2001, New York

Maddy and Adam stared at the monitor while Sal helped Becks and Cabot ready themselves for transport back to 1194.

‘What do you mean, you can’t use Becks’s time-stamp?’ asked Maddy.

> There appears to me too much instability to lock on to a reliable window.

‘What does that mean?’

> Reality is fluctuating unreliably between two preferred states.

‘It can’t make its mind up,’ said Adam.

> That is a fair analogy.

‘Well … what? Do we wait? Do we risk it?’

> We can risk sending them back using Becks’s time-stamp, but I cannot anticipate the result of that.

Maddy balled her fist on the desk. ‘OK, then … Well, how big is this instability?’

> Please restate the question.

‘How … far, how much time is affected by it? What I mean is … is it regionalized? Like a storm or something?’

> The fluctuating timelines appear to branch from between seven and nine hours before Becks’s return time-stamp.

Maddy turned round towards the water tube. Becks was just about to climb the stepladder to get into the water.

‘Becks! What happened seven hours before you left 1194?’

Becks stopped, consulted her memory. ‘Precisely seven hours? I was walking along a stone passage.’

Maddy flapped her hands impatiently. ‘Or thereabouts. Anything significant?’

‘Six hours and forty-three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I scaled the outer wall of the city of Nottingham.’

‘Go back a bit.’

Becks tilted her head. ‘Seven hours and three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was saying to Liam and Bob that “I would be fine”.’

‘Oh come on! Go back more. Something significant!’

Becks spooled memories silently for a moment, then finally her eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘At eight hours and fifty-six minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was speaking with John.’

‘What the hell did you say to him? Exactly!’

Her eyelids fluttered. ‘… A man must find at least one moment in time to make a stand for himself … or live a life – burning in the flames of regret.’

Maddy looked to Adam.

He shrugged. ‘It’s very poetic.’

> Checking quotation database. Just a moment …

She turned back to Becks. ‘You think that’s, like, changed history somehow?’

‘I believe it may have inspired him,’ Becks replied. ‘John was considering immediate surrender to his brother. However, correct history shows he held out for five days. I decided he needed … encouragement.’

Maddy sighed. ‘Well guess what? Looks like it worked.’

> Quotation source: Rock band – EssZed. Lyrics to song.

‘Yuh, thanks, Bob. So –’ she turned back to Becks – ‘you think maybe saying that quote to –’

‘I also offered myself to him.’

Sal’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean …?’

Becks looked down at her. ‘Marriage.’

‘If he … what? Showed you he was a big tough man?’ said Maddy. ‘If he stood up to his brother?’

‘Affirmative.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh well, looks like you really encouraged him all right.’ She turned back to the monitor. ‘Bob … what competing histories are we getting out of this?’

> No information. The fluctuation is too rapid to generate timelines.

‘That’s why we’re not getting time waves?’ said Adam.

> Correct. However, this oscillating status is unstable and dangerous.

‘Dangerous?’ Maddy pushed up her glasses. ‘What’s that mean exactly?’

> It is a stress factor on the reality wall.

Adam looked at her. ‘The reality wall?’

‘What separates us from chaos space,’ she replied quickly. ‘Bob … then what are we supposed to do?’

> The instability may settle itself. Or it may increase in severity.

‘And if it does do that – if it gets worse?’

> No information.

‘No information?’ she howled, exasperated. ‘Well … But look, it’s not a good thing, right?’

> Not a good thing. There are several essays on chaos space written by R. Waldstein and E. Chan in my database.

‘Can you sum them up?’

> Chaos space is a dimension where the laws of quantum physics are contradicted. Theoretically, the effect on normal dimensions would be their complete destruction.

‘What does that mean? Like, all of Earth … destroyed?’

> Negative. Everything.

‘Ev– everything?’

> The entire universe.

