Experimenting with Multiverse

After I wrote my heart out about the Time Orphan universe, I was plagued by yet another “what if”: What if a little boy wandered into a forbidden part of his house, and got pulled into a parallel universe?

Not a Narnia universe, but more like in Dr. Hugh Everrett’s Many Worlds Theory - a world almost identical to the one you just left.

Thus began my adventures in writing Rats in the Cellar.

At this point, I have to make a vigorous denial: I don’t have an obsession with rats. I don’t own a pet rat, I don’t fantacise about rats - at least I didn’t then, as I wasn’t actually writing about rats.

Had I known that I would later write a series titled The Rat Queen, I would have named this series differently. The Rat Queen is about rats. In Rats in the Cellar, they’re only a metaphor. 

Rats in the Cellar is about nine-year-old boys - or one nine-year-old boy - one nine-year-old boy in multiple universes, therefore, many nine-year-old boys, all named Oscar Wilde Dougherty. 

The thing about nine-year-old boys is, that’s the prime age in which they could just as easily be a whining mama’s boy or a street-wise survivalist. In the many instances of the Dougherty household throughout the multiverse, the Oscar Wilde Doughertys cover the whole spectrum in between. They’re eachother’s best friends, eachother’s worst enemies, they’re a threat to each other's security, and there to give a helping hand. I’m talking about all the different instances of Oscar.

And why are there so many instances of the same boy?

They discover the portal in the forbidden part of the house - actually two, one down in the cellar, and one in the attic. They've been warned to keep away from both places, but it's an easy warning to heed, because both parts of the house send “bad vibes”. Later, we find this is “cosmic static”, caused by the friction of time-lines rubbing against each other. The genius who built it found that he could use the cosmic static as a power source to keep the portals forever switched on. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. 

But the cosmic static makes the two parts of the housefeel feel spooky, so no one ever ventures into the cellar or to the third floor.

Once having gone thorugh a portal, getting back isn’t straightforward. You can’t just turn around and re-enter the world you just left. There is a way to get back, but you have to do it in five steps, in the right order, which isn’t always easy for a nine-year-old. They’s why they’re lost.

As I said, they’re eachother’s best friends or worst enemies. They develop traditions, rules of the game. They pick alternative names to be known by so they don’t get confused (by opening a phone directory and randomly pointing). There’s a room in the cellar where they can sleep in any instance of their house, and they’re sworn to secrecy about that room. And they steal food from the kitchen. That’s why they’re called “Rats in the Cellar”. 

To throw in a bit more fun, it’s a dystopian future. Most western counties are no longer united, there are national borders where there didn’t use to be, some are at war, some have nukes, there’s political unrest, and governments don’t have enough resources to keep the police department going. There are police, but they only protect those that pay a special “police tax”. And the rich are still oppressing the poor.

Yet more fun - or horror - whatever: Oscar’s Uncle Milton is supposed to be in prison, but in some universes, the prison has broken open, and he’s terrorising the family. He’s a sex offender of the worst type, and some instances of him have found their way into the multiverse.

But justice is met in a satisfying way.

Then, there’s the cat. While there are many instances of Oscar, Uncle Milton and others, there’s only one of the cat. It’s a very wise cat. 

In my assessment of various fictional narratives, one type of character is the “Gandalf/Dumbledore” figgure. I probably don’t need to say that’s the wisend, supportive, elder figure who helps move the plot along. In Rats in the Cellar, it’s the cat.

It appears to be just an ordinary cat. It doesn’t talk, but it can generate visual images by its purring. Sometimes the purring just sets the mood. As I said, it’s a very wise cat. There are other wise creatures as well, which appear in the sequels.

But in the first book in the series, the cat has a plan, which leads to the climax of the first installment.

  

Anyway, here’s where you can download the first Rats in the Cellar novella:  

Amazon US

Amazon UK 

Amazon Canada 

Amazon Australia

I may write more about this next time.

 

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Experimenting with Time Travel

If something was fun to write, I think that means that it should be fun to read as well. 

