Derek, uncomfortable in sweat drenched tee shirt and jeans, commenced belching and farting. Bodily eruptions had always been his forte and he had just returned from the 4 June 1976. Tracking down a punk with a mohican.
Derek wanted his money back.
The plan had been simple: travel back to 1960, invest in IBM Shares, travel back to the present, cash them in. It all went wrong, according to Derek, on 31 May 1979 when Derek was mugged by a punk as he walked out the Bank.
What Derek had never considered was this: he changed his Darwin Notes for Jane Austin Notes on 1 March 2018 and then again changed his Darwin Notes for Florence Nightingales on 20 May 1994.
Without realising what he had done, Derek had witnessed a reality fork created by someone who understood his double Darwin dipping was due to Time Travel.
Derek waxed lyrical about the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester on the 4 June 1976. The Sex Pistols were playing. Unconvincingly, Derek rattled on about how he had convinced Bolton Technical College students Howard Trafford and Pete McNeish to change their names. Derek exaggerates. Derek also counts too much and badly.
Derek reckoned there were forty two people in the Lesser Free Trade Hall. After 31 May 1979 they will all become, automatically, suspects.
The reality fork had taken place some time before the mugging. Derek was sure of that. The mugging was pivotal. The mugging gave Derek his inspiration. The mugging also gave Derek a limp and a fat lip.
Derek had never really considered the technology and energy necessary to travel through time. It all cost a lot more than £100. That £100, invested in 1960 needed to become a fortune. Without the fortune there would be no time machine. As his financial backer, I was not keen on the idea of developing time travel with only £100 of funds. That would cover coffees for Day One.
Derek had a simple plan: sell the shares at the tail end of time and then return, via a chain of bank transactions, to 1960 and reinvest it. Repeat a dozen time and that £100 had become £280Bn. Derek had scribbled his calculations on the back of a Chinese Chippy Menu.
Reality had forked. Derek had got mugged. Cryptochrono had, for better or worse, become about to become the Cryptocurrency of choice for discerning time travellers and grammar had stretched thin accommodating the complications of describing it all.
Derek, with a bottle of Port by his side, sat making notes about mohicans and punks and cryptocurrency. In large letters, Derek wrote in crayon. His rationale was simple and elegant: nobody would want to steal notes in crayon because they look like the ramblings of a lunatic. Derek remains mad as a bucket of oily monkeys. Derek is not stupid.
