Temporter by Christopher M Robinson - HTML preview

TEMPORTER

Christopher M Robinson

Dedicated to

Junior Inventors of all ages

Never be afraid to fail.

We learn more if we allow ourselves to make mistakes.

Chapters

Part one: How it started.

1.                Where am I?                                                 7

2.                Investigation                                                 10

3.                Treatment                                                                 18

4.                Teaching                                                                 24

5.                Junior Inventors’ Club                 29

6.                Investigations                                                 34

7.                The Conference                                                 39

8.                Recruitment                                                 45

9.                Investigations                                                 51

10.                Relocation                                                                 57

Part 2: Temporter

11.                The Laboratory                                                 63

12.                The Project                                                 69

13.                Experiments                                                 75

14.                Back to the present                                 81

15.                Experiments                                                 87

16.                Lei                                                                                 93

17.                Experiments                                                 99

18.                Medical Reports                                                107

19.                Police Investigation                                112

20.                What Happened                                                117

Part 3: Rebuilding

21.                What now?                                                125

22.                Dafydd                                                                129

23.                Reconstruction                                                134

24.                Reunion                                                                139

25.                Resumption                                                144

26.                Revelation                                                                148

27.                Reunions                                                                153

28.                 Recovery                                                                158

29.                What now?                                                164

30.                Sharing                                                                169

Part 4: Outcomes

31.                SSS                                                                                175

32.                Weddings and a funeral                180

33.                Children                                                                184

34.                Temporter                                                                189

35.                Foreign assistance                                194

36.                The future                                                                200

Part 1

How it started

Chapter 1

Where am I?

Beep!

Beep!

Beep

 What is that noise? Some kind of monitor?

And what’s that smell? Cleaning, antiseptic? It reminds me of something. Why am I thinking of a maternity clinic?

Where am I?

A flickering bright fluorescent light.

I feel dizzy. My head hurts.

I try to move my hand to touch it but it feels too heavy to move.

I think I have a cannula; I’m attached to a drip.

My left arm is strapped up and in a plaster cast.

“Hello,” I try to croak but my mouth’s too dry to make much noise.

A curtain opens and a fuzzy black shape gets nearer, slowly forming an image of a person. She wears a normal nurse’s uniform in the navy blue tunic top and trousers that I know, from somewhere, means she has a more senior rank and with a dark red trim which I think also denotes something.

The young nurse seems very familiar, short and slim with an olive skin and black hair. Her face has typical East Asian features, with a cute button nose, and a lovely smile above a slightly pointed chin. I think she looks like she’s in her young twenties but I expect she’s a bit older than that.

“East Asian peoples always look young to a Westerner’s eye,” I hear someone saying in my head.

“You’re awake?”

“Thirsty,” I croak. She disappears to get some water, leaving the curtains ajar enabling me to see this is indeed a hospital. The corridor lined with a wide rail to prevent trolleys banging against the wall and coloured over-head indicator lights seem somehow familiar.

Moving my head slightly I can sense the bedside cupboard unit, the overbed table and chair beside the bed. I cannot see the other patients as the curtains block my view but I hear snoring and various beeps apart from those emitting from the monitoring equipment I’m attached to.

The corridor I can see through the open doors passes a nurses’ station. Standing beside the door is a policeman.

As the nurse reappears a few moments later with a plastic beaker and a straw, he follows her.

He is wearing the typical dark blue shirt and from the chevrons on his epaulettes, I assume he’s a sergeant.

“Hello. My name is Tala. Do you know where you are?” the nurse asks.

“I’m guessing in hospital?” I reply.

“You’re in St. Mary’s Hospital. You’ve had an accident.”

Glancing at a tablet she holds, she adds, “You were admitted last Tuesday.”

A sudden image floats through my mind of a similar tablet with a cracked screen and covered with blood.

“Can you tell me your name and date of birth?”

Try as I might, although the question sounds as if it should make sense, I have no idea.

The policeman steps forwards. He is a big man but built from muscle rather than fat.

“I believe you may be Mr Woods?”

I have no idea if that is right. He is starting to ask more but I cannot concentrate.

The nurse, Tala? Gives the him a stare.

“Enough for now,” said the nurse, “My patient needs some rest.”

Turning to me she adds, “We suspect you may have retrograde amnesia as a result of concussion. Hopefully it’s only temporary, but you need rest. Do you want any painkillers.”

Although there is a throbbing behind my eyes, I assure her I’m okay.

“If you change your mind, press this button,” she demonstrates. A robotic drugs trolley magically rolls in.

Something about that drugs robot seems to trigger some sort of alarm reaction making me recoil a bit.

Tala ushers the policeman out. “Look Sergeant Deacon, he’s in no shape to answer your questions. You didn’t tell me you knew who he was.”

“In his jacket, I found what appears to be the remains of a business card, though it’s pretty worn and faded, but I haven’t yet found out any more.”

…

I want to know more but any movements cause pain. I lie back and close my eyes again but sleep doesn’t come immediately, there are too many questions.

“Apparently my name is Mr. Woods, this is St. Mary’s Hospital and I was involved in an accident.”

As I doze off, there’s something nagging at me about that antiseptic smell, the nurse, her tablet and that robot drugs trolley. As I sleep I have a nightmare involving a large electronic tablet that breaks in half with a bright flash of light and blood pours from it.

Chapter 2

The investigation

“You need some rest, Matt!” constable Johns arriving to cover the night shift, told her sergeant. “Any news, yet?”

“Well, he woke briefly and I asked him if his name was Douglas Woods but the nurse says she thinks he has amnesia.”

Sergeant Matt Deacon had served the force for nearly 30 years. He was a dedicated “copper” and although tempted on many occasions, had no real desire to make inspector as he enjoyed his job and the higher rank would probably mean him leaving this station and those he considered his “parishioners” with whom he would stop to chat whenever possible.

Keeping himself fit, he was a well built man seen by most as a gentle giant who had gained the respect of the youngsters that congregated around the recreation ground most evenings and quickly stubbed out their joints before Matt noticed: except of course, he did know exactly what was going on and would have preferred to administer a clip round the ear, if it was permitted, than engage in paperwork, so he was more inclined to turn a blind eye but kept a lookout for the ringleaders.

He had seen some changes in his time. Originally a sleepy agricultural community, most changes had come about due to the proximity of the naval dockyard at Portsmouth and Southampton docks. More recently the small industrial estate to the north of the town had seen the development of new housing and an increase in population and concomitant crime, though mainly petty misdemeanours like vandalism and drunkenness. This was the first time he’d had to deal with anything as major as a possible murder. He was getting a kick out of the publicity but knew it wouldn’t be long before an inspector from Fareham was assigned to the case.

Far from objecting to Laura Johns’s informality, Matt liked people to call him by his first name except in those situations which demanded greater formality.

He considered Laura a good kid whose tireless determination would hopefully outrank him in time. Matt thought of her like the daughter he’d never had and wanted to give her as much encouragement as possible.

He wouldn’t admit he was tired but Laura was right. However, with this bee buzzing in his bonnet, he returned to the station. “Douglas Woods Robotics” is what the card had said.

At eight o’clock, it was quiet. Little happened in this area and although an apparent murder had stirred up the local press for a couple of days, everything had died down for now.

Matt Deacon logged into his computer. “Douglas Woods” he typed into the database. Again with no result. ‘You don’t need to be Einstein to know doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity,’ he thought. He didn’t bother rechecking Companies House, there was no robotics nor electronics company registered with that name.

In frustration he turned to Google.

“Douglas” gave all sorts of results. Including the capital of the Isle of Man. There were a few towns called Douglas in Scotland and a village near Bristol. There were some Douglas Fir woods in Scotland. Would any of them provide a clue? he pondered wondering whether he could take a weekend trip.

He checked them out on Google maps but none had any signs of industry other than logging.

The Bristol village also bordered a small wooded area but there was nothing there apart from a few cottages, a church, an Inn and a primary school. It wasn’t exactly Scotland but perhaps it was worth a visit though for now he ought to go home.

…

The next day was Sunday. He called Laura. Having handed her supervisory duty over to the another constable, she had expected a day’s rest. “WPC Johns,” he said, “how do you fancy a day out?”

“You’re very formal this morning sir. Is there something on?”

He explained he had a bit of a hunch about Douglas Woods near Bristol and would like her company if she was up to it. “It’s not a date,” he added, a little unnecessarily.

Half an hour later, he drove up in an ordinary saloon, rather than a police car, though he was wearing his uniform. WPC Laura Johns was in a plain pale blue trouser suit that complemented her red hair and green eyes. “Should I be in uniform, too?” she inquired. Sargent Matt Deacon assured her it wasn’t necessary and they set off for the west country.

On the way, Matt told Laura about his hunch that Douglas Woods may not be the name of the possible suspect under police guard in hospital but of a location. However he could find no connection with robotics.

He decided to take the old A4 road through Marlborough and Chippenham rather than the motorway. It was a beautiful sunny day in early May. There was no need to rush and this route brought out fond memories of his father taking him with his mother and his brother to Wales when they were children.

Although much had changed, he was glad to see the old familiar landmarks including Silbury Hill on their right that had always fascinated him.

“Did you know that’s the largest artificial prehistoric mound in Europe?” he said. “Probably about four and a half thousand years old.”

“So what’s it for? Is it a burial mound?”

“Well, that’s the thing. No-one really knows. It’s not a burial mound; there are some barrows not far from here and there’s also Avebury henge just up the road.”

“Oh yes, I remember those ‘New Agers’ talking about henges. They used to believe they were situated on ‘Ley Lines’ that they described as energy pathways: a bit like an olden times National Power Grid?”

“Although, of course, much of their mumbo jumbo is just fanciful conjecture, there may well be some knowledge our prehistoric ancestors possessed that we no longer understand,” replied Matt.

“And in a couple of minutes, keep your eyes peeled on your left for a white horse. Not a real one of course but a chalk horse, though it’s not prehistoric: only about two hundred and fifty years old.”

They decided to stop for a drink at Calne. “I must have had breakfast too early,” Matt apologised. He found a little shop by the square where he purchased a Cornish Pasty and a ginger beer but Laura was happy with just a diet coke.

“This place was famous for it’s cured meats,” volunteered Matt, “I remember seeing the Harris bacon factory from the road when my father used to take us to Wales.”

Leaving the car, they walked to find an idyllic spot by the canal.

Although it was early May, the sun was warm and there were a few picnickers by the water and a couple of paddle boarders on the Kennet and Avon. It seemed an idyllic spot for R & R but,

“Onward and upward,” nagged Laura. “This is nice but we have work to do.”

An hour later they arrived at Douglas.

It only took a few minutes to drive around the area. There were the woods, next door to Douglas Woods Junior School, the church and the pub by the village green as if nothing had changed in a hundred years. There was no sign of any industry let alone electronics or robotics.

In this sleepy village the pub was quiet but managed to provide a ploughman’s lunch for a hungry Matt, despite his pasty earlier, whilst Laura settled for scampi in a basket. She wondered where he put it all.

“Have you ever heard anything about an electronics company by the name of Douglas Woods Robotics?” Matt asked the landlord.

“There’s no electronics firms around here and no places of work. Locals are usually either retired or commute to Bristol. Though some work from home nowadays. But I’ve never heard of anyone local doing any robotics. The only thing called Douglas Woods, apart from the copse, is just the junior school,” he replied. “Although I do remember seeing the school on the news for some sort of engineering project the kiddies were doing about the time I arrived here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I’ve been here over 10 years now,” he said.

When Matt enquired if there was anyone who could tell him more, he suggested Mrs Smith. “She’s been cook at the school for ever,” he said and directed him to one of the old cottages near the school.

Mrs Smith was a cheery, grey haired woman for whom the adjective buxom was invented. An archetypal mother figure who welcomed them in and hustled around making tea.

“Call me Edie, short for Edith,” she said.

“My granddaughter, Frances, was a pupil in the school back in Mrs Willis’s day. She was such a lovely headteacher, not like that Mr Welsh we have now. He is much stricter, mind, and everyone knows where they stand with him, but he doesn’t get along with everyone.” She paused long enough to ask if the two wanted milk or sugar and poured as she continued,

“Then there was that lovely Mr Miller, Jane Willis’s deputy who left just a year after Mr Welsh’s appointment. Frances had been in his class and went on to the secondary school at the same time as Mr Miller left. She’s at Imperial now studying electronic and mechanical engineering.”

She would have rambled on all day but Laura interrupted.

“Do you know anything about Douglas Woods Robotics?”

“Oh Yes.  It was the big story at the time. The BBC sent a film crew. Mr Miller had had the children making models of bridges. The television people coined the term when they saw the opening bridges they’d made. They were so inventive. It’s what inspired Frances to go on to doing the course she’s on. She’s really creative and loving her time there. She’s taken a particular interest recently in bio something-or-other using her talents to do with medical machines.”

“Can you tell us more about the school projects, though,” prompted Laura.

“I think I’ve still got a copy of the local rag somewhere” and disappeared for a few minutes.

“What a lovely woman,” remarked Matt. “Don’t rush her. I think she’s enjoying having someone to talk to.”

When she returned she brandished a yellowed newspaper cutting. “That’s my granddaughter there.” She pointed proudly to a photo of a group of children, their teacher and some models of bridges.

“And that’s her friend Saanvi. They’ve stayed together through school and are both on the same engineering course and sharing a flat in Bayswater. They can walk to lectures through Hyde Park or take the tube if it’s raining. It’s a lovely spot. The flat’s expensive but Saanvi’s dad helps them with the rent. I don’t know what he does but he’s interested in electricals and isn’t short of a bob or two. Some say he’s something to do with the government.”

“And is that Mr Miller?” asked Matt.

“Yes,” Mrs Smith affirmed. “Michael Miller or Mike. The kids called him Dusty Miller behind his back; Mr Miller knew but didn’t mind.”

“Can we take this?” Matt asked about the paper. Edith agreed but said she would like it back so Laura took out her phone and took a couple of photographs of the article instead.

“You couldn’t give us Laura’s number by any chance, just in case we need to talk to her?”

Having convinced her her granddaughter wasn’t in any trouble, she copied it to Matt’s phone.

A few minutes later, sitting back in Matt’s car, they were looking at the story of the Douglas Woods Robotics club for junior inventors and a photo of the children. Laura had copied the pictures to Matt’s phone too.

ENGINEERS OF TOMORROW

The children of Douglas Woods primary school show off their talents to the world.

BBC television’s Points West programme on Wednesday evening looked at the amazing work of children in class 6M.

As part of a science project, the children were challenged to make realistic models of the bridges they chose. We were treated to images of their models of the old Severn Bridge and Newport’s Transporter Bridge along with models of the Forth Rail Bridge and Tower Bridge.

Their teacher, Mr Michael Miller, told us more.

“If you ask children to make a bridge,” he told us, “they will just place a ruler over a gap between two books but I wanted them to “feel” the forces involved and make their models more realistic by only using materials that were to scale.

“The children divided into four groups, each choosing a different bridge. Out of 10cm squares of paper, drinking straws, paper clips and cotton they were tasked to make their bridges as authentic as possible to scan one metre in length.”

The children were so caught up in the project most of them volunteered to stay on after school in Mr Miller’s Junior Inventors’ club to continue making them.

The groups modelling Tower Bridge and the Transporter Bridge added motors and remote control which led to Alison Rogers of Points West calling them the “Douglas Woods Robotics” group.

And there was a photo of a class of children with Mr Miller centre flanked on either side by Saanvi Patel and Frances Smith, team leaders of Transporter and Tower Bridge teams respectfully.

Could that man with them be their possible killer? The article named him as Mr Michael Miller.

“Hopefully this will stir some memories in our murderer?” said Matt.

“Possible murderer,” corrected Laura as they headed homewards.

The next day Laura phoned the school but didn’t really learn much more.

Mr Welsh, the headmaster, confirmed that Michael Miller had taught there until shortly after he was appointed head. “I must admit, we never got on very well and I was pleased when he offered his resignation. The children liked him well enough and his classes always did well in the SATs.”

…

Matt let Laura take the lead in confronting the patient. She had phoned him to tell him of her conversation with the headteacher and Matt had felt a surge of pride in the way his protege was getting to grips with her first real case.

She had relieved the PC on duty at the hospital who had told her there was nothing new to report.

Chapter 3

Treatment

Tala seemed more than an ordinary nurse and she revealed that, as a nurse specialist in accident trauma, she had been assigned to me in particular to “sort me out”.

She gave me more information although she said that, because there was an on-going enquiry and that murder hadn’t been ruled out, she couldn’t tell me more about the accident itself except that I had been brought in unconscious at the same time as a deceased male of about the same age.

I had had no visible serious wounds apart from a broken radius bone on the left arm, and a CT scan had found no signs of internal damage, although I had had some lacerations to my head which had needed a couple of stitches. That explained the pain.

I had also suffered some severe bruising but, judging by the condition of the other man, I was lucky to be alive and have escaped so lightly.

She described it by saying my brain appeared to have “shut down” and they had decided to prescribe pain killers, mild sedatives and nutrients intravenously to let my body rest and recover in its own time.

Now that I was awake, they would do more to ascertain no serious physical or mental damage had occurred.

I asked about the other man but she said she wasn’t supposed to have even mentioned him yet as they didn’t know if I was related to him and they wanted me to try and identify his body once I was well enough but whether that was possible when I still couldn’t identify myself, was questionable. It might be possible, however, that seeing him may reawaken my memories but they needed to be cautious as there was the possibility it could exacerbate my present trauma state. So that would need to be put off till a future date.

She also said she was unable to give me any details regarding the “accident” I had been involved in.

...

The physiotherapist arrived and with her help, I managed a few steps using crutches even though she assured me my legs were fine, just bruised and needing exercise.

She wanted me to stand without crutches but I told her I just felt dizzy so she said she’d send the ENT doctor to check me over.

Meanwhile she was setting me targets. First I’d have to manage without the crutches and then walking without them. My legs needed to learn how to walk again.

Next the ENT doctor arrived. He listened to my chest, he looked at my ears, up my nose and down my throat and talked about my symptoms.

Was I getting ringing noises in my ear? I confirmed I was aware there was a constant buzz that kind of felt normal.

“Your chest sounds good but you have tinnitus and peripheral vertigo,” he told me. “I’ll send you for an ear test and an eye test. In your inner ear are semi-circular canals which liquid runs through every time we move. If that doesn’t match what we’re seeing, we feel dizzy.”

He had me pinch my nose shut and, keeping my mouth shut as well, blow as if I was bowing up a balloon. “It’s the valsalva procedure that divers learn to open their Eustachian tubes to equalise pressure.”

My ears popped which he said was a good sign.

I was then trundled down in a chair to have my hearing tested.

I was seated in a soundproof chamber with headphones and a button in my hand to press when I heard a beep.

For a few minutes I was fed beeps at different volumes and different pitches through either ear.

On emerging from the chamber, I was shown a two screens side by side with a graph on each displaying the results as graphs.

“You have mild hearing loss but within reasonable limits,” the audiologist told me.

The ENT doctor told me later he thought that as my Eustachian tube appeared okay, he wondered whether I had reflux issues and had arranged for a gastroenterologist to check me over.

I was dismissed and taken back to the ward.

My next visitor was the gastroenterologist. He asked if I was getting heartburn. I admitted I did, a little, but wasn’t that normal?

He said he’d arrange for me to have a barium swallow and an endoscopy in the next few days.

I wasn’t too sure about that. He explained that for the barium swallow I’d be given a mildly radioactive drink whilst standing in front of an x-ray machine so they could see what happened, and for the endoscopy, I’d be sedated whilst they fed a camera down my throat to see if I had any reflux damage. He’d put me on the urgent list but it wasn’t an emergency so I may have to wait a couple of days.

But more was yet to come.

Mr James was the consultant neurologist that Tala brought to see me. He was black, probably mid 40’s and of average build with a black crew cut. He wore a smart blue suit and tie.

“Good morning. Mr Woods, is it?” He had a thick drawl of a voice that hinted at possible West Indian heritage.

I told him I didn’t know my name but that’s what they were suggesting.

“Let’s see what you do know,” he said. “Do you know where you are?”

I said I had guessed it was a hospital called St. Mary’s.

“So you recognised it as a hospital. Why was that?” I thought it was the smell and the sounds I recognised.

“So it sounds as if you’ve been in hospital yourself recently?” he suggested.

He conferred with Tala who assured him they had found no signs of any recent surgery when I had been admitted unconscious a few days before and could find no patient records for a Mr Woods that fitted my profile.

He enquired as to whether I had had an MRI scan. “Just a CT,” said Tala, “to ascertain any fractures or internal bleeding.”

“Can we request an fMRI then?” Turning to me, Mr James continued, “We’ll look for any signs of brain damage.”

“Assuming you find one,” I joked.

“A sense of humour is good in these situations. Well I’ll see you when you’ve had your scan and we can get a better idea of what’s going on. Oh, and add an EEG,” he called across to Tala.

A little later, Tala arrived with a porter. “Now to look for that brain of yours,” she smiled, referring to my earlier joke.

I was wheeled down the corridor, down a couple of floors in a lift and then on to radiology.

Another nurse was waiting for me. This room was like an office with its filing cabinets, the desk with computer monitor and cabinets with clear fronted drawers revealing boxes, tubes and wires inside. On a trolley was also a piece of machinery holding a roll of paper with a number of thin limb-like pens that I imagined would record on the paper roll:

the EEG recorder with a mass of cables already dangling from it.

“I have a few questions,” she said.

“Do you mind if I shave some of your head?” I indicated it was okay. “We need the electrodes to make a good skin contact.”

“Have you ever worn a swimming hat?” she asked whimsically. I attempted a shrug as she pulled out a cap studded with rows of electrical contacts. It did, indeed resemble a swimming cap. How do I know some things but not others, I wondered to myself.

She carefully fitted it, shaving just a minimal area on my temples and adjusting the strap to ensure a tight fit and started connecting the wires like some sort of old fashioned telephone exchange. Perhaps I must have visited one at some time.

“Don’t the magnets in the scanner cause electrical interference,” I enquired.

She assured me everything was designed so it wasn’t a problem “but your memory can’t be that bad if you remember that from schooldays,” she added. But I had the feeling that I’d been encountering a lot of complicated wiring recently. And the dials and switches on the machine also seemed to trigger some sort of recognition and a familiarity. I had a memory flash of a batch of machines with dials and wires everywhere.

“Perhaps you’re a telephone engineer?” she suggested.

I managed with the crutches to walk into the scanner room. The big white doughnut shaped machine stood there looking like a massive polo mint and with a bed like a platform sticking out of it which I was asked to lie on while the wires were all carefully manoeuvred tidily out of the way as much as possible.

I had another memory flash. I felt as if I was lying in a glass topped coffin but not dead.

In addition to the cap and EEG wires, they had also given me a set of headphones. “It will be very noisy,” I was told. I also had a button to hold in one hand to “Press if anything gets painful.”

It was noisy with all sorts of crashes and bangs as if the scanner was trying to tear itself apart but I had been warned that was to be expected and the calming music tried to mask it. Though I couldn’t remember the title, it brought another memory flash of sitting on a rug beside a large pond surrounded by woodland watching the swans with an attractive oriental featured woman. Am I having some kind of adolescent dream about Tala?

The scan finished the nurse confirmed no damage had been seen. I had to sit up slowly so I didn’t get dizzy and taken back into the previous office like room where the wires were all carefully removed and stowed and the adhesive electrodes pulled off. “Sorry, we’re giving you a free waxing,” joked the EEG nurse.

I asked her about the music. She wasn’t sure what the playlist would have been but when I tried humming the tune, she identified it. It was Saint Saëns “The Swan.” Complementing me on my singing voice she jokingly suggested I must have been a singing electrician.

She made a note that it seemed to stir some memories.

On returning to the ward, I didn’t know whether to tell Tala about my MRI dream but she’d already heard from the MRI nurse.

“I hear you want to take me on a picnic?” she teased.

However the was no time to discuss further as the WPC was back.

She said they thought they may have been able to identify me as being “Mr Miller”. Immediately memories started coming flooding back.

Chapter 4

Teaching

I had graduated with an unimpressive teaching degree but rejected the suggestion of a repeat to get a better grade as I just wanted to get down to doing the job and wasn’t convinced a higher grade would make me a better teacher.

My degree was for teaching of upper junior or lower secondary ages with the main subject area of physical sciences. Having experienced both junior and secondary schools on teaching practices, I knew precisely the age range I wanted to teach: top juniors. They seemed so much more keen and open to learning. Junior schools should lay down the basic desire to learn before the pupils progress to secondary schools.

Towards the end of the course we had, naturally, all been looking for jobs. There was no shortage of junior schools looking for male teachers, particularly if they could offer science.

Noting the areas that had vacancies, I had driven around to get a feel of the areas to apply to. I settled on one in a small village, Douglas, near Bristol.

It was a quintessential English village with a Victorian style school which had required additional “temporary” pre-fabricated classrooms looking as if they had long out-lived their allotted timespan.

Despite my poor degree, the interview seemed almost a matter of routine. I got on well with the headteacher, Mrs Willis, who desperately wanted a man on the staff to manage the boys’ football as well as needing a science specialist.

In response to her standard question regarding what I’d enjoyed about my teaching practices during my training coursework, I explained what I really enjoy about teaching science at this age is providing experiences and opportunities for them to discover for themselves. Better to learn about electricity by building circuits (with safe low voltages) than to just describe them.

I strongly believe in the Chinese saying: “If I hear, I forget. If I see, I remember. If I do, I understand.”

I think I also made an impression with the junior schools inspector for science and technology, Mr Austin, on the interview panel whose specialism was also science. We seemed to talk the same language.

“How would you teach nine year olds about the solar system?” He had asked. He had obviously read my CV as this was something I had had to do on teaching practice. “You can’t take them into space, can you?” he added mischievously. My description of how I had had the children enact the planetary orbits satisfied him.

…

Beginning as a proper teacher for the first time is really daunting. It’s so unlike teaching practice where you know the normal class teacher can take over if you mess up; you now have a class of your own to look after throughout a whole school day – every day. And it’s not just in the subjects you like and feel confident in, like science and maths, but in other areas too, like history and P.E.

Every lesson has to be meticulously planned and teaching aids made. In addition, I always had to have a back up just in case it didn’t work as it should. Perhaps I was too much of a maverick as I preferred to do my own prep for my specialist subjects than rely on using the teachers’ resources that can be found on the internet, although I did have to resort to those at times for history and welcomed the suggestion of mummifying a fish when we were supposed to be studying Ancient Egypt.

Perhaps I veered beyond the confines of the national Curriculum at times when I found they were limiting the children’s enthusiasm to learn more.

I had already known teaching is not just 9:00am to 3:00pm with an hour off for lunch and long holidays. I would frequently find myself getting up at 6:00 am arriving in school about 7:30 to prepare the classroom, collecting the resources required from the stock cupboard, moving desks at times, setting up computers, etc. and at the end of the day, sorting out the classroom again with one day a week, a staff meeting.

At least I didn’t have to manage the football team initially. For the first four years I was there, the deputy head, the only other man on the staff, Mr Jakes who taught year 5, ran that.

I had been at Douglas Woods only 4 years and was only 28 when Mr Jakes retired. He had taught at Douglas Woods for 20 years and was popular amongst the boys, who under his management, had often won the schools’ football tournaments. There was a trophy cupboard in the school entrance celebrating the boys’, and his, achievements.

At Mrs Willis’s urging, I had applied for the job, although promotion from within was rare, but I was called for interview.

The interview process was actually over two days. The first had been a visit to the school to get to know it, which I hadn’t needed but had been told to take that day off anyway so I could prepare.

Typically I don’t revise well. If I know a subject I can answer questions. Cramming just fills my head with information blocking creativity so I’d used the down time to cycle my favourite route along the Bristol to Bath railway path and the two tunnels loop covering about 50 miles and sharing my sandwiches with the swans at the Dundas Aqueduct where the canal crosses the River Avon.

I always particularly enjoyed the calm eeriness of the mile long Combe Down tunnel and the gradually appearing light at the end of the tunnel after ten minutes cycling through it.

Its cool, still air was always especially welcome on a hot summer’s day.

The next day, I was the last candidate to be interviewed.

I don’t really remember all the other candidates. There were three of them: two women, and a man who paced nervously and had exited the waiting room for a cigarette when he was called for interview.

Each interview lasted about an hour. The two women candidates were interviewed in the morning and the two men in the afternoon with a break for lunch at The Swan.

On the panel were Mrs Willis, of course, Mr Austin and a parent governor, Mr Patel whose daughter was just starting in the infants school that was combined with us.

Following each interview the candidates returned to await the outcome. They didn’t share a lot about their experiences but I do remember Sandra, the first of the women candidates, had been asked about how she felt about the possibility of running the boys’ football teams.

When my time came, I was feeling quite nervous.

There were many questions regarding school management and budgets which I found tough and thorough but which I managed to stumble through reasonably. However, I know I impressed with the teaching questions.

I was slightly thrown by Mr Patel’s question if I liked children, which I suppose was because I was the only unmarried interviewee. It’s a difficult question for a man to answer. Of course, I loved working with children but always feel they may think you are a paedophile if you say yes, but I managed to persuade him I did without raising any possible thoughts of impropriety.

After about twenty minutes, Mrs Willis came through to the waiting room and called me back into the office to formally invite me to take the position which I agreed. She then left to thank the other candidates and tell them the new deputy position had been filled. She was gone for some time but when she returned, she confirmed to the other members of the panel that Sandra Gould had accepted a teaching position on the staff which would fill the year 5 vacancy.

I was asked how I would feel about having a member of the teaching staff below me who had wanted my new position. It didn’t really worry me, I hoped she and I would get along well together and, where the situation arose, she could possibly deputise for the deputy.

We did get along well together. She did on a couple of occasions take the boys to after school football matches and refereed a couple of home games when I was needed elsewhere. She was good at bookkeeping and helped me with some of the mundane budget work my new management role entailed.

My workload increased considerably as I was now expected to be a representative on the Parents’ Association committee and the Board of Governors. I was not surprised to find Mr Patel on each of those committees.

Mr Austin had shown a particular interest in some of our projects and had provided supply cover for me to visit some of the other schools in the county to encourage this approach to help in the delivery of their science. So half a day a week, whilst I was visiting other schools encouraging science investigation, my cover teacher took over my history teaching.

