A Teapot on Pluto by Julie Bertagna
Keith Gray's Introduction
Either you're a fan of Julie Bertagna, or you've not read her books yet. At the moment we're all waiting for her to hurry up with Aurora which will be the third part of her drowned world trilogy following on from Exodus and Zenith, both of which have won awards voted for by teenagers themselves. These books in part imagine a future where technology is both help and hindrance, where humans have amassed perhaps a little too much knowledge for their own good. And although it's handled with a light touch, this is also one of the themes in her exclusive story for us A Teapot on Pluto.
It's been very interesting to see how the different writers so far have tackled the Virtual Writer in Residence theme of 'communication' in their stories. Julie has found yet another angle: communication through time. This story is certainly topical for us, here and now. Who knows how prescient it will seem in the decades to come...
A Teapot on Pluto
‘You have one new eye-mail!’
The tweety-voiced phone messager was doing Zack’s head in. She’d have to go.
Zack pedalled hard to the top of the hill. He paused to wipe his sweaty face with a sleeve then grabbed the phone from the pocket of his hoodie. The over-excited messager on his brand new Eye-Fone made every incoming eye-mail sound like a lottery win. He’d got the phone as a reward for scraping through his exams, and he was still fiddling with the all the settings and stuff; but what a sleek little beast it was, with a chameleon casing he’d set to Redhot Sizzle, as a colourful counterblast to the never-ending grey drizzle that was a lousy excuse for a summer.
The road ahead was clear until the traffic lights at the foot of the hill. He’d be late for the game if he didn’t keep moving. Zack pushed off downhill, steering one-handed, his phone in the other, damp pillows of air in his face.
He glanced at his eye-mail. A girl’s face stared back.
The girl from last night.
She’d flashed up on the Eye-Fone screen and reminded him to set his phone alarm for Saturday morning football practice. Zack had been thinking about sleeping in. He wasn’t in the mood for another mud-bath match. But the girl was hot-looking and her breathless voice and big blue eyes made him feel he wanted to set his alarm, which was pretty daft because she was just an electronic gizmo. Then, this morning, she’d popped up again to check if he was awake. She really seemed to care.
Zack couldn’t figure out how the Eye-Fone organiser knew about his Saturday morning football. He hadn’t programmed it in. Probably his mother had - she was always nagging him to get out of his bed and wash something - the dishes, the windows, the car, himself...
‘Hold on, Zack,’ said the gizmo girl. ‘Hold tight.’
She stared out of the phone as if she really could see him.
‘You what?’ said Zack.
The phone gizmo knew his name? Knew he was on his bike? He needed to shove the phone back in his pocket and grip the brakes, but the look in the girl’s eyes was compel-ling. She could almost be real.
He looked up just in time. There was nothing in front, but the traffic lights were red. Zack squeezed the handlebar brakes, too hard and awkwardly, because he still had the phone in one hand. The bike juddered as the front brakes pulled harder than the back.
And then it was like slamming into an invisible lorry.
Everything wrenched away from him - his bike, the road, the traffic lights, the buildings. He was hurtling into fiery heat; he was burning up. The world was a melting darkness and he was slipping through it, slipping fast, too fast, like a hot knife through butter...
I’ve crashed, he thought. I’m dying.
Zack closed his eyes and hoped it would be over soon.
It all stopped with a great jolt. The fiery heat faded. Everything felt still. The ground he’d crash-landed on felt cold and hard and steady.
I’m not dead, thought Zack, amazed. He took a deep breath, just to be sure, and opened his eyes.
And found himself staring up at a gigantic egg. It loomed high over his head like a squashed moon.
Zack yelled in fright but the giant egg sailed serenely onwards, its great shadow passing over him like a slow-moving black hole. Dizzy and trembling, Zack pushed himself up into a sitting position and watched the giant egg-thing move slowly between the huge towers that surrounded him.
His heart banged in his chest as he stared around at a forest of skyscrapers where, mo-ments ago, he had been cycling towards traffic lights surrounded by old Victorian terraces and squat office blocks.
Zack staggered to his feet and gazed out at a world he did not know.
‘Zack?’ said a breathless voice.
A hot, sweaty hand grabbed his and Zack was pulled around to find a pair of wide blue eyes staring at him through a thick, dark fringe.
He knew those eyes; he knew the striking face framed by long, dark hair. It was the girl from his phone.
She let out a shaky laugh. Her eyes welled up and she looked away. ‘Sorry, I - well, we couldn’t be absolutely sure you’d make it.’
