Magestic 1 Read online

  He hit the nail on the head, and made me feel very ungrateful for all he had done for me. ‘Well…’ was all I could get out; the last thing I wanted to do was to spoil our friendship.

  ‘If you have a question … ask it, before we both get hungry just sitting here.’

  I forced a breath. ‘How can you predict the future? Are you, you know –’

  ‘Clairvoyant? No, not clairvoyant, but I can predict the future with great accuracy.’

  My poor brain was puzzled. ‘Isn’t that … a clairvoyant?’

  He seemed amused. ‘A clairvoyant can see the future … if you believe in all that crap. I can remember the future. Your future, my past.’

  ‘My future … your past?’ I gave it some careful thought. ‘That would make you a … what, like a time traveller?’ I said in an off-the-cuff manner, a dismissive wave of the hand.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered with a smug grin.

  ‘Yes … to what?’

  ‘Yes … I’m a time traveller.’

  ‘You’re a … time traveller. What, like Doctor Who on the TV?’ I scoffed.

  ‘Similar, I guess. But my TV sidekick doesn’t have large breasts.’

  ‘Not from this planet, then?’ I joked.

  ‘Technically … no,’ was not the answer I expected. He focused on me. ‘Ever seen me sleep?’

  I thought back, realising that I hadn’t, that he was always awake; last to bed, first up. And if I got up in the middle of the night he’d be reading, telling me he couldn’t sleep.

  Oh shit.

  ‘You’ve seen how strong I am,’ he added. ‘And yesterday you saw me burn my hand.’ He held up his hand. ‘See any scars? Any red burns?’

  I was getting worried. He fetched a file and plonked it into my lap. It consisted of a series of letters, typed and signed, and all address to the Prime Minister. I gulped. Each had been signed “Magestic, the man in the middle”.

  ‘The … er … man in the middle?’ I queried.

  ‘Someone in the middle … sits between opposing parties,’ he enigmatically explained.

  I scanned the first letter. It was warning the Prime Minister about an IRA terrorist attack, and suddenly this was all way out of my league. The next letter itemised a train crash from a faulty signal, the third another terrorist attack by the IRA - this time in great detail, and naming names. The fourth outlined the election victory of Ronald Reagan, and the capture of a British spy in Tehran. It got worse; predictions of things to come in years ahead, ferries sinking, aircraft crashing and being hijacked. I finally looked up.

  Jimmy casually asked, ‘If you had the ability to predict the future, what would you do with such a skill? Trade the stock markets like me? Sure, got to make some money and oil the wheels. Bet the horse races, make a mint? Why not, you can always give some money to charity. But would you not, also, warn people about things like … plane crashes? Terrorist attacks?’ He eased back and waited.

  ‘Well … yeah, of course I would,’ I firmly suggested.

  ‘So you would use such an ability … for the benefit of mankind?’

  ‘Well … of course.’

  ‘Sounds laudable. And if you had this ability, and you were warning people and saving lives, then you’d be … what … one of the good guys, yeah?’

  My head nodded itself.

  ‘And if you knew that … let’s say … your mum was due to get cancer in twenty years time … then what?’

  ‘My … my mum will get cancer?’ I was horrified.

  Jimmy nodded, looking solemn. ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Get her to the doctors before that time, for a check-up,’ I rushed to get out.

  ‘Check-ups … reveal things, they don’t cure them.’

  ‘She … she’ll die at sixty-seven?’

  ‘Not if we don’t let her.’

  ‘What could you do?’ I asked, almost sounding angry with him. Calmer, I said, ‘You … you’d help me pay for private medicine for her? Early treatment?’

  ‘Something along those lines.’

  This was now a different ball game, a very different ball game. When I had come up in the lift I figured he was some sort of clairvoyant, and that he used his gift to trade the markets. I had completely missed the other uses of such foresight, such as plane crashes. I felt very guilty all of sudden. We simply sat and stared for a moment.