Although I liked to help other schools, I wasn’t welcomed by all the teachers who thought I had been sent to judge them and I wasn’t too happy at the idea of doing the work of the inspectorate instead of getting on with the job.

…

“Mr Miller?” PC Laura Johns brought me back.

“Can you tell me about Douglas Woods Robotics?”

Chapter 5

Junior Inventors’ Club

The children in my class enjoyed their science projects so much they had asked for an after school club where they could continue which Mrs Willis readily agreed to and was well accepted by the Board of Governors. It also meant children from the other classes could join the “Junior Inventor’s Club”.

Whilst undertaking a class project on Bridges using paper straws, cotton and pipe cleaners to provide a realistic experience of structural forces, we had had a class outing which saw the Severn Bridges and the Transporter Bridge in Newport. It consists of a section of road deck, the “gondola,” hanging from a truck that runs across an overhead gantry to transport vehicles and pedestrians to the other side.

By this time I had been deputy for 5 years and Mr Patel’s daughter, Saanvi, was now in my class. She was a popular girl and had been chosen to lead the team that had decided to construct a model of the transporter bridge. She was particularly enthused with the project. I don’t know what her father, Bodhi, actually did but he had always told me if I ever wanted to leave teaching, he could find me a job.

The group’s model used a cheap electric motor to drive the truck and reed switches to stop it when it reached its destination: providing cheap and precise automation needing just a plain button magnet.

It took a simple wifi receiver to connect aspects of the model so everything could be operated remotely using a mobile phone.

The Parents’ Association were always keen to see how the school was helping their offspring and raised funds for us if we needed anything. In return we held annual exhibitions of work.

The transporter model took pride of place in my last exhibition at Douglas Woods. It attracted the attention of the producer of a BBC magazine programme and they visited to show the work of our “Junior Inventors” whom they christened “Douglas Woods Robotics.”

We liked that name and printed some membership cards, looking like business cards, to feel important.

But all good things don’t last. Mrs Willis had retired from the start of that year and although I had applied for the position I had been unsuccessful and was encouraged to apply elsewhere but I was happy where I was. However, the new head was to change that. He may have been jealous of the attention I had been getting and appeared to be looking for any way he could bring me down.

I had endured two terms of his bullying. He wanted to take the credit for any success I achieved and instead of working together and sharing management workload as Mrs Willis had done, Mr Welsh met with me seldom and basically abdicated responsibility rather than delegating it. This meant I could be blamed for anything that went wrong.

Without any evidence, around Easter, he decided to initiate disciplinary “professional support” measures claiming I was not teaching the specified curriculum and wasting time on my “pet projects” at the neglect of other essentials. He also criticised the model making with card and cotton as being inappropriate for 10 year olds. (“Professional Support” is the initial stage in trying to get rid of a teacher by trying to prove incompetence.)

Rather than appeal and argue to remain on the staff of a head with whom I knew I could never be able to work comfortably, I gave my statutory four months notice which would see me work out the rest of the school year and leave in the summer.

It was then that I received an invitation to present a paper at workshops about education and remote control engineering all expenses paid at a 5 star hotel in Greece. I jumped at the chance of a free holiday though who was sponsoring me was not clear.

The mysterious envelope had been hand delivered to the school letter box marked “Confidential” and addressed to Mr Miller, Class 6M. There were no other clues but it had a kind of official feel to it that I cannot quite define. It may have been the quality of the paper which was matched by the simple card inside.

You are invited to present a paper about the work you have been doing with the Douglas Woods Robotics Society at the forthcoming conference on Technology Education and Automation at the Megaron Conference Centre, Sounion, 8 to 15 August all expenses paid.

Phone 007 9 19 16 25 to accept.

At the lower right, instead of a signature it confusingly just had the numbers: 2.16

When I phoned, it was answered by a secretary who just told me they’d hoped I’d call and that flight tickets and details were already prepared. I still had no idea who “they” were, but a ping showed me the tickets and information pack had been immediately transferred to my phone.

Meanwhile, we still had the rest of the summer term to complete. It’s a particularly busy time for Junior schools. There were the usual sports day, parents’ association summer fête etc. in addition to the parents’ evening where I had to let them all know how their offspring had done during their final year before secondary school and the report writing.

Knowing I was leaving, I had a full load of parents wanting to attend the parents’ evening. It was quite an emotional event. For some I had already had older siblings pass through previous classes and they wanted to tell me how they were getting on in their secondary schools. Although I was very interested and pleased to hear of their progress, I was very time limited with thirty sets of parents to see in just 3 hours.

Fortunately my reporting to them was straightforward as all their achievements and notes had been recorded on my laptop to discuss which also had made the report writing easier. Instead of comments like, “Chris has worked well,” I could provide figures and graphs to show her achievements.

At the final assembly, an emotional Laura Smith stood in front of the school providing a eulogy. Anyone would think I’d died. She then presented me with a set of travel luggage, knowing that I’d be travelling in the next few weeks, though I hadn’t told them about going to the conference in Greece.

I had a lump in my throat as I thanked them all and wished them luck. As a parting gift to the school, I presented a new trophy, not for sport but for achievement in an academic sphere, suggesting an annual competition challenging scientific or technical skills. I knew Mr Welsh wouldn’t be too happy about that and the trophy would probably be relegated to the back of the trophy cupboard and remain unused, but at the end of assembly I had a throng of excited children gather all eager with suggestions for projects for Douglas Woods Robotics (the name had replaced “Junior Inventors” since the television programme) to undertake. I couldn’t bare to tell them that without me there, the after school club would probably no longer exist.

I doubted any teacher would wish to take it on, with the possible exception of Miss Gould but I knew she and her boyfriend were contemplating getting married and moving to another area.

…

I am not that good at preparing talks or learning scripts. If I know about a subject I have no trouble talking about it but knowing I have time constraints, I just list bullet points to keep in front of me along with a simple wristwatch alongside.

I would want to make use of demonstration a lot in my talk, rather than just video, so collected the bridge models to see what would be possible. Of course, I already had video of that project as well as some previous ones, that I could use.

…

A few weeks later, a taxi arrived to take me and my luggage to Bristol Airport for the flight to Athens.

Chapter 6

More investigations

When Matt phoned Frances to ask more questions, he found her grandmother had already pre-warned her.

“I believe you’re wanting to know about Mr Miller?” she said, “The best teacher I ever had.”

She confirmed she and Saanvi were studying together in London and agreed to meet to talk some more saying she was free that afternoon and a suitable location could be the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park?

Matt hastened to the car pool and headed to the A3. On route he called a friend in the Royal Parks Police to ask where he could park near the Albert Hall.

“Queens Gate’s open at the moment. There are a couple of disabled parking bays or you could park on South Drive. If your in a squad car, it won’t be challenged.”

An hour and a half later, Matt was greeted on the steps of the Albert Memorial by two young ladies who introduced themselves as Frances and Saanvi. Although they had considered the Students Union bar, it could have been busy with students cramming for their finals and as the weather was nice, they opted instead to sit on the steps of the memorial.

Frances informed me they were both at the end of their finals, too.

The two girls had been together since playschool and now had completed their university degrees together in the same discipline of Biomedical Technology and hoping to travel together in a gap year perhaps visiting some war torn countries to work with medical teams utilising the latest devices, like powered exo-skeletons.

However, they had agreed to meet Matt to talk about their time at Douglas Woods and the teacher who had inspired them.

When they first went up to the juniors from Douglas Woods Infants, Mr Miller’s after-school Junior Inventors’ club was already popular and, although most members were older than them, they fitted in well and enjoyed “playing” with various bits and pieces, like magnets and simple electric circuits making things that moved.

When they reached year 6, the top year of the juniors, they had had Mr Miller as their class teacher.

They really enjoyed the Bridges project. Mr Miller had cleverly managed to integrate much of the work they were doing in other subjects, too.

Saanvi remembered in particular a PE lesson where in groups they made bridges with their limbs and bodies from which they had gained first hand experience of compression and tension forces.

“That may have affected our choice of bio-engineering,” she reflected. “We’re particularly interested in electronics and mechanical engineering and how it can help with muscular skeletal issues.” Matt noticed the girls always talked in the plural, almost as if they were one person.

The day the BBC crew arrived had been exciting.

The hall had been commandeered for the day by lighting, camera and sound crews whilst a studio editing van had parked on the playground.

Although it was a little disruptive, classrooms were unaffected and physical education lessons could be accommodated on the field.

Mrs Smith (Frances’s grandmother) was able to serve school dinners on the field too as the weather was good and, with the help of Mr Earl, the caretaker, tables and chairs had been taken out. The children loved it. It was like having a picnic or street party. They had asked if that could be repeated but it had had a definite “No” from Mr Welsh.

Although most bridges are static, both Laura and Saanvi like the idea of adding motors to moving bridges and, having visited the Transporter bridge, it was an obvious candidate, as too were Tower Bridge’s bascules, of course.

Alison Rodgers had made the children feel at ease. A consummate professional, she knew exactly the questions to ask to get the children to explain things without any nerves or inhibition.

It was when they were packing up, she thanked all the children of the “Douglas Woods Robotics” club, instead of Junior Inventors. Whether that was intentional or a mere slip, the children had loved that name. It was one of the other children, a boy named Dirk, who had drawn up and printed the membership cards using his home computer and dad’s printer.

…

The girls wanted to know more about Mr Miller and were sorry to hear he had been involved in an accident, but Matt was not telling them any more. He did, however, give them the hospital details when they expressed a desire to send a get well card.

Matt asked the girls if they had ever known Mr Miller get angry. Saanvi did admit to having overheard him shouting at some boys once whom he had discovered mercilessly bullying another and had used appropriate force to physically separate the brawling miscreants but immediately added they were certain he would never hurt a fly.

“Thanks for your time. That’s been very helpful. I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

Matt wished the girls luck in their exams and for whatever the future held for them and was about to take his leave when he had another thought.

“Do you know what happened to Mr Miller when he left Douglas Woods?”

“During the summer holidays, he went to a conference and took the Transporter Bridge model with him,” volunteered Saanvi, “but what happened after that, I don’t know. Does that help your investigation?”

“Everything helps. If you think of anything else, here’s my card,” he said.

“And here’s one in return,” replied Frances handing him her Douglas Woods Robotics membership card she had kept as a memento.

Matt looked at it closely. It was quite professional looking and in better condition than the one they had found on Mr Miller’s unconscious and blood-stained body, but he wouldn’t take it as it may have memories that Frances would wish to hang on to.

They parted their ways, the girls crossing the road to their college whilst Matt returned to his parked car to drive back to Hampshire.

He phoned Laura to share what they had both discovered.

He was quite excited that Michael Miller had recovered his memory of teaching at Douglas Woods Junior School.

“Can you write up a report?” he asked, sharing what he had found out from the former pupils, “And perhaps we can ask him about the conference?”

“I think that will have to wait until tomorrow, sir.” From her deferential address, he assumed, she was with the nurse at the time.

…

The next day, the WPC arrived at my bedside at the same time as a large bouquet of flowers.

“These aren’t from me,” Laura Johns told me, “but I do have good news. Since we cannot find any evidence to charge you with murder, you no longer have a police guard.”

The flowers had a card wishing me a speedy recovery from Saanvi and Frances, raising questions of how they knew where I was. I remembered them then and would have loved to know how they were doing.

Whilst having no charges against me, was good news, I was already sure I hadn’t committed murder and that it didn’t mean I wasn’t still under suspicion.

Pressing her further, the constable confirmed they’d had a phone call from the inspector in Fareham saying there was nothing I could be held on but that the explosion was still subject to an on-going investigation.

Thus she revealed, intentionally or otherwise, that the “accident” in which I’d been involved was an explosion whereas I’d been thinking I’d been knocked of my bike by a lorry or something.

She also told me Sergeant Deacon had met Miss Patel and Miss Smith the previous day in London where they were completing their degrees and planning a gap year.

“Can you tell me anything about a conference you attended after leaving the school?” she asked.

Chapter 7

The Conference

I thought I was used to public speaking by now. When I had addressed a science teachers’ conference at York University, there had been 1000 in the audience. Although I had expected 2,500 at the QEII conference hall when addressing the IEEE, a publicity error had left the facility only half full.

Why did this feel different? Perhaps it was because at the back of my mind I couldn’t help wondering if this was my last?

I cleared my throat and began.

I commenced by telling a joke about coming out of the woods which at least raised a few smiles and perhaps an odd groan but it certainly broke the ice and I was immediately relaxed and feeling natural.

I had entitled my paper, “Working With Woods” which was to detail my approach of involving the children in experiencing what they were attempting to learn and the successes the Douglas Woods Robotics members had achieved.

With my old trusty laptop computer open on the lectern in front of me, I called up short snatches of video showing diverse inventions like the “breathing machine” and “mechanical heart” they had constructed to help understand respiration and circulation in biological science. We had done the usual experiments of the “ghost walking upstairs’ mixing baking soda and vinegar in a fishtank with the rising carbon dioxide extinguishing candles of increasing height but had also related that to antacids neutralising stomach acid with the oesophagus and stomach modelled by a piece of cycle inner tube and a water balloon which could ‘swallow’ a marble helped by the fingers demonstrating muscular action of peristalsis. (I particularly like and related to that project, as, like many others, I often experienced heartburn, which many other primary colleagues also admitted, particularly bending over low desks after lunch.)

After half an hour, I reached my pièce de résistance and lifted the sections of the transporter bridge from the box and carefully slotted the pieces together. I had practised this enough times to know it only took 5 minutes to join the two uprights and the overhead gantry and finally adding the truck to the track, whilst describing the details as I did so. I had been particularly impressed with the children’s pulley drive system using rubber bands, lids and tin cans to slow the speed of the cheap motor sufficiently so the gondola would not fly across the space too quickly.

They had had to avoid the problem of scale by housing it in a separate box to sit beside the model and hooked to a pulley wheel on the track by a band that was partly concealed by one of the towers.

“I now need to remember how to make it work,” I said. “I think I need to call for help.”

Pressing the keys on my phone, An image suddenly appeared of an 11 year old Indian girl dressed in a beautiful red sari, to the delight of the audience.

“Hello Sir,” answered Saanvi. “Are you ready for me?”

“As you can see,” I replied, “we are at the conference in Greece and I have reassembled your model. Now, if you would be so kind, can you do the honours, please?”

“My pleasure,” she said and the truck with its suspended gondola slowly traversed the gap between the pillars.

As it reached the other side, the person holding the phone in Douglas moved and turned it to show a selfie of herself with Saanvi. It was Frances.

I apologised that I hadn’t been able to bring her Tower Bridge model as well whilst turning my phone so the girls could see the applause they were receiving from the audience.

“And that,” I concluded, winding up my presentation, “is the end of the road, or rather the end of my presentation and the culmination of my time at Douglas Woods.”

There was barely enough time for questions but the audience ascertained that I had indeed now left that employment and no, I wasn’t sure where I was going next. I would probably take a belated gap year as there was much travelling I would like to do.

At the coffee break that followed I was besieged by job offers but most were from inner city secondary schools. I love teaching children but I thought it was time to move on to something new.

…

My euphoria quickly dissolved as I packed up the model and collected my papers. Leaving the conference centre, I took a taxi back to my hotel.

I intended to make the most of the holiday and there hadn’t been any talks that afternoon that had taken my fancy and I fancied fresh air and a swim.

There was an unusual air of activity at the beach where some celebration was taking place. There were barbecues made from oil drums on which piles of sardines were being cooked and handed out free on paper plates. There were also piles of simple breads and a massive barrel of ouzo.

Apparently this annual festival used to be held in Skala Kallonis on Lesvos but had been transferred to the mainland this year. The island is well known for the production of the best sardines as well as being the centre for ouzo production. I didn’t know why it was here but it may have been as an advertising promotion as there were also boards advertising Lesvos and weekend breaks by boat.

I hadn’t thought I particularly like the aniseed flavour of ouzo but after a few free plastic cupfuls, I had retrained my palate.

Lesvos should definitely been on my itinerary for a future holiday. I picked up a couple of leaflets to learn more.

I didn’t get my swim but was feeling quite calm, and my lethargy had gone.

…

There were a couple of presentations the next day that I had pencilled in.

The next morning, I attended a presentation that was sponsored by Lego entitled “Building on experience,” showed off their ubiquitous bricks but I had hoped for more. Talks sponsored by well known manufacturers were slick, using technology to the fore with moving holograms rather than the “boring” videos I had relied on.

I had assumed the presentation would present research regarding the cumulative effect of building on previous experiences analogous to stacking bricks but it seemed more to do with them building on marketing experience than children’s learning.

Frida, the presenter, described the easy to assemble kits that helped children understand forces and, with the addition of their motors and gearboxes.

The kits included cranes which I imagined my children would have built with straws and rubber band pulleys. However, these would be useful for many teachers who employed more traditional teaching approaches.

My criticism was that, by providing too many kits requiring little or no innovation or imagination, although the models were instructive, they restricted creativity.

Assembling a kit placed the learning style somewhere between “See and remember” and “Do and understand.”

In the bar afterwards, chatting with the Lego presenter, Frida, I’d expressed my views but could also see the definite advantage of these kits for many of the teachers I had worked with on my half day a week secondments to other schools, who did not have the same physical sciences background.

We were so engrossed in our discussion we continued over lunch where I had selected an excellent slouvaki and Frida a salad composed mainly of tomatoes, olives and feta cheese.

Although she hadn’t attended my presentation on the previous day, having to man the Lego stand in the exhibition display area of the conference, she was interested in what I had to say and the videos I had on my phone and invited me to visit their headquarters in Denmark to discuss a possible job.

It sounded possibly interesting and I told her I’d get back to her.

…

The afternoon presentation I attended, entitled “Letting the Cat out of the bag,” was presented by two people: Ivan and Lei.

I had been intrigued by the title as it seemed to hint at discovery rather than didactics.

However, it was about the quantum paradox rather than with children’s education. The lecture wasn’t well attended and I admit to being a bit lost with it as it was beyond the physics I had studied and the presentation was a bit muddled.

The title was a reference to the Schrödinger paradox that not knowing whether a cat in a box is alive or dead, it can be considered to be in two states at the same time and referencing Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal meaning we can either know the precise information about the motion of a particle or its position but not both.

It was liberally illustrated with superimposed wave patterns referencing Fourier. (I made a note to research him later.)

The main other demonstration, on video, was the double slit experiment showing the duality of photons as either particles or waves whereby a single stream of photons passing through two parallel slots cause a multiplicity of interference bands.

I think the idea being suggested was that through quantum entanglement, we may be able to create a duplicate of electronic data in a distant sphere instantaneously.

…

In the bar afterwards, it was Ivan and Lei who sought me out rather than the other way round. I admitted to them I didn’t really understand much about it nor what work they were actually doing.

They had both attended my presentation the day before and were keen to discuss something with me but hadn’t been able to find me the previous afternoon. I told them what I had done and how I’d made a mental note to visit Lesvos sometime.

“What are you doing tomorrow? Any presentations take you eye?” asked Ivan and when I confessed I had no definite plan, he suggested the three of us take a day trip to Lesvos.

“But it’s 12 hours away,” I said.

“Not by plane,” countered Ivan.

Chapter 8

Recruitment

Ivan was a rugged looking man in his late thirties with a strong jawline and a broad forehead. He had piercing blue eyes and dark brown hair which was just beginning to show the first hints of grey at the temples.

He had a firm, deep voice but his sense of humour revealing a softer side to him than his physique might otherwise suggest.

His chinos and shirt looked expensive. It seemed to me that money was no object to him as he said he would pay for the three of us to take a day trip to Lesvos.

Lei had East Asian features, possibly Chinese, with almond shaped eyes under neat straight cut glossy black shoulder length hair, dressed smartly in a blue trouser suit over a plain white blouse with minimal makeup.

I must admit to feeling an immediate attraction and desire to know more about her and considered Ivan lucky to have her as a partner. Perhaps it was time for me to settle down and find my soul mate?

When I said something about Lei looking younger than Ivan, she said they were the same age but that “East Asian peoples always look young to a Westerner’s eye.”

…

The next morning a taxi arrived early at my hotel to take me to the airport where Ivan and Lei were already waiting in the domestic departure hall at one of the café tables. They stood up to greet me with ‘la bise’ in the continental way. We sat and I accepted their offer of a small glass of the strong bitter black coffee.

Whereas yesterday they’d worn smart formal attire, today they were definitely on holiday in shorts and, in Ivan’s case, a white T-shirt with a picture of the acropolis and bearing the legend ‘Ελλάς’ (Greece) like a typical tourist over his khaki shorts whilst Lei wore a plain pale green blouse knotted at the waist over navy shorts. Ivan wore a baseball cap and Lei a wide brimmed rattan hat that looked as if it would afford better protection from the sun. She had a canvas shoulder bag and I was surprised Ivan sported one similar.

Not having brought a small day bag with me, I had had to make do with my briefcase. “Have you got your bucket and spade in that?” she joked.

Our flight was called. Ivan had booked us three seats together and suggested I sit in the middle seat between them. “I don’t want to split husband and wife,” I commented which was greeted by laughter form them both.

“We’re only working partners,” hastened Lei. “You’re more Ivan’s type than I am.”

Not abashed at being outed, Ivan admitted his sexuality was why he had left Belarus twenty years previously. “They don’t have the same tolerance of LGBTQ as westerners,” he added.

“Well we’re going to the right place then,” I said, “Lesvos gave its name to lesbianism. Many Brits call it Lesbos but the Greek letter beta is actually pronounced like the letter V.”

“It’s the same in Cyrillic,” volunteered Ivan, “where my name looks like IBAH which we pronounce Eebvohn, but it sounds too like your girls’ name Yvonne, so when it’s anglicised, we start it with an ‘I’ sound.”

We hadn’t really made plans for the day and as I went to pull out the map, the seatbelt signs came on and we were told to prepare for landing. The flight was certainly quicker than it would have been on the ferry: it had been less than an hour since we’d taken off.

From the airport we took a taxi into the town of Mytilene which took just a quarter of an hour along the coast. Our driver, Yannis, pointed out there were some well hidden and disguised military hideouts along the route as Türkiye was just a few kilometres away, which we could see quite clearly across the Mitilini Strait. Even now there was peace between the two nations, they still spied on each other in mutual distrust.

Yannis dropped us at a taverna overlooking the harbour. “If you want, I show you island,” he said giving us a card with his number. “All day; good price.” I don’t like pushy touting but we told him we’d give him a call, which I always say when I really mean I won’t.

We sat at a table drinking cold soda drinks and I spread out the map and guidebook I’d picked up thirty-six hours previously.

I had been reading up about Sappho.

She was an ancient Greek poetess who lived on Lesvos around 600 BC and who wrote many love poems some of which extolled the beauty of same sex love. Since many of the men were away fighting petty wars all the time, the women often formed romantic relationships amongst themselves.

Refreshed and still with no real plan, we strolled around the water front to the castle. It was hot and dusty. I was enviously looking at the deep blue water of the Aegean when Ivan suggested, “Yannis?” and we agreed.

He must have only been just round the corner because five minutes later his broad grin greeted us.

“I take you Skala Kallonis,” he suggested. “Good place to eat.”

Along the way, he provided a commentary as we passed through vineyards, and olive groves and fields of what looked like parsley, but we were told were anise “for the to make of the Ouzo,” and about the other important industry granite. Though we didn’t actually pass any quarries, the use of the stone was obvious everywhere, from the roads to builders’ yards to stone masons. Passing salt pans, great shallow lakes divided into squares with grey and white piles of salt that had been harvested, gleaming so brightly in the sun, it was blinding even with our sunglasses: “Clean stuff for food; dirty for road,” he said. “Stop slip on ice.”

Arriving at the town, “I take you good taverna; run by my friend Christos,” he said.

The restaurant was just at the end of the small fishing harbour adjacent to a stretch of beach right on the waterline. “The advantage of no tides,” I thought. “Tsunami only risk of flood,” I continued using Yannis’s voice in my mind.

Christos greeted Yannis with a hug and a handshake and after determining that we would rather sit in the fresh air under the awning that provided shade, than inside with air conditioning, he gave the table a quick wipe to remove the dust that had deposited there and pulled up the chairs ‘for the lady’ first.

“We have best seafood,” he said, “caught this morning.”

So we enjoyed various dishes with olives and tomato salad washed down with ouzo, of course.

Yannis reappeared. “How you want spend rest of time?”

Glancing at Ivan and Lei I admitted to being hot and could fancy a swim do which they readily agreed.

“Best spot Skala Eresou, where Sappho lived there. I take.”

It took us an hour to reach our destination travelling inland and over some mountainous areas affording great views. The road was quite winding but had obviously been upgraded to a dual carriageway in recent years.

“This dangerous road before,” commented our driver. “Many bad accident.”

The beach was large and sandy but there were some sunshades at one end of beach. “You want this end or other?” He asked, “”No swim clothes need, other end.”

I think I spoke for us all when I quickly responded that this end was fine. Whereas I have no problem with naturist beaches, having used them in the South of France where my twin brother, Tony, now lives with his wife, Jane, I didn’t think it right for the three of us who had just met.

We changed under towels and were soon neck deep in the freezing cold Aegean. It was colder than I’d expected but the sun had been so strong, we relished the refreshment and we were soon splashing about like kids.

Ivan dashed out and returned a few minutes later with a beach ball he’d managed to procure from the small stall that also managed the beach beds.

Having exhausted ourselves, and feeling fully refreshed, it didn’t take long, lying on the sunbeds to dry.

I was itching to know why they were happy to hang around with me but had been a bit shy of asking. I enjoyed their company but wondered what was in it for them.

“So, How did you two get together?” I asked, seeking a clue.

They told me they had both arrived in UK on student visas to study electronic engineering at Manchester at the same time and had spent four years studying together whilst following a similar interest in attempting to understand quantum electronics, particularly in communications and in their attempts to study that further had established a working partnership for which they had created a specialist laboratory in Hampshire after an intriguing approach.

But at that point Ivan stopped Lei. “I’m sorry. We may have said too much already. Our work is actually classified as top secret and we may be breaking the law to elucidate further.”

That had me really intrigued and I was dying to know more.

“I do hope you excuse the subterfuge,” he continued. “We wanted to get to know you more before we made the offer.” Quickly glancing at Lei who gave an affirmative nod, he continued, “We’d like to offer you a job with us. We cannot tell you much except you’ll be paid a lot more than as a teacher. But it will require you signing the official secrets act.”

Wow. That was something to think about. They assured me there was no rush for an answer but we did need to head back to the airport.

I sought out Yannis, who was sunbathing at the other end of the beach with some other locals. He pulled his clothes on as I approached. The car was parked on the beach and he drove me to where the others waited.

I was lost in thought on the return journey. Which was fairly uneventful.

I guess Lei and Ivan knew I needed to think and were also quiet. I think we were all tired as we thanked Yannis for the day and Ivan paid him as we reached the terminal for our flight back to Athens.

As I embraced them both farewell before heading to separate taxis, I said I’d see them tomorrow at the last day of the conference when I’d give them my answer.

Chapter 9

Further Investigations

My recovery was going well. All credit to the excellent nursing care from Tala and the physiotherapist, I was now able to walk although I was using a stick as I would get attacks of dizziness which the ENT doctor had said may be from reflux.

Now they knew who I was, my medical records had been found and I was found to have had reflux issues which had caused me to develop a condition known as Barrett’s Oesophagus and that I should be on daily medication called a proton pump inhibitor and my bed sloped for sleeping (which was easily accomplished). I had been having regular endoscopies so the one the ENT had requested, was deemed unnecessary.

My dizzy spells had become so infrequent, the need for a stick was also found to be an unnecessary hindrance.

If I continued as I was they hoped I’d soon regain the lost memories and be able to be discharged in a day or two.

That was good news but where would I go?

It brought back the memory of a similar quandary.

My mind drifted back to Athens. It was the last day of the conference and I had to give Ivan and Lei my answer.

I remembered an exercise during a psychology module in my teaching course when we looked at dream interpretation. We had had to draw a picture to represent a nursery rhyme of fairy tale that came to mind and we’d try and analyse them.

Images of Humpty Dumpty were fairly easily interpreted as showing anxiety, of the feeling of sitting on the edge but scared of taking a leap.

Similarly “Hickory, Dickory Dock” depicted anxiety of running out of time to take action.

My drawing had been of Rapunzel letting her hair down out of the tower window for the prince to climb and rescue which had drawn a lot of discussion. Could it be fear of being trapped and looking for an escape? The consensus was it showed I was a risk taker, prepared to take the leap and not delaying.

As I replayed that discussion in my head, the idea of being offered a lifeline to escape, had given me my decision.

The closing talk at the conference thanked all participants and we were reminded, if we handed done so already, to provide an electronic waiver of copyright so our content could be added to that available online with transcripts provided for the printed archives for future scholars to be able to cite.

Attendance was quite low as many had had to leave early for flights.

I met with Ivan and Lei and told them my decision.

“We’re so glad,” they said intimating they had expected my choice and gave me a pack to “read on the flight home.”

I had been puzzled by the funding but told I was told that would become clear later and hinted it was covered by the official secrets act that I would be expected to sign.

I was brought back to the present by the arrival of Sergeant Deacon.

…

The police sergeant had put in a request to take me on a field trip and after a quick consultation with the doctors, Tala thought it could be beneficial to enable my mind to assemble the missing pieces.

She had managed to find me some trousers, a shirt and a fleece which looked more presentable than the hospital gown I’d been living in.

“Hopefully, we’ll have an address for you soon, and you can have your own clothes,” she said. “Presently the only address we have is your place of work.”

The policeman had turned up to collect me. “Call me Matt,” he said.

“And I’m Mike;” I responded, “two nice short, four letter names beginning with M. One can be morphed into the other by changing one letter at a time in just three moves: Matt, mate, make, Mike.”

“I see you like puzzles; you ought to have been a detective.”

Matt signed me out at the Nurses’ Station and we walked along the corridor and took the lift to the ground floor where Matt’s patrol car was waiting.

It made a change to be out in the fresh air and to see more than the four walls of the ward and the view of the helipad from its window, though it had provided something to look at when I wasn’t reading a book from the Hospital Friends’ trolley. I was presently reading a supposed science fiction novel about establishing a settlement on Mars. Whereas it had started off promisingly, with great detail of all the dangers and how they were overcome, like too many, it had deteriorated to an interaction with a competing nation arriving and descending into a description of warfare between the two factions. An outing was exactly what I needed.

