Gavin: Confessions of a Clairvoyant Schoolboy

By Christopher Slatter

What would you do if you suddenly remembered having lived before? This is what happens to Gavin, a 16-year-old schoolboy in England. It is while doing his history homework that Gavin discovers his past lives. Suddenly he can perform amazing feats of skill, speak dozens of languages and he can write history essays from memory.But wouldn't you know it, there's a catch. Gavin also realises that life is just a game and those who control the game are dangerous. Pursued by the fates Gavin goes on the streets,where he meets up with two waifs who he befriends. But he's not allowed to stay long. He flees to Brighton on the south coast where he becomes a clairvoyant in a new age shop. But even that doesn't last long and he is forced to flee again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Slatter
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301734009

Christopher Slatter

I have been a professional writer since I was 17 years old. I have been an advertising copywriter, film director, teacher of screenwriting and a television producer. I have worked for some of the world's largest advertising agencies in Australia and the UK before attending the London Film School for two years. A career as a director of television commercials and short films followed before returning to Australia to take up the post of creative director of a small agency in Melbourne. Following an invitation to direct a series for Australian television, I returned to the screen. Then in 1990 I went back to university, studying geology, horticulture, environmental science and plant genetics. I am also a writer of science fiction with several published stories. I hold dual British and Australian citizenship. I have two (very large) children which are the joy of my life

Book preview

Gavin

Confessions of a

Clairvoyant Schoolboy

A Very Odd Book by Christopher Slatter

Copyright Christopher Slatter 2012

Cover illustration by Eric Laplace

Smashwords edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of contents

Prologue: In the Beginning

Prologue: 2 Million Years Later

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Historical Notes

Prologue:

in the beginning

Ever since the Magellans had discovered space travel and coincidentally that space wasn't laid out in a straight line, but was folded instead, they'd been like Richard Branson with a new business idea, or Elizabeth Taylor with the institution of marriage - they couldn't leave it alone.

People were constantly flitting off here and there on camping trips in the Orion Nebula, or fishing in Andromeda. The discovery of the Great Law of Folded Space and the invention of the Unraveller Device meant that people could travel light years in seconds, which was handy as the Magellanic Cloud - the home galaxy of the Magellans - is a few thousand light years from anywhere.

The Great Law of Folded Space states that the volume of space is smaller than the sum of its planes which, when translated into ordinary-speak means that there is simply not enough room for all the galaxies to exist with the vast distances in between. They must therefore be closer together.

Imagine a big bolt of cloth, tie-dyed silk for instance. Unrolled on the floor it would be one hundred metres long and to go from one end to the other you'd have to walk the length of a football pitch. But when folded up you could reach any part of it without moving more than a few centimetres, all you’d need to do is penetrate the folds. That was the function of the Unraveller Device - which is a pretty simple name for something so complex. Mechanical engineers are good like that, unlike physicists, botanists and computer salesmen who like to make the simplest things sound incredibly complicated. Mechanical engineers aren't like that at all; they're satisfied with simple names like 'the big end' and 'the little end', or 'connecting rod'. There's a sort of simple modesty about mechanical engineers, I've always thought.

Anyway, due to the amazing discoveries I've just mentioned, at any given moment half of the population of Magellan was off-planet while the other half was preparing for some sort of intergalactic excursion. There was no time-dilation effect either - you couldn't jet off for a couple of years and on your return whip around a Black Hole and arrive a few minutes after you'd left. Consequently, absenteeism was rampant on Magellan as you would imagine. It's one thing to lose your staff for an afternoon when there's a particularly close game on, quite another when they're out of the galaxy for a couple of weeks.

In the end, the Magellan government had to act in order to maintain order and preserve the economy. There was a great debate in the General Assembly with the government attempting to introduce legislation outlawing wildcat excursions, while the opposition shouted them down with cries of derision and accusations of police state and infringement of civil liberties. The normal sort of political debate where parliamentarians plead moral outrage and then go off and get drunk with their lovers, or smoke marijuana in hotel penthouses.

The legislation was passed narrowly by both houses and was set to become law in sixty days. One thing about the Magellans - and it's true of most inhabitants of the Universe - is that they will rant and rave and swear bloody revolution about a piece of proposed legislation, but once it is enacted and given a suitable name, they will respect and abide by it as if they had agreed with it all along. And when you think of some of the ridiculous pieces of legislation that people have gone along with, like Britain’s Window Tax which caused people to brick up windows rather than turf out the government that calculated property tax by counting how many you had - you have to shake your head in wonder.

