19. The Good Doctor
The drive to Windsor was pleasant enough. It was cold outside, and after a mid-morning start, Clive and Michael were on their way. Little was said on the journey, as Clive didn’t have the level of comfort required to talk about what was something of a mental health issue within his family. He spoke about the Blues, ironically enough, and how they were having themselves a very good season and looked a good bet to win the Grand Final. He just hoped they’d broadcast it in Sydney.
The sturdy old house that was Dr Henry’s residence had the well-worn, dusty feel of a homestead in a Banjo Patterson story. The weeds were overgrown, and rusty car parts and farm machinery seemed desperately, randomly assorted on the front lawn. It wasn’t a promising sign.
The door was answered by an older man, late 60s, bearded and with a tweed jacket. He introduced himself with a wry smile as Hank. Michael hadn’t the capacity to recognise him as having been at the tertiary education debate. But he was there, taking notes.
Clive was offered a cup of tea and offered a seat in the front room, next to a pile of old magazines and a dog that looked to have been alive since before the war.
‘We won’t be long, Clive. Just got a few things to chat about with young Michael here.’
Clive nodded. ‘Take your time. I’ll just sit and talk with Fido.’
‘Vernon,’ the doctor corrected, turning his back on them both. He escorted Michael to what was his office.
The office was old, ramshackle and crammed with books. A beam of dusty light broke the space in half, between Hank’s desk and a ratty old chair, which he indicated Michael could sit in.
‘I’m glad you could come by and see me,’ Hank said as he sat, peering over the top of his reading glasses. He seemed to Michael to be every cliché of academic psychiatrist ever conceived rolled into one. He would have pointed out the fact that the whole act seemed derivative of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, were it not for the fact that they were still a decade away from that film being made.
‘I’m not a genius,’ Michael said, glumly. ‘I just read a lot.’
‘What about your lack of friendships at school?’
‘What about it?’
‘I’m guessing you find it hard to relate to kids their age.’
‘I suppose so.’
Their age?
Hank’s hands glided over the surface of his desk in a smooth motion, as if to modulate his line of questioning or to create a more soothing atmosphere. Michael noticed it, then saw Hank noticing him noticing it.
‘Just so you know,’ Michael started, ‘I’ve been through these hoops before.’
‘Hoops?’
‘These shrink hoops. Guys like you who come along and look for signs of abuse, or autism, or genius, or trauma, or what have you. There’s nothing to be found.’
‘OK,’ Hank said, reaching for a note card in his desk. ‘No jumping through hoops. Mind if I ask you a few questions?’
‘Knock yourself out, chief.’
Hank smirked as he looked at the card.
‘How does it make you feel when adults don’t take you seriously?’ he asked.
Michael snorted. ‘How does it make you feel?’
Hank didn’t look up, continuing on his interrogation.
‘Is it a source of frustration for you knowing you’re smarter than all your classmates?’
Michael crossed his legs and rubbed his ankle. ‘It’s not the sort of thing that would usually bother me, but it seems to irk the shit out of some of them.’
Hank put the card down and laced his fingers on his desk, staring right at Michael. It made him feel awkward.
‘I saw your debate on higher education.’
Michael raised a suspicious eyebrow. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Interesting points you were making. The whole notion of a theoretical shift in socio-economics. You postulated a resource boom feeding the needs of developing economies in Asia.’
‘We do have a lot of iron ore.’
Hank nodded. ‘We do at that. Be an interesting turn of events if what you said turned out to be true.’
‘Well, you know,’ Michael stammered, shifting in his chair. ‘Only one way to find out.’
Hank nodded.
‘True.’
He leaned back and rubbed his beard.
‘Tell me, Michael. How old are you again?’
‘12.’
‘Ah, yes. 12. Quite the child prodigy. They’re talking about you a lot at Wellings.’
Michael glanced away, bitterly.
‘They seem to think they have some use for me, now that they know I won’t be playing cricket or basketball for them.’
‘Indeed. So, twelve years old, born in … 1975.’
‘Right.’
