The Mysterious Book

THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK...BY JUSTIN BARWICK

I was out shopping for groceries on a cold January day in 2007 when I decided to pop into the local charity shop.  At first I could not see anything new.  Then I spotted a shiny red book cover peeping  out from a box of cheap paperbacks.  The title was emblazoned across the cover in vivid blue letters: DEATH COMES SWIFTLY!  When I tried to read it most of the words seemed to be written in a foreign language.  Some pages were completely blank.  I was taken aback by the intriguing first sentence which was the only legible piece of writing: Jack Chatham extracted the  mysterious book from a box of cheap paperbacks in his local charity shop.  My name is Jack Chatham!  Dismissing it as a spooky coincidence I bought the book for 50 pence and hurried away to purchase some groceries.  When I opened the book again while travelling home on the bus I read the following peculiar words: Jack returned to the mysterious book while travelling home on the bus.  Back at home I put the book down on my bedside table and decided to read it at the end of each day to see if it would continue to record my day to day life.  The story continued to describe my every move for the following three weeks.  Then at the end of chapter 21 (each chapter covered a single day in my mundane life) The book offered me two options:

a) Return this book to the charity shop for the benefit of another diarist too lazy to            write their own diary!

b)  Keep this book and find out about the activities of a dweller in the mid-19th century.

Overcome by sheer curiosity I decided to hang onto the weird novel.  The following night I excitedly turned to the beginning of chapter 22 of the bewildering tome.  It read as follows:

January 25th 1854
It was a bright crisp winter’s morning when I decided to visit the local bookseller’s musty establishment.  I purchased a slim volume describing itself as a collection of folk tales.  Imagine my astonishment dear diary when I discovered that most of its fragile pages were completely blank.  Then I turned to the first page and was taken aback to see my own name printed in black and white!  The opening sentence read as follows: Richard Jenkins!  You may keep this fine volume in order to catch a glimpse of the activities of a dweller in the early 21st century.  Or you may burn it in your fine Georgian fireplace.  I must admit that curiosity won the day and I decided to keep the mysterious volume.

January 27th 1854
Dear diary I have been astonished by the strange tales of my arcane volume.  It speaks of things called cyber cafes and a mysterious device known as the internet.  What is this thing called e-mailing?  Jack Chatham my future persona purchases all manner of goods in a magical realm known as a supermarket.  When I showed it to my friend William Davidson he found himself unable to read it.  As he turned the pages the words within faded away to leave blank pages.  Apparently only the owner of this remarkable book is allowed to peruse its fabulous contents.

I decided to try an experiment.  I wrote the following message in a blank page of the book:

Hello Richard Jenkins!  Do not be alarmed.  I found this wonderful book in a place called a charity shop.  It has revealed to me some of the contents of your diary!  The internet is a miraculous global device that links people together who live on different continents!  E-mailing is similar to the way you post a letter except that it is done electronically!  Instead of taking days to arrive the message arrives very rapidly indeed! If you can read this message, try writing one back to me about your world in 1854!

Then I returned to the chapter of diary entries.

January 28th 1854
This is most peculiar!  Jack Chatham has actually communicated directly with me across the centuries!  There is precious little charity in these dark and dangerous times.  My neighbour’s three children have all perished from a mysterious and deadly fever!  No doubt brought on by this wretched winter!  This afternoon I tried to write to a London newspaper.  Unfortunately when I tried to recall the details of the marvellous inventions that will arrive in the year of our lord 2007, my mind went utterly blank!  It seems that I may only write of these future creations within the pages of the book itself!  I would welcome further news of the fate of mankind from the pen of Jack Chatham!

The next page was completely blank apart from a short message near the foot of the page printed in blood red ink:

Strange portents will show themselves to other dwellers in the 21st and 19th centuries!  The time of great confusion is nigh!

I shut the book and went to sleep.

The following evening’s diary entry direct from the winter of 1854 was very bizarre indeed.

February 3rd 1854
This morning I witnessed a great commotion taking place around the frontage of a local bank.  People were throwing money into the air and laughing hysterically!  I pushed through the crowd of merry makers and saw the cause of their great excitement.  There was a strange device attached to the wall of the bank.  Some metallic buttons with numbers inscribed on them.  Also there was a slot in the wall.  I tried pressing a few buttons and eerily glowing green words appeared in a small glass window.  I pressed another button beside the window and a great many paper notes were ejected from a narrow slot in the weird device!  Upon  closer examination they bore the likeness of a Queen, but I swear it was nothing like her majesty Queen Victoria!  Then there was a peculiar whistling noise.  The machine vanished into thin  air!  It had to have come from the future!  I am most perplexed!


Nothing unusual had happened in the present day, at least not yet!  I wrote a short message on the next blank page confirming that the cash machine and police car originated from 2007.  I added that I awaited the imminent occurrence of such unique events in my own time with considerable excitement!

