One Word Kill (Impossible Times Book 1) Read online

  ‘What helps a bit is that you can move the crazy around depending on how you interpret the theory. None of the predictions change, and the crazy doesn’t go away: it’s just that the mad thing you’re asked to accept as the price of entry changes.’

  ‘And many worlds is one price? What does it mean?’ She bit off half the casing from her second brazil with small white teeth, exposing the nut.

  ‘It applies whenever any choice is made. You can think of those choices as you choosing to stay in or go out, but it really means whenever anything that has multiple possible results happens. And it says that each time a choice is made the universe splits, and there is a universe in which each possible outcome happens. And those universes go on and do their own sweet thing forever after without ever interacting again.’ I sketched a tree on the notepad beside me, explaining that the trunk represented our timeline and that at each fork of the branches lay a decision, splitting the universe’s timeline into multiple new timelines. At the tips of the smallest twigs lay all the possible outcomes, a multitude of timelines waiting to be split yet again by new choices. ‘Basically, we’re all infinite.’

  ‘Wow.’ She sucked her fingers.

  ‘Yeah . . .’ I looked away from her red lips and tried to regain my train of thought. ‘So, there is a universe where Nick Hayes has rolled a one every single time he ever threw a die. And a trillion others where he hasn’t. In that one universe he’s probably famous and gets on TV shows. And the thing is, it’s just regular chance. Each time he rolls a six-sided die again, he has exactly the same probability of getting a one as everyone else, and in five of the six branching universes, the TV hosts blink and Nick says, “But . . . it always works . . . I don’t understand . . .” But in one of the six, Nick chalks up another victory and the world thinks it’s a trick or magic.’

  ‘That’s legitimately mad.’ Mia nodded. ‘So . . . in one universe, one of my premium bonds wins the hundred-thousand-pound prize tomorrow?’

  ‘Yup. In fact, there will be a universe where all of your premium bonds win a prize tomorrow . . . and then you’re killed by a meteorite.’

  I didn’t even notice Mother come in to deliver the drinks. We talked for an hour or more, physics mostly. It didn’t matter to me that Mia had probably come out of pity, and that if I weren’t dying of leukaemia, she wouldn’t have come within a mile of me without John or Elton on her arm. I just enjoyed being with her.

  ‘I gotta go.’ Mia glanced at her watch and brushed her hair out of her eyes. She looked at the bedroom door that Mother had left decidedly ajar. ‘I, uh, got you something else.’ She kept her voice low and placed a small black rectangle between us, wrapped in cling film. At first, I thought it was a strange bar of chocolate. ‘It’s supposed to help with the pain and feeling sick.’ She bit her lip. ‘I read up on it.’

  I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure, but I thought it was probably cannabis resin. A lot of it. ‘I . . . Thanks. But I don’t—’

  ‘I know you don’t smoke.’ She grinned. ‘You faked it better than John, though!’ The grin broadened. ‘But you can eat it. Not more than this.’ She showed half the nail of her little finger. ‘Just thought it might help.’

  I looked down at the rectangle. Then covered it with my hand as she withdrew hers. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’ She got up to go, stealing one last chocolate. ‘Saturday.’ She paused at the door. ‘Or we all come here.’

  CHAPTER 6

  I made it to Simon’s house on Saturday. Mother gave me a lift, which was nice of her because I don’t think I could have walked it. My third round of chemo was really starting to bite. The resin helped, though it made Mother think I was more ill than I was. It also made concentrating on quantum mechanics textbooks difficult, so I took the minimum required to lift me far enough out of the pit to function, without going too high to care.

  The night had been sleepless, adrift on a black sea of self-pity. And why not? I stared at the dark, one thought churning over the next. I’d always had the sense of a whole life ahead of me, an endless series of sunrises and sunsets. A decade seemed like forever, and it would take two of them just to reach the age my mother was right now. Cancer had closed that down. Like the big C, curling in on itself, my view of the future had narrowed to tunnel vision, aimed squarely at the next week, next month . . . would I have a next year? I was carrying not only the burden of my sickness but the pressure of making something worthwhile of each day now that my towering stack of them had fallen into ruin and left me clutching at each hour as it slipped between my fingers.

