I met Jesus once. Well come on, we all do it. He was one of us after all, a fey. Our hero, venerated by us the way baseline humans worship him for something else entirely. It was his stand which makes our history, our world, possible.
I was fourteen years old, and dreamed myself all the way back to his time. A relatively peaceful segment of his life, mind you, when he was starting to quietly gather his disciples from across the Roman Empire and beyond, and before the ghouls started showing an interest. It was on the shore of a lake. I don’t remember where. It’s not important.
He saw me and recognised what I was. Not hard. Fey can see each other when we’re manifesting, and I must have been quite a sight. I was wearing a white summer dress from Top Shop and some frayed Nike trainers. My hair was fairer than you got in the Middle East at that time, and cut in a wavy bob that was never really in fashion even in my time, never mind back then. All very different to First Century styles.
To look at he wasn’t anything remarkable. Average height, average build, small beard. His eyes though, they were sad. But I could see how much anger he could bring forth. Maybe that’s what made him the one, our saviour.
“You’re from a long way ahead,” he said. Or rather didn’t say, we don’t use words, of course, not in manifested state. As in all dreams, you can talk to whoever you want and understand each other. “I can always tell.”
“The start of the twenty first century,” I admitted.
“That’s risky. You’ll get the Guardians come and talk to you. There will be finger wagging.”
“I know. But I had to see you. To thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You won. Or you will win, but then you know that.”
“Yes, enough of you tell me.”
‘I live thanks to you. I’m grateful. I wanted you to know. That’s all.”
“Well thank you for making the trip… “
“Malinda.”
“Malinda from two thousand years ahead. I appreciate it.”
I looked round at his band of followers. He’d gathered over forty fey already, and not just timedreamers like me, there were sidedreamers, fardreamers, soothers, and more. But all of them were fighters, I knew that from their attitude. “Thank you all,” I said. And I saw someone else approaching. Some boy in late eighteenth century clothes, who was walking over to us with his feet not quite touching the ground.
I wondered what it must be like for Jesus, to have a constant stream of visitors from every century there will be, arriving in every spare moment, all praising him for the fight he would have and win. What must it be like knowing you were going to win? And die?
The disciples basically ignored me. They must see a dozen awestruck timedreamer kids a day. All of us breaking the guidelines.
“I should go,” I said. “It’s a long wave back.”
Which truly made me very nervous. The longer you stay in the past, the further back you go, the more chance there is that you change something, especially if you talk to someone backwhen. The universe, the timeline, it adjusts to every dream we have, every impact we make. Every word we speak to a fellow fey alters something, not by loading them with foreknowledge which is just damn stupid. But even if you only speak for a moment, you delay them – that changes things in a physical way, and that has consequences. The example Guardians always give is that a pause makes a pace different, every step they make thereafter is fractionally altered. Dislodge a pebble that wasn’t dislodged before (step on a Butterfly! – the timedreamers’ very own ultimate horror story) and it has consequences. That pebble can start a temporal avalanche if you’re not very careful. Was it the stone that got caught in a sandal, which made another traveller on the road stop, and if it doesn’t get caught in his sole and he arrives a minute early, he might see someone he didn’t before, a friendship springs up, lives are altered and so – history is different. Too different and you might not get born.
So you ride the consequence wave home. And you get to see what you’ve done rushing around you like you’re watching the whole world in IMAX, watching the changes ripple out to become temporal tsunamis that wipe away everything you know, the timeline that produced you.
I did change things. I watched my consequences from a couple of the disciples admiring me, talking about me later that evening. Their movements were different, they trod on ground left clear before. Dirt was dislodged, tiny specks only, but some soil was compressed. A couple of grass seeds never germinated. But others came and took their place – were chewed on by animals. It was a ripple – circular, small. It washed out. The timeline didn’t change. I woke up safe on my bed on a sunny afternoon August 2000.
I’m never going back that far again.
Jesus is history to me for evermore.
He made his stand back there when we fey were becoming hunted to extinction. Not that there have ever been many of us. But nature being the bitch she is creates predators for everything, locking life in an eternal rock paper scissors battle. Humans are deadly to most animals, we can swat a scorpion, but a scorpion sting can kill humans just as asteroids kill dinosaurs (don’t laugh, asteroids are part of nature too, a very big nature).
