The Time Bubble Box Set 2, стр. 31
There were lessons to be learned, in particular not toassume anything. No matter how much homework he did about the period he wasvisiting, he could still be surprised by unanticipated events. He couldn’t relyon his memory or anyone else’s.
Kaylee had said that they had stayed in Oxford all night,but her recollection couldn’t be taken as gospel nearly forty years down theline. Memories tended to become selective over time, as he had discovered on morethan one occasion.
Eager to try the technology out for themselves, Alice andVanessa also took trips back into their past over the following few days, asdid Henry who was keen to take a lengthier trip than his original foray. Beforethey left, Josh ensured that they were suitably forewarned to keep their witsabout them and not to take anything for granted.
Henry revisited his east coast road trip from his youthwhere he reacquainted himself with his long-lost girlfriend. Married he mayhave been, but given the increasingly hostile state of affairs between him andVanessa, he had no qualms about what he was doing.
He even told her where he was going, something that didn’tbother her in the slightest, because she had her sights set on reliving acertain night with a certain someone back at her university graduation party,and even tried to taunt him about it when she got back. But he was long pastcaring, too, so she was wasting her breath.
Alice opted to go back and relive her wedding day, somethingit was fair to say would be Henry and Vanessa’s worst nightmare. However, allfour of them agreed that if they ever opened up the technology to a wideraudience, this would be a popular choice.
This led Vanessa to once again flag up the commercialpotential of what they were doing. She felt that offering what she had termed“time travel tourism” could be enormously lucrative. She soon found herself atloggerheads with the others who all disagreed.
Alice was vehemently opposed, citing the moral and legalissues that Hannah had previously highlighted. Henry agreed that the potentialfor misuse was too great, whilst Josh’s concern was the same as it had alwaysbeen – that they would become the target of higher powers, keen to utilise thetechnology for their own ends.
Outnumbered for the time being, Vanessa had backed down, butAlice felt they hadn’t heard the last of it. She didn’t trust Vanessa one iotaand had made her feelings clear on this to Josh several times.
He, too, had frequently felt uncomfortable in Vanessa’spresence, ever since she had made that pass at him on that afternoon beforethey went to the barbecue. However, he had no intention of severing theirworking relationship because of it.
This wasn’t for particularly honourable reasons. It waslargely down to the funding she was supplying that was enabling them to work onthis project in the first place.
Presumably it was the same reason Henry stayed with her solong, too. It was either that or abandon the project which sat uncomfortablywith Josh. There were times he felt almost if Vanessa had bought both of them.
She continued to flirt with Josh whenever she got anopportunity. This was something else he had been keeping from Alice who wouldhave certainly called a halt to the project if she had known. It just seemed tobe one secret after another he was being forced to keep by his obsessivecompulsion to time travel, and he knew one day it would very likely all catchup with him.
In the case of Vanessa, he dealt with the situation as bestas he could by avoiding all scenarios where they might be left alone together.
Putting their differences aside, the four of them continuedover the next few months, experimenting, refining and developing the technologyfurther. They continued to run further tests and take further trips back intime, many of which proved invaluable as they identified more potential issuesas they explored various situations.
Over dinner one evening, Henry made the point that, althoughthe four of them had made several successful forays into the past, it wasn’t afair representation of what the average person might do.
They were experienced at what they were doing but what aboutyour average woman or man on the street who wouldn’t know what to expect? Theyneeded a control group of people to send back cold to see how they would cope.
The technology could now be operated remotely, leaving themno longer confined to the lab. They could now transfer a consciousness fromanyone’s body between past and future whenever and wherever they liked, returningthem home in plenty of time for tea.
Henry had concentrated his time into mapping andunderstanding the multiverse. His work on this meant that the ability to moveminds from one universe to another as well as through time was now simplistic.This delighted Josh as it gave him the opportunity to fulfil a long-standingpromise to someone he had left behind, in another universe and another time.
Armed with the latest tachyometer, with all the newtechnology built in, Josh was able to travel back to another world in 1992 torescue the mind of Amy, an adult woman from the twenty-first century that hehad unwittingly marooned there in her own childhood body.
This had happened during his early exploration of themultiverse when he hadn’t fully grasped the consequences of what he was doing.He had felt guilty about what had happened to Amy ever since and now he had achance to put things right.
Capturing her mind in that other 1992, he left thesix-year-old girl there to grow up naturally in her own world and time.Meanwhile he returned Amy’s adult mind to its correct place and time of Oxfordin 2025.
Buoyed by this success, he conducted further experimentsover the next few months, sending random people back into time to see what theywould do, travelling back himself to observe from afar what they did.
Pretty soon, he didn’t even have to do that, as yet anotherdevelopment that Henry and Vanessa had been working on meant that they couldmonitor everything a person did while they were in the past. It was possible toview their experiences on a screen exactly as they would