It was a quarter past one in the morning and Derek was leading me down a long country lane toward a small town nestled in the valley bottom. The year was 2150, Derek had told me, and the first thing that you notice about 2150, on a cloudless night such as this, is that at 01:15 in the morning, its not completely dark. Its not bright, like at daytime, but its much lighter than a full moon. Enough to make out the details of the land, buildings, trees, pylons etc, but the sky was a deep dark blue, and the brightest of the stars shone through, along with everything else in that night sky that I’d never seen before.
‘See those bright lights up there?’ Derek said, pointing to about twenty or so over sized stars in the sky above. ‘Mirrors‘
‘Mirrors?‘ I said.
‘Mirrors, in space‘ he explained. ‘The sky is full of mirrors here. They channel sunlight, control the weather, and keep the nights warm and bright‘
‘Twenty four hours of sunlight‘ I said, ‘That’s got to be bad for the wildlife‘
‘Well its not good‘ he said, ‘but aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?’
I’d been asking Derek all week where our next adventure would take us and he’d been deliberately evasive every time so naturally I stopped asking. Our next what? Or oh, you’ll see, or who can tell, he’d say. I often thought that Derek would benefit from a punch in the gob, not that I could administer it though. I hadn’t hit out at anyone in over thirty years, and she went and told the teacher on me, besides, without Derek and his mysterious means, how else would I grice in the fourth dimension?
We continued our descent toward the town, following the winding narrow lane, skirting the edge of a large forest that had so far blocked much of our view. Now, as the road began to turn, we rounded the high tree line and could see where we were really headed. Beyond the small town that we were walking toward was a large body of water and an enormous structure spanning it, out to the horizon and disappearing in to the twilight haze and beyond the curvature of the earth.
‘Where are we Derek?‘
‘That,’ Said Derek, pointing to the town below, ‘is Portpatrick, and that…‘
‘Is a bridge to Ireland‘ I said, interrupting him, ‘They did it then, they actually built a bridge to Ireland?’
Derek chortled at me, but I was too busy taking in the view to bite. This was probably the largest structure that I had ever seen. The bridge deck was low toward the shore, but it rose steadily and became a series of cable stayed bridges crossing the open water. The bridge was lit by white street lamps and road traffic was clearly visible by the headlights and tail lights moving at speed. One hundred and thirty years in to future and our love of cars showed no sign of ending.
‘Its Twenty One Fifty‘ Derek said, ‘There are lots of bridges to Ireland…‘
‘And what about the track gauge?‘
‘Its Twenty One Fifty, track gauge isn’t a problem‘
‘Can we cross it?‘ I said, ‘On a train?‘
‘Of course‘ he said, ‘why else do you think we’d be here?’
‘Awesome!‘ I said, ‘But won’t I need a passport or something?’
‘Its Twenty One Fifty‘ Derek said, for the third time, ‘We don’t need passports.’
Another thing I noticed about this future sky was the number of things in it that weren’t stars. Drones, I assumed, and airliners, satellites. Maybe even star ships. A lot could have happened in a hundred and thirty years.
‘STOP RIGHT THERE!‘ An angry man’s voice with a Scottish accent called up the road from a blockade ahead of us. We’d been so busy looking at the bridge and the sky that we hadn’t noticed the heavily guarded check point up ahead of us. ‘STOP!‘
Then there was gun fire. Warning shots I imagine, they didn’t look like the type of shooters that would miss. It all looked very formal and sincere. Instinctively, we both ran to the edge of the road and threw ourselves over the low dry stone wall and in to the forest.
With our backs against the wall for cover, we felt the bullets hitting the other side of the wall, ricocheting in all directions, whizzing over our heads and snapping at leaves and branches mere inches away. Tree debris rained down on us.
‘They’re shooting at us Derek!‘ I had to shout over the sound of gun shot and the stones being gunned behind us. It was only a matter of time before the armed guard was upon us, wanting an explanation that we couldn’t possibly give.
‘Its Twenty One Fifty!‘ Derek said, ‘There’s a bit of a war on‘
‘A bit of a war? Did you not think about that before we got here?‘ I began picturing a white circle drawn around Derek’s mouth, with concentric red circles and a red dot in the middle, a target, right on the kisser.
Derek fumbled with his mysterious device, manipulating its unfathomable functions to zap us out of this time and place, all the while being extra certain that I didn’t get a good look at it. Even now, under machine gun fire and almost certain imminent death, he shielded his precious device from my prying eyes.
‘I forgot about the war‘ he said, ‘I can’t remember everything. I keep telling you, I don’t do politics‘
Then there was the flash of light. I was starting to get used to it, but I still felt scrambled. The sound of guns still rang loud in my ears, and my eyes were blinded by the sudden daylight; they would take a moment to adjust. The damp cold forest floor, and the hard stone of the wall had been replaced by something softer, warmer, but no less damp.
I heard laughter. Figures were beginning to resolve themselves in my vision. We were being pointed at, sneered at, jeered at. We were sat in manure.
Actually, that word, manure, accurate as it was, just doesn’t quite do it justice. We we stuck in a huge pile of steaming horse shit and the passersby were laughing at us. And now that my eyes were recovering, I could see that these folk were in period dress. Nineteenth century, I guessed.
‘Where are we Derek?‘ I said, ‘Not in some other bloody war I hope.’
The people around us had northern accents and were dressed in a mixture of styles both elegant and pauper. No one seemed to be carrying a gun though, and if anything, there was a buzz of excitement in the air.
‘Two minutes‘ Derek said, ‘I’m just resetting the chronometrics…’
‘Take your time‘ I told him, and I stood up to get a better look over the heads of the people walking by. I knew that I could work it out from the scenery, in particular, the big sign by the road. ‘We’ve hit the big one Derek!’ I shrieked excitedly. The rush of being shot and the euphoria of then not being shot at, got the best of me, for the briefest of moments.
The large crowd of people were hurriedly making their way down the cinder path toward a wooden frame fence decorated with bunting. To the left of the opening was a large sign, and in big red letters, the word ‘Parkside Station, Grand Opening.’
If I knew my history, and until I started travelling with Derek, I really thought that I did, then today was the 15th September 1830, and beyond that fence, crowds were gathering to see the world’s first passenger trains. All children are taught about the Rocket, the little yellow wooden steam engine that became the worlds first passenger loco, and I’ve seen it at the museum in York, I’ve even traveled behind a replica of it. But this is the actual real deal, if I knew my history.
‘Its the Opening Derek, the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway! How exciting is that?‘
‘Not very exciting at all if I’m perfectly honest with you‘ he said, carefully putting his mysterious device in to his satchel.
‘What?!‘ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For a trainspotter like Derek, this should be like a Christian sneaking in to that stable in Bethlehem or something.
‘Well, they’re not proper trains are they? ‘ He said. ‘Not very sophisticated, just wood and pipes, and bits that break. They don’t even have whistles, or numbers, you do know its all about the numbers‘.
Duggan's Dig 
Leave a comment