We timedreamers were stalked and our minds devoured by ghouls as we contained the richest thoughts of all the fey. Just like us, ghouls were physically indistinguishable from baseline humans; but once they latched on, they savoured the memories and sensations of others, sucking them out to leave husks behind. And us, with our ability to visit anywhen, well we were the ultimate hit; the high they all craved. They sought us out first before feasting on the other fey. We were on the verge of dying out until Jesus decided to make his stand and fight back. He was a fardreamer, so he gathered other fey to him, which was a remarkable achievement in its own right. We always prefer to live quiet lives, keeping our heads down. Even today the prejudice against us is nasty. Back then, with Rome dominating Europe, any difference to the baselines was a death sentence. But he convinced the fey we were doomed anyway, and rallied our ancestors.
That many of us together acted like nectar for the ghouls. They came from all over the globe. Unfortunately for them, it turned out the disciples were a wasp trap. There are no more ghouls now. Not in this universe. Oh sure, they’re still out there in the endless parallels of the multiverse. But us, here, now, since the Time Of Christ, we’re clean.
Jesus knew the outcome, because stupid awestruck teenagers like me came back to tell him, but still he fought on. He died to save us. Others have different versions of the conflict. They’re all good.
I’m wondering if one day when I’m older and supposedly wiser I’ll put in a stint as a Guardian. Lecturing and nagging kids to be careful how they dream themselves back in time, warning them of the consequence wave. Emphasising how history has to be preserved, because we’ve tried altering it, and frankly this is the best version there is -Hitler, Genghis Khan and all the other bastards included.
Except I’m not sure I believe that. I still think we should be bolder.
After that visit, when those missing blades of grass really did scare the crap out of me, I did what all of us with half a brain do, and stuck to the recent past.
I’m rich, of course. Our family always has been; using the talent to do very nicely thank you – the trick is not to overdo it and call attention to yourself. Mum is a reasonable fardreamer, and Dad can soothe, so my talent came as quite a surprise.
I have a nice life. Loving parents. Nice house by the sea. Housekeeper and gardener. It’s easy. I want for nothing. I travel as I please. Mum and Dad encourage that, always telling me there’s so much to see and enjoy in this world, this time. “Get out there, girl, and live it.”
But I’m human. I want more. So I dream.
Everyone has dreams that they think are so real. That’s because they are. Baseline humans view what’s happening all over the multiverse. But they don’t manifest there, they don’t take part. They’re observers only, and never really understand what they see anyway.
So after that stupid rite of passage I was a lot more cautious about when I went back to. It’s thrilling to see history for real. Not that I’m one for politics (exception: Nelson Mandela walking out of prison is a must) or war or disasters, there’s way too much suffering going on in my realtime, I don’t need to add to it. Instead I did what most of us do, and go for the uniques. Concerts, sports matches, and of course everyone goes to watch the Vostock 1 and Apollo 11 launches, festivals, Woodstock (naturally!) Live Aid, I even went to the first Glastonbury – wow was that different: no yurts for the mega-rich back then.
I guess that’s when I fell in love with Sixties music. I know, I know. That’s a cliché. But I loved it. Music was raw and new back then, it meant something in that era, it wasn’t a business. Bands and singers believed in their art, they were musicians not celebrities. All of it was exciting, and it spoke to the hearts of a whole generation. Inspired them. People had a buzz.
So back I went, again and again. The Who, the Stones, Joan Baez, Pink Floyd, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Cream, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Credence Clearwater Revival, I even sat through some Ravi Shankar – not really my thing but the audience vibe, man o man!
Then I found him.
“You’re dreaming your life away,” Mum says. “Look, I know it’s like when you discover sex –”
“Mum!” she is the classic parental embarrassment at times.
“All right. But there’s so much this world has to offer, too. Take a couple of trips further back, see the poverty and squalor everyone lived in just two hundred years ago. That way you might appreciate what you have a little more.”
“I don’t want to risk the consequence wave,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow. “Ah, you went to visit Jesus.”
“Did not.”
“Really?”