Orphans of Space-Time was certainly fun to write. 

Actually, I had fun with all my books - or I wouldn’t have managed to complete them.

But in Orphans of Space-Time, I got to try out a few unusual ideas, and attempt to answer a few unique “what if” questions, 

The original idea for the book was, in fact, a question posed by my son as an idea for a story: What if the main character is able to remember it when a time traveller has gone to the past and committed a murder?  That became the premise for the first story in the series.

The book, by the way, is really a set of stories ranging from short stories to novellas, but they fit together as sequels and prequels – a whole series in one cover. 

Each story answers a “what if” question.

One day, after having writen the first couple of stories, I was walking past a road-works near our house, and I got another idea, which went into the story titled, The Murder Victim Who Was Still Alive. 

What if they found a child buried under the pavement that they’re digging up, who has only been dead a few hours? What if you found out that the same child is still alive and well? The detective involved in this case is forced into believing in time-travel, as he realises that this child is about to be murdered. How do you prevent such a murder from happening?

Another question that begs to be asked is, what if a major historical event happened differently, such as Rome never becoming an empire? What would happen to the world that we know, and things like rise and spread of Christianity?

I flip that question on its head, with a rogue time traveller asking instead, “What would happen to the civilised empires of the East, if one of the barbaric nations of the west, say for example Rome, became a major empire that pushed back on the Parthian empire? What if Hannibal's conquering of Rome had not succeeded? What would happen to the spread of Christianity?” Lots of plot twists in that novelette; titled, The Great Time Shift.

Another one is autobiographical, about my 8-year-old self. As usual, I name myself Boz. Boz is one of the narrative points of view, the other is Ben Scully, the name I gave to my best friend. 

Here’s where I have to confess that I was a horrible kid at that age. When under peer pressure, I wasn't beyond bullying, even if I was bullied a few times myself. But the incident that the story is built around (besides the Cuban Missile Crises and the Kennedy assassination) was my deciding to turn against my best friend. I just simply dropped him as a friend!

In the story, Ben Scully was the time perceptive one, and was having trouble getting details sorted out regarding both the missile cries and then the Kennedy assassination a year later (both events involved time travellers}. In real life that I actually remember, he was only an ordinary lad – which would explain why his future self didn't show up to teach me the importance of friendships. 

I wish he had, but of course, this is real life, where I've written that story to atone for my being so horrible. But apart from the last couple of scenes, all the details written from Boz’s point of view are accurate to the best of my memory. As for the setting, the only clue is that the area is well represented on the Monopoly board. That's A Couple of Years in the Early Life of a Time Traveller. 

The final “what if” question is one in which you have to be well versed in the Time Orphan universe to ask or understand. That's why it's at the very end, and isn't released as a stand-alone, even though it's of standard novella length. 

The premise: if you jump from a disconnected timeline, showing up in the new timeline where another instance of yourself already lives quite happily, if the two of you come too close together, you'll merge into one, with the memories of both timelines having equal clarity. 

The question: an unscrupulous, murderous time traveller goes back and murders his mother when his younger self is only 4 years old. The 4-year-old grows up in a very good environment, becomes a strong Christian, is transformed by the Holy Spirit and through good training; and then merges with the evil doppel. What happens? Which personality becomes dominant? 

I had lots of fun writing The Lives of Eoin Murray.

And I hope you'll have fun reading all the above. 

Next time, I'll write about my other time travel series, Rats in the Cellar, based on different premises. 

 

Again, here are the download links:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M1AIZGS

 

The Official Table Of Large Numbers

In case you ever wondered, the following is the list of names for the higher numbers

One

Ten

Hundred

Thousand

Million

Billion

Trillion

Quadrilion

Quintillion

Sextillian

Septillian

Octillian

Neptillion

Dectillian

ByGillian

ARapscallion

NamedMaxmillian

MadeAMillion

OrWasItABillion

PerhapsItWasTrillion

ButHsWasASilly’un

AndWouldntGiveToAnyOne

WhoNeededHelpButAwayHe’dRun

ToBetItAllOnOnFrillyFun

ToBuyTheWorldAndThenBeDone

OnHisYoyoStringTheWorldHeSpun

ButAllTheseNumbersPointToONE

WhenAllWasSaidAndAllWasDone

HeFoundHeHadNoWhereToRun

SoWhatWasHisEndAndHowAndWhy? 

