Allergic To Time (3 page)

The other man nodded.
 

Martin took a deep sigh, and without looking to see what my reaction was or stopping to explain anything to me he unfolded it and began reading. I stood still and studied his facial expressions. He had a commendable poker face: his features stayed still and emotionless as his eyes ran back and forth over the material.
 

The man in black cleared his throat. “So as you can see, it’s pretty comprehensive evidence this time.”

Martin flung the piece of paper back at him dismissively. “It is anything but.” He folded his arms defiantly. “It’s just another crackpot, that’s all. It’s the same story every other week.”

The other man folded the paper back up slowly and returned it to his pocket. “This patient is different.”

“How?”

My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, trying to keep up. Martin’s eyes had switched from emotionless to defensive.
 
“Seriously, tell me: how is this any different to any other time?”

The man in black finally removed his sunglasses. He took a long slow glance from the floor right up to Martin’s face so he could stare him in the eye. “You read the file. He couldn’t breathe when he appeared.”

Martin rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling. “Appeared?” He shook his head. “He didn’t ‘appear’ anywhere, I can guarantee it.”

“He appeared out of thin air in Pit St Mall yesterday afternoon at 4pm.”

Martin didn’t respond. He waited, daring the man in black to continue. I waited at his side, scarcely daring to breathe.

“There were witnesses. People said he appeared out of nowhere. One second he wasn’t there, the next he was.”

Martin shrugged. “It’s a hoax, other people get in on this sort of thing all the time.”

“And he couldn’t breathe. He appeared out of nowhere, and collapsed, unable to breathe.”

I didn’t know what the significance of all this “not being able to breathe” business was, but it seemed to be the one thing that Martin didn’t have any response to.
 
He finally seemed to remember that I was there and glanced down at me. “Do we have to discuss this with her here?”

The man in black raised his eyebrows. “She might be the very person we need actually.”

My stunned silence during the conversation up till that point was now replaced with a huge grin that covered my face and I had to refrain from doing a little clap and jumping up and down. Yes, finally, I was going to be involved in whatever it was they got up to on these secret little missions of theirs. The man looked at me almost bouncing up and down and told me to calm down. “This is a hospital you know. There is a gravely sick man on the other side of that door.”

I quickly spun back towards the room, again trying to peer through the blue glass. “I can’t see in. Can we go inside?”

Martin stared at me in disbelief. “Anna, do you even understand what the situation is?”

I raised my eyes at him. “I know you would love to believe I am stupid, but yes, I do know what is going on here.” I glanced towards the man in black as I continued. “The man in that room is a time traveller. You’ve come here to investigate him.” I paused and turned to look back at Martin, and continued on, pointedly: “Or in your case, cover it up.”

The man in black gave a brief, wary nod, while Martin simply glared at me. I knew he was annoyed with me but I didn’t care. He was supposed to be a scientist! He was supposed to be my PhD supervisor! And yet he hypocritically taught us in all his classes that time travel was a physical impossibility. While in his private time he was sneaking off to solve these little time travel mysteries on the side. Well, I was finally around to show him who was boss.
 

“I guess you think you’ve got it all figured out then.” Martin threw his hands up. “Alright, off you go then, on your way. Go and solve your little time travel mystery, if that’s what you think it is.”

I paused. I looked at the man in black. “
Is
the guy in that room a time traveller?” I asked slowly.
 

“No!” Martin snapped at me, clearly forgetting we were in a hospital.
 

The man in black was not so quick to jump in. “That’s what we’re... investigating.” But his eyes said it all: they said yes. Yes, they said, the man who had appeared in Pitt St Mall at 4pm the day before — out of thin air — was a time traveller.
 

“The only thing we’re investigating,” Martin interrupted. “Is another hoax.”