I sometimes think fardreaming is code for mind-reading. “Maybe quickly. Once. It didn’t have consequences.”
“But riding a wave that far must have scared you, so I get how you’re just dipping shallow right now. But what we have is a gift, especially you; don’t waste it.”
“It’s not a gift, it’s natural. And really, apart from the money, it’s not terribly practical, is it? It’s for enjoyment. So I’m enjoying.”
So she sighs in that waiting-till-it-runs-its-course patience she has. “Life is a gift, darling. Timedreaming enriches it like no other. Don’t waste your gift, but don’t let it dominate.”
“We could do so much, though. We could have stopped 9/11. We still can.” I still think about the attack most days. I saw it all on the TV. The first thing I wanted to do was go back, warn the CIA or FBI or someone. Mum sat with me watching events unfold, telling me I couldn’t. That the Guardians already knew about 9/11, and were ready to stop any attempt to prevent it.
Life was simpler back in the sixties, another reason to spend all my time there.
“We could have,” mum says sadly. “But the Guardians said no. The fanatics would have come back with nukes in Paris and Washington.”
“Then we could have stopped that, too.”
“We’re not the police.”
“We could be. We should be.”
“Sweetheart, please. You’re young, and that’s a gift as precious as any. I just want you to be happy. Now, have you been seeing any decent boys?”
“Mum!”
“All right. Girls?”
“Arrrgh. Stop it.”
I manifested in the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall in Spalding, 29th May 1967. Cream and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience were headlining, with Pink Floyd supporting. Gabriel Ivins played a couple of songs first, an unannounced warm up for the support, when Spalding’s young and restless were still clustered round the bar. He was nineteen, an electrical engineering student at Cambridge; up on stage all by himself, him and his acoustic guitar. All dark curly hair, weak sixties sideburns, gangly frame, big thick-knit pullover, and flares wider than some of my skirts. Dylan was clearly a big influence on Gabriel, he was almost a tribute act. Except he wrote those two songs himself. And his voice was mellow and kind of appealing.
I saw quite a few girls in the bar crowd turn round and listen, and watch. He finished, bowed nervously while no one applauded, and scuttled off stage. Just before he left, he caught my eye and quirked a grin.
I drifted after him. Caught up in the green room. The green room being where they stored bulb crates in an annex at the back of the hall. He was putting his guitar away in its case while the Floyd were getting ready to go on. I should have been interested in them, Syd Barrett was still part of the line up at that point.
Instead I went over to Gabriel. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” he said, and looked round the annex to check that he was right, and only he could see me. It was just him, looking like he was muttering to himself in the corner like a true wacko artist. “Cool threads, man.”
“Thanks.” I was wearing a ridiculous purple and green tie-dye shirt with a long vintage turquoise-blue skirt, gold daisies woven into my hair. I hadn’t cut my hair since I was fourteen, so now aged seventeen it was halfway down my back – I had a real hippy-chick look going. “I liked your songs.”
“Thanks. Where are you from?”
“Two thousand and three.”
I could see the surprise in his eyes. “Yeah? You look… today, man.”
“I like today.”
“I thought you were a maybe a sidedreamer. I’m always kind of surprised to hear the twenty-first century exists.”
“Barry McGuire, Eve Of Destruction,” I grinned.
“Something like that.” He produced a half-burnt reefer, and lit it.
“He was too pessimistic,” I said. “Things aren’t perfect but they’re not too bad. So are you writing any more songs?”
“Some. They’re not good enough to sing in public yet.”
“The ones you sang tonight, Rainbow Smile and Flower Sun; are they recorded?”
“No. Not yet. Hey, you can tell me if they ever are, future girl.”
“I can’t. Sorry. Too many consequences.”
“Heavy.”
“Like neutronium.”
“Wow, are you sure you’re not sidedreaming from the land of the fairies?”
“Nah. Is that what you do?”
“A little. My talent’s not too funky. I never get far enough to see anywhere groovy. My old man, he says there are wonders out there in the alternates.”
“So I hear.”
Gabriel took a deep drag. “I’d offer you some, but…”
“I know.”
“Gotta split. Gotta hitch back to Cambridge.”
“Have you got another gig lined up? Maybe I could come and hear if your other songs make it to the stage.”
