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“Fucking spiderman tits on a cracker!”
Tao’s voice echoes through the dimly lit halls in the basement of ███████. I chuckle at his creative expletive. What is it about Marvel fans, where they can somehow shoehorn it into the most unrelated things?
“We’ve got another one!” he calls out, and I roll my eyes. The knowledge is supposed to be kept secret, but since 2015, time travelers from some well-meaning future have been messing with our timeline. Here at the Department of ███████, we’ve been able to keep a lid on it, but the crazier things get, the more often there are leaks.
And the slam of the telephone and expletives can only mean one thing – another leak, another person inexperienced in the ways of time travel, another person who will need rescuing before we can go home today.
I don’t know how I got into this job. I went to Uni to study the classics, with a specialization on Roman and Greek timeframes, and a unique sub-study on spoken Latin and the variances in oral story telling and the written word… well, I can already see your eyes glazing over. I found it fascinating at least.
As predicted by my ever-loving, never-critical (you should be able to hear the eye roll in that) mother, the job market was not nearly as fascinated by the subject as I was. That is, until I received a mysterious envelope with an invitation to a clandestine interview.
I assumed I was either going to be murdered or offered a position at MI6, and I wasn’t sure which. Turns out that it was neither. It was, instead, a rather underfunded department specializing in time travel anomalies. Underfunded as in: did not officially exist, but rather gathered its funding through rounding errors picked up from other departments’ budgets. But they were in need of someone who could deal with the centuries surrounding the Roman Empire, and I was in need of a job, and I’ve been at the Department of ███████ ever since.
So now that you are up to speed, I should explain why this job is maybe not the dream job that someone with my interests may have. It turns out that 90% of what we do is get dumb kids out of trouble – kids who never should be in that position in the first place.
Strange things afoot at the Circle K Tesco Express indeed.
Side Note: Don’t even get me started on William and Theodore - they were a nightmare to reign in. And getting Socrates involved? What were they thinking??
Anyway, what was I saying?
Ah yes, I was strolling into Tao’s office to see what we are dealing with today. Apparently some kid has accidentally fallen through a wormhole to end up back in King Arthur’s time.
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it,” I say. “I don’t deal with the Middle Ages.”
Tao gives me a withering look at this, and pinches the top of his nose as though he is in physical pain.
“The first depictions of King Arthur’s court were in the 5th or 6th century. The Middle Ages were more like the 11th or 12th century. Those were revisions to the original folklore. Which, mind you, is real. Confirmed real. By the Department of ███████.”
“Well, fine,” I retort. “That may be true, but once the Anglo-Saxons invaded and drove Rome out, that’s when they drove my expertise out as well. Get someone else.”
“Otis is on holiday and James is mid-mission. You are literally it. And it's an easy mission. All you need to do is go back a few weeks, make sure the kid gets a direct lesson on solar eclipses, with the dates drilled into his head by his teacher. He’ll use that knowledge to get back. Without it he’ll die.”
“Just two weeks back?” I ask, skeptical but a little more relieved.
“Just two weeks,” he assures me.
As an aside, I’m sure you are wondering about this. Doesn’t it seem like every time travel story has a major historical event that is just a little too convenient? Big storm that hits the clock tower and all? Are you listening, McFly? It's not a coincidence. That’s literally what we do here at the Department of ███████. We make sure those events are known about. It's how we do the rescue without being too obvious. Who do you think gave Marty McFly the “Save the clock tower” pamphlet anyway? Gladys, who specializes in the mid-20th century, that’s who.
Tao slides the dossier over to me to study. Two weeks ago the kid had a substitute teacher for a day, who taught his entire lesson based on the folder left by the absent instructor. I go in, swap the folder, make sure the eclipse is covered, and everything works out. As long as the kid ends up back here with no significant events, the timeline won't be thrown off.