Maddy suddenly felt light-headed and short of breath. ‘Oh crud. Oh my God! We’ve … we’ve really messed up.’ Her hands scrambled across the clutter on the desk for her inhaler. ‘We’ve –’

‘Maddy.’ Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maddy, come on, calm … don’t lose it.’

She found the inhaler and pulled hard on it several times. She doubled over on her seat, her head between her knees, the wheezing rasp of her contracting throat sounding like a blacksmith’s bellows.

Sal was over beside her, an arm across her shoulders. ‘Maddy? You OK?’

She shook her head. ‘Second …’ she wheezed. ‘Gimme … a … second …’

Adam looked down at her. ‘This is all going wrong, isn’t it? This organization of yours, it’s –’

‘We’re still learning,’ Sal snapped defensively. ‘We’ve been in worse situations.’ She bent down and stroked the hair out of Maddy’s face. ‘Right, Maddy? We’ve got out of worse things?’

Maddy pulled again on her inhaler, then lifted her face. ‘Yuh …’ Still wheezing. ‘Yeah,’ she said again. ‘Bob?’

> Yes, Maddy.

‘Becks and Cabot have to go back with the Grail, like right now! Find us the best window you can – as close to the castle as you can.’

> Affirmative. Searching.

‘But it’s unstable, isn’t it?’ said Adam. ‘Your computer was saying there’s a risk of sending them –’

‘There’s always a freakin’ risk,’ Maddy uttered wearily. She pulled herself up off her elbows and faced the desk again. ‘Bob? Come on … give me something!’

> Just a moment … Searching.

She checked their displacement machine had charge enough. It looked good. She turned to Sal. ‘Get them in the water, Sal. Go get them ready!’

Sal nodded and rushed over to the perspex tube.

‘If it’s unstable, what could happen to them?’ asked Adam.

‘They could end up turned inside out and looking like a bowl of lasagne,’ she replied.

‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked.’

‘Or worse.’

Adam pulled a face. ‘Worse! How could you get worse than that?’

She lowered her voice. ‘They could end up stuck in chaos.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Tell me, do you believe in Hell?’

He shook his head. ‘You kidding? I – no … of course not. It’s an invention of the Catholic Church. Just a load of old religious mumbo-jumbo.’

‘That’s what I used to think. But, you know … I wonder. Is it?’

The dark dialogue box on the screen in front of them suddenly flickered with the movement of computer-Bob’s cursor.

> I have a candidate time-stamp that is currently holding a solid state.

‘How long will it last?’

> There is no information how long it will last. Perhaps only seconds.

‘Activate a ten-second countdown. NOW!’

> Affirmative.

She turned to see Becks splosh into the water, the Grail once more in its box, the box sealed in a plastic Ziploc bag. Cabot was standing at the top of the stepladder and regarding the chilled water at his toes. ‘But, please, young lady … why do we have to get into …?’

‘JUST GET HIM IN!’ shouted Maddy above the growing hum of energy building up for a release.

Sal climbed up the steps of the ladder. ‘Mr Cabot, you have to get in the water … please!’

She spun round to see the countdown on the screen.

Four … three … two …

‘PUSH HIM IN!’

Sal nodded and threw her weight behind a hard shove against the monk’s thighs. He teetered for a moment, arms cartwheeling for balance, before he toppled forward into the tube, sending a small tidal wave of water splashing over the side and on to the floor. The stepladder wobbled under Sal’s sudden lurching movement and tipped back against the brick wall, the legs sliding along the concrete floor, dumping her on to a storage shelf full of cables and toolboxes that cascaded down and clattered along with her to the ground just as the displacement machine discharged its energy. The perspex tube flexed violently and thudded with a boom as the water, Cabot and Becks vanished back into the twelfth century.

As Sal rolled on the floor among spools of cable and yelping from a sprained wrist, and the echo of the flexing boom bounced around their archway, slowly fading, Maddy could only wonder how it was that mankind – perhaps even the whole universe – had ended up resting its fate in the hands of an amateur little outfit like theirs.