“Uh. I dunno. The scene man, it’s not as cool as I thought. Unless you’re the Beatles.”
“Yeah, two-thousand-three remembers the Beatles.”
“Take care, future girl.”
“And you.”
Google is not my friend. Yahoo is not my friend. The internet has nothing on Gabriel Ivins. No bootleg sites have recordings of Rainbow Smiles and Flower Sun. I can’t believe it. They were good. How did he sink away without being signed by a record company?
I so much want to hear them again. They’d be a comfort right now. I’m sitting here in this cold February, with the TV showing the build-up of troops on the Iraq border. There’s going to be war. Bush and Blair are really going to do it, they’re going to let thousands of people die.
There must be another way, there must! I’m thinking in a few months I could go back to now. I could tell other fey how many died, that it wasn’t worth it. They’d be outraged. They’d do something. Wouldn’t they?
It’s taken me a few dreams backwhen, stalking I suppose. But I found the student newspaper with the announcement, and manifested in the Cambridge Corn Exchange 23rd July 1967.
Gabriel took to the stage just after eight o’clock. Still in his thick woolly jumper (does he have any other clothes?). He sang four songs, and this time people drifted away from the bar, starting to groove along. They’re sweet songs, his new two, about love and fate and hope. He got a big round of cheering and applause when he finished. It was great. This little gig must be the start of his success, I’m sure of it, and I’m one of the witnesses. Go history! But then he looked straight at me from the stage, smiled shyly, and started his fifth song of the evening. And OMG!
The Future Fairy by Gabriel Ivins was issued in 1968, a limited pressing vinyl single on the Calibre label (an independent Cambridge record label – declared bankrupt in 1970). It is a love song by young poet musician Gabriel Ivins, dedicated to ‘my sad and lovely vision’. Ivins was a solo singer songwriter guitarist until this recording, when he was joined by Calibre session musicians, adding electric guitar and drums.
Ivins died in November 1971 from a drug overdose. A good copy of The Future Fairy will cost £87.00. V Rare.
Google is my friend after all. It doesn’t matter how many times I shake my head in disbelief, the words on the screen stay the same. The consequence wave I rode back after the concert was exhilarating. Nobody dies. Nobody is worse off. It’s changed the timeline.
I. Changed. Things.
The Guardians haven’t noticed.
And Gabriel died.
But before he did, he wrote a song about me. Me!
It was cold on February 15th 2003. I’d never gone back such a short time before. But the crowds I saw on TV just a few months ago thronged all around me. Marching through London’s streets, chanting and calling. So many people, so much good humour. And desperate hope. I’ve seen that kind of belief once before, back in the Sixties. Back when music and good people were going to change the world.
There are plenty of fey among the marchers. I flit between as many as I can find. And all the time I tell them. “There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction, there never were. I know. I’m a timedreamer from the future. They’re lying, Bush and Blair. Tell everyone. It’s all a lie. They don’t exist.”
After it was over, after the crowds went home and the night claimed the empty streets, I braced myself and rode the consequence wave back to late summer.
There was nothing, no real disturbance. February 15 was a day of chaos and determination. Everyone I told believed anyway. One fey girl with long hair and a desperate smile telling them they were right changed nothing. Nothing. Around my pathetic little consequence wave, tens of thousands of people died in pain and fire.
The Future Fairy single hit the timeline harder, for fuck’s sake.
Mum knocks on my door. My knuckles screw the tears from my eyes and I say: “Come in.”
She does, but she’s not alone. There’s this old woman with her, wearing a neat grey suit and sensible black shoes, like she’s on her way home from her city desk job. Except I know she never worked at any desk.
“Sweetheart, this is Ms Remek,” mum says, slightly nervous.
“You’re a Guardian,” I say. There’s only four or five in any generation. We don’t need more, there aren’t many timedreamers. We’re kind of like fey royalty I guess.
“I am, dear, yes.”
And she has this sympathetic voice, too, all understanding, an I-was-young-once voice. But stern, too.
“Nobody listened,” I tell her miserably. “Nothing changed.”
“I know. But the point is you tried to change it.”
“There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There never were.”
“All the fardreamers knew that last year. You weren’t telling anyone anything new.”