  Finally, Jimmy said, ‘Of course, if you expose me … I won’t get to carry on preventing plane crashes. And I certainly could not help your mum and others.’ He opened two cans and poured me a lager, which I needed. ‘So’, he finally said. ‘You going to turn me in to the authorities?’

  My mind was still on my mum, and plane crashes. ‘No, of course not.’ There was also the matter that he was the best friend I had ever had. In fact, just about the only decent friend I had ever had.

  ‘Why of course not? I could be a dangerous alien for all you know,’ he toyed.

  ‘Are you … you know?’

  He laughed. ‘No, I was born in Newport, South Wales. You’ll meet my parents soon enough.’

  ‘Then how…?’

  ‘Time travel,’ he carefully mouthed. ‘In simple terms: I lived to be sixty-four years old, went to Canada after World War Three destroyed the planet. –’ My eyes widened. ‘- Became Commissioner for British, European and Israeli Refugees, stepped into a time machine built by the United States Air Force, and came back here knowing what I know. My body is full of genetically modified stem cells and other drugs, giving me greatly extended endurance and strength. I’m immune to all diseases known to man - and a few they haven’t discovered yet. I heal quickly, I don’t sleep much, I eat a lot, but I can’t jump tall buildings in single bounds and I most certainly do not wear my pants outside my trousers.’

  ‘Wa … World War Three?’ I repeated, now wide-eyed and transfixed.

  ‘Kicks off in about seventeen years time, give or take.’ He raised a finger. ‘Unless, of course…’

  ‘You warn them. You stop it.’

  ‘Tricky.’ He shook his head. ‘Would they listen? I’d need some … credibility, built up over twenty years or more.’

  I lowered my head to the letters, suddenly realising where this was going.

  Jimmy added, ‘Of course, it would be a difficult task all by myself.’

  I scanned him from under my eyebrows, finally switching my brain on. ‘You didn’t need a room, did you?’

  ‘No, I’m worth millions. And this place, dumb fuck, is mine - I bought it for two hundred grand. You’d make a lousy secret agent.’

  ‘Why come to me? I’m no James Bond.’

  ‘You have a destiny.’

  ‘I do?’ My expression made him laugh.

  ‘Yes, you do. I’ll guide you, so all you need to do … is to think more about others than yourself for the next twenty or thirty years. Do you think you could do that?’

  I nodded, although I had no idea what I was nodding about. ‘What would happen –’

  ‘If the authorities found out about me? We’d be locked up, tortured for information, dissected probably. So, you know, not a word to anyone. And I mean … anyone. Your life … depends on it.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I let out before setting about my lager.

  ‘If you accidentally tell your parents, or some lady you’re dating, you’ll put everyone you know in danger. In time, in the years ahead, I’ll be rich enough and powerful enough to stop any such action. But for now we have to be careful.’

  ‘So, your plan –’

  ‘Is to make some money, build up contacts and friends, build up credibility with the tip-off letters and, when the time is right, go public.’

  ‘What?’ I whispered.

  ‘Years from now you’ll be very rich, and have your face all over the TV and papers, so start thinking like a celeb’ in the making. And now that you know what you need to know … we’ll be off on our travels.’

  ‘Travels?’

  ‘Starting with Kenya, then the Stat
es, Australia - everywhere. I need to educate you in the ways of the world.’

  It sounded good. But I foolishly asked, ‘What if the plane crashes?’

  ‘It won’t, dumb fuck –’

  ‘Because you know which ones crash,’ I said, feeling silly. ‘So what’s the weather going to be tomorrow?’

  He laughed. ‘No idea, check the news weather. I only know what I need to know.’

  ‘So how come you don’t look like … you know … a wrinkly old guy?’

