I felt the momentum increase as I went down and down and down into the unknown, though I could still hear the voice of Melanie Five.
«Thelonious Dray, wake up! You can’t fool me. Your vitals are fine. Wake up, now. Do you understand me? Fear is an excellent instructor. You’ve done very well. The game is over.»
Yes, I thought. So it is. Now.
I let go completely and followed the vortex all the way down to the surface.
Wattpadder reginac7 is a lover of all things SciFi, particularly B grade movies, and has had many short stories published in her time in various publications. More of her work can be found on her profile.
RobMay Back to the Opera
It was the hottest weekend of the year in London. I was twelve years old and now that school was out, I had a summer of work ahead of me: making a bit of cash by feeding all the cats of Kensington, whose wealthy owners were jetting off to even hotter climes.
Just off Holland Park Road is a row of millionaires’ townhouses, and one of those belonged to a man who me and my friends knew simply as the Professor of Rock, because he divided his time between touring with his band and giving lectures on astrophysics. Don’t ask me about his music, though, or what his lectures were all about. All I know is that his cat would rather eat my shoelaces than the food I put out for him.
I let myself into the spacious black–and–white–tiled hall. ‘Flash,’ I called. ‘Come on, boy!’
‘In here!’ said a voice from the study, which nearly gave me a heart attack.
The Professor was at home. When I entered his office, he was lounging in his leather swivel chair, long legs up on his desk. He wore black drainpipe jeans and a black shirt, that contrasted with his mass of curly white hair. He must have been about, I don’t know, fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Who knows how old old guys are.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Hey, Lauren,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you. I was wondering if you’d help me run a little errand. I need someone to go somewhere I can’t. I don’t want to risk getting recognised.’
I shrugged. ‘Sure. Where do you want me to go?’
‘I want to you go back in time, thirty years, to 1985.’
We went up five flights of stairs to the attic. I’d never been up here before. There were computers and strange machines everywhere, and what looked like giant loudspeakers that were as tall as I was. Guitars hung from the walls or were propped up in stands. Was this a recording studio, a science lab … or both?
A young guy with black hair and eyeliner was sat at a laptop in the corner. ‘That’s Adam, my assistant,’ the Professor said.
‘Hi Adam,’ I said.
‘Yo,’ he replied in an American accent, giving me a casual wave.
The Professor showed me his iPhone. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I just tap in the date I’m sending you to here. So, 14th July 1985 …’
‘Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘Are you telling me you built a time machine …out of an iPhone?’
The Professor laughed. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘The app is just the interface. All of the heavy lifting and number–crunching is done online, in the cloud. Now you stand between these two monitors …’
He indicated two of the giant loudspeakers that were facing each other, a metre apart.
‘What do you know about quantum physics, Lauren?’ he asked me.
‘Quantum what?’
‘Well, quantum theory states that if I play a chord on my Red Special here,’—he picked up an electric guitar from one of the stands—’then that chord will also sound in an infinite number of parallel universes. And if I set up a feedback loop like this …’
He strummed the guitar. The fuzzy chord tickled my eardrums and the air around me started to vibrate. ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘You haven’t told me what my errand is yet!’
‘Oh yeah,’ the Professor said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He tossed me a box of chocolates. ‘I want you to go and deliver this to an old friend of mine. But that’s just your cover story; what I really want you to do is to find me an old demo tape that went missing in 1985. It should be labelled ‘Back to the Opera,’ and I’d really like to get my hands on it. It will make a great bonus track next time we reissue a remastered box set.’
I didn’t understand half of what the Professor was saying. ‘What’s a demo tape?’ I tried to ask, but although my lips were moving, no sound seemed to come out. My whole body was wobbling like jelly on a plate.
‘Don’t be more than a couple of hours,’ the Professor said. ‘I have to keep playing my guitar in order to keep the way back open for you. Turn the gain up, Adam!’
And with that, his fingers blurred on the strings of the guitar. Adam pressed a button on his laptop, and the world of 2015 vanished.
I was still in the attic, but it was dark and empty now. It might have been my imagination, but I could still hear the Professor’s guitar notes hanging in the air all around me, the only link to the world I had left behind. I had to feel around for the door to the landing, and then quietly sneak outside: the house seemed different, and evidently belonged to someone else in 1985.
Outside, though, nothing had changed. The white terraces of Kensington still looked the same. Were the road signs different? I dunno‑I never paid them much attention in 2015. The cars were the same mix of BMW’s and Mercs, although the designs were squarer and less sleek. A guy in faded blue jeans and a white Live Aid T shirt was strolling past, listening to music on oversized headphones with orange ear pads. The wire led to a big chunky box that was clipped to his belt. That settled it: this was the past alright! They probably didn’t even have computers here, let alone the internet!
I pulled out my phone and dialed home, just to see what would happen. No signal. Boring! I guess I could duck into a newsagents and check the date on the papers, or something, but then I remembered I was on the clock. I had to get back before the Professor’s fingers tired out, otherwise I’d get stuck here and wind up becoming my own mother or something crazy like that. I looked at the box of chocs I held: there was an address on the tag: Garden Lodge, Logan Place.
I knew where that was! Logan Place is a small residential street off Earl’s Court Road. I was there in ten minutes. Garden Lodge was a massive Georgian mansion surrounded by a tall brick wall. I must have walked past it many times in the past‑I mean in the future–but something looked different about it this time. I didn’t have to knock, because as I approached a dark–haired man with a thick moustache came out of the gate.
‘Are you …’ I said, looking at the tag again, ‘the Wizard?’
The man laughed. ‘No, I’m the Wizard’s hairdresser.’ He sized me up and down as if assessing my threat level, and then nodded to the gate. ‘He’s inside. Close the gate behind you.’
The gardens were beautifully manicured. Inside, the house was stylishly furnished with gilded sofas, exotic rugs and expensive paintings. I followed the sound of a man singing, and wound up in a large room with a crystal chandelier. It might once had been a dining room, but it now housed the biggest piano I had ever seen.
The man at the piano was also dark–haired and moustached. He looked tough, like he should be in a biker gang or something. Yet, he was wearing a yellow vest and white shorts and was pushing the piano pedals with bare feet. The melody was light, and his voice was a rich, and operatic. There were cats sitting all around listening to him play.
‘Oooh, la de da … music can’t save me … think I’m going ga ga. If you don’t come back to me, la de da … then I’ll go … I’ll go … la la la …’
He spotted me and stopped playing.