Thursday
Lying on his bed in the morning he reached over and clicked on the radio, the normal raucous music that he favoured now left him cold and he re-tuned it to the local news.
“…..it seems that the world of science is in a bit of a tizz this morning.” The anchorman was saying with some relish. “The supposedly super accurate atomic clocks here in the UK aren’t agreeing with other atomic clocks around the world, so whose clock is right? On the line is Dr Mark Lester, an expert from the Physics department at the university. Dr Lester good morning, or is it goodnight?” The man said with a chuckle.
“Good morning Jeff.” Dr Lester replied with an uneasy manner.
“So the clocks don’t agree, what is the problem here? I mean we are talking about tiny fractions of a second.”
“Very true, but atomic clocks work on the decay of radioactive elements, the rate is fixed, it doesn’t vary for any reason, heat, cold, nothing affects radioactive decay. So even a minute discrepancy is surprising.”
“Maybe to you, but what does it mean to our listeners?”
“Well.” Dr Lester paused for slightly longer than was good radio. “Well, it’s not going to affect whether your train runs on time this morning.”
“I don’t think anything affects them.” The announcer laughed. “So are our clocks broken then?”
“Well, either that or…”
There was another overlong pause.
“Yes?”
“Or the laws of physics are coming undone.”
It came out in an embarrassed rush.
“Come again? The laws of physics?” The announcer queried him jovially. “What does that mean in laymans language Dr Lester?”
“The universe is about to end.” Dr Lester said without hesitation.
“I think I’ll put my money on a dodgy mainspring, thank you Dr Lester. Now the weather with…”
Phil snapped the radio off.

‘The universe is about to end.’
The words chilled him, not because he believed them but because of what Al had told him on that drunken Saturday evening.
‘Its all gowin’, fadin’, fadin’ to nowt. Shades Phil, Shades don’ last while seven days.’
Phil dragged on his clothes and grabbed up his phone, sunglasses and wallet, he was out of the front door before anyone in the house had realised he was awake. The bus journey across town was nightmarish, more crashes had occurred overnight and the abandoned cars added to the normal rush hour misery that was ratcheted up another notch by further near misses and fender benders. The bus finally ground to a halt on Furnival Gate.
The driver leaned out of his cubby hole and shouted down the bus.
“Centre’s gridlocked, best walk from here.”
The doors opened and Phil joined the grumbling mass of passengers as they got off and began to trudge towards their jobs. Phil found that he was now hungry and stopped off at a bakery to get a bacon sarnie and a coke. As he emerged into the city centre he was sharply reminded of Al’s death, the tower crane was a grim silhouette on the skyline. He turned away from it towards the university, marked by the angular grey tower on its main campus, a highly visible blunt blocky phallus just to the right of the slightly less ugly hospital building. The traffic was stationary, the trams as stuck as everything else, so he walked out of the centre against the general pedestrian flow, wary of the many little collisions of his fellow walkers. For some reason this morning there was an outbreak of general clumsiness and frayed tempers weren’t improving.
He managed to get to the university without colliding with anyone and looked around a little helplessly, he hadn’t twigged just how big the campus was.
“’Scuse me, where’s t’ Physics department?” He asked a girl who looked only a little older than himself.
“Over there, see that brick clad one ?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Physics.”
“Uh, thanks.”
She went back to her texting and Phil walked up the road towards the tall modern building in the general melee of students heading for their lectures but as he neared the entrance there was a static crowd.

“What’s up mate?” He queried a figure squeezing out of the throng.
“Bloody press scrum, they’ve shut the main doors, we have to go round the back.” The other replied and jerked his head in the direction he was heading. Phil tagged along and joined the students as they entered by the rear entrance under the watchful gaze of security staff. His youthful appearance got him past their scrutiny, just another student, he was inside but still no wiser as to the location of Dr Lester. Before he got to the lifts and stairs he spied a porter in university uniform.
“’Scuse me, where can I find Dr Lester?”
The porter gave him a careful look.
“Not from this department?” He queried him, but it was a statement of fact.
“No, I’m uh from chemistry.” Phil lied. “Got a meeting with him this morning.”
“Well I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you and not some reporter, they’re all over the place since that radio thing.” The man said with a slight grin. “Take the lift to the sixth floor, room 615.”
“Thanks.” Phil said with a grateful smile.
Emerging from the lift he walked slowly down the corridor towards what he hoped would be answers to his doubts and questions. Room 615, the door was slightly open and he knocked on it nervously.
“Come.” A familiar voice called out.
Phil entered the room to see a man lounging behind a modestly chaotic desk, the phone clamped to his head with one hand while the other twirled a pair of gold rimmed spectacles.
“Look Gordon I’ve got to go, there’s a student here, no. I meant it Gordon, the clocks don’t go wrong and that’s the simplest explanation. No, no. I can’t argue with you, got to go now, bye.” Dr Lester finished in an exasperated tone and dropped the handset back onto phone. “Hi, bad morning.” He apologised then took a longer look at Phil. “Sorry, should I know you?”
“I, err, no.” Phil mumbled.
The previously open face began to frown, drawing his receding hairline downwards.
“Student press?” He challenged him.

