One

In the two years Geoff had been working as a Time Rep, he’d been called to only three emergency meetings, and one of those he didn’t turn up to because something interesting came on the television while he was putting his coat on and made him forget why he was going out. The other two meetings didn’t turn out to be that important—the first one was after his first week on the job, when he had nearly told his friend Zoë what he really did for a living—that he worked for a company based in the future called Time Tours. He remembered them calling him in for a meeting afterward and holding him in a small room for hours while a very stern man with a thin moustache explained why no one from his time period could know that he met tourists from the thirty-first century and showed them around twenty-first-century London.

“If someone from your time has any knowledge of future events,” he was told, “it could create a paradox.”

“Ah,” Geoff had replied. “Those are very bad, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are. And the reason they are very bad is because they have a nasty habit of destroying everything that has ever existed. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember, I remember. But surely telling Zoë wouldn’t be that bad? I mean, at the very worst it would only create a tiny little paradox, no?”

“A tiny little paradox?”

“Yeah. You know, really small.”

The man with the thin moustache shut his eyes and sighed.

“The scale of the paradox doesn’t matter, Mr. Stamp—big or small, they cause all sorts of problems, like the unraveling of the space-time continuum.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh.’ And the space-time continuum is not like a sweater, Mr. Stamp—it cannot be easily re-raveled, so let’s not let that happen, okay?”

Geoff wasn’t sure if a sweater could easily be re-raveled (it sounded pretty hard to him the more he imagined trying to actually do it), but decided to keep quiet. He was already in enough trouble as it was, so he didn’t think questioning this man’s knowledge of sweater construction was particularly wise—he needed to focus on not causing any paradoxes.

If this meeting had been happening at any normal company, Geoff could imagine this conversation being captured in some sort of “personal development” paperwork:

Objective 1: Improve my networking skills in the wider business.

Objective 2: Offer a quality customer experience to all tourists from the future.

Objective 3: Do not destroy the universe.

But Time Tours was no normal company.

In fact, most people would have described it as pretty unusual.

The second emergency meeting he had attended was a few months ago. This one seemed to be quite a big deal, because it was held in a huge conference room in the Time Tours building, and every Time Rep was there. Over two hundred men and women from throughout history had been summoned, from 3000 BC cavemen to twenty-ninth-century galactic colonists. As far as Geoff knew, it was the first time since the company had started that they had all been in the same room together at once, and seeing such a huge variety of people from across time was quite special. William Boyle, the Time Rep Geoff had met during his introductory tour of the Great Fire of London, was there, along with many other Reps he had heard about.

In this meeting, the chief executive of Time Tours herself, Ruth Ashmore, told them all about a new company called Continuum, which was also offering holidays to the past. However, unlike Time Tours, which required every tourist to be scanned by a supercomputer before they went back in time as a safeguard to ensure they weren’t going to change history, Continuum claimed they had the technology to allow tourists to go back in time and change what they liked, without disrupting anything in the present. Nobody knew how it was possible, but the claims appeared to be true, and as a result a lot of people were starting to book their holidays to the past through Continuum instead. The meeting ended with Ruth asking all Time Reps to keep an eye on things in their native time periods, and to inform them if anything unusual happened. In the months that followed, Geoff hadn’t noticed anything particularly different, apart from one week when his local supermarket had decided to stop selling his favorite breakfast cereal. But after having a word with the manager, they put it back in again, so he didn’t think that had much to do with Continuum.

Oh, and his neighbor bought a pet rabbit.

Other than that, there was nothing to report.

So here he was for another emergency meeting. Based on his past experience of these things, he hadn’t really taken it that seriously when Eric had called and told him to come to the future immediately. In fact, instead of leaving the twenty-first century straight away, he’d brushed his teeth, made himself a cup of tea, and watched the first few minutes of an old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode while he drank it. It was the many episodes where Captain Jean-Luc Picard kept tugging at his uniform to stop it from riding up, which amused him. After about five minutes, he put on the standard-issue earphones Time Tours had given him to travel back and forth between his own time and theirs, and left. As he arrived in the thirty-first century, though, he began to wonder if perhaps this emergency meeting really was an emergency. After all, it was a little unusual for Eric to call him in person, and he’d detected a hint of nervousness in Eric’s voice when he’d told Geoff to come to the future as quickly as he could. And why had Eric asked him to meet them in a hospital operating theater?

“Where’s the present-day Geoff at the moment?” he could hear Tim saying as he approached the room. “We need to speak to him as quickly as possible.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Geoff said, looking around at everyone as he entered. “What did I miss?”