Dunno, NoOne’sEverCountedThatHigh

#poetry #humour #social

The Time Orphan Universe

As promised in the previous blog post, we’ll talk more about time travel, namely my book, Orphans of Space-Time.

I need to emphasis it here: Orphans of Space-Time doesn’t follow the rules laid down by Emmet Brown (Back to the Future), nor the Many Worlds theory of Hugh Everrit (I have a different series that subscribes to those rules). I need to emphesis it because, though the rules of the game are clearly spelled out in the narrative, at least two reviewers stated that there was a plot hole because the actions of the time traveller didn’t erase his own existence. 

All the editions since, begin with a prelude, simply stating the Three Observable Facts of Time Travel. I’ll paste them in at the end of this email. But first, here’s a storyteller’s description of how it works (You’ll also find this in the book, in the appendix):

  

So, what happens if you go back in time and kill your own paternal grandfather when he’s 11 years old? In the universe in which these stories are set, you’ll simply return to your own time and find that no one knows you. Your father was never born, and therefore, neither were you.

But you still exist. You're now a time orphan. Contrary to both Drs Hugh Everest and Emmett Brown, you neither created another parallel universe, nor a time-space paradox; simply a new timeline that replaced the previous one. All the people whose birth you erased, such as your brothers and sisters, never existed. Only you do, simply because you established the fact of your existence from a time-location before the critical event.  

...And, your older sister, also a time traveller, has survived, even though she was in the timeline as it got erased.

That's because two weeks earlier, she travelled back to try to discover King Arthur, who lived long before you killed your and her grandfather, thus establishing the fact of her existence ever since King Arthur's time.

So there she is, two weeks later, lying in a hammock in her backyard reading Malory’s Mort d’Author, when suddenly… the impression of lying in a hammock in her backyard reading Mort d’Author is only a very dim memory that comes to her while she’s actually sitting in the lobby of the local youth hostel going over her research into her grandfather’s death at age 11.

Returning from her adventure, she had popped back into a house that isn't hers, no hammock in the backyard, and she probably gets arrested for trespassing even though it was her own house in the old timeline (that explanation usually doesn't stand up in court). She has no brothers or sisters, or Father, and you haven't popped back into the new timeline yet. Her mother is married to her old history teacher, and doesn't know her. Her research tells her that her grandfather once existed, but was mysteriously killed at age 11.  

But she has the dim recollection of a concurrent timeline which ended with her lying on her hammock reading Mort d’Arthur. It's way too dim to remember events with any clarity.  

Of course she remembers her life before she jumped back to find King Arthur. That's because it's her personal timeline, and she’ll always remember that even if no one else does. By jumping so far back in time, she had established her own life as a pre existing fact, so she didn't get erased by the new timeline. However, most of her memories are now of things that never happened.

But now she has popped back into a changed timeline, where she already existed up to the point where you made your time jump to visit wee Grandpa. Because she is now imposing a new memory over the existing memory of those two weeks, causing the original to appear as deja vous.

There’s something about the discontinuation of a timeline that activates the original memory, so she suddenly becomes awar of an alternate sequence of events for those two weeks. While she was sitting in the overstuffed settee in the lobby of the hostel, reviewing her information about her grandfather, she suddenly has the impression she's been lying in her hammock in her own backyard reading Mort d’Arthur. It’s only a residew of memory, unless something happens to trigger a full memory, like, maybe, a dream brought about by thinking hard about something. 

Then, you suddenly reappear in her new timeline. She puts two and two together.

Now, you're in trouble!

