Echoes of a Ghost

An aspiring and reclusive physicist, following in his late father's footsteps, Ringo was delving deep into his latest creation. He hadn't realised quite how long he'd not seen the sun, or breathed fresh air, this experiment of his had been messing with his interpretation of time.

Not literally, it just felt like he'd spend two hours doing something, when really it had been ten. So having the odd nap, and amid an ever-growing tower of empty monster cans, Ringo had spent almost six days experimenting and completing this brand new creation.

He was sure he'd figured it out, the secret to space travel. A way to get beyond our galaxy, the speed needed, the power needed, the direction - which as it turned out to be, was vital. The question that had been plagueing physicists, astronomers and scientists all over was ‘how do we get more power?’. But that turned out to be the wrong question, everyone had been looking at the issue the wrong way, we have the necessary power already. The question that needs answering is how to implement the power. Currently so much of the power the engines are creating is being wasted, and Ringo had found the answer - or so he'd thought.

Having experimented with different metals and plastics, different length pipes, he ran what would be his final experiment in this house, but not for the reason he was expecting.

His monitor began blaring at him, and angry shade of red pulsing, coinciding with a dangerously loud alarm and a computerised voice shouting;

- ALERT - ALERT - ALERT -

All bad things, his experiment was smoking, his monitor switched off and powered down as the PC it was attached to also started smoking. Ringo smashed the glass revealing his small fire extinguisher and sprayed desperately, but to no avail. Grabbing what he could, he darted out of his home lab, up the stairs and out the front door. He turned back just in time to see a lick of flame rise up out of the ground floor window.

He watched his home start to disappear behind a curtain of flame, the crackling sound growing ever louder until it started to be replaced by the sounds of distant sirens closing the gap. Ringo knew they were going to be too late, all they'd do now is minimise surrounding damage. As he was standing there, the heat blisteringly hot against his bare face, thankful for his safety goggles protecting his eyes, something his dad use to say to him resurfaced;

“A failed experiment is just a step to success."

Ringo smiled bitterly, what success could he gain from this failed experiment? Where could he go now? He loved his dad, but since he passed away, when Ringo was just seven, his words of wisdom hadn't seemed so wise.

His father, Hero Spacer, a name meant for better things than leaving a young family behind. His death was unexplained, his body never found, but his disappearance more than apparent. Ringo swore off physics from that moment, the day he lost the man he looked up to most in the world. But he kept finding himself drawn back, he would have to tear himself away from his dad's old laboratory, reminding himself how much he didn't want to go back in there, but then a day later, his hand would be hovering over the handle once more. Ringo kept trying to avoid science at school, but it was the only thing that called to him, and he was good at it, better than good.

The day he lost his home, Ringo returned to the home that was left to him. His mother, stricken with grief, moved out but never sold their family home, she couldn't. The musty smell hit him as soon as the front door opened. The smell of a house that hadn't been touched in years, like a vortex the fresh air rushed in, forcing the old stale air out desperate to breathe fresh air itself.

He didn't explore, the layers of dust told him everything he needed to know, it was exactly how they'd left it. Keeping his lab coat on, his hand hovered over the handle to the basement, his dad's laboratory, only momentarily, before accepting this as his fate, and pushing the door open for the first time in eighteen years.

The first thing he noticed was it seemed… Fresh? Odd, he was expecting the room to be worse than the rest of the house, after all it hadn't been opened longer than the other rooms in the house, but it looked just as it had the last time he'd been in it, he couldn't see dust, nor any mess, indicating his mother hadn't come in here either.

The whitewashed walls were barely visible behind shelves stacked full of equipment, folders full of notes and vials of unknown liquids of all different colours. Expecting to come in to find a ruined lab, Ringo was shocked to find that his ears had picked up the low deep buzzing of electricity.

Glancing around the room trying to find the source of the buzzing, his eyes locked onto a home built unit on a desk in the corner of the room, nothing in particular stood out to him, but there was something drawing his gaze, an unexplainable and distinct attraction to the unit that Ringo couldn't avoid.

Before he knew it, Ringo was standing in front of the unit, his body having moved him there before his mind could catch up. His hands quickly, yet delicately and expertly explored the unit in front of him, careful not to press any buttons, but finding out everything he could.