Zack felt groggy, fuzzy-headed. He must have crashed his bike. He must be concussed and hallucinating. There was no other way to explain how he had landed in this weird place with skyscrapers and giant floating eggs, with a girl who had popped out of his phone. And she was definitely no gizmo. She was a real, trembling, breathing, flesh and blood girl.
‘It’s okay, Zack,’ said the girl. ‘I’m real. This is all real. It’s just a very long way from where you were a minute ago.’ She paused and bit her lip. ‘Um, fifty five years, nine months and five days from there, to be exact.’
‘Ha. Very funny.’ Zack stared as another giant egg passed high overhead and sailed slowly between the skyscraper towers, pausing at one of them as if for a rest. ‘I’m in some weird dream or hallucination. I’ll wake up soon.’
‘You’re in the year 2065,’ said the girl. Her voice trembled. ‘I’m Alison. Alison Hart.’
‘Hart?’ Zack grasped at the one familiar thing in all the bewildering strangeness. ‘My name’s Hart too. Zackary Hart.’
‘I know,’ said Alison, gently, still with the tremor in her voice. ‘We’re related.’
Zack took his eyes from the giant egg that was once more sailing through from the sky-scrapers. He studied the girl. He had never seen her before she popped up on his phone, and yet there was something oddly familiar about her. And then he saw. She looked a bit like Jenny, his sister. There was a deep dimple in her chin, as if she’d pressed a finger there. Zack rubbed his own chin. He had the very same feature, except his chin looked as if he had poked his thumb too hard and left a clumsy big dent.
‘We need to get moving,’ said Alison, tugging his hand. ‘I know you’re confused, Zack. I know this is weird. I’ll explain everything, I promise. But you need to come with me now so that we can get you back home. There isn’t much time.’
Dazed, Zack followed the girl across a broad boulevard, busy with people and trees. He had a glimpse of other tree-lined boulevards, stretching in all directions through the ranks of huge skyscrapers. Scatterings of people sat at pavement cafes under newly-budded trees. Cool spring sunshine slanted down between the boulevards, glancing off the side of the gleaming towers like a thousand swords. Children played on the grass that ran like a wide green road down the centre of the boulevard.
‘What are those things?’ said Zack, as a pool of shadow engulfed them and another giant egg passed overhead.
‘The buses?’ said Alison, pulling him through a doorway into one of the skyscraping tow-ers.
‘That’s a bus?’
This was turning out to be one weird hallucination.
‘Forget I said that,’ said Alison. ‘Actually, forget you even saw that, would you?’
‘Why?’ said Zack. ‘Where’d you put all the traffic?’
Alison looked blank.
‘Okay,’ said Zack, ‘so there’s no traffic in 2065. Buses are giant floating eggs. Do I get to waken up now? And who are you, anyway? My imaginary cousin?’
Alison didn’t answer. She steered him through a crowd of bustling people who swarmed the ground floor of the tower, into a crowded lift.
‘S’cuse me,’ she announced, in a loud voice. ‘Could we have this lift? I’ve got a worm here and we’re short on time. Thanks, everyone.’
A crowd of faces turned towards Zack with curious, sympathetic smiles before pouring out of the lift and leaving him and Alison alone.
Worm? thought Zack, and his stomach lurched as they began to plunge downwards at huge speed.
Alison turned towards him and her face was flushed. ‘Don’t faint,’ she said, with a look in her eyes that made Zack’s skin crawl. ‘The thing is, I’m your grand-daughter.’
This dream was way beyond weird now. Zack wanted out.
‘I know you don’t believe me - yet,’ said Alison. ‘Harvey will explain.’
‘Harvey? Who’s he then - my grandson?’
Alison’s tense face relaxed and she laughed. ‘He’s a Gatekeeper - an expert in worm-holes. He’ll get you back to your own time.’
Zack wanted to laugh too, to show he wasn’t buying any of this crazy dream or whatever it was. The knot of terror in his stomach felt real enough though.
His ears were popping. The lift seemed to be taking them deep underground. When the doors finally slid open, Zack felt as if he’d walked into a James Bond film.
An enormous machine filled a massive underground chamber. But the man who approached them was nothing like James Bond. The sleeves of his grubby boiler suit were rolled up; he looked like a plumber ready to unblock a drain.
Alison introduced him to Harvey with the relief of someone who was handing over a ticking bomb to a bomb disposal expert.
