Old Pete glanced about the bar. It wasn’t busy. A salesman travelling in tobaccos and ready-rolled cigarettes chatted with a pimply youth who referred to himself as “Scoop” Molloy and worked for the Brentford Mercury. Office types drank halves of cider and munched on their Lighterman’s lunches.

“If I tell you,” said Old Pete, “you have to promise me that you will never tell another living soul. Can you promise me that, Neville?”

“I can.” Neville licked his finger. “See this wet,” he said, and then wiped it upon his jacket. “See this dry. Cut my throat if I tell a lie.”

Old Pete sighed. “You’re a Freemason, aren’t you, Neville?” he said.

Neville made a wary face. That was not a question that any Freemason cared to be asked. And it is a tricky one, because if you are, you’re not supposed to lie – simply to evade.

“How are your crops at present?” Neville asked. “How’s the Mandragora coming along?”

Old Pete put his hand across the bar counter for a shake. “Have you travelled far?” he asked.

Neville shook the elder’s hand. It was a significant handshake. Both men knew the significance of it. Words were exchanged and these words also were significant.

“I never knew,” said Neville, “in all these years, that you—”

“I keep my own business to myself, Neville, whereas your Masonic cufflinks are something of a giveaway. But I can trust you. Brothers upon the square, as it were.”

“And under the arch.”

“Quite so.”

“So what is it that you wish to tell me? In complete confidence, of course.”

“How old do you think I am, Neville?”

Neville shrugged.

“I was born in eighteen eighty-five, right here in Brentford.”

“Eighteen eighty-five?” Neville counted on his fingers. “Why, that makes you—”

“Old enough. Now, you might not believe what I’m going to tell you, but I swear to you it’s true. I’ve spent most of my life trying to convince myself otherwise, but I know what I know. I saw it all with my own two eyes.”

“Go on, then,” said Neville.

“Victorian society,” said Old Pete. “It wasn’t how it’s written up in the history books. It was nothing like it’s written up in the history books, it was completely different.”

“How?” Neville asked. “Smellier, more violent? What?”

“Technology,” said Old Pete. “There was technology back then that nobody knows about now, technology that simply ceased to exist and of which no record survives today.”

“What kind of technology?” Neville asked.

“Electric technology. Have you ever heard of Nikola Tesla?”

Neville shook his head.

“He invented alternating current,” said Old Pete. “It wasn’t Edison who invented that – that’s false history. Tesla worked with Charles Babbage, inventor of the computer.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Neville. “He invented the computer but it was never taken up in Victorian society. He died in poverty. There was a programme about him on the television a while back.”

“He never died in poverty – he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Victoria in eighteen sixty for his services to the British Empire. With the help of Babbage’s computer, Nikola Tesla created a system of towers across the country that broadcast electricity on a radio frequency, no wires. There were flying hansom cabs, electric airships, a space programme. A rocket was going to the moon, but it was sabotaged.”

“You’re making this up,” said Neville.

Old Pete glared at him. “It’s true, it’s all true. Most houses had electric lighting long before nineteen hundred. And computers. And there were robots, too, powered by broadcast electricity, working as doormen and cabbies, and soldiers as well. The British Empire had conquered almost all of the globe by the eighteen nineties. America had been won back and was a British colony again.”

“This can’t be true,” said Neville. “It would be in history books.”

“It isn’t,” said Old Pete, “because everything changed at the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred, as far as I can make out. I owned a digital watch, Neville – my father gave it to me when I was ten.”

Neville the part-time barman shook his doubtful head. “But if this were true, then there’d be some trace of it, surely. What happened to all this amazing Victorian technology?”

“Vanished,” said Old Pete, “as if it had never existed, at the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred.”

“But how?” Neville asked.

“Through witchcraft,” said Old Pete, “as far as I can figure it out. There were rumours that a cabal of witches sought to destroy all Victorian technology. I don’t know how, or why, but they wiped it all out.”

“Witches,” said Neville, who was not unacquainted with several local practitioners of the Craft. “Witches wouldn’t do that.”

“It’s what I heard, I can’t prove it. I can’t prove anything. But I’ll tell you this: all that stuff in Victorian science fiction books, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and so on – it’s all true, it was all real. All of it.”

“What?” said Neville. “Like the invisible man?”

“That was H.G. Wells himself. He was a scientist, not a fiction writer, and I know that for a fact.”

“But this stuff would have been in the newspapers. And newspaper offices have archives.”

“All records vanished with the technology, as if none of it had ever happened, at twelve midnight, coming of the year nineteen hundred. And Norman is in great danger.”

“Norman?” said Neville. “How does he fit into this?”

“He’s come into possession of Victorian computer parts. Babbage Nineteen-Hundred Series computer parts.”

“Then surely these computer parts prove your story. You should be pleased that he’s found them. Will you be writing a book? A rewrite of history?”

“Neville, you’re a fool. You don’t understand.”

“I can’t understand if you don’t tell me. What’s the problem with these computer parts?”

“The computers were part of it. The magic was in the computers, programmed into them. It’s evil stuff, Neville.”

“I really don’t understand,” said the part-time barman, “but this is a most extraordinary story. And it’s clearly troubling you.”

“It is,” said Old Pete. “To be frank, it’s scaring the very life out of me.”

Neville made a thoughtful face. “Just one thing,” he said. “How come only you know about this? If history changed on the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred, how come no one else who was alive during that period has ever mentioned it?”

“Because all their memories of it were erased. History was changed and it was as if it never ever happened. All the electric technology, all of it, just disappeared and all memory of it, too.”

“So how come you remember it?”

“Because I wasn’t there when the change came, Neville. I came back afterwards, an hour later, a boy of fifteen, to find my entire world changed – as if everything that had happened had never happened.”

“So where were you?” Neville asked.

“I was right here,” said Old Pete. “Right here, but not right here right now. I was right here several months from now, in Mr H.G. Wells’ time machine. I—”

“Have to stop you there,” said Neville. “Kindly leave my pub, Old Pete, and consider yourself barred for a week.”

“What?” said Old Pete.

And Neville reached for his knobkerrie.