Time Is... Time Was...

By Bill Williams

Bill an ordinary young guy in his early 20's suddenly finds himself catapulted from the London of 1972 to the London of 2972, where he discovers his cousin has been fighting in a terrible war on a distant planet and that he has been seconded into that fight. Encountering an alien race called the Xon, inventors of the time travel machines, Bill learns that much of the Earth army is made up of soldiers declared missing or killed in action in wars both past and yet to come. The effects of the war and the travelling back and forth through time have a profound effect on Bill and his attitudes and outlook on life change him. having fallen in love with Kalera, one of the elegant Xon females at the Time Centre, Bill is torn between his life in 1972 and what could be in 2972...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daric Books
• Release date: Sep 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386632757

Bill Williams

Bill Williams is a retired Englishman residing in Florida. He is a qualified financial accountant who ran a global IT and Business Consulting company for many years. In early life he played soccer at a high level in England and was associated with three professional clubs, later, a number of semi-professional teams. After moving to the Sunshine State, his passion became golf, playing, watching and subsequently writing about the game, moreover the history of golf. He is, by his own words, a student of golf history. Since retiring from the world of business and commerce, which took him to many regions of the globe, his pursuits include an avid interest in all sports, particularly golf. When not playing golf or attending professional tournaments, his time is taken up with reading and researching from his extensive library of biographys and reference books. This latest work is Bills third published book, and he plans several other projects, all golf related.

Book preview

One: Forward to the Future

The story I’m about to tell is, to say the least, bizarre in the extreme. How to start? More to the point, where to start?  Well, I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning and I know that you, Phil, will understand my story, even if others don’t. I suppose it all started in 1972 when my cousin Tom, you remember him don’t you? When Tom went to live in London. As you’ll recall, Tom and I are more like brothers than cousins. We grew up together, and him having three sisters and me having none, it was natural that we’d become like brothers, especially as he’s only three months older than me. We spent our childhood holidays together, alternating between houses for the duration and were honorary members of each others gangs. Those were great days, back in the ‘50’s. Swapping toy soldiers, making model kits and building things with Meccano and Lego. Then, in our teens, we went camping together, went to festivals and rock concerts, got drunk, took acid and met lots of lovely girls. Oh yes, we did everything together! Well, we ended up working together in the same factory until he took off for the big city. Of course there were no mobile phones or e-mail in those days so we communicated via the old snail mail. Every four or five weeks I’d go up there and spend the weekend with him, especially when there was a Rugby International on at Twickenham or London Welsh were at home at Old Deer Park.

Anyway, I’d spent one weekend towards the end of April up there going to see Beck, Bogart and Appice at the old Odeon at Hammersmith, then London Welsh on the Saturday. They were at home to London Irish which wasn’t too much of a trip for the Paddies as their home ground was only a few miles down the road!

Well, I’d booked the first week of May off, mainly because I was finishing up on the Friday morning off nights and would be starting back on nights a week the following Monday, effectively giving me an extra two days off. I came off nights that Friday morning and went to bed for a few hours kip. I’d planned my week so that I could go to the Colston Hall in Bristol on the Wednesday to see Ten Years After and Black Sabbath in Cardiff on the Friday and the other days were to be spent lounging around listening to records, playing the guitar and doing a bit more to the mural that I was painting on my bedroom wall.

So, I got home, went to bed and got up around eleven. My mother, I should point out that I was still living with my parents at this time, although I was planning on moving up with Tom as soon as he got a two-bedroom flat, handed me a letter. It had a London postmark so I knew it was from Tom. I opened and read it. It said simply: ‘Get up here as soon as you can. Very urgent. Tom’

Mother packed my bag and by one o’clock I was on the train to Paddington. It didn’t take me long to get over to Brixton and Tom’s flat on Creamer Road. I had a key and let myself in. The flat was sparsely furnished with just a bed settee in the lounge, two chairs, a television and a huge stereo system. There were posters of Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead on the walls, along with Dali prints and other pictures. Glancing around, I could see a note with my name on, on top of the stereo. It told me to go to the old junk shop just off the main Brixton Road where I would learn more. To say I was intrigued would be missing the point completely, so I made some tea, had a cigarette and went to the shop about ten minutes later.

