Page 4 of Love and Other Paradoxes

He shut the laptop and lunged to hide the book under his pillow. By the time Rob peeked around the door, he was poring over

a philosophy textbook in a way that almost certainly looked suspicious. “Sorry,” he said absently.

“Ah, no harm done. Only one person complained. The rest of them lapped it up. I spun it into a whole story about how you were

the ghost of a student who drowned himself after failing his exams.”

“Hey,” Joe protested weakly.

“It was very moving. Especially the part where I mimed your floating corpse.” Rob paused, looking at him closely. “Yes. That’s

exactly the expression. Uncanny.”

He needed to get his face under control. He closed the textbook and spun round in his chair. “For your information, I’m going

to get a 2:1.” Saying it aloud brought home what it meant: he no longer had to worry about failing. The crushing pressure

lifted from his chest, finally letting him breathe.

“Great news,” said Rob. “Happy for you. Is that what you’re wearing for Halloween Formal?”

He looked down at himself. “No. But that’s not till this evening.”

Rob indicated the darkness outside. “Through the magic of time travel, this evening is now. So come on, get spooky. We have to be there in five minutes.” He tapped the door frame and disappeared into his own bedroom.

Joe stared out at the fingernail crescent moon hanging over the battlements. Hours had passed in the present while he had

been wandering the pages of the future. He got changed into his costume, but his heart wasn’t in it. He felt like he was his

older self, playacting at being a student again.

When he emerged, Rob was baffled. “Why do you have a toy train hanging off your jumper?”

He indicated the bridge motif knitted into the jumper, and the deliberate rip he’d made down the middle. “I’m the Tay Bridge

Disaster.”

Rob made a face. “Isn’t that a bit tasteless?”

Plucking at the jumper for emphasis, he explained, “‘The Tay Bridge Disaster.’ By William Topaz McGonagall.” He searched unsuccessfully

for recognition in Rob’s eyes. “Worst poem ever written? Rhymes ‘buttresses’ with ‘confesses’?”

Rob shook his head. “Greeney, you’re supposed to wear a costume someone other than you would have a chance in hell of recognising.”

Joe looked Rob up and down. He was dressed as usual for Formal, in a shirt and black jacket under his gown. “What about you?

Who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Future Rob,” he said, leading the way down the stairs. “Rob from the future.”

Joe stared at his roommate. Had he sneaked a look at the book while his back was turned? Trying to be casual, he said, “You’re

still going to be wearing your undergraduate gown when you’re sixty?”

“Who says I’m sixty?”

“Okay,” said Joe with exaggerated patience, “how far in the future are you from?”

“Ten minutes.” Rob took the last flight of steps two at a time. “I’ve come back to tell you the starter was delicious .”

They headed into the college dining hall, where the long tables were lined with dripping candles and grinning pumpkins. Joe

sat opposite Rob at the edge of their group of friends. Two of them asked about his costume, and he answered mechanically,

barely hearing himself over the poetry singing wildly through his head.

Some time later, Rob clapped his hands in Joe’s face. “Greeney, you’re miles away. What’s up?”

Through the haze of wine, Joe focused on his friend. He wanted to tell Rob. He was desperate to tell Rob, because Rob was

the person he talked to about important things, and this was by some orders of magnitude the most important thing that had

ever happened. But Rob was also a physicist. Joe didn’t know much about physics, but he suspected that if he opened the conversation

with the fact that time travel was real and he had the proof under his pillow, Rob would have trouble getting past that to

discuss the vastly more interesting topic of Joe’s future poetic greatness.

He had to tell Rob. There was no way in a million years he could tell Rob. He hovered, torn between two incompatible compulsions,

until his mouth opened of its own accord and an inarticulate noise came out.

Rob leaned across the table. “What?”

He could test the water. Pitch it as a hypothetical, then decide on the basis of Rob’s reaction whether to make it true. “Could

time travel be real?”

Rob gave him a warning look. “Do you really want to get into this? You’ve had most of a bottle of wine.”

He was offended. “You saying I can’t keep up?”

“I’m saying nothing. I’m just reminding you that last time I tried to talk to you about physics, you hid under the pool table

and sang The Proclaimers until I went away.”

He let that pass. “I mean it. I want to know.”

Rob’s face lit up. “Okay, so, general relativity allows for closed timelike curves. And the most intuitive solution that gets

you a space-time with CTCs is a traversable wormhole of some kind...”

