Chapter 3

The Historian

Wilbur led the way along the verandah and side of the house into the front yard. It was small but with a dense native garden. After we moved through an empty carport onto the footpath, I was struck by a sudden thought. “Aren’t you going to lock up?” I asked.

Wilbur kept walking but turned to give me a quizzical look. “Why would I do that?”

I was ready to make the obvious reply, when I decided I’d had enough obfuscation for one day. Rather than have to deal with some new piece of information probably intended to further unsettle me, I shrugged my shoulders and walked in silence next to Wilbur for the rest of the journey.

It made no difference—I could not avoid being further unsettled. We turned into two other streets along the way but they were all the same: not what I was used to. Sure, there was the usual arrangement of houses, paved roads, footpaths, gutters, kerbs, gardens, even the odd fence, but that was about where the similarities ended.

On generous blocks, separated almost always by screening hedges not fences, houses were made of mud-brick, ordinary brick, concrete, several of rendered straw, but none of timber. All had very modern but unorthodox architecture, full of passive solar efficiencies, with large north-facing windows. A surprisingly large number had stained-glass front doors. In several yards, water tanks could be glimpsed behind large bushes, fed by downpipes from roof gutters. Better hidden tanks were probably on nearly all other houses, judging by the arrangements of most gutters and downpipes. I saw no power lines, although that didn’t surprise me—increasingly, new estates were putting them underground.

Notably absent was the gratuitous over-the-top obsession of recent years with expansive double-storey indulgence. Most houses were modest single-storeys, and yet none looked cramped. Even more strikingly, while each house had its own identity, choice of colours, and idiosyncrasies of style, somehow they managed to harmonise, again in contrast to the often glaring contrasts that corrupted most suburbs. Urban character guidelines might have been in force for some time at home but usually they could not contend with the accumulated visual pollution of previous generations, or even the varying tastes of new home builders. Here, however, it was as if the entire neighbourhood had been designed carefully and built as a single entity, guided by a strong sense of urban aesthetics and visual harmony, yet somehow avoiding sterility and artificiality.

All of which further begged the question: where the hell was I? If this was the city of Chord, why had I never heard of it? It was certainly unusual enough to have attracted attention. Unless it was a classified military installation engaged in top secret research. If so, I saw no uniforms.

My sense of discomfort only mounted when I noticed a car. All houses had carports (but no garages)—some apparently joined to that of an adjacent house, others separated from, but side by side with, their neighbour’s—but most were empty of cars. The first one I saw was utterly unfamiliar, like no make or model I’d ever seen. Relatively small, though big enough to seat five, it was even lower to the ground than a sports car. Its lines were smooth and curved, unfashionably so given recent trends, but distorted compared to older models. Its wheels were almost completely hidden by long pointed front ends and equally long but blunter boots. Overall, its contours reminded me more than anything else of the Concorde jet. Completely missing were the exhaust pipe, and manufacturer logos and labels.

I stopped walking and turned to Wilbur, ready to hit him with questions. Then I saw another car, identical to the first except for its colour, approaching rather slowly along the road. As it drove past, there was a slight dull noise from air resistance, but whatever powered it was all but silent. I decided to follow suit: to avoid any further disorientation, I kept to myself the questions tossing in my head, and resumed walking. Soon, I noticed more of these baffling cars parked under other carports, and in the street. Apart from being in various colours—across the spectrum but always dark, with no pastels or muted shades—they differed in only one way as far as I could tell: as well as the five-seater I first saw, there were smaller two-seater versions. But they were much less than ubiquitous: rather than the standard two-car family, there looked to be no more than one car every five or so houses.

Where the hell was I?

It looked eco-friendly enough to have given Yvette a wet dream. Her phrase for it, I’m sure, would have been ‘visionary’. But where was it? The topography was not exactly flat, but neither was it as hilly as home. It was nowhere near home, I was sure of that, if nothing else. There was no way I could have overlooked a place like this in the vicinity, not after having lived where we had for almost a decade.