The first similar happening didn’t take place, until, late April of 2007.  Oxford Street was suddenly blocked with an array of horse drawn carriages and hansom cabs!  There was much shouting and confusion.  Passers by reported hearing a strange high pitched whistling noise as the scene of antiquated bedlam suddenly vanished!  At first some new form of terrorist attack was suspected, perhaps they had used a hallucinogenic gas?  The next day a fleet of large wooden sailing ships materialised in the Thames!  They launched a volley of shots at a nearby passenger ferry!  The cannonballs that smashed through the deck of the ferry dated back to the 1820s.  They were in unbelievably good condition considering their supposed great age.  The fighting ships vanished accompanied by the same high pitched whistling noise! 

I wrote to Richard Jenkins in a blank page of the mysterious book that very evening with my exciting news!  Some more of his diary entries contained further reports of breaches in the fabric of time and space.

April 20th 1854
I watched agog this afternoon as seven growling two wheeled machines roared along the high street. They were ridden by men clad in brightly coloured metallic helmets and leather jackets!  Again that accursed whistling noise as they disappeared back into the future.

This evening’s newspaper reported that more of the strange money producing devices known to Jack Chatham as cash machines have appeared at locations scattered across the country!  Bewildered shopkeepers are having to turn away the custom of folk trying to pay for goods with the paper money that truly belongs in the year of our lord 2007.

April 21st 1854
The evening newspaper reports that a seagoing vessel was sighted speeding along the river Thames at supernatural speeds early this very morning!  It smashed through a small fishing boat before disappearing.  Several strange devices have been found on London’s cobbled thoroughfares.  They are covered in tiny buttons and feature tiny glass windows which appear to display an endless variety of unintelligible messages.  Some of them made the most peculiar noises.  When a disembodied voice was heard speaking from within the odd machines they were smashed by fearful townsfolk.  What can you tell me of these objects?

Jack wrote a message in the next blank page of the book explaining that the devices were called mobile phones.  They were a very popular method of communication in the year 2007.  The strange seagoing vessel must have been a modern speedboat.  The next few diary entries were even more astounding!


April 23rd 1854
A vast new building appeared overnight in the place where the local park should be.  Inside there were a great many new shops barred with metallic shutters, several were torn down by a baying mob of local townsfolk.  Reports in the evening newspaper spoke of a great many gleaming machines covered in tiny buttons, some with large circular windows in the front.  There were walls lined with vast glass screens depicting a constantly changing kaleidoscope of flickering images.  Many of these were smashed by superstitious locals convinced that the devices were possessed by evil spirits!  Then very suddenly there came the eerie whistling noise and everything instantaneously disappeared!  Bewildered rioters scrambled about in the muddy grassland of the local park, which had been restored as if it had never gone in the first place. 

April 24th 1854
A strange building has appeared in place of the butchers shop that should stand on that particular spot.  Inside are lines of blank screens attached to thin boards bristling with small buttons inscribed with numbers and letters of the alphabet!  Somebody pressed a button and they all came to life!  Strange pictures of floating clouds and abstract shapes keep appearing when the buttons are left untouched for  a certain period of time.  As I write these words I believe the building is still there, it has failed to disappear like the other odd fragments of a distant future time!  Other strange establishments have appeared all over London.  Some are stocked with the small devices that make the shrill ringing noises.  One shop is full of several racks of  flat multicoloured boxes packed with small metallic disks!  What can you tell me of these artefacts from the future?

Jack wrote an explanation on the next blank page:

The vast building that disappeared suddenly is known as a shopping centre in 2007.  It is full of smaller shops that sell things like flat screen televisions.  The moving images that they displayed should only be available in 2007, not 1854!  They are certainly not possessed by evil spirits!  That building which was full of rows of screens and boards covered in buttons is called a cybercafe in 2007!  The screens are all called computers and the buttons are part of devices known as keyboards.  These are used to operate the computers.  The small metallic disks that you mentioned play many different kinds of music when they are placed in a special machine that converts the digitally encoded information they contain into sound waves! 

The diary didn’t continue on the next page, it remained stubbornly blank.  Jack looked for the diary in his mysterious book every night for the following week.  Feeling worried he decided to visit the local history library.  Eventually he managed to track down the evening newspaper for April 26th 1854 on microfilm.






He found the relevant article at the top of page seven:

MAN KILLED BY PHANTOM CARRIAGE

Yesterday morning a resident of the parish of South Kensington was struck and fatally injured by a speeding carriage that appeared to be driven by some power other than that of the humble horse.  Witnesses spoke of being blinded by flashing red and blue lights accompanied by an eerie wailing sound.  The mysterious carriage appeared to vanish into thin air!  Jack Chatham was 36.  fifty seven other victims have been struck and badly injured or killed by similar deadly apparitions in the past few days.

Jack felt very angry that his new found friend had suffered an untimely death at the hands of an emergency vehicle that shouldn’t by rights have existed in 1854. 

Back at home he opened the mysterious book to a blank page and wrote a message in furious capital letters:

WHEN WILL THIS MADNESS END?  CAN’T YOU DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT?