“But it’s a lie, and now it’s over and all those people are dead.”
“It’s not over,” Ms Remek says. “The war doesn’t officially end until December two-thousand-and-eleven.”
“Eleven!” I squeak.
“Fraid so. We screw up the peace even worse.”
“Then stop it!” I yell.
“It’s not that simple,” she says kindly. “It never is. You heard about Paris and Washington, didn’t you?”
“Nukes. If 9/11 is stopped.”
“That’s right.”
“So… stop that as well.”
“And if we do, which we could, it would be another target, another atrocity. Bin Laden is a persistent man.”
“So tell the CIA where he is.”
“A compound in Bilal, that’s in Pakistan.”
“What? You know?”
“Yes. He’s going to be killed by a navy Seals team in two thousand and eleven.”
“What is it with two-thousand-eleven? And why not assassinate him now?”
“You tell me.”
My shoulders sag. “Consequences.”
“Yes. If we keep chasing down the bad guys, what does that make us?”
“What do you mean?”
“We become official. True world Guardians of Peace. The baseline governments will turn us into an agency or service – at best. We are unique, my dear, us timedreamers. At most there are a hundred of us in any generation. But our talent makes us possibly the most powerful people ever. We can strike down an enemy before they even become an enemy. And what will happen if baseline humans ever discover we exist? Have you thought of that?”
“They’ll be frightened, I guess.”
“No. It will be worse than the age of ghouls. They will be utterly terrified. Because if we do stop terrorists and wars, we poor few will become the rulers of the world. We decide everything, including who lives and who dies.”
“So that’s what you’re really Guarding against?”
“It’s half of it, yes. We carry on the work Jesus started, and protect the fey. First they’ll come for us, then the others will be hunted, and we won’t be there to protect them.”
“But we’ll always be able to warn ourselves if anyone comes for us.”
“And so we become rulers out of self-defence. There are parallel worlds where it has happened. Where it is happening.”
“What’s the point of timedreaming if we can’t help people?”
“We are helping people. Guardians talk to each other across eras, and keep the timeline stable.”
“So what you’re saying is Guardians do have a purpose. I don’t. Are you trying to recruit me?”
“Nobody is ever forced to become a Guardian; that would be wholly counterproductive. And not every fey has your compassion and goodwill. We Guard against that, too. I watch history and warn my predecessors against rogues and inadvertent consequences; as I am warned by those in the centuries to come.”
“What if I don’t listen? What if I keep trying to expose the lies?”
“You don’t succeed. And if you were to, and make things worse, then there’s always one person who will come backwhen to your moment of failure and convince you beyond any doubt that you’re making a mistake.”
“Who?”
Ms Remek smiles in compassion. “You, of course.”
Gabriel’s digs are truly eueeew. I mean, I don’t need to go back two centuries to witness people living in poverty and squalor. Sixties students would envy medieval hovels for their luxury.
He doesn’t seem to mind. January sixty-eight was cold. His gas fire had five wavy flames, which all seemed to burn yellow, producing no heat. The inside of the windows were frosted over. I was lucky I couldn’t feel the temperature, at the time my body was snug at home, curled up on my bed in the early autumn, with the central heating on.
Gabriel wore his thick sweater – of course – with three T-shirts on underneath. He sat on the threadbare bed-settee, strumming his guitar, writing possible lyrics in his big notebook.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I like it. Sort of like Perfect Day, but harder. Sharper.”
“Oh, man, you mean it’s not original?”
“Oh it is. Lou Reed writes Perfect Day in the early seventies, I think.”
He brightened. “I write like Lou Reed?”
“Better.”
“Nahh.”
“You do, seriously.” I’d manifested in five of his gigs now. He was gaining quite a reputation locally.
“So how come I haven’t got a record deal?”
“They take time, Gabriel.”
“Do I get one?” he pleaded.
“I can’t say. You know that.”
“I was thinking of giving up my course. Just concentrate on my music.”
I didn’t know what to say. He only had three years left to live. If I knew I was going to die, I wouldn’t spent what time I had left sitting in lectures. “Follow your dream.”
“Yeah?”
“Gabriel, I’d say that to anyone.”