Wilbur and I continued along the shady footpath, my mind in uproar. I grappled for explanations, but quickly rejected each desperate idea. An elaborate set for a new big budget film? Too large, surely. The world’s biggest and most secret timeshare resort? No sign of a beach. A secret enclave of a maverick group of environmentalist millionaires? Or organised crime barons? Cars and houses weren’t ostentatious enough.

Soon I saw several people riding bicycles on the road, and several others walking ahead of us, some approaching. One young woman, pushing a pram, her face shaded by a wide cane hat, smiled when she drew near and, looking straight at me, said “Hello, Ernest.” By now starting to get used to the name, I was able to put aside my momentary shock quickly enough to return a stuttered “hello”. “Beautiful day,” she added as she passed, to which all I could think to respond was a feeble “yes”. Two other people made similar greetings to both Wilbur and I before we reached our destination.

“Here we are,” said Wilbur, stopping at the fenceless border of one typical mud-brick house. Perhaps I was growing paranoid, but I thought he was watching me very carefully despite affecting an air of casualness. He gestured to me to walk ahead of him along the short path to the front door, and I did so, warily. I was suddenly aware that, like every other house we’d passed, there was no lawn. Nor had I seen any in Wilbur’s back yard, nor even on the nature strips which were invariably native grasses mixed with small shrubs and ground covers. Small sections of many gardens resembled lawns, but even my untrained eye could tell they actually consisted of low, usually mossy, ground covers. Not many mower retailers round here, I decided.

When I stopped in front of the door, I waited for Wilbur to indicate what next. Without removing his gaze from me, he opened the apparently unlocked door, and gestured for me to enter. Trusting neighbourhood this one, I thought, as I warily stepped inside. Could it all be a clandestine project of some religious sect? No, Wilbur didn’t smell of incense, or mention deities, prophets or sacred texts every other sentence.

I stopped in the entrance, looked about me, and asked, “Are we meeting someone here?”

“In a manner of speaking perhaps. Why don’t you just have a look round?”

Wilbur silently followed every step I took through the house. It had a different layout of rooms to his house, and a considerable art collection—not just paintings but also abstract sculptures and mobiles. But what struck me most was the dishevelled state of the furniture, and an overall untidiness. Unwashed dishes were strewn throughout the kitchen, some still containing leftover food. A few plates in similar states in the living room kept company with many books and an e-reader left presumably where they’d last been used. There were a lot of books in the house—one whole wall in what looked to be a study was full of shelves overflowing with them. The few titles I noticed all concerned history. Only the second bedroom was orderly, an apparent sign of its disuse. The floor of the main bedroom, by comparison, was littered with several items of clothing. The wardrobe was wide open, revealing clothes similar to the atrocities I was wearing, and equally as colourful, spilling over shelves and each other. I could not make up my mind whether the owner was simply untidy or if the house had been ransacked.

“Well,” I finally said, returning to the main living area, “what is it you thought I’d find of use here? A spare set of clothes?” When Wilbur did not answer, I pushed on. “Whose house is it, anyway?”

“It’s yours,” said Wilbur, his eyes fixed on me, it seemed at the time like a fox on its prey.

“Really? You shouldn’t have.” Sarcasm seeped from my voice. “How generous of you.”

“You’ve lived here for, I think, five years,” said Wilbur, unperturbed by my reaction.

“Think again,” I retorted.

“Have a closer look at the house, it may jog your memory.”

“It would need more than a jog.”

“Perhaps a marathon then.”

“You can’t expect me to remember somewhere I’ve never been.”

“Have a look anyway. Humour me.”

“Why not,” I sighed. “If it gets you off my back.”

I returned to the study, wandered over to the bookshelves again, and reaffirmed that the books were mostly historical non-fiction. One shelf was devoted to novels, many science-fiction, several in my own modest collection, others by well-known living authors but with unfamiliar titles, others by authors whose names I did not recognise. Was I so out of touch?

“So,” I said, as I returned to the living room and continued my inspection, “am I supposed to live here alone or am I married?”

“You live alone—have for two years, since your divorce.”

That surprised me. I turned to face him. “Divorced, huh? Any children.”

It was Wilbur’s turn to be surprised, for some unfathomable reason, although he quickly recovered with a quiet “no”.

