Cawston, 31^st March 2008.

He picked up the little device and strapped it to his wrist.

This was it, the moment of truth.  After 10 years of researching, reading articles on the Internet, getting information off Internet forums and the like, Neil was finally ready to try out the new device he had invented.  He had joined no fewer than four dozen technical forums on the Internet, using different screen names on each one to conceal himself, and wording his questions such that he got the required information without giving away what he was working on.

There were no guarantees that it would work: at best, the pressing of a button would send him 50 years into the future.  If he got it wrong, however ...... well, the outcome didn't bear thinking about.  At least he wouldn't know much about it.

He had also copied details of everything he might need in order to return to his own time - such as the device's technical details and how to change its internal settings - onto a memory stick and pocketed it.

He looked at the surface of his time machine, now strapped neatly to his wrist like a wrist-watch: anybody could have mistaken it for an ordinary wrist-watch, and he had designed it that way so as not to attract any unwanted attention.  He pressed the little button in on the left-hand side.

All of a sudden, he felt dizzy and he thought he had passed out.  It was a strange sort of feeling, starting out as a weird sensation in the wrist wearing his time-machine, spreading up his arm, and through his whole body.

When he came round, it seemed like he had only been out of it for a few minutes, or was it hours?  He couldn't tell.  All he remembered was strapping something to his wrist and pushing a button......

The room he was in looked as if it had seen far better days: there were cobwebs all over the place, and a laptop computer sitting on the desk that also looked like it could do with a good clean.  He brushed some of the dust off the laptop and turned it on.

It seemed to work, so he started up his Internet browser.  But instead of his home page, he simply got a page saying "The page cannot be displayed".  He tried a few other Web addresses, but none of them seemed to work.  He checked the wiring - everything looked OK: rather old perhaps, but definitely in good working order by the looks of things.  He would have known otherwise as he was well trained in all things electrical and electronic.

Oh well.  Maybe that computer wasn't still working after all, he thought.

By now his head had cleared somewhat, so he decided to venture outside - get a coffee, look for an Internet café, get some news, find out when he was.

The village of Cawston is one of those places that just seems to be frozen in time.  Although the use of many of the buildings may have changed through the years, the exteriors looked very much the same, so Neil had no problem in recognising where he was.

He noticed that the cars made a very different noise to what he was used to: it was as if they were now all electric.  The air was amazingly clean - it felt like the best he had ever breathed.  Although the street was familiar along with many of its buildings, he only recognised one or two places.  He also noticed that the distinctive village church building, which boasted one of the tallest towers in the county, looked just the same as it ever had done.  He stopped a passer-by, a young woman who looked only slightly younger than he was.

"Excuse me," said Neil.
The woman looked at him as though she was preparing to refuse an unwanted invitation to lunch.

"Yes?" she replied in a polite, but curt manner.

"Can you tell me where the nearest Internet café is, please?"

"Internet café?"

"You know… where you can sit down, have a coffee, go online surf the Web, and check your email."

The woman looked at him much as to say, "What kind of a weirdo are you?" but said instead, "No, sorry, there's no such place around here" and then walked off, quicker than before, presumably to escape the situation.

He then went into a newsagent's shop.  Deciding that he didn't want to look like an idiot again, he bought a newspaper that actually carried news as opposed to fiction and gossip.  Find out exactly when he was, and get acquainted with this weird new world around him.

After a little looking, he picked up the Daily Direct.  He couldn't have known it, but this had become one of the best newspapers around, known for its candid and direct way of reporting news and happenings in the world in an unbiased manner. 

"Ten pounds and forty-seven pence," said the cashier.

WHAT??????  £10.47 for a newspaper???? But Neil knew better than to make the cashier think he was a total idiot.  He reached for his wallet, took a nice, new, crisp £20 note out, and handed it to the cashier.

