Answering the call: the university’s early Christmas present

From the small front bar of the White Hart, the vice-chancellor of the University of Rural England surveyed the scene outside with deep gloom.

It was dark, and an insistent rain hissed down on to the cobbles, reflecting the gaudy Christmas lights that swung above the street like so many twinkly gallows. A few late-night shoppers scurried past the window, hunched and hatted against the cold – then he saw the formidably erect figure of Lady Mary, chair of the governing body, approaching the pillared portals.

“Evening, Peter,” Lady Mary greeted him as they claimed the table near the fire, “I’ll have a pint of what you’ve got. I’ve earned it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he replied as he signalled to the barman. “How did it go today? Is there any more clarity – or, indeed, funding…?”

“Not until I’ve had a drink. And you may need another one too. While we’re about it, let’s order food at the same time. Lunch at the board meeting was four grapes and half a pomegranate – fine for a marmoset, but not enough for this Yorkshire lass…”

Once their dinner of steak, chips, onion rings and a decent bottle of red was spread before them, Peter could contain himself no longer.

“Well? What happened? Do I still have a job to go to in the morning?”

Lady Mary chewed appreciatively and swallowed. “I won’t bore you with the technical jargon of the bean-counters, but their professional analysis is that our beloved University of Rural England is circling the drain – and the consultants are pretty damned sure that we’ll carry off the trophy for being the first British university to take the dive…”

Peter looked stunned, his right hand gripping the stem of his glass far too tightly.

“Circling the drain, but not down the sewer yet,” she persisted. “I’ve got them to agree to allow us one last effort – a big push to get more investment on board, something high-profile enough to confound the doubters and get the more obvious candidates back on board. There’s just a chance it might work. But I need to ask you to do something for the university.” She paused. “And for me…I need you to go out on the road for a couple of weeks. I’m setting up a series of meetings across the United States – there are a number of…well, potential bidders, I guess you’d call them…You need to press the flesh, see who’s serious and who is just tagging along for the ride. You’re the only one who can do it…Will you?”

Peter stared gloomily into the fire before agreeing. He had been expecting something like this, but somehow the reality hit him harder than he had expected. It was an admission of failure, of course. He could picture the bidders, a pack of venture capital hyenas fighting over the slowly decaying corpse of his life’s work. How dare they! If only things had been different.

Lady Mary leaned across and touched his hand, a surprisingly warm gesture which made him jump visibly. “Are you all right, Peter? I know this must be a shock…”

The vice-chancellor nodded curtly. “Yes, Mary. I was just thinking how much better things could have been if I’d acted differently.”

“Regrets, Peter? That’s not like you.”

“Just one…Well, two, actually…I should have married Beth 30 years ago – 40 maybe – and I should never have let that damned internet nerd out of my clutches!”

Lady Mary smiled. “Yes, difficult to argue against either of those. You and Beth would have had a very different life – not commuting to California and back all the time – and I have to admit that letting go of Adam was a bit like failing to sign the Beatles. He was one of our finest, and we missed a trick not keeping him – some of his tech dollars would be handy right now. But what was it he said in his biography?”

Peter snorted. “‘I managed to escape the studied intransigence and brutal stonewalling of England’s worst vice-chancellor’ I believe was the phrase. Total rubbish, of course. Once he was in Silicon Valley, he cut off all communication and then tried to make me the villain. Well, I hope he chokes on his millions…”

“I’ll second that…The last time the alumni team contacted him, he said he’d be happy to make an appropriate donation – then mailed us a single dollar bill. He’d better not cross my path, the young tyke...”

From the 16th floor of his downtown Denver hotel, the vice-chancellor could see only snow – swirling, dense, unremitting snow. It was early afternoon, and almost dark – but not as dark as his thoughts.

The meetings here, and in Boston and New York, had only reinforced his view on the toxic nature of venture capital and the deep, careless iniquity of those zealots who practised its dark arts. To them, the university was just a corpse in waiting, a body in the last hours of life support waiting to be dissected for its commercial component parts – in essence, its branding and property – with anything of true intellectual worth to be scattered and lost.

Calls with his airline had confirmed that nothing was flying out of Denver International, and with a second blizzard forecast that was unlikely to change. On a whim he checked the train schedule and found to his surprise that the train to San Francisco was still running, leaving at eight in the morning.

He’d have to skip Los Angeles, but SF was the bigger potential benefit – so he booked a coach seat, downloaded the ticket to his phone and called his luckless assistant back home, where it was already 9pm. Sadly, he wouldn’t see Beth any sooner – she was still travelling, and having a similarly bumpy ride.

