April 2010 West Buckinghamshire
Read by Ben Crystal
Feel the weirdness. Odd.
In 2029 travelled back to 1926.
My machine is big.
In 2034 I travelled back again to 1926.
Nothing much had changed.
It was the year of the first truly waterproof wristwatch.
Oh.
The machine was getting larger. That’s how I kept my own time: by the growing bulk of the machine. It never shrank, but always grew each trip.
I could be wrong. It’s hard to tell.
I have no great devotion to 1926, other than its waterproof wristwatch.
The last time I went, in 2037, the Industrial Revolution hadn’t happened. It was rather dissonant.
They had discovered lithium, which was a bonus. But the parking was a nightmare. I ablated three tanks.
I am stuck in a very specific here. A garden in West Buckinghamshire.
There is a pleasant if incomplete view of Wishwell Mill.
I’ve seen it disappear into the past.
I’ve seen it become a ruin.
I’ve seen them building it. And not.
In 1926 this area was a tank depot for the army. Or it was in 2034 when I travelled back to 1926.
The machine keeps growing.
The waterproof watch never came to Buckinghamshire, I believe. I’ve looked around the district.
I’d like to see Mesopotamia. How would I get there?
In the thirteenth century they built an elephant clock: a water mechanism to tell the time. It was in the shape of an elephant.
I’d like to see that, in Mesopotamia. I’ve only ever seen West Bucks.
The tanks are arranged in a dense grid. They’re gone in 1929, 1930, 1931. Or perhaps were never there. Once in 1926 they weren’t there. More often than not they are. So far.
I know I keep going back: the machine continues to grow.
There was no way to avoid hitting something. The tanks were nose to tail. They also seemed to have got bigger. Maybe that was technological advancement. I ablated three tanks again, but they were larger ones.
The maps showed empty ground. The old maps lied, as directed by the Official Secrets Act. I couldn’t have known. You never really know until you go back. And then it’s too late.
In 345 AD I ablated a cat.
I did it several times in fact.
Until I found it moved an hour later.
14th January, 345 AD, 12.33pm – No cat.
11.33am – Cat.
12.33pm – No cat.
You learn these things by trial and error.
Richard of Wallingford lived in Hertfordshire – the next county along.
Clocks are some of the oldest human inventions. Sundials and astrolabes. The rings of a tree. Sand in a glass. Escapements and quartz.
My pre-modern collection, by necessity, remains mostly English.
The Wallingford timepiece of 1325 was the first clockwork mechanism the world had seen. It’s my favourite. I guess it was just luck that Hertfordshire was next door. I hadn’t planned it that way. The machine is large. It doesn’t travel. It was natural to build it at home.
I worry about continental shift. Maybe one day Herts. & Bucks. won’t be there.
Still the machine grows.
I never leave it for long. I’ve seen people, and they might tamper with it. Or it may get sucked back without me. I worry. If you’ve seen the Industrial Revolution disappear you know that in truth things are unstable. The years change. The future comes and goes. What is insanity but having nothing to cling to? And to what can I cling but the machine? The ever-growing machine.
Astrolabes and sundials.
Alas, how can I get to Mesopotamia in the thirteenth century? From Cambledon, West Bucks.?
Sand in a glass.
I have an old-fashioned spring clock. Brass release mechanism, machine-turned facia, by G. B. Plum of Newcastle. I found it in the bedroom of a local parson. I stole it. A beautiful timepiece. Very resistant to vibration. It makes a delightful tick, like crayfish shuffling. I went back to 1844 and he still had it. It makes me feel less guilty.
Three hundred miles from here to Newcastle. I’d never get there. It’s too far away. I can’t leave the machine. God knows what might happen. It continues to grow with every jump.
Al-Jazari’s elephant clock was huge, and like a proper elephant it had a deep memory – for the uneven length of days throughout the year. The past is also large, but has no memory, it seems.
I can’t find my year anymore.
But I know time is passing: the machine is growing.
There is a café in 2223. They have an amazing device that allows you to be in two places at once. I used it to visit what had once been Mesopotamia…but it looked very much like West Bucks. It was hotter. The fashions were the similar to here. I stepped out of the device somewhat disappointed. I’d expected something more. I’d hoped to see the elephant clock. Perhaps get lucky. It was a foolish hope. The standard clocks there were thinner than a human hair.
I began to travel further. 1000 BC was desolate. A nice round number. Thousands of miles away Zoroaster was preaching in the desert. David wooed Bathsheba. Perhaps. There was nothing here. Even the grass had gone. Why was I so afraid? Why had I travelled so little through time? Or had I in fact travelled a lot? The machine – the machine was huge now. I went back to 10,000 BC and found the area teeming with hominids, using a complicated financial system of discounted retrograde units. I had seen the same thing in 3017. I went back to check. In 3017 everyone had gone.
I wander. Country lanes and copses. Honeysuckle and hyacinth. Dawn inflaming in crispest mandarin. Light birdsong and calmed wilds. What year is this? What year? It’s 2401. But what time am I in?
