Guardian

Guardian

by Roger Ley

Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

Clancy knew he was in trouble as soon as he stepped into the house. He could see his wife, Paula, through the doorway from the entrance hall. She was sitting at the dining table doing her twice-yearly audit of the household accounts, balancing the books.
‘Can you come in here for a moment, Clancy? I seem to have found some rogue receipts,’ she called.
Clancy’s heart fell as he hung up his coat. So, the unavoidable confrontation was upon him. He was finally going to have to explain the whole debacle, and he wasn’t sure what Paula’s reaction would be. He walked through into the dining room. Neat piles of receipts, bills, and wallet files covered the table. Paula reached for a set of receipts held together with a binder clip.
‘Each one is about five thousand dollars from Bald Eagle Gold and Silver Bullion Online. You’ve made a purchase every month for the last five months. Have you taken up a new hobby, and if so, why haven’t you told me about it? This is a serious amount of cash, Clancy.’ She pushed her reading glasses up onto her head all the better to glare at him.
‘Yes, er, I meant to tell you about this, but it slipped my mind.’
‘It slipped your mind every month?’
‘Sorry, I should have told you.’
‘Tell me now!’
Clancy put his finger to his lips, walked over, took her hand and led her out of the back door and into the yard.
#
Clancy was a technician in the physics faculty at the local university. He worked for a team of scientists who were housed in a building on an industrial estate, a few miles from the campus, and a twenty-minute cycle ride from their home. Paula visited it one day when Clancy had forgotten his lunch bucket. As she stepped out of her car and walked up the access road, she noticed the steel shutters covering the windows on the ground floor, and the chain-link fencing topped with razor wire that surrounded the building. It seemed rather excessive security for a university department. Stepping into the reception area, she was confronted by security guards wearing military uniforms, and although they were very polite, they wouldn’t let her past the front desk. The receptionist phoned Clancy, and he came out to speak to her.
‘Sorry, darling, they won’t let you in without clearance. It’s a government contract. They’re completely inflexible.’ He walked her out of the building and back to her car.
‘I didn’t realise you were involved in secret government work,’ she said.
‘That’s the problem with secret work, hon. I’m supposed to keep it secret, even from you.’ He kissed her cheek as she got into the car. ‘We’ll talk about it tonight.’ She’d driven away feeling a mixture of emotions. When she got home, she realised she’d forgotten to hand over his lunch.
That had been over a year ago.
#
Clancy led Paula into the summerhouse at the end of the garden and closed the door behind them.
‘We’ve had a breakthrough at the lab,’ he said quietly. ‘Obviously, I’m not supposed to talk about it, but I think I have to tell you.’
‘Well, that sounds interesting,’ she said. Apparently, the rogue receipts were momentarily forgotten. ‘Do tell.’
‘They’ve discovered a way to travel through time.’
She laughed. ‘No way. Time travel’s not possible. It’s science fiction, and anyway, there are all those paradoxes, “what if I killed my grandfather?” that sort of thing.’
‘Yes, I know, the whole team knows, and we aren’t sure of our ground yet.’
‘It sounds dangerous if it’s true,’ she said. ‘I mean, people could change things in the past and that would affect the present.’
‘Yes, we know. We’ve only been successful at moving forwards in time and then back to the present, but I’m sure we’ll be able to travel in both directions soon.’
‘So how does it work?’ she asked.
‘I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you this much: there’s a booth, and a volunteer stands in it, and when they operate the equipment, he or she disappears. From the traveller’s point of view there’s a moment of disorientation and suddenly they’re forty years into the future but in the same place.’
‘Why forty years?’
‘That’s what we set it to, and the government won’t let us change it. They’re being very cautious. They think the technology could strike at the foundations of our civilisation. I suspect they wish we’d never discovered it. They probably want to shut us down, but they daren’t, because what if the other side discovers how to do it?’
‘Is it like in the movies? Do the travellers have to go through naked?’
‘No,’ he said patiently, surprised at the triviality of her question. ‘They emerge fully clothed with whatever they took with them.’ Clancy thought she seemed a little disappointed.
