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Volume 1
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October 27, 2008
August 3, 2008
A sharp contraction of terror gripped Sam Fitzpatrick’s bowel as the hollow tube swung the other way, its thick electrical cable was torn from his grasp and he was hurled out of the tube, his suit jacket flapping against his body like slow hand-claps. So it was true. Time really does seem to slow down when your life is at stake. Coloured raindrops stung his face one at a time like a swarm of lazy wasps as he tried to stop himself shitting his pants.
The rain sprayed from a dense spiders web of pipes surrounding him. The pipes appeared to be transparent for he could see the coloured raindrops moving along inside them. As he spun slowly through the air he saw the web curving away into the distance like a thick blanket surrounding the planet. Sam’s incontinence problem got worse as his field of vision moved and he saw how high he was. The pink planet was so far away it looked as smooth as a billiard ball. The thick legs supporting the spiders web seemed to dwindle away to nothing as they ran down to it.
Sam kept spinning and something else came into view, a long white oval shape floating in the air below him like an airship. Two human-looking arms and legs stuck out sideways from its long curving flanks. One of the hands was holding the tube he had been hiding in. Sam saw the hand swing the tube and smash it into one of the rain pipes. Fragments of broken pipe fell away towards the distant ocean in a long line of tiny sparkling dots.
Sam’s stomach heaved as gravity pulled him over the smooth apex of his flight and he began to accelerate downwards. A moment later the whole scene was lit by a white flash so bright it hurt his eyes. All the pipes surrounding the planet had lit up as if somebody had thrown a switch on an enormous neon sign. He closed his lids tight against the blinding light but still he saw every detail, black against a white background; the row of dots, the oval airship, the spiders web of pipes, the thick legs.
Then something brushed gently against Sam’s chest, he put out his arms and pushed the thing away. Whatever was touching him pressed harder against his body. It felt like a long smooth cylinder with many flat sides. It had to be one of the rain pipes. It was the wrong shape to be part of the airship. Sam made himself relax, giving himself up to it, realising that this was his only hope of salvation. He opened his eyes. The rain had stopped.
He was sliding head-first at high speed along the smooth pipe. The flash was fading from his retinas revealing a faint blue glow within the pipe beneath him. The coloured raindrops had all gone. The pipe was as transparent as blue glass. Dead ahead, about a kilometre along the pipe, was a place where dozens of other blue pipes met this one. They radiated out from a central point like a star-burst. If he fell into that junction Sam knew he was going to be crushed in the narrowing crevice between the pipes.
As he neared the junction he felt the pipe he was sliding along bend so that he began going up hill and slowing down. By the time he reached the junction he was moving very slowly. At the centre of the star-burst he saw a gap, a place where one pipe was missing. The junction appeared to be hollow. At the last moment the pipe he was on tilted over and dropped him through the gap into the hollow space. The crystal directly below him moved to break his fall. He slithered across the floor and finally came to rest against one wall.
He lay still, dazed and amazed, looking around. He was in a sort of crystal cave made from the flat ends of many transparent pipes. Through them he could see how they radiated away into the distance. Their far ends joined other pipes forming further star-burst junctions. There was just one gap in the cave high above him, the gap he had dropped through, a place where one pipe appeared to be missing. He was certain that these pipes had caught him, stopped him falling to his death and deposited him safely in this place, but how and why? But uppermost in Sam’s mind was Catriona. The last time he had seen his step-daughter she had been looking down at him from a balcony high up on the cavern wall. Was she still alive, or had she too been absorbed by the black hole?
Sam felt the wall beside his arm move away and turned to see the wall swing out, turn and move quickly back. Before he had time to move it hit the floor beside him and sliced a neat strip out of his jacket sleeve with a ringing musical chime. If his hand had been a few centimetres further along it would have been chopped off. He pulled his arm away from the wall and looked around in alarm.
All the pipes around him were moving, gently striking one another. Even the floor was rocking, lifting and falling. This motion was accompanied by more musical tones, like a child playing a glockenspiel. The wall beside him moved again, a yawning gap opened up and slammed closed. Frightened of falling through or having an arm or leg chopped away, he chose his moment and pushed himself away from the wall. The pipes’ movements were growing more violent all the time. Within a minute they were hammering into each other with the deafening clangs of cathedral bells. The floor was shaking so much that Sam was tossed about like a pea on a drum, his balding head and crumpled suit unable to stop him sliding across the smooth surface, slippery as ice, towards the edges where the walls were crashing into the floor like guillotines.