There were at least ten people in here, all crowded around a figure lying on a table. He couldn’t make out who it was, but he could see that they were draped with a surgical gown. He immediately recognized Tim—his friend and headhunter for the company, who had nominated him to be a Time Rep in the first place, and Eric—an elderly, double-Nobel-Prize-winning scientist who’d developed the supercomputer that scanned tourists before they traveled to the past. He had no idea who the other people were, but they all wore white coats and looked very concerned about something.

Maybe they were just nervous about the fact that they had to wear white coats, in case they spilled something on them.

“Where have you been?” Eric said, pressing his hands to the sides of his head as though he were trying to mime being stuck in a vise. “You were told to meet us here twenty minutes ago!”

Geoff gulped. Given that he had used time travel to get here (and therefore could have arrived anytime he liked), there really was no excuse for arriving late, but he tried to think of one anyway.

“I, uh…tripped on a thing.”

Brilliant.

Eric squeezed the sides of his head a little harder. Nobody else in the room said anything. They all just looked at him awkwardly, as though he’d just suggested they play an impromptu game of strip poker.

“So…what’s happened?” Geoff asked, trying to change the subject from his lack of timekeeping skills. “I haven’t done something wrong again, have I? I mean, I swear I haven’t told a soul what I do for a living, or—”

“Geoff…you might want to come over and have a look at this,” Tim interrupted, motioning him to walk toward the table in the middle of the room.

Geoff did as he was told and walked forward. When he got close enough to see the face of the person lying on the table, he stopped still and looked around at everyone.

“Is that who I think it is?” he asked. The man looked to be in his late twenties, with thick chestnut hair, pale skin, and a round face. He was an average height, with a skinny build and narrow shoulders, and the more Geoff looked at him, the more he couldn’t help but think he looked extraordinarily similar to the face he’d seen in the mirror two weeks ago, when he’d last brushed his hair.

There was one major difference, though—this man was much better groomed.

His hair had been cut, his face was clean shaven, and for a moment he almost looked…handsome. The man’s olive-green eyes were darting erratically around the room, drool was dribbling down the side of his face, and every so often he writhed around in his restraints, but other than that, he looked rather civilized.

“I don’t know,” Tim said, walking across the room to stand next to Geoff. “Who do you think it is?”

“Well, I’m guessing it isn’t a lookalike you’ve hired to go and open shopping centers on my behalf?”

“No, it’s not a lookalike.”

“And I don’t have a long-lost twin brother?”

“No, you don’t.”

“And there isn’t a Geoffrey Stamp costume on sale in stores?”

“A Geoffrey Stamp costume?” Tim said. “Do you even need me to answer that?”

“Well, then, that only leaves one other possibility,” Geoff said, looking closer at the man strapped to the table. “Is this person me?”

“We think so,” Eric said, walking around to the other side of the table and scanning the man with some sort of portable device. “If our theory is correct, this person is a future version of you.”

“What do you mean, a ‘future version’ of me?”

“He’s you, only he’s somehow traveled back to this point in time from the future,” Eric said, examining the results of his scan.

“He looks different from me in some ways,” Geoff said.

“We were thinking that too,” Tim said. “This Geoffrey Stamp has had his hair cut. He’s shaved recently. Washed his face.”

“Wow,” Geoff said. “So he must be from a few years in the future, then, right? Maybe when I’ve met the right girl and started taking better care of myself?”

“No, Geoffrey,” Eric said. “He’s from tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Geoff said. In front of him, his future self turned his head and looked him in the eyes. He appeared to be docile and confused, like he’d just been forced to listen to a conversation about sport. “This is weird. You mean to tell me that at some point tomorrow, I’ll be lying on that table, looking at me saying the things I’m saying now?”

“If our theory is correct, yes,” Eric replied. “Tomorrow you will travel back to today. Understand?”

“What time did his watch say when you brought him in?” Tim asked.

“Three thirty in the afternoon,” Eric replied.

“Three thirty?” Geoff looked at his watch. “But that’s only twenty-two hours from now!”

“We know,” Tim said. “That’s why we’re all here, trying to figure this thing out. That’s the ‘emergency’ part of our emergency meeting.”

“So what’s wrong with me?” Geoff said, looking into his own eyes. “Why aren’t I saying anything?”

“We’re not sure,” Eric said. “But according to these readings, you’ve suffered an enormous memory loss, and only your most basic brain functions are working.”

“My most basic brain functions? You mean the part of my brain that knows never to eat quiche?”

“No, your mind is barely active enough to keep you breathing. You’re in a massive state of confusion, and it’s quite likely the reason you’re not speaking is because you don’t remember how to.”

Geoff swallowed hard. “So do you have any idea what might have caused this?”

“We think it may have something to do with these guys,” Tim said. He reached into his pocket and handed Geoff a business card.

