Time Riders

But I’m sort of excited too. I’m here in New York! In the times before thingsturned bad. Before the global warm-up, the overcrowded cities, the food rationing, theterror bombs in the north, the oil shortages and all that nasty stuff.

And it’s, like, so strange to think that in India right now my dad is about the sameage as me, a fourteen-year-old boy living in Mumbai, and Mum’s twelve and lives up inDelhi… and they won’t even meet each other for another ten years!

I miss them, though. Sometimes, when the others aren’t around I cry. But Idon’t let them see that. So far, I’ve kept cool.

Foster is taking me out of the field office this morning to begin my training as theteam’s ‘observer’. I really don’t understand yet what an‘observer’ does, but I’m sure I will do very soon.

‘OK, Sal,’ said Foster, ‘this is Monday morning, Monday thetenth of September, the day before disaster strikes.’ He looked around at Times Square,the very centre of New York, the bustling heart of the city. It was just after 10 a.m., and5th Avenue was teeming with life.

‘Think of today as “normal” New York. This is how it should look. You understand?’

Sal nodded.

‘You’re the team’s observer, Sal. The observer is like the nose of a dog- there to detect the very first scent of a reality shift in the timeline.’

‘Because someone went and changed something in the past?’

‘That’s right.’

She gestured around at Times Square, busy and noisy with early-morning traffic. ‘Buthow am I going to know when something is different here?’

He nodded, then thoughtfully stroked his chin. ‘Perhaps I should explain why you inparticular were recruited. What’s so special about you. That might help to explainthings.’

She shrugged. Perhaps it might. There was nothing she considered particularly special about herself. She preferred black clothes instead of thebright neon poly-silks all the other bolly-boppers liked to wear. She preferred dark-head rockmusic instead of boomtastic street hop. She preferred her own company and a good puzzle-ebookrather than hanging around some grimy street corner with a load of stupid ditto-heads chokingbehind their masks on street poison.

‘Our archived records of 2026 zeroed in on you as an ideal candidate for recruitmentfor two reasons, Sal. Firstly, we knew exactly when and where youwere going to die, which made it possible to locate and extract you.’

Sal nodded silently. She understood that now.

‘But secondly you were a Mumbai regional under-12s champion for Pikodu.’

Pikodu was a picture-based puzzle game. It involved spotting repeated patterns in large,cleverly designed grids of random images.

Sal nodded. She was a champion, sort of… until she got bored of it. It was a fad, acraze that came in from Japan. For a few years it seemed everyone was intoplaying Pikodu Training on their Nintendo FlexiBoy, on the train,in the bath… on the toilet.

‘The point is, Sal, it means we knew you’d make a perfect observer. Your abilityto spot tiny details quickly — to notice things that others would easily miss, to seepatterns in chaos — that makes you the perfect candidate.’

His hand swept out across the busy square.

‘You’ll witness this morning scene over and over. It’ll always be the sameand you’ll become familiar with it. You’ll learn that — ’ Fosterglanced at his watch, then pointed across the square at a young mother who’d stoppedpushing her buggy to pick up a soft toy tossed out by her child — ‘at exactly tenfourteen a.m. the woman wearing red jeans over there will have to stop on a pedestriancrossing to retrieve a teddy bear for her baby.’

Foster looked around.

‘That those two old men wearing smart suits will stop outside the McDonald’s andlight up cigarettes.’

Sal made a face. ‘Ewww. Is that legal?’

‘To smoke?’

She nodded, staring with wide-eyed amazement at both men as they casually sucked in then blewout clouds of blue smoke.

Foster laughed gently. ‘Yes, Sal. It is still.’ He pointed to a giant billboardhigh up the front of a building. ‘You’ll know that on this particular day themovie Shrek is showing.’ He pointed to another billboard.‘That the movie The Planet of the Apes is openingsoon.’ And another. ‘That Tommy Hilfiger shirts are the height offashion.’

Sal curled her lips in disgust and realized that they really loved their naff clothes back in2001.

He turned back to look down at her. ‘Your eyes will register all these tiny details,your mind will remember them,’ he said quietly, his eyes lockedintently on hers, ‘and then, one day soon, you’ll know instantly whensomething’s different.’

‘A shift?’

His face creased with an approving smile. ‘That’s right, Sal, a shift — thevery first sign that something has been changed in the past.’

She looked around and realized that, in a way, it was a bit like a very large game ofPikodu.

‘You’ll see this before either of the others will because, well…that’s your special talent, Sal.’

‘Because I once was a finalist in a jahully old puzzle competition?’

‘Yes,’ he laughed, ‘because you once were a finalist in a jahully old competition. And because every Monday you will come out ofthe archway and take a walk across the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan in thisglorious sunshine and you’ll get to know this day like no other person in theworld.’

‘Did the team before us have an observer?’

Foster hesitated a moment before answering. ‘Yes, they did. Every team does.’

‘Tell me about him… or was it a her?’

The smile slowly faded from his face. ‘She… she didn’t really have muchtime to learn her job before — ’ he sighed — ‘before we accidentallytrapped that seeker.’

She looked at him sombrely. ‘Will there be other seekers?’

He shook his head. ‘No… because we’ll always be more careful in future.It’s not a mistake I plan to repeat.’

‘Where did it come from?’

He hesitated a moment before answering. ‘Another dimension.’ He turned to her.‘It’s the dimension you travel through when you ridetime.’

‘That sounds… well, it doesn’t sound safe.’

‘It’s chaos-space. We’re merely travelling throughit… instantaneously. You wouldn’t really want to hangaround there.’ She sensed there was a lot more he could tell her about it, but for nowhe seemed keen to change the subject.

‘Come on.’ His face brightened. ‘Let’s see some more of the city. Didyou visit Central Park when your dad took you to New York?’

She thought about that for a moment. She remembered a large open area in the middle ofManhattan in which rusting vehicles were stacked one on top of the other: a giant automobilejunkyard.

‘Is it the place where all the old cars were dumped when the oil ran out?’

Foster nodded sadly. ‘Yes. But back in 2001 — now — it’s still abeautiful park, with grass and trees and a lovely lake. Would you like to go seeit?’

She smiled and nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

CHAPTER 23