‘Which makes you…’ The pause lingered in the air as Hank’s head lowered to look directly at Michael over his glasses. Michael’s head followed the pattern, their eyes locked.
‘… Sagittarius? Chinese Year of the Rabbit?’
Hank got up and wandered around to the front of his desk, and perched himself on its edge.
‘You tell me you’re 12, and you really do look it – right out of central casting. And you have concerned parents and there’s probably a birth certificate and baby photos, but what I really want to know is… How old were you the night before you woke up and were 12?’
A cold bolt of lightning shot down Michael’s spine. Hank hand landed him.
‘Michael, it’s 1987, but it’s not really, is it? Where, and … for the lack of a better term … when did your mind come from?’
‘What year is it, really?’
*
As though returning from a commercial break, there was an unnaturally long beat before either one of them spoke. Michael broke the tension.
‘How did you know?’
‘You’re not the only one this has happened to.’
‘You too?’
Hank nodded sagely. Michael shot up and motioned to Hank. He was finally going to get some answers.
‘What the fuck is going on? Am I dead? Are we both? How is this happening?’
‘Look, calm down. One thing at a time. I’m going to try to explain it to you, but there’s only so many things I can tell you; the fact is that I don’t know the ‘why’ of it myself. But you’re not dead. This isn’t a coma, a fever dream or a hallucination. This is the real world, the world you remember. You’ve just found yourself re-experiencing this part of it. So, tell me. What year is it in your mind? What year have you come from?’
‘2013’
‘Right. So, you’re in your late 30s, then? I need to jot some notes down. You want a drink?’
‘No thank you. Found out the hard way that a middle aged taste for booze doesn’t gel with a tween’s liver.’
Hank poured some scotch into a glass from a crystal decanter, opened an exercise book and started taking notes.
‘Yeah, that’s a lesson you only need to learn once. Hand eye coordination would be off too, but your penmanship remains as it was when you left. Muscle memory is inconsistent among us. And you like bad food now too, right? No taste for finer cuisine? It’s a common trait. It’s about the palette physically maturing, so things aren’t going to smell and taste the same as you’re used to.
‘Jesus, that explains a lot,’ Michael said.
‘Let’s get cracking here. I have a few standard questions I like to ask people in this situation, because it helps me determine which timeline they’re from.’
‘Timeline?’
‘Hmm. The thing is, time isn’t linear; it bends, happens in parallel. I’ve borne witness to some key moments in history, and then again when those moments never happened. Depends on who I talk to.’
‘You’re not making sense.’
Hank took a sip from his glass, peering over the rim into Michael’s eyes.
‘Think of it as time travel, but only backwards in time, never forwards. And instead of you being in a vessel, like a time machine, a De Lorean, that police box on Dr Who, it’s just your consciousness. Implanting itself into the body you occupied as a child.’
‘And you don’t know why.’
Hank shook his head with a quirky grin on his face. ‘It’s a question of abstract theoretical physics. Astral projection, mental telepathy, out of body experiences. I’ve looked into theories about all of them. Science doesn’t cover it. We’re in a broader, almost metaphysical domain here.’
Michael did a very good impression of a deer in the headlights. Hank returned to his seat with his notes.
‘OK. Let’s give this a go. Do you have, I’m sorry, did you have a Quatri-Cube?’
‘What’s a Quatri-Cube?’
Hank jotted a note down and made a mark next to it with a red marker.
‘Good. Not from 6, makes this easier. Question two. Are you fluently bilingual and tri-literal because of the Higher Mandate?’
‘What? Higher which now? No. Am I supposed to be?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On who won a certain war in the late 90s.’
‘What war?’
‘Hardly matters now, it’s fiction here, historical fact in another Timeline.’
He jotted another note.
‘Three, a hypothetical: say you have the means and the funds to go to any point in history and change one thing or another – for the greater good of humanity… within your lifetime.’
‘Something I could prevent from happening? Like, stop 9/11?’
Hank took a note.
‘Ah. 9/11. You’re from Timeline 1.’
‘Timeline 1? What’s that? And how do you know about it if it hasn’t happened yet?’