“You’re infuriating, you know that.”
“You ever thought of going electric?”
“Naww, it’s a sell out. I play my own music. I express what I have to say myself.”
“I love your integrity.”
“This geezer, Matt, he was interested at the gig last week. Said he’s got his own record company, Calibre. But he wanted me to go electric, too. Said acoustic is dead.”
“Your choice. Do you want people to hear what you have to say or not?”
“Is that a hint, future fairy?”
“Don’t call me that.”
Then there was a commotion outside. His friends had arrived, and he let them in. Fellow students, bringing cheap wine and homemade beer. Gabriel had more friends now, people who liked hanging out with a musician. It was party time. Two of the girls made sure they were sitting next to him, hanging off every word. I smiled. Waved goodbye.
Mum’s happy for me.
His name’s James. He’s nineteen and says he’s a musician – when he’s not working behind the bar at the local pub. He lays down electro-pop tracks on his PC, and lets anyone download them for free from his website. Twelve people have logged on in the last three months.
His dream is a record contract. At night, when we cling together, he confesses once he’s discovered he’s going to be mega, and super-rich, with homes here and in the Caribbean. He thanks me for listening, for believing in him.
I tell him to write a protest song about the war.
His answer? “Aw come on, that’s so sixties.”
He’s tall and skinny. He has thick dark hair which is long and curly. In the dark, with his body lying on top of mine, I can’t see his face. I can’t see it’s not really Gabriel.
Amid the final joy I call a name. I’m not sure whose.
“Have you met me, man?” Gabriel asks.
It was late summer sixty-eight, and we walked around Cambridge a week before all the students came back. He carried a bag full of Future Fairy singles, which he was trying to flog to the city’s independent record shops.
“Er… what do you think I’m doing?” I ask.
“Not now,” he laughs. “In the future. Have you come to see me?”
“No.”
“Did you try? I’ll be what? Fifty five, yeah? Did my bodyguards stop you?”
“You have a very high opinion of yourself.”
“Is it justified?”
I haven’t seen him so happy for a while. Musicians can be moody prats at times. Adds to the mystique, I suppose.
“Stop trying to wheedle stuff like that out of me. You know I’ll never say.”
“Okay, all right.” He stopped in the middle of the market square, and almost made to grab me. His arms came up before he remembered – he was the wild student talking to himself in public. “How about this, man. What month is it with you now?”
“September.”
“I’m going to remember November the first, 2003, okay? On that day I do solemnly swear I will be right here on this spot. No bodyguards, no managers. Just me. Please please please, be here. Just to talk.” He faltered. “Just to touch you. To know you’re real. I need that.”
“Gabriel…”
“Promise me!” he yelled.
Now half the market was looking at the crazy boy.
“I promise.” I turned away so he couldn’t see my tears.
So now Google says Just To Touch You the second single by Gabriel Ivins charted at number 47 in the nineteen-sixty-nine January top fifty chart.
And on the radio the news is a High School shooting in the American Midwest. Seven dead. I wait and I wait, and future me doesn’t manifest to tell me not to go and warn the school.
But I’m scared. Scared of my power. I don’t want to rule the world. I want the world to be a better place. But I want those kids not to have died.
I don’t know what to do.
Winter sixty-nine, and the Gabriel Ivins band is on tour, promoting their first album. I haven’t been to see him for a while – his time. That last consequence wave was a large one. I almost expected a visit from Ms Remek. But she didn’t come, so I manifested in a pub in Newcastle.
The band is mainly session musicians put together by Calibre records. Older than Gabriel. Competent but without his verve.
I drift through the audience watching the show. And Gabriel is bad. You can tell the roadies have turned down his guitar feed. His hand is strumming in a jittery way that’s out of tune with the rest of the band. And his lovely smooth voice is all harsh – like he’s inventing death metal twenty years too early.
That gave me a chill, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned future music trends to him.
The audience drinks. They don’t pay him much attention.
Backstage in the green room after the gig, and he’s got three groupies groping him on the couch. Nobody drinks beer, it’s all whisky.
Gabriel was knocking them back, but then he finally sees me. He lets out this stupid wolf howl of greeting. “Man, I missed you. It is you, isn’t it?”