The 10 coaches of the California Zephyr wound their way through the heart of the Rocky Mountains alongside the Colorado River. The drama of the snow-bound landscape soothed some of the bile that had been building up in the vice-chancellor’s body, and he slowly began to relax into the 34-hour journey.

Source: 

David Parkins

Making the acquaintance of Jack, the steward of the bar car, improved his mood massively – especially when he was introduced to the Cocktail of the Day, a Bloody Mary of impressive vigour. As the train eased into Utah and headed for Nevada, the phone signal edged from being poor to non-existent, and he turned the device off in disgust.

As the connecting bus from Emeryville carried him across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, the sun set for the second time since leaving Denver. He had slept for most of the journey, but he now felt the full impact of the huge temporal hangover that the state-side journey had given him. He turned his phone on in anticipation of a blizzard of messages, but it resolutely declined to find a network. Damn! Oh well, he’d look at it later.

The bus dropped him and his case-on-wheels only a few yards from the inverted concrete prism that was his hotel. The vast lobby was crowded with dazzling festive imagery and gaggles of celebrating guests, a montage that looked vaguely like a Norman Rockwell painting – if the artist had been on acid at the time… 

At the desk, it all fell apart. The clerk had no record of his reservation and, even worse, had no rooms free at any price. Would he care to wait while they checked if any of their local partners had availability? Curbing his feelings with an effort, Peter decided that he wouldn’t – and stomped off to have a think.

Time was passing, and he needed a place to stay. He didn’t have a key to Beth’s place in Berkeley, so that was out. Wandering the drug-haunted twilight of Market Street seeking refuge definitely didn’t appeal, and without his phone he felt unusually powerless. He checked his contacts, and found that they were still visible even without the network. He had stayed somewhere near here before…That weekend conference…Where had it been? A quick search brought up a motel number in Silicon Valley, less than an hour away by train.

Finding that rarest of things, a working payphone, in the corner of the lobby he made a call. Yes, they had a room and, yes, they would hold it for him. He silently thanked a higher power while mentally rehearsing the route south by BART and Caltrain.

The languidly cheerful receptionist in Palo Alto was wearing flashing light-up reindeer antlers when she welcomed him, then wearily informed him that, to pile indignity upon indignity, his credit card had been declined. He tried another, which was no better, before raiding his emergency stash of cash. “At least the place is cheap…” he muttered, before he fell asleep fully clothed on top of the bed and dreamed of trains, credit cards and drug-inspired Christmas art – while thinking he heard the ping of messages arriving on his phone like so many cartoon bullets.

After a large European-style breakfast by the pool, where the sunbeds were interspersed with tackily decorated silver Christmas trees, the vice-chancellor felt much restored. He tinkered clumsily with his phone. It appeared to have connected to a local network, but he couldn’t make calls or look at the web. Puzzled, he checked his text messages – and got a shock. A dozen or so messages had appeared since Denver – all from one sender, who his contact list labelled as “Adam the Nerd”. That blasted idiot? Why was he contacting him now, after all these years?

Scrolling through them, the messages formed a slow-motion car crash that began with an awkward but apparently sincere offer of a conversation and ended two days later in a torrent of invective about the vice-chancellor’s rudeness in not answering any of his previous messages, culminating in an offer to insert the university somewhere anatomically unlikely, “where the sun doesn’t shine…”. This last message was only a few hours old, and was redolent of either late drinking or an early hangover.

Intrigued, Peter replied to the first message, saying that he was in town, and would like to meet up for brunch. Was Adam available? The reply was almost instant, and affirmative – suggesting a cafe just around the corner in University Avenue, in an hour or so. Peter agreed. But then his finger paused over the phone's screen as his eye was caught by the time and date it was displaying – as 19 December 2008…

A slow burn of unease began to rise in Peter’s capacious innards. Hurrying back to his room, he checked the newspaper that had been shoved under the door by housekeeping. It bore the same impossible date. Was this some huge practical joke? Knowing Adam’s peculiar grip on reality, it was not entirely unlikely. And it would certainly explain a few things.

With trepidation, Peter turned on the television and flipped to a news channel. The news was certainly not from 2024. It was discussing the cabinet choices for the new Obama presidency. Feeling dizzy, he wandered into the bathroom to wash his face in cold water. In the mirror he looked old, very old: a lot older than he had looked in 2008.

Adam thought so too. “What the hell happened to you?” was his scowling opening shot as the vice-chancellor slid clumsily into the cafe booth. “And why the hell didn’t you reply to any of my messages?”

