Chapter 9

In the Puddle

My doubt and suspicion vanished at once. I felt vindicated. And relieved beyond measure. If there was any conspiracy, it was less than exhaustive. “I knew it. This proves I’m not Ernest.”

Wilbur, poker face undisturbed, said, “Are you sure, Toby?”

“Well, I… Yes. I mean, as sure as I can be. The test is not foolproof, though.” He smiled thinly, as if finding an obviously weak source of renewed hope. “Perhaps I should take another sample to confirm it.”

I agreed to this, now feeling no doubt the result would be identical. We went through the motions again in complete silence. Toby was apparently too surprised to talk, Wilbur perhaps likewise, and I so relieved and vindicated that I felt anything I said would sound unbearably smug.

“Same result,” said Toby, finally, staring at the spectrometer’s display, his face awash with confusion. “There’s no trace of it in your blood.” He looked at me. “I don’t understand this at all. I mean, I know you were injected with it last week – I did it myself. It should be there.” He took a stethoscope and put it to my chest, his expression almost immediately more doubtful. “Are you on any other medication?”

“No. Is there something wrong?”

“Yes, and no. I mean, your heart beat is a little stronger and slower than usual – healthier. More than can be explained by the medication. If you had it, that is.” His expression firmed, as if making a last ditch effort to reassert what he thought he knew. “Which you must.”

“Is your spectrometer reliable?” Wilbur asked Toby.

“Yes,” he replied. “Well, I mean, it always has been. But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps we should conduct the same test with another spectrometer. A full-scale version. The one at the hospital.” He extracted a babel from a pocket, and made a call.

“I hope I still have some blood left when you finally convince yourself.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, nor Wilbur who looked lost in thought. Clearly, the boot was on the other foot. Now it was they who had to grapple with uncertain possibilities about my identity.

“One o’clock, Saturday,” announced Toby at the end of his call. “The day after tomorrow,” he added, after my expression must have conveyed to him I had no idea what day of the week it was.

“Whereabouts?” I asked.

“At the hospital,” he replied. “Where you had the other tests, Ernest.”

“Where Ernest had them,” I said. “But where is that exactly?”

Dourly, he opened a desk drawer and handed me a hospital’s business card.

The tide was turning. The dream at last was giving me a chance to prove my identity. In the strongest possible terms, by empirical scientific tests. How convoluted it all was, to need future science to prove I was me! What was the point of this outrageous dream? A remedy for an unrecognised identity crisis? Or perhaps one for something more physical? Here I was, I realised, in a doctor’s office of forty years in the future, and what had been troubling me more than anything else in the days before this dream started?

“As long as I’m here, Toby,” I said, “would you mind giving me your opinion about my condition? The chest pains I’ve been having?”

As if distracted by unvoiced thoughts, Toby did not respond at first. “The diagnosis you claim you were given seems sound enough. It may be heart trouble.” An abrupt mocking laugh and shake of the head. “Maybe even what I thought I’d treated you for, though I doubt it. More likely entirely different, maybe muscular pains and cramps brought on by sudden activity, or some psychosomatic trigger.”

“Is there any way of deciding which?” I asked.

“Yes. I’ve already given you the test.”

“You may have already given it to Ernest, but not to me.”

Doubts visibly renewed, he stood. “Would you mind taking off your shirt, please?” He extracted an object from a high shelf: it was a rectangle a few centimetres wide, flat, black, made of a flexible plastic, with no visible features. He removed from it two protective covers of adhesive strips and fixed it to my chest above the heart, its shape adjusting to my contours. “You should keep this on at all times until you next have a chest pain, then see me immediately. It’s waterproof, so keep it on even when you shower.” He stopped momentarily in his tracks. “I’ll call the hospital later to schedule some additional tests, for your heart. How are your toes?”

I’d completely forgotten about them in the recent excitement – now they barely bothered me, though their black and swollen appearance prompted me to walk with caution, and shoeless.

As I hobbled out of the room, I began to wonder when Toby was going to give me the bill. “I haven’t any money, you know,” I said, “what with me just arriving from the past and all.”

Perplexed looks later, Toby explained there was nothing to pay. “All health care is free.”

On the point of asking how this could be, I decided not to cloud my little victory with another economics treatise. Not yet at least.

Wilbur drove me to Ernest’s home, and insisted on making sure I was comfortable. Appreciative of his concern, in the best mood I’d been in since the dream began, I offered him a drink. Wilbur agreed, taciturn as ever.

“Cheer up,” I said, as he cautiously sipped his tea. “We’re all wrong sometimes.”

“I’m not at all sure I am wrong.”

“You still insist I’m Ernest? Despite Toby’s test?” A scornful expression. “Steven Stone,” I said with heavy punctuation. “Get used to the name. The day after tomorrow, you’ll have the proof – beyond doubt.”