"Haven't seen one like that since I was a kid," said the cashier.  "Looks brand new as well, but it's such an old design.  At least they had the good sense in the end not to foist the Euro onto us."  The Bank of England had never withdrawn them from circulation so it was still legal tender.  The cashier handed Neil his change.

At least that was one problem solved: he had safely arrived into the future, but just exactly when?  What had happened?  What had gone wrong?  What had gone right?  He checked the date on the newspaper: 31st March 2058.  So his time machine had worked perfectly: he had arrived exactly 50 years into the future.

He left the newsagent's shop and walked further up the street.  He came to where he knew there should have been a café – All Things Nice – and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was still a café, albeit a different one.  The next immediate question in his mind was, Will I need a mortgage just to buy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake?

So he sat down with his coffee and started to leaf through the paper.  It wasn't a latte as they didn't sell those; it was a type that had become very popular within the past few years called a lattuccino - a kind of cross between a latte and a cappuccino.  A few pages in, his eye caught the following article:

On This Day Thirty Years Ago

On the 31st March 2028, the last Internet cafe in the country finally closed its doors: the Internet had long been considered defunct and pretty useless.

'What's the Internet and what's an Internet café?' you may ask.

Neil skim-read the next few paragraphs as they didn't tell him anything he didn't already know.  But then the article concluded:

Back at the start of the century, it was thought that this Internet would be the way forward.  But it suffered from two very serious drawbacks - it was not secure and was so horribly open to abuse.  Security loopholes  were discovered in even the most advanced trading mechanisms, and people lost faith in using it to make purchases.  Ruthless software engineers had developed almost undetectable methods of  following people around wherever they went online, and this made people feel that they were always being watched.  Unscrupulous companies had developed a whole range of malicious software designed to turn the average computer into their advertising medium at the user's own expense.  Electronic messages, known at the time as 'e-mail', were routinely being intercepted both by law enforcement agencies and criminal bodies alike, so no such messages were safe from prying eyes.  In addition, the curse known as 'spam' had become so sophisticated that it was no longer possible to block the barrage of some 500 junk e-mails the average person would receive per day.  Over time, it got used less and less, businesses pulled out of using it, e-mail systems fell into disuse, and finally it just died a natural death.

That was 30 years ago .... no wonder that woman had given him such short, sharp shrift!  And yes, he had also experienced first-hand many of the problems described in that article.  It had only been a day or so ago - or more like fifty years and a day or so ago - that he had removed some malicious software that has somehow crept onto his laptop.

He continued reading his paper ..... advertisements, mostly.  Many of the advertisements were for cars, classified services, properties to let, properties to buy, the usual sort of thing.  "Some things just never change," he thought.

Then another article caught his eye:

Life Back Then: The Environment

Each week, we feature something from the turn of the millennium about what life was like back then.  This week, we look at the perceived threats to our living environment.

The article went on to give a brief description of what what had been called 'global warming' and 'carbon footprints' during the first decade or so of the millennium and, by and large, didn't say anything he didn't already know.  However, he was struck by the article's conclusion:

But, as some in the late 1990s had predicted, by 2050 all the oil fields had finally been used up thus it was no longer possible to manufacture fossil fuels.  All cars since 2030 had to be electric, and what were once 'petrol stations' became 'battery replacement stations'.  An increasing number of wind-farms and sea turbines had been built, and eventually there were enough to supply all the nation's electrical needs.

Wow!!  So the environmental problem had been solved!  Nice one!  No wonder the air was nice, clean, and so easy to breathe!

A short distance away, Moira was sitting down in the local pub, The Bell, with her two friends Aidan and Gormal.  They both looked like the sort of men you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of, while Moira herself was a lot slimmer, quite attractive and intelligent, but also very inexperienced, sly and cunning.  Together, they had formed a little club that knew how to use the remnants of the Internet, and had been pulling off information about how people had used it.  They had also got hold of files pertaining to someone who looked as though he was working on something rather interesting - and they wanted to get their hands onto it if so.