‘I’ve been accumulating information for a few years now, once I figured out how to contact … people like yourself.’
‘Are you from the future?’
‘Christ… hard to say at this point. I’m actually from the past, in that I’ve never experienced anything past 2006. The thing is that I vividly recall 9/11 from a long, long time ago, even though it’s still – what – 14 years from happening?’
‘You recall it? How? How old are you?’
‘Again, hard to say. Now, looking at me? This time around, I’m 67.’
‘This time around?’
‘Look, leave the questions to me for now, it just makes it more difficult and this is not easy even when I’m not being interrupted.’
Michael nodded, and leant back on his chair. Hank turned the pages back in his exercise book. He scanned a pencil down a list of numbers, adding them silently as he went.
‘I worked this out over some time, and mind you, this is the stuff I can remember. 67 now and a bunch of short spells elsewhere, a full run that got me to 86. I’ve borne witness to 211 individual years over time.’
Michael narrowed his gaze, as if focussing his eyes was going to help things. ‘You’re 211?’
‘Well, no. Physically, right now, I’m 67. But psychologically? My consciousness? I’ve experienced 211 full years, that way, yes.’
‘So, you’ve been into the future?’
Hank took his glasses off and leaned back in his chair.
‘The thing is, you need to stop thinking about time being in the three phases as you know it. For most people, it’s a simple equation of past, present and future. The past is what you have experienced, the present is what you are experiencing, and the future is what’s in store. But what you call the future is what I was calling the present, but it’s the past anyhow. To me. Like I said, I only ever got as far as 2006, as best I can recall.’
‘So where are we now? What happened to me?’
‘That’s the big question and I’ve never been able to figure it out. All I know is that you, me, and as far as I’ve ascertained, seven others have somehow managed to have each of our consciousness individually move backwards ‘in time’.’
Michael made air quotes. ‘In time?’
‘Like I said, it’s not linear, it’s not about time as we know it. And it could not conceivably be more random. There are a few consistent factors, but it’s mostly scattershot. You reach a certain age plateau, and then, through what I can only assume are forces beyond our understanding and most certainly beyond our control, you leap, or what I call ‘shift’ back to yourself at an earlier point. Could be the previous day, a second, could be – like you – when you’re a kid, or the most unfortunate ones get sent back in utero or as they’re being born.’
‘Christ.’
‘Tell me about it. There’s a reason you don’t remember it the first time it happens, and there’s a reason babies emerge from the womb screaming.’
‘And I thought my relationship with my mother was complex.’
Hank nodded in agreement.
‘I have one theory that déjà vu is you starting a shift but it not finishing. But… that theory needs work too. A lot of my understanding does. So, what I’ve done is, I’ve pieced together a bunch of theories over time that breaks down our existence into Timelines.’
‘Timelines.’
‘Yes. I think I’m the oldest person to have experienced these … what I call ‘shifts’. Born Wednesday, March 17, 1920. I’ve never experienced anything prior to that date, or seen further than Sunday, September 3 2006. I went to sleep, woke up and I was in my childhood bed, on the back porch of my parents’ farm in Cootamundra, 1929. That took some getting used to. Through my own experiences, and what I found out through conducting interviews, that there have been seven timelines.’
‘Seven? How does that work?’
‘You mentioned 9/11? That one event is one of the key moments in modern history, and from what I found out, only occurs in Timeline 1 – your timeline. Every other Timeline, it either never happened, or the Timeline hadn’t reached that date yet… I can see I’m losing you.’
Michael shook his head and snorted. ‘I’ve been learning a lot recently, Hank. Nothing’s too much for me at this point. But you said you were born on March 17? That’s when I woke up here. March 17, 1987.’
‘Fairly typical. Something about that date… Anyhow. Timeline 1 is what I’ve been calling the Alpha. The broader, best-known history of the world exists in this Timeline. Hitler, the war, Vietnam, Menzies, Nixon, the internet, Rubik’s cubes… Everything that happened there is in the Alpha.’
‘What happens in the other ones?’
