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five I could win chess matches.’
    ‘You played
chess when you were five?’ Sam was fiddling with an unlit
cigarette. He put it back in the box. ‘You were five?’
    ‘Yes. But it
was against my cousin.’ Jules winked at me.
    ‘Oh yeah?’ said
George, ‘But isn’t she….’
    ‘Five?’ Sam
said again. The lads spluttered tea and biscuit crumbs.
    ‘He doesn’t
know.’ said Joe.
    ‘Ok Genius.’
Alex interrupted, ‘So how do we save the world?’
    ‘Five?’ Sam was
fixated.
    ‘Someone punch
him out.’ said James.
    ‘Has anyone
heard from Oliver?’ George flipped open a lined reporter pad.
    ‘No,’ said Joe,
‘he did say he would be out of touch for a week or two.’
    ‘We could do
with Oliver.’ said George.
    ‘Let me get
this straight;’ Alex said loudly, ‘you are going to stop someone
who has the ultimate weapon at their disposal. They can simply
change history itself?’
    ‘But they
cannot make people choose things against their will.’ said Jules,
‘we always have the freedom to act.’
    ‘But choices
often depend on what you know. Without certain bits of information
different choices are possible… but still within the boundaries of
what a give person would act upon?’
    ‘Yes.’ said
Jules.
    Kyle offered
Alex the biscuits packet back, ‘Hey! You get it!’
    ‘Yes of course
I do.’ Alex waved a biro at the group, ‘I’m at least as intelligent
as Davey here. And I have a better level of scepticism about the
origins of self-indulgence of obnoxious people.’
    ‘He’s trying to
work out if it’s a compliment.’ James glanced at me.
     
    For the next
twenty minutes we talked around the subject. And George made notes
on the pad. We theorised on the exact nature of the doubles and put
forward the idea that at least more than one coexisting reality
could continue to operate after the experiment was at an end. Jules
spoke to the group, and I knew was simplifying for their sake. Kyle
and Sam just had a puzzled but concentrated look. George a worried
frown, and after about ten minutes of advanced level statements by
Jules, and ignorant questions the group started to get fidgety.
Trying to pick apart Jules’ largesse in sharing the kind of things
that are normally only heard in among fellow physicists with about
three degrees each; they got rowdy and began demanding more tea.
Alex seemed quite at ease, as if he was waiting for something. He
stood with a calculating expression on his face, and began to
gather up the mugs.
    ‘Perhaps a game
of scrabble?’ asked Joe.
    ‘It certainty
couldn’t be worse than getting nowhere.’ said Kyle.
    The serious
discussion, if there had been one at all descended into chit chat,
and idle banter, with the occasional rude comment thrown in.
Violette, who had been quiet for some time, left the room, and went
upstairs. Bathroom I guessed, or to get away from us lot for five
minutes.
    ‘The problem,
gentlemen…., Marcia….’ said Janey firmly from the corner. The room
settled into an expectant silence, and they all turned towards her.
I saw a bewildered curiosity in Jules’ eyes in particular. This
was, for him, eerie and discomforting in the extreme.
    She waited
until they had settled down and stood up. She took a deep breath
and spoke with that melodious hypnotic tone that I so associated
with Janey from Cloud Field: ‘The problem can be stated thus: there
is a day and an hour at some point in the past when our destinies
diverged away from what would have happened.’ She moved among us
talking; she took the pen from George’s hand; ‘You don’t know when
that was. And because it was induced by Someone rather than
Something, we are now waiting for this divergence to resolve
itself. Homeostasis is the concept I need you to consider
gentlemen. Things have a system built in where the balance will
always be maintained. If there is a kink in the line, it will kink
somewhere else too. Unkinked, then the other will too. As anyone
knows who has ever