Page 19 of Love and Other Paradoxes

He resisted the urge to scream with laughter. “Okay.”

“Now, imagine that future includes you graduating with a First.”

“2:1,” he corrected her.

She frowned. “If you insist.Great, you think,I’m predestined to get a 2:1. Now, how do you respond? Do you think,Well, fate’s got this covered, looks like I can relax?” She leaned forward. “No. You can’t. Because hard work is the only mechanism that’s going to get you there. Determinism isn’t going to take control of your legs and march them to the library. It’s not going to read the books for you, or put in the long, hard, deliberate effort that turns reading into original thought.” She waved her hand in parenthesis. “Not to mention, unless you’re a white man who went to Eton, the much greater effort of persuading everyone else to take you seriously.”

He stared over her shoulder, the cogs in his brain turning. “You’re saying, even if you’re destined for success, you still have to do the work.”

“I’m saying more than that. I’m saying determinism makes the work necessary.” He looked at her blankly. She sighed. “I see too many students here who think they know the future. They think a good degree is something they’re entitled to, not something they have to work for. You know what happens to those students?” She handed back his essay, covered in red pen. “They fail.”

He knew what she was trying to say. But he wasn’t like those students. He didn’t think he was entitled to a good degree because he’d gone to the right school, or because his parents had a lot of money. Hewasentitled to one because of the physical laws of theuniverse. It was a completely different situation. “No, I get it,” he said. “I’ll do better.”

“Glad to hear it. Any other questions?”

He remembered what he’d promised Esi. “Yeah, actually. Are there any academic awards that get given out on the twenty-third of June?”

Dr. Lewis looked bemused. “The twenty-third of June?” She leaned over to her side table and leafed through an academic calendar. “That’s in May Week. Too early for any university-level awards.” She pursed her lips. “I suppose some societies might give out awards then.”

“Societies. That’s a good idea. Thanks.” He folded his essay in half and left.

“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?” Dr. Lewis’s voice followed him down the stairs. “Work first, Mr. Greene. Awards later.”

Chapter Eight

If he had still been living in linear time, he would have heeded Dr. Lewis’s advice and spent the next few days in the library. But his 2:1 was guaranteed: if he didn’t put the work in now, he was bound to put it in later. Instead, he spent the time reading and rereading the poems, daydreaming about falling in love with Diana.

On the day of their fateful reunion at the ADC, he headed out to meet Esi. As he left college, he saw Vera across the street, surrounded by his oddly dressed devotees. They tailed him through town, muttering just out of earshot, leaping comically into the shadows whenever he turned around. He tried to remind himself that these people had come here from decades in the future because his poetry meant something to them. Their presence was the ultimate realisation of his dream. But the close, prickling attention made him feel like he was back in high school, marked out and picked on. He hunched his shoulders and walked faster. As he crossed the grass of Christ’s Pieces, the muttering subsided. He turned back from New Square Park, pretending to crouch and admire the autumn leaves. The time travellers were standing in a line on the other side of the road, forlorn as puppies peering through a stairgate.

“Good,” he said under his breath. “At least some of you are taking the terms and conditions seriously.”

He went on towards the Grafton centre and turned right onto Burleigh Street. Esi was leaning against a bike rack in black leggings and an oversized grey sweater, working her way through a box of chips.

“The chips arebetterhere,” she said, offering them. “How did we manage, as a society, to make chips worse?”

After the breathless awe of the other time travellers, her total unimpressedness with him was a relief. He took a chip. It was perfect: hot and greasy. “You’re telling me in return for poetic greatness, I have to accept substandard chips?”

“These are the sacrifices we make, I guess.” She wiped her hands and threw the empty chip box in a bin. She looked briefly over his shoulder, following someone in the crowd, before focusing back on him. “So. Joseph Greene.”

“So,” he echoed. “Esi...” He laughed. “I don’t know your surname.”

She smiled. “It’s Campbell.”

“Oh! Scottish connection?”

Her smile froze. “I guess? My dad’s family is Jamaican, way back. It’s a pretty common name there.”

“Ah. So not the fun kind of Scottish connection.” He winced. “Sorry.”

She looked at him sideways. “I mean, according to you, all that was just destiny, right? How sorry can you be, if you think it was meant to happen?”

She was teasing him, and she wasn’t, something serious behind her eyes. “That’s not how it works,” he said, rememberinghis conversation with Dr. Lewis. “Even if our actions are predetermined, that doesn’t mean we’re not responsible.”

Her smile broadened, showing her tooth gap. “Deep, Joseph Greene. You going to put that in a poem?” Before he could react, she winced. “I’m doing it again. Sorry. I didn’t want to interact with anyone in the past, and now I’m here talking to you of all people, and it’s a mess, but it’s the only way to fix the even bigger mess I’ve made already, and I’m just—”

“You’re fine,” he interrupted, laughing. “Do you think I’d be standing here asking you to help me impress Diana Dartnell if I took myself that seriously?”

She looked quietly surprised. “I guess not.”

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