Matt recounted his meeting with my ex-pupils to me.

Both girls had looked excited as they were planning big adventures, seeing the world before pursuing possible masters degrees or even doctorates.

They had shown a real concern for me and had hoped I’d have a speedy recovery.

Lesser Heath wasn’t far. We were there in less than half an hour.

I already knew where I was as we entered a small trading estate. “Down to the end and turn left,” I said.

My memory seemed to be just fine now. This all looked do familiar and the building was as I remembered it apart from the window being boarded up and police tape everywhere.

There was a fire van, not a fire engine but just a small one, on the drive way. It’s driver alighted as we drew up with just a dark fire service jacket as identification, though Matt recognised him immediately.

The fire officer gave us a quick verbal report; I’m guessing Matt already had a full written report.

He told us the fire appeared to have started as an electrical explosion possibly triggered by a mobile device with a touch screen which was broken but it had been handed over to the police to see if they could get anything from it.

They had found the remains of one deceased male who hadn’t been formerly identified but neighbouring traders reported the unit had been used by two males, one of whom appeared be of Russian or Baltic origin and a white European male, and a lady of Chinese or East Asian appearance.

“Ivan and Lei,” the names came back to me. It was distressing that I assumed it was Ivan’s body they had found and the news made me quite emotional; I admit to unashamedly shedding tears and being physically able to say anything more than their names at that point.

Recognising I needed time alone, he watched as I wandered off into the little adjacent copse to find the grass bank beside the small lake that I knew was there.

I had hoped I’d see Lei there feeding the swans but it was quiet. Where was she? But something was telling me I should know if only I could think hard enough.

After a while, Matt found me.

One the swans wandered up asking to be fed. Its mate was guarding their four cygnets.

“I have a ham sandwich I could share,” volunteered Matt but I pointed out, although they will eat meat, they’re vegetarian by choice and bread’s not good for them as it swells in their guts. Their favourite appears to be lettuce. Matt said his sandwich had lettuce in it and pulled it out for the magnificent creature who grabbed it quickly from Matt’s hand and gulped it down quickly. Matt was a bit shaken. He admitted he was worried it was going to take his fingers off. But it was coming back for more.

“No,” I told it firmly and, turning to Matt explained it was always begging for food but it could find everything it needed in this ideal hideaway.

As we headed out, I asked Matt to make a detour. I knew where I lived and could now collect some of my clothes and a mobile phone.

I directed him down a couple of back-roads to the small cottage I had shared with Lei. I also remembered where we hid a spare key – under a particular brick of the drive, if it was still there. Matt obliged with a penknife to help remove the brick and it was there.

Opening the front door, the alarm started to beep. “1 3 1 3,” I remembered the code to cancel it.

The place was as I remembered leaving it. We’d started turning the spare bedroom into a nursery. That brought other painful memories that helped explain why I’d originally thought I was in a maternity unit.

I quickly gathered some clothes into a rucksack and a mobile phone marked “personal.” I’d either had the “work” mobile with me at the time of the explosion or it was in the laboratory.

“You’ll be allowed into the unit, tomorrow,” Matt informed me, when the hospital was intending to discharge me.

Resetting the alarm, I locked the front door and Matt returned me to the hospital.

I now bid farewell to Matt and confirmed I wasn’t leaving the country whilst investigations were ongoing. I told him I’d let him know of anything else I remembered that may be of relevance.

…

The next morning, I was able to dress myself in my own clothes and, after breakfast, Tala told me the doctors had agreed I could be discharged.

I thanked her for her attention and apologised for leaving her with some washing of the clothes they’d lent me.

“We never did have our picnic date,” she teased.

I apologised again and said I now knew that location and my companion with a similar complexion as I told her how Lei and I used to feed the swans at the small lake in a copse adjoining a trading estate.

Chapter 10

Relocation

I opened the envelope Ivan and Lei had handed to me at the airport whilst awaiting my flight home. I had been asking myself if I had made the right decision. I was stepping into the unknown based purely on the chance meeting of two strangers with whom I had got along well. Although when I saw the contents, I began to wonder how much “chance” had been involved.

It was a sparse information pack about what I was committing myself to.

There was a brief covering letter in a separate envelope marked TOP SECRET:

Dear Mr Miller,

We are so glad you have agreed to join this project.

The two operatives you will be working with you have already met. For the sake of partial anonymity, they are referred to as 9.16 and 12.3 henceforth.

You will be required to undertake various tasks as directed by them and encouraged to make any useful insights of your own.

The precise nature of the work is strictly confidential so you will excuse the lack of any detail here but your skills as an educator and communicator prepared to think outside the box and bypass convention for the greater good if required, are the traits we have been looking for.

To be part of this project, you will be required to sign the National Security Act (also known as the Official Secrets Act). Once 9.16 and 12.3 have witnessed your signature, you will officially be part of the team.

You will be remunerated well and all relocation expenses will be covered including any hotel expenses as necessary.

The letter included salary details, geo coordinates for the laboratory location and a start date in mid September. It was signed 2.16.

The pack also included a brief guide to the National Security Act 2023, “An Act to make provision about threats to national security from espionage, sabotage and persons acting for foreign powers,” plus a link to the government website for the whole text of 227 pages which I would be expected to read first. Looked as if I had some homework to do.

…

Once home, I started having doubts. Had I been too hasty?

I would have to give up my home near Douglas, say goodbye to the Swan, though I knew the landlord was about to retire and had been advertising for a new licensee.

I tried carefully weighing up the pros and cons but my curiosity won out. Besides, what was there here to keep me? I had given up my job which had been the centre of my life and, being realistic, would have to move to a new location even if I did decide to look for another school.

Ivan and Lei had revealed the location was in Hampshire and the geo-coordinates showed a small place called Lesser Heath which, on examining Google maps looked to have similar characteristics to Douglas.

I found a buyer for my house in Douglas quite quickly: The sleepy village was becoming a dormitory town for Bristol aided by more people able to work from home not requiring that commute every day, and I spent the next few weeks packing up my belongings, most of which I put in store until I found myself somewhere new to live; everything apart from the essential clothes etc., computer and bike which could all be stored in or on my ageing Citroën Berlingo. When I had bought it, it was a toss up between it and something smaller as most of the time, I didn’t need a car but I had been able to live out of the Berlingo for short trips to France and longer trips driving through France to visit Tony and Jane. I suspected I could use it at a pinch until I found my new house but I had the promise of reimbursement of hotel expenses.

So I moved temporarily into the George Inn which was only a little over five miles from Lesser Heath, so eminently cyclable.

I spent the next week cycling around the area to get a feel of the district and visited some estate agents. Property here was expensive but, having secured the sale of my Douglas property, and a promise of higher income, an affordable mortgage should be within my reach.

When I found what I considered had the potential of being a suitable house, it needed a lot of work.

It was a simple detached three bedroom cottage but how many places now only had single glazing? It had had ancient gas heating which had also served hot water. That would all now need to be changed.

Available for immediate access and with cash now in my bank account, or as good as, I made the decision to buy it and lined up the builders to do the requisite changes, installing triple glazing, electric underfloor and space heating and air conditioning powered from a heat pump and solar panels.

Whilst I would continue at the Inn for a few more weeks as the end of the month approached and I would start my new job, I didn’t want to do that for too long and hoped the building work wouldn’t be protracted or I may have to find some alternative in the interim.

Part 2

Temporter

Chapter 11

The laboratory

In my exploring the area, I had sought out the laboratory where I was going to work.

I had set off on my bike following the instructions relayed to my earphones from my phone app interpreting the GPX file of the route, down some particularly scenic backroads in rural Hampshire. Just to the north of Lesser Heath, I arrived at a small trading estate.

The units were ubiquitous brick built blocks with large enough doors for delivery vehicles to the right and glazed offices to the left of the facias.

The display board at the entrance to the estate identified the 20 units and the businesses occupying them. Most of them appeared to be occupied by electronics companies and small engineering firms.

I had been instructed to go to unit 7 which was identified on the entrance display as Swan Innovations.

The entrance road led straight back from the main road. On the left I cycled past units one to six with units twenty to fifteen counting down to my right. This met a short road forming an unbalanced cross bar making a T shape road layout. Units eight and nine were directly opposite with ten and eleven beside them on the right hand part of the crossbar, twelve facing the end with units thirteen and fourteen tucked around the corner behind unit fifteen.

Turning left into the short stub of the crossbar Unit 7 stood almost alone tucked behind unit six and squashed up tight against a wooded area that also spilled directly opposite up to Unit eight.

It was secluded and with no nameboard looked uninviting and possibly empty. The office windows on the left were dark as if blacked out. Unlike some of the other units, there was no sales counter door, with the only pedestrian access seeming to be from a smaller door inset into the large delivery door on the right.

It was fairly inconspicuous as it would be the only unit anyone would need to turn left for. It was tucked tightly up against a small copse which appeared to intrude on the trading estate to the extent there was no room directly opposite for another unit, unit 8 being opposite the end of the entrance road.

I guess when submitting the original plans for this estate, the boundary of the copse had had to be protected.

When I’d been exploring, I had padlocked my bike in front of Unit 7’s doors and walked through a narrow track between the scrub and trees that formed this small area of woodland. It opened to what may either be called a large pond or small lake with a grassy bank and a family of swans. It looked idyllic but with no signs of visitors, the other side of the lake being more densely populated by trees than the estate’s side; nor was I able to follow round the edges of the lake.

It seemed the only entrance to the copse and its lake was via the trading estate and its existence was probably unknown to most people.

…

This morning, though, I had come to reunite with Ivan and Lei and start work.

I drove my Berlingo onto the concrete pad in front of the loading doors, beside a deep yellow Renault 5 turbo which I guessed was Ivan’s.

A number pad was mounted on the inset pedestrian door. I had been instructed to enter the code 9 19 16 25 and press the call button.

If I were to have to use this number frequently, I’d need a way of remembering it. I like looking for patterns: It’s 32, 19, 42, 52, I noted; a run of square numbers but why the odd 19 thrown in the middle?

Each button press gave a beep and I was careful not to make a mistake but nothing happened. I had forgotten to press the call button. Correcting that omission, I listened for a voice but instead the door opened automatically into a small loading bay with an office entrance door on the left. I think it had probably been longer originally to accommodate a reasonable sized truck but that the space had been truncated by the erection of a partition wall. Although I could probably squeeze my Berlingo in here, or Ivan’s Renault, there wouldn’t be enough room for a typical delivery lorry let alone an articulated one, which was just as well as the position of this particular unit would make manoeuvring such a vehicle quite challenging. I suspected this would have made the unit the least attractive to most other firms looking for units on the estate. Aesthetically though, it was the most attractive location with the woods pushing up beside it.

Opening the office door, I took in a clean room but cluttered with benches and equipment.

The lab consisted of a large rectangular room with whitewashed walls and the only windows high up offering a view of the tops of some trees only.

Steel shelving lined one side covered by all sorts of bits of electrical circuit boards that looked as if they ought to be in the scrap bin. Some even had radio valves and I’m sure the couple of cathode ray tubes were from ancient television sets.

There were wires and cables trailing absolutely everywhere.

Benches ran parallel to two sides of the room away from the walls, one of which had cupboards and lockers and the other filing cabinets.

A solid looking concrete store of some sort protruded from the far corner beside which, on the furthest wall was a large metal cage. There was a separate small room built out into the main room which I guessed was what would have been the rest of a standard size loading bay. Behind that was a well appointed kitchen.

The two main walls were lined with screens, one of which had views from half a dozen external cameras showing the trading estate entrance and the entrance of their own building.

Along the front wall was a smart sofa with two matching recliner armchairs and a coffee table to provide a comfortable lounge area. There was even carpeting on the floor of that area whereas the rest of the floor area comprised cleanly polished tiles.

Lei and Ivan had had their backs to me, wearing headphones which they removed as they detected my entrance. They left their workstations and hastened over to greet me with a hug. “We’re glad you found us, okay.”

“Sorry I disturbed your listening,” I ventured but they dismissed it as being “just work.”

Why “Swan Innovations”. I queried.

“We just wanted a neutral sort of name so we could remain anonymous. It was Ivan who suggested Swan. We have a secret pond next door and there’s a cute family of them there.” I let them know it wasn’t so secret that I hadn’t found it.

Lei started busying herself with the coffee maker and soon brought steaming mugfuls on a tray which she set down on the coffee table.

“Apologies if we look a little disorganised,” she said. “We’ve only actually been here for a week. It took time for the conversions we needed to be completed first.

I empathised, saying I was awaiting the builders to finish work on the house I had purchased.

“If you need to, you can always crash here,” said Lei. “That couch makes a comfortable bed and we have all the mod cons, including a shower room and toilet through there.” She indicated the loading bay room. “I’ve been using it myself this week. It’s quiet at night but quite safe.”

“You said I needed to sign the Official Secrets Act?”

It was good relaxing as friends but I wanted to know more about the work we were getting paid for.

“I’m assuming you read the literature that was texted to you?” said Ivan, “The National Security Act, as it’s now known, is to ensure no secrets are leaked and what we are doing does need to be kept secret, even from your own family. We know other nations are eager to get their hands on what we’re attempting to do.”

He referred to my pupils’ ability to control a model remotely with their mobile phones. What if, instead of a transporter bridge, it had been a bomb? I thought that was already possible and may have already been used by terrorists, but he said he would tell me more later.

I replied that secrecy from family would be easy as I had no family apart from my twin brother who had moved to Provence some years ago, to avail himself of the same light that had inspired Van Gogh and Gaugin. I believed he was making a passable living from his paintings, however we weren’t close any more and communications were often no more than perfunctory exchanges of emails at Christmas and on our birthday.

In response to a supplementary question from Lei, I had to admit I had had no time for a romantic involvements, though, perhaps now, without the former pressures of teaching, I may be more easily tempted but if I were ever to meet the right person, she would have to respect the fact that there were some things I would never be able to share with her.

Ivan went to one of the filing cabinets are removed a sheaf of papers.

After scanning through it again, with Ivan and Lei watching, I signed three copies at the various places required and they both added their signatures as witnesses.

“Now. Perhaps someone will now tell me what this is all about?”

Chapter 12

The Project

Ivan explained.

“There have been many experiments that show information can be sent practically instantaneously over distances using quantum entanglement.

It’s the basis of the new quantum computers. It’s almost as if the receiver can think what the transmitter is thinking.”

“Like telepathy?” I asked.

On a few occasions I had experienced what I could only describe as being telepathy with my twin brother, Tony.

Many simple things, like me whistling a song he had been thinking of all day when we were growing up or my sharing the symptoms when he was ill.

I remembered what I descried as a “mental jolt” followed by ankle pain when he was knocked off his bike by a lorry shortly after moving to Montpellier. He’d had his leg in plaster for weeks afterwards.

The most dramatic occasion was when I was feverish with severe abdominal pains which had caused me to phone the emergency services but the paramedic who arrived said it was probably associated with my acid reflux, told me to take extra of my medicine and go to bed with a hot water bottle. He didn’t think it was severe enough to admit me to hospital. And he was probably right as, although I sweated in pain for the whole of that night and the next day, it suddenly cleared up as quickly as it had started. I then received an email from Tony telling me he had been taken into hospital the day before as he had “gone yellow” but had just had a cholecystectomy as they realised it was due to an inflamed gall bladder.

“We’re not actually thinking of telepathy,” answered Ivan. Though quantum entanglement could conceivably be responsible for twin telepathy, what he was talking about was actually moving data, “More like teleporting. What I’m hoping for is to be able to move more than just data. Data is basically just energy and we all know of the Einsteinian equation relating energy and mass.

“Your pupils made a transporter that transports mass. We’re hoping to work towards a way to teleport mass. Let’s call it a teleporter?”

“Like in those old television series of Star Trek?”

“Probably not the same but we don’t even know if it’s possible yet.”

Lei showed me the device they had been building. It wasn’t really anything much to look at; just a number of black boxes with dials and switches linked together by masses of wires.

“It will probably require a considerable burst of electrical energy but for an almost infinitesimal amount of time,” she said, revealing they had special storage cells to cope in the specially constructed concrete bunker in the south-west corner of the lab.

The working end of the machine consisted of a glass box with a lid and side that could hinge open. A receiver set up on the other side of the lab had a similar glass box.

“Initially we need to see if we can send energy from here to there,” she pointed. “We will probably try a light source initially, hence the glass box.”

She went on to show how they hoped to shine patterns of light into the box and see them appear in the receiving box.

There were no limitations to my duties. I would just muck in and do whatever needed doing that I was capable of.

Ivan handed me a mobile phone. “Strictly for work use. Use your normal phone for most things; you can contact us on this but, although it is shielded and encrypted to be as free from possible interception as possible, for anything sensitive, we’ll be using codewords.”

He also suggested codenames. Ivan was Cob, Lei was Pen and I was Cygnet. It felt like it was becoming very cloak and dagger or James Bond.

“We can’t be too careful,” he said. “There are spies everywhere and our code names may be easier to remember than our numbers.”

He did seem obsessed with secrecy but as he pointed out, if a ten year old girl could switch on an electric motor with her mobile phone from three thousand miles away, it demonstrated a terrorist could operate a bomb on the other side of the world or a spy could just as easily launch a drone.

(I wondered if he were ex KGB.)

He did say they knew the Russians and the Chinese were looking into teleporting information but following different paths. The Russians were experimenting to see if they could in fact produce telepathy by involving very high magnetic fields. Experiments with a group of potential telepaths as opposed to a control group, produced no statistical evidence for its existence with just a slight abnormality in the data if the beta brain waves of the sender and the recipient were in sync.

The Chinese were looking at other possibilities for sending massive amounts of information instantaneously. Their ideas required many different “way stations” permitting consecutive instantaneous data hops both across the globe and via devices they had secreted on their space missions and on the moon. So far neither country had a working prototype.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“Because we listen in on them. That’s why we were wearing headphones when you arrived.”

“If we listen in on them, can’t they listen in on us?”

“They are probably doing so already. That is why we are so concerned about our privacy protocols.” He also showed the special work mobile phones had a bug detector built in that performed regular automatic sweeps but could also be manually operated.

Working with Lei, the two of us identified pieces of equipment and a schema for their storage within the cupboards, lockers and filing cabinets whilst Ivan worked his way through scrolling lines of data on his terminal. Although different from the original purposes of some of those units, we wanted the place to appear to be just like any other anonymous unit if ever there were any unexpected visitor.

That was fine for the lasers and cathode ray tubes. In a developing language of abbreviations, we referred to these as PT equipment, for Particle Transmitters.

Of course, not all the equipment could be so camouflaged but any casual visitor would just see a typical electronics lab. Not that we wanted, nor expected, any visitors, but the trading estate’s owners were at liberty to send inspectors at any time.

We also had to ensure that health and safety measures could be demonstrated, hence the concrete bunker storing the high energy electrical batteries and Faraday cage.

We had been working for some hours without noticing now long when my tummy rumbled. I can’t help it but my acid reflux condition does require I eat little and often. I have no problem with the “little” but frequently neglect the “often”.

I suggested calling out for a pizza which was readily agreed.

“Can you eat pizza with acid reflux?” asked a concerned Lei. I assured her no foods caused me any harm; whereas pizza ingredients can trigger heartburn in some people, they do not cause reflux: it’s a commonly touted myth.

Sitting awaiting its delivery, Ivan discussed the present problem he was attempting to tackle. He was very much the theorist whereas Lei was the practician.

Put simply, the problem was something like: if you consider the parallel slits experiment, there are multiple peaks and nodes analogous to Bohr’s “Copenhagen Interpretation.” The problem was how to determine which peak should be the receiver?

I wondered whether there was any way of sending a complementary signal on an appropriate wavelength to negate unwanted peaks and focus on the desired one but whether my idea was useful or just showed my ignorance, I am not sure as we were interrupted at this point by the pizza delivery.

I leapt up to answer the intercom and proceeded to the anteroom to receive it, closing the office door between before opening the outer one. “Always treat the entrance like an airlock,” was the advice from the others. “Never have both doors open at the same time.”

…

That night Ivan and I left at the same time, whilst Lei was staying there another night, “until I get Mini back.” Mini turned out to be her car which had been having battery problems.

She was settling down in front of one of the screens which she had tuned to the new TV series, “SciQuest,” to which she admitted being addicted, “to laugh at the absurdities,” she said, and had a ready meal ready to microwave. She insisted she would be alright and would see us in the morning.

Ivan took up my invitation for a quick drink at my hotel before he went home to his dinner. It would provide me with an opportunity to find out more about him. “Do they serve ouzo?” he’d joked.

Ivan’s interest was swimming. He had been a medal winner as a teenager growing up in Belarus but the training was really aggressive. Now he watched but didn’t participate, preferring to swim for recreation rather than competition. I was interested as I had taken extra courses for teaching swimming.

He wasn’t keen on SciQuest as “it had too many inaccuracies” and preferred to watch medical programmes on the television.

He said the hardest thing about arriving in England wasn’t the language but getting his electronics doctorate taken seriously when looking for work. He had had to take several menial jobs in television and computer repairs before he was recruited for this job.

He had been texted to attend an interview at a government office in Croydon and feared it was the Home Office looking to deport him.

He had been put through a number of confusing tests before then being asked to sign the official secrets act.

He didn’t really elaborate more than to say the tests were probably psychological in nature assessing personality and loyalty as much as intelligence and knowledge about the subject he’d written his thesis on.

I would have talked longer but he indicated he needed to rush away as his new boyfriend was cooking dinner, but he didn’t give any more information about his new friend.

So I retired to my room and ordered a simple salmon salad from room service whilst I flicked through the available TV channels indecisively, eventually landing on one discussing the future of education which included constructing virtual reality holograms as a means of instruction which made me bristle a little and realise I was glad to have left teaching when I did as “instruction” is almost anathema to my particular convictions.

So Ivan was a competitive swimmer? I mused. With my extra swimming coaching qualifications, I had helped out at the local leisure centre, just under an hour’s cycle away from where I lived although it had an Olympic sized pool, helping with the local swimming club, with swimming lessons during school holidays and as an occasional lifeguard when their regular staff were on holiday, though I had been advised against swimming competitively myself as my reflux had caused ear damage.

I realised the paradox as swimming requires instruction, though my aim, as always, was to make them better than me.

Chapter 13

Experiments

The next day, I cycled to the lab.

Beside Ivan’s Renault was an ageing electric mini looking sparkling clean. I guessed it must be Lei’s. The two vehicles filled the width of the driveway not the length. I would have been able to fit my Berlingo behind one of them or across the truncated end of the road against the encroaching woods. There was plenty of room for my bike, however, in the shortened loading bay, having remembered the code: “two squared, nineteen, three squared, four squared, five squared,” I’d said in my head.

But the others had only just arrived, they said, when I entered and Ivan had just started making coffee.

Again we set too, arranging equipment, cataloguing what was where, though using our own codewords for some of the more unusual equipment.

This was our pattern for most days.

Ivan and Lei would discuss the theory and plan circuit boards which were laser printed on mica boards in the old fashioned way to which I was happy to solder components.

We’d break for lunch and snacks when we’d chat and relax. Those were the periods we sometimes found were our most productive, coming up with solutions to the minor problems we found.

Then one day, Lei announced we thought we were ready for our first trial.

A laser was set up pointing at the Transmitter Box (TB) and sensitive photo receptors positioned around the Receiver Box (RB) where we expected the beam to emerge.

The transmitting laser was tested in situ separately first. “Be careful not to look towards it,”  warned Ivan, “although it’s harmless otherwise,” and directed our gaze towards a cupboard door where we might just see a quick flash of the small red dot once it had passed through the glass TB, although when it happened, it was such a quick flash, we couldn’t be really sure whether we’d seen it or not.

The air inside the boxes was filtered so there would be no dust particles to reflect and reveal the light beams: one of those annoying little details they always got wrong on SciQuest, Lei had said.

Both the laser and the receptors were linked to identical oscilloscopes side by side on the control desk labelled TB and RB. All the receptors had been linked to the same receptor oscilloscope using electrical circuit to display the signal from the first sensor to receive it, if multiple reflections occurred and there was a separate detector circuit to identify the sequence of any other received signals if they were to occur, from reflections off the glass casing, for instance.

There was further complex circuitry that would automatically compare the transmitted signal with the received one: some kind of interferometer, I had correctly surmised. A computer comparison would be too slow even with our optical computer. As it was, we were limited by the speed of electricity, Ivan pointed out, which was why some of our equipment was designed to work submerged in liquid helium which we’d have to order in if needed.

So we set ourselves up in sitting at the control desk. I wasn’t sure whether to watch the oscilloscopes or the boxes.

The TB scope still showed a frozen trace of the transmitted signal, which Ivan cleared.

“Three, two, one, go,” said Lei, pushing the button and; nothing!

Nothing appeared to happen, though the TB scope recorded the similar trace to before which it froze on the screen.

None of us said a word to start with. Whether it was just a trick of the eye but glancing about, I could have sworn I caught a similar glimpse of a flash of light on the cupboard door out of the corner of my eye a few seconds later.

“Well, the Michelson-Morley experiment famously showed us that a failed experiment can actually teach us something new?” I proffered to break the silence.

Ivan leapt up and started examining all the components and the connections. He used a separate laser to point directly at the sensors around the RB triggering traces on the RB scope that showed they were all working fine.

“We’ll try it again,” he said and we repeated the same thing again with the same result, though this time, I did concentrate on the cupboard door and a few seconds later, I’m sure I saw that minute flash.

“Perhaps it’s some kind of rebound?” I suggested to Ivan when I reported it.

After some consideration, we decided to repeat the experiment but adding a sensor at the spot on the cupboard door.

It only took a few minutes. First we determined the exact spot the laser beam reached when fired through the TB and then simply moved one of the sensors from the RB to the cupboard door, attaching it with Blutack.

We then tested it by firing the laser again with both oscilloscopes switched on. The two both showed exactly the same trace, which we expected since the distance between transmitter and receiver were so close. The short laser flash was received practically instantaneously with it being transmitted.

Ivan reset all the controls of the teleporter and we prepared for a repeat. “Three, two, one, go,” said Lei, pushing the button.

The TB scope showed the transmission but there was no indication of its reception initially. However a few seconds later, there it was. It was as if the laser beam had stopped in the box only to continue a few seconds later.

With the previous setup, we had automatically deactivated the sensors of the RB directly after the signal had been sent. With this new experiment, we had left that circuit open.

“Have we somehow managed to delay a light beam?” I puzzled.

“I think it’s something far more significant,” said Lei, without further elaboration. “Let’s try the audio tone.”

This was a similar experiment that we had already planned.

“I will generate a pure audio frequency sine wave of 256 Hz, that’s scientific middle C in the TB and we’ll listen for it with the microphones in the RB,” said Ivan as he reset the teleporter instruments.

The audio transmitters and receivers were now connected to the scopes, replacing the light receivers and the automatic cut off of the RB sensor circuit was switched off.

“Ready?” He clicked the switch. We could hear the faint sound from the TB which quickly stopped, but no signal was noted at the RB until about 10 seconds later when the short burst of tone was heard there.

We had hoped the teleporter would provide instantaneous transmission whatever the distance from quantum entanglement. Our ultimate aim had been to see whether we may be able to send signals instantly over astronomical distances, which would be invaluable to any future space missions particularly the long delayed Mars missions. Instead of speeding communication, somehow it looked as if we were delaying it.

“How about changing the distance we’re using?” I suggested. “Is it a ten second delay whatever the distance?”

Ivan agreed to try it. Lei and I moved her desk closer making the gap just 5 metres whilst he reset the controls for the signal to appear 5 metres from the source.

The short bip emanated with nothing at Lei’s desk but the original sound repeating just 5 seconds later at Ivan’s instrument.

We retired to the lounge area where I started on writing up the notes on our experiments whilst Lei made coffee and Ivan pulled out some Danish Pastries.

“These were meant as a treat to congratulate ourselves on a success, but I for one could use one now.” We did not disagree.

Lei spread out the sheets of mathematical workings she and Ivan had produced. I couldn’t follow most of it but I do recognise speeds as metres divided by seconds. We were hoping to make the time interval zero, equivalent to infinite speed. I couldn’t comprehend the anomalies that could occur if a signal were to be able to travel faster than the speed of light.

It was me who then said something stupid like, “Didn’t Heisenberg say you can know the speed or the position but not both?”

“You know I said I thought it was more significant, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. We do seem to be changing the time the copy arrives rather than the place,” Lei agreed. “Instead of changing the time it takes for transmission over a distance, we seem to be changing the delay time of an echo. But could it be that we are sending the signal forwards by a certain amount of time?”

“What? Like time travel?” I butted in to say that in popular science fiction, we think of time travel as journeying to the past or future. “Surely that’s not possible?”

Ivan said that although going back in time to change things would probably be impossible, we are already travelling into the future all the time. He was also beginning to consider what we were actually doing was sending data in front of us. “The ‘echo’ is received instantly a few seconds into the future and we have to catch it up travelling at normal speed through time.”

“I don’t understand the significance of this,” I admitted but Ivan was off, his imagination racing as he designed an experiment.

“How about we try this conjuring trick? One of us chooses a card from a pack and types the card’s detail into the machine without telling either of us, to appear after a specified time. We have to try and access that answer.”

It seemed like an idea but we had no playing cards. “So I’ll imagine one and write it down,” said Lei. She went to her keyboard whilst Ivan and I looked at each other quizzically. “OK. I sent it band then deleted it from my machine. You have 20 seconds to find the answer.”

Both Ivan and I raced to search for the data on our lab network. It ought to be there, we had seen Lei typing, though hadn’t seen what.

Twenty seconds later, our screens both displayed a message, “Queen of Hearts.”

It seemed we may have invented Time Travel!

Chapter 14

Back to the Present

I had a visit at home from Sergeant Matt Deacon. Although he had considered me as a possible murderer, I quite liked the man and his approach was friendly.

“This is a formal request sir,” he started.

I interrupted him, “I was “Sir” to 10 year olds as a teacher. Please call me Mike.”

He apologised and went on to make his request, if I thought I was able, Mr Petrovich’s body still needed formal identification. I said I would be able if there was nobody better placed to.

Matt asked me if I knew anything about the current boyfriend and I had to admit I was unaware there was anyone presently on the scene. He had had a few boyfriends in the past but none were long lasting and he was always secretive about his private life. There were occasional signs when he had a partner at home, like the odd occasion when he would need to leave early as they had a dinner date or were going to the theatre but I hadn’t seen any of those tell-tale signs recently.

