Read A Window into Time (Novella) for Free Online

he was playing that football match, most of my life hadn’t happened. So if he told people he’d seen a vision of the future, they would have thought he was crazy.
    I checked the Internet; there’s no list of all the insane people locked up in the UK. There must be one somewhere, the Internet has all the information the human race owns, but I couldn’t find it.
    I opened a new Gmail account, calling it Big Russell, and used that to set up a Facebook page in the same name, making up lots of details. I even put in some random pictures of London I ripped from Instagram to make it look authentic. Then I sent Michael Finsen a friend request from it. I was hoping he’d think it was coming from the striker on the other football team and answer.
    I fell asleep waiting for him to reply.

Chapter 8
Probate
    Michael Finsen still hadn’t replied by Saturday morning, so I sent him another friend request from Big Russell.
    After breakfast we all got in the car and drove north up the A1 to Peterborough. Dad wanted to get the Yaxley house sorted out ready to sell, which meant we had to empty it. I didn’t want to go back; just about everything there would be a memory trigger. But I didn’t want anyone else sorting through my stuff, either.
    —
    I figured messaging Michael must be a paradox—or maybe a subparadox, because it’s hardly a biggie—so the universe wouldn’t allow it. If Michael had stopped Kenan from assaulting me, then it wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have hurt my ankle falling over in the park. I wouldn’t have his memory and he wouldn’t have mine.
    There’s something called causality that seriously means time travel can’t happen. It’s like the hard science explanation of paradox. There’s plenty of academic papers about causality published on the Internet, but they’re like
really
technical.
    But causality wasn’t the thing stopping Michael Finsen from answering my Facebook friend request; ignoring me was his own decision. Maybe he wasn’t a nice person after all and didn’t want to save me.
    Second thought: Michael Finsen wouldn’t know what year/month/day it was when Kenan and his crew went for me. Next time I got a memory of his, I was going to say the date, time, and place where I was out loud. Then if he got my memory, he’d know. If I do it right, I’d probably turn around and he’d be there. How cool would that be?
    —
    Uncle Gordon had been sorting out the house in Yaxley. Supposedly.
    We arrived there midmorning, and the garage was full of boxes. Trouble was, they were all empty. Uncle Gordon was meant to have put all the house contents in them ready for collection by a local auction company, which was doing a house clearance for us—at one o’clock.
    He’d brought the boxes but hadn’t packed them.
    “Yeah, sorry about that, fella,” he told Dad when he met us in the lounge. “I’ve been kinda busy. Big order for Andries.”
    “For what?” Dad said. I could see how angry he was, but he was making an effort to stay calm. He knows how much I like Uncle Gordon.
    “Andries. This new acid-grunge band out of Leeds. They’re touring next month, seventeen dates. Gonna be big. Not the sort of folding I can turn down.”
    “Did you pack anything?” Rachel asked in exasperation.
    “Uh”—Uncle Gordon scratched the back of his head as he glanced around—“I made an inventory.”
    I was pretty sure he hadn’t. I could see everything was in exactly the same place it had been when I left.
    “Good,” Dad said. “Where is it?”
    “Man! I left it at home. Sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” I said before Dad got really angry. “I know what’s in every room. I can write a new one.” I got my tablet out and sat down.
    “You can’t know everything in a whole house,” Rachel said.
    “Whoa, you don’t know your stepson very well, do you?” Uncle Gordon told her.
    She gave Dad a very direct stare, expecting to be backed up. For once, he just shrugged.
    “Write it