‘Right on time,’ said Harvey. He gestured to the giant machine, ‘This is your Gateway back to 2009.’ All Zack could do was stare at the mighty machine as Harvey studied him, with a smile. ‘It’s very good to see you, Zack. Now, let’s see if we can get you back home.’
‘How?’ Zack looked up at the machine’s gigantic metal mouth.
He couldn’t explain why, but from the second he’d stepped into the underground chamber all sense of this being a dream or hallucination had dropped away. Though he didn’t understand a thing, he felt sharp and sure. This was happening. This was real.
Weirder than anything was the idea that Alison was his grand-daughter. It was impossible. And yet, when she looked at him it was unnerving. She cared about him; Zack could see that in her eyes.
‘Imagine someone holding a gate open then pulling you through,’ Harvey was explaining. ‘That’s what we do here. We’ve never lost anyone yet.’
‘Great. So what happens if I’m a first and you lose me?’
‘We send out a Tardis.’
Zack burst out laughing.
‘Dr Who rescues me? Woohoo!’
‘A Tardis,’ said Harvey, sternly, ‘is a search engine that locates missing people in space-time. You won’t be laughing if something goes wrong and you land in a battlefield in the middle of the Oil Wars.’
‘Give him a break, Harvey,’ said Alison gently. ‘He’s just crashed out of 2009.’
‘Where a Tardis is the mode of transport for a Time Lord,’ said Zack. ‘On the TV.’
‘So that’s where they got the idea from!’, exclaimed Harvey. ‘All right, Zack, let’s get rid of you.’
‘Wait,’ said Zack. Everything was happening too fast. ‘Just give me a few minutes. If this is real, there’s so much I want to know...’
Harvey shook his head. ‘Against the rules.’
‘I wish you could stay longer,’ said Alison. She planted a shy kiss on his cheek and glanced over Zack’s shoulder. ‘It’s so weird to see you young.’
‘Alison,’ said Zack, his heart quickening as an amazing thought occurred. ‘Am I still alive in 2065? Here? Right now? Am I?’
Alison didn’t answer. But this time, when her eyes flickered behind him, Zack felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He glanced over his shoulder but the monstrous bulk of the wormhole machine cast a great shadow over the back of the chamber and he couldn’t see anything there.
He turned back to Alison. ‘Is he there?’ he whispered.
‘Don’t look, Zack, please...’
‘Tell me one thing then - will I ever see you again?’
‘Of course you will,’ said Alison. ‘In about... oh, forty one years. From your time, I mean. Apparently I puked up all over you the first time you saw me.’ She gave a giggle. ‘Well, I was only a few hours old. The second of May, 2050. My birthday. See you then, um, grandpa.’
Zack rubbed his forehead as he realised what Alison meant. ‘So I go back to 2009 and the next time I see you, you’re just born? But I’ll be old and - and you won’t know me - this me.’
Alison shook her head. ‘I only know you as my grandpa - until now.’
Zack blew out a long breath. ‘But you knew I was coming.’
‘’Cos you told me,’ said Alison. ‘The rest of the family just groan when you start going on about wormholes and stuff. Gran always says it’s the bang on the head from your bike crash that started all that nonsense.’
Zack’s mind was reeling. What was all this about wormholes and worms?
‘That’s how you got here,’ said Harvey. ‘Fell through a wormhole.’
‘But I didn’t really believe you, not totally,’ Alison continued, and she seemed to shoot a fleeting smile over his shoulder, ‘until I saw you crash out of thin air today, just where you always said you’d be.’ She became serious. ‘You have to make sure I’m here for you - on May 20th 2065, at eleven minutes past ten. Make sure I eye-mail you to set your alarm. If you sleep in...’ Alison blew out a sigh. ‘Well, everything’s different if you sleep in.’
‘How did you eye-mail me from the future?’ asked Zack.
‘We have technology that you can’t imagine - yet,’ said Harvey, with a grin. ‘Zack, I can’t hold this gateway open much longer. We don’t want the worm problems they’ve had in Paris.’ The grin became a grimace.
Zack absorbed that. ‘You mean I’m not the only one?’