Matt had previously asked me lots of questions about Ivan and I thought I had told him all I knew.

Probably revealing more than he should, Matt said there were problems with identifying the current boyfriend. They did not know his name nor anything else about him, but he had disappeared. They thought he may have been an illegal immigrant who may be concerned about being deported.

Matt asked me about Ivan’s car. He wondered whether the boyfriend may have taken it. I could describe the car in detail. It was a high end Renault 5 following the trend of resurrected classic designs given a new lease of life, refashioned with the most recent electric updates. Ivan’s was in deep yellow with red trims. It would normally have been parked outside the Swan Innovations works unit although he did come by taxi some mornings. I was sorry I could not remember a registration plate but he did have a small swan badge on the back to hint at the works.

Matt said there had been no sign of the car at the works, nor any car. Just two bicycles which I said was odd as although Ivan was quite sporting, he didn’t cycle to my knowledge even though I’d suggested outings by bike.

The fact there was no car at Ivan’s house either sounded as if the boyfriend had taken it?

Matt said he would check the local taxi firms to see if any had provided a lift into work for Ivan that morning. He would also put out requests to ferry and cross channel shuttle services to look for a yellow Renault but thought that may be a long shot.

His colleagues had talked with the neighbours who said they hadn’t seen the latest boyfriend very much and described him as being elusive. Like Ivan, they thought he may be from Russia or one of the Balkan States but could give no clear description apart from him having a black beard. They had also said they had heard sounds of arguments between Ivan and his partner in the days before Ivan’s death but had heard no sounds from the house since.

When the police had gained entrance to the address, it looked as if any partner must have moved out as there only seemed to be a few scarce items presumably just belonging to Ivan. He appeared to live very frugally.

That surprised me as he had never seemed to be short of money.

I had always wondered where the money came from and thought the funding of our project was some governmental organisation. Payments just arrived in my bank account monthly coded as from Swan Innovations. I had wondered whether Ivan was a Russian oligarch in disguise but had dismissed that idea as being fanciful and not consistent with what he had told me about his recruitment. However, with another possible Balkan state connection, I probably started overthinking.

Could the new boyfriend have killed Ivan? Matt said it was unlikely and that he was not a suspect as they now considered Ivan’s death to have been an accident.

I did agree to accompany Matt to the hospital mortuary where Ivan’s body was still being held. Having no other demands on my time at the moment and still wondering what I would do now, I agreed there was no time like the present.

It gave us more time to chat.

Matt wanted to know more about the work we had been doing, now my memory seemed to have returned.

I said I knew I had signed the Official Secrets’ Act but I didn’t really understand most of what we were doing. I accepted I was the dog’s body but did give some helpful insights at times. I did say it was to do with communications and involved an awful lot of electricity but reluctantly was bound not to provide any specific examples of how I had helped which seemed to satisfy him for now.

I didn’t tell him about listening in on the Russians.

A few days before the accident, Ivan had been excited as he’d managed to intercept a message being sent to a new agent in the UK.

His screen showed the message:  “ириска разрушать rolling road” which sounded to me a bit like, eeriooeeska aragusha rolling road and which Ivan translated as, “Taffy, destroy ‘Rolling Road’.” We had no idea what it meant. I had half wondered if “Rolling Road” had anything to do with the transporter bridge but decided I’d kep my fanciful ideas to myself.

He said Taffy was a sweet treat like toffee. I also pointed out, it is a nickname given to Welsh people, from the River Taff which flows into Cardiff bay. Could the new agent be Welsh?

…

Getting back to the matter in hand, I had never been asked to identify a body before, though had seen it on television in so many crime dramas, but television doesn’t prepare you for the atmosphere.

Matt had phoned ahead. The man who met us identified himself as the Senior Identification Manager whilst his badge named him as Leon. He was a short, stout, balding man who met us in the corridor outside and, entering a code to unlock the door, took us through. I wondered why they would keep a mortuary locked but realised there may be reasons of possible contamination if unauthorised admission occurred. Matt also said in crime cases, there was just a small possibility that there could be attempts by others involved in the crime to deliberately interfere with evidence.

It was very cold and, although I have a poor sense of smell, which I attribute to my reflux, there was a powerful mixture of smells: the chlorine smell of bleach was the most predominant, which I always associate with my times as a lifeguard or coach at swimming pools, but I also recognised formaldehyde. Although we didn’t use it in junior schools, I had visited enough secondary school laboratories where it is used to preserve biological specimens. Other fetid odours were probably from putrefying bodies and blood although the place was spotlessly scrubbed. There were noises of fans circulating and exhausting the air, and probably from the refrigeration units, and the lighting was much brighter than I had thought any chapel of rest ought to sport but this, of course, was no chapel of rest.

Leon brought the body out of its cold storage covered in a cotton sheet which he carefully pulled back to the neck.

The face was badly burned and blistered looking black and crinkled and his hair had been completely burned off.

Although the pathologists had obviously attempted to clean it up a bit, there was no mistaking Ivan’s jawline and I’m sure if his eyes were open, I’d see his piercing blue gaze, though I didn’t like to think about what a fire would do to a person’s eyeballs.

The sight was deeply upsetting and, although I had been determined not to, I’m not ashamed to say I couldn’t hold back the tears and the deep sorrow at having lost a friend.

Matt tried to comfort me by placing a hand on my shoulder. I just wanted to sit down but there was no chair here. I just nodded my head and exited to find a seat in the corridor where Matt let me grieve for a few minutes until I could pull myself together enough to seek him out.

Having identified him, Matt asked if I had any objection to his burial. “Not cremation?” I asked.

“Although it’s unlikely, there is always the possibility if any relatives are found the body may need recovery or we may also find something still which requires re-examination.”

Back in the car, Matt said he had no listed next of kin but an old, unsigned will found at his home left everything to someone called Chen. He had obviously not updated that for years nor had it witnessed.

He agreed to take me via Ivan’s home when we left. “The landlord will be wanting to know what to do with the contents of his flat,” he said, “but we need to keep it as it is a bit longer as the investigation is not yet formally closed.”

I had never visited Ivan’s place before. He was always secretive about it as he “didn’t want the KGB to know” which I had always taken as being a joke, though history has many examples of supposed Russian attacks in Britain of defectors from the socialist regime.

I had always thought of Ivan living in a big house with some kind of house keeper or servant who did all his washing, cleaning and cooking, but this was more like where the servant might live.

It was a small two-roomed flat on the ground floor of an old Georgian house conversion consisting of a living room with a settee that could convert into a bed, a small table with a single chair and a television, and a bedroom with a single bed, a wardrobe and a bedside cupboard.

The separate bathroom and kitchen were also very small.

The kitchen had one of those electric “do everything” cookers combining microwave, air fryer and grill, a small fridge freezer containing some butter, marmalade, a couple of apples and a bottle of Pilsner lager with a few slices of bread in the freezer. The cupboard just had a few tins of stew and some soups. There was also a washing machine.

The bathroom was equally sparse with a shower with a bottle of shampoo on its small shelf and a toilet with a toilet brush and a bottle of cleaner beside it. The shelf above the washbasin had a mug holding a half used tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, there was also a shaving stick and a couple of disposable razors on the shelf together with some after shave. There was a single, plain dark blue bath towel on the rail.

Everything was clean. Even the waste bin was empty.

There were no bookshelves or ornaments in the flat and no pictures on the wall. I guessed he probably kept all his reading material on his computer. In fact there were almost no personal belongings to be found anywhere. There were a few clothes in the wardrobe: one smart suit, a few shirts of various colours and some trousers plus shorts, tee shirts, underwear and socks, a pair of smart black shoes and some trainers. The bedside cupboard had his swimwear, towel and goggles.

Matt indicated that was where they had found the only piece of writing in the place, the unsigned will.

The flat was obviously just sufficient for his overnight needs. Matt wondered whether he may, perhaps, have some other lodging elsewhere but I was unaware of any.

It was a few days later that Ivan was buried in a corner of Lesser Heath cemetery with no ceremony, just an undertaker’s van bringing a simple wooden box lowered into a hole. Matt and I were the only witnesses apart from the undertaker, and a plastic marker was all there was to identify the grave.

…

I don’t know why I didn’t tell about Matt about the name he had provided as the beneficiary of the will. It’s normal for Chinese people to be addressed by their Family name before their given name. Lei’s family name was Chen.

Chapter 15

Experiments

I was responsible for coining the term “Temporter”. I argued that if something was carried across a space, it was transported; if something was sent to a distant space, it was teleported, so perhaps, if something was carried across, or sent to a distant, time, it could perhaps be temported?

It stuck. It was easier, and more appropriate, than calling it the Transmission Box and “The Time Machine” was the title of a book by H. G. Wells.

But we needed to prove we had actually invented time travel, how to manage it and what its implications and limitations were.

We had so far only succeeded in sending the subatomic particles that constitute light and sound. There would definitely need to be considerable ramping up before we knew if we could send anything larger.

After short discussion, we decided to create a fine water mist, like a fog. It would be easily detected by moisture meters and probably visible.

We experimented to get just the right size and visibility of water droplets we could force through a nozzle into the TB that would be visible and easily detectable. Now we considered the RB to be unnecessary, we ditched the initials and used the designation I had advocated.

The nozzle from out mist generator would be inserted into the seal of the lid of the temporter.

The difficulty had been in assessing the exact mass that would be in the chamber when the temporter was activated. Ivan was getting his head around the equations requiring exact measurements to enable possible calibration of the system.

I suggested a simplification. “How about a simple hypodermic syringe, like giving an injection? It would provide a precise measurement of the liquid expelled and I’m sure we could set a syringe pump at a fast rate to provide a single quick burst of spray into the box.”

“That’s why we wanted you on the team,” said Ivan, “because you think outside the box.” This was met by a groan and Lei punched him playfully on the arm.

We tried the spray idea and it worked but we needed to arrange the lighting to make sure the droplets would be clearly visible. We repurposed the light meters attached to the box for the previous laser experiment to detect reflections and transmissions from the droplets.

We created fantastic rainbow effects which were really quite beautiful to behold.

Once we had finished with ensuring the experimental set up would work, we had to ensure the glass box was thoroughly dry again. After drying it with towelling and a hair dryer we left it overnight with a small tray of silica gel to ensure the air was perfectly dry before the experiment.

As a bit of an afterthought, we also placed the temporter on a massometer, an accurate electronic balance that would detect even minute changes. This had also entailed connecting the electric motor of the syringe pump wirelessly so there was no physical connection to the box. The output from the light meters were also sent wirelessly to the oscilloscope on the control desk.

“You could control it with your mobile phone now,” Lei suggested playfully, but we let Ivan do the honours with a big red button he favoured.

“Three, two, one.”

Ivan dramatically hit the red button followed a second later by the temporter activation switch.

We saw the iridescence of the droplets for a second before it suddenly dispersed to reappear ten seconds later and slowly fading as the droplets fell.

We looked at the graph of the change of mass of the temporter box. It had suddenly dropped by two grams for ten seconds and just as suddenly returned to the previous weight.

I suggested using the same quantity of water as water rather than a mist.

The same two millilitres of water was measured into a petri dish and placed in the temporter.

Everything else remained the same and the experiment was repeated. Again it disappeared immediately but reappeared just two seconds later.

“Of course!” said Ivan. “We forgot the dish itself. The whole thing was five times heavier and only had enough energy to travel one fifth of the distance through time.”

As with all experiments that don’t go exactly as predicted we had learned a lot. “We learn more by making mistakes,” is a mantra I had often used as a teacher. Although it may look pretty to parents on parents’ evening to see pages of ticks in a child’s maths book, that would indicate the work was too easy. I would rather see pages of mistakes which the child learns from and then gets right.

We had found we could temport solid matter but that in future, we would need accurate measurements of the weight to be moved as well as the time distance to move it across.

We devised experiments to send various objects into the future. All reappeared in exactly the same state as when it was sent. Jellies held their consistency and if not set arrived still setting.

It made things easier to use some solid blocks weighing exactly 100 grams each, either singly or in multiples, whilst Ivan ensured he had the equations exactly right to know the time distances the objects were being sent.

Much of our time was spent doing practically nothing as we waited for the objects we had sent to reappear. When I had asked if we could build a second temporter, it was met with a dismissal as it would be far too expensive, unless it could prove its worth in a military capacity which dismayed us as none of us wanted to consider what we were accomplishing could usefully contribute to conflict.

We set up longer time periods overnight or over weekends to enable us to send objects hours or days into the future, though, to be honest, we still weren’t too sure of what use the machine could be.

As we started sending heavier objects further in time, we needed increasing amounts of energy, although just for an instantaneous burst. That was the purpose of the large capacitor array in the concrete bunker but we needed to increase the capacity.

Ivan submitted the request which was granted and a few days later, an army team arrived to add more, and the concrete bunker was enlarged. The small team of military engineers didn’t know, nor need to, what the work was that we were doing but they were on board with the need for secrecy.

An interesting experiment was with a live mouse.

Lei and I were despatched to find a pet shop where we bought a sweet little white mouse in a cage. Lei immediately named in Topo though I said we shouldn’t get too attached to it as it was just for a lab experiment. I think she may have been getting a bit broody but what do I know of a woman’s hormones when she’s just entering her thirties?

We placed the cage with the mouse in the temporter and, taking careful measurements of the total weight, Ivan sent it off two hours into the future.

At the moment he pressed the send button, Topo was on his wheel. He, and the cage, disappeared instantly. We had timed it to be over our lunch break but we were all too tense and nervous, hoping for Topo’s survival, to eat.

Two hours later, Topo reappeared on his wheel. When splicing out the two hours transit time from the video recorded by the observation camera, there was no visible break at all. Topo just appeared to continue running round his wheel as if nothing had happened.

“If a human could live through this, we could possibly have an alternative to cryo-hibernation for long distance space travel?” I joked.

“It’s not Sci Quest,” retorted Lei.

Ivan taking this suggestion seriously said it would be impossible currently as the power required would be too large and the equipment would be too big and heavy. However, he acknowledged, it may well be a feasible long term possibility if better power sources and miniaturisation of the equipment could be developed, though probably not in his lifetime, he added somewhat prophetically.

Looking at other possible uses, which the life pause experiment had triggered, I wondered about bacteria.

Could we devised a simple test, growing bacteria on a petri dish and send it over a long period of time?

We had been working at the lab for many weeks without a real break but Ivan had previously said we should all take a summer holiday month off which would be the perfect time for this experiment.

Lei and I looked at each other and grinned. We had already made plans for a cycling holiday together.

Ivan worked on the details and we set up the experiment. I had suggested using a mouldy orange but he pointed out penicillium was a fungus rather than a bacterium. However, he thought he could source a suitable sample of staphylococcus from the hospital. He liked the idea of following in Fleming’s footsteps.

Alexander Fleming had accidentally discovered the world’s first antibiotic just over a hundred years previously when returning from holiday to a petri dish he’d left, whilst he had been working at St. Mary’s Hospital, part of Imperial College where Saanvi was studying, I couldn’t help noticing.

Ivan oversaw the details of the experiment. Lei and I collected a sample from the histopathology labs at the hospital, on the Friday afternoon. Our month’s holiday was due to start the next day and my cycling holiday with Lei was a week away.

The specimen was already growing in agar in a petri dish. We just needed the accurate weight, around twenty grams measured on the scale on which the temporter now permanently resided, and we were ready.

“Okay. It’s nearing five o’clock on Friday evening,” declared Ivan. “I’ve set the time for seven hundred hours which will take us to one o’clock, lunch time, five weeks on Monday.”

As the clock reached the hour, he hit the button. “Have a good holiday. I’ll look after Topo.” That’s when we knew Ivan was a softie at heart as well.

Chapter 16

Lei

From the moment I first saw her at the presentation in Athens, I had been seduced by those dark eyes, that seemed to draw me in, and the softness of her face. Her appearance of innocence in a way scared me.

A lost puppy can seem adorable and provide an urge to be hugged but it is a feeling I often automatically resist so that I would never to be accused of inappropriate behaviour to someone younger.

She always seemed so full of life and had a great sense of humour.

It was that attraction that made me so keen to accept the offer she and Ivan had made for me to join the team. I had known I would enjoy working with her and being in her presence.

When she had initiated the kiss on the cheek and I had hugged the ‘puppy dog’, I had felt an electric shock run through me, a frisson from a momentary connection I wanted to repeat forever and relived in my dreams.

I enjoyed those moments when we could be alone together. We just chatted so naturally with each other. Was this really what it felt like to have a “soul mate”?

She told me how she became involved in this project.

She had been attending college in London on a student visa, where she had also met Ivan doing a similar course. However after finishing their undergraduate and master’s degrees, Ivan had ploughed into research, to support his thesis in the involvement of quantum entanglement in electronic communications, which gained him a doctorate, Lei had followed a taught masters.

Their PhD and MSc were certainly more advanced than my humble BEd.

It did explain our structure. For Ivan, this was an extension of his research; for Lei she interpreted the detail whilst I was the errand boy.

When I made a comment like this to Lei, she dismissed it. We all have a place and contribution to make to a harmonious society, she had said and went out of her way to show me how special I was to her.

“Without you, we couldn’t do our jobs,” she graciously opined. I pictured myself as the dish cleaner whilst Lei was the under-chef following the chef’s instructions at a posh restaurant.

The Chinese had pursued the reunification of her homeland during her university course. Concerned for what may happen if she returned, she had applied for asylum to remain in England.

When she had received a letter from the Home Office to attend the offices in Croydon, she had been extremely concerned. Like Ivan, she had thought this would be to refuse her request and deport her.

She had been subjected to considerable cross examination and skills tests, some of which had been conducted in Mandarin, and which had unexpectedly concluded with asking if she would be happy working on a secret project with Dr Ivan Petrovitch. It seemed he had specifically asked for her.

She was delighted this would mean remaining in Britain and had no hesitation in agreeing and signing the official paperwork, including the Secrets Act.

She had been told that correspondence from thenceforward would be strictly by texts to be destroyed after action using the special work phone they provided her with. It was only to be used to contact others identified by their code identities or “head office” on 0086 9 19 16 25. She had thought it odd as 0086 she knew to be the code for phoning China but they had explained to her the number dialled on that phone would actually be rerouted elsewhere. The 0086 helped identify the project.

She had been given the code ID of 12.3 and 9.16 had contacted her whom she guessed was Ivan who had provided her with the co-ordinates and a time to meet him.

He was glad she had accepted, although she didn’t really know what it was all about but had had the feeling if she had refused, she may well be on a plane back to Taiwan.

It seemed my feelings for Lei were reciprocated as whenever we sat together, she always managed to ‘accidentally’ brush my hand with hers and held my gaze perhaps a little longer when I looked at her, or was it me who held the gaze? Was fate calling us to be more than just work companions?

We started to share our lunchtimes on the grass bank beside the pond in the neighbouring copse, where the swans would always nag to share our sandwiches.

One particularly hot day, Lei impulsively stripped to her underwear and plunged into the pool. “Come on,” she called and a few minutes later we were both splashing about as we had done in Lesvos.

Lying back on the grass afterwards letting the sun dry us, she snuggled up to me.

Still wet, we picked up our clothes and walked back to the lab in our underwear. Ivan hardly raised an eyebrow as we walked in. I let Lei shower first, eschewing her suggestion we share, and showered, dried and dressed properly after she had come out.

Being a particularly warm spell, we made it almost a daily ritual for the next week or so with Lei sporting a yellow and black bikini and me wearing my navy coloured swim shorts. She brought suntan cream and I enjoyed helping her apply it to her gorgeous body.

That’s when we suddenly found ourselves kissing. I don’t know who actually initiated it: one moment we were looking at each other and the next, we were locked in a full on embrace.

We walked back to the lab, hand in hand that day.

It wasn’t long before she moved in with me. It had started when I started inviting her back to mine for dinner occasionally which became habitual.

I’m no Michelin chef but she seemed to enjoy my simple fare, saying it was better than the ready meals she usually relied on. I didn’t admit that was what I used to do but I had an incentive now to brush up on my culinary skills.

After drinking too much wine one evening, we knew she couldn’t drive home so I made up the spare room but she decided she’d rather share the double bed in my room. A couple of days later, she moved in. Most of her belongings fitted in her mini but I utilised my Berlingo, too. It wasn’t as if she had furniture to transport, as she was living in a cottage which she was renting fully furnished.

We started taking it in turns to drive us both to the lab each day but Lei could see I was missing my bike. She said perhaps she could get one, too, so we went bike shopping.

Taking the Berlingo, we drove to a bike shop we had found on the internet and, after much discussion emerged with a hybrid bicycle to complement mine, rather than being a racing bicycle nor a mountain bike, the town bike could do all jobs.

Lei had given it a trial ride around the car park and the helpful salesman had made sure it was adjusted correctly.

I also made sure we bought a cycle helmet and lycra shorts. In answer to her quizzical look, I said, if she were to cycle frequently, or any distance, she would welcome the chamois padding. To her amusement, I also assured her, it is more comfortable to “go commando” under cycle shorts to obviate the static build-up between them and underwear.

Lei had previously been a jogger but hadn’t found the incentive to participate much recently. She welcomed the idea of being able to now participate in some healthy exercise.

In addition to cycling to work together, we also participated in some longer day trips together and she took to cycling like a duck to water. With Hayling Island, Southsea and Lee-on-the-Solent all about 20 miles away, the 4 hour round trip with a lunch stop in between was popular. We even made the 6 hour, 60 mile round trip to Beaulieu in the New Forest via the ferry from Southampton to Hythe where we cycled down the pier with its electric railway that most foot passengers use.

For a holiday of a lifetime, during a month when we had closed the lab, we had signed up for a week cycling from Ho Chi Minh city to Angkor Wat. Lei was excited but slightly hesitant regarding a trip to East Asia but was really pleased we did it.

We also received sponsorship raising funds for Médecins Sans Frontières. Our trip had been shared in an online community of ex Douglas Woods pupils and Bodhi Patel had donated £1000 to MSF for our venture.

The travel company provided top quality mountain bikes and overnight stays were in good hotels. Lei did recognise many words as the Vietnamese language, also commonly used in Cambodia, shares some similar vocabulary to her native Taiwanese Mandarin.

Having completed the challenge, on the last morning of the tour, we were roused at 4:30 and taken by rickshaw to watch the sunrise over the ancient temple at Angkor. It was a simply magical experience. We sat on the stones in pitch darkness with just the quiet background buzzing of crickets and anti-mosquito transmitters, unaware until the sun rose of the hundreds of others also revelling in the stillness. Slowly the familiar outline emerged from the darkness as the sky slowly turned from black to orange to blue.

It was a moment we shared that we will never forget.

The trip had also been educational, enabling me to learn enough about Riziculture to give a talk about it to an Old People’s group on my return which raised even more money for the charity.

I had been impressed that nothing is wasted. The catfish that keep the paddy fields clean and free from parasites become a source of protein. The rice dries on sheets in the sun on the ground with the husks separated by tossing them in the wind and they with dead stalks provide the fuel for brick ovens that turn the filtered silt accumulating in the paddy fields into bricks.

A totally green operation except for the smoke from the brick kilns but it may be considered that the growing rice will have used that carbon dioxide and oxygenated the air.

However, the S-21, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, showing the horrors inflicted by the Khmer Rouge was extremely upsetting for Lei imagining what might have happened to some of her former compatriots.

When, a couple of months later, she discovered she was pregnant, I couldn’t have been happier. In my previous career, I had had a hand in bringing up other people’s children. Now, I couldn’t wait to do it for my own.

I am also convinced I was beginning to develop similar telepathy with her that I had experienced with my twin brother. When she stubbed her toe, mine hurt.

But telepathy, as I know it, is not like the fantasy stories. It’s not being able to control sending and receiving thoughts. It comes occasionally and unbidden in coincidences or odd symptoms like the toe.

Being a scientist, I always look for a rational explanation and mostly it may be explained as coincidence or having similar tastes and experiences, but I had suspected before Lei told me that she was pregnant as I had been getting morning sickness.

Chapter 17

Experiments

Our holiday over, we returned to the lab five weeks later. Ivan had phoned and said he’d looked in on the lab and, since everything there looked okay, he saw no reason for any of us to rush back.

It was 9 o’clock in the morning as the three of us greeted each other and started exchanging notes about our holidays over mugs of coffee and some croissants, Ivan had picked up on his way in.

Ivan had visited Cairns in Australia and regaled us with stories of diving on the Great Barrier reef, visiting the rainforest at Kuranda and travelling through them on an antique DUKW, an amphibious vehicle originally developed in 1942 for deployment in the second world war. I think the technology interested him as much as the flora and fauna, as also with the cable car and vintage railway he’d used to and from the village with its quirky artisan shops.

He showed us lots of photos from his phone which he projected onto one of the lab’s view screens, including bathing under some breathtaking waterfalls such as the spectacular sixty feet tall Millaa Millaa waterfall. I noticed there were no pictures of any travel companions and knowing his penchant for privacy we knew better than to ask.

We waited until he had finished his presentation before we revealed our news. “Congratulations,” he said. Although short on words, his demeanour revealed his delight and later that day he somehow found a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne.

Ivan had set a large display countdown timer on one of the screens to the anticipated arrival of the bacteria culture sent five weeks previously. I suspect the champagne had been to toast the success of that event rather than our news, but how had he known to make it non-alcoholic since he hadn’t already known of Lei’s condition, or had he as he always seemed to know what was going on?

At the stroke of one, the petri dish reappeared. The streptococcus culture looked exactly the same as we remembered it which was borne out by comparison of the image when it had been despatched previously.

Could this indicate a possible future use for our machine?

It could, perhaps, help with food storage or even storage of dead bodies in an undertaker’s mortuary until the funeral.

It would probably be more useful if it were mobile, a transporter as well as a temporter if you wish, but presently, that didn’t appear to be an option.

Perhaps it could be used to hold a patient until surgery, thus reducing waiting times without their condition deteriorating? Though for that, it would be better if it were possible to terminate the temport to order, rather than predetermining it, but that was totally impossible, insisted Ivan since the whole premise of how it worked was to swap the present location for a precise future location instantaneously.

I was thinking we needed to try a personal experience for which I’d be appy to volunteer.

In one of our experiments, we had sent a video camera into the future whilst recording the experience. There had been no change in the viewed image throughout so I’d felt there’d be no problem.

“We’ll need to make a bigger glass box,” said Ivan, “though that won’t be a problem.”

Lei was showing concern, “But nothing untoward has happened,” I said.

“Yet!” she added.

One of the other units on the trading estate was a double glazing company who managed to provide what we needed, and cut it to size.

Assembling the box wasn’t difficult: duct tape was mainly sufficient, providing a suitable join with a hinged lid and side wall, running it along the length and across the joins.

All it required was the reallocation of the sensors and transmitters from the original box and it was ready to test.

After a few tests of various sized masses over various times, it was considered to be working identically to the original.

Was I concerned? Perhaps I was just a little apprehensive but we had seen Topo manage quite happily without seeming to have noticed he’d been moved forwards in time and I didn’t want Lei to worry.

She ensured I had a comfortable mattress to sleep on. The larger box now rested on two large pads forming a weighbridge to accurately determine the weight of mattress and me combined which we found to about 120 kilograms in total.

After some calculations, Ivan said the mass was fine. It would be possibly to temport that up to a maximum of five years but this would be a much shorter test.

I suggested setting the time for half an hour but Lei said she didn’t think she’d manage to wait that long so we compromised on just fifteen minutes.

It was good that the side as well as the lid opened. It made it easier to get into it. When the lid was closed, I felt like I was in a glass coffin. Although I am normally a bit claustrophobic, the box being transparent, I felt no panic. I smiled at Lei and blew a kiss whilst watching Ivan set the controls. “Three, two, one,” I heard faintly through the walls but then they opened the box for me to get out.

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. It went perfectly. You travelled 15 minutes into the future and proved it is safe.”

I didn’t believe them until I saw the video footage. One moment I could be seen in the box as the countdown ended and Ivan pressed the button. Then the box was empty. Lei was shocked and horribly upset although Ivan rushed to comfort her and assure her everything was fine. Then fifteen minutes later, I suddenly reappeared.

“I’ve thought of another use of this,” I said. “It would be great for a magician.”

“But a bit expensive and not portable.”

…

It was a few days later we had an “accident”.

We had been idly sending things into the future to prove to ourselves how well our machine worked.

It was Valentine’s Day and the day before, unbeknown to Lei, I had sent some flowers to her in the temporter to arrive the next day.

The next morning, whilst I was in the bathroom, Lei decided to send me some chocolates to magically appear after breakfast. However, when she pressed send, the chocolates magically appeared to change into the flowers I had sent. My chocolates did actually arrive an hour later.

It was the first time we had tried sending two things at the same time: or rather sending a second item before the first had arrived.

Perhaps we should experiment more with what we had previously thought might cause a problem.

Ivan had a theory about this. He suggested there was some kind of feedback loop. If we were sending an object into the future, anything already in the temporter would be sucked back into the present time to replace it.

There was, however, one snag about testing the theory. We’d somehow need to have an object placed into the temporter at some time in the future for us to access now and we weren’t sure how we were going to do that.

“We’ll obviously need to send something there first!”

 So we sent two of our hundred gram masses twenty minutes into the future. They disappeared as expected the instant the button was pressed.

We then placed a single hundred gram mass in the temporter and ten minutes after sending the first masses, sent the next.

It was just like a magic trick: what had been one cube suddenly became two. We removed it and a few minutes later, twenty minutes after sending the first load, the single cube appeared.

The working hypothesis was that the first load had reached its temporal destination instantaneously but swapped position with the second temporal transmission, or should that be tempmission?

Another experiment was devised to test this.

I couldn’t help thinking how I’d explained scientific method to teachers who had little science background, using the LASTT acronym standing for Look, Ask, Suggest, Try, Tell.

We had looked, observing an unexpected result, we had asked, why it could have occurred. We had suggested, or hypothesised a theory which we were now going to try. Whether we would eventually tell our results to the wider scientific community would be seen but at the moment, this had to be kept secret.

We decided to place an ultra high speed video recorder (UHSVR) in the temporter’s chamber again pointing at an external clock. We set the controls to temport it twenty minutes into the future and pressed the send button at precisely three o’clock.