‘Variations on a theme to one degree or another. This is why I try to have this conversation with everyone I can track down. Seems that there’s two kinds of shifters.’
Michael covered his eyes with his hands and rubbed them vigorously. ‘Shifters. Alpha timelines. It’s just baffling.’
‘I have my own vocabulary. Shifter one, that’s your well-intentioned do-gooder. Does what he can to right the wrongs in the world, but doesn’t think that the wrongs and evils in the world were necessary; that maybe the worst of humanity is necessary to get the best of humanity off its fat arse. I was one of those at first. Big student of history. Once I realised that it wasn’t all a dream, I could manipulate things in what I thought was the right direction. Got to my early 20s, and used my knowledge to warn the British about Hitler.’
‘And?’
‘Timeline 2. The Beta. Not good.’
‘What happens?’
‘Alpha timeline has Hitler dying in the bunker in 1945, allied victory and peace, right? Well, in the Beta, a few inexplicable early losses galvanized the old boy’s reserve. Made the Reich change tactics. Take in a whole new approach to the different theatres of war which I had no way of anticipating or helping. History, as I knew it, was all of a sudden a whole bunch of William Holden movies in my head.’
‘So what happened?’
‘A whole new world. Not only does Germany win the war, the entire post-war history is re-written. Everyone learned German, and through the execution of Führungskraft Auftrag #53 the Jews were entirely wiped off the face of the earth – in America, here, everywhere. All mentions of them, their history, erased from books. Vast catalogues of literature, art, culture and film, destroyed. And, of course, no Israel. No Middle East conflict either. There was no civil rights movement in the US, no Vietnam War, no rock music. They all but re-introduced slavery in some parts of the world, basically re-colonised the entire third world and brought about the master race. Hitler lives to a ripe old age and dies in his sleep from dementia in 1973. That was the Beta.’
It was quite the image. Michael didn’t quite know what to say.
‘… at least he got to see The Godfather.’
Hank scoffed. ‘There was no Godfather in the Beta.’
‘All that – all that, was because of you?’
‘Indirectly. By the time I shifted again, everyone was dressed very smartly, the architecture was phenomenal, and if you were white and straight and middle class and compliant and Protestant, life essentially carried on as it was always going to. It wasn’t so good if you weren’t part of the master race…’
‘So if that happened, how is it that I know who Hitler was? I know how the war actually ended.’
‘Because I knew once that happened, I knew once I was having a third go at it, I wouldn’t do that again. I got another chance at it, did as little as possible different to how I remember it, and things worked out as they were supposed to. So it’s up to me to lay low. Not mess with history and to let headline-making shifters like you know it’s the wrong thing to do.’
‘But what if I just use my knowledge of the future to bring about stuff quicker? Make life simpler for everyone?’
‘No.’
‘But…’
‘But nothing, Michael. There’s far too much at stake, and I’ve seen hideous things unfurl as a result of your type trying to do ‘the right thing’. There’s only so much I can do anyhow. In your lifetime, in the Alpha, there are shifters doing all kinds of crazy things that I can’t, couldn’t, won’t be able to control.’
‘But I could get in on the ground floor! My life could be so much more interesting if I did something like … invent the iPad. Nobody loses there. Everyone gets to read eBooks and watch Mad Men on the train and I make a billion dollars.’
Hank reached for a tissue and honked a massive nasal blow into it.
‘Mad Men. I’ve been told about that. Never been able to see it. Think it was after my time. Pity.’
Michael was clearly not getting the answers he wanted. Hank saw his frustration and exhaled.
‘Fine. Go ahead, then. Be a genius ideas man. But tell me this: how does an iPad work?’
Michael looked at his feet.
‘I don’t know. Internet?’
‘And the internet works how, exactly?’