The unit was cuboid, with the panel on the right being see-through glass, in which Ringo could see different coloured wires overlapping and tubes constantly circulating coolant. The other panels he could see were all dark metallic grey in colour, with a black metal frame bolted in, holding it all together. The top panel housed a lit up digital screen alongside a touchscreen with a keyboard, number pad and two round buttons, a green one on top, a red one below. The digital screen was lit up with the word, ENGAGED, printed in the middle, which Ringo couldn't make heads nor tails of.

If he was to guess, Ringo would say this was a modified PC, however it looked too high tech, at least it did for eighteen years ago, could his dad have been that much of a prodigy, that he could modify a PC to a high enough standard back then, that it wouldn't be looked upon as old nowadays? Thinking back to the experiments his dad had run when Ringo was younger, he realised he was correct. Hero Spacer was incredibly smart, a life taken too early.

Having the inquisitive and curious scientific mind that he did, Ringo was more than tempted to press each button as the quickest and easiest way to find out what they did. A sixth sense however, guided him to err on the side of caution.. Maybe that should have been what he'd done earlier in the day to prevent the unfortunate end of his last experiment, perhaps that was the driving force of his apparent new sixth sense sensible side.

Tapping the integrated keyboard, the clicking keys seemed deafening as they echoed around the small room, the screen off to the right switched from its ‘ENGAGED’ screen and instead prompted a password with no other information given. Smiling, Ringo input his long term password, adopted from his father, which he had used for everything, with slight variations.

Muff1n020297

The name of their pet dog when Ringo was growing up, with a '1’ instead of an ‘i’, followed by Ringo's date of birth. Considering how detached his father was, Ringo had considered whether the password was to help him remember Ringo's birthday, as opposed to the other way around. Dismissing the thought as the screen accepted the password and was replaced with a couple of lines of data, he quickly read through what it showed him.

-username: herospace

-last login 03/05/04

-system name: Delorean

-system status: engaged

-failsafe status: off

-Would you like to turn failsafe on? _____

There was a blinking line after the question at the end, trying to draw his attention, wanting him to type either yes, or no. But that wasn't what was drawing his attention, Delorean was obviously the name of the time machine Doc had built in Back to the Future, a favourite film Ringo shared with his father, and it's system was engaged, what did that mean? Had his father built a working time machine? What did it mean about the failsafe being off?

Ringo's eyes grew wide at the thought that his dad hadn't died, but had in fact just built and used a working time machine.

Yes.

Tapping enter after typing yes, he heard the machine whirl in anticipation. The green button blinked on and off, inviting Ringo to press it. How could he not? He'd lost everything, his now believed long lost father, his mother had died a few years back, he'd now lost his home just this very morning, what was the worst that could happen?

His hand hovered over the button, just as it did over the door handle to this room when he was a kid, breaking through that mental barrier once more, Ringo pushed the button.

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Time.

Space.

Reality.

It all blended into one, as Ringo's mind twisted and spiralled, like a swirling vortex, he felt like his body was being wrung out like a wet towel. Without enough breath in his lungs to scream out in pain, Ringo just had to clench his teeth and endure.

All of a sudden, it felt like his feet landed on a hard floor and he crumpled, but the pain was gone, slowly scrambling to his knees and then standing, Ringo looked around and was surprised to see the basement he was just in, but it looked… Different. The colours were tinted and shimmering, nothing looked quite as it should, but the main difference was the man standing in the middle of the room, staring at Ringo, smiling.

Not feeling the pain anymore, but still feeling the residual ache in his whole body, it took Ringo a moment to grasp who was in the room with him, “Dad?”.

“Hi, son.” With tears welling in his eyes behind his glasses, Hero stood there, a kind smile widening on his handsome face. Ringo was dumbfounded, and went to speak, but no words came out so he just shut his mouth again. With so many questions swimming around in his head, his mouth couldn't land on one to spit out. Eventually, he stammered out a single word, “how?”.

Hero took a deep breath, as if he hadn't spoken a word in the whole time he had been gone, and then he spoke, and all Ringo had to do was stand there and listen.

“Ringo, my son, where do I start? I grew up as a nerd, a geek, a loser. I loved science, and sci-fi, star trek and star wars were staples for me growing up. In my teens, Back to the Future came out and the world of time travel opened up to me. I researched it, I went into every library, I picked up every science book, I found every newspaper clipping I could and delved deep. I lost myself in my work until I met your mother, beautiful and my shining light, she stopped me spiralling into a pit of depression that I was close to falling into. I'd started to believe that my only way forward in life was working out the secrets of time travel, but she changed my mind.” There was a wistful look in his eyes as he took breath, before continuing.