The Holiday Act was passed into law. It forbade people to make more than one extra-terrestrial trip every five years, or face fines and imprisonment. A few thousand extra bureaucrats were employed to administer the paperwork. Of course, with nearly two months remaining before the Holiday Act entered the statute books, people were bound to have one last fling - and they did.

It was billed as the Trip of Trips and the advertising brochure featured an illustration of a space armada, complete with a vapour trail, streaking towards a delightful, blue-white planet wreathed in cloud and just reeking of adventure. A simple four-berth cabin cost an arm and a leg and a state room was beyond the means of all but the very wealthy. But you couldn't stop a Magellan once his or her heart is set on an extra-terrestrial camping trip. The organisers sold ten million tickets in the first hour and by the end of the second day three-quarters of the population of the planet were booked to go.

There was plenty of room. The ships were as large as moons - massive spheres of rock honeycombed with corridors, recreational facilities and dormitories. There were ten of them orbiting Magellan, ten moons like a string of pearls girdling the planet, and a very impressive sight they were too. Old Akash, who keeps the records of Life, told me (I am now able to recall) that the Spacebugs, the small craft used to ferry passengers from the surface to the ships, were so numerous they resembled a swarm of fireflies. It must have been quite a sight.

It took just under a week for the ships to fill up and get under way. There were over two billion Magellans crammed into the hollow spheres, all shouting with excitement as people do when they set off on holiday. Nearly half of them were children and I'll bet that the ships hadn't been under way for more than half-an-hour before most of them were asking, Are we there yet? and I forgot my football - can we go back?, while their parents tried to hold on to their sanity and pretend that parenthood was wonderful.

Down below on Magellan the couple of million inhabitants who had stayed behind gazed wistfully at the sky as the ships that had been orbiting the planet slipped off into the blackness of space. They were a bizarre bunch - bureaucrats who were working on constructing the maze of rules and regulations of the Holiday Act, low level executives who wanted to take advantage of the absence of their colleagues to advance themselves, politicians who'd got the departure date wrong and were still packing - all the mean and low types no one would want to associate with anyway.

The voyage was scheduled to take two days, which is rather quick when you consider that the destination was two hundred thousand light years away, although I expect there were a lot of parents who thought it was a day-and-a-half too long. You can get really lost among half-a-billion people without a great deal of effort at all, not like getting lost in a shopping mall which takes quite a lot of ingenuity. But the tour organisers had foreseen this eventuality and had fitted everyone with locators, a sort of electronic homing device. This was marvellous for people with young children, but it really annoyed the teenagers as you can imagine. No sooner would a group gather to share a bottle or two, or couples cuddle up in linen closets when the door would slide open with a pneumatic hiss and a head pop around the corner, Seen my son Doug, anyone? Ah, there you are. Mother asked if you could give a hand to stow the tents. You couldn't even take the locators off and leave them stuck under a seat in one of the hundreds of movie theatres. They were inserted under the skin of the arm, and too deep to dig out.

It was on the morning of the second day that something happened that was to change the course of history - or more accurately, was to give rise to history. People were getting ready for their arrival at the blue-white planet, rushing about and barking instructions at each other, worrying whether they had enough suntan lotion and generally working themselves into a lather as people like to do when they go on holiday. There was the faintest jar and a momentary sensation of having suddenly fallen in a pool of treacle. Most people hardly noticed at all, but on the bridge there was general consternation.

We've dropped out, said the navigator, gazing at a panel of lights that had suddenly winked out. The captain, who was lounging in the command chair finishing off his breakfast of sausage and bacon, sucked a piece of gristle from between his teeth,

What?

We've dropped out, repeated the navigator. We're in linear space. The navigator leaned back in his chair and gazed over his shoulder at the captain.

But we're not supposed to be in linear space, said the captain.

The navigator sighed. I know we're not supposed to be in linear space, but that's where we are according to my instruments. He decided he'd better add a belated Sir.

Well, your instruments must be wrong then! the Captain said with irritation.

Like most people in positions of authority the captain held a deep mistrust of technicians and other experts. In fact, he suspected that they knew more than he did and the day was not far off when technicians and experts everywhere would rise up and usurp the authority of all those rightly placed over them. Until that day he was determined to keep them in their place.

Hadn't you better fix it? he sneered.

The navigator turned back to his instrument panel and opened a voice channel to the maintenance bay, Chief Engineer to the bridge, Chief Engineer to the bridge, he said in that special tone reserved for reporting disasters of catastrophic proportions.