  ‘Stem cells, my lad; everyone has stem cells, they’re what builds our bodies when we’re in the womb. After we reach about eighteen years the production of stems slows down; enough to keep us alive and to heal wounds, but not enough to keep us looking youthful forever. I’ve been genetically modified so that I produce an excess of them, something that doctors will be able to do in around … oh … twenty-five years time. When I was an old guy, I was strapped to a bed and intravenously injected with stems for ten weeks, stems taken from the wombs and umbilical cords of ten ladies I made pregnant for that very procedure. Because the stems were fifty-percent genetically my own they worked well.

  ‘I was only given enough protein to survive, and so lost a hell of a lot of weight – appearing like the twenty-year-old me at thirteen stone. The genetically modified stems basically reverted me back to a full adult at the youngest age, around twenty, which was what I needed for my parents to accept me as me.

  ‘That particular story … is very secret, so we’ll discuss it at some point later. So is the exact mechanism of time travel – the people here can’t find out by accident. If you don’t know … then you can’t accidentally disclose it. As for my appearance … ten or twenty years will pass and I’ll age just a couple of years. Eventually I’ll grow old and die if I don’t get another injection … from doctors that are in nursery school as we speak.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ I sipped my beer. ‘So … so what do I do… in the future?’

  ‘Mostly, you’re my assistant, helping me do what I need to do. There’s no one else I can trust with what you now know, and what you’re going to know.’ I felt honoured, then immediately concerned. He added, ‘And if, and when, I’m killed … you take over.’

  ‘Killed?’ I repeated.

  ‘It’s always a possibility. Accidents … or getting shot by irate husbands.’

  ‘And then what do I do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what the future holds and you … you fix what you can. But don’t worry, you’ve got ten or fifteen years before we get near a situation where the CIA will want to shoot me.’

  ‘CIA?’ I whispered.

  ‘In the future, the Americans are going to want to invade a few countries, but I’m going to try and stop them.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ I sipped my beer as he fetched a large box.

  ‘Reading material.’ He took out each book in turn and made a pile on the floor that grew to a height of three feet: history of the world, UK history, first aid, advanced first aid, Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support, expedition first aid, mountain rescue, UK politics, The Global Economy, principles of flight, piloting helicopters…

  ‘Helicopters?’ I queried.

  ‘How else are you going to impress a bird … other than by flying her home the next day in your own helicopter?’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Your language tutors will arrive in a few weeks.’

  ‘I’m like Luke-frigging-Skywalker being trained to use The Force.’

  He eased back. ‘You know, in years to come they’ll make three prequels to Star Wars.’

  ‘What the fuck’s a prequel?’

  He sipped his beer. With a deadly serious expression, he answered, ‘My life.’

  After a reflective beer, I asked, ‘Well … what exactly do I do now?’

  ‘Now you carry on trading the markets, you study, you travel … you get ready for the future. I’ll give you some money so that you can trade your own account - to make you eventually look rich on your own, so you appear to be my business partner and not an employee.’

  ‘R … rich?’ I repeated, making him smile.

  ‘Yes. By time we get to 2005 you’ll be one of the richest men in the UK.’

  Wide-eyed I said, ‘I will?’

  ‘You will, I won’t.’

  ‘Huh?’ came out without any help from me.

  ‘I’m going to make a lot of money and give it all away. You, on the other hand, will hang onto some so that we have a reserve.’

  I suddenly considered that my future self was quite mean. ‘Don’t I … give any money away?’

  ‘Some, yes. Quite a lot in fact – compared to most; tens of millions. But I need you to act as banker. If someone sues me we’ll have a fall-back position.’

  I pointed at myself. ‘I … I’ll have more money than you?’

  ‘A great deal more; nice cars, helicopter, hordes of women chasing after you.’

  ‘So … so what’s the catch?’ I finally asked.

  ‘When you have a lot of money – a lot of people try and take it off you. You can’t just pop down to the corner shop … because someone will claim that you punched them – even though you never did. Girls will claim you attacked them, hoping to make some money from the story or from a settlement. If you’re in a car and some idiot nudges you from behind they’ll tell the police you deliberately reversed into them and how bad their neck hurts and … could they please have a million quid.’