  I sat yawning in the back of the car, like a kid, staring at Demus’s note. It had two words on it and ten numbers. ‘BATTER UP.’ Written in crudely drawn capitals as if a child had done it. I’d memorised the numbers: 4, 17, 17, 6 . . . it went on. I tried to fix them in my mind. Simon could lock a sequence of numbers into his head at glance. I’d always struggled with memory. Phone numbers leaked out of me. So it was probably good I hadn’t many friends. Understanding was a different matter. I could get an idea quick enough, but a list of numbers . . . even without the dope I’d be struggling.

  Simon’s mum greeted me at the door rather than Simon. She waved to Mother, still parked across the road, signalling in some universal mothering code that I was in good hands.

  ‘The hat suits you.’ She gave me an unexpected hug and aimed me upstairs. ‘They’re all here already.’

  I winced my way up the stairs. On the oncology ward, I was still synchronised with talkaholic Eva. She continued vomiting like a puke-fountain, but in between she said she felt fine, and her dull brown hair was still clinging uninspiringly to her skull. Of all of them, I seemed to be winning the race to the bottom. The nurses tutted to themselves, the doctors puzzled over blood counts and clotting factors. The white walls and starched uniforms were failing me. Their poison was hurting me more than it was hurting the rogue cells filling my veins.

  ‘Holy cornflakes! It’s hat-man!’ John raised his coke can in my direction. The table was decked out: dice ready, maps sorted, figures positioned.

  ‘How you doing, Nick?’ Elton got up as if I were an elderly relative who might need helping to my chair.

  ‘Of all the worlds, in all the universes, he walks into mine.’ Mia wrapped the Casablanca quote around Everett’s many-world interpretation and gained yet another level in my esteem.

  ‘You’re late.’ Simon didn’t look up from his character sheet. I’d known him pretty much all my life. He was the way he was. So much of what he felt couldn’t ever crystallise into something small enough for words or action. Instead it raced around in his skull, winding him tighter and tighter. I wouldn’t ever know more than a fraction of what was going on with him, but I knew enough that we could be friends.

  ‘Woah.’ As I sat down, I saw Mia’s black eye for the first time. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You should see the other guy.’ She made an unconvincing smile.

  ‘But what—’

  ‘It’s not important.’ Mia looked pointedly at Elton, who frowned but took his cue and began the game.

  ‘The fortress backs against a granite ridge. It’s half-ruined now, but you can see that once it was magnificent. It covers acres. The morning sun’s just starting to catch on the towers. Down below it’s all shadows . . .’

  The game went on its way, Elton’s skill drawing us in and wrapping us in his imagination. The rest of the world faded into the background, taking most of my discomfort with it. Only the square of paper in my pocket kept me anchored to something outside the fortress we had to search.

  Elton had us creeping through darkened halls hung with dead ivy, forcing ancient doors, descending into the subterranean levels below the vast fortifications. Hours slipped by. It was almost time to go before I knew it.

  ‘The chamber’s huge,’ Elton said. ‘You could drive a double decker bus through it, and there’s shafts of light here and there from openings in the ceiling, leading up to the outside.’


  ‘So, we’re blind then,’ Mia said.

  John frowned. ‘He just told us there’s light.’

  ‘Yeah, but like spotlights: patches of brightness that take away your night sight and hide what’s in the shadows. And Simon’s lantern isn’t going to touch a place this big . . .’

  ‘Fineous,’ Simon muttered. He always wanted to be addressed by his character name in the game.

  ‘Sorry.’ Mia didn’t look sorry. ‘Alright, Fineous, how about you shoot an arrow or two out there and see what you stir up?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘I put my lantern to one side, get out my short bow and loose an arrow toward the back of the hall.’

  ‘There’s a cry of pain,’ Elton said.

  ‘Shit.’ I moved Nicodemus behind the armoured bulk of John’s warrior.

  ‘Why shit?’ he asked.

  ‘He didn’t roll,’ I said. ‘If Elton didn’t roll to see if the arrow hit anyone . . .’

  ‘That means the place is full of them!’ Mia said.