‘Surely the Earth wouldn’t be in the same place when you travel ahead. You’d materialise in the vacuum of space?’
‘Good point, but no, that’s all taken into account by the AI that runs the equipment. The traveller is displaced in both space and time.’
‘So who tried it first?’ asked his wife.
‘Initially they sent animals, then when they wanted to send a human, I volunteered. I’m the only one to go so far.’
‘And when did this happen?’
‘About six months ago. Remember that bonus they paid me?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I thought that was for overtime.’
Clancy shrugged.
‘And how many times have you been?’ she asked.
‘Dozens. I’ve spent days up ahead. I always return to the time of departure, so it’s as if no time has passed while I’m away.’
‘What’s it like in the future? Are there flying cars? What do people wear?’
‘It’s not that different from now, although there are differences: funny hairstyles, strange clothes, three-dimensional tattoos, quite a lot of plastic surgery. There’s a fashion for young women to look feline. I don’t know how much is surgery and how much is makeup.’
‘What about the people who work for the university in the future? What are they like?’
‘I haven’t met any of them. The building appears deserted. I think the powers that be may be worried that if they communicate with me, it will interfere with their history.’
‘Is everybody rich or are they all communists?’
‘People seem reasonably well off, but it’s far from perfect up there. They still have poverty, inequality, crime, and disease. All the things you’d hoped would have been eradicated.’
‘I suppose forty years isn’t such a long time,’ she said. ‘It’s only the difference between the 1990s and now. So what do you do when you visit the future?’
‘They’ve given me a collapsible bike, and I pedal around taking photographs. Then, when I get back, I write a report. I’m not supposed to interact with anyone or do anything while I’m there, just observe.’
‘There’s more, isn’t there? You’re not telling me everything.’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘On the third trip, I couldn’t resist riding around to look at our house.’
‘And?’
‘I knocked on the door.’
‘And?’
‘You answered it.’
‘Me? Forty years older? We were still living here?’
‘Yes, you were in pretty good shape for a seventy-year-old. You looked at me kind of hard, then said, “I’ve been expecting you,” and invited me in.’
‘Wow, and were you there?’
‘Yes, but I was suffering from Alzheimer’s.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘This is what the gold coins are for. They’re a way of helping the old couple. With the money I got from selling the coins, we moved, let’s call him Clancy Senior, into the Maple Meadows care home, and Paula Senior visits him most days. She’s very grateful for our help.’
‘I bet she is. Wow, what a story! And how is Clancy Senior now?’ she asked.
‘About the same. He’s barely conscious. You can’t expect much at his age and in his condition. I pretend to be his son when I go to see him. The staff seem to be doing their jobs; he’s clean, dressed, fed and watered. Of course, the robots do most of the work.’
‘Robots?’
‘Yeah, they’re pretty advanced. They move him into the lounge and sit him in front of the television with all the other coffin-dodgers in the mornings, then after dinner they move him back to his room.’
‘God, it’s not much of a life for him,’ said Paula.
‘No, it certainly isn’t. But he doesn’t know any different. Every day’s a new dawn as far as he’s concerned.’
‘It’s such a groundhog existence. Promise me you’ll shoot me if I ever get to that stage, or maybe give me an overdose?’
Clancy grunted. ‘He lives in a world of his own.’
#
At the Maple Meadows nursing home in the future, Clancy Senior enjoyed his limited life, filtered through the cocktail of medications the robots gave him. At night he dreamed vividly and chatted to characters in books he’d read, or films he’d seen. There’d been a memorable discussion with Frodo Baggins about the social structure of the Shire. Sometimes he relived conversations he’d had years before. Girlfriends from his teenage years visited him, as did other old friends, ex-colleagues, and even a favourite teacher from his primary school days. Many of them were long dead, but that didn’t detract from the pleasure he took in their conversations. His nights were full and satisfying.
During the day, his entertainment was more passive as he watched television in the lounge along with his friends. He liked dramas and often took part in them. His favourite was Star Trek. He usually played the part of the engineer.
“It’s life, Captain, but not as we know it.”
“The engines can’t take much more, Captain.”
“The shields are at ten per cent, Captain. I’ll have to divert warp power to them.”