Michael smiled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘There you go. From what I’ve noted about Timeline 1, there’s all kinds of things have gone on that I couldn’t alter or prevent. Didn’t you ever stop to think exactly how information and communications technology advanced further in the last ten years of your life than it had in the previous hundred? How do you think that happened? It wasn’t exactly organic, now was it?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘No, you just accepted it. And those on the inside made billions out of it. And it’s all very nice that you can have every piece of music and film and literature, and every bit of information in the history of the world on your phone in your pocket… those internet sites the Wiki-whatever and the you tubes. It’s inconceivable today, and it was inconceivable in 2002. But something happened, someone shifted from somewhere way the hell beyond any world I know and then everyone has the complete works of Shakespeare at their fingertips. In their pocket.’
‘I wish it was that noble. When I last looked people were throwing angry birds at pigs and building fake farms on their phones.’
Hank took a sip from his glass. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to figure it out.
‘Fake farms? Pretending to grow crops and raise cows and whatnot? What’s the point in that?’
‘No clue… You said there were two types of what… shifters? What’s the other type?’
‘The ones I was just talking about. They aggrandise themselves. Take other people’s art and knowledge and essentially steal it from the future, pass it off as their own. You’re that kind of person. Arty, creative types who never got their work taken serious enough, or you never made a handsome enough living. So you somehow manage to convince Jerry Seinfeld to make a show about nothing, or write a script about an adventure story in outer space, or a series of books about a boy who goes to wizard school. It all comes back to bite you on the arse, trust me.’
Michael was resigned. ‘You’re the only person in the world I can trust at this point. I didn’t think being accomplished was going to hurt anyone.’
Hank shook his head. ‘Fame is a Faustian bargain, remember that. What I wanted to tell you was to lay low. I can’t tell you what to do, but what I learnt from my own experience is that it’s best to not muck around with what you know. Don’t try to undo history. Don’t take money out of Steven Spielberg’s pocket. There’s a grand plan at work and you don’t want to trifle with it.’
‘I wasn’t trifling with anything.’
‘You were. Don’t think I can’t spot it when I see it. You get all high and mighty, using a vast adult vocabulary and ideas as a 12 year old, you’re in the papers and making a big name for yourself. What were you before you shifted?’
‘Professionally? I was an actor.’
Another snort of derision. ‘Figures. You wanted to be bigger than you were, huh? Thought you’d take advantage of your moment and be the youngest person ever to play the Dane?’
Michael shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘I was bored. I just wanted to do some good work.’
‘Well, you should stop it. Like I said, I can’t force you to do anything, but tell you that the less you do to draw attention to yourself, the better off you’ll be. You know the butterfly effect?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, the thing about it is that you can take big steps, like stopping Hitler or preventing 9/11, or you can take someone’s job by accident and that was the one thing that pushed their sense of self-worth over the edge. At best, no electric car. At worst, political assassination, acts of terrorism, war…’
‘So to you, I should just be the same gormless twit I was as a kid, make no inroads and struggle to get to the middle?’
Hank was seeing Michael miss the bigger picture.
‘I’m not saying you should shovel shit for a living and never say boo to a goose, but drawing attention to yourself for being decades smarter and more intuitive than your average kid is not doing anyone any favours. You’ll have nutbags on the right thinking you’re Jesus and nutbags on the left wanting you to be Prime Minister.’
Michael got up from his chair and walked to the window.
‘So what, do I just pretend like nothing’s happened? Why can’t I use my insight to make things better in the world?’
Hank stood up and shuffled over to Michael at the window. He took a deep breath.
‘You know my story about the war? The Beta?’
Michael nodded.
‘I saw the other side of it too. Chap I knew, years ago, he found his way back and started ranting about jihadist Islam. 15 year old kid, like you, a few years from now. Timeline 4, which is mostly like this one, and yours. Anyhow, I try to get him to make himself scarce, and he seems like a smart enough kid, but wanted to prevent 9/11, passionately, like it was his life’s mission. I tell him it’s best not to, I explain why, tell him about the Beta, and he seems to agree. So the years go by, I don’t hear from him, he doesn’t crop up in the papers or on TV. Eventually the day itself rolls around, and at the time I had some kind of a cold and I was 81 years old. I was in bed most of the day, and I remember watching The West Wing that night, and I looked over to the clock, and the time was right, and I remembered what day it was. And I was thinking, any minute now. We’ll see what happens.’