“Yes, one way or the other.” He sipped further. “The proof, as they say, is in the puddle.”

“You mean the pudding.”

“Pudding? In a puddle?!”

“No, you’ve remembered only half of it – it’s in the eating.”

“A pudding is in the eating?! Or a puddle is in—”

“The proof of the pudding is— o, never mind.” I sighed, slowly, loudly. “Tell me Wilbur, if the next tests also show Ernest’s medication isn’t in my blood, will you believe me then? Or will you require further proof? Like fingerprints?”

Wilbur almost choked on his drink, a reaction that made me jolt with sudden understanding. “Of course,” I said, “Ernest’s fingerprints couldn’t be the same as mine, could they? That would be a simple proof.”

Without a word or gesture, Wilbur put his drink down, stood, moved to the study, and made a quick flurry of motions at Ernest’s computer that resulted in a website with a prominent heading: Citizens’ Database.

“This is what we’re after,” said Wilbur. He explained how the website accessed a database about residents, including identity records taken soon after birth: retinal scans, DNA samples, and fingerprints. Before I could yell ‘big brother’, he added that each person determined how much of the information they made available online. The rest remained confidential.

“You type in a name and birth date here,” said Wilbur, standing to let me take over the keyboard, “and it comes back with whatever information that person allows.”

Without hesitation, I sat and quickly typed in my name and birthday.

“For your own record,” continued Wilbur, “accessed from your own computer, that should be everything. Wait on! You’ll need to type in Ernest’s details if this is to work.”

Of course! But it was too late. I had already hit the ‘Enter’ key. Before I could hit ‘Stop’, the screen was replaced with a list of personal details, most of which matched my own to the letter. “That’s me, all right,” I said, scrolling down and glancing over them.

“But this is for someone who’s almost eighty years old!” said Wilbur, now undeniably confused. “And lives on the other side of the region.” He pointed at an address. “At Wunsa Pond.”

The name prompted an alarm bell to erupt in my head. When I made my futile attempt just that morning to contact Yvette, one of the two phone numbers for her name was in Wunsa Pond. And an elderly, vaguely familiar voice had answered. Who had I spoken to?

With sudden resolve, Wilbur leant forward and tapped one of the screen icons. “That should bring up personal photographs. If this Stone has agreed to make any available.”

The screen abruptly filled with photographs of myself at many ages. I scrolled, from one of my earliest baby shots to one Yvette took on our last vacation.

“But…” began Wilbur, staring at the screen, pointing at one of the more recent snaps. “But that’s Ernest!” His poker face was lost now, surprise writ large.

“No, it’s me all right. This life I remember.”

“Your appearances are identical,” said Wilbur, shock subduing.

I scrolled down to more photos: me, or someone who looked just like me, into and beyond my forties, to old age. An eerie experience seeing my future selves. It was some time before I remembered to remind myself that it was all just a dream.

Then, with a jolt, I realised. The call I made to the Wunsa Pond Stones! I might have been able to have spoken to Yvette after all, or at least to an older version of her. And that vaguely familiar voice of her husband – it must have been my own! I had spoken to myself – an older version.

In a dream, I reminded myself, anything is possible.

“It can’t be you,” said Wilbur.

“It is. Maybe I look just like Ernest – that’s not beyond the realms of possibility – but this is me all right. I remember every photo – the first forty years at least. The rest, obviously not.”

“But it can’t be you,” said Wilbur.

“It is,” I said. Inspired, I keyed a return to the previous screen which showed my personal details. Turning my back to the computer, I said, “Test me. I’ll tell you everything on the screen.”

Wilbur seemed hesitant, but soon said, “What’s your second child’s full name and birth date?”

“Sylvia Lauren. May 17, 2022.”

I could not see Wilbur, but his silence spoke for itself. He repeated the question for Yvette, then my son Godfred. I gave the correct answers – as I did for subsequent questions about parents, marriage date, schooling, employment, career, shoe size, birthmarks, favourite shower arias…

“Convinced yet?” I asked after answering what must have been about the twentieth question.

“No,” he replied, with an atypical edge of desperation to his voice. “You may still be Ernest. Perhaps, at some stage, you accidentally stumbled across these records during research. You’d have been sure to notice how physically alike you and this Stone are, and that might have prompted you to examine him in detail. Maybe you remembered his details, perhaps subconsciously, so that when you were bumped on the head, memories of Stone’s life surfaced as a false identity.”

“And did the bump on my head remove all of Ernest’s medication from my system too?”

After a perplexed hesitation, Wilbur replied, “Toby’s tests weren’t completely conclusive.”

“Not about the medication perhaps, though you and he seem to be clutching at straws on that one, but Toby seemed quite sure about the state of my heart. If I’m really Ernest, how could my heartbeat be stronger and slower than it should be?”