He preferred the Star Trek films to the TV series. Then, as the music played, and the credits rolled, the nice shiny white robots would wheel him into the dining room, feed him dinner, take him back to his bedroom, help him with his shower, and lift him into bed, ready for the night’s entertainment.
On Thursdays, the finest entertainers from stage and screen would come to perform in the lounge for the residents, leading them in singing popular songs from yesteryear. The inmates’ strong voices combined as one to reinterpret the music with new and complex harmonies. It was glorious.
On some mornings during the week, Jesus came to speak words of comfort to him. He had such kind eyes. There were no holes in his hands, but they’d probably healed up over the centuries.
Junior visited him regularly. He seemed tired, so Clancy Sr. was pleased to see him dozing as the reflections from the fountain in the courtyard outside played on the ceiling of his room. Sometimes there were just patterns of light, but often there would be pictures and messages in strange pictographic languages from alien civilisations which existed in the depths of the galaxy. Often the messages were important, and he wanted to write them down, but he had nothing to write with. He would have liked to discuss them with Junior, but they didn’t seem able to speak to one another.
#
Now that he’d explained the debits from their account to Paula, Clancy felt more relaxed about his visits to Maple Meadows. Early on he’d found a jeweller who would buy the coins at scrap value each month, and he paid the cash into Clancy Sr.’s bank. Everything was regular and aboveboard. He sat in his ‘father’s’ room and admired the slickness of the robots as they dealt with the everyday business of washing and dressing him. They were strong, patient, kind, impervious to insults, and indifferent to the various bodily functions they had to deal with. With pleasant genderless voices, they could hold simple conversations. They remembered the details of previous encounters and simulated interest in their patient’s recollections. They were perfect companions and caregivers.
Junior discussed Clancy Sr. with Dr Stephens, who seemed to care deeply about his charges. He had shoulder-length dark hair, a goatee beard and a tanned, Mediterranean look.
‘So, Doctor, how is he doing?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t expect any improvement in his condition. His dementia was very advanced when he first arrived here, and his neurodegeneration is irreversible.’
‘How long do you think he’s got?’ asked Clancy.
‘Months, I’d guess, possibly weeks. We’ll keep him comfortable until the end.’
‘Thanks, Doc, I know you’ll do your best for him.’
Clancy walked back to the lounge and sat with his ‘father’. They both dozed through an episode of Star Trek, or was it Star Wars? He could never remember.
#
‘How was he?’ asked Paula when he got home that evening.
‘Much the same. He’s on his last legs though; it doesn’t look as if he’ll make it through the month.’
And as it transpired, he was right. The next visit saw the old boy in obvious decline, and a week later, Clancy held his ‘father’s’ hand as he drew his last breath. He sat with him for a long time and felt the small muscles in his palm stiffen as rigor mortis set in.
#
Clancy took a couple of days’ holiday. He needed time to process his feelings. He’d lied to Paula from the beginning. He couldn’t tell her the truth. She hadn’t been there when he’d first visited Clancy Sr. He’d found the old man alone, filthy, and undernourished in his unkempt house. There had been no sign of his wife. Later, he discovered from newspaper clippings he found in a drawer that she’d died in a road accident ten years earlier. He arranged the sale of the house, the disposal of the old man’s effects, and Clancy Sr.’s move to the Maple Meadows care home. The monthly fees were eye-wateringly expensive, and the sale of the house hadn’t raised much. Their interest-only mortgage saw to that. The arrangements had been a lot of work, and he’d had to lie in his reports to his employers. His boss had started asking questions, but it didn’t matter now. Clancy had stopped volunteering to travel to the future; he had no reason to go there anymore.
Paula said he looked tired, but Clancy just felt old, and knowing what the future held for them both didn’t help. He made a conscious effort to try to live in the present; after all, the future would arrive soon enough.
Now, as he pottered in his flower garden, he wondered if he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records? A week after Clancy Sr. died, his ‘son’ had stood alone in the chapel at the crematorium and watched as the casket slid noiselessly through the curtains and disappeared. He was currently the only human being to have genuinely attended his own funeral.
He just wished he could tell somebody about it.