‘What happened?’
‘That’s the thing. Nothing. Nothing happened. Flicked over to CNN and nothing. A story in the late news appeared the next day about an anonymous tip that prevented any of the hijackers from getting on any of the planes. They all got arrested either at the airport or on the way to the airport. Triumph of counter-terrorism. It never happened. Airport security tightened generally over the world, but the actual attacks, the tragedy itself never actually took place.’
‘So it’s good, right? Saved 3000 lives. No retaliation, no war in Iraq? Did Bush even get re-elected?’
Hank shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t. But it didn’t matter. The problem was that 9/11 was Plan A for Al Qaeda. Plan A got foiled. So they moved on to Plan B.’
‘Which was..?’
Hank solemnly shook his head. ‘Worse.’
For a second, Michael thought he saw Hank get misty, a look of fear that crept over his face, turning him a paler shade of grey.
‘Long time ago, that one.’
‘A long time ago, in the future,’ Michael pointed out.
There was a pause. Hank contemplated the fact that it was in his past, and Michael’s too. But in the reality in which they currently stood, it was a while yet intro the future.
‘Well, I guess. But it was a part of my past, which happened in the future. About 85 years ago.’
Michael’s eyes involuntarily crossed themselves as he soaked up the warped physics lesson he was a part of. Hank went back to his chair behind the desk. Michael followed and sat down again.
‘There’s nothing you can do that’s going to keep things exactly as they were. You’re creating a new Timeline, something that hasn’t been experienced before. Every person you meet, every chance encounter and every flap of that butterfly’s wings will change the entire course of human history as you know it from here on in. Perhaps for the good, perhaps not. But all I can tell you is not to upset the apple cart too much.’
‘How do you remember all this? From all the timelines? How does a 200 year old brain even work?’
‘A 200 year old brain wouldn’t be good for much. My brain is in its late 60s, and aside from occasionally forgetting where I left my keys, it’s in good nick. A 200 year old mind? That’s a different thing. You don’t get encumbered by the limits of the physical body.’
His sermon had made a hell of an impression on Michael to the point where he could feel a headache coming on.
‘The depression you’re feeling is an after effect of something you did, some kind of karmic blowback. I don’t know what it was, but you did something different than you did originally. This could have, and probably did change someone’s life irrevocably. This haze you’re under? This fog? The depression is the after effects. It’s the consequences. You did something, it changed someone’s life. It changed history. Nothing will ever be exactly as it was from here on in. Similar, but different.’
Michael shook his head. He somehow simultaneously felt better and worse. But he suddenly knew he was going to function better with more clarity about the universe on his mind.
‘Reduce your meds by half, finish the prescription and then don’t get a refill. You’ll be fine without mood enhancers.’
Michael nodded. Hank motioned to the door.
‘You should go. You have my details, call me if you need any advice. Avoid sugary soft drinks, especially in aluminium cans. Another tip I got.’
Michael got up as Hank began to escort him to the office door. ‘How will I know if I’m going to, what … shift again?’
‘You won’t. Like you, like everyone, it always happens when you’re asleep or unconscious. So until they find a cure for that, we’ll never know.’
They reached the office door. Michael grabbed the handle, and paused, turning to Hank, motioning to the bookshelves.
‘So this is what you do with your time? That and read a lot, by the look of things.’
Hank looked around at his mildewy library. ‘You can only see films a certain number of times, and I can tell you I have seen every film ever released in cinemas. TV never interested me, so I learnt to paint. I can speak eight languages. Play the violin. But I don’t think I’ll ever run out of books to read. I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye until recently.
‘What do you think?’
Hank shrugged.
‘Meh. Holden Caulfield is basically just a little arsehole.’
Michael laughed.
‘Hank, how did you track me down? How did you know?’
‘Couple of things, but it was really that article in the Herald. You seemed WAY older than your years. That kind of thing is a dead giveaway.
‘Besides,’ he smiled, ‘I always keep an eye out for the precocious.’