The Time Traveler's Mother

I can't remember how it started, I remember though I had some ideas sketched into a notebook. I thought I had found a way to time travel. It had occurred to me that if we could see events in the past happen in front of us, we could probably travel to them and effectively be in the past. I began to work on a way to move outside our current temporal sphere and then travel in an arc back across the path of the universe and then I should intersect the past Earth, where I could land in its "now", but which would be my past. I realised if this were possible I would need a couple of things to aid my time there, Money, clothes and the correct slang for the period.

I targeted money first and was able to buy old banknotes from various periods in recent history quite cheaply. I also found that coins were in plentiful supply. I needed pre-Decimalisation currency if I wanted to travel further back than January 1970, when the UK had moved to a decimal system. I found coins in dribs and drabs, halfpennies (pronounced ha'pennies), half crowns (two shillings and six pence or 10p) and florins (two shillings strangely also 10p). I boned up on the money and soon I could do old maths papers I found at antique markets. One pound notes were harder, they had been replaced by coins and so those notes had just disappeared. The five and ten pound notes were hard too, but I had a way to solve this I thought.

My first test was a disaster, I failed to even slow the temporal flow and it took several months to work out the solution. Then I had to find a way to move backwards through the universe, tracking it's path to meet up with the earlier Earths. Finally I had it sussed, but after a successful trip back ten years, I stayed more than twenty four hours and consequently came back a day after I left, prompting questions from friends and parents on why I had been out of touch. Learning lesson here, I might go back, but time marched on. I needed to adjust my machine to allow for the time flow factor. Since time, although I reversed it, was second for second still moving forward to the future. I won't bore you with the details but I now could come and go with barely a seconds difference.

I decided to go back for a longer period. Booking three weeks off work, I told family and friends I was going back packing in Nepal and disappeared off the radar. Dressed for the fifties and with a small amount of money stashed for my trip I was ready. I researched carefully and found a spot that would be a perfect cover for my machine when I went back. There's no use moving back in time from the upstairs bedroom of your home which sixty years ago was a wasteground. Instead I bought a lockup that had been set up in the late forties and would be empty when I arrived. It took me three days to move and set up the machine, a day to check it and a day to test, I had about nine days left to travel into my past and a margin for error of three days.

I arrived safely and with my stash of cash, I sought out a Bank which still existed in my time. Knowing the rules of the time I opened an account in my name, claiming to have found employment and to be living locally. I opened a current account and a savings account. My plan was to move money in and out thus giving the impression of a working account, meanwhile the savings account would build up interest as it was not going to be used for a while. When I came back to the present I went to the Bank, where on presentation of my documents I was able to get a balance and see I had a healthy account. I had obtained a fake Death Certificate and a will appointing me executor of my "uncle's" estate. I was now a very wealthy man.

Back in time I drew some of the money out and spent it on rare objects in our time which were available in the thousands then. These could be sold discreetly at auctions, and no one queried why they looked as if I had bought them brand new yesterday. With regular appearances at the bank I was able to give the impression of a thrifty young man in regular employment. As funds generated interest I was able to move some money into stocks and shares and soon had a fair amount of capital at my disposal. Knowing the history of companies I made my money before they lucked out having already moved onto pastures new. I even rode the new technology wave, thank you Apple and Microsoft. By now I was an affluent man, but I was becoming bored of just sneaking back for a few hours. I decided to leave my job, my friends and family and move to a new location, where I could go back and not be missed.

I bought a disused farm, one that had been vacant on and off over the years. I knew in the late fifties and mid sixties it had been run down and left alone, before it had been appropriated in the late sixties by some Hippies who had an idea to start a commune and farm organic crops. They later found some of the seeds they'd sown had grown up illegal and a Drug Squad raid had once again reduced it to a vacant ruin in the early Seventies. From the newspapers I knew when and for how long I could stay. I had a base in the present and the past.