You've noticed, of course, that when people have something really trivial to report such as the car's broken down, they'll be on the edge of hysteria when they tell you. But when it's something truly disastrous like the house burning down, or the end of civilisation they'll be as cool and calm as a day-old bath.

The Chief Engineer duly arrived on the bridge with a team of technicians in boiler suits who proceeded to unscrew everything in sight until the bridge resembled an electrician's workshop. There were meters and dials all over the floor and you couldn't take a step without tripping over bundles of multi-coloured cable, or crunching a pile of diodes.

The Captain watched this activity from his command chair, happily nibbling on a submarine sandwich. He loved to see technicians at work, as most untechnical people do. It was fascinating to see so much destruction taking place in the guise of fixing something. He wasn't concerned about the ship dropping out of folded space as he'd got the radar technician to get a fix on the other ships - they were confirmed to be loyally keeping station. If the ship had really dropped out the other ships should have been long gone.

After a couple of hours the Chief Engineer ambled over to the command chair, We've dropped out, Captain. I'm going to have to check the Unraveller. The Captain smiled around the Danish pastry he was eating and nodded amiably.

They must be really impressed with how cool and unruffled I am under stress, the Captain thought to himself. But in fact, the Chief Engineer wasn't thinking anything of the sort. He was feeling the first flutterings of panic, and damning the Captain for being a complacent twit, and a gluttonous idiot, as well.

As it happened, virtually the same scenario was occurring in every ship in the fleet. Unknown to the Captain, the reason that all of the ships of the fleet had stayed together was because they had all dropped out of folded space simultaneously.

In the engine bay, the Chief Engineer undogged the inspection hatch to the engine access tunnel and wriggled in. The navigator gave his behind a shove to help him in and then wriggled in himself. The access tunnels were like worm holes in an apple; there were thousands of them supplying heat and ventilation to the passengers and crew, and providing access to the myriad pieces of equipment that were required to keep the ship operational. The engine was located at the south pole of the planetoid ship and the Chief Engineer and the navigator had taken the emergency express lift from the bridge which was located in the north pole. The emergency express lift travelled so fast - it was several hundred kilometres from the top to the bottom of the ship - that passengers sat in special couches with full harness seatbelts to prevent them from going through the floor or the ceiling , depending on whether they were travelling up or down. The navigator had smiled to himself as the lift was preparing to rocket them down to the bottom of the ship. There was a sign on the lift wall advising passengers to remove hairpieces and false teeth before the lift was set in motion. The Chief Engineer had sat bald and toothless. The navigator pretended not to notice; it was the decent thing to do, after all.

Now he was following the Chief Engineer's rear as they monkey-walked along the curving, silver shaft towards the engine. At an intersection they made a left turn and suddenly the deep heartbeat of the engine was all around them.

Nearly there, the Chief Engineer shouted back at the navigator.

The Chief Engineer halted by a small red box bolted to the wall. He selected a tool from his bag and unscrewed the bolts holding the cover. In the middle of a jumble of wires was a tiny silver smear like melted solder.

The Chief Engineer peered gravely at the silvery speck, This is bad, he said, sitting back on his heels, very bad.

The navigator tried to ignore the ominous implications of the Chief Engineer's opinion. Engineers normally look on the bright side of things; to them everything is fixable or replaceable. They never ever say things are bad.

They sat in silence on the return journey to the top of the ship, the Chief Engineer cradling the Unravelling Device in his arms like a dead baby. Finally they entered the bridge where the navigator was relieved to see they had re-assembled his control panel. He resumed his seat.

The Captain was debating with himself whether he could squeeze in another lunch before their arrival and glanced casually at the engineer and the box he carried. All fixed, eh? He grinned inanely at the Chief Engineer.

I'm afraid not, Captain. You see, it's the Tiny Bit - it has imploded, the Chief Engineer replied.

The Captain decided that he did, after all, have time to order a second lunch. What tiny bit is that, Chiefie? Doesn't sound too important to me; can't you just pop in another little thing, or miniscule doodad or something?

The Chief Engineer raised his eyes to the ceiling in resignation at the ignorance of all executive officers. It's not a tiny bit, Captain - it's the Tiny Bit, he said

For once, the simple modesty of design engineers had caught them out. Who would have thought that one of the most miraculous and complex pieces of miniaturised construction ever devised would have been graced with a title as innocuous as the 'Tiny Bit'?

It had sounded so trivial to the clerks responsible for supplying engineering spares to the fleet that they hadn't bothered with them. Consequently, there wasn't a spare Tiny Bit within a hundred thousand light years of the fleet.

