What Time It Is

On Sunday mornings, Alex's parents sent him to be looked after in his grandfather's watch-repair shop. Alex would sit at the workbench and kick his legs, passing his time reading comic books, doing homework, or drawing.

Alex was surprised how many people in the city had old-fashioned watches and alarm clocks, and how often these needed fixing. He wondered if perhaps his grandfather was not good at repairing watches. Alex was ten when his grandfather told him the truth: nobody came for watch repairs. "This is not a workshop, not really," he said. "This is a library."

"Then where are the books?" asked Alex.

It was a sign of how good the imperial censors were that Alex didn't know they existed - and that he hadn't heard about time travel. This was the shop's hidden secret, that Alex's grandfather slipped the customers banned stories. They wanted to read about people travelling back in time and changing everything. "This is not how the world should be," said Alex's grandfather. "All this - the Queen's Council, soldiers arresting innocent people - it wasn't always like this. We could have had so much more."

Alex was forbidden from speaking to the customers about their beliefs that an original, better timeline had been changed. His grandfather told Alex a little about the stories that the customers wanted: ones where America survived, stories about time machines and science heroes. Alex wasn't allowed to read them because his grandfather wanted to keep him safe. Those Sunday mornings continued for years. A little older, Alex realised his parents were not actually going to church but rather wanted a little time and privacy. He continued visiting his grandfather anyway.

Eventually, the worst came to pass. The Queen's guards came to the shop, arrested Alex's grandfather and took everything away.

Alex had kept his promise not to read his grandfather's books, but he had a couple that he had stashed just in case, battered copies about to be destroyed. The next Sunday, Alex stayed in bed late and started the first book:

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated.

Alex read until he found ways to change the world, going back even before his grandfather was arrested.

• The first time, the Queen never took the throne, but wolves ran wild in the market square.

• The second time, Britain had been defeated in a war, its churches replaced with temples.

• The third time there was no sun.

• The fourth time, the streets were full of dancing - it seemed beautiful but not quite right.

Alex would keep changing the world until he found his grandfather again.