Read Online Ctrl-Z by Andrew Norriss - Free Book Online

the details because his father was shouting for him to come home.

    He was hopping mad. Literally.’ Mrs Howard looked up at Alex. ‘So how did you know?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The phone call,’ said Mrs Howard. ‘The “Don’t let Callum into the house” thing. How did you know he was coming and why did
     I have to keep him out of your room?’
    ‘Oh, that,’ said Alex. ‘I… I’ll just put this milk in the fridge, shall I? Then I’ll explain it to you.’
    Indoors, he left the milk on the table and went upstairs to his computer.
    It was five minutes to ten and Callum was playing darts. The hook that normally held his dartboard to the wall had come out,
     so he propped it up on the window sill instead and he was about to start throwing when Alex appeared.
    ‘Hi,’ said Callum. ‘Want a game?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ said Alex. ‘One of the things I came to tell you is that playing darts by an open window, especially when
     your dad is standing underneath, is definitely a mistake. But sit down, will you? And listen.’
    ‘OK.’ Callum sat down on the bed. ‘Has something happened?’
    ‘I want you to imagine,’ said Alex, ignoring the question, ‘that you’re up here throwing darts at that board and one of the
     darts misses the board,
goes out of the window, and lands in your dad’s foot, down in the garden. What would you do if that happened?’
    ‘Well, I’d…’ Callum hesitated. ‘We’re not talking about something I already did, are we?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘but stay with the question for a minute; what would you do?’
    ‘Well, I’d phone you and –’
    ‘There isn’t time to phone,’ said Alex. ‘Your dad’s screaming that he’s going to bury you in concrete…’
    ‘Oh… well… I’d go round to your house…’
    ‘Right,’ said Alex. ‘You come round to my house, but I’m not in. I’ve gone down to the shops. So what do you do then?’
    There was something in the intensity of Alex’s gaze that made Callum feel distinctly uncomfortable.
    ‘Well…’ he said, ‘I suppose I’d go upstairs and try using Ctrl‐Z on your computer to –’
    ‘That is exactly what you did!’ said Alex. ‘And you must
never
do it again!’
    ‘OK.’ Callum looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
    ‘Because you hadn’t told me, had you? So you went back in time, but you didn’t know you had! You were just back here in your
     room playing darts and one of them went out of the window and hurt
your dad, so you ran up to my house, set the computer, pressed Ctrl‐Z so you were back here in your room playing darts and
     one of them went out of the window and hurt your dad, so you ran up to my house and set the computer… !’
    ‘Oh…’ You could almost see the cogs turning in Callum’s brain as he worked out what this meant. ‘What… what happened?’
    Alex told him the whole story. About finding himself at the shop with Mrs Bellini every four minutes, about trying to get
     home to reset Ctrl‐Z, about taking the bicycle and nearly stealing a car and, finally, about the phone call.
    ‘You must never,’ said Alex, ‘
never
press Ctrl‐Z without telling me first, so that I can tell you what you need not to do. OK?’
    ‘Right,’ said Callum. ‘OK.’
    That night, Alex wrote an email to his godfather, telling him what had happened. It had been a bit of a shock to realize that
     his laptop could be quite so dangerous and he wondered if there were any other risks in using it. If there were, he wrote,
     it would be good to be warned about them so that in future he could try to avoid them.
    The reply, when it arrived, was not as helpful as he’d hoped.

    Dear Alex
,
it said,
    It sounds like you’ve been making some important mistakes. Well done! And in answer to your question: yes, there are plenty
     more dangers in using Ctrl‐Z. My advice is to be very careful!
    And I thought I’d mention there’s a chance I may be travelling to Europe some time in the next couple of months – so