Forever

Forever
By Stephen Ward


Anthony O’Connor ran into the lab and slammed the door behind him. The security locks weren’t working so he grabbed a large filing cabinet and pushed it in front of the door.

The lab was in disarray, papers loose everywhere from the fast exodus made by the rest of the staff. The power was still on but O’Connor didn’t have much time before he was found and killed.

In the center of the lab was a large construction on an elevated dais. This was the project that this entire facility was working on although until yesterday no one person knew what it was. Each team of scientists had a different job and they couldn’t see what the others were doing. It was that top secret.

O’Connor knew what the project was. He found out when a streak of curiosity got the better of him. He worked on the computer systems on the project and while on a routine scan of the systems database he discovered the files revealing the whole scope of the project. Once the security breach was discovered, the agency that controlled the project sent in troops to remove the security risks, i.e. kill everyone.

O’Connor ran up to the console next to the main construction and began to press buttons.

Power routed to main capacitors… Said the calm voice of the computer. The construction began to generate an aura of white light as the hum of power increased in volume. O’Connor rapidly pressed some more buttons.

Parameters accepted. Activation in T-Minus ten seconds… Nine… Eight…

Suddenly, the filing cabinet in front of the door exploded and special ops troops flooded into the room and surrounded him.

Seven… Six…

“Come away from that console!” Commanded the leader.

Five… Four…

O’Connor didn’t move, he knew they wouldn’t dare fire on the equipment; the shots could cause a huge explosion that could level the building.

Three…

“DO IT NOW!!” The Commander shouted.

O’Connor turned and ran up the ramp towards the glowing construction.

Two…

Shots ran out, clattering against the ramp by O’Connor’s feet.

One…

A shot hit O’Connor in the shoulder, causing him to stumble but he didn’t stop running.

Temporal wormhole activated…

A whirlwind of energy knocked all the troops off their feet and pulled O’Connor through the wormhole. The instability of it caused feedback through the power supply and a huge explosion obliterated the lab and most of the building with it.





Lauren Macmillan closed down her terminal and lay back in her chair. Her glasses had begun to itch around her nose so she took them off and rubbed her eyes.

It had been a long week full of system failures and manual debugging and she had had enough. What she really wanted was to go home, put on a DVD and relax for the whole weekend. Unfortunately she had already promised her friend, Janise that she’d double date with her and her new flame. He was bringing along one of his friends who, judging by him would have more teeth than brain cells.

“Oh well…” She said to herself.

She put a few disks into her rucksack and left her ‘Cell’, the name that she and her colleagues had given the cubicles that they all worked in. And that’s just what it felt like sometimes. This entire floor was full of them, little pulped wood prison cells containing the dregs of humanity. Computer programmers. She didn’t regret becoming one, she loved computers and the pay was good but she didn’t know what was coming round the corner. A programmer would live their lives as a semi-freelance. They’d get hired, do a job then be expected to find another job.

“There has got to be a better way to do this,” she said.

“Amen to that,” said a voice from the forest of cubicles. Lauren walked over to where the voice had come from. One of her fellow cell mates, he wore a baseball cap and what looked like a denim jacket but years of wear had faded it. “There probably is, but that would take effort on managements part. And we all know their attitude.”

“What can we do?” asked Lauren,

“Not a lot,” he replied, “I say just hang the sense of it all and keep yourself occupied. Look at me, I’m coding a program that obviously won’t work efficiently because the designer doesn’t know his ass from his elbow but he has good hair so management promote him to chief designer. Where’s the sense in that? None that I’ve been able to work out.”

“So we’re boned then.” Said Lauren in her blunt way.

“Quite.” All through the conversation he had been typing at his terminal without stopping. He was obviously a pro who had asked himself the same question several times before but had found no answer. Well it saved her a sleepless night.



Lauren exited the building and headed down the street across town towards her apartment. It wasn’t a long walk and she wasn’t unfit, one of her hobbies was dancing, she had been doing it for years ever since her mother decided that she spent too much time on “that damn machine!” She had taken part in a lot of competitions and won a few trophies but she wanted to try some choreography. She thought that the formation skills she had acquired during her many years computing would go well with the formation of dancing, but the opportunity had not come up.

