.
And now he’s setting him up for another fall?
“Ah,” Darius sighs, failing to pick up on my mood, and snaking his arm across my shoulders to give me a brotherly squeeze. “God, it’s good to be back here with you guys. I love how nothing ever changes here. Really, like it’s frozen in time.”
Ha. If only he knew. I can’t help making wide eyes at Jules.
Not that he notices. He’s already moving the conversation on, telling Liam he’ll get him listed as a beta tester for some hideous-sounding violent new games title he’s got in development called Zombie pHUK—“as in pH, because they bleed acid, and UK, because it’s set over here,” he tells us, with the same revolutionary zeal with which Einstein probably first uttered “E = mc2.”
“Probably not one for you, though, eh, Ads?” he says, before confiding in Liam with a wink, “Always was into softer games, your old man. One of the reasons things would never have worked between us in business, what with Fortnite and GTA leading the market for the last ten years.”
The kids exchange a look that Jules somehow ducks. They both know we could have moved out to San Francisco and no doubt resent me for it too. Thanks a lot, Darius, for bringing that up.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “There’s still a market for retro games and gamers. Quite the community online.”
“Old people, man. Not where it’s at.”
Another little pat on the back, but he’s wrong.
One of the crews me and Doodles play with online have even set us up a Reddit called the Dadass Dudes, where we answer old-school games queries from Millennial and Gen Z gamers craving tips.
All way too small fry for Darius, though, so I don’t bring it up.
Plus I just want this conversation to end.
I have a time machine. A time machine, for Christ’s sake. I have a time machine in my shed! Catching Jules’s eye, I know she’s thinking the same.
She starts making noises about having to work tomorrow. After a quickly orchestrated coffee, I walk Darius out front just the two of us, so I can get him into his car as fast as possible and get back inside to talk to Jules about how our whole world has been flipped upside down.
“So that, er, news I mentioned…” he prevaricates, leaning on the Ferrari’s open door.
“Uh-huh.” I nod, barely even remembering the context of whatever it was that he said.
“It’s Quark Studios,” he says. “I’ve bought it.”
It takes a second for this to sink in. I picture Todd grinning like a Cheshire cat at the party last night.
“I would have told you sooner,” he says, “and God knows I wanted to. But you know what lawyers are like. In fact, in a way, it was your idea, really. You remember a few months back when we were chatting on Zoom, and you were telling me about what a great company Quark was?”
When I was trying to big myself up to him, he means, me and my pathetic little life…I feel my arse cheeks clench and my stomach churn.
“And, er, what are you planning on doing with it?” I say, already thinking about Meredith and Doodles and the rest of my department.
And, obviously, myself. Because, shit. In this babyface industry, I’m practically a dinosaur already.
What if he’s going to break Quark up and I’m suddenly surplus to requirement?
How will I pay my mortgage? How will we survive?
“Well,” Darius says, “I’m putting a management team in, so that’ll be up to them. I don’t want to be too hands-on to begin with. There are a few more local companies I’m hoping to snap up too. We’ll then see what we’ve got and maybe even try to do the whole Sirius unicorn thing all over again.”
Another gamble, in other words, but with me now just another one of his little plastic chips he’s stacking up in front of his roulette wheel.
“But don’t worry, eh?” he says. “I’ve got your back.”
Right, because even if push did come to shove, he’d surely throw me a lifeline, yeah? Yeah. I still have that, at least.
Another wink, like the one he shot Liam just now when he was reminding him how I lost out on a fortune. A wink that tells me he’s in charge.
—
Less than thirty seconds after Darius finally leaves, me and Jules are sequestered in the kitchen discussing the bombshell he’s just dropped.
He’ll make a much better boss than Todd, Jules reckons, and might even put my career back on track. But what if he doesn’t? I can’t help thinking, as she drags me upstairs and into our bedroom. What the hell am I meant to do then?
