(Part XIV , XVI)
I slept, and while I was sleeping the string of time became ever more tangled about the swinging and bouncing yo-yo of fate. Space-time was nearing its breaking point unbeknownst to us as we overlapped multiple times into one three day period. No-one was there to stop the inevitable consequences should the sharp-edged yo-yo cut through the string like scissors through ribbon on a badly wrapped birthday present.
The next twenty four hours went by quickly, as Carter arrived to take Rolf-watch off my hands and I took the curiously quiescent Agnes to meet Lily Snooks. Lily had been my doctoral student once and was now a respected academic in the school of Archaeology with plenty of contacts and cross-departmental work with the School of Mathematics. I let her blab every secret I'd ever wanted to hide and thanked the world that Carter wasn't there. She would laugh enough at the bow ties in the secret wardrobe compartment she'd probably found by now.
The string became ever more entangled around the yo-yo but we didn't realise.
Agnes had accepted my theory that we should stay out of the way with more poise than I had expected. We passed through the Smedley Gallery, and while she was examining Nineteenth Century Dutch I explained to Lily the bizarre events of the last few days and the difficulties ahead. She seemed more concerned by what we hadn't done.
"Why aren't you back there? Isn't it possible that you are supposed to be the future you you met in your past? Oh, palooka, the grammar is always so difficult. You could be breaking the space-time continuum by branching history even further! We know what happened to the Egyptians and that the Grand High Zorps disappeared completely after trying to mess with the timeline. What if you cause a temporal base nine cataclysm?"
"It had occurred to me, kid, but the problem is that that version of me was telling stories about cataclysms and disasters and I've seen nothing to indicate any of that being real. That information has to have come from somewhere so I'm betting that that was a me who'll never come to be, or a plain fake. Then what we have here is temporal artifact plus a two-stream redundancy. The only question here is the guy I brought back. Something stinks to high heaven about him and it's not easily narrowed down amongst all the defective personality traits and cheesy stories."
"Yes, but what if..."
"Lily, there's a reason you're here and it's not just to tell Agnes - and don't give me that look right now - all my past as a professor and dig merchant. You're going to have to go down to Abbot and get a scenario run for me, and then bring me the results."
"Abbot? You want me to talk to a Mesopotamian super-computer who thinks I'm a high priestess and all-around super-woman? And now don't you look at me like that either!" (The stories we could tell would light up bars from here to Tokyo, but they'll live for another day and another story.)
"If you wouldn't mind. Punch in this card and then explain the situation as much as possible." I handed over the punch card, which had represented the highest forward compatible data input for Abbot for many years. "Please, Lily. Abbot will know what to do."
Agnes reappeared and saw our fingers touching over the yellow punch card. Her eyes narrowed a trifle and wrong conclusions visible set in her eyes. I would have to explain later if I ever wanted to share a lunch with the lovely Miss McGonagle in the future. Lily took her leave and headed off to consult Abbot and I walked Agnes back to the flat, wondering if any more wrong conclusions could possibly come my way.
Carter knocked Agnes out cold as we entered. That's the way days go sometimes. Then the string of time tightened to the brink and snapped, and we all took the sleep of the utterly bewildered.
More? There might be more. There's no plan any more!
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