Nano Bytes

The Wizard wound up his call and came over to find me sat next to the cat, stroking it while trying to slip my hand under its massive butt. ‘Meet Delilah,’ he said. ‘Delilah, meet …’

‘Lauren,’ I said.

‘Do you like cats, Lauren?’ the Wizard asked.

‘I love them!’ I said, honestly.

‘Oh, so do I,’ he said. ‘I think I love them more than people some days. So long as I have cats and music in my old age, I think I’ll be happy. Of course, a big house like this helps, but happiness is all that’s really important.’ He went over to a rack of vinyl. ‘What music do you like?’

‘Um …’ I said, trying to think of a band or artist we both might have heard of. ‘I quite like Madonna.’

The Wizard gave a haughty sniff. ‘Well, she has some spunk, I dare say, but if she thinks she’s the queen of pop then she really has another thing coming.’ He went and placed a plastic disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. ‘I love rock, I love pop, but I really love opera, and this woman is opera royalty. Montserrat Caballé‑I would absolutely kill to meet and work with her one day.’

A hiss, a crackle, and then an epic noise filled every inch of the large room.

And while we listened, I managed to squeeze my hand under Delilah’s rump, and pull out the demo tape. It was slightly damp.

The Wizard came over to sit with me. He immediately sprang up again, though. ‘Delilah!’ he screamed. ‘You make me mad when you pee all over my Chippendale suite!’

* * *

I spent the best hour of my life listening to records and playing with the eight or nine cats that wandered in and out of the room. I even tried my first smoke (yuk) and took a sip of the Wizard’s drink (yum). My parents would have killed me, but I never felt in any kind of danger. The Wizard was as harmless as a pussycat himself, and when I realised that I had to get going, he looked almost sad.

‘Come back anytime,’ he said. ‘We must listen to the whole of The Magic Flute!’

I promised that I would, though what he would make of me turning up on his doorstep in 2015 was anyone’s guess.

I ran back to the Professor’s house, entered by the back door and bounded up the stairs to the attic. Someone shouted after me, but I didn’t stop. I could hear the guitar notes hanging in the air, still, and they started playing faster and faster as if sensing my presence. The world shimmered again, and suddenly I was back in 2015.

The Professor put down his guitar in relief and flexed his fingers. He flipped down the lid on his laptop; Adam, his assistant, was nowhere to be seen.

I pulled the demo tape out of my pocket. ‘Mission accomplished!’ I said. ‘I hope it still plays though–the cat peed on it.’

The professor smiled and shook his head. ‘It was the cat pee that destroyed it first time around. You didn’t get to it in time.’

I suddenly got all excited. ‘Well, send me back! I can try again. I know what to do this time! I can get to the tape before Delilah—’

‘No need, no need,’ the Professor said. ‘The tape wasn’t the main reason I sent you back, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘The chocolates,’ he said. ‘I will send you back to Garden Lodge again, but next time it will be to 1986 with another box, and then maybe for another couple of years after that … You see, the chocs were heavily dosed with very powerful antiretrovirals–the latest drugs that stop viruses replicating inside the body. I’ve invested most of my money over the last twenty years in medicinal research and development.’

I suddenly remembered what was different about Garden Lodge. When I had used to walk past it, there had been graffiti and often flowers left against the wall … like tributes. ‘Was the Wizard ill?’ I asked.

The Professor shrugged. ‘No, never. You see, with the right treatment, a person with HIV can live a normal, long and healthy life …’

The doorbell rang downstairs, followed by the sound of eager footsteps coming up. The person bouncing up the stairs was humming to himself as he came. I turned round and came face to face with a man in a tracksuit. He was bald, but had a bushy grey moustache and a big grin.

‘Hey, Fred,’ the Professor said.

‘Afternoon, Bri,’ the man said. ‘I’ve just come up with the most perfect middle eight for Back to the Opera, so I just had to run right over and—’

He noticed me gawping at him. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘You look kind of familiar from somewhere. Like someone I used to know back in the good old days.’

‘Oh,’ I croaked. ‘Um, well must be just a coincidence, I guess.’

‘Coincidence?’ the Wizard said. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

He winked at me. ‘It’s a kind of magic, darling!’