“No. Sorry…” Phil just couldn’t get his tongue working now he was here.
“Wait a minute.” Dr Lester murmured. “I have seen you before, yes, your picture was on the front page of the Star last night or the night before, yes that’s it. Sorry about your friend, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“I’m not here about Al.” Phil said softly. “He’s gone.”
“Yes, well…” Dr Lester began to say, his hand creeping towards the phone again.
“What tha said on’t radio this mornin’.” Phil blurted out suddenly. “S’ true ent it? Its all gowin’ t’end this Sat’day.”
Dr Lester’s hand stopped its advance and he leant back in his chair again.
“You seem pretty certain about that.” He probed suspiciously.
“Al tol’ me las’ Sat’day, he said Shades don’ las’ while seven days. We’re in Shades ent we?” Phil spilled the prediction onto the surprised academic.
“I don’t know about Shades, but the rough calculations I’ve done indicate the terminator will occur on Monday at the latest.”
Phil slumped down into the chair uninvited, it was true, the world really was going to end.
“Seven shittin’ days.” He groaned.
“What’s that?”
“We’re all gowin’ tuh hell.”
Dr Lester sat upright across the desk.
“One thing you learn in science is to be sure of your facts, we need more data.” He said calmly.
“Whassa point?”
“Either we can try to understand this or we can lie down and let it roll over us. Me, I’m going to try the former.” Dr Lester informed him. “What about you?”

Phil looked back at him as the words filtered through the haze of fear and desperation.
“What? Me, help tha?”
“You got anything better to do?”
He didn’t want to spend his last days in school learning useless facts, he could go and get terminally drunk but that wouldn’t solve anything. It would simply send him to hell with a hangover.
“What tha want doin’?”
“I’ve got a readout of the clocktimes from locations around the world, I want to get a picture of whether this effect is universal or localised…”
“What?” Phil interrupted him plaintively.
“Sorry, getting ahead of myself. If we are in a decaying shadow universe the rate of decay may not be the same everywhere, okay?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“So if we plot out the clocktimes on a map of the world we may see a pattern of decay.”
“Yeah, but ‘ows that ‘elp us?”
“It helps us understand the phenomenon, beyond that.” He shrugged. “I want to understand it, worrying can come later.”
Phil saw some logic in that, keep busy.
“Okay.”
“Good. Get on the PC there and get a decent world map up, then locate these cities and label each with the clocktimes here.” Dr Lester pointed at an old dust covered computer in the corner of the office and then held out a sheet of paper to him.
“I’m going to get some more data.” He continued, picking up the handset and beginning to punch in a number.
Phil switched the computer on and was immediately faced by the login request.
“Need a login an’ password.”
“DP1MKL password onyerbike, that’s O-N-Y-E-R-B-I-K-E.”

Phil dutifully typed in the letters and numbers and the computer flashed onto a new screen with the familiar icons of word processors and web browsers, he was onto Google and got a high resolution jpeg of a world map. He imported it into the Paintbox package and began to add the numbers to the cities he already had, behind him he could hear Dr Lester collecting more numbers.
“Here’s some more for you.” Dr Lester called to him.
Phil got up and accepted the paper, this guy worked fast.
The handset clunked down onto the phone and Dr Lester stretched with a yawn.
“I could use a coffee, how about you….sorry what’s your name?”
“Phil doctor.”
“Phil.” Dr Lester smiled back at him. “Call me Karl.”
“Karl?”
“It’s a family thing, oldest son is always called Mark but we use the second name to avoid confusion when we get together, me Dad and Grandad, all Mark.” Karl explained.
“Okay.” Phil shrugged, he wasn’t going to argue the toss over a name.
“So, coffee or coke or whatever?”
“Coffee thanks.”
“I’ll bring them back. I’m pretty persona non grata just now in the department and I don’t want to hang around in the common room.”
“Okay.”
Phil went back to entering the numbers on his map and he was starting to see a pattern, the numbers far away from the UK all seemed to be different to each other but the closer to home they were the more constant they became, it was as though the clocks in the UK were the least messed up.
“Here you go.” Karl held out the mug to him.
“Uh, Karl.”
“Yes?”
“T’ numbers, they get, I dunno, weird further from here.” He pointed to the map on the screen.
Karl leant forward and scrutinised the screen for a time, taking little sips of the coffee as his eyes darted here and there absorbing the details.
“Hmmm.” Was his considered response. “Plot the rest of these would you Phil.” He requested, retrieving the latest sheet of numbers.
Between drinking his coffee Phil entered the new numbers until he had them all on screen.
“Great, print that.”

