It occurred to me after he'd left that he never told me his name. He looked strangely familiar, though. He had a longish beard that was beginning to turn white. His receding hair was brown with flecks of grey, but looked as if it had once been red. He was at least twice my age. He was dressed much the same as I was, in jeans, trainers and a t-shirt. This surprised me a little: I always imagined – or did back then – people in the future wearing weird clothes. Perhaps I'd been watching too much Blake's 7.
I was sitting on the settee in our flat in North London, staring through the window at the sky, through the colours of a rainbow-transfer we'd stuck on the glass. I was listening to an Ian Dury album I'd just bought. It was 3rd June, 1981. I'm usually hopeless with dates but that one's not one I'm likely to forget in a hurry.
I never got to actually see his time machine. All I saw was a black flash, like a negative of a flash of lightning, and there he was, standing in the corner of the room. He stood for a moment, wide-eyed and open mouthed, looking round.
“New Boots and Panties!” he cried.
A strange exclamation for the first known time-traveller from the future. Speechless and disorientated, I nodded, got up and went over to the hi-fi to take it off. I suppose I thought it was the polite thing to do. He must've realised what I was doing.
“No, no! Leave it on,” he said. “It's one of my favourites. And on vinyl!”
I did as he said, but turned it down a bit.
“These were the days!” he said.
“How did you – “ I began.
“Don't ask,” he said. He laughed.
He made for the chair under the window and sat down.
“It's great to see you again,” he said.
“Have we met?” I said.
He chuckled and smiled knowingly, but offered no further explanation. Perhaps I was too nonplussed to demand one. Somehow, though, we skipped all further pleasantries and settled down to talking as if we'd known each other for years. He told me how all the ecology stuff that was just starting to get trendy in my time was really important and how, in his time, the world was in the middle a climate catastrophe. He said we already were, in our time, only it wasn't public knowledge. People in the UK were getting poorer, too. He explained to me what foodbanks were and how people had to queue at them for food. It got worse: the world, in his time, had been struck by a pandemic and millions had died. And, to make matters even worse, the situation in the health service had been allowed to deteriorate to the point where even the doctors and nurses were going on strike.
“And did I mention the war in Europe?” he said.
“No,” I said. I started to laugh. I must've been watching too many alternative comedians. I thought he was joking.
“Straight up,” he said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“Has anything changed for the better?” I said, finally.
He thought for a moment. He told me how although it'd not all been plain sailing, most people were probably a bit more accepting – a bit, mind you – of people different to themselves. Then he tried to explain how everyone was linked up by computer. He called it the internet. I told him it sounded good.
“It is, I think,” he said. “But if you put it another way and tell people computers are taking over the world, it sounds a lot less attractive.”
“And you've invented time machines,” I said.
“Well, no,” he said. He went on to explain how he'd stolen his from a quadrillionaire entrepreneur from the 2060s who'd happened to materialize in his living room. He'd told him that in 2060, spaceflight was old hat and time travel was the latest thing.
The guy had made the mistake of putting his remote control box down on the table and my visitor, on impulse, had grabbed it and pushed the button on it. It seemed the right thing to do, he said. And here he was, in 1981. He'd left the quadrillionaire stranded in 2023. Not something, he said, he was likely to lose any sleep over. I noticed, for the first time, that he was holding a device like a TV remote control in his left hand.
“I felt I just had to come back and warn you,” he said. “Don't fall for the 'jam tomorrow' scam. If you do, things just get worse. Tomorrow never comes.”
Then he told me he had to leave. The quadrillionaire had mentioned, in the brief time they'd spent talking, that you could only spend so long in the past before your material integrity began to deteriorate. He stood up and stepped back into the same corner of the room he'd appeared from. He fixed me with an earnest stare.
“It's been wonderful seeing you,” he said. He sniffed a little. He seemed to be fighting back emotion. “But you've got to do something!” he said. “All of you!” He looked around as he said it, waving his arms in a helpless gesture to all the people who weren't there with us.
I saw his finger close on the button on the control-box and then he vanished, just as he'd appeared, in a black flash.
