The Woman Who Died a Lot

We bought Gavin a cup of tea and a cupcake and sat in the canteen while a Nemicolopterus Syntheticus flapped around above us, part of a project to revitalize the ailing home-cloning industry. The tearooms were filled with mad scientists of one sort or another, many of whom had the unkempt “wild hair” and mismatched-clothes look that seemed never to go out of fashion. Some sat quietly, too shy to order or too unaware to know that it was self-service, while others could not stop themselves and insisted on regaling the staff with logical methods by which they could serve more efficiently.

Gavin sat slumped idly in his chair, his slovenly manner, ill temper and foul mouth endearing him to no one. But he knew as well as we that if he was going to survive the next twenty-four hours, we were going to have to at least pretend to get along.

“So if I’m not murdered, I turn out to be a serial killer in thirty-six years’ time?” said Gavin once we’d explained just what we’d found out. “But why do I kill those useless and boring people? Without that dumb meeting on Tuesday night, I’d not even know them—and more, not even want to know them. Worse, I end up buying a Vauxhall. I’d never buy a Vauxhall. Not even to kill someone with.”

He took a deep breath.

“Okay,” he added, “I admit it, I can be a bit intolerant toward the mendacious savages I call my fellow man, but there’s a big jump between that and serial killing. And if I were to survive your moronic son tomorrow, why would I wait until I’m fifty-six to start a rampage? What suddenly changes me?”

“We don’t know,” said Landen. “It could be anything: death of a loved one, passed over for promotion, brain abnormality, a bet, boredom. The list is long. And yes, Vauxhalls might be shit now, but in three decades they could be like Volkswagens are today.”

“You mean driven by smug, self-important, middle-class idiots with hideously spoiled children?

“It’s possible, yes.”

He thought about this for a moment. “But if those other potential ChronoGuard are already dead in this future, how will killing me change that?”

“Because at this precise moment in time,” I explained, “you’re still around to kill them.”

“But I’m not,” he insisted. “If both those events represent this timeline, killing me has no effect—if they were alive right now, then not killing me would guarantee their deaths.”

“There is something in what he says,” admitted Landen.

“But both those events do not represent one timeline. I can only think that we are seeing two timelines at once, with all events. Your murder is in their timeline, and their murder is in your timeline. Once a timeline is taken out, all will revert to as it should be.”

“Wow,” said Landen, clearly impressed with my explanation.

“Smart girls give me the horn too,” said Gavin sadly. “But they always ignore me. Tuesday ignores me.”

“Maybe you should try washing,” I said, “and keeping a civil tongue in your head.”

“Will that work?”

“Probably not in your case, but it’s certainly worth a try.”

He nodded reflectively. He responded well to straight talking, so I tried a different approach.

“Gavin, how did you turn out to be such a nasty piece of work?”

He shrugged. “I could blame my parents, but that’s just whiny victim bullshit. Some people are just naturally unpleasant. I’ve known for a long time that I’m something of a shit. I tried for years to hide it, but it never worked, so in the end I decided to just go with it, and see where it led me. What’s your excuse?”

We just laughed this time at his impertinence, and, surprisingly, he laughed, too.

“Okay,” he said, “what’s the deal tomorrow? Do I conveniently reveal my soft underbelly for that toe-rag Friday to gut, or do I run?”

“We don’t know,” said Landen, “but Friday is at this moment attempting to find out more. He thinks there might have been sixteen Destiny Aware ex-timeworkers and not fifteen.”

“How will that make a difference?”

“Someone may know something that we don’t. For it to be murder, then there has to be a motive. Without that, he can’t kill you.”

“So I should do nothing?”

“If you can.”

There was a pause.

“Why are you here anyway?” asked Landen. “Shouldn’t you be in school or breaking windows or pushing over grannies or something?”

“I’m a freelance mathematician,” he said loftily, “offering my unique services to those either too stupid or too lazy to work it out for themselves. Do you want to see something seriously batshit cool?”

“Okay.”

He took a grubby piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it to reveal a three-digit number. Landen and I stared at it for a moment.

“It’s an even prime number,”¹ he announced. “It’s been lying there unnoticed since the dawn of math, and I found it. Archimedes, Euclid, Gauss, Fermat, Newton—they all missed it. How dumb were they?”

Landen and I were staring at the number. The thing was, now that he mentioned it, he was right—the number was prime and was even.

“That’s incredible,” I murmured. “Does anyone else know about this?”