“The entire shell is Chronium. That shields the op…”

“You mean chrome. Chromium?”

“Ahem. Crow NEE Uhm. Chronium. As in Chronos. Yes… so, it shields the operator from time partic…”

“Chronons, right!”

“Ye… Look are you going to kee…”

“…p interrupting? No. Sorry. Just. Just excited. Distracted. Do carry on…”

“Right. I know you created the concept, and were very keen to be the first test subject, but the engineering team has had to adapt a great deal of the original design. Are you su…”

“Yes. Totally re… Damn. I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Let’s just get you inside,...

“Pob lwc.” the elder of Saint Joseph’s had wished me, after his strange warning. I presumed he meant for my first Mass to be held, as traditional, at Midnight on Christmas Eve. It went well, the service, with a fuller than expected attendance, to see the ‘new man’, I presumed.

Later, sat still in just the candle light, I sighed, thinking I’d found a final home. It was then that the Bwgan Fawr sighed too. A man of middling years, he seemed, from one of the middling centuries, but as translucent as chip paper fat.

He pointed at the great...

”Beware the Bwgan Fawr.” the old Vicar sighed. “Every chapel has to have its ‘Ysbryd capel’…”

“Its chapel ghost?” the younger clergyman replied. His pronunciation was still more ‘gog’, more Northern, than the man he was replacing felt comfortable with. Too… foreign. If such a phrase could be used for a fellow Welshman.

A shame, his body was found the morning after his first Midnight Mass. Just outside the chapel door, lying as if it had carried a great weight across the threshold, and then collapsed with the release of his burden. A heart attack, they said. Strange in someone...

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” Smith quipped. “The Tempest. Act four…”
“…Scene one. And it’s ‘on’ not ‘of’.” I retorted. “It continues. And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Smith snorted. “Ever the pessimist. And yet.” He paused for effect. “I propose to travel forward in Time by one second.”

“Smith, you can’t. Except by the traditional route. Which just takes one second to do. Except we are moving in Space-Time. Not just Time. Only light can do that without feeling the time pass.”

Smith shrugged. I tried to explain. “The Earth spins 460m/s....

It was rather like being a ghost. Vicarious snooping. A social media haunting (stalking?). The only way to keep in touch with the untouchable children, who were no longer part of life. Maybe, the FaceBook groups should have been diplomatically UNLIKEd, given that they were only there because of previous parental responsibilities. Or the Messenger App blocked, due to ocassional earthquake requests, unsettling and unfooting in their simple, direct, but untimely demands.

Finding out a once was daughter has the lead in her drama group's next production, via accidental browsing of a stream. Realising another was home from university, only...

The conversation lasted two words: "Too much." Too much pain? Too much regret? Too much suffering. And who's? From twenty nine hour a day parenting to none, in the space of one brief, bitter phone call. "We don't want to live with you, Dad. We want to live with Mam, fulltime." And then a long overdue pause of a pregnancy, waiting for the response. Not sure if it would be explosive rage, reprisals and recriminations, or sad acceptance. All that came was the dialing tone. It spoke more eloquently than any words would have done. One more abandonment, in a...

The writers club - writer's club? writers' club? - started amicably enough. Geoff (Murder Mysteries and Historical romps) had searched his family tree back to the 1500s. Seranne (interesting name. A story there...) was nervious that we'd fit round the long raised table, with laptops and notepads, etc, and threw the odd curt look at the young couple inhabiting the corner, uninvited, and unaware. Jen set to work, with numerous hand written notes, while Rachel tapped discreetly away on her duck egg blue Huddl; only the second I'd ever seen not forlornly sat on a Tesco back shelf. Non-fiction and...

“Send me a picture.” he’d said. Well, typed. It was that kind of initial flirting request. She had responded with a
:-)
a
:-P
and a
<3
and then, eventually, with a selfie.

Analysis of the GPS data encapsulated in the header file, compared with a record of CCTV locations, and her smiling face as a search parameter from stored footage, provided her entry point to the location. Cross-matched with the stored WiFi coordinates her smart phone had used to send the file, the exact location was confirmed. The “Le Poursuivant”

Inspection of the blurred background of the photo matched...

I held it at arms length. A scruffy business card in battered Russian. Something like “путешествие во времени”
(“puteshestviye vo vremeni” in my mother tongue. It had been a long time. I was rusty.)
“So, you’re telling me th…”

“That time travel is possible. Probable. Inevitable. Yes.”

“Ok, old man. I’ll give you a beer. Spill…”

“Well, Sonny… that would be a waste of good beer.” The ‘old man’ smiled. “Yes, yes. I know what you mean.” He shrugged.

“We know the universe is expanding, right? And that expansion is accelerating, yes?”

“Dark energy.” I snorted.

“Precisely, and no one...

“You’re looking down in the mouth.” Teddy had said. Earnest waited. He knew more was coming. More was always coming. Teddy sidled up to it.
“Bill and I were just saying… ‘Ernie is looking *decidedly* down in the mouth.’ he said to me.”
Earnest, who *decidedly* didn’t like anyone, least of all Teddy, calling him Ernie, sighed and waited some more.
“You need a pick me up. A tonic. Bill and I both use Blinko-wide-awake(TM)… and you can get 5% off. Just tell ‘em I sent ya…!”
“Are we done he…” Earnest started to say.
“Remember, that’s Blinko…!” his work...