“I don’t know. But if you’re not Ernest…” He pointed at the computer screen. “…how can you be Stone? You’re half his age, and he’s somewhere else.”

“And I’m somewhen else. I told you, I belong in 2025.” I pointed at the screen. “This is clearly me forty years in my future. As far as this dream goes, I have travelled in time.”

“And if it isn’t a dream?”

I returned his steady gaze, snorted a derisive laugh. “It must be.”

He smiled grimly. “I might not be able to prove it to you – yet – but I know this is not a dream. And I would much rather believe you’re Ernest with some unexplained improvement to your health, than a time travelling younger version of Steven Stone, somehow turning up just when Ernest has disappeared.”

“I can prove I’m Steven Stone,” I said, turning my attention to the computer. “How do I call up my fingerprints?”

Wilbur tapped a menu: it listed the information viewable, not a fingerprint in sight. “You can’t,” said Wilbur. “Not from this computer. Not unless you know your older self’s logon code.”

After a moment’s frustration, I settled for a lesser proof. “Well, I can prove I’m not Ernest at least.” I was familiar enough with the browser to quickly return to the main screen, on which I started entering Ernest’s details. “What’s his middle name, do you know?”

“Albert.”

“And his birth date?”

“September 28, 2025.”

I typed it in, and pressed ‘Enter’, just as I realised: “That was the day I fell asleep and this dream started. So, he’s forty years old, is he?”

Hesitant pause. “In less than two weeks.”

I laughed abruptly. “Me too. This dream thinks of everything.”

Wilbur’s expression suffered a sudden queer flicker, just as the computer screen flashed up a list of Ernest’s personal details.

“Where’s his fingerprints?” I asked, growing impatient when they were not immediately visible.

Wilbur leaned forward and tapped an unfamiliar icon on the screen. A new page came up almost instantly: larger than life, it showed the thumbprint of the man everyone thought I was. I held my own thumb up and compared it.

It was silent in the room for some moments.

“I told you.”

“This cannot be.”

“It must. They’re clearly different. Now will you believe I’m not Ernest?”

Wilbur put a hand to his face and rubbed one side up and down repeatedly, staring at the screen. “It must be a mistake. The database must have switched your records and Stone’s.” Then he froze for a few moments, before leaning over me to tap a few keys. My screen – the one for Steven Stone – returned. Wilbur immediately took his babel from his pocket, and with one eye on the screen, the other on the babel, he tapped a number – the one displayed for my older self. “Why not get it from the horse’s mouth?” said Wilbur. “Dream or not, if you have time travelled, you must have returned to 2025 in order for you to be still around now as an eighty-year-old. In which case, the eighty-year-old would be able to verify it.”

“Unless the eighty-year-old has dementia,” I said. “Or Alzheimer’s. Or just a bad memory.” My memory. “Maybe he has amnesia. Though it would have to be pretty bad to forget a time trip.”

“Hello, my name is Wilbur Edmonds. Could I speak with Steven Stone, please…” Wilbur’s eyes briefly widened, rapidly blinked, then regained their more typical composure. “Oh… Oh… Yes… No… Yes… All right, thank you.” He ended the call, and looked steadfastly at me.

“You didn’t ask him?!” I said.

“That was his house sitter. Stone and his wife left this morning for a holiday in the Congo. They’ll be out of contact until they return, in a month.”

“You’re joking.” I felt suddenly deflated. “Hasn’t hi tech communication reached the Congo yet? I can’t believe there isn’t some way to contact him. To contact me.”

“It could be done in an emergency. The Congo is not lacking in communication, but the holiday the Stones have taken is deliberately far removed from civilisation. There are still many spots like it left in the world, and some people really crave them.”

“Yvette’s choice, probably,” I muttered. Wilbur’s expression demonstrated a lack of understanding. “My wife. She loves nature, the more unspoilt the better. Damn! And I only spoke with him this morning and didn’t even realise it.”

“Huh?”

I explained my earlier phone call. Wilbur nodded, though his mind seemed to be elsewhere. “It may be for the best that Stone is away,” he finally said. “I have to concede I’m no longer sure you really are Ernest. But if you’re telling the truth, if you are really from the past, then who knows what would eventuate were you to come into close proximity with your older self.”

“We’d annihilate each other in a great pyrotechnic display. According to a lot of sci-fi at least.”

“Perhaps.”

“Wait on. There’s another standard sci-fi theme. When I return to my own time, I’ll know about the future. And the actions I take with that knowledge could alter the future – your past. I could corrupt the timeline. Right?”

“Pure speculation,” said Wilbur, forcefully. His expression, however, suggested he hadn’t convinced even himself; his meeker addendum confirmed it. “But possibly.”