  ‘They come boiling out of the back of the hall.’ Elton began gleefully advancing orc figures. ‘Dozens of them. Big Uruk-Hai in chainmail, ogres, too.’

  John moved his warrior behind my mage. ‘Batter up! Time for a fireball!’

  ‘What?’ A cold finger of recognition ran down my spine.

  ‘Fireball! Quick, before they’re too near!’

  ‘You said “batter up”.’ The words on Demus’s piece of paper. Coincidence, surely?

  John tapped his finger before the leading orcs. ‘Come on, Nicodemus. Fireball! It’s what we brought a mage with us for in the first place.’

  I blinked. ‘OK. I’ll detonate it at the back of the hall.’

  Elton nodded. ‘Roll the damage.’

  I picked up a six-sided die. If you asked the rest of them to roll six dice, they’d grab a handful. Me, I liked to do it one at a time. I tossed it out.

  ‘Four.’ Elton started to keep tally.

  ‘I knew that . . .’ The first number on Demus’s note.

  ‘Knew what?’ Mia asked.

  ‘That I was going to roll a four.’

  ‘Big deal.’ John snorted.

  ‘No, really. I knew it was going to be a four.’

  ‘If your party trick is guessing one of six numbers, then you need a new trick.’ John picked up a twenty-sided die. ‘Impress me, hat-man!’

  ‘Seventeen,’ I said, almost sure it wouldn’t be.

  John let the die go. A D20 is almost a ball. Technically it’s an icosahedron, but it rolls like a ball. It kept going until it fetched up against Mia’s newly acquired rulebook. ‘Seventeen!’ she exclaimed. ‘Cool!’

  ‘Yeah. Good guess.’ John shrugged. ‘Do it again.’ And he set his other D20 rolling.

  ‘Seventeen again,’ I said.

  And it was.

  ‘Shit.’ John sat up straight. ‘What’re the odds?’

  ‘One in four hundred,’ Simon answered, unimpressed. ‘Get on and roll the damage.’

  ‘Six,’ I said, and tossed out another D6. It landed on six.

  That gave even Simon pause. He gave me a flat look and scooped up three D12, clutching them in his fist. ‘What will these be?’

  ‘One, two, then eleven.’

  Simon dropped them one after the other. One, two, then eleven.

  ‘What are the odds now?’ Mia breathed.

  ‘One in four million, one hundred and forty-seven thousand, two hundred,’ Simon said with a frown. ‘Which means it’s a trick. How are you doing this, Nick?’

  I shrugged and tossed out three more six-sided dice. ‘Three, five, three.’ Then I took out Demus’s piece of paper and unfolded it for them. The numbers were all there, written down in order.

  ‘Do it again!’ Elton demanded.

  ‘I can’t. That’s all I’ve got.’ I threw out the last die of the forgotten damage. ‘Six,’ I hoped. It was a four.

  ‘All you’ve got?’ Mia asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s it say there?’ Elton came round from the game master’s side of the table, leaving the seat of his authority. He picked up the paper. ‘Shit! Batter up. That’s what you said, ain’t it, John? Batter up? You in on this, too? All of you got weighted dice or some shit?’ He snatched up the last couple of dice I’d thrown.

  John leaned over to squint at the paper. ‘Holy crap . . . I said that . . . You wrote it down just then!’

  ‘How?’ I shook my head. ‘My stalker gave me that last Saturday.’

  ‘This is nonsense.’ Simon banged the table. ‘This isn’t real.’

  It seemed a bold claim for someone who five minutes ago was wholly invested in blowing up orcs, but I had a lot of sympathy for his point of view. ‘Look, I don’t know how he did it.’

  ‘The guy who hit Michael Devis . . . he knew what those dice would roll?’ John ran his fingers into his hair, clutching his head as if he might squeeze some sense into the situation. ‘You know this is all mental right?’

  ‘I know.’ It made having cancer seem almost everyday.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Elton asked.

  ‘See if any of the orcs are still alive.’ Simon tapped the table.

  I ignored him. ‘I don’t know. What can we do?’

  ‘Go out and find this guy!’ Elton smacked fist into palm. ‘And . . .’

  ‘And what?’ Mia stood up. ‘Smack him around for knowing the future? Like that makes sense. Anyway . . . he’d know you were coming.’