***
 

I didn’t understand why they were keeping the unnamed patient in such a dark room. As we slowly stepped inside, myself and the man in black walking side-by-side, Martin reluctantly dawdling behind us, my eyes gradually adjusted to the light. I began to think that maybe the blue of the windows wasn’t tinted glass, because the interior of the room also seemed dyed blue.
 

As my eyes came to grips with the strange blue glow, I saw him at last: lying in a bed by the window, in the far corner of the room. The time traveller.
 

I took a sharp gulp of air and stopped in my tracks. I steadied myself as I looked over the long dark body stretched out in the hospital bed, with an oxygen mask over his face, the machine doing the breathing for him. It wasn’t the physical state of his health that was so shocking to me — the fact that he looked tortured and half dead, hooked up to a dozen machines. No - it was the way he was dressed that caused me to freeze where I was standing.
 

He was dressed like a 70s glam rocker.
 

I inched forward slightly to get a better look at his clothing. He had on a purple suede leather jumpsuit, which stretched from head to toe. On his feet were a pair of platform shoes, also in purple but with a lightening bolt decal in silver glitter up the sides of each one. Over his jumpsuit he wore a short vest with black and purple sequinned feathers spilling off it. And then there were his eyes: they were caked in panda-style black eyeliner, making him look even more ill than he probably was.
 

My eyes grew wider as Martin came to stand beside me. “Oh my god,” I murmured, looking up at Martin. “Would you take a look at this guy...”

Martin rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised they didn’t fall out onto the cold pale blue floor we were standing on. “For crying out loud Anna…he couldn’t even make an effort to be subtle. He’s gone and dressed himself up in the most ridiculous 70s attire I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Clearly Martin thought I was just naive. That I was being taken in by what he considered an obvious hoax. I crossed my arms. “Exactly,” I said, making a deduction. “If this were a hoax he wouldn’t have been so obvious about it.”

Martin shook his head dismissively at me and walked over to join the man in black by the other side of the hospital bed, up close and personal with the patient. There was a chart that he wanted Martin to take a look at. I hurried over to stand next to them. As I got closer to the bed the absurd appearance of the patient lying in it hit me. Starring down at him, I’m not sure how but I knew it for
 
sure. It was just a gut instinct. That man was from another time. I believed it in the very depths of my soul.
 

Not that this was the most scientific approach to things: I had to admit that. As a science PhD candidate maybe I should have been ashamed of myself. But science and I had always had a strained love-hate relationship. I may have dedicated my life to the study of it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t question it every day. My belief was that you had no right to call yourself a true scientist if you didn’t. I glanced up over at Martin Anderson and thought about how he would consider just the opposite to be true.
 

I swallowed and tried to compose myself as I looked down at the body in the bed. I had truly never seen anyone look or dressed like that outside of a film. There was nothing costume-like or fake about the man’s get up. It was the genuine article, the real deal. I was pretty sure of it.

Next to me, I could hear Martin fervently disagreeing with my silent assessment, only his opinion was very much being said outlaid. “So what, he goes down to the costume shop, picks up the most ridiculous outfit he can afford — which just happens to be 70s themed, mind — and then fakes an asthma attack at Pitt St Mall? I cannot — “ he paused to stare defiantly at the man in black “ — seriously believe you are wasting my time with this crap again.”

I pipped up. “Erm, how exactly does one ‘fake’ not being able to breathe, precisely?” I stood up straight. “That seems like something that the doctors may have picked up on.”

Martin had no response. The man in black looked over at me and nodded. “He’s not faking being unable to breathe, we can be sure of that.”

I scratched my head and realised I still didn’t understand the significance of the whole being unable to breathe issue anyway. What did that have to do with him having potentially travelled through time?
 
“And anyway,” I asked, directing my question at either of them but being less optimistic about the chance of Martin answering me. “What does it matter whether he is faking it or not?”

I was proven correct when Martin responded with only a blank stare. He shifted slightly and looked towards the man in black, who explained it to me. “When a person travels through time,” he paused only briefly to wait for Martin’s impatience with that turn of phrase to pass, “he or she is unable to breath the atmosphere of the different time period.”

