Brownie points

Peter pushed open the door gently. Although the hinges creaked loudly in the silence, the door swung open easily enough.
'Professor', Peter called out into the poorly lit parlor, 'Are you there?'
There was no immediate answer, only the noise of traffic passing the Victorian house on the road at the bottom of the garden and the hum of electrical motors from further in the house coming from what seemed to be the entrance to the cellar just down the hallway. The interior of the house, rather like the garden that Peter had walked through to get the front door, was neat and tidy, clean and decorated though with a little too much use of pink emulsion for Peter's own taste. No one had come in answer to Peter's knocking and ringing of the door bell. Still the Professor had been very insistent that he come when they had spoken that morning in the public library.

Peter had met the Professor for the first time today. There had been one of those momentary embarrassing tussles as they both reached for the Daily Telegraph in the paper racks in the reference section. After a few 'I'm sorries' and 'No, no after you' they had determined that they had both wanted different sections of the paper. Peter wanted the jobs section and the Professor the obituaries section, 'To check that I am still alive dear boy' he said smiling. They sat at the same table and it seemed natural to continue the conversation. Peter explained that he'd been made redundant yet again, been unemployed for months and just couldn't get a job no matter how hard he tried. 'I don't know what to do,' said Peter, 'I'm very well qualified, have retrained more times than I can remember but no one seems to want you when you are in your 50's. Even my wife says I'm like our elderly Fiat car - that never works either, she says. I chose the wrong career all those years ago. I had a chance to do something else and blew it on one decision. The thing that really depresses me is that I could have been so successful with my life but I just never got the breaks. Now I'll never achieve all that I could have. ' The Professor tut-tutted sympathetically. 'It is a problem' he agreed, 'look at me, I'm in my 70's, all my best work in quantum physics in Cambridge now behind me, still working on my big idea but no one pays attention to you once you pass into retirement'. He paused then looked directly into Peter's eyes, his own eyes now serious.

'I have an idea, a machine I've been working on. It might help you. Come to my house tonight at 8.00pm and I'll show you what I mean. No, don't ask questions now, just come and you'll see. Promise you'll come.' And with that he left the library. The librarian smiled at Peter, 'Such a lovely gentleman, comes in every week and orders the most wonderful books on quantum physics, worm holes and last month, temporal displacement and probability, very different from the usual requests for the latest best-seller.'

Peter walked down the hallway and jumped when the voice of the Professor shouted out from a speaker mounted on the wall next to a video camera.
'There you are! Jolly glad you came, now come down into my workshop in the cellar and I'll explain everything.' Peter closed the front door behind him and walked down the stairs into the cellar. 'Marvellous things security cameras' said the Professor, 'means I can keep working and decide whether I want to be interrupted or not.' He tapped the screen of the TV on his work bench. Peter looked around the room. In every conceivable space were cables, wires, screens, monitors, all leading to a large well-padded armchair in the middle of the room itself in front of a console containing two levers.
'Professor er... I don't actually know your full name' said Peter.
'Brownie' replied the Professor and then Peter remembered. Professor Brownie the world famous quantum physicist who had retired 15 years ago - he remembered the interviews where the Professor had claimed that time travel was more than theoretically possible it was a fact but a fire had destroyed his laboratory in Cambridge and he could not replicate the experiment. 'Time Crank retires' - Peter remembered the tabloid headlines.

'I see you remember me now' said Professor Brownie noting Peter's expression, 'and what they said about me. Well I can show you tonight it wasn't all made up. You really can alter time. I have found a way of sending you back through time to one specific moment and letting you alter one fundamental decision.'

Peter stood and looked around at the equipment. He looked at Professor Brownie and then he made to leave. That was all he needed during this unemployment, a lunatic offering time travel. The Professor waved in the direction of the door. 'I understand Peter, go if you want to, but this morning you told me you made the wrong choice of career. What if I could give you that choice again? What have you got to lose?' Peter thought quickly - what else was he going to do that evening, it wasn't as if he'd have to get up early in the morning to work was it? It would make a good story for the pub anyway, goodness knows he had little else to talk about these days. 'OK' Peter said 'let's try it'.