The Captain diffidently fished for a dill pickle from the jar by his elbow. Well, it doesn't sound important enough to stop the biggest extra-terrestrial camping trip in recorded history! He took a crunching bite of the pickle, Does it?

The Chief Engineer was silent, consumed by his own thoughts.

Well, what are you going to do, Chief? One of the management techniques that the Captain had learned at Captain's School was to throw a problem straight back at the person who had presented it; it saved a lot of time and unnecessary worry. Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions! He had waited years to use that one.

The Chief Engineer and the navigator exchanged glances. The navigator reached for his calculator while the Chief Engineer tried to hold on to his temper. There is nothing I can do, Captain. We have no spares. I have contacted the other ships and their Unravelling Devices have broken down as well - they have no spares either. We cannot build more Tiny Bits because the technology is beyond the scope of the fleet's repair shops.

It was beginning to dawn on the Captain that Captain's School had been notably remiss in preparing him for eventualities like this. So? he snapped.

So, Captain, the Chief Engineer felt the icy dread of inevitability descend on him, we must continue in linear space.

There, you see - you had the solution all along. I knew you did, said the Captain jovially. He turned his gaze to the navigation console.

Navigator, compute the journey time in linear space, there's a good fellow. He peered around the bridge, finally locating the figure of the steward. Ah, there you are! Now that we have a little more time on our hands, you can rustle me up another lunch please, steward.

The Chief Engineer, who had already performed the calculation in his head on the way up to the bridge slumped against a bulkhead, exhausted by the fear and anger that had been waging a war inside him.

The navigator patched his calculator into the bridge screen so that his calculations, in symbols one metre tall, could be seen by everyone. Deftly, he punched in the figures while humming a tune to himself and occasionally muttering formulae. The Captain and the crew on the bridge were transfixed as numbers and symbols flashed across the screen, winking as they were divided and multiplied, logarithmed and tangentially cosined until a simple equation blazed in glory: 2 x 10⁶.

Twenty, said the Captain, relieved and pleased with the way he had handled the crisis. Well, that's not so bad, is it everyone? He smiled at the grim faces around the room. Just twenty days and we'll be there. Think of the extra flight pay you'll draw. The Captain had already calculated his.

The bridge door hissed open and the steward entered wheeling a food trolley which he parked beside the command chair. The Captain selected a turkey drumstick and took an exploratory bite; then he noticed that the navigator was shaking his head.

Excuse me, sir, it's not twenty days, the navigator said.

The Captain flung his arms in the air in exasperation, spattering gravy over the radio officer's skirt. Why, this is outrageous. Twenty weeks on this tub!

Again the navigator shook his head.

Twenty years? whispered the Captain, his face ashen.

The Chief Engineer decided that it was time to bring the guessing game to a close. It's going to be a lot longer than twenty years, man! he roared in the Captain’s face.

The Captain swivelled the command chair back and forth, the drumstick forgotten in his hand. He peered at the equation on the screen and leaned forward. Navigator, what is that small number just to the right of the equation that I've just noticed?

That's a six, sir.

And what's it doing there?

It indicates that ten is to the sixth power, sir.

Ah, of course. The Captain was completely out of his depth, but couldn't bring himself to admit to the navigator and crew that his knowledge of mathematics didn't extend much beyond long division.

That means that the ten is followed by six zeros, sir. I'll punch it up for you if you like, so you can read it, the navigator said helpfully.

The navigator tapped at his calculator and six zeros appeared after a two.

The light of comprehension dawned on the Captain's face. That's two million, navigator. Chief, is that not two million? The Chief Engineer and the navigator nodded in unison while the remainder of the crew gazed on mutely.

You mean it's going to take us two million years to get to our destination! The Captain jumped up from the command chair and adopted an outraged pose. I'm not having that! We'll just have to turn around and go back. The passengers can all have refunds, it can't be helped.

The Chief Engineer decided that he'd had quite enough of this nonsense and strode toward the Captain who cowered in the command chair. The Chief Engineer thrust his face into the Captain's. We were past the midway point when we dropped out, you incompetent idiot! Resign yourself to it, man - we're doomed!

With that, the Chief Engineer stalked off of the bridge and holed up in his cabin for three weeks, uproariously drunk and no problem to anyone apart from the occasional bystander whom he would startle by appearing in the corridor with not a stitch on his body and minus his wig and dentures.