One of the groupies who’s got the whole Goth thing right before there were any, frowned in my direction. But she was smoking a thick reefer so she didn’t really think anything was wrong or weird.
“It’s me.”
“Cool. I thought you’d left me.”
“No.”
“Do you like the album?”
“I do.” The album had some neat songs; on the recording Gabriel’s voice had been appealing and evocative. Downcountry was a protest about ‘Nam. It was charting, number seventeen last week – its highest. He was doing something, making his voice heard, inspiring others. I was so proud of him when I discovered that.
Trouble was, up on stage he’d just been awful.
“Thanks, man. Hey, did we meet up in futureland like we said?”
The groupies giggled at that.
“Yes,” I lied.
“Cool. What’s life like up there?”
“We gave up. We stopped protesting. The whole world’s going to hell.”
“Bummer, huh?”
Then one of the roadies came in, and gave Gabriel a nod. He lumbered to his feet and staggered across the room. The roadie slipped him a small leather wallet. Gabriel went into the toilets.
My Gabriel is doing hard drugs.
Gabriel Ivins died March 17th 1970 from a drugs overdose. Although his band’s first album was moderately successful, Ivins had to cancel the promotional tour half way through due to ‘exhaustion’. He spent the following months alone writing new songs. Recording for his new album, Paradise Unglimpsed, was scheduled to begin in April 1970. His record company, Calibre, was declared bankrupt a month later.
I’m in the lounge, crying, when Ms Remek comes in. She gives me a thoughtful look, and asks: “Have you been seeing Gabriel Ivins?”
“No. Yes. He dies anyway.”
“There have been consequences.”
I nod miserably. “I know. The wave wasn’t very big.”
“That’s because you’re only surfing it for twenty years. There are significant consequences later on.”
“Oh.” I try to make out like I’m interested. “I see future me hasn’t manifested. So how bad is it?”
“Not enough to warrant a full intervention against you. Soothers were called in to calm certain situations.”
“Oh good, so the future stays perfect then.”
Ms Remek frowns, determining how much sarcasm and sass I’m giving her. Because just this month Anna Lindh was stabbed to death by some religious nutter, Iran is refusing to cooperate with the nuclear inspectorate, Osama bin Laden says Al-Quaeda is developing biological weapons, the British National Party got a councillor elected in a Thurrock by-election, a suicide bomber killed eight people in Israel, airstrikes in Zabul province killed seventeen people. And Johnny Cash died. I could have stopped those bombings and killings. I wonder what consequences that would have? People getting to live their lives and have a chance at happiness.
“The future doesn’t get any worse,” she says tetchily.
“What’s the point?” I ask.
“The point?”
“Of our ability? If all we do is use it to keep everything the same. Why do we have it?”
“You just answered your own question. This is as good as it gets.”
I shake my head. I refuse to believe that. “There must be somewhere out there in the parallels, a world where we get it right. We could use it as a template.”
“Maybe there is. But if it is out there, it’s beyond any sidedreamer I’ve ever talked to.”
“So now what?”
“So be careful, please.”
I nod. I know she’s being reasonable, and semi-sympathetic, but it still makes no sense to me.
I want to make a difference. I want to stop the ugliness that contaminates this world.
When Ms Remek leaves I make myself a promise. In the future, I’ll come back to now and tell me something that can be stopped. If I can’t influence other people, then I can use facts; if someone’s going to get shot or bombed then I can warn them or the police myself. I will make a difference.
But I don’t manifest in front of me. I break my promise. Why? Why why why?
Gabriel’s new digs weren’t any better than his student ones. He’d got a flat in a grand old house overlooking the Cam, with two more rooms than last time, an extra bedroom and a tiny kitchen. The squalor remained the same.
When I manifested, he was lying on the worn settee, a week’s stubble on his cheeks, and looking so thin I could believe he hadn’t eaten for the whole of that same week. A guitar lay on top of him. There was a syringe and all the rest of his drugs crap on the carpet beside him.
He was dozing fitfully. I almost left, then. Except it was mid-afternoon on March the seventeenth, nineteen seventy. Gabriel Ivins would be dead before the end of the day.