One thing had always interested me, who my father was. Mum had raised me as an only child, lavishing care and time on me. She never spoke of my father, but said I would know who he was when the time came. Eventually I stopped asking, but now realised I could find out for myself. Having made the necessary arrangements I readied myself for a two week trip and planned accordingly. Knowing my birth date I planned a window of a month either side, I'd hop back and forth seeking out Mum, until I eventually spotted the man who was my father.

I arrived back a week before my Mother's nineteenth birthday and watched her go to work and come home. She had a whole gang of girlfriends and they would meet and go to a disco or a bar and flirt with boys, dance and go home, usually in a pack, although one or two disappeared early with a boy on their arm, quite regularly. Mom, I knew, never had that luck, but she was convinced Mr Right was out there. She wore the latest fashions and her job allowed her a certain freedom her parents hadn't had. I decided it would be fun to meet her and so trailing her to a pub, I "accidently" bumped into her. apologising profusely I offered to refill her glass and pay for her coat to be cleaned. Egged on by her friends she agreed and I gave her my address, to present the bill at for dry cleaning.

I wandered off and wondered whether she would take me up on the offer. A week later I heard the doorbell and my landlady talking. She shouted upstairs and I skidded out the flat door and thundered downstairs. There she was looking radiant holding a the dry cleaners slip. I took it and fiddled in my pockets for the cash. I nearly fell over when she said I could treat her to a meal instead of just paying. Her grin was mischievious and I laughed. Grabbing my coat, I pulled the door too and took her hand. We walked down the street, noddong at others passing. My Mum, Amanda, said that they probably thought we were going out together. I grinned and reddened. Well aren't we I challanged, she grinned and squeezed my hand.

We found a restaurant, well a now famous burger chain that had only just opened in the UK. We ate this food which she found extravagant and "foreign" whilst I ate a burger whose taste I knew for practically all my life. We chatted, she gave me a whole new perspective on my grandparents and uncle and aunt. Things she'd never told the child me. I gave her a sort of rehashed hstory of my life without the time travel. We finished and walked some more, I taking in the sights and sounds of seventies London. What a mad place it was. I felt at ease, although she said at times I talked funny and used funny words, which was worrying.

We found a pub and sat and drank, she nineteen, me twenty five. It was so easy and I all too readily forgot this divine creature was my mother as her younger self. Which is why I feel a bit awkward lying here in a hotel room, with my arm draped over my naked mother, as she sleeps off the night of pure passion we have just spent. It was a mad glorious romp an impossibledream, but we had both agreed it was the best night we'd ever had. I felt her waken and we sat up and tried to make conversation. We were stilted, it was hopeless, last nights passion gave way to this mornings embarrassment. She left to go home to change for work. I slipped out and found breakfast at a greasy spoon.

At the farm I gathered my shuff together, tidied and left for home, or rather my real "now". I thought over what had occured and fretted about running out on Amanda. I spent a wretched two days agonising, before returning to her and apologising for the way I treated her. I told her I had to go away, my job was taking me to America, she could leave messages at the farm. I told her that this was where I had my business, although I didn't let on it was an abandoned farm. I went back weekly and I dreaded the fact that she would indeed write to me. I hoped my father would find her soon and she would forget me. I found her first letter a week later. Then a second, third, fourth, but the fifth blew my world apart. She had missed two possibly three periods, she was pregnant with my child.

I understood now why she had said I would know when the time came. I had fathered myself, I was my own son. How could this be? I tried desperately to find some other answer. I made provision for my child and his mother, funds at her disposal, I could regulalrly top up as she dug into them. Then I went home and my beautiful forty four year old mother, held me and loved me. We talked, we laughed, we cried. I moved back in with her, we would spend all our time together from now on. With my fortune I had no need to work, neither did Mum. So we took holidays and danced and dined together.

And yes we do sleep together, she saying it was for old times sake, I would grin and kiss her gently.