The first thing the passengers knew about the amendment to the ship's schedule was when the intercom crackled and hissed. Er, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We are presently travelling at approximately the speed of light - one hundred and sixty eight thousand miles per second, which is very fast. However, we are running a little behind schedule and we will keep you informed of progress as information comes to hand.

The Captain put down the microphone and beamed at the crew on the bridge. They stared back at him morosely. Well, at least there won't be any panic for the time being, he declared. Now, steward, what's for dinner?

Prologue:

2 Million Years Later.

Who knows what cosmic phenomenon had caused the Unravelling Devices in each of the ten Magellan spaceships to fail simultaneously. Perhaps it was part of the same forces that had given birth to the Universe in the first place. Or perhaps there is a Cosmic Jester playing practical jokes on a universal scale. If there is, his or her sense of humour is wasted on the majority of us.

Gradually, it dawned on the two billion campers aboard the Magellan fleet that the journey was taking far longer than it was supposed to. Despite the Captain's cheery announcements about the galactic weather, sunspot activity on Betelgeuse and any other trivia he could dream up to divert their attention, they knew that something was very, very wrong. Finally, cornered on their bridges by delegations of irate passengers, the Fleet Captains were forced to admit that all of the Unravelling Devices had failed and that the long and short of it was they would be in space for two million years.

Had the Magellans sat down and thought about it they would have realised they were only doing the same as every other species in the Universe - hurtling through space on a large ball of rock on an interminable journey to somewhere they'd never been before. The fact that the Magellans were inside balls of rock, instead of being perched on the outside really had nothing to do with it. Of course, being on the inside there was no sun to shine, but on the other hand, there was no such thing as sunburn or skin cancer, or being disappointed because you couldn't go to the beach. But no, the Magellans didn't weigh all this up and decide that things weren't so bad after all; they decided that they were going to feel lost. They wallowed in self-pity; they wailed in abandonment. They buried their heads in their hands and gave up.

Two million years is a very long time. That may sound like stating the obvious, but not many people have a grasp of just how long two million years really is. Two million dollars or two million hamburgers are much easier to comprehend; but two million years? Two million years is twenty thousand lifetimes, given that everyone lives to be a hundred. It's a birthday cake with enough candles to be visible from space. Two million years is practically forever!

Another thing about a period of two million years is that it gives sufficient time for things to change. Earth has gone from palm trees to glaciers and back again in two million years. Two million years ago there were sabre toothed cats and ape men. And like everything else, the Magellans were bound to change, too.

The ten moon-sized spaceships that finally arrived at that far-flung outpost of the Milky Way galaxy we call the solar system were battered and pocked with craters. When you think about it, it was an amazing piece of navigation, or luck that got them there. Galaxies do not stand still - they are whirling about in space at thousands of kilometres an hour. One minute they're here, the next they've gone. Imagine living on a train that travelled around the country. You'd leave home in the morning, but when you wanted to go home you'd have to travel to a different place. Think what it would be like rushing onto the station platform to see your home disappearing into the distance. That's what navigation in space is like.

But whether it was superb navigation, luck or the Universal Jester, the Magellan fleet had finally arrived. And instead of cries of, We're here!, or Please stay in your seats until the spaceship has docked. there was only silence. Apart from the Unravelling Devices, the equipment was still functioning perfectly. On the bridge, little lights winked and danced along instrument panels and meters monitored current flows. Automatic recording machines announced that Lunch will be served in ten minutes and The movie tonight will be Lost in Space. But on the ten ships of the Magellan fleet there was nobody to be seen. But there was life, and plenty of it.

After a few thousand years of despair and despondency the Magellans began to look inward at themselves. The struggle for survival - jobs, money and success - was solved. The trivial things that had occupied them in the past had no relevance any more. Who cared what the politicians were saying? So what if you missed out on that vacancy in the hydroponics farm, or some pea-brained twit was promoted ahead of you, or your kids didn't turn out to be academic geniuses? None of this was relevant to the Big Question.

What precisely the Big Question was nobody really knew. And so, the Magellans sat down to ponder. They gathered in small groups in corridors; committees were formed and debating societies established to discuss the Magellans’ Role in Destiny.

As century followed century the debate raged continuously. One school of thought would achieve ascendancy only to be torn down and replaced by another fashionable theory. There was the Church of Him which preached that the Universe and each of its species was a toy of an immensely wise and omnipotent man. Its powerful rival, the Church of Her believed essentially in the same gospel, only disagreeing on the gender of the Supreme Being.

There was also the theory of Blissful Ignorance which maintained that the purpose of life was unknowable and declared all ponderings and researches a heresy. True happiness