The shop was full of mainly military items as well as all the usual junk. There was a young girl of Chinese extraction sitting behind the counter and she gave me a strange look as I entered. She glanced down at something behind the counter, then got up and turned the sign on the door to ‘Closed.’ With a faint smile, she beckoned me to follow her and led me down a corridor to another room. I was quite taken aback when I entered the room as it was bare of any furniture and the walls, floor and ceiling seemed to shimmer with a kind of pearly light. The girl touched one of the walls and two seats slid out from the walls. She beckoned me to sit, and, as soon as I did so, I was gripped by an invisible force field. She sat down and touched the wall again. This time a slim column rose out of the floor. The top of this column opened out like a flower seen in a speeded-up film. Her hands flew over the flower and the room seemed to shimmer and shake. I suddenly felt quite sick and felt as if I was on a roller-coaster that was out of control.

I think I must have passed out for a few seconds, then I was fully awake and the invisible field that held me was gone. The girl motioned for me to stand up and made for the door. When it opened I was amazed to see a long corridor lit by soft light. There were several doors in this corridor and the girl led me along to the end door. She placed her hand on a white panel next to the door and I was astonished to see a small lens open and a beam of light scan her face. Then the door slid noiselessly open.

The scene that greeted my eyes left me quite breathless I must say. I found myself being led into a large spacious apartment that was furnished in what could only be called a minimalist fashion. There was a large, three-cornered settee that encompassed a good three-quarters of the room with a long, low glass-topped table in front of it. Strange statues were stood in the corners of the room and equally strange paintings hung on the walls. There were two large patio-style windows that gave a view over a fantastic city! It looked very much like the film set for Wells’ Things To Come, with mono-rails, moving pedestrian walkways, flying cars and towering buildings. I stared at it for quite a few seconds until the girl indicated for me to sit down. I flopped down on the settee, my mind full of questions. She vanished through a sliding door, returning a few seconds later with a large whisky and ginger and a packet of cigarettes and an ash tray. She placed the drink on the table in front of me, offered me the cigarettes and, when I had one lit, smiled and spoke for the first time. ‘Listen carefully, Bill and don’t interrupt. Yes, I know your name and everything about you. Tom’s told me so much, but I digress. You may well be wondering where you are? Well, you are more or less exactly where you were a few minutes ago, perhaps it might be better for you to wonder...when you are?’

I stared at her, unable to follow her line of speech. She smiled slightly, very attractively I thought: she was a very attractive woman. Then she continued, ‘Yes, Bill, when you are. You are in the area of London you know as Brixton but it’s now the year 2972.’

She paused and took a sip of her own drink. I was still staring at her in total disbelief. She put her glass back down on the table, lit a cigarette and went on, ‘You see, at the end of the twenty first century there was a terrible war between the East and the West. Many nuclear weapons were unleashed and the faces of the lands were changed forever. Many of the low-lying countries were flooded when huge parts of the polar caps melted. There then followed a long period of night as darkness covered most of the world. Over two thirds of all life on the planet was wiped out and it took nearly three hundred years before the world began to recover. By the middle of the twenty sixth century, much of the planet was back to some kind of normality and when the twenty eighth century dawned, the world was visited by an alien race from a planet that orbits the star you know as Procyon. These beings, the Xon, were benign and peace loving and they brought cures for all the diseases that had plagued the world.

‘As the century drew to a close, many of the Xon were living on Earth and many Earth people were living on their planet, which is called Aldera. Fifty years ago, Aldera was attacked by the Bla’ain, a reptilian race from the third planet of the Procyon system. The Xon, being peace-loving, had no way to defend themselves and the Bla’ain soon over ran the planet. When the news reached us here on Earth, the Xon asked us to help them but as we only had small armies we could only send limited numbers to try and attack the Bla’ain. So, the Xon, being great scientists developed a time machine, having learned of the great soldiers that had fought in wars in the past. So we have been going back and bringing soldiers from battles to help us fight the Bla’ain. I know that you have a military background, as does Tom and I know that both your fathers fought in World War Two so you seemed to be ideal choices to help.

‘You may have often wondered about all those soldiers that have been listed as missing in action? Well they are here in this time fighting for us. We take them out from battles and bring them here, re-train them with modern weapons and off they go to Aldera. Of course, I know that you have not been a soldier and you have the right to refuse, but we rather hope that you will fight.’

I stopped her with an upraised hand and said, ‘To say that I’m overawed is a bit of an understatement and I would like to take some time to think about it, if that’s possible?’

She nodded and I continued, ‘How far back do you go to get your soldiers? Rome? Greece? I mean...’

She stopped me, saying, ‘Oh no. The farthest we go is World War One. You see, if we were to go further and something happened to our machines, we would not be able to repair it with the materials available. Of course much of the electrical machinery of the early twentieth century is crude, but usable, as we found out when a machine broke down after materialising in a small village near to where the Battle of the Somme was underway. And of course, we could not let a machine fall into the hands of say, the Nazis or Vietcong, so we now carry some spare parts that can be used in conjunction with available