‘2008 was Year Zero for wormholes,’ said Harvey. ‘They switched on the giant Atom-Smasher under the Swiss Alps but it malfunctioned. They kept having to switch it on and off and in the years that followed mini-wormholes crawled all over the place. People fell though them - at both ends. They said that wouldn’t happen, of course - it was as likely as finding a teapot on Pluto, they said. All I can say is, there must be one helluva lot of tea-pots on Pluto.’ Harvey snorted at his own joke. ‘Gatekeepers like me have been trying to tidy things up ever since. Could have been worse, though.’ Harvey winked at Zack. ‘Could have been mini-black holes - then we’d have been in big trouble.’
‘Both ends?’ said Zack slowly. ‘You mean...’
Harvey sucked a breath through his teeth. ‘Yup, they fall out over at your end too. And you don’t have the technology to send them back so that’s where the Tardis fleet comes in. We still haven’t detected every wormhole.’
Zack’s mouth fell open. ‘There are time-travellers from the future in my world?’
‘Some of them even opt to stay there for a while. But don’t go looking for them, Zack. They’re the ones who help get you out of the global warming mess. Usually that kind of meddling is way off bounds but we do bend the rules when it concerns the survival of the human race.’ Harvey winked at Zack again. ‘Keep that to yourself, eh?’
‘Wow.’
‘He didn’t see anything he shouldn’t have, did he?’ Harvey asked.
Alison looked uncertain. ‘Just the boulevards and some buses. I got him here soon as I could.’
‘Well, we do our best.’ Harvey’s eyes twinkled. ‘Buses do a lot less harm in the air, eh, Zack? Ready to go?’
‘I - I think so.’ Out of the corner of his eyes, Zack saw something move. There was someone in the shadows.
And he knew who it was.
Harvey grabbed Zack by the arm as he made a move towards the shadows. ‘No, Zack. I can’t let you see him. That way disaster lies. Now stand right in front of the Gateway here.’
‘But it’s him - it’s me,’ Zack burst out. ‘He can see me, but I can’t look at him? How’s that fair? What difference does it make if you’re about to blast me away?’
Harvey sighed. ‘I don’t make the rules of time travel, Zack. I just do my job.’
‘If you know too much, if anything is different,’ said Alison, ‘then maybe everything is different.’
‘But what would be so different?’ Zack felt desperate. How could he leave without even a glimpse of his own future self?
‘Everything will be different if you don’t get back now,’ said Alison. ‘You’ll see why. Please, Zack, it’s for your own sake. And mine. If things are different maybe I don’t get to exist.’
She looked desperate and scared. Zack sighed. He couldn’t take that risk; of course he couldn’t.
Alison gave him a hard hug and Zack walked over to stand in front of the massive machine. He swallowed hard, emotions churning inside. This was the strangest, most wrenching moment he had ever known.
‘You have a good life, Zack,’ said his grand-daughter, as the great machine hummed into power.
‘Do I?’
The question burst from Zack as the person in the shadows took a step forward. Zack stared as hard as he could but already the world around him had begun to melt away.
‘Do I have a good life?’
Zack hurled the question at his future self. Then a voice he knew, a man’s voice, changed and older yet still his own, called out in reply just as Zack felt himself sucked into the immense hot force of the wormhole.
‘She still tells me,’ the voice called after him, ‘that it’s the craziest chat-up story she ever heard...’
Rain pelts his face. There’s a roaring in his ears. Zack blinks the rain from his eyes and yells in fright.
A double decker bus is coming right at him.
‘Get off the road!’ a voice screams.
Zack is yanked to his feet and dragged to the kerb as the bus judders to a halt. The bus driver yells a volley of abuse from his cab and the rain-blurred faces of the passengers stare through the streaming windows in alarm.
Around him, the old Victorian terraces and the low office buildings seem quaint and odd. The noisy rush of traffic makes his head spin. A vision of slow, floating airbuses fills Zack’s dazed head. He smiles at the cursing driver. Just you wait.
‘You got a death wish?’
His rescuer stares at him with familiar blue eyes in an unknown face.
‘Hey, take it easy.’ The girl reaches out to steady him. ‘Wow, is that your bike?’
A heap of mangled metal lies on the pavement. It looks as if the wormhole chewed up the bike and spat it back out.
‘You survived that?’ says the girl.
The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as Zack remembers the voice that called out as he was sucked into the wormhole.
‘Who are you?’ he asks the girl who has Alison’s beautiful blue eyes.
‘The person who just saved your life, that’s who,’ says the girl. ‘My name’s Alison.’ She gives Zack a quizzical look as he begins to laugh. ‘Do I know you?’
Not yet, he thinks.
‘Alison,’ he says,’ you are never going to believe this...’