I drifted round the room. He had been writing, bless him. There were pieces of paper scattered about, some scrunched up on the floor. All of them holding his lyrics, lines crossed out – re-written again and again. Ten sheets had been laid out neatly on the table: his songs for Paradise Unglimpsed, the album he never got to make.
As always, Gabriel’s lyrics were profound and eloquent. He spoke of worlds where people don’t kill, where peace breaks out not war, where hunger and hatred is a memory. A world far far away from ours.
The world I want to live in.
“You came back,” he croaked.
I went over to the settee and gazed down on him. His eyes were brutally bloodshot. I saw now how the fluffy stubble disguised sunken cheeks. “Yes, I came back.”
“I thought you’d given up on me.”
“No, Gabriel.” I forced a grin. “I’ve spent too much time to abandon you now.”
“That’s stupid, man. I am just one giant fuck-up.”
“No you’re not. I read your lyrics. They’re beautiful, Gabriel. Congratulations.”
“Matt wants me to lay down another album. I can’t do it. Touring, man, it’s too heavy. I’m not built for it.”
“You went sideways, didn’t you, a decent world a long way sideways into the parallels?”
He dropped his head in his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe. I was out of it. I don’t know if it was real or a real dream.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Yeah.” He nodded weakly.
I stared at his syringe. “Have you been trying to go back there, Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t.”
My beautiful sweet Gabriel started to cry. “I hate myself.”
“Sing for me,” I told him. “Play the songs you wrote. I want to hear Paradise Unglimpsed.”
“What’s that?”
“Ooops. That’s the title of your next album.”
“Not bad, man. Hey, you’re not supposed to tell me that.”
“I know. I’ll put up with the heat just this once. Hearing you sing them will make it worthwhile.”
“Okay. Yeah, groovy.” He picked up his guitar.
Gabriel Ivins sang his unmade album to me in that bleak grey, cold Cambridge afternoon. He sang his songs the way they were meant to be sung, with hope and pleading.
“That’s what music is for,” I told him reverently when he finished. “To give people courage, to inspire them.”
He grinned nervously. “Are you crying future fairy?”
“Yes, Gabriel, I’m crying. I’m crying because we can never go to that parallel world you dreamed. The only way we will ever live it, is to turn our world into it.”
His gaze dropped down to the syringe.
“Listen to me, Gabriel.” I knelt in front of him, imploring. “You have to tell people a life like that is possible. You can do it. You can inspire them. Sing it loud, Gabriel. Sing it to the whole world. This is the only age when music counts. After this, the companies and producers take over. The money wins. It’s never about the music again.”
“I just want to go back there,” he said brokenly.
“You never do,” I told him. Suddenly I was standing, my expression stern. “You’re going to die, Gabriel. Today.”
“What the fuck, man?”
“You die. Here in this god-awful rat’s nest. You overdose on the shit you’re injecting yourself with. Nobody will ever hear Paradise Unglimpsed. This world will carry on along its vile corrupt course. It needs to be changed, Gabriel. You can do that. Sing for me Gabriel, show people what a decent life full of love can be. Sing that they don’t have to live like this. Be my angel, Gabriel. Save the world.”
And I leave him like that, gaping at me in astonishment and fear. I surf the consequence wave into the new realtime. I’m not afraid, it is exhilarating. I watch him make his choice, the right choice, stamping on the syringe, breaking it.
Gabriel lives. He goes on to record Paradise Unglimpsed, which charts high. Then goes on to record his next album. People flock to his gigs. They hear his songs and sing them loud.
Changes flood out from the wave. Multiplying. The changes carry his message of love and hope with them, spilling right across the world. The difference builds and builds.
Until the Reading Rock Festival in ‘77. Thousands of happy people sailing across a sea of mud swirl around me. The consequence means it’s now Gabriel Ivins who headlines on Sunday night, not the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
My mother is in the crowd, her arms raised above her head, swaying from side to side as she chants Gabriel’s anthem: Beyond A Dream. Absorbing the love he evokes. Questions about the way we live are kindled in her deepest thoughts. But she doesn’t meet dad there. The consequence has put him somewhere else.
And I’m witnessing the world I want born. It is the most exquisite moment I know. Ten simple honest songs, my gift as I am unborn –