The noise from the clashing pipes was so loud that Sam hardly noticed the other noise at first, but when he did it resonated in his soul. It was a primordial blast of pure hate, the angry bellow of an insane bull, so frightful he turned his head, unable to stop himself searching for the thing that was sending out this terrible siren of disaster. The airship was bending and thrashing about franticly trying to escape from a dense net which surrounded it. The spiders web had collapsed around it and was now holding it fast. The metal tube had fallen from the airship’s hand and the little arms and legs protruding from its curving flanks were pulling and kicking the web. It was almost doubling up as it bent from side to side, twisting and distorting the net. It was this struggle, transmitted through the network of pipes, which was causing his crystal cave to shake. As the airship almost doubled up, Sam glimpsed both ends of its long white body and each was a vision of horror.
On one end was a face, huge as a monument carved into a mountain. A man’s face. A Chinese man’s face. It was unmistakably the face of Dr. Michael Zhang. Sam’s heart almost stopped when he saw it. How had Zhang’s face been blown up to such enormous proportions and fixed on the airship like the figure-head on a Viking warship? Then the airship bent the other way and the rear end of its body came into view. Sam stared at it, unable to believe his eyes. It was shaped like a pair of buttocks, human buttocks, and there was a dark dot in the cleft between them. This was not an airship, it was some sort of animal.
Disbelief turned to horror when he saw the gondola hanging below them in the shape of a man’s private parts. They were huge, much larger than the legs sticking out above, and were swinging from side to side as the airship tried to escape from the net. Sam tried to swallow down the vomit that rose in his throat but his mouth was completely dry. He watched the monster thrash about for a few more seconds, white, naked, bloated as a dead whale, its futile efforts to escape shaking even the little hollow cave in which he lay.
He looked at the monster and with an effort called ‘Stop!’ The sound came out of his dried lips as a stifled gasp. Even as he tried once more he felt the floor lift like a trampoline and he was airborne, hurtling across the cave towards one crystal wall surrounded by gaps. The noise that erupted from his throat surprised him; the visceral shriek of an animal being taken to slaughter. It echoed around the crystal cave. The monster heard him and stopped struggling. The last wave of vibration travelled across the network, the walls of the cave hammered together for the final time, the shaking ceased and silence descended, broken only by the dull thud as Sam’s head crashed into the wall, followed by the crumpled mass of his limp body. With a groan he slid down the wall, across the smooth floor and a short way up the opposite wall before falling back and gliding gently to a halt, trembling and breathless, battered and bruised, but still alive.
Then a voice like thunder rolled around inside the crystal cave. ‘Get up, Samuel!’
Sam turned his head. The distant monster was still trapped in the crystal net but it had stopped struggling.
‘I know you can hear me, Samuel. Come on, get up! I need your help and we don’t have much time. Stand up! Don’t you want to save the world?’
‘Of course I do, Dr. Zhang, but how–’
‘Do not use that name!’ A darkness suffused Michael’s gigantic face. ‘I used to be Michael Zhang, but now you will call me Lord.’
‘You? I certainly will not!’ You were odd before, Sam thought, but now you’ve gone totally insane.
Michael’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am as wise as what you would call a god. You don’t believe me? I can easily prove it. For example, I know everything about you. You are Samuel James Fitzpatrick. You were born in a labourer’s cottage on Paddy O’Hearns’ Farm at Ballycallen, near Cork, at 2:54 in the afternoon of 7th of July 1959. You were the second child of an alcoholic called James Rossiman Fitzpatrick and a depressive woman Irene Juliet Fitzpatrick, nee Blanding. Your family lived there for the first six years of your life. On August 9th, 1965…’
Sam couldn’t believe it as every detail of his past was reeled out, including many facts he didn’t even know himself but which all had the ring of truth. And when Michael described his father’s infidelity with a neighbour, a close family secret, and correctly stated the woman’s name, Sam was convinced. ‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I know everything, Samuel. Everything! The things I have told you so far are trivial. I know the deepest secrets of what man calls the Universe. Every secret that science struggled to understand has been revealed to me. Now call me Lord.’
Sam stared at Michael’s enormous face, his bloated body trapped in the crystal network, helpless, naked and obscene. How can I use such a word for such a monster? But Michael has clearly been changed physically and he certainly knows a lot about me. Who knows, perhaps he really is a god. And I haven’t got a clue what to do, so I need him as much as he seems to need me. ‘Very well,’ Sam said, ‘I will call you Lord if that’s what you want. Now tell me, Lord, is Catriona still alive?’
‘That’s one of the things I want you to find out.’
‘You mean you don’t know? I thought you knew everything?’