"If we do get hold of such a thing," said Aidan, "just think of how rich we could become!"

"Yep!" replied Gormal, "We could go gallivanting back in time, make a few predictions at the races, and become VERY rich, VERY quickly!  The ultimate Get Rich Quick scheme!"

"It might not work like that," said Moira.  "If you go back and change the past, who knows what might happen?  If, for example, you go back to watch a horse race, then go back from there to place bets on the winner, you'll change the course of the future!  The odds of that horse winning could be changed by your bet.  Who knows, we might not be sitting here now, quite likely.  I don't know.  And I'm sure you know the old stories giving problems with time travel - H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and how Hermione had to make sure she didn't meet herself when using the Time Turner in the Harry Potter books.  To say nothing of the old Back to the Future movies!  We don't know how accurate they may prove to be!"

There was a lull in the conversation as the two men digested that.

"But," continued Moira, "I had an interesting encounter just a short while ago.  I was walking along here to meet you guys, when suddenly this man stopped me in the street and asked if I knew where there was an Internet café."

Gormal and Aidan gave her a blank look, not realising the possible implications of this.

"I played ignorant," she continued.  "He was quite serious about his question, and I figured that the only sort of person who would ask such a question in seriousness would either have to be a time-traveller or someone who's been living under a rock for a lot of years.  I also noticed that he was wearing something on his wrist, sort of like an old wrist-watch."

"Wrist watches went out of fashion years ago," said Aidan.

"I know," replied Moira.  "The question is, how do we get nearer to him so we can find out?  What if this is what we've been hoping for all this time?"

Gormal was thinking about the financial implications of this, and you could almost see the pound symbols in his eyes.

"I saw him go into the café up the road," said Moira.  "What say you that we go up there and .... er, find out?"

They discussed this for a little while longer, and finally decided that Moira would go alone.

"Excuse me," said Moira to the man sitting down with a newspaper and a coffee, "are these seats free?"

The seats on that table were the only free ones in the cafe: it was a small place, but also very popular and thus it tended to be quite full most of the time.  Perhaps it was because the cakes and biscuits were all hand-made and relatively inexpensive compared to other places, and home baking always went down well.

"Yes," replied Neil.  Then he paused.  "Errr .... I hate to be so forward, but you remind me of someone I spoke to just a short while ago."

"Asking about that café place?"

"Yes, that's the one.  You seemed very eager to get away after I asked you."

"I was running late for a meeting with some friends," replied Moira.  "Sorry if I appeared rude."

"That's OK, no offence taken.  Can I get you a coffee?" asked Neil.

They engaged in small talk for a while, then Moira decided to go for it.

"May I ask .... what is that you're wearing on your wrist?" she asked.

"Oh, it's just something I've been working on .... tested it only today, and it works like a charm!"

"So, what does it do?"

"Well, you're probably going to think this is rather stupid, but it's a time-machine."

"No, that doesn't sound silly at all.  I've been reading that someone was supposed to be working on something like that."

"A short while ago, I pressed this little button here and then I thought I had passed out.  Don't know how long I was out for, but when I came round I was still in my home, but everything around me looked much older, so I knew it must have done SOMEthing.  When I came outside, I noticed everything was different.  Prices have escalated since 50 years ago, I'll say that much!"

"The Daily Direct is one of the more expensive newspapers, though."

"Didn't know that."

"One of the best as well."

"Didn't know that either.  But it figures ..... I was just reading some of the articles.  I come from the time when the Internet was pretty big, so I think the biggest surprise was to find out that it's gone."

"Well, there are a few of us around who have learnt to use it, but it's probably very different from how you remember it.  Besides, I'm really curious about your time-machine."

Just then, Gormal and Aidan entered the café and saw Moira deep in conversation.

"Hey, meet my friends Aidan and Gormal!"

"Hi, pleased to meet you!" said Neil.

"I was just talking to Neil about an interesting device he's just invented .... it sounds pretty amazing."

