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Bromley South Railway Station, Bromley, Kent
Ari arrived in 2029 to see few changes, if any, in his surroundings. The station looked, for all intents and purposes, the same place that he had just left. The only main differences that he could see were that the ticketing machines were no longer digital and printed out paper tickets, and that the timetable and route-planner were two-dimensional visual infographics, not a holographic image suspended in mid-air.
About three dozen or so people were milling around on the platform, waiting for the next train. Ari imagined that most were probably shoppers heading to the West End but he knew that one of them, Danuska Stepánková, was waiting to meet someone off the incoming train. Whiling away his time on the journey from Portsmouth to Bromley, Ari had taken the plunge and had discovered the existence of social media.
According to Danuska’s Facebook timeline for that day in 2029, she was looking forward to seeing her live-in boyfriend, Petr Nowaková, for the first time in three months. Apparently, he’d been away working in their native Czech Republic but now he would be home for the foreseeable future and they could make plans together, maybe even try for a baby. Danuska wrote that she would love to have a child and believed that Petr felt the same way. A baby would make their family complete. She would be meeting Petr off the train that would arrive at 10:40.
A train approached, its electric motor humming and its wheels clickety-clacking as they rumbled over the track joints, accompanied by a light screeching of brakes. Books were put away into bags and earpods adjusted as people prepared to board the train as soon as it stopped.
Ari scanned the group of people on the platform and saw a blonde woman dressed in jeans with a loose-fitting light grey sweater with a deep peach coloured horizontal band on it move behind Danuska. She looked familiar.
The train continued to approach.
Danuska moved forwards, wanting to embrace Petr the second he alighted from the train.
The blonde woman moved forwards.
Ari moved forwards too.
The train continued to approach.
In her excitement, Danuska inadvertently crossed the yellow line that was painted on the platform.
Ari and the blonde woman moved closer still.
The train continued to approach.
The front of the train was almost level with Danuska.
The blonde woman was right behind Danuska.
Ari ran at the blonde woman, knocking her away from Danuska and causing her to lose her balance, falling towards the tracks.
The train wasn’t able to stop in time.
People on the platform shouted and screamed and rushed forwards, expecting to see a tangled mass of flesh and bones where the train wheels had crushed her.
But there was nothing.
Ari reached into his waistcoat pocket and stared at his pocket watch. The tracker had registered a time-jump. Not just a few minutes into the past, not a few hours, nor a few days. The woman he thought he had pushed to her death had jumped back one hundred and sixty-three years.
He had the exact time and date. He had the authorisation to travel back in time up to one hundred years. Did that mean that it was impossible to travel back any farther or just that he didn’t have permission? He had no choice. There was only one way to find out. He set his watch to take him to the same point in time that the woman had jumped to.