About half a mile further on, they came to the gate, manned by a couple of Ais “No entry unless permitted”
“Hmmph” Johnny exhaled, seeing no way through there.
“Easy now son, I know a way, lets go back up the road a bit then head right into the hills.”
There was no doubting Gramps when it came to Cornwall or “Kernow” as he sometimes jokingly referred to it, recalling bumper stickers on cars that
Johnny had never seen.
Gramps was right though, they crested a hill and could see the launch complex in the distance, amid the glittering of the sea, the tall towers and
squat, fat tanks dominating the landscape now as Gramps cursed and told Johnny how the transatlantic cables used to come ashore there, right on the
beach.
He also told him about how people used to surf there and how the waves were the wrong ones for anyone who wasn't already good at it.
Johnny just took his word for it, never having even been in the sea, let alone surfed outside of a sim.
The chattering of a helicopter sounded in the sky, reverberating off the hills around him and Johnny scurried down the slope towards a little shack
that looked like it could hide him from the helicopter.
When he got to it, he found the door secured by a state of the art electro lock...clearly the owners wanted no one getting inside, though they had
failed to foresee someone with Johnny's cracking ability wanting entry and he was inside in seconds, eyes widening at the spinning, shining steel
contraption before him.
He took a couple more seconds to strip the databases out of the computers around the room and gasped as he told Gramps “This is only a bloody time
machine!...And they don't make nay money from launching satellites into orbit, they make money by getting paid to go back and change things!”
Gramps growled a long string of his most favoured expletives as he too read what Johnny had and then, like alight going off, Johnny had an idea.
“Hey Gramps, lets go back and ...stop this, huh?”
Gramps was in full agreement, “Right on son, I only wish I had a body and could help you, there's people back then needs killing.”
Half an hour later, Johnny was sitting in the machine waiting for the countdown to finish
An explosion of light, like every colour Johnny could imagine and he was sitting on a small mound of grass, the air tasting subtly different, the
sounds quieter now.
A couple of breaths and he rose, looking around, no sign of the rocket complex or any other intrusive modernism, he checked his feed, the em spectrum
was more sparse than he had ever seen it as he tried to sniff out some packets of data...Gramps was there though still in his head “Well well well,
looks like it mighta worked my boy.” He stated and then mused “Shoulda downloaded some of the racing results before we left coulda made a
fortune!”
“If this isn't some sort of alternate reality old man!”
They walked back up the hill and into the small town, barely more than a village really and at Gramps' urging, Johnny went into an arcade, all booming
bass and flashing lights. Gramps explained how some of the machines were for gambling and stuffed with cash, it took a few goes but Johnny soon got
the hang and it wasn't long before his pockets were bulging with one and two pound coins.
Further up the street was the chippy of course and Johnny almost cried at the flavours of the fish, the texture of the crunchy batter, the minted
mushy peas and the salt and vinegar over it all.
“Told ya didn't I?” Gramps reminded him as Johnny leant back in the chair, both hands around his distended belly.
“I have never eaten like that Gramps, ever” Johnny said to accompanied laughter from the old man.
A little further up the road, he say outside an internet cafe with a can of some fizzy orange drink that tasted again, like nothing he was ever used
to.
Gramps talked him through how to search companies house for information about Spacetek
while it hadn't been formed yet, some of the directors were listed as members of other company boards and Johnny was able to surf the web about them
too.
It only took about another hour and they had a clear picture of how Spacetek would come to be born in the next 12 to 18 months,
A name that kept cropping up was one Dr Bentham... a physicist from UCL in London.
“I say we go there, find him and kill the piece of...”
“Whoa Gramps we cant just go round killing folks!” Johnny complained..
They argued like that for the rest of the afternoon, eventually ending only when Johnny agreed they would go to London and see if they could find this
Doc at the university there.
It was a bit of a walk back to a bus stop and a long wait to get the bus back to Penzance for the train but Johnny was wide eyed at how everything
seemed unspoiled by corporate advertising and security.
They got on the train, when it arrived and Johnny leant back in the seat, closing his eyes against the glare of the setting sun.
Hey might have looked asleep but he was reading all he could find about Doc Bentham...First name Sarah... a pretty blonde girl about his age with
striking blue eyes and the figure of a sim star.
As the train pulled into Paddington Station, the roof beams still marked by decades of diesel smoke from countless trains pulling in and leaving
Gramps piped up, “John, I know you are thinking about how pretty she is, but you really need to see her for the thereat she is son, she is like
Hitler's daughter...She can't be left alone to go on.”
Johnny didn't even reply as he hopped into a black cab and said UCL please mate...about 20 minutes and 30 quid later, he hopped out, not quite jogging
up to the main building through the quad. He paused to study some of the maps and then unerringly fought his way through the crush of eager young
students towards the high energy physics lab.
Somehow Gramps had been silenced since he got in the cab and when he walked into the lab he was interested in, there she was, Doctor Sarah Bentham. He
stood in the threshold of the door for a moment trying to not let his heart burst out of his chest and also trying and failing to not look weird.
She looked up at him and asked “Can I help you?”
Gramps was fighting back up trying to point out the scalpels, the long nosed pliers, the screwdrivers that Johnny could use to end this monster...all
Johnny could do was think how much he wanted to take her to dinner...
The End...
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