It was from that new company Ruth had mentioned a few months ago—Continuum—and underneath the company logo, he saw his name. There was no job title, and when he turned it over in his hand, he noticed the back was blank.

“Continuum?” Geoff said.

“That’s right,” Tim replied.

“Where did you find that?”

Tim nodded toward a black suit hanging up in the corner of the room. “You were wearing that when you were brought in. We found the card in your jacket pocket.”

“But I don’t own a suit.”

“I know.”

“So where did I get it?”

Tim pursed his lips for a second. “It’s an old one of mine.”

Geoff frowned. “An old one of yours?” he said. “Why would I be wearing that?”

“We’re not sure,” Tim said. “Maybe Continuum invited you for a job interview, and I let you borrow my suit so you could look smart for it. That would also explain your appearance.”

“But how could all that happen in a day? And even if it did, that doesn’t make sense. If I was looking to leave Time Tours, why would I tell you? And why would I have an interview with them in the first place?”

“Again, we’re not sure. But we do know they are trying to recruit a lot of our Time Reps at the moment. Whatever the reason, it looks as though you choose to go and work for Continuum at some point in the next twenty-two hours. Have they tried to contact you over the last few weeks at all? Arrange a meeting? Anything like that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You sure? What about your post? Have they sent you a letter or something?”

“Maybe,” Geoff said. “There’s quite a lot of unopened post at home, so it’s possible they’ve been writing to me. I can check if you like?”

“You do that.”

“So you think what happened to me had something to do with Continuum?”

“We don’t know,” Tim said, “but for now that’s our only lead.”

Geoff inhaled some air into his cheeks, held it there for a few seconds, then breathed out again slowly. “Why do you think I traveled back in time?”

“We have no idea,” Eric said, “but there are two possibilities to consider. Either you traveled back in time of your own accord, or someone sent you here against your will. And then of course there’s the bullet you had in your back when we found you…”

“Right,” Geoff said, nodding absentmindedly for a moment. “Wait a minute—someone’s going to shoot me?!”

• • •

Geoff spent the next hour sitting in the far corner of the operating theater, staring at the Continuum business card. He had his back to the wall, and his legs were hunched up to his chest. Maybe he could just stay here for a day. If he stayed here, no one could shoot him in the back, right? Then again, what if staying here was what got him shot? Maybe a cleaner who really wanted to mop the corner of the room he was sitting in got so annoyed that he wouldn’t move that he ended up shooting him?

This was Geoff’s train of thought as he turned the Continuum business card over and over in his hands, creating increasingly ridiculous scenarios that all ended with him being shot in the back. In the end, he reasoned that anything he did could result in someone trying to kill him, so he gave up torturing himself over what fate might befall him and tried to think about what to do.

The others used their time a bit more productively. Eric said something about going off to analyze the bullet, and the other men and women in white coats continued to monitor Geoff’s future self for any changes in his condition. From what they could tell, there were signs that his memory loss was only temporary, and that some of his higher brain functions were returning. This didn’t really make Geoff feel much better, though. What on Earth was going to happen to him over the next twenty-one hours?

“What are you going to do to him now?” Tim asked one of the people in white coats.

“Once he’s in a more stable condition, we’ll get him into a ward,” they replied.

Tim walked over to Geoff and offered him a hand. “Get up.”

“No.”

“Come on—sitting there isn’t going to solve anything. We need to work out what’s going on here.”

“Fine,” Geoff said, grabbing Tim’s hand and pulling himself to his feet.

“Okay—let’s go over what we know,” Tim said, pacing up and down in front of Geoff. He looked pale, and had to stop walking every now and then to dab his forehead with a handkerchief. “At some point over the next twenty-one hours, you are going to leave Time Tours to work for Continuum. Something is going to happen that results in you getting shot, and you will somehow end up being sent back in time. You will appear on Tower Bridge unconscious at three thirty tomorrow afternoon, and when you wake up, you will have no memory of what happened, nor will you be able to communicate with us.”

“Great summary, Tim,” Geoff said, trying to reach around to feel his back. “I feel so much better.”

“Now—let’s think about the unanswered questions,” Tim continued. “What would cause you to leave Time Tours and go and work for Continuum? Why would someone try and kill you? How did you lose your memory? Why were you sent back to this point in time exactly? And how were you able to get here?”

“That’s a lot of questions.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“Yes,” Geoff said, handing the business card back to Tim. “Now that I know what’s going to happen to me, will this change the fact that I get shot? And what has all this got to do with Continuum?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Tim said.

“Who are these people, anyway?” Geoff asked.

Tim looked down at the floor.

“There’s a lot about that company that still remains a mystery,” he said. “But maybe if we go back to your house, we can start to get to the bottom of this. Didn’t you say you might have some letters from them?”