‘I know everything that happened in the Universe from its creation until the moment we left. I do not know–’
‘We left…’ Sam couldn’t take this in. ‘We’ve left the Universe?’
‘That is the Universe.’ Sam looked at Michael. His little arm was pointing straight down at the pink planet. ‘But I do not know what happened to it after we were sucked into the black hole.’
‘Was the Earth absorbed too?’ Sam said, afraid of the answer.
‘That’s one of the things I want you to find out. Stand up! We don’t have much time.’
Sam tried to get to his feet. Immediately he slipped and fell heavily back onto the shiny crystal floor.
‘Take your shoes and socks off,’ Michael said.
Sam removed his footwear and managed to stand.
‘Look down the middle of each crystal,’ Michael told him. ‘If the Earth is still there you should be able to see it.’
Sam chose one of the crystal walls at random and moved his head sideways, not sure where the middle of the wall was. At first he saw nothing but the long pipe tapering away into the distance. It had seven flat sides and their edges seemed to meet in a point. He moved his head so the converging lines looked symmetrical and for a moment he glimpsed a small rectangular shape floating like a ghost far down inside the pipe. Slowly he moved back and saw it again. It was only visible when one eye was in exactly the right position. It was very small, as if it was very far away. What was it?
He put his hand inside his jacket. He was surprised and somehow comforted, to feel his spectacles still safely tucked away in his shirt pocket. He put them on and saw it slightly more clearly, a blue metal cabinet with two doors, the sort you might see in a smart garage workshop, but it was still very small and very far away. At the sight of it Sam’s heart stopped beating for a second. This was beyond his wildest hopes. It obviously belonged on the Earth, not on this weird pink planet. He leaned forward, trying to get a better view, and the cabinet moved towards him so rapidly he gasped and moved back, afraid of being hit. The cabinet moved away from him. Its movement, he realised, was some sort of optical illusion. He leaned forward again and once more the cabinet moved towards him, so close that he could see marks on its doors; four deep dents, two marked with a scratch.
Eagerly he turned and looked into another crystal. Once more he moved his head so the vanishing perspective of the pipe’s edges looked symmetrical and a red metal box came into view, fixed to a white concrete wall, a cone sticking out of one end and some pipes out of the other. Sam stared at it. How could he see things which seemed so earthly when he clearly was not on the Earth? Eager to see more, Sam began looking around at the other crystal walls. In one he saw a yellow metal girder, the sort you might see a crane moving along in a warehouse. In another wall there was a red cabinet with Savox on the glass door. Another showed thick cables and a blue metal balcony. Sam’s heart soared. The last time he had seen Catriona she had been standing on a balcony, half-way up the tall cavern wall. He was leaning forward, eager to see more, when Michael’s voice boomed across the sky like a thunderclap.
‘What can you see?’
‘I can see the cavern.’
‘Call me Lord.’
‘I can see the cavern, Lord.’
‘I knew it!’ Michael’s voice was triumphant. ‘Which parts?’
Sam described each image in turn.
‘Can you see any people?’ Michael asked.
‘No, Lord.’
‘Have you looked through every crystal?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You must look into all of them. Be quick!’
Sam longed to see Catriona. If only she was alive, it would give him something to live for. Once again he began peering into the crystals, wondering why this urgency, checking them all methodically. It was after about a dozen crystals, as he was looking at a sheet of white plastic punctured by large rivets, that he heard a woman scream.
December 25, 2007
To celebrate the 1st anniversary of this blog I’ve just posted the revised version of Part 1. It can be downloaded as a pdf from here.
The work has progressed in a major way over the past 12 months. Volume 1 has been written, read and is being revised. I’ve just spent most of today sorting out the troublesome Chapter 27.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all my reader(s?).
Wyken Seagrave
Christmas Day 2007
p.s. Sorry Tehun if you’ve done lots of work on the earlier version. I’d still like to know what you thought about it.
November 1, 2007
I’m still waiting for Dr Jarrold to tend to my sick manuscript. However I’m also giving it some of my own TLC, and I’ve decided that the first 5 chapters are too bitty. At present I mix different scenes inside each of these chapters, and I think it’s too confusing. So I’ve revised it, mostly by just re-organising the existing scenes, so that each chapter focuses just on one group of characters. However for historical purposes I’ve left the old version in place. It might be of interest to students of writing one day. The versions are as follows. Right click and “Save as” to download. These are only part 1 of the story, about 1/3 of volume 1.
As work continues on this story I’ll add new editions above. The latest version will always be available at:
October 20, 2007
You can download a review copy of the Prequel by right-clicking here and select “Save Target…”.