Neil explained to them about his time machine, and how he came to be here now.  Conversation inevitably led to Moira, Aidan, and Gormal asking about what life was like back in 2008 as they only have stories to go by and it would be good to hear from someone from that time frame first-hand.

"How much are you willing to sell this information for?" asked Gormal.

"Oh, not sure I ought to sell it really .... I'm kind of precious about it for the time being, and would rather keep it to myself until I've had a chance to test it a bit more.  Then I might sell .... I'll have to see."

"We do already know a lot about it, you know" said Moira.  "We've managed to .... errrrr ..... get hold of some information .... take a look at this."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out something that looked like a large  MP3 player, and opened it out.  Its screen, once fully open, must have been at  least 12 inches wide, thought Neil.  "This is a vPod", she continued.  "Do they exist in 2008?"

"Not quite .... clearly music and video players have come a long way!"

"This is much more than a music player."

After explaining some of its functionality, she showed him some screenshots of the information she had come across.

Neil could hardly believe his eyes.  This was an exact copy of his posts at many of the Internet forums he'd been asking around on .... it was all there, his carefully concealed screen names, many of his questions were there, as were the answers he had received ...... only a few were missing, it seemed.  In particular, he noticed that the questions that were not there were almost always those he had asked immediately after he had removed malicious software from his computer.

"How the .....? How did you get this information?" he asked.

"It was all there, on the old Internet", Moira explained.  A lot of the archives stored by what you called 'search engines' never got deleted, and we were able to track them around, thanks to tracking software that was so prevalent at the time."

Neil paused as the reality of all this sank in.  He had essentially been followed .... his own computer, his own research tool, had also been used to betray him!  Or would be used to betray him!  How had the same thing - the Internet - been a double-edged sword?  It had both delivered information and been used to spy on him at the same time!  There wasn't a lot he could do about it now though ..... he'd asked those questions, he'd got answers, he'd built his device, and now he had been found.  How many others have been betrayed by their own computers, he wondered.

"You know," he said, "I ought to get back to 2008.  Somehow expose what's going on back then, and try to stop it before it's too late!"

"Before you do," asked Aidan, "given we already know quite a bit about this, why don't we give you some information about how that 'malicious code' as you call it works and get onto computer systems, so you can stop it getting there in the first place?  And in return, you tell us some of your secrets?  We'll only find out anyway, so we may as well help each other!"

"Besides," added Gormal, "This is 50 years in the future for you.  You can still test and sell your time machine, we get to have it and you get some security information to help you in your own time!"

"It's what I believe you'd call a 'win-win situation'," added Moira.

Neil thought about this, and decided that it wasn't a bad idea.  He was still somewhat reticent about sharing his hard work, but if he could take some knowledge back with him on how to stop this from ever happening, he was all for it.  "O....K...." he agreed.

They left the café and went to Moira's place - a house in New Street next door to what had once been a convenience store.  It wasn't far from the café so they got there in just a few minutes.  Fortunately, Moira's high-tech equipment was backward-compatible enough to be able to copy the information from Neil's memory stick, and to copy her information onto it too.  "As an added bonus," she said, "I've also included some stuff about your environmental issues - the way things were going back then don't sound good if the reports I've read are to be believed."

Neil walked home past the rather imposing church building and got back to his filthy home a few minutes later.  He pressed the little button on the right-hand side of his time machine.  As before, this weird sensation came over him that led to a sort of dizziness, and he passed out.

A short while later - he didn't know whether it was minutes or hours - he came round.  He was in his freshly-cleaned room.

"Weird," he thought, through his grogginess.  It seemed that when he came in here a little while ago, the room was all cobwebby and all he remembered was pushing a button...

He already had some ideas for his next project, and this one would definitely not take as long to develop as a time machine, and probably be more beneficial.

He turned his laptop computer on and plugged in the memory stick that he had in his pocket.

Copyright (C) Angus Cook, April 2008