The Adventures of Ephesus Hyde
an excerpt

“Because, Hyde,” I said for the umpteenth time, “the thing about China, you see, one of its main defining characteristics, I would say, is that it is, in fact, really rather quite big.”

“Oh come on,” said Hyde. “Sir Robert can't be that hard to find. He's an eminent businessman and a time-tamperer. Both of those always give off a stink.”

“What would you say were the proportions of a standard haystack, Hyde?”

“What?”

“A haystack, man. Say eight feet in height and two yards in radius.”

“What in the name of Isambard Kingdom Brunel are you blathering on about, Jenkins? There are no haystacks around here. The ground is ankle-deep in soggy rice for leagues hence.”

“I make that a total volume of just over a hundred cubic feet. And if we consider a one-inch sewing-needle, with a diameter of one-sixteenth of an inch if it's chunky, that's point nought nought nought, nought nought seven of a cubic foot. A luxurious seven hundred millionths of the size of the haystack.”

“My patience wears. Get to the point.”

“China, McGinty's tells us, covers an area of three point seven million square miles. I estimate finding Sir Robert Morlock somewhere in China to be at least a hundred thousand times more difficult than finding the needle in the haystack. And that's if he's obese.”

“Nonsense,” said Hyde. “You can't see through a haystack, so you have to hit the needle exactly. We might spot Sir Robert from half a mile off. This might be him now.”

A stooped figure was trudging towards us through the paddies, its arms hunched stiffly by its sides.

“Go on, then,” Hyde told me. “Ask who goes there.”

“Who goes there?” I called towards the newcomer.

“You do,” it replied.

And sure enough, it was me. A little haggard and skinnier than I like myself, but unmistakably a me. This had happened a few times before. Hyde had got us into our usual sort of trouble somehow, and a future, tangent-timeline Jenkins – it had never been a future Ephesus Hyde – had had to be dispatched back to help ourselves out of it.

“You took your time,” said Hyde.

“Shut up, Hyde,” said the other Jenkins, a man who was about to correct himself out of existence and therefore had little inclination to worry about social niceties. I made a you-have-to-understand-him face at Hyde. My counterpart climbed into the carriage without another word, and started messing around with the controls.

I – he – emerged five minutes later.

“That'll take you straight to Morlock,” I told me. “Oh, one more thing.”

The alternate Jenkins pivoted on his heel, punched Hyde square in the face, and disappeared just as he connected.

“Sorry,” I said to Hyde. “I can't imagine why I always do that.”