Or would my immature and undeveloped brain no longer be ableto make sense of all of this? Was I destined to end up a helpless infant, withno control over my bowels or bladder, like an incontinent, senile old person inreverse? The thought horrified me.
Was there any way out of this? Was there anyone who couldhelp me? If I could track down the mysterious Doctor Gardner, perhaps he could,but I had no idea where to start. I didn’t know his first name and I didn’teven know if Gardner was his real name. He had been pretending to be a doctor,so had he used a false name as well?
Whoever he was, was he even aware of what he had done to me?I cursed the man and his time-travelling wand. Why had he let me get draggedinto whatever he was up to? Didn’t time travellers have rules about this sortof thing? They always did in the movies.
Assuming I wasn’t going to find him, then what else was I todo? Wallow in self-pity or make the most of the time I had? I had to try and bepositive. Maybe I did have less than eighty days left to live, but potentiallythey were full of opportunities. I may have hated most of my birthdays thefirst time around but now they were positively sparkling with possibilities.
I pondered what was to happen in my new life as the yearspassed. Right now, here I was living with Phoebe and Lily, but in anothercouple of years that would come to an end and I’d never see them again.
Then there would be Rob. The man I had lived with for nineyears who had betrayed me, belittled me and cheated on me. In return, I wastedthe best years of my life on him. How was I going to be able to bear spendingnine birthdays living with him?
Don’t get mad – get even, whispered a voice inside myhead.
It was an interesting thought. A woman scorned, getting herrevenge in first? That could be a lot of fun.
In the years before I had saddled myself with Rob there hadbeen college, travel, teenage crushes and more. The thoughts of those yearsexcited me. Was this death sentence really so bad? How many with lives goingnowhere would swap shoes with me, given the chance?
And what about the people I had lost – my mother, my fatherand especially my sister? Maybe I could help things turn out differently forthem. Even if I couldn’t, at least I would get to see them again and that wasalmost worth the cost of all this alone.
I decided to banish all thoughts of my impending mortality,and seize the day. The possibilities were endless. I had no idea how all ofthis might end up playing out or what part I was going to play in it all, butit was time to start thinking ahead – or technically behind.
I needed to be sure I was going to jump again before Istarted making any plans that I might not be able to bring to fruition. So inthe short term it seemed best if I just played out the next two days as if lifewas proceeding just like normal. I would go to work like the dutiful soul I am,and then see if the jump back in time happened again on 2nd January.
If it did – then I would know that this was definitely gameon. It was a game where I could tear up the rule book of life and throw it outof the window. There were new rules now, and I was seemingly the only one whoknew what they were. That gave me an advantage over everyone else and a certainsense of power. The possibilities were thrilling. The world was about to becomemy own personal playground where I could do pretty much anything. Would this beabusing the gift I had seemingly been given? Very probably, but right at thistime, I really didn’t care.
I had nothing to lose and life was about to get all kinds offun.
Chapter Five
2021
I had stayed up until 3am because I wanted to be wide awakewhen the jump happened. When it did, the last thing I remember was looking atthe digital clock in my room as it ticked over to precisely 3am. The next thingI knew, I was waking up and it was 8.30am in the morning.
This didn’t mean I had arrived at that time. I was prettysure it meant I had arrived at 3am as before, but had been asleep in this bodyat that time. That was to be expected – if I wasn’t at work I would almostcertainly be asleep at that time as most people, party animals aside, would be.
I went straight for my phone, which I noticed was now anS10, for the confirmation I sought. It was 31st December 2021, just as I hadexpected. That settled it, then. The pattern was clear. I was travelling back ayear and two days in time every forty-eight hours, as regular as clockwork.Except I was living by a clock unlike any that had ever been invented.
Seemingly it was only me that this was happening to.Everyone else I had seen or spoken to in the last few days had been actingcompletely normally. I think if the whole world was being cast back in timesimultaneously it would have been pretty obvious – and probably extremelychaotic.
I sat up in bed, once again contemplating my situation, as Ihad so many times in previous days. Last night I had felt quite excited by mynewfound ability to travel in time, but would I carry on with this if I had achoice? I had to be honest and admit I wouldn’t. I would stop this right now ifI could. But what could I possibly do?
It seemed that I would have to assume that there was no wayto stop it, so perhaps I ought to accept the situation and start thinking aboutwhat I should be doing with my time.
I likened my position to