The laser printer clicked and hummed then printed out the map. Karl grabbed it up and used several coloured highlighters to draw a series of lines on it before holding it out to Phil.
“What do you see?”
There were a mass of squiggly lines but essentially they formed rough rings radiating out from England.
“A bullseye.” Phil suggested tentatively.
“A very apt description, a bullseye. And we are sitting somewhere close to the epicentre. Waves of disruption rippling out from the site of the schism.”
“What?” Phil asked plaintively.
“How to put it?” Karl pondered for a moment. “A shadow universe forms instantaneously, poof!” He waved his hands and nearly spilt his coffee.
“But as time goes on it doesn’t precisely mirror the events in the original universe, our many different choices cause ever wider differences. I decide to have a beer, my original decides to have a glass of wine, but not just me, you, everyone making millions, billions of choices.”
“Okay.” Phil agreed warily, he thought he followed Karl’s argument.
“No, wait a minute.” Karl frowned. “That wouldn’t cause this effect, that would generate a completely random set of numbers all over the world. No this indicates some sort of causal event, a single event from which ….”
He went back to his chair and sat down in it, frown lines creased his face as he worked through the facts towards the conclusion.
“This could only happen if there was some fixed point, some locus that wasn’t diverging as rapidly from the parent universe.”
Everything else was fading but he remained solid, only him, the fixed point.
“I ent fadin’.” Phil said in shock.
“Eh?”
“I ent fadin’.” Phil repeated much to Karl’s bemusement.
“You’ll forgive me for saying this but you are every bit as solid as I am from my side of the desk.”
Phil looked around the office, he could see the blotchiness even here. Almost without thinking he put on his sunglasses and nearly crapped himself as the floor became rather too translucent for comfort and he could see shadowy figures moving about below his feet.
“Phil, you alright?” Karl enquired seeing his sudden jerk and pallid face.
“I…” Phil couldn’t begin to explain it.

He just removed the sunglasses and held them out to the puzzled academic. Gingerly Karl raised them to his face and slipped them on. His head moved from side to side, then up, then down, and all the while his lips were moving silently forming increasingly shocked and shocking words. He held up his own hand and turned it back and forth. Then he settled his disturbed attention upon Phil.
“You aren’t fading.” He said quietly and took off the glasses. “You are the locus, you are….you are the original.” He finished in a whisper. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m away then.” Phil said dejectedly.
“No, no, no!” Karl called anxiously and waved him furiously back into his chair. “That’s not what I meant. You shouldn’t be in this universe Phil, you belong in the original universe. But how the hell did you get here?”
“I dunno.” Phil replied unhappily.
“If we could answer that question, maybe, just maybe we could get you back where you belong.”
Phil stared at him dumbly. Was there really a chance? A chance to get out?
“What abaht theesen?” He asked instead.
Karl looked back at him steadily.
“You’ve seen it with your own eyes, I’m fading along with everything else, there’s no escape for me, or them.”
He tilted his head at the door.
“Then why’s tha helping me? I mean it dun’t help tha.”
“What’s the choice Phil, go out and blow my last hours in drunken debauchery, shoot up on coke, OD and bale out early? I’d like my time to count, maybe understand this situation a bit before it kills me.”
“But none’ll know.”
“If I succeed, you’ll know Phil.” Karl said earnestly. “I need to do some thinking and calculating. Can you search the web for stories on high tech stuff failing?”
“Okay. Why?”
“The more high tech electronic goods rely more heavily on quantum effects to function, our degrading universe will show up there first.”
“What?”
“The universe is falling to bits, literally, so the cracks will show in the smallest things first, micro electronic circuits and the like. The first effects may already be showing, and the rate of decay will be accelerating.” He explained ominously.
Phil turned back to the PC and began his web trawl. It didn’t take long to find examples both trivial, the latest iPods were failing like flies, and serious, fifteen of the most modern fly by wire aircraft had crashed in the last 48 hours.
The press circus at the front doors had finally gotten re-assigned or bored or both by the time six o’clock rolled around and Karl was still jotting down notes. He looked at his watch and took his glasses off.
“You best get off home Phil.” He suggested.
“I can help.” Phil protested.
“Tomorrow. Tonight I need some space. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning, let me have your address and mobile number.”
Phil looked at the academic warily, was this just a fob off? He decided it wasn’t, the guy looked troubled.
“Here.” Phil handed him the details on a piece of paper.
“Near Bramall Lane, a fan?”
“Yeah, well ‘ntil this season, been shite.” Phil admitted.
“Know what you mean, I saw the match last weekend…” He shook his head, he would never see another football match. “Tomorrow, might not be until nine if the traffics bad. I’ll ring you.”
“Okay.” Phil agreed.
He paused halfway through the door.
“Thanks.”
Karl smiled back wearily and then bent back over his notes.