The Watch – Part 137:

I would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas. Your present from me is an extra part for the story, The Watch.

I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has read my posts. It still blows my mind to this day, after a year of doing this that people are reading what I've wrote, and for that I am truly grateful. I have big plans for the future which I hope to share with you as they progress. I will communicate with you every step of the way to keep you updated. I did have plans to celebrate my first year of the blog, but I found myself unexpectedly busy with personal stuff.

Again, a massive thanks to everyone, and without further ado, let's move onto the story.

We arrived in my living room two weeks in the past.

‘I am never going to get used to that,’ Amy said once she had settled down from that sudden jolting sensation. ‘I think I’ve already said that,’ she tried to remember. She had that cute crinkle in her forehead whenever she tried to remember anything from a while back. ‘If I have, I have,’ she said not wanting to cause any hassle.

‘Are you ever going to get used to that?’ she asked suddenly.

‘In terms of side effects, I know I already have, but in terms of knowing that you’re standing in the past, that still causes adrenaline to surge through my body,’ I answered thoughtfully. ‘

‘How many times do you have to travel in time to get used to it?’ she asked excitedly, hinting at more trips.

‘A lot,’ I said simply, skimming over the many times I’ve travelled through the Space-Time Vortex in my mind’s eye.

‘You’ve already travelled through time so many times you’ve lost count.’

‘I was going up against an army of huge robots at the time, and stopped all those rockets from destroying the world.’

‘Yes, I remember you explaining, but I thought the sensation of time travel would have allowed you to remember.’

‘If I sit down and truly think back, I probably could remember the exact number, but given the situation I was in, my mind wasn’t exactly in the right place to remember everything, just make sure that I took down those robots, and stop those rockets from destroying the world,’ I repeated. ‘There were a lot of robots, and a lot of rockets.’

‘You said that so normally,’

‘Trust me, it doesn’t sound normal to me,’

‘Not yet,’ she added.

‘Probably,’ I shrugged. We fell into a natural silence before Amy put a spark in another conversation.

‘Anyway,’ Amy said she clapped her hands together. ‘Video.’

‘Yes,’ I said as she pulled the memory stick out of her pocket. ‘Now, where did I leave my laptop?’ I tried to think back to what my past-self did before leaving the house this morning. I didn’t get that far, so I decided to just go looking for it in the most common of places, which were on the dining room table, near the TV, and when it wasn’t there I went up to my room and found it laying on the bed.

‘Got it,’ I said, returning to Amy, who was standing by the dining room table, reading today’s newspaper that my dad had been reading before heading off to work. Or should I say, that day’s newspaper considering we are in the past, but we’re in today, so it would be today’s.

‘You know, it’s weird reading a newspaper that is out-of-date, but is dated for today,’ she said casually tearing her eyes away from it and focusing on me with the laptop.

‘I guess it is, yeah,’ I said.

‘I wonder what else is weird, except standing in a different time zone, that is,’ she added quickly.’

‘TV guide?’ I suggested.

‘Yes,’ Amy said, pointing at me with acknowledgement. ‘And a magazine.’

‘Knowing that the bus and/or train is going to be late?’

‘Because you would be the only one who would know,’ she agreed.

‘Because you would be the only one who would know,’ I repeated in agreement.

‘That would be weird,’ Amy said thoughtfully.

‘Indeed, it would be.’

‘Taking an out-of-date ticket to see a concert you’ve already been to,’ Amy stated.

‘But wouldn’t there be a visual indication that it was used?’ I said.

‘Oh, yeah, there would be, wouldn’t there,’ she realised, ‘but you have to admit it would be weird.’

‘Oh, yeah, defiantly would be,’ I agreed.

‘A backstage pass would be still valid after use, though,’ Amy said, ‘for keepsake purposes.’

‘So you can go as many times as you wish,’ I said before, ‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t be able to, would you.’

‘Because there would be many copies of yourself in the same room.’

‘Yeah,’ I said simply.

We fell into silence, trying to think of more things that would be weird to experience in the past. Then we realised that we were just standing around, doing nothing.’

‘Shall we upload the video,’ I said, snapping us both out of our train of thought.

‘Yes, let us,’ Amy said, bringing herself back into the room. We sat down on the sofa, I opened the laptop and turned it on, made sure that the screen wasn’t caked in dust by wiping it with a tissue that I grabbed from the box sitting on the arm of the chair, and entered the password, which brought me to the desktop. I let it finish starting up all the way before opening the web browser and then forgot the name of the website that we’re supposed to be uploading the video to.

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Amy said, ‘I didn’t write it down anywhere. I didn’t think I had to, so you can’t fault me on that one.’