“I was hoping that you could help me find that out…” Peter replied. And as they shovelled down their calorie-laden Festive Classic Diner Brunch, he outlined his story to date – ending with the dramatic line: “So you see, Adam, I think I may be from the future – your future, at least…”

Across the table, Adam leaned back and folded his arms. “Prove it,” he said with an air of devout scepticism. Peter thought for a moment, then slid his phone across the table, under the cover of his meaty hand. Adam stared, then blinked a couple of times and looked cautiously around. “Not here…This place is full of eyes and ears – we’ll go to my office.”

Adam was obviously doing well, Peter thought as he slumped into the remarkably comfortable visitor’s chair in the capacious, oak-panelled office.

Adam twisted the blinds shut and sat down. Then he picked up the phone Peter had placed on his enormous desk with a degree of reverence, and began a technical incantation.

“OK, let’s have a look. Glass case both sides: must be toughened to survive in your hands…No headphone socket, that’s a bit shoddy…Power? Hmm…Some proprietary socket in a bastard gauge…Heavy, very thin though…Must be a solid alloy chassis…Interesting…Press this one? Oh…Wow…Huge screen! And the colours! Why so many cameras? OK…Tell me what it can do…”

Source: 

David Parkins

Peter outlined with some pride the memory, speed and capacity of the device, dropping a pair of wireless earbuds on the desk to add to Adam’s rapture, pointing out the USB-C port – yet to be invented – and the three-day battery life.

Adam shook his head, he seemed close to tears.

“OK, I believe you. This is way beyond anything the folks in Cupertino have demoed yet. And, I’m starting to get an idea of what’s going on – why the ‘future you’ is here. You say you never got those messages from me when you were in 2008, right? Well, the reason must be that ‘future you’ picked them up instead – so they did get delivered, probably through some research network here...It’s 5G you say? Damn…”

He looked at the phone, then at Peter.

“I think you may have broken the timeline, or branched it maybe – changed something that was supposed to happen but then didn’t. It’s a classic temporal paradox: You are here because you are here because you are here – it would make a great movie!”

His gaze was caught for a moment by the flashing lights on the miniature Christmas tree his assistant had placed on his desk, which were reflecting diffusely in the screen of his own suddenly very dated-looking Nokia phone.

"You say that in 2024 I’m supposed to be mega-rich and have written my memoirs?” he resumed. “Awesome! And the university is going to hell? Well, that’s not so good. If you hadn’t got in touch, I’d have been happy to let URE burn – last night I’d have lit the match myself – but now that I understand, I’ll do what I can to help.”

Adam paused, and looked enquiringly at Peter.

“Like everyone in this town, I have my price, though. I’m a successful millionaire, sure – but the sort of help the university sounds like it will need is in a different league. It will likely take someone with billions. Happily, I think I know how I can make that transition…” Adam pointed meaningfully at the phone he had placed back on the desk.

“Perhaps you would consider loaning that to me so that I can do some reverse engineering on it – which may involve disassembly – and gain a modest technical advantage? If this takes off the way you say, that should put me in the billionaire club. And, in return, I’ll step in with the funding for URE when the time is right. You have my word. In fact, let’s call it a Christmas present... A very early Christmas present...”

Peter smiled. “Certainly – but I suspect it will be easier for the survival of the universe if you keep that a secret. I’ll just remove the memory card with my personal stuff on it. And then I believe a celebratory drink is in order.”

With Peter’s phone locked in the office safe, the pair repaired to the bar on the next corner, with Peter desperately trying to recall what was going on in 2008 while fending off as many questions about 2024 as possible – sticking to recent American political history, his description of which he doubted Adam would believe anyway. More bars followed, each with louder music. Then, suddenly, everything merged into a roaring grey blur, and a terrible pain tore through his chest.

The light was too bright, and something was bleeping loudly. A voice somewhere close by said, “It’s OK, it’s going back up…”

Then, “Peter, can you hear me? Just nod if you can…Excellent…OK, you’re in a hospital – you had a coronary episode and we’ve done some work on you. You have two stents now, and you’ll be just fine in a couple of days. Someone will be along later to discuss some of your lifestyle choices with you. Just relax, there are a couple of folk who’d like to see you if you are up to it? Great.”

“Peter? It’s Beth…Adam is here too. He looks like he feels guilty about something, but I haven’t asked…He says you’ll want to know the date – it’s December 19th… What? Well, 2024 of course – what drugs have they been giving you? Lady Mary sends her best and says not to worry – everything is fine. Oh, and Adam has brought your phone – he says you left it in his office. It’s just by your left hand if you need it…”

Peter opened his eyes, focused with some difficulty and smiled weakly at Beth, then picked up his phone. It was only then that he noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring.

John Gilbey teaches in the department of computer science at Aberystwyth University. He has made several visits to Silicon Valley, during which he met a number of billionaires – although without finding a means of becoming one himself.