Once it had disappeared, we placed one of our 100 gram cubes in the chamber and at 15:10, we pressed the button to send it to 15:30.

As we expected, it appeared that the cube became replaced with the UHSVR which we immediately removed.

At half past three, the cube reappeared but we weren’t worried about that as we were looking at the display of the video recording.

The digital time shown flashed quickly from 15:00 to 15:10 but even when we analysed it in close detail, we couldn’t be sure if for a microsecond, it had shown 15:20 between displaying 15:00 and 15:10, so we didn’t think we had proved our hypothesis and would need to think of another way.

We devised a really complex experiment.

First, we would send an auto-flash device (AFD) into the future carried on a small truck programmed to automatically trundle out of the chamber. It would carry the AFD out of the chamber, orient it to face the box and to operate if an object appeared. But we would also send an object to remain in the box.

Next we would send a light receptor object (LRO) into the future bearing a photosensitive cell which would record any detected flash and retrieve the object.

We didn’t need to build an AFD as we already had motion detection cameras and just need to add a flash to one.

A light meter that recorded maximum and minimum levels would provide the LRO.

But we needed something to carry the AFD to exit the chamber, turn round and emit the flash at the particular time.

Turning to me, Ivan said, “That’s your expertise isn’t it?” obviously hinting at the Transporter truck the children had made for the model I had exhibited at that conference all those years before.

It was easy and nothing new. Fifty years before, a popular toy called “Big Trak” had been the rage. It could have done the task required easily. Neither did it need anything as crude as the rubber band pulleys. It was easy to build a simple programmable device to do our bidding and I set to work straight away.

The other amendment we needed to make was to the box. We needed to make the side that opened, hinge down, which it did already, but to automatically close again.

This was easy. The side wall was held closed by small magnets. Assuming the robot carrying the AFD was powerful enough, it could push the side down, and the addition of a couple of relatively weak springs would be all that was required to close it afterwards.

It took a couple of days getting everything right for the experiment and testing it.

Once the robotic truck (RT) had been made, it needed testing. I had added a simple keyboard to program it:

Wait 30 seconds to ensure ensure enough time between turning the RT on and pressing the send button.

Move forward one metre.

Stop.

Turn 180 degrees.

That was all that was required assuming the RT was set facing the hinged side at the beginning.

Whilst recalling these memories, there was something about that Robotic Truck that felt as if it could help fill in that remaining piece of jigsaw that was missing from my memories.

The AFD and LRO were tested at the same time by setting the AFD a metre away from the temporter chamber and facing it and then sending the LRO properly aligned, to be detect any flash from the AFD.

It took a few tries to ensure the correct alignment of all the parts which were carefully marked out and recorded, as well as the positioning of the flash unit so it didn’t all just reflect off the side of the temporter chamber.

So eventually we were satisfied everything was right and we were ready to conduct the experiment.

The temporter was programmed to send the AFD and one of our hundred gram cubes thirty minutes into the future.

Lining up the AFD, correctly facing its exit route, we switched it on and then pressed the temporter’s go button.

That load having been despatched, we loaded up the LRO.

We had left ten minutes so the RT should have had plenty of time to position the AFD correctly, before pressing go to send the LRO just five minutes into the future. It disappeared and was replaced by the cube,

If everything had gone according to our predictions, the LRO would now be sitting five minutes into the future having liberated the cube from thirty minutes in the future.

We just had to wait.

I did, though, wonder whether there might have been an easier way, using an analogue clock and using some kind of detector to see if the hour hand reached the further point on it’s travels, but I had kept that to myself.

Chapter 18

Medical reports

I was awakened from my reverie by my alarm reminding me of my hospital appointment. Today I would finally have my plaster cast removed from my arm.

Our experiments had proved our theories regarding how our temporter appeared to work when sending and receiving at the same time. I wondered whether in the future there may be some quicker way to helping bone fractures heal than just plastering them up for a few weeks.

I had been attending a clinic adjacent to the hospital weekly for the last few weeks where the hospital had referred me to a physiotherapist. A taxi regularly collected me and returned me later that day.

As part of the NHS restructuring some years previously, this physiotherapy was now outsourced to a franchisee. Like other franchised services that used to be the preserve of the NHS, like teeth, eyes and so on, it meant I was met with advertising at the clinic for all sorts of services I could obtain at a cost, even including some exoskeleton robotics for those who had lost all nerve and muscle function of some of their limbs and endoskeleton implants to replace damaged joints. It looked as if the human race were advancing to become cyborgs: science fiction becoming science fact.

However, the physiotherapy to strengthen my leg muscles had still been free and today was to be my last visit although I did have daily exercises I was expected to continue with. A young physio student saw me this time. She said I didn’t need any more physiotherapy treatment and signed me off.

Next, I returned to radiology at the hospital who x-rayed my arm and agreed the plaster cast had done its job, my fracture was fully repaired and I could get back on my bike again but to be careful and to phone the hospital if I experienced any dizzy spells because I knew there was still a small piece of my memory missing as I couldn’t recall the events prior to the explosion. The neurologist said I may never know.

Otherwise I was free to go.

Apart from the x-rays and scans I had had there, I felt there were other reasons that I remembered this unit for.

As I walked out of the hospital, I couldn’t help but look in on the emergency department and seek out Tala. It was obvious she remembered me when she saw me.

“I was just passing,” I told her, “and wanted to thank you for everything you did for me.”

“I was just doing my job,” she answered modestly. “I see so many wounded soldiers and not all make it through. I’m glad you are now one hundred per cent.” I’m assuming she meant the term metaphorically as we were not at war to my knowledge.

To get to the taxi pick up point, I had to pass the maternity hospital. More memories had come flooding back.

Our elation at discovering Lei’s pregnancy had been short lived.

I had had the feeling things weren’t right and Lei also admitted concerns the baby may not be developing properly.

At the first scan, we had seen the head and limbs as the sonographer moved the scanner across Lei’s tummy and we could also see the heartbeat. We had been so excited. They were also able to verify how old it was confirming what we had suspected, that our baby had probably been conceived in Cambodia.

Amongst all sorts of names we started discussing, we had suggested Cameron or Angie to remind us of Cambodia and Angkor Wat, although we both agreed we could never forget that experience.

Lei had been experiencing heartburn. Being something of an expert on that subject with my own history of acid reflux, I knew it was to be expected and had laid on plenty of Gaviscon to manage it.

Our growing baby was pushing Lei’s stomach and contents up into the oesophagus where the acid was attacking the lining causing heartburn. Gaviscon is an antacid that neutralises the acid in the oesophagus giving some relief.

I was also experiencing her continuing heartburn and headaches, possibly by telepathy, although my acid suppressant medicine should have been helping me. (Acid suppressants reduce the amount of acid being made rather than neutralising acid that has already been made and is just in the wrong place.)

Our doctor just said it was the foetus causing reflux and prescribed her acid suppressants although I knew they would do nothing, so we contacted the maternity unit who brought forward the planned five month scan to look for any anomalies to just sixteen weeks.

I held her hand as the sonographer applied the gel and rubbed the scanner across her swelling abdomen.

I noticed the hint of a worried frown across her brow as she said, “Excuse me” and returned with the radiologist who looked at the scan and wiggled the scanner head a bit more.

We could see the image but neither of us had sufficient expertise to make any assessments of what we were seeing.

The senior specialist nurse described the concern. She explained, as we knew, that the baby develops in a sac in the uterus filled with amniotic fluid to protect it and help it thrive but Lei was producing too much.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I thought but she went on to say it is a condition known as polyhydramnios which can cause anencephaly in the baby which is nearly always fatal whilst polyhydramnios can also cause problems for the mother.

We were devastated. Lei was wondering if it was anything she had done wrong but were told they don’t really understand the reasons at the moment, although there may be some genetic factors they hadn’t yet discovered, but she described it as idiopathic and that there was no known cure or treatment they could offer. “Of course, things are changing so quickly in medicine and, who knows, in ten years time, they may have a treatment, but for now, we can only suggest an abortion.”

An abortion! We just looked at each other in stunned dismay.

The nurse tried to be as sympathetic as she could but had to present the gravest news.

“Your baby has anencephaly due to the polyhydramnios; it means parts of the head, the skull and the brains, will not develop properly. It will most likely cause still birth before term but if it does carry to term, it will probably die within hours.” Moreover, she could not guarantee that any future pregnancy would be trouble free andit could even threaten Lei’s life.

Dejected we returned home. We hadn’t agreed to an abortion but we didn’t know what else we could do.

“Who knows, in ten years time, they may have a treatment,” repeated Lei. “Do you think?”

We needed to discuss this with Ivan. He wanted to do all he could to help us but was not hopeful of our suggestion that we could send Lei ten years into the future in the hope of a cure. He thought we were clutching at straws, which we probably were, but, wanting to give us hope, started on the calculations.

Lei was short and, even in her pregnant state weighed no more than 60 kilograms. I was 12 kilograms heavier than her and I had been temported successfully. However, we had not tried temporting anything that far into the future yet.

Coming back with his calculations concluded, Ivan said, there was just a chance. Temporting that mass that distance was right at the very upper edge of what we may be able to achieve but it would require all the power we could generate. If we were to go ahead with such a foolhardy plan, we’d need to charge up all our capacitors for a week, hoping they’d hold the strain.

And so we came up with our plan.

We would send a note ten years into the future telling any recipient to expect a pregnant mother with polyhydramnios and a foetus with anencephaly a week later seeking treatment.

We’d then charge the power packs and send Lei.

A fortnight after that we’d send another object hopefully in exchange for a cured Lei and a baby developing healthily.

I knew it sounded madness but we were both so desperate we were prepared to try anything.

So we sent our first note providing as much detail as we could and the timeline for our experiment and started charging the batteries.

During the week, Ivan kept reminding us it was not too late to change our minds.

D day arrived.

Ivan had calculated the maximum weight that could be temported 10 years was just sixty kilograms. Lei was short and normally below that figure but what about the extra mass of the growing baby?

The scales showed she just exceeded the weight limit.

“Sorry. You’ll have to somehow lose some weight. I don’t like to ask this, but would you be comfortable, stripping to your underwear?”

Lei said she had no problem and, because we were all adults, she had no problem in stripping entirely. She only just scraped in under the limit by about a hundred grams.

She looked beautiful and vulnerable lying there. I just hoped we’d see her in a fortnight’s time looking even more radiant with a healthy baby inside her.

We closed the box. Ivan had already set the dials to the maximum which was required as he prepared to press the button.

Chapter 19

Police Investigations

I once again found myself arrested.

I had a phone call from Matt. Was I going to be in as he wanted a chat.

I had no plans on going anywhere, although I would have liked to be able to go for a cycle now I’d lost the plastercast and it would be helpful physio exercise.

Half an hour later, two police cars arrived. Matt was accompanied by a senior detective from Fareham and three others.

The inspector had a very broad Welsh accent so I wasn’t surprised when he introduced himself as Inspector Evans, a tall, scrawny man with a sallow countenance that looked as if it had never learned to smile. He had been brought in specifically for this case but I felt a distinct air of unease with him.

“Sorry, Mike,” said Matt. “There’s some new evidence come to light.”

They had a warrant to search my home but didn’t need it. I had nothing to hide, I thought, but they were very thorough.

Whilst they were busy pulling everything apart, Matt didn’t formally arrested me at that stage, nor did he put me in handcuffs as the crime dramas on television delight in showing. He just asked me to accompany him, and Inspector Evans to the station for questioning under oath where I might be charged and detained, and we walked out to one of the cars without any drama of being marched out which could have aroused suspicions with any neighbours or anyone else out and about.

They would have seen Matt at my house before now and knew I had been helping them look into the tragic accident at Lesser Heath industrial park.

I sat in the back seat with Matt whilst Inspector Evans sat next to one of the other detectives who was driving.

I asked Matt about the new evidence and he said he’d show me at the station. He did confirm the fire brigade were convinced the explosion had commenced with a massive electrical build-up in storage capacitors which had destroyed a concrete bunker housing them. I had previously been asked as to its utility and had had to say it was to do with our experiments which were being conducted under the 2023 National Security Act.

At the station, I was ushered into an interrogation room to sit opposite Matt and Inspector Evans.

I formally assented to being filmed and recorded, waived my right to a solicitor or phone call and confirmed my name, age and address as I was formally cautioned and arrested for the murder of Ms Lei Chen.

The questioning was led by Inspector Evans.

“Can you identify this woman?” It was the photo of Lei and I together that I had had in our home that had been taken on our holiday in Cambodia.

“And can you tell us who is this man in this picture?” showing a photo of the three of us Yannis had taken of us on Lesvos years earlier.

“So to recap for the record,” said Inspector Evans. “You have identified Chen Lei of Chinese origin and Ivan Petrovitch of Russian origin.”

I hastened to correct them saying we knew her as Lei Chen and she was from Taiwan before Chinese reunification and Ivan Petrovitch was from Belarus before Russian reabsorption and they had both been UK citizens for more than ten years.

He said my comments were noted but they were two areas of particular interest regarding possible terrorism and espionage.

He went on to question in detail, first, my relationship with Ivan:

Where had I met him? “Greece.”

When? “2032.”

Where [again]? “At the conference on Technology Education and Automation at the Megaron Conference Centre in Sounion. That’s near Athens.” I added if it helped.

Why were you there? I explained about my presentation.

What else did you do and who did you meet, in Sounion?

Why was Mr Petrovitch there? I explained about his presentation. “And that was with Ms Chen?”

I told him it was actually doctor Petruvitch. Although we never used his title, I hoped it would make this inspector be more courteous.

Had I met either of them before?

Why did we meet other than for the presentations?

Why did we decide to leave the conference for a day’s outing?

Who had we met in Lesbos? I told him Levos was the more accurate pronunciation. I didn’t want this man to have the upper hand.

The questioning continued for ages.

“Summarising so far,” he said. “You knew this man of soviet extraction and built a relationship with him and you shared electronic information with each other.” He held up a hand to indicate I should not interrupt.

Then we came on to Lei.

All the same questions.

The two of you became intimately involved? Yes.

In fact, you became lovers? Yes.

And she became pregnant with your child? Yes.

And more and more questions.

“So summarising,” he said, “You knew this woman of Chinese or Taiwanese extraction, and shared intimacies with her.”

I knew better than to interrupt, although “sharing intimacies” wasn’t how I would have defined our relationship.

Inspector Evans, called a short break. A desk clerk brought us cups of tea. I don’t like tea and when I asked if there was coffee instead, the inspector said, “This isn’t the Ritz” but allowed the clerk to fetch me a tasteless, bitter cup of instant coffee; I declined milk or sugar. The tin must have been left open which lets the powder oxidise losing flavour, and it had been made with boiling water which had burned any flavour the original Robusta beans may have once had. I missed my real Arabica coffee. (I guess I’m a bit of a coffee snob but I do favour a particular brand grown at altitude in Peru which is FairTrade and ethically produced.)

Inspector Evans handed over to Sergeant Deacon. I welcomed a friendlier tone.

Matt asked lots of details about me.

Where I had been educated. How long I had taught in Bristol.

Hadn’t I left under a cloud?

Had I had any inappropriate relationships with pupils?

It’s a bit odd isn’t it for a grown man, obviously well educated, to teach young children?

I bristled at any hint of these allegations.

I explained I left voluntarily because the new head and I hadn’t seen eye to eye. If he thought it was under a cloud, he should contact my former advisor and education inspector, Mr Austin.

I was absolutely incensed by any suggestion that I would ever have any inappropriate relationship with a pupil. He could ask Mrs Willis or Mrs Smith, whom I knew he had previously spoken with.

As for my choice of profession, I believe there should be far more men teaching young children, providing a role model. Teaching is far more than baby sitting and it’s extremely sexist to think that nurturing is solely the preserve of women.

Did I still have contact with any ex pupils, particularly Ms Saanvi Patel?

I was pleased to keep contact with the many who had chosen to “like” me on social media. I had had a good relationship with Saanvi and her father, Bodhi, who had even offered me a job.

At the mention of Bodhi Patel, Inspector Evans had a quiet word in Matt’s ear not to pursue those questions and left the room.

Matt switched tactic.

Why had I accepted a job working with Ivan and Lei in Hampshire?

I found it difficult to explain but felt I had been led there.

He asked about the facility at Lesser Heath.

I explained it was primarily an electronics laboratory,

With the ability to spy on many other establishments?

I indicated I was unable to verify whatever he was hinting at.

For many of the questions, I simply answered, “I don’t know” or “I cannot say.”

Cannot or will not?

Well I am still bound by Official Secrets, I said.

Or hiding under them.

After more questioning, Matt called another break.

This time, the clerk brought us some canteen sandwiches, a little dried out and curling at the edge but my ham sandwich was welcome even with the disgusting coffee to wash it down, though it would have benefitted from some mustard.

When Inspector Evans returned he asked if we could adjourn.

I was hopeful something had cropped up meaning criminal charges could be dropped.

The best news, of course, would be that Lei had turned up safe and well.

Of course, I dreaded news that her body had been discovered.

I was led away to a cell.

It was just a sparse room with a narrow, hard bed, a chair and a table. In the corner was a toilet and washbasin.

A couple of newspapers were the only reading material with which to keep myself occupied, though a policeman did provide me with a pencil when I asked so I could at least attempt the crossword.

How long was I required to stay here?

Should I have asked for a solicitor after all?

I knew I was innocent. How on Earth could anyone even suggest I could have done anything to hurt Lei?

With these thoughts still buzzing in my head, and unable to even contemplate attempting the crossword puzzles, I lay down on the bed and must have drifted off to sleep.

I don’t know how much later it was that I was woken up.

Chapter 20

What did happen?

Juliette Brombley introduced herself to me. She was a solicitor who had been requested to represent me by a “friend,” whom she hinted was a parent of one of my ex-pupils who had been taking a special interest in what I had been doing since I had left Douglas Woods. I could quite easily guess who that was.

Juliette was no ordinary sessions solicitor, however, but a barrister specialising in cases involving official secrets.

I had been shown into a private interrogation room without any double glazed observation windows or surveillance cameras and Juliette and I were then left alone, although a clerk did arrive with two cups of really good coffee. She smiled at me as I recognised a proper coffee aroma.

“And there’ll be some croissants soon,” she added. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

It seemed she was considered something of a maven or even a celebrity and they would do whatever it took to keep her happy or she could make their work more difficult.

Juliette told me they had a lot of evidence to support their case but that she was sure I had no case to answer.

She told me they had both of my mobile phones, and managed to reclaim video evidence from the cameras and other evidence at the laboratory but that none of it was sufficient to detain me any longer.

That gave me hope as some warm croissants, butter and jam had arrived plus another pot of coffee.

Juliette was wonderful and had even arranged for me to be able to have a shower. She had brought with her a change of clothes. The “donated” clothes were actually all brand new and bore expensive labels. I felt my benefactor was truly wanting me to know he was looking after my interests.

…

A little later, feeling refreshed and alive, I thought I was ready to face anything when we were called for a resumption of interrogations.

Matt collected us and led us to the interrogation room where Inspector Evans was already awaiting us. He stood up and helped Juliette to her seat but she wasn’t impressed by the show of deference.

“Hello Rhys,” she said in an almost disdainful way; I found it hard to suppress a smirk.

Matt said they had recovered a lot of evidence but he acquiesced to Rhys to conduct the interview.

Why do you have two mobile phones? I explained one was for everyday use and one was to keep work separate, “And secret?” Yes. Of course. I imagined there would be some police phone use he would want to keep secret? He didn’t like my impertinent comment but, shooting a sideways glance at Juliette decided it was better not to respond.

Who are these contacts, labelled 2.15, 9.16, 12.13? On Juliette’s advice, I just said “That’s secret,” and he had to continue on another tack.

Your work phone has many details of times and use of abbreviations? What do TB, RB, TR, LRO, AFD all mean? “That’s secret,” I responded.

Realising he was getting nowhere, he turned to another line of enquiry.

Although we found no remains of Ms Chen, we did find her clothes in a locker that escaped the conflagration, including her underwear. Can you explain? I wished I could.

He went on to say, he knew these were the clothes she was wearing on the day I had killed her. Juliette interrupted to caution against his allegation and he changed it to the day of the accident. She had been picked up cycling in with me that morning by one of the security cameras on one of the other units. I repeated I wished I knew.

He held his hand out to Matt who passed him a couple of photos. One was a still of Lei and me cycling in that morning. She was wearing her favourite light blue trousers and a distinctive yellow blouson top she wore to ensure visibility on the roads.

The other photo showed her clothes spread out on a table, including the distinctive blue trousers and yellow top as well as her underwear.

Could I identify these? Of course. They were her favourite outfit.

“You may have thought the explosion destroyed all the evidence,” he said, “but the forensics team have managed to salvage some frames from the security cameras you had in the lab.”

He pulled up some footage on the computer and projected it on to the large view screen.

“Our experts say much of the footage as been erased by powerful magnetic forces that accompanied the explosion but they have done a sufficiently good job to render features recognisable in some.”

The first clip was from the external camera covering the entrance.

Matt asked me to talk him through what we could see.

It showed two cyclists arrive and Lei type a sequence of seven digits on the keypad to gain entry. It was not possible to see which digits she had pressed. We had deliberately ensured that was masked by the camera in case anyone was able to hack into it. Next she had pressed the call button and the system’s facial recognition had automatically opened the door.

The next clip was from the camera that covered the entrance. It showed Lei and me arriving that morning and stowing our bikes in the loading bay. We removed our helmets and our faces could be clearly seen.

I acknowledged it showed us.

I unhitched the pannier my bike sported and we entered into the lounge section of the lab.

“So what was in your pannier?” I couldn’t remember precisely what I was carrying on that particular day but it would have typically been supplies to top up the kitchen and any personal effects for the two of us.

The camera that had been least damaged was the one that showed our lounge area. There was footage showing the three of us eating and drinking and laughing together which I was finding very upsetting remembering the fun we had together and now one of them was dead and I may never see the love of my life again.

“Doesn’t look like you do much work?” I explained that this was our rest area and that because of the secret nature of what we did, there wouldn’t have been cameras trained on our work area.

“Except this one,” said Matt as he called up his last clip.

It was almost unwatchable as mostly it was flashes and broken pixels due to the magnetic interference. It was the camera that pointed directly down at the Temporter showing a glimpse of just an empty glass coffin in an earlier frame. He paused the playback, Why do you call it “temporter”, is it because it’s temporary. I hadn’t realised I must have used that term unintentionally. I just responded, “That’s Secret,” so he resumed the video. After more flashing and pixelation, one clear final shot remained which Matt froze the screen on.

It was a picture of my beautiful Lei, lying naked inside the glass coffin. It made me sick to consider how many pervy officers may have been turned on by viewing this.

“Please can we turn off the screen?” asked Juliette. “You can see how distressing this is for my client.” Matt acceded.

Rhys Evans now took up the questioning.

Was this some kind of satanic ritual sacrifice? Not at all.

Why was she lying naked inside a glass box? Was it an art installation? No.

Well most people don’t take their clothes off and lie in a box at work do they? I didn’t respond to that cynical question.

How was she sacrificed? Was it some poison gas let into that box? I reacted angrily and Juliette had to calm me. I DID NOT KILL HER!

So then you disposed of the body in the explosion which was bigger than you’d planned?

Juliette intervened, “Inspector Evans. Mr Miller has already stated he did not kill Ms Chen! Please change your line of questioning as you are clearly upsetting him.”

Changing his line of attack, the inspector pulled up two short video sequences one after the other. The first showed the truck Saanvi’s team had made for their transporter bridge model and the second the programmable truck I had made for the experiment looking for more information on how the rebound effect of temportation may occur.

He could have found the first online in the archives of the Sounion conference but I had no idea how he had obtained the second clip.

So. Can you tell me what we have just seen? The first is a model made by my pupils about eleven or twelve years ago. The second is a robotic truck I made for one of our experiments. I don’t know how you obtained that video. He explained it had been found on Lei’s private phone which the forensic team had been able to hack.

Rhys Evans then brought out his pièce de résitance. It was a mangled version of what appeared to be the same robotic truck on which was mounted a tablet with a cracked screen. They had been unable to get the tablet working but the image of the last screen when it had obviously been caught in the blast was burned in.

Shown on the screen in clearly visible letters it said,

“You will kill somebody  ”

The final piece of my memory jigsaw came clearly back into focus.

We had ensured Lei was as comfortable as anyone could be, lying naked in a glass box with no pillows or blankets, and Ivan had pressed the button.

Lei had vanished into the future to be replaced with a robotic truck bearing a tablet which rolled out displaying that warning.

Then everything went black as the explosion occurred.

I told them I now knew what had happened. I wanted to explain that Lei had vanished and been replaced by the robot but they would probably have wanted to section me there and then. I could imaging Inspector Evans’s sarcastic voice: “So the fairies took her?”

Do you know where Lei is? I said I knew where I hoped she was.

And can you take us to her? No. It’s not possible.

Why not? That’s secret.

It sounded like a lame answer and caused Rhys and Matt to roll their eyes and for Juliette to say, “He obviously cannot.”

It left me with a load of questions.

Did I kill Lei?

Did Ivan kill Lei?

Did an electrical problem cause the explosion?

Is Lei alive and well 10 years from now and has she had the baby?

Was it deliberate sabotage or a sinister attack from a foreign power, perhaps Russia or China?

Part 3

Rebuilding

Chapter 21

What now?

The evidence against me had been pretty flimsy.

Juliette Brombley had questioned the reliability of the recordings. If Lei’s body had been in the glass coffin, how could it have been moved to the site of the explosion in the time suggested? Wasn’t it more likely she would have climbed out of the box and walked across to the explosion site, if, indeed, her body was destroyed that way and if so, why were no traces ever found. Even from a body lying on top of a bomb, there would be some remnants.

It all sounded pretty ghoulish to me and I was thankful to some extent that at least I knew she didn’t end up in the centre of the explosion.

Juliette summed up that although it looked as if Lei could have perished in the explosion, there were anomalies; it seemed she was not near the site of the explosion. Although it was a mystery as to what happened to her body, dead or alive, that’s what it remained: a mystery.

Also there was no evidence that I had been responsible for the explosion or her disappearance.

The police had no option but to drop charges and I was free to go.

At Juliette’s insistence, they reluctantly returned my private possessions including my phones; after all, they knew how to get hold of me if needed, but they would not release Lei’s effects. It was still a missing persons investigation and her clothing and belongings were evidence.

I thanked Juliette for all her help. She said she was delighted to help and that she was available for when I next needed her, checking I had her contact details. “And if I’m busy, leave a message and I’ll get straight back to you.”

I noticed she’d said when I needed her, rather than if, and recognised that was, of course, the most likely inevitability.

For now, I was feeling a bit lost. I was glad my memory was finally intact and I had hope to grasp onto.

Then, somehow, one of the ghastly news media outlets somehow acquired the photo of Lei’s body in the glass coffin and ran with the headline:

“Satanic rites in Hampshire. We have the naked truth!” together with the photo, though, with some pixelation of the pubic area and nipples which was no less titillating.

I phoned Juliette. Within a couple of hours it had been removed from their site and an apology had been issued.

I wondered how this image, which had only been obtained by the police forensics team working on the video evidence, could have been leaked and by whom. I personally didn’t trust that welsh inspector.

I was bolstered up by a video phone call I received from “somewhere in the middle east.” It was from Saanvi and Frances.

Having finished their degrees, they were taking a gap year with Médecins Sans Frontières where they were seeing some horrific injuries from people caught up in war zones.

They had been distressed enough by my being caught up in the accident and losing both my best friends at the same time. They hoped Lei would turn up okay and wished they had met her in person, though they had spoken on a video call. They did like to keep contact occasionally by more than just social media.

…

I returned to the lab.

I didn’t really know what to do. Anything that was obviously destroyed beyond any possibility of repair needed to be thrown thrown out, but was anything worth keeping? I certainly knew insufficient to even contemplate repairing anything or rebuilding and for what purpose?

If by some miracle, Lei was able to return tomorrow, would she know enough to rebuild or would we even want to.

Shouldn’t I just accept the project was dead? If it would be ten years until a remote possibility of reuniting with Lei, would she still want to?

Shouldn’t I just clear out everything and terminate the lease on the unit? I didn’t even know who owned the lease. There was just too much to comprehend.

As I poked around the charred remains sweeping soot and ash and vacuuming the dirt, it started to look less of a mess. Was it possible for some of these instruments to be repaired? I knew they had been very expensive originally. Would they have any value to anyone and how would I find someone interested?

I could get the neighbouring unit to reglaze the damaged windows but were they my responsibility or the landlord’s and was there adequate insurance. If so, could I claim for any damaged and destroyed equipment even though I didn’t know what half of it was actually called let alone what some of it did.

I realised my mind was just going round in circles.

I took myself to the little lake in the copse where I had so often thought through dilemmas.

The swans appeared so calm and serene. “Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.” The saying is attributed to Michael Caine but was probably Japanese in origin. It didn’t really matter, this distraction was what I needed to clear my head.

I decided I would continue to clean up everything I could and leave everything clean and tidy. If there was anything I knew I could repair, I would do it. I could rebuild the glass coffin for instance.

I could replace burned out cables even if there was little I could do about the electronics of the boxes they were connected to.

Working hard, scrubbing and cleaning, throwing out obvious rubbish and repainting lockers and walls was hard work but it kept my mind busy.

I bought most of the electrical wiring I identified was required, from one of the neighbouring units in the trading estate.

The neighbours were very good and sympathetic. I guessed they were thankful the incident hadn’t affected them and their businesses.

The double glazing company had already started work on the top of the range replacement triple glazing for the front window saying it had been paid for.

One of the traders who owned L.H. Electronics, was eager to volunteer his services if I needed help repairing electrical devices but I had to reluctantly turn him down as I revealed for the first time that our work was highly classified. He seemed impressed but I did ask him to keep the confidence.

I also visited a DIY centre and bought up the materials to rebuild the bomb proof bunker, following videos on YouTube to find out the best mixes. I had sufficient engineering expertise to work out the best shape, with a dome roof, and the means to achieve it.

What more could I do?

Although I am not religious, I could pray for a miracle. I hadn’t realised that prayer was about to be answered in an unusual way.

Chapter 22

Dafydd

My work phone rang causing me to jump.

As far as I knew the only people that would contact me via this would have been Ivan, 9.16, or Lei, 12.3. I knew it couldn’t be Ivan but could it possibly be Lei?