‘True,’ I said.

‘I guess we just search around a bit until we stumble across it, although that might take a while considering we might not enter the write words into the search bar to bring up the same results.’

‘Also true,’ I said. I was about to enter the first words that came into my head relating to what we were trying to find when I got an idea.

‘How about we try, Mistley’s abandoned train station video, that might narrow the results down a bit?’ I said.

‘Worth a try,’ Amy said, unable to think of a better combination of words. I entered the words and several thousand results appeared in less than a millisecond.

‘Well then,’ I said, looking at all the links on the screen.

‘Best get cracking.’

‘We better had.’

We spent the next fifteen minutes searching through many, many, many links until eventually Amy recognised one of them.

‘I’m almost very certain that that’s the one,’ she said.

‘Almost very certain?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she said, waving it away with her hand. I clicked on the link and, like so many times before, the website popped up, this time around, it was the website that we needed.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Amy said happily. ‘How do we upload?’

‘I have not a clue,’ I said.

‘Awesome,’ Amy said with fake, over the top enthusiasm.

‘Do we have to make an account?’ Amy said after we had settled back down.

‘I hope we don’t,’ I said. ‘I don’t particularly want to be registered to this website.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Amy said, ‘there’s a section where members without an account can post their own stories and videos.’ She pointed out the section and I clicked on it. The screen was filled with a large message box with a smaller one for the title at the top.

‘So, all we have to do now is upload the video, create some story, preferably one that fits the video…’

‘Of course.’

‘And wallah, job done. All we then have to do is sit back and let things take their natural course.

‘Sounds easy enough,’ I said. I started to type. ‘Quick question.’

‘What was written there before?’ Amy asked the question for me.

‘Yeah.’

‘No!’

‘No?’

‘We don’t have to worry about what was written there before,’ Amy said putting the pieces together. ‘Remember, someone finds this and writes something else about it.’

‘Oh, yeah, they do, don’t they,’ I said happy to have realised that as that relieves a lot of stress from my shoulders. With having that level of worry taken away, my fingers started to fly across the keyboard.

***

‘Done,’ I said after I had pressed the ‘Publish’ button and the video was free to roam about the Internet.

‘Is that it?’ Amy said.

‘Yep?’

‘Paradox complete?’

‘The Bootstrap Paradox is now complete.’

‘So, now what do we do?’ Amy asked.

‘Well, after I have deleted the websites from the history, I guess we go back to the present... I mean, future,’ I quickly corrected myself.

‘Nope, sorry, but you had your moment, and you blew it,’ Amy said jokily. ‘You had that handed to you on a plate and you decided to send it back to the chef.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘You had better be. When are you going to get that moment again, and don’t say any time we travel into the past,’ she said before I could.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Don’t sulk,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t sulking!’

‘You were soooo sulking,’ Amy said with emphasis.

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Was.’

‘Wasn’t.’

‘Was.’

‘Wasn’t

‘Was.’

‘Are we really doing this?’ I asked.

‘Trying to change the subject is another way of saying you was,’ Amy said smiling smugly.’

‘Is not,’ I argued, trying to make sense of that.

‘Is, too,’ Amy defended.

‘Is not.’

‘Is, too.

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘There you go again.’

‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

‘Are, too.’

‘Seriously, we need to stop this.’

‘But, I was having so much fun winning,’ she said smiling.

‘Agree to disagree?’

‘Agree to disagree,’ Amy repeated in agreement.

‘Right, shall we go get back, then,’ I said, shutting down the laptop and standing up. I wanted to make sure that I put it back where I found it because it would look rather suspicious if my past-self would find it on the sofa, even though I doubt I would remember where it was originally anyway, but I couldn’t take that change. When I had gotten rid of the laptop, I re-joined Amy in the living room.

‘Are you ready to go back?’ I asked.

‘Yep,’ Amy said linking her arm with mine.

***

‘So now what do we do?’ Amy asked, after we had arrived a half a minute after we left.

‘What do you feel like doing?’ I asked back.

‘I don’t know, I was hoping you would have an idea,’ Amy said.

‘I was hoping you would as well,’ I said.

‘Looks like we’re at a stalemate,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t particularly want to stay here all day, I want to go out, but I have no idea – we have no idea – where to go or what to do.

‘Do you want to go for a walk?’ I asked as soon as the idea popped into my head, catching Amy off guard for a second.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, ‘but where?’

‘I think we will leave it up to our feet to decide that,’ I said.

‘Making it up as we go along,’ she said, smiling.

‘Just like always,’ I said.

‘In that case, shall we?’

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)