  ‘Little fuckers,’ I quietly let out.

  ‘It’s no fun being a millionaire; you’ll have to watch your back. If someone asks you if you like your mum you’d say yes. Next day in the papers it would say you hate your mum.’

  ‘Little bastards. All because you got a few quid?’

  Jimmy explained, ‘In the years ahead the tabloids will become more aggressive than they are now; they’ll print anything, till some privacy laws start to take effect after 2009. So anything you say or do now – that people will remember – will make it to the papers in years to come. Probably be an unauthorised biography about you as well.’

  ‘Biography? About me?’ I challenged.

  ‘Should think so.’

  ‘How can they write it … you know … without my say so?’

  ‘No law against it. If they say you hate your parents it’ll sell better.’

  ‘So anything I do –’

  ‘And anything you did,’ he emphasised.

  ‘Shit. I lost my virginity to a middle-aged hooker up the West End for forty quid.’

  ‘Who knows about it?’

  I thought back. ‘I think I told a mate in school…’

  ‘Then make sure you look him up, buy him dinner, stay on his good side.’

  ‘I got arrested for nicking a cricket ball from a pavilion when I was sixteen.’

  ‘Fine, tell them you were a rebellious teenager, no one will give a shit about stuff like that. It’s what you do in the next ten years that matters.’

  ‘What about all the one-night stands?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a problem: man about town; money, cars, women. Papers love that sort of stuff.’

  ‘I haven’t even made any money yet and I’m worrying about it!’ I complained.

  ‘That, young man, we have in common.’

  After two beers, I said, ‘What’s the future like?’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘I dunno … girls.’

  ‘They shave off their pubes.’

  ‘They … what?’

  ‘Nearly all girls shave off their pubes, or have them cut into patterns – like butterflies. And tattoos, they all have lots of tattoos.’

  ‘Girls … have tattoos?’

  ‘Just about all of them; up their arms, on their boobs, sides of the hands - it starts in the 1990s. Around 2020 you see old women with stupid tattoos misshapen by their ageing skin. Singers like Robbie Williams have lots of tattoos.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

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; ‘Christ. What’s music like?’

  ‘In the 90s it’s good, but by time we get to 2009 there’s a lot of Rap music in the charts.’

  ‘Rap? Like what those black kids do in America? Here?’

  ‘Top sellers.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me!’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘But after 2010 there’re many covers, not much original stuff. Guess everything has been done. I’ll commission a clever bit of software that’ll compare songs.’

  ‘Software?’

  ‘A computer program. And those mobile phones you see yuppies with, Motorolas, they’ll be small as a credit card.’

  ‘What?’

  Jimmy lifted his eyebrows and nodded. ‘They end up as small as a playing card, and either touch screen or voice activated. You’ve seen Captain Kirk use his communicator? Well … just like that.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘You can get a small device to put on your belt and wear around. It bleeps if you’re going to have a heart attack.’

  ‘Strange … but cool.’

  ‘Imagine this … walking down a street, you take out your phone – size of a credit card - and say where am I? It tells you where you are, what direction you’re walking. You ask it where’s the nearest curry house? And it tells you.’

  ‘Fucking hell. They expensive?’

  ‘No, you get them free and pay a monthly charge of around fifteen quid.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I let out.

  ‘Everyone has one, kids as young as six. Everyone. If a parent wants to know where their brat is they ask their phone and it tells them.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Many cars go electric around 2015, I have a hand in that. Some things are great, some crap.’

  I gave it all some careful thought. ‘What do you like the most … in the future?’

  ‘Probably the Internet.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Our computer is connected to the phone line, and in the future all computers are connected to central super-computers that hold information on everything. You can click a button and find out the news, the weather, everything. The best bit is the social networking by computer: it’s a gossip shop on the computer screen. You type in something … and lots of people see it, tell their mates. So when the CIA are about to do something naughty you tell people down the computer wire and it goes all around the world in minutes, soon on the news, so that the CIA can’t do what they want to.’