It’s beautiful here. The air is full of oxygen. It vitalizes my vision. My accelerated eye metabolism catches colours of such power, patches of intense zest, like newborn hues in their first dalliance. Waves of depression and joy wash over me (– sudden movements through the years take their toll). But it is so beautiful. So vivid in smell, and touch; the drifting languor and vital energy involving, turning in and through each other like immiscible dyes. And in the distance, only the graphite hulk of the machine, winking in the sunlight, to remind me of where I am. Could I never travel again? Could I stay here? Could I lay me down to rest in this jade pasture?
I made a decision.
Dismantling the machine in a fit of mania… I had my reasons. Enough of this shifting ground! Groundless, chimeric time – I can unpick its chance to change! I can delete the other futures. I will let the play, play. Then I will really move. Truly travel. Visit Wales or France. Discover the New World again or take my time in Orient. Swim, if need be, across the Hellespont. I will learn what occurs in this 2401. I will reset the cosmos to this very now, and in a frantic vision of myself within the world, lay a fizzing marker for the start of time in dashed components on the grass.
I’ve ablated one large single tank.
The compound was full of nothing else…and I hit it.
It attracted some attention. Soldiers came out with advanced rifles. They encircled the machine.
It’s odd how it keeps working. I damaged the machine years ago, on purpose I believe. Still it runs; still it grows. I cannot be sure of the proportions, but it takes some time to reach the exits. It seems like a while. Maybe I am moving slower down its corridors and shafts. Maybe I am older. In my mind the machine has become a city in itself. A vast, empty city accruing slabs of nothingness. Was it always this big? No, I don’t think so. I walk towards the doors recalling the parson’s clock, now lost somewhere deep within the caverns of this kind, infernal machine. It would need winding. It must be run down by now. I hate to think of it seizing up. Falling to disrepair; hidden in a corner of this temporal labyrinth.
The soldiers are wary of the machine, as well they should be. I don’t doubt it has a gothic sense of humour – some of the things it has shown me; some of the dark juxtapositions of Buckinghamshire it has unveiled. And of course, I need only do a simple thing to remove these soldiers from time’s pages. Well might they be wary then, as I myself am of this awful megalith, the machine, the kind machine, that curiously functions despite my sudden acts of rage against it.
I notice one of the soldiers wears a bi-phase wristwatch. I’ve seen this type before, I don’t remember when. It has an elegant calf strap. I can hear it’s in good working order. Forceful sweeps of the hand. A mesmeric dial.
I find I can catch single ticks now. The miniscule beats of time around us become large within my head: Heartbeats, all of them winding down; particles escaping from their isotopes; the very mewl of entropy, discordant and long, slips into my hearing. When did it start? I don’t know. I have become supersensitive with my shuttling then, and now, and back again.
I ask him for the watch. It must have been a shock. He fires a round into the air. The tension in the group was plain. Easy now, I said, and stretched out towards him. He fired again in panic. It struck me in the ribs. Easy now, I said.
I fell back onto the parapet. I was winded. I could hear microwaves rattling past my ear. My overalls covered in blood, I held my hand to my chest to find a shredded lung hanging pendulously from its cavity. My casement had come undone. My workings were exposed to the corrosive air. Time slowed…
I travel back in the hope of seeing my death.
I ablated a kiosk.
Now the area was a car park for a massive stadium at Wishwell Mill.
There were acres of parking zones.
I had ablated the warden at the entrance.
There were no tanks. No soldiers.
I would never obtain that lovely wristwatch it seemed. With its quality leather strap. Its face of concentric circles, black and red. Its exact, strident second hand. A shame. I wonder whether it will ever exist again? Such a lovely little piece. Suitably durable for a serviceman I would have thought.
Nothing happened. The young man shot me, and strangely nothing happened. Nothing changed.
I keep coming back to 1926. I hope to find myself. It would be of interest to watch me die.
Though I suspect I will only end up ablating myself in the process. The machine is very large now.
I jump backwards and forwards in Buckinghamshire.
Always Buckinghamshire.
I collect clocks.
I wait for the one thing I cannot jump to…
My own future.
What will happen to me?
How will it end? If it can.
Of course I may get lucky. I might find a water clock in the shape of an elephant. I would like that. I still harbour the hope that one day I will see that Mesopotamia.
I imagine it large.
And full of parking.
West Buckinghamshire by Joshan Esfandiari-Martin was read by Ben Crystal at the Liars' League Wine, Women & Song event at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square on Tuesday 13 April 2010
Joshan Esfandiari-Martin divides his time between London and Berlin. He multiplies it by double booking. He subtracts it with booze and fags. Blurb on his new film can be found at www.nextfilm.info
Ben Crystal is an actor, writer, and producer. He works in TV, film and theatre, and is a narrator for RNIB Talking Books, Channel 4 and the BBC. He writes about Shakespeare, while living in London and online at www.bencrystal.com
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