My heart leaped although I knew it was impossible, but the ID was not 12.3, nor 9.16 of course, nor even 2.16 who was our paymaster, but showed an unknown, 4.23.

Who on Earth not only had access to this secure line but had a secret ID code?

I cautiously answered it.

“Diwrnod da. Shwmae,” sang a Welsh voice.

I knew this meant good day and how are you? Was this some spam call even though they weren’t supposed to be possible on this phone.

My heart sank. “You’re not a colleague of Rhys Evans are you?”

“No. I’m a friend.”

I knew we shouldn’t be giving personal details on the phone which he acknowledged.

“That’s why I’m calling, syr. Can I come and see you?”

He knew where I was and suggested the next day at 10:00 which I agreed.

…

At precisely 10:00 I met the stranger outside the unit. He arrived on an electric motorcycle which I assured him should be safe padlocked up outside.

I was particularly careful especially as Ivan had revealed the discovery of a new agent who might be after our work and whom we had thought might be Welsh.

I suggested we walk into the copse. He didn’t look like he could harm a fly and didn’t appear to be carrying any sort of weapon with which he could attack me but I wasn’t letting him inside.

“What do you know about ‘Rolling Road’?” I decided to test him.

He hesitated, not a good sign, but rapidly went on to say,

“I’m sorry about the subterfuge but I am a friend of Fran … er, Frances Smith. My name is Dafydd or Dai for short.”

“And I’m guessing your surname is Williams?”

“How did you guess?” I didn’t tell him I had worked out it began with W and Williams is a common Welsh surname.

The lad was about the same age as Frances but I wasn’t taking anything at face value. Dai was slim and tall in his twenties with a shock of red hair cropped into a crew cut.

I led him to the lake and we sat on the bank. I wasn’t going to say anything yet as I didn’t want to give away any information. I just sat and waited for him to talk.

“I live in Rhondda. I met Frances, and Saanvi, at college. They’re so close, like sisters, and I was worried if I befriended Fran, I’d come between them, but I was just finishing my master’s when they had just started as undergrads. We all became great friends and I helped her, Fran that is, through her course as my subject in quantum physics overlapped with some of her studies.

Saanvi’s father helped me find a job. He’s great. I don’t know what he does but he obviously has contacts. It’s secret, my job that is, but it has to do with communications. I had to sign the official secrets act.”

It was difficult to interrupt his flow as he hadn’t even paused for a breath but I interrupted.

“Okay, slow down. Let me ask you a few questions.”

How had he learned about me? The girls are always talking about the teacher who inspired them.

Where was Frances at the moment? I already knew the answer to this, but it was to test him. He told me she was somewhere in the Middle East with Saanvi. They could not give a precise location but the girls were working with MSF on a gap year break.

Do you know what we are doing here? He said he actually knew quite a bit. He had been working on a thesis regarding the use of a submerged tube, not a tunnel, he added quickly but tethered to certain points of the seabed, to carry trains at supersonic speeds using magnetic levitation and propulsion in a vacuum between Scotland and Ireland but that may also have the possibility of being scaled up to even cross the Atlantic some day, it would depend on mapping currents at different depths and calculating stability but the tube didn’t need to be rigid; it could be flexible like a hose. He was digressing but jumped back on track. He did like to talk.

He had then discovered Dr Petrovitch’s seminal work and hoped to build on it. It was his interest in this that had piqued Mr Patel’s interest in offering him a job.

He couldn’t tell me too much about what he was currently doing but it did involve working in an office which was part of the Home Office. Being bilingual, because he spoke Welsh, had been sufficient to pass the foreign language requirement for the post but he was now spending many hours a week at the language labs learning Russian – “So I can read Dr Petrovitch’s other works?” he added, rather unconvincingly. I guessed I knew why he needed Russian but didn’t pursue that.

Dai revealed he knew a lot more about Dr Petrovitch as well as Ms Chen and me. He had obviously been doing a lot of homework. He could tell me so much about me he could have written my biography. He told me where I had gone to school and about my twin brother and his wife, too. He had gone off track again but jumped back once more.

“I know you sometimes used the codenames Cob, Pen and Cygnet and was going to suggest you could call me Allah if you wish.”

“So, you have a god complex? Sorry but I’m not a Muslim,” I retorted.

Dai hastened to interrupt.

“Not Allah but Alarch,” he said. “It’s Welsh for Swan but if you now become Cob, perhaps I could be Cygnet?”

“I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. Those codenames were for the team of us working for Swan Innovations but we haven’t really had need for them.” I thought if I ‘became Cob’ I would denigrate Ivan’s memory.

“Well, that’s actually why I wanted to see you. You see, I’m actually hoping … that is Mr Patel thought … you might be able to offer me a job?” he stumbled.

“Well, it looks like you’re out of luck. Swan Innovations doesn’t really exist any more. You may have missed it but two-thirds of the team are dead or missing. So we have no job to offer.”

“That’s the point,” he insisted and went on to say, he may be able to get Ivan’s work restarted. “And I may be able to get Lei back for you.”

“You’ve sold yourself,” I agreed, “but how do I know you’re legitimate and not actually a spy?”

“You mean like ‘Taffy’? Sorry I wasn’t fully honest with you before. I have heard about a project the Russians have given the codename ‘Rolling Road’ to but I didn’t want you thinking I had been sent to destroy it. I can confirm ‘Rolling Road’ is actually the name the Russians have given to your project. They know it was to have been attempting to develop teleportation but they don’t know about the discoveries you have made that has changed course to it being about temportation and I want to make sure they don’t find out.”

He did say the Russians knew we had made an astonishing breakthrough, but they thought it was still in the realm of teleportation, which actually the Chinese had taken a lead on.

From what he’d heard, it seemed likely the Russians thought we may have had a breakthrough with teleportation of people, but which required the body to be naked, and that the explosion was because something had gone wrong: something which they were all too familiar with, remembering the early failures in the initial days of their space race.

They had thought they had identified the location of the teleportation transmission but not the destination.

Taffy had been directed to find out the destination and to then destroy the project before we worked out what had gone wrong.

“So, you think Taffy was responsible for the explosion?” I asked.

“No I don’t think so because he has failed in the first objective. If you let me join the team and explore more of what Dr Petrovitch was doing, I hope to be able to discover what did cause it.”

That’s when I thought he had bought himself a job.

“Come with me.”

We stood up and walked back to the lab, where Dai did the honours, demonstrating he knew the lock code and the facial recognition had somehow already been programmed to let him enter.

“Welcome to the team,” I said, “but there’s just one thing. We knew him as Ivan. You may drop the title. He would have preferred it.”

Chapter 23

Reconstruction

Dai explored the system very thoroughly. Although we had deliberately not kept any written records, he had to reveal that our “paymasters” did have some details on their servers from activity we had utilised our special work phones for. Access to that helped considerably.

His first focus was ‘the lump’ – well that’s what we referred to it as.

It was a big, heavy block which was the main reason the temporter was not portable. It was mainly made of lead as in the centre was a small amount of a radio active element.

It’s not sufficient to cause danger by itself, Dai assured me. It’s to release subatomic particles which were somehow involved.

Fortunately, it passed all his tests as if it hadn’t there was zero chance of doing anything to get the temporter working again.

Our capacitor storage facility needed complete replacement. He admired my handiwork with the bomb-proof dome but it was the actual capacitors that would need replacing.

He suggested we could order them from our neighbours L.H. Electronics whom we could ask to keep secret since they already knew we were engaged in secret activity. If necessary, we could get them to sign the secrets act but it probably wasn’t necessary as they didn’t have any idea of what we were trying to do and would welcome the size of the purchase.

Dan, who was the trader at L.H. Electronics with whom I had previously spoken, was eager to help. On promise of absolute secrecy, we let him visit the lab to assess the physical size requirements that would meet our specification. He also revealed we could have them super-cooled to help prevent any future fire risk.

We couldn’t hide the ‘glass coffin’ that I had repaired. I could tell by his glance at it, that he had seen the news picture.

“I confess I did,” he said. “I get automatic alerts about any news that may affect the trading estate but I shut it off before any of my workers would get a chance of seeing it.”

I said it was like a magic trick that had gone wrong and we were hoping to make the vanishing lady reappear again later.

He touched his nose and winked, signalling he knew I was spinning a yarn but that he wouldn’t let on. However, I did ask him to sign a shortened secrecy sheet not to reveal anything he saw or heard in our lab.

Dan was helpful in fitting the special capacitors when they arrived and sourcing other electronic bits and pieces, too.

Dai meanwhile had turned his attention to the broken communication tablet. We had had to put in a special request to Hampshire Police to permit access to this piece of evidence that they retained but when I said I thought we would be able to find the missing person if we accessed it, they gave it up quite easily which made me suspect they had been leant on by someone in the Home Office.

Dai started dismantling it. Although it was obviously intended to be inaccessible, working very carefully with fine tools, including a dentist’s drill, he was able to prise the broken pieces apart and connect them to our view screens.

Powering it up, the message headline indeed showed, “You will kill someone” but it continued, “if you’re not careful. You may send harmful bacteria that has been eradicated in the future.”

It was not a notification that we were intending harm but a warning to protect the distant future. We couldn’t let Matt know, however, as it wouldn’t make sense without him having to know about temportation.

…

Now I trusted Dai I got to know him more.

The Welsh valleys were now booming. The legacy of coal mining had long passed and modern new industry in the Cwm Rhondda Cynon Taf had rejuvenated these narrow valley towns which had become desirable again aided by the extensive modern light rail network, the South Wales Metro, running to Cardiff Docks that the Senedd were particularly proud of. Although Cymru had not become fully independent, like Alba and Ulster the home nations had benefitted from the considerable amount of autonomy they had achieved in recent years.

Cwm I knew was Welsh for Valley and the area was named after the valleys of the three principal rivers of South Wales above Cardiff.

Although some of the rows of terraced miners’ cottages had been retained, it was usually just the frontages with the interiors gutted and rebuilt as efficient modern homes. I remembered seeing a fun film featuring an old English pop group called the Beatles many years ago where the four musicians had supposedly converted similar terrace houses in Liverpool in that fashion.

Dai was no miner’s son seeking a better life than the pits, but was from an educated family. His parents both worked for the Welsh NHS at the Hospital. His mother was a paediatric surgeon and his father worked on drugs research.

My recounting of Lei’s polyhydramnios and the baby’s anencephaly obviously resonated with him as they would be of interest to his parents.

Knowing my love of cycling, he suggested that at some time we might visit his parents as they lived near Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, which I might know better as the Brecon Beacons where there was some excellent cycling including the 55 mile Taff Trail from Cardiff to Brecon along the Taff valley which he had only covered on his electric motorbike.

I told him I’d love that sometime but for now I was more focussed on the possibility of finding Lei and our baby.

Dai tried to be as gentle as possible but said the suggestion of a cure for birth defects like anencephaly, particularly after the first couple of weeks were extremely unlikely and would most probably not be accomplishable within the next twenty years let alone ten. However it may be a different story for polyhydramnios as we were now learning a lot more about it.

…

Dafydd appeared to understand what he was doing and having watched Lei at work previously, I was able to assist him as he tried to reconstruct everything.

We reconstructed various test projects Ivan, Lei and I had previously conducted. Each time, Dafydd was learning more and making many fine tweaks.

Eventually he thought we were ready to test Temporter Mark 2. Though it was, hopefully, essentially identical to the Mark 1, we may have got some of the wiring neater knowing more about what we were aiming for now.

The temporter also now permanently resided on a pair of massometers that were wired to automatically feed the measurements into the time controller which had been simplified to not much more than a dial to set the time co-ordinates and the red button which we retained for the drama of it. There was also a gauge to show the amount of charge that was available and an automatic shut down which would not permit temportation if it was insufficient for the measured mass and the time setting selected.

So, beginning with one hundred gram masses again, we resumed temporting.

I was, of course, anxious to try and see if we could find Lei, but Dafydd said we must make sure everything was perfect first. We wouldn’t want any recurrence of the accident.

He had worked on his own theory which seemed to make some sense.

When a time exchange happens, that is receiving some rebound when something is temported to the future, instead of requiring the input of a massive amount over an infinitesimal amount of time, it could be that a rebound surge pushes more charge into the capacitors rather than draining them. This could account for the accident that had occurred.

Although we had just enough power to send Lei ten years into the future, the exchange tablet on its robotic carrier sent a little extra charge which could have been sufficient to exceed the capacitors’ storage capability.

It didn’t sound quite right to me as the discharge would have occurred at the same time as the received charge and I would have thought that theory would have required the received charge to arrive first but Dai tried to explain it which I didn’t understand.

So we embarked on a ‘Recover Lei’ task.

We decided to send a message ten years into the future to ask if Lei was there and to inform anyone receiving the message that we would repeat the same operation exactly 10 hours later, so if Lei was there, “they” would know to have her lined up in the glass coffin ready.

To avoid any bacterial contamination, we wouldn’t send the message on paper but use an electronic tablet which could be well cleaned with antibiotics first.

So we sent the message.

We then drained the capacitors of all charge except for the amount required to send one of our 100 gram cubes ten years forwards. And anxiously waited until the allotted time when Dafydd signalled to me to press the red button.

Chapter 24

Reunion

I’ve never prayed so hard in my life and had all my fingers crossed.

Although the disappearance of the cube and possible reappearance of my love would be instantaneous, I felt like I had been holding my breath forever when:

Lei reappeared!

There she lay in the glass coffin wearing a simple knee length shift dress, red and sleeveless with a halter neck top looking even more beautiful than I remembered her even though there was no sign of her being pregnant nor of a baby.

I rushed to help her out of the glass box and couldn’t stop holding her so close she complained I was suffocating her and couldn’t breathe.

“I’m so sorry, they could not do anything for the baby,” she said. “They won’t be anywhere near have the technology to do that in ten years. Angie died in the womb the day after I arrived. They did however, give me some medicine that may help my polyhydramnios to prevent a recurrence if we become pregnant again.” I loved her use of ‘we’, I always wanted to share the pregnancy in any way I could. So the baby had after all been female and she had chosen one of the names we’d discussed.

She had so much to tell us and we were keen to listen but first she had questions of her own. Where was Ivan? Who was this young lad? Why had we delayed her return? Why had we been redecorating and changing things so much?

We adjourned to the lounge area. Dai made some coffee, apologising for not having stocked up on champagne, and some chocolate biscuits. I actually felt that, although overwhelmed by the best possible news that Lei was safe and well and back with us, the terrible news we had to impart, particularly regarding Ivan, a champagne celebration would have been inappropriate.

Lei knew nothing about what had occurred here. All she knew was that, instead of receiving a transmission to enable her to return at the time planned, nothing had happened. She had felt like a bride jilted at the altar.

I had to tell her about the explosion, about waking up in hospital, about Ivan’s death, my imprisonment, the rebuilding and resumption of the project.

Lei was absolutely astounded. She was devastated, as I’d known she would be, to learn of Ivan’s demise. She’d needed a lot of comforting.

“I thought I’d done my share of grieving at losing our baby,” she’d sobbed. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

I let Dai introduce himself. Never short on words, he recounted everything he had already told me.

“So now he’s part of the team,” I finished for him before he tired Lei out too much.

I apologised to Lei regarding the leaked photograph that had briefly made the news. She wasn’t so much embarrassed for herself but for the adverse publicity it could have given the project.

As for her adventure, she said she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say too much as there were concerns what prior information could cause.

If she were to relay much of her future experience, it could possibly change the course of history. For that reason, she had not been shown or told much and had had to swear to keep things secret, in a similar way to our having had to sign the secrets’ act. She wasn’t even permitted to tell me, but she was able to tell us some things.

She recounted that one moment she was lying a little uncomfortably in the glass coffin and the next she was in a brighter area where two young women helped he from the box and put a robe around her.

It transpired the two women were Saanvi and Frances who would be the only people Lei was allowed to meet.

She had been heavily sedated and taken to a medical facility which she thought was the same building.

Her recollections were a bit confused as she talked about the still birth of the partly formed, deformed, foetus which had been taken for examination and then cremation although she had been able to have a short private ‘funeral’ for her.

She had learned the location was the same but the trading estate was now one large facility under the name of SSS. She had wondered whether that bore any relationship to the SS, the Schutzstaffel who had initially formed Hitler’s bodyguard and became synonymous with the Nazi Reich but was told it was quite the opposite and that we would know about in due course.

Although she had been made to feel welcome, she had felt a bit like being in prison. Much of the time, she amused herself with the old television programmes she was limited to. Nothing newer than the date she had departed for the future.

The two young women had explained they didn’t know what could happen if her younger self were to meet up ten years later with herself at this unit. “They were so scared of some possible catastrophe, they would have to keep me hidden and out of the way, undiscoverable by my future self.” They had hinted there was a concern of something like mixing matter and anti-matter, resulting in a massive explosion and annihilation.

I wondered if something like that might have been behind the explosion that had occurred or whether it was just an electrical build up.

Saanvi and Frances either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell anything that had happened in the ten years. When my “collection” didn’t happen on time, they said they knew I would be collected at some point and were awaiting an indication as to when it would occur.

“Yes, Dai, Fran is well, in ten years time but I cannot tell you anything more because firstly I promised secrecy and secondly she was deliberately keeping anything secret.” Lei attempted to answer the question he was trying to ask. “It probably helps that I didn’t know about you so I couldn’t ask.”

I wasn’t sure if Lei would be up to cycling and her shift dress wasn’t really suitable for cycling so I had been going to cycle home to collect the car but accepted Dai’s offer to do that for us. So, having given him my keys to the Berlingo, Lei and I were left alone whilst he popped off on his motorbike, catching up on lost time.

A little later, I drove all three of us back to my house via, at Lei’s request, a florist’s and the cemetery where she could lay the bouquet she had bought on Ivan’s grave.

…

We hadn’t been in long when I had a phone call from Sergeant Matt Deacon.

“Inspector Evans believes you have found the missing person? Can you come to the station now to verify that.”

Although I knew contacting Matt was something I needed to do, it hadn’t been at the forefront of my thoughts, but how Rhys Evans had found out so quickly puzzled me.

Matt met us at the front desk. Lei confirmed it certainly was her but Matt hurried us saying Inspector Evans was waiting for us in the interview room.

We sat opposite the two policemen and Inspector Evans started questioning with all his characteristic disdain.

Are you Ms Lei Chen? She confirmed she was.

This person? He showed her the photo of her body in the glass coffin. She nodded, and on prompting said yes.

Why did you get into the box naked?

Was this some religious ritual?

Where have you been?

The questions were fired quickly and aggressively giving no time for thought. Without giving Lei a chance to speak, I quickly responded, “It’s secret,” to each question.

“I’d like Ms Chen to speak,” he said.

“And I’d like KC Brombley here first,” I replied which changed his manner.

“So. You admit it was you who climbed naked into a box a couple of months ago and has now turned up saying you cannot say where you were all that time?”  

Standing up and leaning across the table at Lei he shouted,

“You need to start answering questions straight away or you’ll be shut away where we do know where you are for wasting police time.”

Unflustered and keeping a calm voice Lei responded, “I had to climb into the box naked for reasons I cannot explain and I cannot tell you where I was during the time as I don’t really know myself.” She could certainly stand up for herself.

I repeated if he wanted to hold us, we needed Ms Brombley.

Matt, who had been quiet all this time, just said, “It’s good to finally meet you, Ms Chen. I have heard so much about you and I’m glad you are safe.”

Turning to his superior officer he said, “With due respect, sir, I don’t think it will serve any purpose wasting further police time.”

The inspector grunted and waved his arm as a sign of dismissal.

Matt escorted us out.

“I feel I have to apologise for my colleague’s behaviour. We had the same problems when your husband had lost his memory.” I didn’t correct the misattribution and noticed Lei didn’t rush to either.

Chapter 25

Resumption

I decided Lei and I needed to do something together as a distraction and to help rebond before we went back to the project so I took us away for a weekend to Prague.

Flying from London to the Czech capital, which I had visited before but Lei hadn’t, we stayed in a hotel on Wenceslas Square, which is more of an avenue than a square.

Prague is now a vibrant and lively city but it has had a troubled history and suffered at the hands of communism.

My parents had taken Tony and me when we were boys and my father had to visit someone there to do with work, and I recalled him regaling us with his account of when he had previously visited it under the communist regime. He had recalled how the inhabitants then were fearful to look you in the eye apart from the illegal money traders wanting hard currency in exchange for bundles of Koruna.

With hard currency, they could shop in the tourist shops, otherwise they were restricted to the meagre substandard goods offered in the state supermarkets.

In those days Czechia and Slovakia were one nation, Czechoslovakia which had been formed following the first world war from two nation states of Hungary and Austria.

I had only visited Prague twice previously but that was twice more than Lei who wanted me to show her all the sights, so from memory, we took a tram to the Charles Bridge.

Lei acknowledged I have a “thing” about bridges but agreed this bridge with its many stone arches is a “must see” for any tourists.

We climbed one of the towers on the Old Town side of the bridge which gave us great views across the Vltava river to the hill with the castle and St Vitus cathedral. Lei had expected to see a gothic castle or something from Disney. From this position it looked like neither.

“But you won’t be disappointed when we get there,” I told her.

We walked over the bridge.

“Di dum, di dum, di deee dum; dum dum dummm,” I started singing.

“What on Earth’s all that about?” Lei laughed at my attempt to sing Smetana’s Vltava which I had to explain to her. Smetana was deeply patriotic and this river had inspired his famous work which he had written in the late 19th century and perfectly captured the various flows of the water.

The bridge was busy with an abundance of stalls selling postcards and souvenirs and there were painters everywhere who were always just at the point of completing a painting, usually of the bridge on which they were standing but viewed from a remote point. If a tourist bought it, the paint had magically dried quickly enough so it could be taken away there and then when it was immediately replaced with another that was also one pretend brush stroke away from being finished.

Lei wasn’t disappointed with the castle; with its quaint cobbled streets, it was like a walled town with the walls comprised of, nowadays, mainly tourist shops.

I knew the State Opera at the end of Wenceslas Square near our hotel was worth a visit and that evening we enjoyed a production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

Lei recognised the storyline from having seen Miss Saigon with me and the music of the Humming Chorus having seen Les Misérables with me. I had introduced her to musicals and now to opera. I agreed Schönberg had appropriated Puccini’s work and in so doing perhaps brought a love of opera to the masses.

The storyline about an American soldier marrying a young Japanese girl, and deserting her, leaving her pregnant and ultimately ending in her suicide provoked a lot of discussion that evening about the overlooked consequences of war.

The next day we visited the old town and the Jewish Quarter. The amazing state of preservation of the buildings impressed Lei. I told her that during the war when Hitler’s Nazis thought they would eradicate Judaism, he had wanted to preserve the old quarter as a museum to an extinct race.

I told her the country and the city had seen many revolutions with Russian tanks having rolled in in 1968 to quell the uprising known as the Prague Spring when the Czech leader had permitted too much freedom for the soviets’ liking.

The last revolution had been the velvet revolution in 1989 when, at a time when many students in former soviet controlled countries started rebelling and forcing the communists out as the Berlin Wall fell.

It was a few years later that Czechoslovakia separated peacefully into the two separate states of Slovakia and Czechia we have now.

At the old town square we stopped for a drink at a small café from where we could see the Astronomical Clock as it approached the hour and crowds gathered to watch the procession of the twelve mechanical apostles.

Lei remarked on the beer. I told her it was real Pilsner, made in Pilsen after which it takes its name

But it was as the chimes finished and the apostles disappeared, along with the crowds, that she turned to see me holding in front of her a sapphire and diamond ring. I thought I had lost her once. I was determined I never wanted to lose her again.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” was her response.

Just round the corner we discovered a glassworks. Bohemian glass has been renowned for centuries but here we could even try and make our own glass sculptures.

It was very hot but we had great fun being guided by experts who helped us.

I had started trying to blow a goblet but found it hard going requiring a lot of puff. Lei alongside had started on a different tack attempting to make a dressing table dish to resemble a swan.

As we became more successful, though most of the success was actually to our two excellent tutors guiding us, we both ended up with similar shaped mugs whose handles resembled swan necks. Not particularly brilliant but a great memento we would pick up the next morning once they were fully annealed and boxed up for us.

The next morning it was time for us to leave this charming city.

We had one stop to make on our journey back to the airport to collect our boxed souvenir tankards.

After an uneventful flight and a long trek through the air terminal, I sought out the luggage carousel whilst Lei sought out a toilet.

She saw my concerned expression as she found me having just retrieved our cases.

“What’s up, Teach?” she asked using the nickname she’d often used when I had provided background information on what we discovered together on our romantic getaways.

Whilst waiting for her, I had turned on my mobile to find a message from PC Matt Deacon, “Call in to the station as soon as possible.”

What might we have done wrong?

I’d thought we’d been given the all clear to leave the country now.

Although it brought an unpleasant digestif of anxiety to the gourmet feast of our weekend, we would get through it whatever it was.

Chapter 26

Revelations

As we arrived home, I picked up the work phone. Turning it on there were all sorts of alerts and messages.

“Break-in detected!” was the main thrust. It seemed someone had gained entry to our labs.

Dafydd had followed up to say he was checking on it presently, so we decided to go straight to the police station.

Matt met us at the front desk and took us through to a conference room, “rather than an interrogation room,” he said, “you’re not under arrest this time.”

He revealed the station had had a burglar alarm alert at 1:10 but as the keyholder had been alerted, he hadn’t investigate further. A person called Dafydd Williams had phoned in at 2:35 to say the property had been secured.

I wasn’t happy that they hadn’t taken the break in seriously but Matt said that a major emergency alert had also been issued at the other end of their area at 1:00am and that Inspector Evans, who was, it seems still around despite the murder cases having been abandoned, and mysteriously on duty remotely by phone at that time, had ordered that all available forces should attend: something to do with reports of a possible drug based gang fight at the Comfy Hotel. However, in the end that had proven to be a false alarm and was put down to a prank call.

Matt asked if we could furnish them with details of anything found to be missing and said he would be pleased to return there with us now if wanted though, realising we like to keep everything there secret, that would be entirely up to us. He said it was the second break-in in two days. The night before, Plainvu Secure Windows (PSW) had been targetted. They were the glaziers who had fitted our new secure windows after the explosion.

From the police station we drove straight to the lab where Dai was tidying up. He showed us the small window in the kitchen area we had thought inaccessible from the other side as it touched the small copse. Although it would be likely the police would pick up clues from anyone who had squeezed their way through there, we preferred not to have them probing around. The intruder had obviously had some knowledge of the way the windows were constructed to identify where their weak points were but we wouldn’t have thought PSW would have been involved seeing how accommodating they had been in helping us reconstruct the facility after the explosion.

It was then that we had a visit from Inspector Evans wanting to investigate the break in. We declined the offer with Dafydd saying what sounded like “Spasseebo!” which appeared to stop him in his tracks casting a querying look in his direction.

Showing we obviously were not interested, he left.

“What was that about?” I queried. “That was Russian wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It means thank you,” Dafydd said adding he’d thought his Russian studies might come in useful sometime.

Our tall scrawny burglar had been carrying a mobile phone at the time.

Although he had been wearing black and wore a balaclava to hide his face from our security cameras, he had received a phone call from a probable accomplice, and although the sound wasn’t very clear, the exchange sounded like; “Oowitha?” “Ishu informatsy.”

“Welsh?” I asked.

“No. I think it’s Russian but the reply sounds like it’s a Welsh accent,” answered Dafydd. “If I’m right, I think the enquirer was asking where his accomplice was and the answer was that he was looking for information.”

“But there’s more,” Dai went on. “We managed to identify the phone.”

And?

Our surveillance equipment had identified the phone but that was not all, with that information he was able to hack into it sufficiently to track that particular call. It had come from a mobile registered in Belarus but had originated within twenty miles of our location though he hadn’t been able to get a good trace on it.

We looked at our video recordings from the camera at the entrance to the trading estate prior to the break in. About two hours before, a Renault 5 Turbo had pulled up at the entrance road and a tall willowy black figure had exited the passenger door. It was impossible to tell the colour of the vehicle as a street light was out and it was too dimly lit, but could it have been Ivan’s yellow car?

More details were coming to light.

Plainvu Secure Windows had been looking at footage from their security cameras for the time of their break in which they were happy to share with us. It clearly showed a distinctive yellow Renault 5 on that occasion clearly illuminated as it had tripped their security floodlighting. Nothing had actually been taken apart from some design details left around  regarding the installation of the high security glazing they had provided for us. It looked as if the intruder had left hurriedly, perhaps because of tripping the security light. It was possible he could have photographed those documents.

Incredulously, the accomplice’s mobile number was stored on Ivan’s personal mobile, which had been found intact in one of the lockers, as  Boris Blodovitch.

Dafydd decided to give it a call.

“Privet tovarishch,” tried Dai.

“Is that you, Taffy? Why are you on Ivan’s phone?” came the reply.

Dai hung up but he had managed to ascertain the mobile was currently at the Comfy Hotel twenty miles to the south.

I telephoned Matt. “I have some information regarding the break in,” I said, and being ultra cautious of creeping suspicions added, “I’d rather you didn’t involve Inspector Evans.”

I told him we had reason to believe one of the people involved in the burglary was presently at the Comfy Hotel. Matt said that was where they had been called to on the wild goose chase at the time of the burglary.

An hour and a half later, Matt called back to say they’d located Ivan’s car there seemingly abandoned but that the guest had just checked out hurriedly an hour before. He had unusually paid in cash and the police thought he’d given a false name. The receptionist had said she thought he might be Russian by his appearance and accent.

They had asked that the room be untouched and were asking forensics to search it and the car.

Gaining consent from the others, I suggested Matt could visit our unit and we share what we had discovered.

That afternoon, Matt arrived accompanied by a female officer.

“I hope you are okay if WPC Laura Johns tags along?” he asked.

He knew what we were doing was top secret and they agreed not to divulge anything that may compromise our work, though not knowing what that may actually entail since he had seen the inside of our unit directly after the explosion anyway.

We had assembled the various bits of video footage from the break-in at Plainvu Secure Windows, the drop off at the trading estate entrance and the murky figure inside our unit.

Perusing the footage, WPC Johns asked us to replay certain bits and freeze certain frames. Dai used his skills to intensify any images he could and zoom in on any details.

“I am ninety per cent certain I know who the intruder was,” she said.