  

So, how did you and your sister become time travellers? It started when you both realised you were having dim memories of discontinued timelines - or at least confused by alternative facts regarding recent events. That was the first clue that you had the gift of time travel. From there, there are two ways to become a time traveller: 

• Through long and rigorous training in concentration techniques, 

• The use of a small mind focusing device, that was designed in a medieval Japanese Christian monastery in a world in which Rome was conquered by Hannibal Barca, and never rose to be an empire. 

So, there you are, having jumped back in time, and tracked down your 11 year old grandfather. He is just inches from you. You are about to grab him, when suddenly, there stands your sister, giving you a look that would wake the dead.

‘Don't. Even. Think. About. It.’ she says, in her most convincing tone.

She grips you by the ear, drags you away from young Grandpa, and time-jumps you back to your own time, where you merge with your selves of the restored timeline. Then she confiscates your mind-focusing device.

  

Now, do you notice how you and your sister’s personal timelines seem to go both forward, backwards and sideways, weaving in and out through various timelines? Yohan, in the narrative, explained four dimensional space-time, so I won't do it here, except to say there’s also a fifth dimension. That's what enables us to refer to ‘original timeline', ‘new timeline’ and ‘personal timeline’. It seems that in the fifth dimension, from the timetravellor’s point of view, time moves sideways from old to new in a different direction than time in the fourth dimension. A timeline can go on for a million years in the fourth dimension, and yet be short lived in the fifth dimension. How? One person initiates a critical event that starts a new timeline, then his arch-enemy jumps a million years into the future, and then straight back to prevent the first person from initiating the critical event.

The above was reedited from the appendix of the book. There’s more, but to paste it here would provide too many spoilers. 

Anyway, here’s how it works, simplified:

The Three Observable Facts of Time Travel

1. What really happens when you jump back to an earlier time and prevent your own birth? Do you produce a time-space paradox? Do you create another parallel universe?
   No, you become a Time Orphan. Other people may cease to exist if their birth was affected by your action, but you go on existing, because you now have a new point of origin, the earliest point of time you travelled to.

2. If, by jumping backwards in time, you change the course of your own life to the extent that you wouldn't have made the time jump when you did, you produce another instance of yourself, a Time Dopple. Dopples can coexist in the same timeline, as long as they don't come too close together. If they come within each other's event horizon, they merge back into one - one person with two sets of memories. That's because it's against the laws of physics for two instances of the same matter to exist at the same time.

3. Only certain people have the gift of time perception. Such people remember broken timelines, be it only the residue of a memory, or a deja vous. If they develop that gift, they can become time travellers themselves.

So, Isaac Asimov has his "three laws of robotics", I have my "three facts". All the stories in this collection are based on the Three Observable Facts.

  

And here’s where to get it:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M1AIZGS

 

How to plan a new sequel to the Back to the Future trilogy in 2026

This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to writing fan fiction, but here goes…

  

The film opens sort of like a documentary about the history of hover-cars. The inventor, it seems, was searching for a way to help his young brother who had been crippled in an accident. His search for a way to give him mobility was what led to hover technology, which was later applied to motor vehicles and skateboards.

The film shows the scene of the accident between a white Rolls-Royce and a black pick-up truck. Both are wrecked. An ambulance is parked nearby, with paramedics surrounding the young boy. Others are assisting the driver of the black pick-up, whom we see is none other than our Marty McFly, who had injured his hand, and is looking absolutely horrified at what has just happened.

 Suddenly the action stops, and then speeds into reverse. The boy flies back into the car, the black pick-up up-rights itself and speeds backwards, while the white Rolls-Royce glides backwards into the side road. Finally, there’s Marty McFly at the wheel of his new car, and Needles, in the other car, challenging him to a road race. Back into normal forward motion, the action proceeds, but it instead it happens just as it did at the end of Back to the Future III, in which the accident didn't happen.

Therefore, the little boy didn’t get paralysed from the waist down. 

Therefore, his older brother didn't invent hover-conversion.