“It was when you came to be, around your first birthday, I had an epiphany, having spent a few years away from my research of time travel, I looked back through my notes and couldn't find anything relating to my thoughts, so I started tinkering again. I had a few failed attempts, until I made the Delorean.” He smiled as he said the name of the Irish-made car made famous by the Back to the Future trilogy, and nodded towards the unit on the desk behind Ringo.

“Which brings us to the day I disappeared. Both the most successful, and the worst day of my life. Excitement and eagerness got the best of me that day as my initial tests with objects went well, I decided to test with myself, and like I said, I was too keen, I forgot to turn on the failsafe. I realised my mistake too late, and as I felt myself being transported, I imagine it felt similar to your journey here, I wasn't able to turn the failsafe on.

“Unfortunately for me, what the failsafe option means is that you're able to return by interacting with the Delorean.” Ringo took a sharp intake of breath as he recognised the severity of what his father was saying, Hero noticed the look in his eyes, and knowing his son understood what it meant, a sadness fell across his face.

“Whenever this is, you're trapped here.” The heartbreaking realisation hit Ringo like a truck, his feelings of abandonment and anger towards his father leaving him immediately.

“Yes, and no.” Hero replied, surprising his son. “I am trapped,” he continued, “but this is exactly the same time as it is at home for you. What I thought the Delorean would do, it didn't. Instead of travelling through time, I created a machine that could travel through dimensions, and where we are now is an alternate dimension, at least that's how I'm interpreting it.” Hero smiled with genuine humour, as he saw the look of complete confusion on Ringo's face.

“I can't interact with anything anymore, but I can still see and hear what goes on. I've been there in the background of your highs and lows, I've seen your worst days, like your Year Seven sports day.” He said with a small laugh, treasuring the memory of Ringo accidentally tap tackling his relay teammate in the 4x100m, causing a chain reaction of people falling over. “I've seen your best days, like the excellent volcano you made when you were nine, and the first time you built your own PC, I was even there for your first kiss with Evelyn, although I did turn away and give you that privacy, I promise.” He said with a cheeky smile.

“I figured out quite early on in my time here, that I can't move anything, I can still feel and touch it, otherwise I wouldn't be able to stand in the room with you. Doorways for some reason I'm able to go through them if I vibrate quick enough.. It took me a while to figure that one out, I was in her for I don't know how long before I even tried it.

“There was a day that changed my life, it changed my view on my world and the way I saw the position I was in. A few months after I'd escaped the basement for the first time, I was checking up on you. I knew two things, I knew you'd sworn off science because I'd left you behind, and I knew that you were the only person who would be able to find me.

“You were in your room, your mum had gone out, and you were reading, I was speaking to you, but as always, you couldn't hear me. I begged you, I wished, I pleaded, I did everything I knew how to, to get you to come down to the basement.” Hero paused to collect his thoughts again.

“And you did.

“That was the first time I was able to influence you and your emotions. You got to the door, and hesitated, before heading back up to your room. Over the next few years I continued to prod and poke, I asked for your help, and I begged your forgiveness. I tried multiple things, and I don't think it was ever possible for me to make you do anything, but if you were already thinking about something, I could give you a nudge in that direction. I helped you get back into science, I brought you back to the unopened basement at every opportunity I could, and today was the day you finally came in.”

With his father's explanation complete, Ringo stood in silence for three full minutes absorbing all the information in disbelief. A lot of his previous questions answered, but in doing so it opened the door to so many more questions.

How different would his life be had his decisions not been influenced? Would he be happier? What happens now? Can they both go back? Does he even want to bring Hero back if he can?

Ringo was surprised to find that he didn't know the answer to that question, it would throw an imbalance into the life he had created for himself, influenced or not. But… Hero was his dad, the man who introduced him to everything he loved, the man who taught him how to wire a circuit, the man who unconditionally loved his mum and him. He had left, yes, but not intentionally.

It took just a moment for Ringo to make his decision, a decision that his father wasn't even aware was being made. But Hero saw a look of undeniable determination come to rest on Ringo's face seconds before he held his hand out.

With a smile on his face, and his hand clammy with nervousness, Ringo broke the silence;

“Take my hand dad, we're going home.”