She walked down an ally behind the houses to avoid the crowded streets. The sky was darkening and the over-sensitive security lights on the backs of the houses switched on as she passed, casting strong shadows along the alleyway.

A gust of wind blew along the alley, whipping crisp packets and newspaper up into the air. Lauren stopped thinking that she could ride it out but it just got stronger and stronger until she was holding onto the wall for dear life. The alley began to glow a bright blue and a shaft of light appeared in the alley behind her. The howling wind had become a cacophony of noise but Lauren couldn’t take her eyes off the light. It was beautiful.

Suddenly the wind ceased and the light vanished. Lauren picked herself off the floor and looked back at where the light had been. In the place that it had been was the body of a man. He was lying on the ground very still. Lauren came closer and saw that he was wearing a lab coat but he was also covered in a thin layer of ice. It was too dark to see anything more so she stood up, waved her hand and sure enough a security light flicked on, flooding the alley with light.

The man flinched as the light turned on and he turned over holding his hands over his eyes and groaning.

“Are you alright?” asked Lauren, as she knelt next to him. He removed his hands from his eyes and looked at her.

“Lauren?” he asked and flinched in pain as he grabbed onto his shoulder. Lauren saw blood and what looked like a bullet wound in his shoulder.

“My God!” she said, “We’ve got to see to that, Can you walk?”

He nodded and she helped him to his feet. They walked down the alley towards Lauren’s apartment.

“What year…” he began.

“Try not to talk too much,” said Lauren, “my apartment is just here.” They walked through the back gate and up the fire escape to her back door.



She laid him on the couch and went to the kitchen for her first aid kit. The bullet had just grazed the shoulder causing no major damage so she put a bandage on him.

He had been sleeping for a couple of hours when the man on her couch suddenly sat up and looked around with a momentary air of panic and disbelief but it settled into something that resembled disappointment.

“How do you feel?” asked Lauren as she knelt beside him.

“I’ve been better, thank you.”

“What’s your name?” asked Lauren

The man seemed to hesitate, but then gave up. “You may as well know now. My name is Anthony O’Connor.”

“Tony, I’m Lauren…”

“…Macmillan.” finished Tony, “I know.”

Lauren looked blankly, clearly surprised by this.

“I’m sorry, I’d better explain,” Said Tony with a grim smile, “This could be a long story…”



“Two years ago… actually that’s not technically true but it will become clear soon. I was working as a computer programmer, a new job every few months and I was getting sick of it. Endless coding and debugging other idiot’s code, it was tiresome and boring but I could do it and I did it well.

“Then, one day, I was given a job proposition. It was to program the computer systems on a government project. They wanted single, unattached people. I wasn’t told what the project was, all that I was told was the specifications and we were just told to get on with it. I jumped at it ‘cause it paid well and anything was better that what I was doing.

“For two years I worked on the project. They would tell me new features that they needed and I would create them and I didn’t ask any questions and life was good, until one fateful day…

“I was doing a routine maintenance check of the systems when I stumbled across some encrypted files. I should have left them alone but my curiosity got the better of me, the encryption wasn’t too hard to crack and soon I was looking at all the details of the project that I was working on…”

“What was it?” asked Lauren.

“What do you know about the theories behind time travel?” asked Tony.

“I’ve never given it much thought,” she said but then the implications of his words hit home, “You don’t mean that’s what it was do you?”

“It was their most top secret project and potentially the most devastating weapon in history, they thought it would be possible to go back in time and destroy an enemy before they even thought of attacking.

“Once the security leak was detected they took no chances. They sent in troops to kill everyone in the complex. I was the only one who knew what they had created so I saw a chance to make things right. I was responsible for the deaths of my friends and colleagues and I was going to stop this. I ran to the main lab and activated the Time Machine, I set it so that I would arrive now so I could tell myself not to take the job.”

“Phew!” Sighed Lauren, “I need a drink before I hear some more of that. Tea?”

