No Way Back

Jake hit the “alarm off” button blearily and got out of bed. It was 6am. He put on a t-shirt and went downstairs, yawning and sighing as he went into the kitchen. He opened the curtains and looked through the window. It was still mostly dark, the dawn almost breaking. He could see the garden through the window, but it was dark enough that he could also see his reflection in the glass. A strange melding of the two images, so that his own reflection seemed to be superimposed on the shadowy, grayscale image of the lawn and garden path. As he moved his head slightly he felt a strange sensation, almost like a dizziness or nausea, like when you look through someone else’s glasses and the whole world seems to shift sideways slightly. He looked again through the window and focussed on the garden, not his reflection, and in the darkness saw the neighbour’s cat scurrying across the bottom of the lawn and under the hedge. She always seemed to be running away from something, or maybe she was just in a hurry to get back home for her breakfast after a night of hunting. Jake glanced at the kitchen clock and, again, had a slight sense of everything being out of kilter. The clock said a quarter to six, but it must be after six already, because his alarm clock had gone off at six o’clock. Not having completely woken up properly yet, Jake tried to work the mathematical conundrum out. Maybe the kitchen clock had stopped at 5:45am. Maybe his alarm clock was running fast or… He looked at the small digital clock on the cooker – it read 5:46am. It was one of the moments where you wonder if you’re maybe still asleep or so tired that your brain isn’t quite up to speed yet. He looked through the window again and tried to focus on his reflection against the murky background of the garden. He moved his head slightly and thought he caught a shadowy glimpse of the cat again, this time going in the opposite direction across the foot of the lawn. He glanced again at the kitchen clock and the clock on the cooker – 5:35am. Whoa! Something’s not right here. He tried to move his head slightly and focus on both his reflection and the garden, but it was weird, like when you try to look at something on the back of your head using two mirrors (like a bathroom mirror and a shaving mirror). Everything seems slightly back to front. But it was only partially back to front. Jake kept on moving his head, just a little at a time, and noticed that the garden was getting much darker. His own reflection suddenly came into focus in the window and the garden was now in total darkness. He looked at the kitchen clock – 3am.

Jake stood for a while, staring at the clock, watching as its second hand moved around the dial as each minute counted forwards. He started to smile as he realised what was happening. As incredible and unbelievable as it was, and as unlikely as it was that he should experience such a phenomenon, Jake completely understood what was happening. Even though it didn’t make any sense whatsoever, and even though he knew it was a scientific impossibility, he stood in front of the window and smiled at his reflection – he had gone back in time.

Not really understanding the how or why, Jake considered for a moment whether this was even safe. What were the implications? There were a million questions and possibilities, but his mind just seemed to focus on the reality that he was somehow able to reverse time. Not so much go back in time, like in a time machine, but just sort of rewind time. In order to test this newfound ability further, he went upstairs and fetched his wristwatch, so that he could more accurately observe the time rewinding. He followed the technique again, and observed in wonder as the hands of his watch went backwards. He watched the hands rewind past midnight and the date on the watch face clicked backwards to yesterday. Suddenly the outside became light, startling him so that he moved his head and looked away from the kitchen window. He had a slight dizzy sensation and a heavy feeling in his head, almost like a hangover. He looked at his watch, which read 6:10am, yesterday morning. He’d rewound almost twenty-four hours. Maybe that’s why he felt a bit groggy. So, what happened now? Did he have to relive the whole previous day again? What if he did something different? The brain fog persisted and he couldn’t work it out, so there was no alternative but to just carry on, have breakfast, get showered and dressed and go to work. He felt a bit like he was on autopilot and when he got to work he had a strange feeling of déjà vu which was a bit unsettling. After work he went home and decided to have an early night and catch up on some sleep. Hopefully, that would shake the strange feeling he’d had all day and he would perhaps feel better in the morning. The next day he got up at 6am and as he was walking down the stairs he suddenly remembered the previous day’s events. He stopped halfway down the stairs and it all came back to him. The strange events in the kitchen window. The backwards and forwards cat. The watch hands going the wrong way. He realised that he’d gone back in time a whole day and then spent the whole twenty-four hours repeating his whole day, without realising it. So, he kind of understood that he could go backwards in time, but it didn’t appear that he was aware once he’d done it, so presumably he couldn’t actually change anything, such as buying a lottery ticket having already seen the winning numbers. It was purely a case of rewinding and then reexperiencing the same time period, but with a vague notion of having already been there.

Jake pondered the situation for a moment and then decided to try out a theory. He unplugged his smartphone from the charger and opened his calendar app. He picked up the Sunday newspaper from the kitchen table and searched for Saturday night’s winning lottery numbers. He typed the numbers into his calendar app for the day before – the Friday, but realised he couldn’t set a reminder for an event in the past, so he just typed in “Lottery Ticket!” and the numbers, and hoped that he would notice the reminder in his calendar sometime during Friday, prompting him to buy a ticket with the winning numbers. All he had to do now was go back to the kitchen window and rewind to Friday morning and hope that he saw the reminder. He focussed on his reflection in the window and looked down at is watch as time rewound to Friday morning. Everything went as normal and he went off to work. He had a strange feeling all day that there was something he had to do, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it was. He kept checking his calendar but there were no reminders or notes to do anything.

A few days passed and he found himself looking at his reflection again in the kitchen window. He suddenly remembered his experiment and realised that it obviously hadn’t worked – whatever reminder he had set had obviously been lost as he’d rewound the time. He thought for a few moments and decided to try something else. He tore the winning lottery numbers out of the newspaper and screwed them up in his hand, determined to not let them disappear.

He looked into the kitchen window again and focussed on his reflection, moving his head slightly so that he could see the hands of his watch rewinding. Just at that moment a movement in the garden took his attention. It must have been the neighbour’s cat. As he looked back at his watch he saw the hands spinning furiously backwards and he suddenly felt overwhelmed by dizziness. He turned his head away from the window and clenched his eyes tight shut. It felt like everything was spinning around him and as he slowly opened his eyes he saw that he was standing in a large field. He looked around and saw some old vehicles and what looked like construction workers, but they were dressed like something from the 1950s, and he realised that the vehicles he could see were old trucks like those he’d seen in pictures of the second world war. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he wondered what on earth had happened. What on earth had he done? Where his road should be, there was just a dirt track and some men in overalls who were taking measurements and marking out plots with string and wooden stakes. He turned round to look in the opposite direction and what should have been his garden was just a field. There were no houses, no roads, no garden fences, just fields with plots being marked out for new houses yet to be built. As it dawned on him what had happened he realised he was still clenching his left hand into a fist. As he unfurled his fingers he saw a small piece of newspaper with some numbers written on it, but he had no idea what they were for. He stood there, utterly lost and confused. As he stared at what was, or rather, would be his garden, he saw a cat staring back at him, sitting elegantly and squinting its eyes slightly. It licked its whiskers and let out a meow and then as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.