(#4)

4

You would have thought that as soon as I discovered the Time Machine (or Interdimentional Portal (IP*) as it is more properly called) I would have dived right in.

As it happened, I was so shocked, shaken and confused by the discovery that, with a wildly beating heart and uncontrollably trembling hands, I threw the hat straight back into the box, slammed on the lid and put another heavy box on top of that, just to be on the safe side.

As for the ring, I picked it up with the air of someone picking up a scorpion and then sat staring at it - half expecting it to jump out of my hand and fly at my face, or suddenly turn into something else.. or god knows what... but it remained motionless, impossibly light and frictionless smooth, casting reflections of things that weren't there in ways my mind couldn’t comprehend. I stared into the pattern embedded in the metal (if it was metal, it was a kind I'd never seen, heard of or imagined) and fell into a kind of fascinated trance.

I don't know how long I sat there staring at it, or how long I would have gone on staring into it (perhaps forever) if I hadn't been suddenly brought back to reality by the telephone ringing downstairs. Without thinking, I slipped the ring onto my finger (amazingly it fit perfectly, as if it somehow modified itself to perfectly fit - and being frictionless and weightless, I couldn’t even feel it there after a couple of seconds) and ran downstairs to answer the phone.

[Note: something only Time travellers know - Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address - most people think that stands for
Internet Protocol, but it actually stands for Interdimentional Portal, because that is actually what it is. The people who brought us the internet came from the future*, mainly to enable communication across Time. That’s how I'm managing to relay this story to you from the year 2040 on a Timephone which I've made from parts I stole. Of course, it's absolutely forbidden, for obvious reasons - mainly the havoc it would cause in the so-called Space Time continuum - but at this stage I'm beyond caring. I've got nothing left to lose. My own fate is fairly sealed and Time has a way of flowing that whatever I do or don't do will ultimately make no difference.

**There are more Time travellers about than you would probably expect, the most famous obviously being Keanu Reeves, but there are many others - some famous, but most anonymous, like me. You can read all about them on the internet and see plenty of photographic evidence, about half of which is true.]

...I ran downstairs to get the phone. It was Kim, my girlfriend checking to see if I was coming soon. She'd made dinner, something special, and was expecting me. It was quite a big deal as she'd just moved in to live with me at my flat in Muswell Hill the day before. It was a big step for both of us - exciting, but also strange and daunting, even though she'd practically been living there for the last few months anyway - she'd always had her place to go back to. Now my place was 'our' place, we'd brought all her stuff from the shared house she'd been renting a tiny room in... I'd borrowed my mate's van to bring it all across from Holloway... it was amazing how much stuff she had... I'd left her to get on with finding places for everything. She was good at that. I knew I'd get home to find the flat transformed, with her touches of colour everywhere, her beads and cloths, crystals and candles, her paintings, paints and brushes, her books, her music. I was happy. I was more than happy... I was.. I don't know... I was in love with her and felt so lucky to be going home to her...

...what was I going to do? Jump into a wormhole and travel to London in the year 1914? I told her I'd be there in twenty minutes.

In the event, it took me three months before I actually started my journey - the journey that began with me travelling back to 1914 to meet my great great grandfather and ended with me being stranded - and hunted down - in the year 2040...

... ok. I'm going to have to stop for now. They've detected my signal. This is quite bad. I've got to run. I'll continue with the story soon, I hope.

You can read part 3 here, if you missed it (there's a link to part 2 there):

https://steemit.com/travel/@stillgideon/i-am-writing-this-post-from-the-future-continued