“Inspector Evans?” I enquired.

“I’d know creepy Rhys’s gait and mannerisms anywhere,” she said.

Matt added, “This needs a higher authority to continue. We’re going to have to get the Chief involved.”

Lei intervened. She had reported everything to the Home Office, who had been automatically alerted already it appeared, and someone was already on their way to us. In the meantime, there should be no further police investigation, including at the Comfy, with the exception of making an arrest based on the Plainvu Secure Windows break-in if one was imminent.

Matt made a phone call and ascertained the forensic team had been stood down from orders already received.

We invited the two of them to stay for a coffee.

That was when the door bell sounded.

Chapter 27

Reunions

The screen revealed who had arrived was someone we all recognised but hadn’t seen for a while.

“Bodhi! Hi!” I greeted him. “Long time, no see.”

“But I’ve been keeping an eye on all of you,” he grinned.

He congratulated Lei and me on our engagement. I hadn’t been aware he knew of that but as he said, he knew about everything that had occurred since the lab was first founded, “and before,” he added.

He was sorry about what had happened but he wanted to congratulate us on what we had achieved and that Ivan’s death would not be in vain. But he warned us that as word was getting out, now was a time to be extra vigilant regarding competing markets.

He was obviously not going to tell us any more than we needed to know but revealed ‘they’ had been on the look-out for Boris Blodovitch for a while. Ivan had particularly targetted him but Boris had probably suspected he was onto him which would explain why he did a runner taking Ivan’s car as he did so.

He didn’t think it would take long to find him now Interpol had been alerted and they would be watching all the ports.

As to long term plans, he was a little disappointed the original premise hadn’t come to fruition, regarding teleportation that Dr Petrovitch had proposed but that temportation was obviously going to find its own benefits.

“Meanwhile it seems the Chinese may be on the brink of a discovery in that direction,” he added, nodding towards Lei who batted back a puzzled raised eyebrow.

Dafydd was impatient to ask how Saanvi and Frances were.

“They’re both doing well. In fact you’ll meet them tomorrow as they’ve just returned from their gap year and before returning to college I’ve invited them to stay here for a couple of weeks. … Well not exactly here but I’ll let them tell you for themselves.

…

The next day the three of us met up with the girls at the Comfy Hotel where Bodhi had booked a suite of rooms.

They were full of what they had been doing and what they had seen on their gap year working for MSF.

“War is so horrible,” said Saanvi. “Big bullies running countries greedy for more and attacking countries who were more keen on living peacefully than spending everyone’s money on buying bigger weapons to defend themselves against the aggressors and preventing them from developing weapons to defend themselves at the same time.

“We’ve seen people displaced from their homes with nowhere to flee to and if they can escape their devastated countries, other countries won’t let them in as they’re too greedy to want to share with ‘immigrants’ calling them terrorists or criminals.”

It was obviously a sore subject that she felt very strongly about.

Fran and Dai hadn’t taken their eyes off each other. Saanvi had to get their attention.

“Sorry guys but if you two lovebirds can concentrate for a minute, we were going to give these three an invitation weren’t we?”

“Sorry,” said Frances embarrassed. “Are you guys busy over the next week or two?”

We had to admit we didn’t really know what we were going to do presently. It seemed we had invented a device that might be the solution to a problem that didn’t exist. The girls knew we couldn’t give any more details than that.

“That’s what we thought,” said Saanvi, “so we’ve taken the liberty of provisionally signing you up for a week’s holiday in the Netherlands.”

“Except it’s not actually a holiday,” interrupted Frances.

They knew Lei and I had participated in a sponsored cycle in Vietnam and Cambodia for MSF with whom the girls had been volunteering during their gap year. (Sorry, I must stop thinking of them as girls. They’ve grown up since they were in my class and are now young women.)

The young women were going to cycle from Dunkirk to Amsterdam and wondered if we’d like to join them.

“It’s less than two hundred miles over four days,” they added.

Saanvi’s father, Bodhi, had already paid our participation fees so if we raised any money it would all go to the charity.

 Glancing at each other, we knew we didn’t really need to discuss this. We were all up for it.

In the week prior to our departure, through publicity on social media and with press attention following up on the unexplained “disappearing and reappearing woman” story, giving them the opportunity to once again use that photo of Lei, though appropriately censored, donations flooded in whilst we readied ourselves, checking our bikes, as we would be using our own this time, unlike the loan bikes for our Asian challenge, and packing minimally.

 And then we set off.

All the participants in the event met up at Dover for an early morning crossing to Dunkirk. Many had stayed in hotels in Dover overnight but we had made an early start with Bodhi carrying us and our bikes to the docks in a minibus. He wasn’t accompanying us but wished us Godspeed.

Our bikes were stowed on the car deck of the ferry and we watched the white cliffs disappear from the deck.

On docking in Dunkirk, we were allowed off the car deck first and, after a quick briefing by the organisers, set off at our own pace for the first overnight stop at the delightful city of Bruges where we ate al fresco at a restaurant in the medieval town square and stayed in an equally charming hotel.

The next day it was on to Vlissingen requiring a fast ferry that seemed to be just for cyclists. At just forty miles, this was a short day which gave us time to visit the nearby Zeeland Liberation Museum.

Lei thought it so sad. We had seen various reminders of the war preserved alongside the cycle trail and this museum’s aim was as a reminder to hopefully prevent recurrence but she had had first hand experience of fear from the ‘reunification’ she had escaped and Saanvi and Frances had had recent experience dealing with victims of continuing wars showing we never learn.

“War doesn’t determine who’s right. It determines who’s left,” I couldn’t be sure who said that but I thought it was probably Bertrand Russell.

In contrast the next day’s cycle to Rotterdam was longer.

On reaching Rotterdam, I was impressed with the Benelux tunnel we cycled though. Unlike the previous day, there was no need to take a ferry across New Meuse river. The dedicated tunnel was quite unlike the Combe Down tunnel I had enjoyed at Bath.

It was interesting in that instead of long sloping roads, descent to and ascent from the tunnel, was by lift or escalator. I was a little nervous about taking a bike on an escalator but watched how everyone else was taking it in their stride and the bike fitted on the steps perfectly. It looked like an ordinary escalator I’m used to but wondered what they’d say if I tried it on the London Underground.

The final day’s cycle took us into Amsterdam.

The itinerary provided a day’s sightseeing in Amsterdam before we would take a train to Hook of Holland, returning via ferry to Harwich from whence the organisers were to collect us and our bikes.

Frances wanted to see the Anne Frank House museum having studied her diaries when at her secondary school.

With no better plan, that’s what our group of five decided to do on our last day in the Netherlands.

It was yet another chilling reminder of war: “The persecution of innocent citizens to satisfy the blood lust of dictators,” was how Frances described it.

“We will speak you language,” was one of the many quotes I read on the wall. The message was that language shouldn’t divide us. We are all one race, the human race, and there is no room for division and squabbles because some have different beliefs. We should embrace those differences and allow ourselves to be enriched by them.

The return sailing was a night crossing.

After stowing our bikes on the car deck we shared a drink in the bar before finding our three allocated double cabins: Lei and me, Saanvi and Frances and Dai by himself – though Lei and I were too discreet to enquire about how the youngsters decided to share their accommodation.

There was much to reflect on from those few days through northern Europe: the reminders of war and the pretty little villages with windmills everywhere.

At Harwich, the organisers met us with a coach and a large van to transport us and our bikes back to Dover, though many, including us, opted to be dropped off at Maidstone after traversing the newly opened Lower Thames Crossing.

I had joked we could cycle home from there as it was ‘only’ a hundred miles, but the women said they’d rather forego the saddle for a few days.

It was as we pulled into Maidstone Bus Station, I received a text from Matt Deacon requesting a meeting. Now what?

Chapter 28

Recovery

Whatever Matt wanted could wait.

It was time for these two exceptional young women to return to uni to resume their studies.

It was an emotional farewell at the station as they caught the London train, insisting it was easier for them than having us have to fight the traffic in the Knightsbridge area.

Dai was particularly sad having to say goodbye to Fran but I pointed out she wasn’t a million miles, or even ten years, away and they would be face-timing all the time anyway.

To be honest, there wasn’t really much else to do at work now. It seemed the track we’d been following had reached the terminus, but had we missed a branch line somewhere?

Stopping off at the police station, Matt had news.

Inspector Evans had been arrested by officers from Scotland Yard on terrorism charges relating to espionage as well as the lesser charges of theft and breaking and entering. His finger prints had been found in Ivan’s car that had now been released by forensics and was available for us to collect from the car pound. They had also found in his possession a specialist tool stolen from PlainVu Secure Windows used for repairing or replacing parts of their window security fixtures.

Boris Blodovitch had been arrested at Heathrow and was also charged with terrorism and espionage under the National Security act together with burglary in relation to PlainVu and aiding and abetting charges in relation to the break-in at Swan Innovations.

As far as the local police were concerned all cases were now closed. Matt said it had been nice knowing us and perhaps we could meet up socially sometime. “Say ‘Hi’ if you see me out and about.”

We said he was welcome to drop in at Swan Innovations if he was in the area, “As long as I keep your work secret,” he appended.

With that he gave us the keys to Ivan’s Renault and three letters.

Lei drove the Renault and I drove the Berlingo back to Lesser Heath Trading Estate where we found Dafydd already engaged in a video call with Frances. He looked guilty when we walked in but we dismissed it, though Fran said she had to fly as she had an appointment with one of the professors.

We opened the envelopes.

The first was from the police containing a formal dismissal of any outstanding charges, thanks and recognition for the help we had given them in securing convictions against two foreign nationals (though is Wales technically a foreign nation, I wondered) and an advice that we may be called upon in future to give evidence in court.

The second was from a group of solicitors in charge of Ivan’s affairs.

It seems he had left a will after all, witnessed by solicitors at the legal practice. It appeared he had amassed a large sum of money mainly by living frugally and saving every unnecessary penny. “And to think he was outwardly so generous,” I commented.

The document provided details of accessing that account which was to be used in continuation of his work.

That was a small problem as we had wondered where the work should now take us.

The third envelope was from the Home Office. It was securely sealed and actually contained three letters.

The first was a formal letter of thanks for the work we had done in identifying two hostile intelligence agents signed on behalf of His Majesty’s Government.

The second, however, was rather more disappointing. It was to formally give notice that, the project could no longer be funded. It seems the Foreign Office and the military had no use for the invention and any continuation would divert funds from other much needed areas.

We would continue to be funded for another six months, including the lease on our premises and wishing us well in any future employment.

It didn’t make clear what we should do with all the electrical equipment we had been using.

The final letter was a personal one from Bodhi Patel wishing us well.

He was sorry he had been unable to secure any furtherance of funding and hoped we would all still remain friends. If we were interested in any posts connected to foreign espionage, he would assist us.

Dafydd broke the silence.

“I have some ideas about where we might go from here but I would like to speak with my parents first. In that connection, can I invite you down to Wales for a weekend?”

Turning to Lei, he added, “I wonder if you have any information regarding your treatment for your polyhydramnios?”

…

Another weekend and another holiday.

We picked up the A34 north of Winchester to Newbury and the M4 to Newport, avoiding the temptation to revisit Douglas as we passed the M32 Bristol Spur or diverting into Newport itself to see the transporter bridge.

(I had taken Lei to each of those locations in previous getaways we’d had in the last few years.)

Instead at Newport, the satnav directed us via Pontypool to Brynmawr where we picked up the Heads of the Valley road, turning South into the Rhymney valley till we reached the Williams’s house just south of the town.

The two Doctors Williams greeted us warmly.

“You’re the couple Dai has told us so much about,” said his father in a strong sing-song accent that took some attuning the ear to.

“Nice to meet you Doctor Williams,” I said. “I’m Mike and this is my fiancée Lei.”

“Please call us Aled and Megan,” chided his wife. “We don’t want any formality here. Please treat us as family and this place as home whilst you stay with us.”

They expected us to be tired after our journey and showed us to the guest room they had prepared for us, complete with it’s own en-suite bathroom.

“Once you’ve freshened up, you’ll find us around somewhere, probably in the garden as it’s a nice day. It doesn’t always rain in Wales you know.”

Aled and Megan were a lovely couple and, following a good night’s sleep, was able to chat after breakfast whilst Lei was in the bathroom. A similar age to me, they had met when Aled was still studying and visiting the hospital pharmacy when Megan was still in training as a paediatric nurse.

He had progressed to working in the research department of the pharmaceutical company where he had quickly progressed and, with a pharmaceutical doctorate now led a small team always on the lookout for new drugs.

Megan had progressed to her position gaining a medical doctorate specialising in paediatrics.

Asking how Lei and I met, I told her about the conference.

“Of course, you must be Frances’s teacher,” she said. “She’s such a lovely girl. I’m so pleased Dai’s met someone like her. I’m listening for wedding bells, I’d love a grandchild.”

Then, realising she may have put her foot in it, quickly apologised.

“I’m so sorry. I quite forgot you unfortunately lost one,” she sympathised.

“Not to worry,” I said. “We’re hopeful for good news on that front soon ourselves.” I indicated Lei may want to chat more with her about it later but meanwhile, I knew I couldn’t keep Megan any longer as she had to do a small hospital visit. Aled meanwhile had already left for his place of work.

Dafydd had suggested a day out. He was eager to show us this area.

He described the area as being composed of a number of parallel valleys running from Bannau Brycheiniog, or the Brecon Beacons as a sais like you might say, to Bae Caerdydd, which we didn’t need translating to mean Cardiff Bay.

“They used to be mining communities,” he said and told us of a tragedy that had happened back in the nineteen sixties when a coal slurry tip in the neighbouring valley at a village called Aberfan had collapsed burying the village school and killing nearly 120 children and some adults.

“My mum was a child herself at the time here in Rhymney. It must have been quite traumatic for her and for the local communities fearful of whether any other coal tips were unsafe. I think it may actually have had some influence on her choice of profession.”

We hadn’t taken our bikes with us this time so we let Dai drive us to Pant, a little village just north of Merthyr Tydfil where we could take the Rheilffordd Fynydd y Bannau, Brecon Mountain Railway, one of the “Great Little Trains of Wales” emphasising the title to sound grandiose. “You can’t visit Wales without experiencing one of our narrow gauge lines.”

I knew Dai was interested in machinery and imagined he had played with a model train-set growing up.

We were in luck as they had a live steam engine working that day. He told us “Baldwin” was over a hundred years old and used originally in South Africa. It had been restored nearly fifty years ago for use on this railway.

He admitted though, that this line was principally built for tourism, unlike most of the many narrow gauge railways in the country which had evolved from working collier and slate working routes.

We had a return ride stopping at Pontsticill reservoir on the return journey where we had a picnic. It was the lower of two conjoined reservoirs.

“Whatever mum says, we do get a lot of rain and these valleys are great for damming to make reservoirs to store it to supply Wales and the Midlands, and some of them make electricity as well.”

When we returned to the Williams’s, both Aled and Megan were home.

Over dinner, they questioned Lei about her polyhydramnios.

“It can be a devastating diagnosis particularly if it affects your baby as your obviously did. We usually do not know the cause,” started Megan, “I believe you were found to have had some sort of genetic susceptibility?”

“I don’t really know,” said Lei. “I only know I was given a painless injection and told I wouldn’t have the problem again?”

Aled was keen to know more but Lei already knew she had probably said too much.

“I can’t say where or when I had that injection,” she added lamely.

To quell further questioning she did manage to remember a few of the letters that she’d seen written on the side of the jet injector they’d used. That satisfied him. “It sounds like one of the drugs we’ve recently developed and are currently experimenting with. You must have been on some trial.”

Lei agreed it was experimental, without saying what was the subject of the experiment.

…

We were getting ready to head home when we received a text message from Bodhi Patel on my work phone.

Chapter 29

What now?

“I know you were expecting to return to Hampshire today but I have arranged a little trip for you. A car will pick you up at 10:00. – 2.16”

That only gave us about thirty minutes.

At ten o’clock sharp, a military car pulled up.

We were ready waiting with our cases.

"Cofia'n fuan!" said Megan to which I was able to reply, “Cymru am byth!”

The military driver opened the doors for us to get in and put our cases in the back.

With no clue as to where we were being taken, I was interested that we headed back West to Merthyr Tydfil and down the Taf Valley, passing Aberfan and Pontypridd until we met the M4 motorway where once again we headed West but only for a short way before leaving it and heading south.

Now I was lost. Although in my days at Douglas I had frequently ventured into South Wales, it was rarely west of Cardiff and I couldn’t guess where we were headed now.

It was about eleven o’clock when we drove through the gates of RAF St Athan with the security guard swiftly opening the barrier and saluting.

He drove us straight up to a helicopter!

“Forget your cases, they will be delivered for you,” he told us handing us over to an officer in military uniform who helped us onto the aircraft.

Apart from the pilot who was already in position, it was only the three of us.

Dai sat up front beside the pilot whilst Lei and I occupied the rear seats. Once he had checked we were strapped in, he had a quick word with the base on his radio and we lifted off.

This was my first trip in a helicopter and I suspect it was for Lei and Dai, too.

That initial lift was quite a strange feeling, rising up rapidly and turning then dipping as we headed off to wherever we were being taken.

“Where are we going,” I had to shout over the engine noise.

“Wyton,” was the one word reply. He obviously wished to concentrate on the flight rather than converse.

The flight was short but interesting flying over the River Severn and the Cotswolds. I caught a glimpse of the Transporter Bridge at Newport and, of course, the two Severn Bridges.

I didn’t manage to identify specific landmarks thereafter but did recognise the old age charm of quaint Cotswold villages with stone cottages and narrow roads and patchwork fields edged with dry-stone walls.

But it wasn’t long before we touched down and were met by Bodhi Patel.

“Welcome to DI 6,” he said.

RAF Wyton is a decommissioned base near Cambridge that now serves, amongst other things, as an operations centre for DI6 we were told.

“In case you’re wondering,” he said, “it’s not MI5. That’s Military Intelligence for the homeland. It’s MI6 that deals with foreign agents usually. Defence Intelligence 6 is more concerned with threats of attack.”

We were led into a briefing room where a few ‘top brass’ were already seated. Astonishingly too, were Saanvi and Frances.

Bodhi introduced us to the seated officers though it wasn’t reciprocated.

“This is Lei Chen, one half of the original team, Michael Miller, the recruit and Dafydd Williams, newly appointed to replace Ivan Petrovitch. My daughter and Miss Frances Smith you have already met. They were not previously involved with the project.”

“Sit down,” said the man who was sitting at the head of the large oval table as we pulled out empty chairs. He didn’t give his name but simply gave his title as Chief of Defence Intelligence.

“This project was formally under the auspices of SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service that you may know better as MI6 but they have now handed it over to us. We just need to find out if there is any particular defensive use of your ‘temporter’ before we can declassify it.”

“We have heard from Miss Patel and Miss Smith regarding data sharing. It seems they have benefitted from, and contributed to, the ‘Imperial School of Convergence Science in Health and Technology’,” he read from the papers in front of him. “Have you any comment on that?”

The questions always seemed to be directed at me. Although I was least knowledgable about the science, I assumed it was because I was the oldest.

“I congratulate these women,” I said. “I know they have been doing a lot of cross-specialism co-operative work merging their engineering skills with specialised knowledge of medical professionals and been putting this to practical use in war torn nations.”

“What we need to ascertain,” said the Chief, “is that if we permit the sharing of information with other countries’ agents, will it compromise UK security?”

I had to admit that actually uses of the invention had yet to be found.

We could send things, including people, into the future but they were effectively lost in the present when that occurred. It wouldn’t be useful to lose troops in that way, I suggested.

“But you have managed to retrieve things, including people, from the future?” He indicated Lei.

“But we also know an object cannot occupy the same space from past temportation and the current time,” Dafydd attempted to explain.

“If something was retrieved from the future and met that same object in the present it would be like mixing matter and anti-matter resulting in cataclysmic annihilation.”

“So it could cause an explosion? Couldn’t that be used as a weapon?”

Dai couldn’t see how. “Since there is no way in the present to send things to the past but things can only be retrieved from the future by temporting something into the future with the appropriate alignment of objects there, unless you can in some way manipulate those future alignments, it would be impossible and if it were to be possible, in effect you would destroy the set-up before it could be used and it wouldn’t exist any more.”

“But you managed that with Miss Chen.”

“True. She travelled ten years into the future. However in ten years time she will have to be extremely careful not to meet with herself or the annihilation I have described would occur.”

“And she would be blown to pieces?”

“Yes. And the surrounding area.”

We all looked at each other most concernedly. We hadn’t actually previously discussed that.

“So what use is the temporter?”

We had to admit we weren’t sure but hoped something could be found.

“It has been suggested we may get information from the future by sending questions and receiving answers in some reciprocal way except it would change the course of experience. By that I mean, if you look for a cure for cancer and receive an answer that brings that cure forward by so many years, the work leading to it would have been negated in that there wouldn’t be the scientists working on it to find the answer.”

“But isn’t that the case with Miss Chen?”

“No, in her case the drug had already been discovered but not trialled. She was just the first ‘guinea pig’ if you like to think of her as that,” He looked apologetically at Lei.

“And, besides,” he added, “we wouldn’t know what point to target in the future.”

“So you’re saying in your view there’s no possible way this invention can be used to attack?”

“It looks as if there’s no real use for the device at all.”

I interrupted. “We have thought it could be a way of keeping a patient from deteriorating whilst preparations are made for their life-saving surgery.”

“Like freezing bodies in the hope of a future cure?”

“Something like that except we’d need to know how long to ‘freeze’ them for,” I replied.

So the questioning continued for some time until the Chief called an end to the meeting.

“In summary, since it is of no military significance, there is a good case for declassifying this work. Consider it no longer hidden by the Secrets Act. It is a shame it couldn’t transport objects across distances as was the initial premise but perhaps we were seeking an impossible goal.”

And with that we were dismissed.

“So that means we can share our work with others in the field?” I asked Bodhi as the meeting dispersed.

“Yes,” he said.

Dafydd said, “My science teacher told me there were five stages to scientific method and the last was ‘Tell’ though I thought at the time it was just so she could get us to write up our work but I have learned so much from other scientists. We do need to share findings.”

“Look, Ask, Suggest, Try, Tell!” the young women quoted, laughing, in unison.

“It became known as the ‘Miller Mantra’,” said Saanvi.

“Or ‘Dusty’s Ditty’,” laughed Frances.

I blushed as they looked my way.

“Well, I have a suggestion for what we can do with Ivan’s legacy,” said Dai.

Chapter 30

Sharing

We were actually relieved to discover our temporter was no longer even considered to be useful in a conflict situation but we were determined Ivan’s work would not be in vain and we needed to see whether anything good could be salvaged rather than just giving up.

Dafydd was quite enthusiastic. “Couldn’t we use Ivan’s legacy to continue his work?”

“But we haven’t been able to determine any route to a possible purpose,”  I queried. “Wouldn’t it be throwing good money after bad?”

“Ivan wanted his work to achieve something that wasn’t war. He would have liked it to have achieved something that was the opposite,” he began.

“We know the Russians and Chinese were sufficiently interested to spy on our activities. What if they have suggestions we don’t?”
He went on to expand on his idea. If we could involve scientists from other nations who were involved in similar lines of investigation, the work may actually unite rather than divide.

Lei had been quiet until now.

“From what we’ve intercepted, it seems the Chinese may be quite advanced with their work with quantum entanglement hoping to achieve teleportation. I think they’d be interested in sharing. Ivan’s work may help them and their work may help us?”

“We’re still trying to navigate in the dark,” I said. “We need someone with a greater overview who may help.”

We decided to ask Bodhi Patel if he could visit and discuss ideas with us.

…

It was a couple of days later, Bodhi was able to meet us at our Lesser Heath lab. He brought Saanvi and Frances with him, to Dai’s delight.

We explained our theory that more heads are better than one and to honour Ivan’s memory, we’d like to see whether some science co-operation may find some useful outcomes.

This really excited the young women.

“We’ve seen how scientific inventions have created weapons of war and how scientific inventions have helped patch up the damage. Sharing medical and engineering science led to the development of many devices we were using with MSF. Things like bionic suits, exoskeletons to provide mobility for failed limbs, AI powered 3D printed prostheses replacing limbs, miniature implants and endoskeletons as well as medicines and delivery systems that Fran’s dad’s been working on. Instead of investing in using science to cause worse and worse war scenarios, surely we should be investing in using science to create peace?”

Saanvi’s father had said that she was probably being idealistic and unrealistic but he couldn’t fault the sentiment.

Sometimes it takes the inspiration of youth. Frances came up with a proposal.

“Can we establish a co-operative where all scientists of all nationalities can work to the fundamental principals?
“We’ve looked and seen there is division in the world. We’ve asked what we can do about it to propagate peace. The next stage is to suggest ideas.”

“Seeking solutions through science,” mulled Saanvi. “We could call the co-operative, ‘Science Solutions’.”

“Swan Science Solutions, or SSS,” interjected Lei. “It would honour Ivan’s memory perpetuating the Swan name.”

“Calmness on the surface with all the work beneath?” I queried.

Although Bodhi still thought we may be being rather too optimistic, he said he’d do all he could to promote the idea and knew how to engage the other foreign agencies.

Frances had been doodling.

“Ive come up with a logo,” she said turning her paper for us all to see her SSS motif morphed into swans.

“S’wan Small Step for man,” contributed Dafydd earning a groan for his efforts and an elbow dug into his ribs from Fran.

…

Once it was just the three of us remaining, I ventured,

“Of course, Ivan’s financial legacy can’t sustain this forever. We will need contributions to continue the work.”

I discussed the idea of establishing SSS as a charity. It would take a lot of work writing a constitution, choosing trustees and opening a bank account as well as the process of applying through the Charities Commission.

Part 4

Outcomes

Of course all that happened years ago and you may be wondering what happened next, so before my memory fails me, I’ll try and fill in these intervening years with apologies if I don’t quite get the chronology right.

Chapter 31

SSS

One of the neighbouring units on the trading estate belonged to a signwriter who produced a great new sign for us refining Frances’s drawing and adding the text “Swan Science Solutions” beneath it. It was larger than the discreet “Swan Innovations” sign we had had originally as now we no longer needed to be secret and we could afford to advertise ourselves.

We also changed the sign on the entrance board to the estate so Unit 7 would stand out as the home of Swan Science Solutions alongside the map of the estate.

Reorganising the interior of our space, we changed the lounge area into a reception area.

The temporter obviously remained with all its necessary control and feed equipment but was probably nothing more than a curiosity for now. We didn’t publicise it: we would only be doing that if we were approached with someone who may have some use for it.

Lei was struggling with getting her head around the Charity Commission’s regulations for setting up a charity. The sample draft they provided as guidance for a charity constitution didn’t really fit our requirements and until we had the constitution we couldn’t get a charity bank account. Since Swan Innovations had never actually had its own account, we had managed to persuade DI6 to let Ivan’s money reside in the account they had held for us on a temporary basis, for which they had wanted to charge us but Bodhi had intervened to drop that suggestion.

Help came from a new source. We had been happy to learn that Saanvi had a new boyfriend.

She visited us one day, without Frances to Dai’s dismay, to introduce us.

“This is Noah,” she said. The swarthy young man was very polite. He obviously doted on Saanvi.

“You must be Dusty Miller?” he said quite politely causing Saanvi to suppress a giggle. I hastened to put him at ease.

“My name’s actually Mike,” I answered. “Dusty was the nickname these kids used to use when they were knee high to a grasshopper.”

Noah was a postgraduate studying law at University College London. He and Saanvi had met at some joint seminar to do with legal implications of medical engineering. Whether it was love at first sight or not, I don’t know but they did start seeing a lot of each other during those university years. I was a little concerned there may have been an element of jealousy as Saanvi’s best friend had become engaged. Although Frances and Dafydd had always said they would never break the young ladies’ friendship bond, there were times, of course when Frances and Dai would take precedence over Frances and Saanvi, particularly once they were married.

Saanvi and Frances had been close since they had started playschool together aged three. They were as inseparable as if they sisters, and much closer than I remember ever being with my twin brother, Tony. It hadn’t surprised me when, talking about telepathy one day, they had agreed they had definitely experienced that themselves on occasions.

It was good then, in fact I would say ‘essential’, that Noah fitted in like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle with the relationships between Saanvi, Frances and Dafydd completing a tight quartet.

Noah was only too pleased to offer to help Lei in getting all the wording right regarding the aims and objectives of the charity and how it operated.

The eventual wording of the aims of SSS as a charity was something like, “To unite science sources to solve problems for the betterment of all mankind.”

We discussed having a short motto at some length.

We felt we wanted to emphasise working together rather than opposition; to create rather than destroy.

There were obvious historical precedents.

The gifted Swedish scientist, Alfred Nobel, is famously remembered for his invention of dynamite when working on a naval mine after moving to St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire. It is thought on his deathbed he regretted the use of his inventions to destroy which is how his fortune became used to found the Nobel Prizes granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind."

Similarly with harnessing the power of the atom which was achieved in England as long ago as 1932. Though the science fiction writer H.G. Wells had predicted it at the start of the first world war, it was the second world war that pushed its development as a weapon with the American scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, credited with the creation of the atomic bomb, who is famously said to have regretted it quoting Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

If Ivan’s (accidental) invention was to find some use, we were determined we wanted it to be for the furtherance of peace first and foremost and not to live in regret following some catastrophic use to the contrary.

Thus, after discussing various ideas we initially came up with, “Peaceful coexistence through scientific co-operation” which we thought a bit too long as a snappy motto so shortened it to, “Coexistence through Science.” It still wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure who it was who originally decided, “Harmony through Science” was better which is the motto we finally adopted and is used to this day.

As initial trustees Lei, Dafydd and I were considered obvious contenders but I persuaded Saanvi and Frances to also be members of the board though Frances was concerned that if she and Dafydd were joint trustees there could be an imbalance. I pointed out that also existed if Lei and I were both board members. Noah said it was still too early in his relationship with Saanvi to consider it when Lei suggested adding him to balance things out and it would be more convenient to have an odd number if any decisions were needed in future that we may not agree on.

Although everyone thought I should be chairman of the trustees, I declined as I probably understood the actual science of quantum entanglement the least and persuaded Lei to be chairman. We discussed whether her title should be ‘chair-person’, ‘chair-woman’ or simply ‘chair’, with Lei objecting indignantly against that last term: “I am not a piece of furniture!”

