It wouldn’t have taken the genius of Sherlock Holmes to workall this out, but I had trained myself to become extremely observant over thepast few weeks. Every little detail that most people probably took for granted,from what brand of cereal I found in the cupboard to what deodorant I wore,provided me with more and more details about my life.
With the monster well and truly devoured, I sat back toawait developments. It was now well past 2pm and everything on the park seemedto be proceeding normally. People were coming and going in and out of thefurniture store and the other shops on the park, which included a DIYsuperstore, a large electronics store and a discount clothing store.
I had my smartphone with me, now thankfully unlocked after Ihad finally managed to work out that the PIN code was the numbers of Stacey’sdate of birth.
What time should I phone the fire brigade? If I phoned tooearly they might turn up, think it was a hoax, and go away again. Too late, andthe blaze would take hold just as it had done before. I knew the fire brigadehad been called at 2.47pm, so I held off as long as I could before entering thestore at 2.30pm.
I could not see any sign of a fire, but the time had come todial 999 anyway. The lady who answered the phone insisted on taking somedetails from me before she’d despatch the fire engines. I gave her my name andwhere I was, but I had to bullshit her about the fire. I said it was in theshop and that the flames were everywhere.
For good measure, I smashed the glass on the wall to set thefire alarm off so that she could hear it on the other end of the line. Asupervisor saw me do it, and immediately headed over to me to admonish me,along with two burly security guards who appeared out of nowhere.
I hung up, panicked and ran, not particularly quickly as ithappened. The effects of the monster, my age and all the weight I was luggingaround with me meant I was no spring chicken. Maybe one day I would be, but thesecurity guards caught up with me before I got to the door.
“Hold it right there, sir,” said one of them, a big, beefybloke who looked like he might play rugby at the weekends as he took a firmgrip on my arm. “I think my manager would like to have a word with you in hisoffice.”
With the fire alarm still sounding, all around people werefiling out of the doors, but these two big blokes were escorting me furtherinto the store, not where I wanted to be with a blaze about to break out.Great, I thought. I’m going to die in the fire. So much for my clever plan.
“Get off me!” I protested, “You don’t understand.”
And then I noticed the smoke, pouring out from underneaththe double swing-doors at the back of the store, leading out to the warehouse,I assumed. “Look!” I shouted.
Taken aback, the security guards let go and I sprintedtowards the exit. Amazing what danger could do: I actually managed to put on afair bit of speed now that my life was threatened, overweight or not.
I looked back to see one of the security guards right behindme, but he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in nabbing me anymore, he justwanted to get out. Meanwhile, the other one had grabbed a fire extinguisher andwas playing the hero.
As I reached the doors I heard the sirens. Three fireengines had pulled up outside, and the firemen were already being deployed,rushing in with hoses at the ready.
In the confusion, I slipped away to the safety of my car andwatched from afar. Whilst I saw a fair amount of smoke coming out of thebuilding, the blaze that I had seen on the television news never happened.Within an hour or so, the whole thing was contained.
I drove home, reflecting on the day’s events. I knew withoutdoubt now that I did have the power to change things. I watched the localtelevision news that evening which did have a small piece on the fire,confirming that the fire service had been called out to the store, but hadswiftly contained the blaze with no reported injuries.
So the future was not written in stone. The consequences ofwhat I had done in preventing the fire would have long-reaching effects that Icould only guess at.
Before my intervention, four people had died in the fire,including an eighteen-year-old girl who had just started work there in thewarehouse. Now they were alive, and ripples of change would spread outwardsfrom their lives, affecting the whole world, not just them.
The girl may well have children in the future that wouldnever be born otherwise. They would have children of their own and so on.Potentially there might be millions of people alive in the future that wouldnever have existed before. Each of the other victims would have had their placein the world, too. The timeline as it was originally meant to play out had beenirrevocably altered.
I may have had my answer about whether or not it waspossible to change things, but inevitably this led to further questions. Mymemories of reading the reports of the fire as it had originally occurred wereuntouched. Did this mean I had created two possible futures?
I was aware of the butterfly effect theory, that every tinychange created new and infinite universes where all possibilities could occur.As things stood now, I was aware of one universe where four people had died,and a new universe of my own creation where they had not.
Would I create a new universe every day of my life? I satdown with a calculator and tried to work out how many days I had lived. I was54 when I died, plus a couple of months, so I multiplied 54 by 365 and added 60on which gave me a total of 19,770. So that was 19,770 potential differenttimelines I could create.
Alternatively, it could be just the one. If the theory
