The Accidental Time Travellers

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The next morning Jack lay in bed thinking. It was still early, and Jess and his parents were unlikely to be awake yet anyway, but he hoped he would be left in peace for most of the morning.

He was rather excited about his time machine, although he really didn’t know why. After all, it was only make-believe.

But there was something in the back of his mind that kept telling him that this might just work, if only he could work out how to connect the clock to the other bits.

As he often did while he was thinking, he started playing with his penknife, mindlessly opening and closing the blade. If nothing else, it was a good tool for cleaning under his fingernails, and with all the building he’d been doing this week they certainly needed it.

His mind drifted from how he was going to solve his clock problem to what he would do if it all came together and worked. He knew there would be responsibilities, not least of which would be making sure he didn’t change history. As Back to the Future had shown, just the slightest act outside of what had really happened could change the whole course of events, and could potentially mean that he was never born in the first place. Then what would happen?

If he went back and changed history so that he was not born, then he wouldn’t be able to go back and cause the event that changed history, meaning that he would still have been born and be able to go back and change history.

It was even more confusing than the offside rule.

He was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The alarm clock was sitting on the floor next to the equalizer. He got out of bed and went and picked it up. Turning it over, he saw two screws that held the cover on. It was times like this that he was happy to have his penknife, as it made a reasonably good screwdriver, and saved him having to go and find one downstairs.

Jack was no expert in electronics, but the wiring looked pretty basic. Basic enough, anyway for him to run some wire from the back of the display screen. At the other end of the wire was a plug, which was inserted into one of the sockets on the back of the equalizer. This in turn was connected to the amplifier, to which he had attached the speakers he had found in the garage.

And all of this was being run from the car battery, via the inverter. It was a mad scientist’s dream contraption. If only he could have made toast with it as well.

The thought of toast made him feel hungry, so he abandoned his science project, as he believed the Americans would call it, and went downstairs for some breakfast. He had obviously been working on his project for longer than he thought, because all three of the rest of his family were sat round the kitchen table eating breakfast.

“Morning, Jack,” said his mother, cheerily. “Sleep well?”

“Yes, thanks Mum,” he replied, sitting down at the table.

“What would you like, toast or cereal?”

“Toast please, Mum. Hey, Jess, I’ve managed to get the alarm clock connected to the equalizer. It’s all linked together now.”

His dad looked up from reading the Mail on Sunday. “Equalizer? What equalizer.”

Oh dear, He’d forgotten that his dad didn’t know that he’d taken some of his things. Now he’d have to be careful not to lose it all.

“Oh, sorry Dad, didn’t let you know. I’m building a time machine. I found some of your old hi-fi stuff in the shed and thought I’d borrow it for a bit. That’s OK, isn’t it?”