He stopped, first to look at Martin, then at me, then at the patient lying in the bed. “They usually die within the hour. This is the first guy to have survived.”

Chapter Three.
 

Martin, the man in black, and I had been unceremoniously ushered out of the room as a team of actual medical professionals had appeared out of nowhere to attend to the patient.
 

At first I wondered why they hadn’t questioned us a bit more before making us leave the room, but I was distracted by Martin pacing up the hall and ranting to us. He kept pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the time. “I have to be back at the university by 3, at the latest, to deliver a seminar. Are you really going to keep me here over this bullshit?” Having been used to him in a mostly academic environment all these years I kept being slightly taken aback by him swearing.
 

“Oh yeah…” I said, remembering that morning’s lecture. “Why were you late this morning?”

His eyes snapped around and locked on me. “I was not late. I was there before it got to 5 minutes past the hour.”

Technically he was right, but for Martin Anderson five minutes late may as well be five hours late. I wanted to press the point but he was getting so wound up by the situation I was almost scared to. Still, I did manage to brave one further comment. “It wasn’t exactly the most warm and welcoming of lectures. I think all the first years are terrified of you now.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how he would take that comment: it could have gone one of two ways. He enjoyed instilling fear in his students, so he could take it as a compliment. Then again, he hated back-chat from me, his most annoying, yet beloved, PhD student, so I also thought he might snap my head off.
 

Instead he just stopped pacing and nodded, lost in thought for a moment. “Yes, I, wasn’t exactly fully present this morning, I suppose.” A thought seemed to occur to him and he stopped to stare at me. “Hang on, aren’t you supposed to be teaching a class right now? The first year Monday afternoon lab?”

I suppressed my own eye roll. “Laboratory classes don’t begin till week two.” It never ceased to amaze me how out of touch the higher ranking academics could be when it came to the teaching schedules and workloads of the graduate students. Jesus – Martin hadn’t even bothered to read his own course outline properly.

“Oh,” he said, and dropped his gaze back to the hospital room beside us. He sighed. “Still, we shouldn’t be wasting our time here.” He shot an angry glance at the man in black who was leaning patiently against the wall. “If this is all you wanted to show me then I really think I should be getting back to work.”

Before he could get a response the door flew open and a nurse hurried out into the hall. She stopped at the sight of the three of us all standing there waiting, though waiting for what I was not entirely sure.
 

 
“Are any of you three relatives of this patient?”

“Oh, umm,” Martin began, while the man in black said nothing. I wondered if the best course of action would be to lie and pretend I was indeed a relative, in case she was about to ask all of us to get the hell out of the hospital. After all, despite Martin’s insistence that we get back to campus, I had no plans on returning to the university when we had a real life time traveller right here in front of us. I glanced over quickly at the man in black, and as I did so the nurse followed my gaze - she seemed to give a look of recognition when she saw the tall dark figure.
 

“Oh,” she said, resigned. “It’s you. So no, I guess you’re not relatives then.” Her tone was wary. She scanned all of us suspiciously but chose to leave and began to walk toward the exit. The same direction the three of us had originally come in from.
 

“Wait,” I said running after her. I caught up and walked beside her as she kept up a brisk pace. I grabbed her arm to try and stop her from walking but she kept up her pace. “What’s wrong with him in there?” I asked, running beside her.

She frowned at me, slowing her pace slightly. She glanced back at the other two in the hallway, a fair distance behind us now. “Aren’t you with those two?”

“Yes, kind of.
 
But...”

“Then I’m sure you have some sort of theory as to what is wrong with our patient.”

“Medically though, what do you think is wrong with him?”

She began walking quickly again. Her flat soles contrasted with my heels as we both hurried along the hallway. She thudded along on heavy feet as I skipped to keep up, concerned that if I stayed away from the others for too long they would decide to shut me out of whatever was
 
happening there.