“Listen, there’s nothing you can do about it. So just forget it for now,” she tells me as we sit down at the end of our bed.
“But—”
“But nothing,” she says. “You and me, we’ve just traveled back in time.”
She’s grinning. Then I’m grinning too, because she’s right. None of that—Quark Studios, Totally Sirius, Zombie fucking pHUK, my whole bloody industry—means diddly-squat next to this.
Because this—our portal into the multiverse, temporal body-swapping, call it what you want—this is not just life-changing, it’s world-changing.
And it’s ours.
I stare at our reflections in the wardrobe mirror.
“So, all those other tapes, and maybe even those CDs, you think we can use them to time travel too?” Jules says.
“Maybe.” Although even just her considering this still does freak me out. “Don’t you think we’d be better off telling someone?”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. The government. Or maybe some Oxford professor. Whoever got Stephen Hawking’s old job. They’d probably do for a start.”
“Right, and you’re just going to call them, are you? Or maybe WhatsApp?”
“Well, why not? This has got to be the greatest scientific invention of all time. Or even times,” I joke.
“Seriously, how would we even get them to listen to us?” she says. “Let alone believe us.”
“Just show them. Show them how it works.” Like I did with her.
“If it even would work for them…” she says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She frowns. “Just that I’ve been thinking about, well, how personal this all feels.
These tapes that we made for each other, with love, and with all those songs that mean so much to us and that bring back so many vivid memories…
I mean, do you really think that if someone else listened, that the—I know you keep talking about science, but just humor me here, okay?
—that the magic would work for them too? ”
Magic. Meh. But what do I know? About life, the universe, or anything. I mean, kids are wearing Crocs again, for fuck’s sake.
“I don’t know,” I settle for instead, “and have no way of knowing, not unless we give someone else a go.”
“Which we’re not going to,” she says, her eyes flashing. “Or not until we know more. No, for now, I think the first and second rule of Secret Multiverse Time Machine Club has to be that we do not talk about Secret Multiverse Time Machine Club. Agreed?”
I nod.
“Great.” She smiles. “So, when are we going to do it again?”
The excitement in her voice is unmistakable. The glow in her eyes. The relish. Of adventure. Of travel. Oh God, it’s Australia all over again…
“Really? Even knowing how bloody dangerous it could be?”
“Yeah, okay, I get it. We could mess up accidentally again, like with the tattoo and beard. The beard I really do prefer you without,” she teases, reaching out to stroke my smooth cheek.
“Or we could mess up even bigger, or even on purpose. Like maybe going back and assassinating some evil dictator,” she suggests, “but thereby inadvertently unleashing God only knows what else in their place. Or cheating on the lottery numbers or something like that, because that would be like stealing from somebody else. But we’re not going to, are we? ”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“Right, because we’re not dicks and we’re going to be super careful. So there are going to be no new alternative timelines created and therefore no new universes, okay?” she says. “We’re just going to ride. Then return to our exact same unadulterated universe here.”
“Like tourists,” I say. “Time-tripping.” Only tourists taking notes too, I’m thinking. Tourists trying to fathom out what makes this thing tick.
“Precisely.”
But I’ve still got alarm bells ringing in my head. That we should not do this. I can’t keep that panic we had over the kids out of my mind. But maybe Jules is right. Maybe we can explore this responsibly.
“And who knows,” I say, “once we find out more about how it all works, maybe we’ll discover it’s not dangerous at all.
Like the universe, or multiverse, or whatever, has some inbuilt law that won’t let us screw it up,” I add, because I read about that too.
How God doesn’t play dice. Or whatever it was that Einstein said.
“Like this is just a gift,” Jules says.
Huh. “But from who?” I ask.
“I don’t know. God. The universe. Aliens. Does it matter?”
I think about this for a second, all the potential X-Files stuff. “No, I suppose not,” I say.
“So, when are we going to do it again?” she asks, turning to face me and squeezing my hands. “How about the next time the kids are out of the house?”