The Time Bubble Box Set 2 Read online

  The Time Bubble

  Books 6-10 Box Set

  By Jason Ayres

  Text Copyright © 2020 Jason Ayres

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by

  http://dani-owergoor.deviantart.com/

  This box set contains the following volumes:

  Vanishing Point

  Midlife Crisis

  Rock Bottom

  My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday

  Happy New Year

  Contents

  Vanishing Point

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Midlife Crisis

  No Future

  Modern Life is Rubbish

  What Difference Does It Make?

  Second-Hand News

  Cops and Robbers

  Fools Gold

  Nothing in my Way

  Avenging Angels

  Friday I’m In Love

  Perfect Day

  The Next Life

  Rock Bottom

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday

  Epilogue: Death

  Cancer

  Fire

  Sex

  Lauren

  Horses

  Indulgence

  Work

  Sarah

  Stacey

  London

  Ibiza

  Josh

  Youth

  Prologue: Birth

  Happy New Year

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Reviews

  Also by Jason Ayres

  The Time Bubble

  Global Cooling

  Man Out Of Time

  Splinters in Time

  Class of ‘92

  About the author

  Vanishing Point

  Prologue

  June 2025

  Kaylee was crippled with fear in a way she never had been before. It was the kind of fear that people only felt at the very real prospect of imminent death, and it was consuming her whole body like a slug of poison coursing through her veins.

  She was a lithe, fit woman in her mid-twenties but right now she felt as weak and helpless as a frail, old woman. Frantically she tried to suppress her body’s overwhelming reflex to be physically sick and to summon up the energy she needed to keep running from her assailant.

  As she descended the stairs on the fire escape that led down to the ground below, the desire to throw up was too strong and she paused briefly, leaning over the metal bannister to projectile vomit over the side.

  The staircase, behind the superstore, ran all the way from the top floor of the car park above to the entrance to the shop below. As the splatter of her semi-digested breakfast hit the floor some thirty feet below, she heard a woman’s voice further down the stairwell exclaiming, “Disgusting!”

  That was all very well for her to say, thought Kaylee, but she hadn’t just seen her husband murdered in cold blood right in front of her.

  Barely a minute ago, up on the roof, she had seen her beloved Charlie hit by a futuristic laser weapon that had made him briefly glow an incredibly bright blue before completely vanishing.

  The unidentified, black-clad and masked assassin had then turned the weapon on Kaylee but the young woman had been nimble enough to just about scramble out of the way, leaving her abandoned Sainsbury’s trolley to be zapped into oblivion instead.

  Despite being utterly traumatised at seeing the love of her life vaporised right in front of her, her survival instincts had kicked in and she had ducked behind a large, white Transit van that was pulling out of a parking space close to the sliding glass doors that led to the entrance.

  From there she had managed to dive through the doors, despite a third thunderous laser blast shot taking out the van and presumably the unfortunate occupant within it. Desperate to escape, she headed towards the lift doors, but she soon realised there was no escape that way.

  A crude, handwritten note attached to the lift doors informed her it was out of order again, leaving her with a choice of the travelator or the stairs, a decision which needed to be made in a split second. She opted for the latter, figuring they were less open, making her a more difficult target for the assassin who she assumed would be coming after her. She could also see that there were people blocking the travelator with their trolleys – she would be a sitting duck.

  As she burst through the doors and began to descend the stairwell, there was only one word in her mind and that was “why?”

  Was this some random terror attack with some new type of weapon she had never seen or heard of before? Or was it a premeditated hit and, if so, why was whoever it was targeting her and Charlie? They were just a normal young couple doing their Saturday morning shopping. They didn’t have any enemies.

  It had been the most ordinary of days until they had emerged onto the top floor of the car park. Charlie had been pushing the trolley and they had been chatting amiably about their plans for the weekend. Their friends Josh, Lauren and Hannah were coming around for dinner and they had just bought everything they needed, not just the food but also copious amounts of alcohol.

  That dinner was never going to happen now, she thought, as she willed herself on, leaping down the stairs, three steps at a time. She was desperate for what she hoped would be the relative safety of the store: at least there were security guards there. Admittedly they were probably more used to dealing with shoplifters slipping bottles of vodka into their coat pockets than assassins with laser guns, but it was better than nothing.