This describes the events leading up to the start of Time Crystal. Note that it is written in an earlier style, and is awaiting a rewrite.
This is YOUR chance to affect this story. I want to know:
- What do you like and what don’t you like about this story?
- How do you feel about the characters?
- Do you love or hate any of them?
- Which chapters are boring, which exciting, which too short, which too long?
- Are you dying to read the next part?
I would also like to know a little about you especially or age and gender but also what kinds of books you normally read.
Please add comments here or email the above information to: reviews@pennypress.co.uk.
Thank you.
Notes of version history
The above link should always link tot the latest version of the Prequel (then called Part 1). I am making earlier versions available in case students of writing would like to see how the story evolved.
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The versions are (date format yyyymmdd):
20071020.pdf
20071101.pdf
20071225.pdf
July 2, 2007
Wandered in euphoric oblivion through London under imminent danger, despite the terrorist threat level being on the highest level of Critical, thinking only that this glorious day had at long last arrived when I could deliver the MS on the day of the deadline.
Took the tube to Ealing Broadway, the end of the Central Line and probably beyond the end of the civilised world, judging from the soporific state of the pubs.
I insisted on getting a signed receipt for the MS (I’m now the proud owner of Sophie Holmes’ signature at Transworld).
Needless to say the rest of the day was a let-down and I had an increasing feeling of emptiness, somewhat akin to grief. Even standing in the sunshine outside the Crown in Soho watching the women go by gave only temporary respite. Spent a few minutes checking out the pictures in the National Gallery (part of my research for volume 2) but I found them disappointing. They appear to have only one original Hans Holbein the Younger which is a scandal considering how much work he did here. I saw more useful material (from my point of view) at Upton House on Sunday. Can’t reveal too much, and anyway these early ideas for how the plot will develop often come to nothing, but I’ve left Catriona in a pickle at the end of volume 1 so I need to work out how she survives.
So even before submitting the MS I was already starting to plot the second volume. No time for grief or self-indulgence. On with the show!
June 30, 2007
I completed the final proof at 11:30 today. Must say this was rather an emotional moment, and a glorious one.
Finished printing it at 15:00. There are coloured images at the start of each of the 3 parts and a neat little label on the Rexel Carry cover (which just about holds the almost 300 pages of the MS).
Not bad timing. Got 48 hours to spare before the deadline. I first found out about the Daily Mail Competition on 24 March. Not sure when I decided to enter. Probably some time after my return from Geneva on 10 April. So that’s about 10 weeks work to get it finished.
Now time to start doing the ironing, cleaning, getting my company accounts done for last year and other exciting things that I’ve been putting off while tied up with TC. But at least I get Monday off to deliver it to the publishers (Transworld). Wonder what I’ll find to do on the train now I haven’t got anything to proof.
Time to start work on Volume 2 I guess…
June 28, 2007
The MS is finished and I’m spending my time going through it, listening to it, correcting little mistakes. There were some horrible sections but I hope I’ve fixed all those now. I’m pretty damn pleased with the result. It’s frustrating not knowing whether this stuff is as good as I think it is. No, I guess nothing is as good as that. I must be infatuated with my own work. It’s just that I keep hearing new things in it, things I don’t remember writing. Often it’s as if I’m listening to somebody else’s work, and I still think it’s damn good. Wonder if anyone else will?
I’m also putting together the illustrations to go with the MS. Not many, just one or two for each of the three parts. Just 3 days left to finish proofing and printing. Then down to London on Monday to deliver it by hand, just hours before the deadline.
I then will have to start doing all the things I’ve been neglecting over the past few weeks in the mad scramble to get this finished, such as vacuuming the floor and ironing clothes. I’ve got to the state of having to buy trousers because I don’t have the discipline or time to iron. There must be a joke in there somewhere about iron will, but I can’t think what it is.
June 11, 2007
I’m working through the consequence of having Catty go down the tunnel in 38 as I revise subsequent chapters. I’ve got a spreadsheet that tells me who holds which bit of crystal at each stage and I rely on that to tell me what is possible, but I no longer know what’s going to happen. I’ve achieved the objective of setting the characters down the paths I want them to go and now they’re on their own.
I’m still recovering from the effort of forcing Catty down the tunnel yet making it seem natural. I think that was my greatest writing achievement so far. Now hoping for a few more.
I feel like the rest of this volume ought to be easy except for the ending. I’ve already written enough chapters to just edit them and I’ve got five years worth of ideas waiting to write down. So far, however, I don’t know which cliff hanger this volume ends at. It’ll have to be a big one to make the reader long for volume 2.