He tried to listen, but the technical jargon paled to the wonder of having seen his future, printed in black and white. He

imagined what his and Diana’s house in London would be like. Huge, probably: she was a successful actress, and Meant to Be must have sold a fair number of copies. No one went into poetry for the money, of course, but love was very marketable, and

he prided himself that the poems were written in plain, unpretentious language, accessible without being dumbed down. He would

be a poet of the people, opening the genre up to a whole new audience. Young poets from underrepresented backgrounds would

write to him, thanking him for making their art possible.

Rob was still talking. “So to make a traversable wormhole, you’d need some amount of negative energy, which is a challenge

because, at least at the moment, that’s a purely hypothetical construct...”

Joe’s attention drifted up the room to the dais, where the Master and Fellows sat with their guests at High Table. Famous alumni were sometimes invited back to dine. He imagined himself and Diana up there, exchanging witty repartee with his former professors. “Mr. Greene was, of course, the first student from his school to be admitted to Cambridge,” the Master was saying as Diana affectionately squeezed Joe’s arm, “making his achievements all the more remarkable...”

Rob’s voice rose in excitement. “But if you ask me, the only model that makes any actual sense is Deutsch’s account, which

relies on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics...”

They would probably both get OBEs. Or Diana would be a dame, and he would get a knighthood. He didn’t approve of the British

Empire or the Royal Family, but he was pretty sure he would sell out on his principles if it meant he got to be called Sir

for the rest of his life. Sir Joseph Greene. He mouthed it silently. It had a ring to it, but it did mean he’d have to go by his full name from now on. “Joe” was right

out.

“...Does that answer your question?”

He snapped back to the present. Rob was looking at him earnestly.

“So you’re saying,” he said, working more from Rob’s tone than from his words, “that if someone discovered time travel, it

would be big news. Physics-wise. Like—folk who are into physics would want to talk about it.”

“Are you kidding?” Rob laughed. “They’d never want to talk about anything else.”

His heart sank. “Okay.” He tipped back the last of his wine. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“No problem.” People were starting to leave, drifting towards the bar for the party. “Since when have you been interested

in this stuff?”

He flailed for a lie. He gestured at Rob’s conspicuous lack of a costume. “I was wondering if Future Rob could ever pay us

a visit for real.”

“What are you talking about? Future Rob is real. I’ll prove it.” He put a hand to his temple, closing his eyes. “I have come back from the party to tell you that they’re about to play ‘Thriller.’”

As they left the dining hall and descended the steps towards the bar, a familiar bassline started up. “Wow,” said Joe, with

drawn-out amazement. “Sorry I ever doubted you.”

In the bar, the party was already in full swing, the tidemark of sweat rising up the walls. Vampires, devils, and a sexy Magna

Carta were tearing up the small square of carpet that passed for a dancefloor. He made a half-hearted effort to join in, but

he was too hot in his jumper, and, more importantly, his brain was on fire. He pushed his way out of the bar and stood at

the side of the court, staring up at the slender moon. His soul itched with impatience to fast-forward the present and land

cleanly in the future.

Someone collided with his shoulder. Rob, sweaty and euphoric, surrounded by a gang of their friends. “Greeney! You’re coming

to the Kambar. No arguments.”

The Kambar was the least terrible of Cambridge’s collection of terrible clubs, in that it played indie instead of endless

loops of “Build Me Up Buttercup,” and also had beanbags. Joe tailed Rob and his friends up Bene’t Street, lagging farther

and farther behind until he was alone. Laughter drifted back to him like radio signals from a distant planet. He visualised

the next few hours: going through the motions of enjoying a night out, pretending to exist in the moment when his entire being

was straining beyond it.

He turned towards the market square. The street seemed to stretch out forever, the roof of the Guildhall pointing the way to infinity. Outside the Cambridge Arts Theatre, a group of girls stood in a circle, hugging themselves against the cold. One of them was dressed as an angel. She wore a white silk gown, and a tinsel halo nestled in her dark curls. She laughed at something he couldn’t hear, then stared away over her friends’ shoulders, like she was looking through the present to see what was on the other side.

“Greeney!” Rob yelled. “Come on!”

The girl was swaying, her gown shadowing the impossibly graceful movement of her body. Something about her was intensely familiar.

He stepped closer, trying to work out where he knew her from. Not college; not a seminar; not the awkward charity blind date

that had ended with him and his match agreeing she should get back together with her boyfriend. No, what he felt when he looked

at this girl was both more distant and more intimate, as though they had spent lifetimes together in a dream.

She turned her head, looking up at the moon. For an instant, her profile was caught in a streetlight. His heart did a somersault.

“Greeney!” Rob had been shouting for a while. “Last chance, or we’re leaving you behind!”

Joe didn’t answer, because he had just realised the girl was Diana.