  These and countless other thoughts whirled through her he
ad in the relatively short time it took to descend the stairs. This couldn’t just be some random terror attack. There had been other people around at the top of the car park, but the assassin had ignored them, focusing solely on her and Charlie.

  There was no doubt it was the two of them the assassin had been after, and Kaylee knew that escaping through the doors had only given her a temporary respite. She felt a growing feeling of despair welling up inside her at the realisation that her chances of getting out of this alive were slim.

  Part of her almost didn’t want to escape. Charlie was her whole life. Without him was it even worth surviving? Should she just give in and accept her fate, like a condemned prisoner at the gallows? But then she would never know the reason behind all of this, and she doubted that the assassin was going to give her the courtesy of an explanation before blowing her away into oblivion.

  There was a tiny flicker of hope inside her that perhaps Charlie wasn’t dead. Perhaps the laser beam hadn’t been a weapon but instead had just transported him somewhere else. It was the stuff of science fiction, but after all the adventures with the Time Bubble a few years previously, her mind was open to all kinds of possibilities.

  The only other comforting thought she had, and it was an extremely tenuous one, was that if the assassin did kill her, maybe she and Charlie would be together again somewhere. It was an odd thing to think of because she had never believed in any sort of deity, but the likelihood of impending doom had suddenly made the existence of some sort of afterlife an extremely appealing proposition.

  By now she was halfway down the stairwell at the entrance to the middle level of the car park. As she swung around the corner towards the next flight of stairs, she almost knocked a mother with two young girls out of the way in her haste.

  The woman gave her an extremely filthy look which suggested she was the one who had seen the contents of Kaylee’s stomach descending at high speed towards the ground floor moments before.

  There was no time to apologise or issue a warning: what use would that be? If the assassin was only after Kaylee, these people would be safe, and if not, no one would be against the sort of weaponry the killer was toting.

  Kaylee risked a quick glance back up the stairs but there was no sign that she was being followed. Briefly she allowed herself a little hope that maybe she was going to get out of this alive after all.

  Her hopes were swiftly quashed as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs and the assassin reappeared, right out of thin air directly in front of her. With a sinking feeling, she knew now that the game was up.

  It was the first time Kaylee had got a proper look at her executioner, not that it gave her any clue as to the identity. The assassin was so heavily clad in black body armour and a mask that covered the whole face, bar the eyes, that she couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. Come to that, she couldn’t even be sure it was human – the armour was made of some strange-looking metallic material that made her wonder if it might not be some sort of robot or android. Could it be an alien, or something from the future?

  “Why are you doing this?” cried Kaylee as the killer raised the weapon that had already killed her husband. They would be her final words as no reply was forthcoming.

  There was a high-pitched whistling sound and then a single brilliant, bright blue laser bolt consumed her body, instantly annihilating her. Barely anything was left behind, just the single yellow flower that she had been wearing in her hair which was blown off her head by the blast. Other than that, there was nothing, not even a hint of smoke.

  Beneath the mask, the assassin smiled, pulled a wand-like device out of a side pocket and pressed a button, before stepping forward and vanishing.

  Other than the small yellow flower fluttering slowly downwards towards the regurgitated bits of muesli and skimmed milk congealing on the floor, it was as if neither of them had ever been there.

  Chapter One

  September 2055

  It was springtime in Canberra and Josh and Alice Gardner were visiting one of the most advanced scientific institutes in the world.

  Australia had risen to become a major world power after the Northern Hemisphere had been crippled by the devastating Black Winter of 2029–30. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the gleaming futuristic buildings of the Australian National University, the pioneering hub of revolutionary new technologies that were set to change the world.

  For some time, Josh had been enjoying holographic conversations with Doctor Henry Jones, the centre’s most eminent scientist. He and his wife, Vanessa, had been at the forefront of developing the increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence in the robots that were now becoming ubiquitous in homes and workplaces across the world. It had made them famous and also extremely rich – wealth that they had used to bankroll ever more advanced research.