“Please,” replied Tony, “Milk, 3 sugars.” Lauren got up and headed for the kitchen and put the kettle on. When she returned with the tea she found Tony at her music system browsing her list of MP3s. He made his selection and a track began playing, it was a piece of late 90s pop that Lauren had been arranging a dance to.

To her surprise, Tony began to perform the start of the males part of the dance, even more surprising was that she began to instinctively dance with him. He was graceful and gave the dance a real professional air.

“Who taught you this?” asked Lauren as the dance got them a lot closer.

“You did,” he replied.

“Huh?”

“There’s a part of the story that I haven’t told you yet…

“About one year into the project I decided that being stuck in a government building all day wasn’t that healthy so I enrolled in a dance class. It was a chance to meet some new people and burn off some of the fat that I had put on over that year. I found that I was quite good. I had a very good teacher. It was you.

“We got chatting and I found that you too were a computer programmer bored of your work. I used my influence to get you on my team on the project, I was successful and over the next year we got very close. We were in several dance competitions together and we won every one”

“Why are you telling me?” asked Lauren, “shouldn’t you try to contact yourself to stop this?”

“I can’t,” replied Tony, “Nasty weird crap would happen if I were to meet my past self. I was hoping that I could arrange something so that I could stop some of this happening. And I only had a few hours before time works out that I shouldn’t be here and I’m thrown back into my own time.

“I didn’t want to come back to you because I didn’t want to distress you with this. But as you saw me arrive I had no choice”

“With what?”

The song had stopped and Tony just stood there, looking into Laurens eyes. Lauren looked back into his; there were tears in them.

“Everyone was killed when the troops arrived.” Said Tony, Lauren could see he was holding back the tears, “I saw you get shot, but I couldn’t get to be with you in your final moments. You died alone as I ran away.”

“My god,” said Lauren as Tony finally broke and the tears let loose. She hugged him.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, “the main reason I came back was to save you, and I hope I’ve done that.”

Just then Tony began to fade, his whole body was becoming transparent.

“What’s happening?” asked Lauren, getting worried.

“I must have changed time so much that I have no reason to be here,” he replied, his voice getting quieter, “I must have stopped myself from time travelling.”

He put his hand to her face. Lauren could barely feel his touch.

“I love you…” he said as he faded and disappeared.



Lauren woke up on her couch the next morning to the sound of her phone ringing. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up, the sound of the phone driving into her scull like an insistent budgerigar. She pressed a button on the videophone.

“Where were you last night?” It was Janise.

“Oh Christ!” said Lauren, “I completely forgot, I’m really sorry!”

“What happened?” asked Janise.

“Long story,” she turned back to the phone, “I’ll tell you later, Bye!”

Before Janise could protest Lauren had hung up and set the phone on privacy. Janise was a good friend but did tend to pry and meddle.

Lauren thought about last night, had she dreamt it? She saw the two cups of untouched tea but that didn’t prove it.

“Only one way to find out.” She said to herself. She sat at her PC and did a person search for Anthony O’Connor. After little work she found an Anthony O’Connor, computer programmer of the right age. The strange thing was that he worked in her building, on the same floor as her.

“Well I’ll be…”



It was Monday and was time for lunch. Lauren left her cubicle to try and find Tony’s. Perhaps she could ask him to lunch or something. Before Friday she had no real purpose but meeting Tony showed her that she had one, and it was with him.

She found his cubicle and had a huge sense of Déjà Vu. It was the cubicle of the guy she had talked to on Friday. He was typing like a demon but she couldn’t see his face.

“Excuse me.” She said to the occupant.

“Hmm…” he said and looked round, “Oh Hi.”

It was Tony. Not quite as fit and toned as his future self but definitely him.

“Your look on life opened my eyes on Friday.” She said, “I’d like to hear more. Want to go to lunch?”

Tony looked at his screen and then back at Lauren, “Sure,” he said, shut off his terminal and joined her. They walked down the row of cubicles, past the dozens of programmers, each one not really knowing what the others are doing but all working towards a common goal. Where had Lauren heard that before?

“So what’s your name?” asked Tony,

“Lauren,” said Lauren.

“That’s a nice name…”



The End