Needless to say, after about thirty minutes of prep time, I find myself stepping through the spinning vortex into my existing timeline, just two weeks earlier. Just in time to see none other than Nick Nelson - Truman’s Rugby King himself - checking into the front office, introducing himself as the day’s substitute teacher.
Now, I don’t think it's possible to overplay the influence that Nicholas Nelson had on my life in secondary school. He sat across the room from me one fateful semester in year ten (year eleven for him), and since that first day in class, his arms had competed with his thighs as the starring attraction in my dreams. Needless to say, he knew nothing of me, a quiet kid in the year below him. Probably never even noticed me. But one look at his biceps straining against the stiff cotton of his collared shirt, and every long shower I took that year came flooding back to me. Straight boys am I right?
Except… except while I watch and wait for a moment to do the folder swap, I see the pin. You know the pin. The one we all kind of look for, even though we never expect to see it? Some sort of indication of queerness. And there it was, on his school lanyard. A rainbow pin and a bi flag. At this point in time, I am now a puddle. I make the swap but I skulk around long enough to find out that he’s single, by hearing him complaining about his last failed date. And you know, desperate times, desperate measures and all that.
Look, I’m sure the kid who went back in time will be fine. I made the swap, didn’t I?
Have you ever had one of those moments where you are torn between two paths? Where you know what you should do, but you aren’t sure that you will do it?
My entire existence through secondary school came flooding back - and not just the long showers this time. The bullying, the mean kids, the teasing. Nick was bi, but clearly not out (or even aware) in secondary. But what if there was some way he could be?
I looked at my control panel, set to head back to the “present” time (is that even a real thing, once you know time travel exists?) and did something that was just a little against the rules. A smidge. I knocked it back 15 years earlier. Same location. Truham school, building of nightmares. For now.
I just needed to nudge past-Charlie to talk to past-Nick, and maybe all the teasing would have ended. Maybe things would have been better. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to spend those months away at inpatient. Who knows. It couldn’t hurt to have a (large, bulky) friend who was a rugby player. Past me deserved it. Hell, current me deserves it, but I can’t control that.
It's just a little change. It can’t make that much of a difference, right? Just a small stop-over in a past time.
I step through the vortex without thinking it through too much, my brain on a mission. It was easy to do, because Mr Lange was always a lazy teacher. Not very observant. I just found his book, and did a bit of a change to the seating plan, and that was it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as I like to say.
I call up the vortex and head back home to good old 2025, hoping for at least a little change when I get back. When the time line has been changed in any discernible way, it's like stepping through a curtain of cold water. You get a shiver down your back. This time when I got back it was like being dropped into an ice cold lake. I’ve never had a re-entry that difficult.
It is what it is though. My thumb absentmindedly brushes against my arm, and there are those faded scars, still present. Whatever I did, it didn’t change that much. If the scars are still there, the psych ward stuff is still there in my past as well. Shoulders slumped, I walk back over to Tao’s office to let him know that I left the eclipse information in the substitute’s folder, but he just looked up at me, shocked to still see me.
“I thought you had left already? Isn’t today the big day?”
I wrack my brain thinking of what the big day could possibly mean when Tao’s eyes go wide, looking at my hand. “You didn’t lose your wedding ring in an earlier timeline, did you? Shit Charlie, Nick is going to be pissed!”
“Nick?”
“Yeah, Nick. Lumbering idiot? Lover of all things Marvel? Your husband of 5 years with a big wedding anniversary today? That Nick. Now get home, I’ll take care of any paperwork.”
“But you are also a lover of all things Marvel,” I say, my brain still trying to catch up to what Tao is saying, when he gasps and looks at me.
“Don’t even joke about things like that, Charlie. If ███████ hears you say that they’ll think there’s been a major shift in the timeline. You could be audited. Now get home to your husband.”
I turn and walk out of Tao’s office, still unsure of what exactly is going on, only to hear him scoff in the background, “As if any timeline or universe version of me would ever be a Marvel fan.”