  By the mid-2050s, Henry and Vanessa had delved far deeper into the complexities of the human brain than anyone had been able to before. Their aim was to achieve something previously thought impossible: the ability to transfer human consciousness completely into a digital format that could be stored forever or transferred into a new host.

  It was this research that Josh was particularly interested in, and he and Henry had discussed it at length. In return, Henry had been just as enthusiastic about Josh’s field of expertise.

  It was well known in academic circles that Josh was the world’s leading authority on time travel theory. He had written many papers on the subject during his long career at Oxford University, without ever quite revealing the full extent of his knowledge.

  What few people other than Josh’s closest friends and confidants knew was that he wasn’t just an expert in time travel theory. He had already achieved the ability to travel in time and done so many times. Those in his inner circle had long ago decided that it was too dangerous to allow this knowledge to be revealed to the wider world and had kept it to themselves for decades.

  Josh had let some hints slip to Henry that it might be possible, purely to keep him interested enough for him to grant Josh access to the institute. He was fascinated by the work they were doing there and the possible applications it might have if combined with his time travel technology. To investigate further he had arranged to meet Henry and Vanessa to see their work first-hand.

  Alice had reluctantly agreed to the meeting, even though they were supposed to be on holiday. She knew how obsessed her husband got over these things, and if she didn’t indulge him it would be all he would talk about for their entire trip. It would be no big deal to give up a day or two out of the several months they were spending travelling the world.

  The weather was warm and pleasant as they walked through the gardens in front of the impressive frontage of the scientific institute. It was an unusual semicircular design that was reminiscent to Josh of the old BBC Television Centre back home, but that was where the similarity ended. This was no 1950s concrete block but all gleaming glass and metal that exuded wealth, confidence and technology.

  The cherry trees lining the path leading up to the entrance were in full blossom, birds were singing in the trees and the sun was beating down on Josh’s face. It was every bit like a sunny April day back home, but here of course, the seasons were reversed.

  “This place looks mighty impressive,” remarked Alice, echoing what Josh was thinking.

  “I should think so with the amount of money they’ve spent on it,” replied Josh. “From what Henry tells me there’s no shortage of cash from the government for research, and that’s on top of Henry and Vanessa’s personal wealth. They get more in funding in a year than we get in a decade at Oxford, and we’re hardly poor. It seems like Canberra is deadly serious about becoming the technological capital of the world.”

  “The city has certainly changed a lot since my backpacking days,” remarked Alice. “I spent a whole summer travelling around Australia the year before I met you.”

  As they approached the entrance the double glass doors moved swiftly and s
ilently aside, leading into a large, circular foyer. It had a spotless, white marble floor, a ceiling supported by several thick, white pillars and the surrounding curved walls were covered in screens showing corporate videos of the institute’s work. A grand, wide staircase led up to a balcony at the back of the room, presumably leading deeper into the institute.

  What was notably absent was any sort of desk or human receptionist. Instead, one of the most lifelike androids Josh and Alice had ever seen walked smoothly towards them. Indeed, neither of them even realised it was a robot at first. It was only when it spoke that they realised it wasn’t a bona fide flesh and blood woman.

  Alice was never quite comfortable affording gender to a robot. Somehow continuing to refer to them as “it” helped to remind her that these were machines – not people.

  Many disagreed and a substantial robot rights movement was springing up around the world, led primarily by humans who were more concerned about the exploitation and rights of these androids than the androids were themselves.

  In the case of this female android, with a stunning figure, perfect complexion and immaculate, white, one-piece business suit, it was impossible not to see her as a woman.

  “Hello. My name is Dani,” said their host.

  Dani paused briefly, looking first Josh and then Alice intensely in the eyes.

  “Retina patterns confirmed. Welcome, Josh and Alice Gardner. You are meeting with Henry Jones.”

  Up close, both visitors now recognised Dani’s true nature. She was a little too perfect, with none of the minor imperfections that every human has. The retina scan and the slightly robotic nature of her voice were also a giveaway. The subtle nuances of human conversation and use of slang terms still hadn’t been fully cracked by artificial intelligence.

  Despite Dani giving herself away, she was still a major advance on any robot they had seen before. How much longer would it be until they would be indistinguishable from humans, and what would be the implications of that?