Bruce Campbell sat at his desk. It was a little before 2pm on a wintery Saturday and he had opened a new bottle of Dry Fly. The shop was busy but his work was done for the day. Besides, he had his best team in place - Alan (wig on straight), Willie, Ken, Les, Roger and Peter. Three varsity boys in that team. He liked varsity boys because they were smart, even if they did get up to silly things at times. As well as serving customers, there was work for the boys to do out the back - like keeping the beer rollers full - and shelving to do in the spirits and wine sections. He could smell the packet of unopened fish and chips that Les had left to cool down in the office - for some reason Les liked his fish and chips cold. Ray wouldn't be impressed to know that the packet been left on his desk blotter. The smell would still be there on Monday when Ray returned; and a stain. He'd probably go on to Ivan about it. Ivan was very patient. The TV was on in the office and members of his staff were passing through to check that the rugby test hadn't started.
"2.15 start." he'd remind them.
The boys at Levin & Co (out the back) had finished around lunchtime so the back roller door was down and was being beaten by rain. Bruce was glad that the test match was in Auckland, though he knew that the All Blacks were better than the Aussies in the wet. He felt a tinge of sorrow for Richie and his younger brother Robert who were out in that weather and missing the test.
The sherry made Bruce feel good. He forgot about Richie and thought about Joe Karam. Joe's dad was a customer and might even pop in for a spot or two this afternoon, during the match.
September 2019.
58 Adelaide Road had changed, as many things had. There were no wooden crates of bottles stacked up on the left hand side, no procession of empty cars and
the Bedford truck would not be coming back today. Or ever.
A lot of advances had been made since 1973, although the All Blacks were still tussling with the Wallabies.
Science had made a lot of advances but it was debatable whether the same could be said of society. While people's rights across the board had certainly improved, there was a growing fester of hate and blame. It seemed that quite a lot of people weren't really ready to move forward on a considerable number of issues, climate change being one of the big ones.
Old beliefs had survived. In fact, some old beliefs were having a big influence on society and, for people in a lot of countries, life was no picnic.
In 2019 some people were familiar with the theory that there were actually a lot of parallel universes.
This seemed strange and dismissible by a lot of good folks but a bit of evidence had emerged.
It was complicated stuff - all to do with time not needing to be in a straight line and the fact that parallel universes meant that events could happen on different planes in different dimensions, or something like that. I don't really understand it all but it seems that past events could pop up again in other universes. Maybe not exactly the same, but the main foundations would be there.