Therefore, we don’t have flying cars today in 2026, and Back to the Future IV is free to follow its natural course.

A few problems still need to be solved, of course. How did Doc Brown get his hover conversion without causing a paradox in the  time-space continuum? 

Maybe he just kept going yet farther and farther into the future until he did come upon hover technology. 

And why have there been no more sequels to the Jaws film? What about holographic animated billboards? Or jackets that automatically dry themselves and tell you when they’re dry?

Maybe the invention of flying cars in that timeline was what inspired the other technology. Perhaps so much effort was made in developing talking jackets and holographic animation that drew the energy away from developing the Internet, so that in that timeline they’re stuck using fax machines instead of sending emails. 

Perhaps, with technology speeding fast-forward, sci-fi films became redundant, and people watched Jaws instead.

But I’ve solved the first problem anyway. Someone else can sort out the rest. 

I’ve got my own time-travel universe to work with.

The Back to the Future films were a landmark in the progression of time travel stories, and have their place right up there with H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, and Dr. Who. They gave us a point of reference for discussing and developing time travel ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed them myself and have watched them countless times. However, it needs to be said that Emit Brown’s theories regarding the danger of a paradox in the space-time continuum, don’t have to be the rule. In my own series of stories in Orphans of Space-Time, it is possible to go back in time, cause your own grandfather’s death at a young age, and still survive. You just become a Time Orphan. 

I’ll explain how that works in another newsletter.

  

Here it is in case you want to download it:

  

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01M1AIZGS

Alice in the Rabbit Hole

One hot afternoon, Alice was resting in her back garden while her older sister read a boring novel. 

She saw a white rabbit hopping by, who took out its pocket watch, and said, ‘I’m late! I’m late, for a very important date!’

Alice’s sister only looked up briefly from her boring novel and mumbled something like, ‘I love the way that rhymes.’

‘But Alice’s curiosity was aroused. ‘Date with whom? Where?’

‘The tea party, of course, and you’d better hurry if you want to make it before the pouring of the tea!’

‘How do I get there?’

‘Follow me down this hole! Quick! And stay in the middle of the hole, don’t get too near the edges!’

Alice’s sister looked up just then. ‘Alice! Don’t even think about it! The mad hatter lives at the end of that hole!’

The rabbit replied, ‘Not so at all! He only appears mad at first, but once you catch his drift, you’ll find him the sanest hatter as ever there was! Coming Alice?’

So the rabbit jumped in, and Alice, after getting up her courage, jumped in after him.’

‘Remember, stay in the middle!’ called the rabbit from further down.

‘Okay, I’ll try.’

It was then that she noticed that around the edges, it was very rough. If she got close, her skirt would surely snag, and stop her fall to the bottom - and to the tea party. 

She also noticed that when she paid attention to any of the snags, she would begin to drift towards it in her fall.

‘Stay in the middle!’ called the rabbit again. ‘Don’t let the snags pull you towards them!’

Indeed, as she stayed in the middle, focusing on what was ahead, she thought she could actually smell the tea, the biscuits and buns.

So she focused on that, but suddenly, one rock she saw jutting out from the edge reminded her very much of Billy, at school, who was always tormenting her, and hiding her things.

Just thinking about him made her upset, and of course, she began drifting towards that rocky snag. 

‘That rock is just ideal to pull out of the side and throw it at Billy next time I see him,’ she said to herself.

‘You can’t afford revenge. Look straight down the hole and think of the tea party that awaits! Forgive Billy!’

So, she looked straight down and thought about the tea party. Then she began drifting back to the middle.

‘But Billy…’ she began to drift back.

‘Forgive him!’

So she said, ‘I forgive you, Billy.’ She looked down towards the tea party. ‘I wish you could come too, if you could only taste what I smell, you’d like it so much you’d stop being such a bully!’

‘That’s right,’ called the rabbit.

They kept falling. Alice was enjoying the fall, like it was a ride through the air, like she was flying. The ever-growing scent of the tea and buns only heightened the feeling.