The Professor sat Peter down in the armchair and placed what seemed to be an iPod on his lap and connected several electrodes to his head. The iPod and electrodes were, in turn, connected to the other machinery by a further cable. 'Hold this and watch the screen. Now tell me the date and time where you had to make the choice of one career path over another. The machine will then scan the temporal streams and show you what has happened with your choice that has brought you here today and what would have happened if you had picked the other career path. It doesn't show the future, only what has happened up to today, this very moment. What happens in the future is still your choice it has not yet been determined. You will then be given the opportunity to pull one of the levers in front of you and either go back in time to choose the other career path or pull the other lever and confirm your life so far. Now this is important Peter. The way temporal streams work everyone has one chance and one chance only to go back and make a choice. Think of it like a railway and coming to a set of points. You set the points one way or the other. Do you understand? You can't go back and reset the points if you don't like the new outcome. Once you have chosen your track you will follow it until it loops back to this exact time and place. When the temporal stream has finished processing you have just two minutes to pull one of the levers. The white one to stay with the choice you made and black one to choose the other life. You have to make a choice, you can't mess with quantum physics you know.''

Peter nodded. 'Barmy old fool' he thought, 'let's get this over with. Bit of a laugh when it all fails to work.' 'Right then' Peter said out loudly, 'July 15 1977 at home in Cardiff. I'm with my Mum and Dad. There are two letters, one from the head office of the world's biggest supplier of computers offering graduate entry and a clerical post in London following my degree in languages and one from Consolidated Holdings Inc. offering me a graduate entry post with their sales team in their head office in Manchester with a company Ford Escort. I took the car and, well, here I am.'

The Professor pressed a number of buttons on the console at his desk and then stared hard at Peter and spoke again softly 'No going back now Peter, shall we start?' Peter sat still, nodded his assent and, at that, the lights dimmed and the machinery starting humming very loudly. In his head Peter saw lights passing, like the windows of a train carriage in the night. Vague images started appearing on the iPod screen and then there it was, like a security camera looking over his shoulder, Peter at 21 in his front room with his mother and father smiling broadly. 'Two offers son, both great, which one to take?' said his father. The Peter of 1977 looked at his parents and said 'Computers of course.'

The screen changed and then Peter saw, at high speed his other life pass on the screen - the big offices in central London, the too-smart suits and neat haircuts, blue shirts and tie, promotion, travel to the head office in the States, moving house because the company expects it, bigger car, bonuses, stock options, girls, the girl, marriage, meetings, working late every night, networking, evenings with people you don't like because the company expects it, wife gives up career to keep up with company moves, bigger houses, fewer friends (you never have time to go out with them), wife leaves with ex-best friend (he always lacked ambition just wanted to live in the country), no friends, promotion to head of South Americas, divorce, company censure (our senior team are expected to be married), new house gated community Sao-Paulo with armed response, marriage to petite blond wife with teenage son who loathes you, promotion Head of Sales Pacific rim move to Beijing, divorce (we really expect our team to be married is there a problem?), promotion to Head of Servers for Baltic region, moves to Finland, firm sold in reorganisation, sorry have to "let you go", "retirement" at 55, escorted off premises by security no time to empty desk, move to UK, very good pension and excellent stock options intact, bachelor flat in Notting Hill, feel lonely, looking for partner in Daily Telegraph in library, meets Professor tells him he's lonely looking for a soul mate, Professor invites him around this evening

And then the screen blurs and it's 21 year old Peter in Cardiff saying to his father 'Are you kidding, I want the car.' And then night school, monthly pay checks, promotion, travel abroad, bigger car, staff, bonus, girls, girl, marriage, her career, holidays in Cornwall and Devon, decide to have children - present at birth and birthdays of beautiful baby girl, wife resumes career, first redundancy, fight back, retrains, small salary increase, another baby girl , present at birth and birthdays, holidays with family every year girls sleeping in the back of the car on the long drive, friends some doing better some doing worse some are with same partners some have new ones, another redundancy a new job a few rungs down the corporate ladder work no longer so satisfying, 25th wedding anniversary, 30th wedding anniversary, MA in Fine Art from the Open University wonderfully satisfying (should have done that instead of languages at Uni), friends celebrate 50th birthday with surprise birthday party one girl comes back from Uni especially and they both want to be with their dad that night, wife starts own business starts to thrive, another redundancy (sorry we've been bought out we are going to have to let you go) out of work for eight months so far money worries, goes to library meets Professor, Professor invites him around this evening.

The screen goes black, the background electrical humming falls silent.

The Professor says 'Peter you have two minutes to pull one of the levers and make that choice again. You must pull one of them.'

Peter lies back in the chair and closes his eyes for a minute and then sits up. He looks at the Professor, winks and then leans forward to pull a lever. 'Thank you Professor, I know which lever I want' he says, smiling, and pulls it.