Electric Light Orchestra - Time
Jet Records, 1981
He stood before the ivory-fronted headquarters of the company. He had no idea why he had come here. They couldn’t help him and he certainly wasn’t welcome any more - not after his failed attempt to run away to the colony on the moon. Perhaps he was here because this place had been the beginning of his end, or, to put it more aptly, the final phase of his final phase.
The sun came out, one of the few reminders that he was still on Earth, one of the few things that hadn’t changed since what he now called his “old life”. The rain was another one of those things, rain that had beaten down upon London yesterday just like it had back in 1981. The ivory facade glinted as the rays hit its polished surface. So clean. So… Sterile.
‘We’ve made remarkable progress in environmental protection solutions since your time,’ Mark had replied when he had asked him about this. ‘It really took off in the early 2010’s, but even then the world was so polluted it took us a few decades to clean it all up. Science is a marvellous thing, don’t you think?’
No, he had wanted to reply, I don’t. Science is what’s trapped me here, what’s stopped me from going home. He picked up his suitcase, turned from the building and descended the steps onto the street. Charing Cross Road was as crowded as it had been in his time, except now the trundling double-deckers and belching black cabs were gone, replaced by their eco-friendly descendents. People spewed across the road on the zebra crossings, a few insubordinate souls ran across in the middle of the road. It had been his biggest surprise - disappointment, at first - that people hadn’t changed considerably in the hundred years he had skipped past. Fashion was more or less the same; he didn’t stand out in his tweed suit. People weren’t wired permanently to computers, nor had they evolved alien feelers or elongated ears. Except, Thomas reminded himself, some of them were androids.
He crossed Charing Cross Road and headed towards Leicester Square. The ticket booths was still there, the queues as long as ever, however the bars and cafes had all changed. He stopped by the Odeon and looked over the ticket prices. This was a pointless task, as he had no idea how much the Euro was now worth and how prices related to each other; it was more an attempt to regain normality than to obtain useful information. He turned back to the square. The pigeons took to the sky and he heard, in his head, how she would laugh at the silly birds. It made him wince.
‘You can’t go back,’ Mark had said. ‘I’m sorry. We’ve not yet developed the technology. Going forwards is relatively simple, you see - some fiddling about with your molecular structure, then break the speed of light and you’re on your way - but we’ve not found a way to go back. Our company has been working on it since we’d developed the machine that brought you here.’
‘So what do I do?’ he had asked.
‘Wait,’ Mark had replied. ‘I’m sorry.’
He fished out the piece of paper Mark had given him. The company were willing to put him up with somewhere to live and provide false documents for him, but he would have to manage on his own from there. As he unfolded the paper to re-read his new address, a one-pence coin fell from it and toppled to the pavement. He watched it trace circles on the scrubbed granite, then come to a halt at his feet. He picked it up, gave Queen Elizabeth one last glance, then pocketed it. He made his way towards Piccadilly Circus, from where he would catch the Tube and make his way to his new home.
Review by Llama
Track list
1. Prologue
2. Twilight
3. Yours Truly, 2095
4. Ticket to the Moon
5. The Way Life’s Meant to Be
6. Another Heart Breaks
7. Rain Is Falling
8. From the End of the World
9. The Lights Go Down
10. Here Is the News
11. 21st Century Man
12. Hold on Tight
13. Epilogue