However, as I pointed out, linguistically the term chairman refers to male or female. ‘Man’ has only become synonymous for male as, unlike ‘woman’ there was no suitable generic term. Man means human. Woman comes from ‘wif-man’ meaning female human. A male human should be a ‘wer-man’ though I don’t see us undoing years of etymological deviation.

Once established with acceptance of Charity Commission, Companies House, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and everyone else Noah navigated for us, we were ready to set up shop.

Transferring Ivan’s funds into our new bank account we were ready for our first membership applications, and our first purchases.

We had had a number of interested existing groups and charities who all wanted to be part of this initiative. Some asked if we could provide office space for them which coincided with some of the units of the trading estate becoming available as their previous tenure ended and rates had been significantly increased.

With Noah’s help, we negotiated the purchase of units 1 to 6 meaning we owned the whole of the left hand side of the estate. We negotiated rents for those customers remaining in those units with a reduced rate for any groups with similar principles to SSS.

Those trading units who were not wishing to be members of SSS had the options to remain on the higher rate, transfer to newly evacuated units on the eastern side of the estate or move elsewhere.

Our acquisition then permitted plans to build and develop the whole of the west side. With the closure of the electricity substation, due to the updates of the national electricity infrastructure, we had additionally been able to add that to our property portfolio, whilst the electrical plant that had served the whole estate and local housing previously were also of benefit.

Within a few years, our modern offices accommodated Aled Williams’s firm’s needs, a modern hospital research facility and manufacturing facilities for medical robotics as well as for those charities working in war torn countries as Saanvi and Frances had worked for.

After university, Saanvi and Frances eventually became full time employees of the SSS company.

Funds for SSS projects and expansion had come from various sources apart from those companies who had moved into our buildings, including a modest but significant grant from the UK government and other funds we knew had originated from some other nations, which I’ll mention when I get on to what happened with Temporter.

But I’ve got ahead of myself. There were so many other things going on.

Chapter 32

Weddings and a funeral

Lei and I wanted a small wedding and had already booked the local registry office when Bodhi Patel heard of it. He wanted to pay for us to have a top rate celebration but I told him to save that for his daughter.

However, we did find our guest list growing as we received requests from various surprising quarters including Matt Deacon and Laura Johns who had now gained promotion to sergeant and moved to Thames Valley police but was still Matt’s protege and felt more comfortable having a companion with him. He hoped she would fill the vacancy left by Inspector Evans.

We were already inviting Saanvi and Noah and Frances and Dafydd of course but Edith Smith and the doctors Williams all wanted to come, too.

Tony and Jane flew over and stayed at the Comfy Hotel where we also had the reception and where other guests like the Williamses stayed. In the end about twenty invited guests though two minibuses turned up of ex pupils who had heard about it through the grapevine. I invited them to have drinks with us at the Comfy Hotel although we hadn’t catered for them but the staff did manage to seat them close enough to join the festivities.

It was great being able to catch up with my ex charges many of whom were still in academia of some sort, completing advanced degrees or other studies. I was impressed that a few were involved with humanitarian work in some way. Some were embarking on engineering careers and a couple had started their own company who were interested in SSS and whether their outfit would be compatible with the suggestions that were only just at the discussion stage at that point. Three who had recently become teachers which I was particularly happy about.

Tony was my best man and Frances and Saanvi were Lei’s bridesmaids. Lei wore a tailored pale blue trouser suit complimented by the pale pink trouser suits of the bridesmaids whilst I wore a grey suit with a tie the exact same colour of Lei’s outfit.

In his best man’s speech, Tony made some reference to all my children. Jane unfortunately could not have children but they weren’t bothered. I, on the other hand now missed teaching and wanted children of my own.

On that front we had just found out Lei was pregnant again and, although now in her late thirties, Megan had assured us she would be fine, “particularly having had that experimental drug,” added Aled. “And you’ll make a great dad,” he added, acknowledging the fact I was a few years older too. “I saw how you interacted with Saanvi and her peers.”

We had discussed a honeymoon and, though feeling we didn’t need one, we did take a five day break on the Orkney Isles to be somewhere different, quiet and a holiday in the United Kingdom for a change.

We stayed on a croft owned by friends of Aled Williams who still kept their own smallholding with a cow they milked and from which they made a unique cheese which had an acquired taste.

The scenery was beautiful with deserted golden sandy beaches and rugged rock stacks like the “Old man of Hoy” standing almost like a pencil on end but something like three times the height of Nelson’s Column, though we viewed it from the headland above.

The historical sites were interesting with everything from the stone age to modern times represented.

The settlement of Scara Brae dates from about three thousand BC, from before the pyramids were built. It comprises a few stone houses partially dug into the ground and connected by tunnels. I was amazed how small our ancestors who lived there must have been considering the size of the doorways. I understood why much of their dwellings were partially below ground as even in summer there was a really cold wind and I could imagine how bleak it must have been in winter.

More recent history featured the war time. It was important strategically being the gateway from the north into the North Sea. The bay at Scapa Flow still has wrecks of German ships that they deliberately scuttled there rather than let them fall into the hands of the British.

The Italian Chapel built by Italian prisoners of war from two Nissen huts is delightfully decorated inside with the curved roof of the hut elaborately painted: perhaps not the Sistine Chapel but worth seeing, and the exterior façade looking every bit like a pointed roof traditional Italian chapel belying the curved roof architecture of the Nissen hut behind.

…

The other important wedding was on a much bigger scale.

It was a double wedding for both Frances and Saanvi and a unique blend of different traditions.

Although not Hindu, nor Muslim, Bodhi and Amyra Patel did hanker after some of the Indian traditions and wanted only the best for their daughter. Saanvi wanted a joint event with Frances, who, being from a more humble background, may have felt a little intimidated by the whole thing but everything was so well integrated, everyone felt at ease.

The event took place over two whole days. The main feasting was before the wedding ceremony itself with all sorts of musical entertainment and dancing with hundreds of guests from various ethnic backgrounds dressed in everything from beautiful saris to summer dresses and morning suits. I wore the grey suit I had been married in and Lei wore her pale blue trouser suit. Our five year old daughter, Aveline, was in a yellow lehenga looking like a princess, which of course, she was to us.

I forgot to mention Lei had given birth to our beautiful daughter. I’m not sure why Lei had chosen the name but I thought it was wonderful. Tony said it was French for a small nut and endearingly nicknamed her ‘Noisette’, which caught on to a degree with my referring to her as our beautiful little noisette.

Saanvi and Frances had both loved baby-sitting and both wanted her as a bridesmaid so they shared her.

Saanvi wore a scarlet silk sari, and was heavily adorned with jewellery and a headdress. Frances wore a white silk outfit that wasn’t quite a sari but seemed to match in its flowing lines. Noah wore a cream sherwani comprising a long embroidered tunic over loose trousers. Dafydd wore something fairly similar but comprising a long navy jacket over cream trousers.

And there were flowers everywhere. We were adorned with long garlands of flowers, “A lei for Lei?” she quipped but was corrected as “That’s an Hawaiian garland. This is a gajra.”

The service itself was conducted in a little chapel in Wales though broadcast to a large gathering outside on a large screen in a giant marquee, because it does sometimes rain in Wales.

Of course Saanvi’s parents were there but I hadn’t previously considered Frances’s. Thinking back it had only been her grandmother I had ever seen on parents’ evenings.

I learned her parents died in a car crash when she was five. Someone unused to the rural back-roads near Douglas, driving a large vehicle too fast, had lost control on a blind bend and hit them head on.

The Patels, Bodhi and Amyra, had welcomed Frances in like a daughter. She had probably spent more time at their house when growing up than at her grand parents.

…

The funeral was Edie Smith’s, Frances’s grandmother and the school cook when I was at Douglas.

Her husband had died many years previously from testicular cancer. Although a very survivable cancer, like all cancers it needs to be diagnosed early and like so many men, he had been too embarrassed to say or do anything until it was too late and had metastasised.

But Edie had outlived him by many years reaching her mid eighties when she had the stroke that took her.

Half the village packed the church at Douglas for the funeral which was followed by a private gathering of just a few of us at the crematorium.

There were so many of my ex pupils again. I had seen some of them just a few years previously at Frances and Saanvi’s wedding.

It was a very emotional time which was tiring on the young children but they were quite well behaved with Aveline keeping the twins and Tanvi

entertained. But I realise I haven’t told you about them yet.

Chapter 33

Children

During ten years of teaching three hundred pupils passed through my hands. I can remember them all and tell stories about most of them but I have always notoriously been bad at remembering their names so if you were a pupil of mine and we happen to meet up at some time in the future, please introduce yourself.

I always realised what a privilege this was and a terrific responsibility leaving my mark on so many of the next generation.

Of course I liked to think of them as all being as special as each other and having no favourites.

There were, of course, some who did become more special because of latter involvements as I have described regarding my relationship with Saanvi and Frances.

But apart from them, there is one child who is far more special to me than any of the others: that is, of course, my own daughter, my little noisette, Aveline, or Ava for short.

Lei’s pregnancy and the birth all went very smoothly. Because of her previous experience and her age, the doctors paid special attention to her. I wondered whether Megan may have had some influence in that although she says she didn’t.

Megan was, however, very helpful with little tips helping her manage the discomforts.

I attended the prenatal classes with Lei and learned how to help her manage the pain. I held her hand throughout the birth. She squeezed it so tightly, it was badly bruised but any thoughts of pain rapidly dissipated as the crying infant was lifted to Lei’s breast.

I really fell in love all over again with this small pink wriggling form that had entered our life.

Throughout her baby years she was super inquisitive, staring intently at anything new. That inquisitiveness continues to this day. She always wants to know how things work. As a girl she would take things apart, though not always managing to get them back together again.

I may have thought I knew about child development from my teacher training but the real learning comes from experience.

Of course, we encouraged her inquisitiveness and deliberately sought out new things for her to investigate and take apart as well as letting her explore outside as much as possible, keeping an eye on her without restricting her. It’s a difficult line to manage not wishing her to harm herself whilst understanding her need to experience bad as well as good interactions.

Unsurprisingly she took to problem solving and was managing three-dimensional puzzles before she started nursery.

She made friends easily and was always the leader of any group.

The village school had an after-school Junior Inventors Club which I helped out with frequently. (Truth be told, I had probably been the motivator for it when I had met with their head teacher, Mandy Price.) Ava was permitted to join when she started in the infants department when she was nearly five.

She never lacked stimulation of course which she also received from her courtesy aunts, Saanvi and Frances and their boyfriends, Uncles Dai and Noah whom they married when Ava was just six. They were always wanting to babysit. She loved being a princess bridesmaid at their joint wedding in a beautiful yellow lehenga choli. We had thought she’d get too tangled up in a full sari and the yellow satin dress skirt and blouse were an ideal alternative.

The other children who gained a special relationship and place in my life were my courtesy nephews and niece.

Of course Saanvi and Frances became pregnant around the same time. Who would expect differently when everything they did was so similar. It was uncanny sometimes to realise they were two separate people.

A couple of years after their wedding, both young women became pregnant.

Frances gave birth first to identical twin boys whom they called Benjamin and Christopher, or Ben and Chris for short.

A couple of weeks later, Saanvi gave birth to a daughter, Tanvi.

My Aveline loved her new ‘cousins’ wanting to play mothers with them. I did have to remind her they were actual living babies and not toy dolls but she was sufficiently grown up to understand and was always wanting to help their mums out if and when she could.

As a father and a courtesy uncle, I enjoyed watching and being a part of the development of these children. I realised how much I had missed being in the classroom but, of course, there was so much more I could do with them which I could never have done with my classroom subjects.

Lei and I enjoyed teaching Ava to cycle and swim. Of course it wasn’t only teaching, we enjoyed playing and holidays and everything else that comes with parenthood – including the bad times when things don’t go right. It’s not all fun and games.

With Ben and Chris and Tanvi, we were spared having to get up in the middle of the night to change a nappy and most of the childhood tantrums.

As an identical twin, I was in a position to speak with Fran and Dai from my own experience. “Never think of them as ‘the twins’ and discourage anyone from defining and confining them with that term. They are two separate individuals and should always be considered and treated as such.”

I was also keen to observe any signs of telepathy such as I experienced.

I did notice the little things, knowing what to look out for. Chris seemed to exhibit telepathic feelings more than his brother, sensing when Ben had stubbed his toe and things like that. “It’s to do with Beta waves,” I thought.

The four children were always playing together with Ava, of course, bossing the youngsters around as she was seven years older.

The three younger children started in the nursery class at the local primary school as Ava reached the last year and headed to her secondary school.

The school’s Junior Inventor club was quite rapidly becoming popular.

Every year there would be a challenge cup that I had presented to the school, awarded to a winning project.

Was history repeating itself, I thought, when following a class project on transport, they had looked at tunnels including the problems of digging through soft materials and hard ones as well as cut and cover and other techniques and new experiments that were taking place between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I accompanied a school outing that included visiting the Isle of Wight links and the little devoted tunnel museum in Whippingham, East Cowes at the southern end of the new five mile road tunnel from Browndown, Gosport. This had been achieved by conventional boring using a ‘robotic mole’. We also visited the older rail tunnel that effectively extended the Lymington Harbour line to Yarmouth to meet up with the renewed IOW lines now used as tramway enabling trams from Lymington to Cowes and Ryde as well as Sandown and Ventnor. That shorter tunnel had been made by sinking two parallel concrete box section tubes.

In Junior Inventors, like mother like daughter, Tanvi had made a working model of her Uncle Dafydd’s pipe tunnel invention. Using two vacuum cleaner hoses joined with a booster ring and each end terminating with a station made from clear plastic soda bottles. The gondola was a small clear plastic bottle she had found that fitted the tube nearly exactly. It had been modified by inserting a hard iron ring at either end and joined by a spacer metal bolt with the whole thing magnetised to become a permanent magnet with poles at either end of the gondola. Three electric magnets had been constructed by winding wires around the terminus ends of the hose and the booster joint. It had been made airtight and a bicycle pump with the rubber plunge washer reversed had been used to create a partial vacuum. It hadn’t been possible to provide a connecting airtight door to the gondola at the stations or airlocks on her model but with a little encouragement by tapping the end of the tube, the magnets sent the gondola from one end to the next. Although not to scale, Tanvi had found a little doll that could lie down in her gondola. Whether accidental or coincidental, it did remind Lei and me of her temportation experience like lying in a glass coffin – though the doll was wearing more.

Ben and Chris had been enthralled by our cycling tales and the bit of video of us managing bikes on an escalator at the Benelux tunnel had fired their imagination. Their attempt at making an escalator from a bicycle chain with steps of stiff card pushed between the chain links was not too successful but they did manage to make some good bike models from drinking straws and paper clips – even working ‘chains’ from a rubber bands between the cranksets made from small plastic caps from a tube at the bottom bracket and a cassettes made of mapping pins fastened to the rear wheels.

I declined to adjudicate that year because of conflicts of interest.

Tanvi’s effort won the challenge cup and Ben and Chris received a highly commended certificate.

But I’ve got ahead of myself again. I should have been telling you about the temporter.

Chapter 34

Temporter

I’m sorry, I was distracted by my personal memories and you really want to know what happened to the Temporter.

Such a lot has happened in the last few years.

Initially we thought we had a solution looking for a problem and were trying to figure out what to do with it.

The idea of being able to quarantine a serious ill patient whilst a treatment plan was drawn up, seemed appealing when we discussed this with Dafydd’s parents. The problem was it would require a single patient being transferred to our facility and tying it up for as long as their doctors had determined.

It was Aled who asked what the problem would be in having more temporters for that purpose and Lei pointed out the massive power supply and nuclear element involved.

“But,” Aled interjected, “can that not power more than one temporter box?”

It was something so obvious. Why hadn’t we considered that before?

So we asked PlainVu Secure Windows if they could construct two new “glass coffins” for us to our precise specifications and they agreed and rebuilt our original one at the same time, using better materials than duct tape for the hinges.

They were happy to be part of our project. At the time, we were looking at developing units 1 to 6 that we had acquired but as yet needed to determine their use. PSW suggested they moved but we said it may be better to stay where they were in unit 13 so they could still serve their many customers who weren’t part of SSS. They were later to acquire unit 14 and expand their business.

Lesser Heath Electronics were also tasked with providing heavy duty switching units and more of the heavy duty capacitors. Like PSW, they were pleased to be part of SSS, benefitting from the publicity our project had acquired since our work had become public knowledge, and from the fact that the mass media had had a field day with stories about time travel as they discovered more.

They realised they could repurpose some of the electrical substation that had been decommissioned but whose parts remained.

They were to later expand from their original premises in unit 10 to occupy unit 11 as well. It left the larger builders’ supplies yard in unit 12 at the end of the cul-de-sac as, and where, it was which served everyone’s purposes well.

The Building suppliers commissioned one of their customers to build more, and stronger, bomb proof cupboards to house the capacitors.

We needed to try Aled’s suggestion. It took a couple of weeks to set up and make sure everything was working okay.

Switching our original, and improved, temporter box on, we tested it by sending one of our hundred gram blocks a couple of minutes.

We then tried each of the new boxes in turn, using the switching control L.H. Electronics had provided. Each worked perfectly.

Now was the time for a parallel test. Something that had not been tried before. We were to attempt to temport three objects simultaneously.

Again we needed to ensure the parameters for the experiment were precise.

We were concerned there would be no harmful back surge of power and no contamination between the different temported objects.

We chose three distinctly different objects to temport.

Box 1 held one of the 100 gram cubes which we intended to temport ten minutes into the future.

Box 2 held 100 millilitres of water in a flask which we intended to temport five minutes into the future. Of course with the beaker, it was heavier than 100 grams but we had the weight sensors under each box to get exact readings.

Box 3 held a mouse in a cage. Topo, had long since died but Aled’s company had some mice which they used to test drugs on, though he insisted they were never harmed. With the weight of the cage, this was the heaviest load and we were going to temport it fifteen minutes into the future.

“We just hope it comes through OK and not merged with the hundred gram block, of course.” I had visions of an old science fiction horror film from nearly a century ago whereby a man and a fly had teleported together and their bodies had become mixed up.

We shouldn’t have worried.

The three boxes were appropriately activated at one minute intervals and we saw each disappear in front of our eyes.

Of course, Lei, Dai and I had seen all this before but there were still one or two who hadn’t, notably Aled and Megan.

Precisely four minutes after the mouse had disappeared in Temporter 3, the beaker of water reappeared in Temporter 2 without so much as a ripple on the surface. Two minutes later, the hundred gram block reappeared in Temporter 1. It was another seven minutes until “Topo 2” reappeared looking as contended as he had before and completely unharmed.

It looked as if our experiment had worked first time, though as true scientists, we did repeat it a couple more times with some variations.

How much of a need could there be for our services to temport ill patients to effectively hold them invisibly in suspended animation for a set time, and how would we transport them to and from our facility?

Megan started enquiries. The answer was almost, “as many as you can accommodate.”

All hospitals had helipads nowadays. If we installed a helipad, we were ideally placed to receive patients from anywhere in the South of England.

“A medical helicopter could conceivably reach us from as far away as Birmingham in just three-quarters of an hour,” contributed Aled.

So we started expanding our property portfolio further, acquiring units 8 and 9 to make a helipad capable of holding two aircraft.

Meanwhile we converted what had been unit 6 into a “hospital ward” where we would be able to house twelve temporters, which also provided more work for PlainVu windows and LH electronics.

“If you build it, they will come,” apparently is what God said to Noah. “That’s the biblical one not Saanvi’s husband,” I added. Perhaps, in a way, there may have been some comparison between our new venture and Noah’s Ark. Our temportation was able to provide stasis for seriously ill patients awaiting life saving treatments.

Any patient who could not be given the life saving treatment early enough because of logistics of assembling the right team and equipment for instance, could be ‘parked’ for a known duration. Saanvi said this would enable the creation of suitable prostheses or exoskeletons etcetera to be manufactured without the patient deteriorating in the meantime.

At Megan’s direction, the newest Temporter boxes being built for the ‘ward’ were big enough to take a trolley with a stretcher and drip stands or other life support equipment. “If it can fit in a medical helicopter, it needs to be able to fit in a temporter.”

It worked well with helicopters coming and going frequently.

There was a slight hitch. Although the surgeons advised it might need three weeks, for example, before they could carry out a procedure on a patient, sometimes they found they had underestimated how long it would take so we’d get a message requiring the temportation be extended. Dai said it would be impossible to change the period of temportation once a person had been despatched, so the simple solution was that as soon as the period had expired and the patient rematerialised, they would immediately need to be temported that extra time. He was able to build a program to do that automatically.

This ability, however, saw an approach from a wealthy businessman wanting to establish a business using our facility to temport those with life threatening diseases for which there was no cure yet available into the future in subsequent ten year jumps until a cure had been found.

We rejected his application. It would have used all our power and tied up all our facilities just so a handful of very wealthy people could try and cheat death.

But we were becoming overrun. We could have doubled or quadrupled our facility just to manage the serious conditions of the legitimate patients the hospitals wanted to use us for.

It took innovations from the foreign powers we had been previously concerned about.

Chapter 35

Foreign assistance

Years ago, we’d have called any involvement from Russia, whom we’d coded ‘Brown Bears’, or China, whom we’d coded ‘Pandas’, foreign interference. However, with our insistence on a kind of glasnost and gongkai for sharing with Russia and China respectively, it was a case of “We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.”

For the foreign powers who wanted to share knowledge with SSS, we acquired the remaining units, 15 to 20, to provide office space or facilities adjacent to the temportation base.

Units were quickly taken up by Russia, China, America, India and Europe.

At the behest of the UK government, we did make it clear to all other nations that Britain retained a patent or ‘copyright’ status on temporter technology to prevent any future claims by another country that they had invented it: something we in the United Kingdom had failed to do before with so many British inventions being claimed by other countries, like electric lighting, nuclear power and so on, and even things like ‘Cheddar’ cheese, unlike the French, for instance, who trademarked ‘Champagne’.

The Russians had been working on telepathy. They had observed patterns of coalescence of thoughts affected by various brainwaves which they thought they may be able to manipulate by strong magnetic fields.

However, it hadn’t really achieved anything.

I think I, and others who have experienced telepathy, could have told them; it cannot be conjured up and deliberately transmitted but is a received feeling which may occur when unexpected.

I would not, for instance be able to force a received telepathic sensation if I were to deliberately harm my brother, even if in the past there may have been times I felt like doing just that.

However, what the Russians had achieved was that they had managed to help with the development of an alternative source of power and ionic bursts which didn’t require the nuclear isotope and heavy lead shielding that made the temporter so immovable. In essence it looked as a way was being provided to enable making the temporter in the future.

The big advantage of the Russian invention, or possibly ‘intervention’?, was the opportunity of developing and producing a smaller, cheaper temporter unit for hospitals.

Thus we were able to develop the Hospital Stasis Units (HSUs). We didn’t call them temporters as they had limited use and didn’t want people to think they could do something they couldn’t. They could only project into the future by a couple of months at a time, maximum. They weren’t transparent boxes either to prevent anyone seeing their loved one disappear in front of their eyes.

Their gradual introduction ought to have reduced the demand on our facility at Lesser Heath but it seemed to be just as busy.

Saanvi and Frances had set up Ark Medical, with the help of Dafydd’s father, which used what had been units 1 to 3 of the original trading estate. They oversaw the production and provision of the HSUs amongst their expanding range of devices, with the help of PlainVu and LH Electronics.

Units 4 to 6 had become designated a hospital with some other emergency or experimental treatments being provided. When advertising for staff for that unit we had been delighted to receive and accept the application of a Ms Tala Wang. Although older, she still looked the same as when she had tended to me all those years ago. She was given complete oversight of the medical facilities. This unit, after all, was by its nature, handling really critically ill patients which had always been her speciality; it was basically an Intensive Care Unit.

Although a small unit, it would require more space mainly for administration purposes and a new building became the first of two erected on the old substation site.

Aled had specifically requested and paid for an extra, small temporter box for his company’s use to aid in the development of new treatments and drugs. Although he accepted that we could not send anything into the past, he reasoned that a paper note sent to the future could possibly elicit a paper note returned. As long as the note sent was burned, there would be no risk of the original meeting its future self and causing an explosion. He also knew it could cause untold problems if answers were received before time but that the future responders would be able to filter information sent and could possibly provide some clues as to whether current lines of investigation into new treatments were worth pursuing or not, thus speeding up drug development.

That box became part of Ark Medical when Aled’s business was partnered with Saanvi and Frances’s. “After all,” he reasoned, “it may have saved Lei’s life.” His facility at Rhymney remained separate initially but was to be fully taken over by Ark Medical eventually.

The Chinese had been hoping to develop teleportation. They had always been keen to further develop transport and trade routes globally.

When they set up their unit, they persuaded UK and local government of the merits of reopening the railway branch line that had once served Lesser Heath and paid for the construction as it could be useful to transport goods and personnel, to and from the site with ample car parking between the two new administration blocks to serve both it and the SSS units. The line also started to run passenger services to meet up with main lines to London and later, via a new pipe, to Europe.

The Chinese liked the work Dafydd had done on pipe ‘tunnels’. Rather than sinking pipes and burying them, as an alternative to conventional boring and bridges that had problems in high winds, a flexible tube anchored at appropriate points above and below with strong cabling, could run submerged deep enough not to cause a problem for shipping. It was thought this could provide an alternative especially where there may be tectonic movements. Bridges and tunnels had always been at risk from earthquakes.

It was thought the idea of a flexible pipe may frighten some people but there were precedents set in Norway which had already installed ‘floating tunnels’ and roads, carrying roads on and under, or rather through, some fjords.

The new pipe structures however, were more flexible than the Norwegian ones, or perhaps ‘semi-rigid’: a bit like how a hosepipe could be used submerged in a bathtub of water, but not carrying water but air. In fact not even air. The idea was to evacuate the tube to provide a near vacuum to reduce any wind resistance so very high speed transportation could be achieved.

This too was not without precedent.

In the 1860’s the London Pneumatic Despatch company had used tubes to transport letters for the post office with a vehicle moving through the tube using atmospheric pressure sucking it through at speed.

At about the same time, some departmental stores in various countries started using vacuum pipes to send cartridges containing notes and money between counters and the office. The notes were simply placed in a special cartridge and, once closed, put into the end of a tube, a trapdoor closed and whoosh, away it went.

The mid nineteenth century had seen considerable scientific achievements. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had overseen the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London for which William Paxton had constructed the Crystal Palace. In the 1850’s the building had been carefully taken apart and reconstructed on Sydenham Hill in South London in the area that is now called Crystal Palace. One of the employees of the LPD company designed and built a public pneumatic railway in the new grounds of the Crystal Palace in the 1860’s using an ordinary railway carriage on an ordinary railway track fitted with large brushes whose bristles sealed against the tunnel walls, to be blown through the half kilometre long tunnel in one direction and sucked back the other way.

A more usable version of pneumatic propulsion had been the atmospheric railways which were experimented with in various places in Europe. However, the London to Croydon Railway, passing near the Crystal Palace, carried passengers for a number of years. It worked as an ordinary railway but there was a pipeline between the tracks through which air was evacuated. A towing carriage had a paddle connected to it by a rod that passed through a flap that ran along the top of the tube to a paddle that, when turned to fill the tube, was pulled or pushed along by air pressure, towing the train with it. The problem had been the flap valve along its length was made of leather and the vacuum sealed by tallow. This combination attracted the rats which nibbled through it causing leaks.

Whereas pneumatic pressure could be used to power transport, in the latter part of the twentieth century, Eric Laithwaite had developed the Linear Induction Motor that could propel vehicles at a very fast rate whilst also being levitated magnetically.

The reason Dafydd’s idea had rejected the LIM is that the motors on the trains needed a continual electrical supply.

An alternative would be to provide a linear induction track but Dai’s research project that was the basis of his thesis, had shown a continual track was not needed, merely occasional boosters which would be easier to provide. Spacing would depend on the efficiency of the vacuum to reduce friction and the strength of the magnetism provided.

So the Pipes that the Chinese had developed using these ideas were about three metres in diameter. The gondolas were bullet shaped at each end, nearly filling the tube and strongly magnetic, like a bar magnet with the poles at either end. At the start of the tunnel, they were pushed into the tube whence they were immediately attracted and repelled by electromagnets switching on and off automatically as the gondola approached any booster stations and then arresting their movement at the termini.

They had built pipes between some of their islands and, working with Northern Ireland and Scotland, had helped achieve a long held dream of those home nations, to be joined by a fixed link. They carried out the work at minimal cost as a goodwill gesture to Britain, though the suspicious politicians thought there may be some ulterior espionage implications.

The SSS real estate was now developing beyond just being a unit in a trading estate to owning the entire estate and more.

Chapter 36

The Future

The Chinese learned much about producing and handling high levels of magnetism from the Russian studies.

Having completed a second “tunnel” across the English Channel using the Pipe technology, they were investigating providing trans-oceanic links aiming to be able to provide pipe travel across the Atlantic and Pacific, initially just for cargo. However they were also considering a possibility of a small temporter to put the contents, including possible passengers, into stasis for such a journey.

Thinking further ahead, they were considering using appropriately positioned satellites in orbit around Earth and other planets and possibly at Lagrange points as booster stations to use the pipe propulsion technology through the vacuum of space. Of course, if they could manage that and integrate temporters within those ships, space travel could become feasible over longer distances.

The new international co-operative effort is known as the Transtemporter project.

Will it happen? Well, not in my lifetime unfortunately and I’m not seeking temportation to be around long enough to find out.

I am now getting old and there are concerns about my heart, despite what Ark Medical can do.

I’ll have to leave it for those who come after me to tell you if it works.

Cover notes

About the Author

Chris Robinson was a teacher for nearly 30 years, teaching Junior school children and acting as an advisor for Science and Technology.

He has written about education and more recently about Acid Reflux, producing the definitive encyclopaedia on the subject in layman’s language, Down With Acid. This is his first foray into fiction.

About Temporter

Awakening in hospital with Amnesia, a former teacher is arrested for causing the death of one of his colleagues and the suspicious disappearance of another. Did he really kill him?

Has the missing person actually been sent to the future?

A review by AI:

"A cool, mind-bending setup.

Temporal mechanics, ethical dilemmas, mystery, and emotional stakes all woven together.”

Let me know what you thought of this book.

Email: chris@chrisrob.co.uk