A short reply appeared at the foot of the next page in blood red  capital letters:

THE CURRENT SITUATION WILL CONTINUE TO DETERIORATE!
I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THESE SEVERE TEMPORAL ABNORMALITIES!

Two days later normally tarmacced roads turned to filthy rivers of mud lined with stinking streams of raw sewage.  A virulent cholera epidemic caused by raw sewage entering the water supply killed many people.  Horse drawn carriages  blocked London’s congested roads.  This time they didn’t disappear.  Their sudden and unpredictable arrival caused pandemonium.  Many modern day car drivers were killed and badly injured in bizarre accidents.  The confused time travellers ran riot smashing up supermarkets and attacking modern day pedestrians.  Armed police struggled to cope with the worsening situation.  Soon the prisons were full to capacity.

Meanwhile back in 1854 a modern day luxury yacht appeared on the river Thames.  A fighting ship holed it below the waterline, luckily the passengers all managed to scramble into an inflatable life raft.  The bewildered time travellers were all arrested as they staggered onto a wooden pier.  They were all imprisoned and sentenced to death as enemies of the British Empire.  Prison guards were taken aback when they all disappeared overnight.  They reappeared in the 21st century.  Several of their stories describing the London of 1854 in great detail were printed in the pages of  many of the more downmarket tabloid newspapers.  Modern day motor cars continued to arrive in 1854, colliding with fragile horse drawn carriages and hansom cabs.  The 21st century car drivers seemed to be permanently stuck in the mid-19th century.  They were forced to live in desolate prisons and mental asylums.  The resourceful Victorians quickly mastered the mechanics of the new vehicles.  Unfortunately there was no way to power them once they ran out of petrol.

Meanwhile back in 2007 several London churches that had been destroyed by heavy bombing in the Second World War reappeared looking perfectly intact.  One church smashed through several council houses killing six of the occupants.  Another church appeared in the middle of an olympic sized swimming pool.  The 19th century vicar managed to swim to safety.  Luckily this particular temporal collision occurred just after midnight.  Some of the churches were inhabited by bewildered 19th century parishioners at the moment when they moved forwards in time.  They struggled to cope with life in the 21st century.  Many of them refused to have television sets or radios in their new homes, being convinced that the contraptions were possessed by evil spirits!  Several electrical stores were set on fire by confused refugees from 1854.


In the 1850’s the Victorians soon mastered the intricacies of the computer.  With the help of a handful of IT experts from the 21st century they created their own global internet.  Countless web sites were set up to store information on a wide variety of subjects.  The contents could be constantly updated to keep up with new discoveries and inventions. Some of the computers that had travelled back to 1854 were still somehow connected to the internet of 2007.  Astonished Victorians were dismayed by news of a terrible war taking place between 1914 and 1918.  They made detailed plans to protect the life of Archduke Ferdinand.  He emigrated to live in Canada in 1910.  An unprecedented pre-emptive peace deal was made with Germany.  They also did not relish the loss of many millions of lives in a pointless future war.  Since the First World War failed to take place many millions of new lives were created.  By 2007 Great Britain was vastly over populated.  Also Adolf Hitler never became a soldier.  He channelled his intense energies artistically and became a world renowned painter.  Millions more lives were also spared due to the fact that the Second World War never took place.  Instead there was a smaller war between China and Japan that only lasted three years. 

Interstellar travel was established in 1955 with the invention of a powerful device that enabled spacecraft to travel across vast distances via several artificial wormholes.  Contact had been made with the inhabitants of twenty seven civilised planets.  The worldwide problem of severe over population was eased considerably by the colonisation of  several ecologically suitable new worlds situated many light years away from Earth’s solar system.  Some of the colonists had interbred with extra terrestrials creating some exotic hybrid species. 

By 2007 genetic engineering was at a highly advanced level.  Cures had been developed for all forms of cancer.  A new species of human being had been created which was partly cybernetic.  They could expand the breadth of their knowledge exponentially via a special socket located at the base of their skull.  IQ levels were off the scale.  Everybody was telepathic and vocal communication had largely died out.  The internet, telephone and fax machine were rendered obsolete since people could share all knowledge telepathically over an infinite range of distances.  As the future was reassembled so Jack Chatham’s life was altered dramatically.  In 1976 when he was three years old his parents emigrated with him off world to the colony planet Vesperus 7 which orbits the distant star Canis Minor. 

He never did buy this mysterious book which you now hold in your sweaty hands.  You picked it up in a bookshop situated in the spaceport on the colony planet Zirconia 4 in the year 2015.  I have told you of events that never really happened in your temporally distorted history.  This should be impossible.  Just remember that I am a very mysterious book with infinite powers of perception.  I kept a record of the cross-time connection between Jack Chatham and Richard Jenkins that never really took place, because, I thought that it would prove a fascinating glimpse into two lives that were utterly changed by the severe temporal abnormalities.  Richard Jenkins actually lived to the ripe old age of 94, he had several children, grand children and great grand children.  You happen to be one of his great grand children,  Elijah Jenkins.  I can tell you what will happen next.  You are just about to...