I resumed my browsing. As at Wilbur’s place, a recharger was attached to a wall, but here, a phone—identical to the mini-monolith he had used—was sitting in it. My suspicions mounted. “Mine, no doubt?” I said, with sarcasm as obvious as a Sumo wrestler’s waistline.

“Of course,” he replied.

“And yet it’s clearly a mobile device. How come I didn’t have it on me when I was deposited on your doorstep?”

Any hopes of trapping him quickly vanished. He reacted with a hint of a smile. “No pockets. Remember?”

With embarrassment, I recalled being naked on my bush trek. My suspicions eased back to their previous level, merely extreme.

“Besides,” continued Wilbur, “you have a notorious reputation for leaving your Babel behind when you go out.”

“My bible?!” O no, I thought, this is an enclave of religious fundamentalists.

“No,” he said, his expression fixed, before gesturing to the phone and enunciating more carefully. “Babel.”

I said nothing, just gave a suspicious nod, and moved to a small set of shelves devoted to miniature art objects and mementoes. On one shelf, prominently displayed: a large framed photo of a couple perhaps in their late fifties. Though they evoked memories of my parents, I did not recognise them. “Who are they supposed to be?” I said indicating the photo. “Mum and Dad?”

“Yes,” he said, with a suddenly lighter tone. “Is it starting to come back?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve never seen them before in my life. Just an educated guess on my part, based on their age.” Gaining no apparent reaction from him, I browsed further along the shelf. I saw nothing of note until I noticed a peculiar, transparent, hard plastic statuette shaped like a small pick axe, fixed to the top of a long rectangular column. Beneath it, an inscription: ‘To Ernest d’Alembert, in recognition of invaluable and original research. Australian Historical Society’. Next to it: a framed copy of the front page of a newspaper, ‘The Chord Times’. Beneath its prominent headline, ‘Local wins award’: a photo of two men shaking hands, smiling for the camera, one handing the other a statuette identical to the one on the shelf next to the photo. The man receiving the award wore the same jumper I was wearing.

More shockingly, he looked exactly like me.

I’m sure my heart skipped a beat. Just the same, I wasn’t going to accept this at face value. “Do you really expect me to believe this? Anyone with a computer could have cobbled it together. Whoever received this award was not me.”

“You don’t remember?” said Wilbur, somewhat sheepishly I thought.

“Of course not. Not the award, not the presenter, not the location. Hardly surprising, since it never happened.”

“But it did,” said Wilbur, walking closer and pointing at the photo. “I was there. This is you. There’s your name.”

I looked at the caption, but read only as far as ‘local historian, Ernest d’Alembert’.

“I’m not an historian,” I said. “I’m a bank manager.”

To my surprise, Wilbur cut short a derisive laugh, oddly shrill and, to my ears, not altogether sincere. Then, almost with embarrassment, he said, “A what?”

“A bank manager!”

Now clearly worried and quizzical, Wilbur started shaking his head.

But I cut in, pointing at the photo. “This isn’t me, I’m telling you.”

“It is you,” he replied. “It happened only last month.”

I said nothing but looked back at the photo, trying to think of a more caustic denial. Inadvertently, I noticed the newspaper’s date: August 18, 2070.

“Hell of a misprint,” I said. “You’d think they’d have picked that up.”

“Picked what up.”

“The seven!” I said peevishly, pointing at the printed year.

Wilbur glanced at it quickly, before responding. “It’s not a misprint,” he said, quietly.

I snorted derisively until I realised Wilbur was serious—his face was filled with unmasked concern. “So you’re telling me,” I scorned, “this is the year twenty seventy?”

“Yes,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Of course it is. What year do you think it is?”

“Twenty thirty. Of course.”

He did not reply, but I thought I saw a shimmer of uncertainty rapidly cross his face.

“O come on!” I began.

Suddenly, I was hit by an impossible realisation. An unbidden profanity leapt from my lips only to fall quickly onto jagged rocks…

Odd clothes, quiet peculiar cars, unknown city and region names, unfamiliar architecture and town planning, even Wilbur’s damned kettle, and his ignorance of Melbourne and Victoria. All this, and more, fitted. It made sense…

Somehow I had been transported forty years into the future.