Then, further down, she spotted another rocky protrusion. There seemed to be people on it – or it made her think of people, she couldn’t tell – who wanted to make a change in the way things were. They were talking about something going on in society, with the leadership, with politics, and saying, ‘This must stop! We must make it stop! YOU can make it stop!’

‘Oh, yes!,’ said Alice, ‘I must do my part to make this stop, and to make society better. I must join my voice with theirs!’

Of course, she began drifting towards that edge.

‘Alice!’ called the rabbit. ‘The tea party that awaits is so much better than any political party!’

‘Oh yes,’ said Alice, ‘I must focus on the middle, and on the tea party.’

Indeed, the scent from below made Alice think this tea must be blended from the very best of all the exotic teas in the world. If everyone would only sip this tea, it would solve the worlds problems!’

‘Tea party?’ said someone. ‘We have a tea party.’

‘No,’ called the rabbit. ‘Our tea is too fine to be thrown into the Boston Harbour.’

So, Alice continued focusing on the aroma of the tea and the lovely pastries that was now quite distinct.

She wondered if she was properly dressed for the tea party.

She must have been thinking out loud, as, from the next rock, someone answered her, ‘Of course not! That dress is so yesterday! And that phone there, isn’t that model from five years ago? I bet it was your mother’s! (it was) C’mon! Wake up and smell the coffee!’

‘You’re dressed just fine!’ called the rabbit. ‘Don’t fall for consumerism! Smell the tea instead!’ 

Alice knew he was right. Just the scent of the tea and wonderful delicacies was enough to give her a sense of contentment such that the consumerist dream could never bring.

So, finally, they reached the tea party. It was far grander than what she could catch the scent of on the way down.

And there, at the head of the table, stood the most handsome, elegant gentleman Alice had ever set eyes on, looking at her through eyes that radiated warmth and care. Here was the father Alice never had, the object of many of her dreams and longings. Here, stood the Prince – who made hats for a living.

She realised that she, herself, was now dressed in the most magnificent wedding gown she had ever seen.

‘Mr. Hatter,’ said the white rabbit, ‘May I present to you, your bride.’

Another review of The Planet

jeyranmain.com/2026/05/13/the-planet-by-robby-charters-book-review-2345/

 

Robby Charters’ The Planet: Blessed Are the Poor, for Theirs Is the Lift to Space as the Planet Dies is a bold, unsettling, and deeply human science-fiction novel that flips the familiar survival narrative on its head. When a comet is on a direct course to annihilate all life, Captain Steinberg is tasked with evacuating the wealthy elite. A communications failure changes everything. With no time to correct course, Steinberg lands in the first city he sees and fills his ship with society’s forgotten: the poor, the marginalized, the unwanted.

What follows is not a clean escape into space, but a tense moral experiment carried out under extreme pressure. The ship becomes a microcosm of humanity itself — housing orphaned street kids, an autistic savant, a disgraced scientist, a defiant priest, victims and abusers, idealists and extremists. Violence, power struggles, and grief do not disappear once Earth is gone; they follow the survivors into the stars.

Charters excels at writing flawed, believable characters whose motivations clash in uncomfortable ways. Even side characters feel fully realized, which makes every loss and betrayal land with emotional weight. The children in particular stand out — forming fragile alliances and protecting one another in ways that feel painfully real. Their resilience provides some of the novel’s most powerful moments.

The story grows even more complex upon arrival at the destination planet, where a small population lives sustainably, inspired by indigenous philosophies of balance and sufficiency. The sudden arrival of another thousand people — many shaped by consumerism and exploitation — forces an inevitable reckoning. Will humanity repeat its old mistakes, or can it learn to live differently when given a second chance?

Dark, provocative, and surprisingly tender, The Planet is a character-driven sci-fi novel that asks difficult questions about class, morality, survival, and who truly deserves a future. Fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky and Frank Herbert will find much to admire here.

Written by Jeyran Main