  ‘Nick!’ Simon’s mum calling up the stairs. ‘Your mother just went by, looking for a parking space.’

  ‘I better go.’ I started heaping stuff into my bag. I had plenty of time. Mother was a terrible parker and the roads round Simon’s were always jammed. But I wanted to be out of there. I felt sick again, and I wanted space for my own astonishment, rather than demands from the rest of them that I sort out their disbelief.

  A few moments later, I was hobbling down the stairs. Behind me, John stood at the window, staring out, still too bewildered to object. Elton was rolling the dice over and over. Shaking them near his ear. Simon stayed seated, biting his lip and staring at the table hard enough to bore holes in it.

  ‘Wait up.’ Mia followed me down the stairs. ‘That was a trick. Right?’

  ‘I wish it was.’ I reached the door and called back down the hallway. ‘Thanks, Mrs Brett!’

  ‘But . . .’ Mia pursued me out into the cold and grabbed my arm to hold me back. ‘Otherwise it’s just crazy.’

  I shook my head. ‘From what I’ve been reading, the whole universe is built from crazy. Hopefully Demus will show up again and explain it all . . .’

  ‘Demus? That’s the guy?’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ I glanced up and down the street. No sign of Mother, or the Chrysler Avenger she’d been refusing to let die with dignity these past ten years. ‘Listen. Could you . . . you know . . . get me more of that stuff? It really does help.’

  Mia frowned, raising a hand to her bruised cheekbone. ‘More? Are you feeding it to the dog?’

  ‘I’ll pay, of course.’ I still had a fair bit left. Mostly, I had just wanted her to come round again. Now I’d gone and made it awkward. ‘Never mind.’ Though I did mind. The idea of being without the resin did feel a little frightening. I needed a barrier between me and my treacherous body right now.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not a problem. I’ll hook you up.’

  ‘Nick!’ Mother beckoning me from the corner. ‘Nick!’

  ‘Gotta go.’ I gave Mia an apologetic look.

  ‘See you.’

  And off I went, my mind full of her smile when any sane person would be too busy freaking out about bald stalkers with magic powers.

  CHAPTER 7

  ‘You’ve concluded that the many worlds interpretation, which, FYI, is correct by the way, is incompatible with time travel.’

  Demus came from behind the bench and sat at the other end from me, room for a third person in between. Richmond
Park lay before us, an early morning mist hiding the frost-laden grass, except where the ground rose in slight ridges, forming islands in a white and undulating sea. I hadn’t come looking for him, but I had thought that he might find me. He was something of a magician after all.

  He was right. I had concluded that. ‘If every moment, an infinity of different worlds are branching from this one to accommodate all possibilities . . . then that’s an infinite number of worlds from where time travellers could come back to this one. And since there aren’t an infinity of time travellers arriving every moment, then either the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong . . . or time travel is impossible.’

  I felt suddenly much sicker in Demus’s presence, nausea pulsing in me. There seemed to be some sort of physical pressure, as if the space between us were overfull. Out of the corner of my eye I saw white shapes, phantoms like those I’d run through that night in the park. They were all around me, rising from the mist.

  ‘Ignore those. They’re just echoes. They’ll die away,’ Demus said. ‘There’s some sort of resonance between us, creating temporal anomalies, and it gets worse when we get closer. I’ve been waiting for it to wear off. My calculations suggested it would be much shorter lived. Think of it like a build-up of static electricity. I’ve been approaching you in stages, letting it leak away, rather than just walking straight up to you and letting the sparks fly.’ He reached his bandaged right hand toward me and immediately the phantom images around us grew stronger, my nausea more intense. He drew his arm back, frowning.

  ‘So all those weird déjà vu things that have been happening, all those ghosts in the park, all of it . . . that was all you? It all happened because you were close by?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why just for me? Why didn’t anyone else see those things?’

  ‘I think you might have already guessed that, Nick. You’re taking this very calmly for someone who hasn’t. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, as I was saying, there are two reasons why we’re not being crushed under a vast mass of time travellers right now.’ Demus dug into his pocket. ‘Biscuit?’ He held out an orange flavour Club Bar. My favourite.