Ctrl-Z

Andrew Norriss was born in Scotland in 1947, went to university in Ireland and taught history in a sixth‐form college in England
for ten years before becoming a full‐time writer. In the course of twenty years, he has written and co‐written some hundred
and fifty episodes of situation comedies and children’s drama for television. He has also written many books for children,
including
Aquila
, which won the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year in 1997, and
The Unluckiest Boy in the World
, which won the Lancashire Schools Fantastic Book Prize in 2007.

He lives very contentedly with his wife and two children in a village in Hampshire, where he acts in the local dramatic society
(average age sixty‐two), sings in the church choir (average age seventy‐two) and for real excitement travels to the cinema
in Basingstoke.

‘Norriss has a wonderful light comic touch’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Andrew Norriss keeps the reader hooked through narrative that is both comic and touching’
writeaway.org.uk on
The Unluckiest Boy in the World

AQUILA

BERNARD’S WATCH

MATT’S MILLION

THE PORTAL

THE TOUCHSTONETHE

UNLUCKIEST BOY IN THE WORLD

CTRL‐Z

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published 2009

Copyright © Andrew Norriss, 2009

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re‐sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-141-91897-6

For my wonderful god‐daughter, Beth,
who seems to make no mistakes at all.
And thank you, Johnny, for the idea.

I
t was a Saturday morning and Alex was sitting at the desk in his bedroom, when his father called up to say there was a parcel
for him. A parcel sounded interesting, Alex thought, and he hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where his father was studying
the label on a box about the size of a small suitcase.

‘It’s from Godfather John,’ he said, as Alex appeared. ‘I suppose it’s a birthday present.’

Alex’s birthday was not for another three months, but presents from Godfather John could arrive at any time in the year,
and when they did they were usually… unusual.

Last year’s present, for instance, had been a Make Your Own Explosions Kit, which Alex still wasn’t allowed to play with,
and the year before that his
godfather had sent a pair of ferrets, with detailed instructions on how to use them to catch rabbits.

‘Perhaps we should open it outside,’ said Mr Howard doubtfully, remembering the ferrets, but Alex was already tearing off
the brown paper and pulling open the lid of the box.

Inside was a battered black case containing a laptop computer.

‘Goodness,’ said his father. ‘How very generous.’ He peered into the empty box. ‘Is there a card with it? Or a letter?’

Alex was rather disappointed. A laptop computer might sound like an exciting present to get, but this was not, he could see,
a new machine. It was old, with spots on it that looked like bits of somebody’s lunch. It probably wouldn’t be able to do
half the things that Alex could do on the computer his parents had given him for Christmas. As presents went, an old laptop
was a lot less exciting than a Make Your Own Explosions Kit or a pair of ferrets.

‘Are you going to try it out?’ asked his father. ‘He’s not trying out anything till he’s done the drying‐up.’ Alex’s mother
had appeared in the kitchen, wiping oil and grease off her hands on to a piece of kitchen towel. ‘Could someone put the kettle
on?’

Ten minutes later, when Alex had finished the drying‐up, he took his computer upstairs to his room.
It might only be an old laptop, but you never knew. There might be some interesting games on it.

Sitting at his desk, he turned on the machine and a window appeared asking him to type in his name, and then to fill in the
date and the time. The date was the fourteenth of May and the clock on his desk said the time was twenty‐three minutes past
ten, so he tapped in the numbers 10.23.

At least, that was what he meant to do.

In fact he typed in the numbers 10.03.

That wasn’t really a problem, though. Alex knew that when you made a mistake on a computer, there was a very simple solution.
If you pressed the Control key and then pressed Z, the computer went back to before you had made the mistake.

So that was what he did now.

He pressed Ctrl‐Z.

And the computer disappeared.

It took a moment for this to sink in. After all, things
don’t
just disappear – especially not computers that you’ve only had for ten minutes and hardly touched. Alex looked round the
room and under the desk – he even looked out of the window, but there was no mistake. The laptop had vanished and there wasn’t
a sign of it anywhere.

He was still sitting at his desk, wondering what he should do, when his father called up from downstairs to say there was
a parcel for him.

Puzzled, Alex went down to the kitchen where he found his father studying the label on a box about the size of a small suitcase.

‘It’s from Godfather John,’ he said when he saw Alex. ‘I suppose it’s a birthday present.’

Alex stared at the parcel. ‘It’s the same as the last one!’ he said.

‘You mean the Make Your Own Explosions Kit?’ said his father. ‘No, no, that was a much bigger box.’ He paused for a moment
before adding doubtfully, ‘Perhaps we should open it outside.’

Alex stepped forward, tore off the paper and pulled open the lid of the box. Inside was a battered black case, containing
a laptop computer.

The whole thing was getting weirder by the second. ‘It’s another computer,’ said Alex. ‘Why would he send me another computer?’

‘Well, he probably didn’t know that we gave you one for Christmas,’ said his father, picking a bit of dried egg off the lid.
‘And this one’s a laptop. Which means you can have it upstairs in your room, if you like. Are you going to try it out?’

‘He’s not trying out anything till he’s done the drying‐up.’ Alex’s mother had appeared in the kitchen, wiping oil and
grease off her hands on to a piece of kitchen towel. ‘Could someone put the kettle on?’

‘I’ve already done the drying‐up,’ said Alex. ‘I
did it just –’ he stopped. There on the draining board were all the breakfast dishes. Not more dishes that had been put there
since he did the drying‐up, but
exactly the same
dishes as before. As if someone had carefully taken them back out of the cupboard, got them wet under a tap and put them out
for him to do all over again.

He was beginning to think that the whole world had gone mad – and then he saw the clock.

The clock on the kitchen wall said that the time was eight minutes past ten.

A faint suspicion of what must have happened stirred in his mind. It was quite impossible, of course, and yet… and yet…

Twelve minutes later, when Alex had finished doing the drying‐up for the second time, he was back at his desk in his bedroom
with the laptop open in front of him.

After he had turned it on, a window appeared asking him to type in his name, and then to fill in the date and the time. He
typed in his name, filled in the date, 14 May, and then the time.

The clock on his desk said the time was twenty‐two minutes past ten, but that was not the number he tapped in. Instead, he
did exactly what he had done before and carefully tapped in the wrong time – 10.03 – and then pressed the Control key and
Z.

The computer disappeared, and Alex sat there, waiting.

He didn’t have to wait long.

It was only a minute or so before his father’s voice came floating up from downstairs to say there was a parcel for him.

The clock on the kitchen wall said that the time was four minutes past ten. Alex’s father was studying the label on a box
about the size of a small suitcase and saying, ‘It’s from Godfather John. I suppose it’s a birthday present.’

And then everything happened again. It was the strangest feeling, watching the events unfold – opening the box, finding the
computer, his father’s surprise, his mother coming in from the garage and saying he had to do the drying‐up for the
third
time.

Finally, he was back at his desk in his bedroom, typing his name and address into the computer and then filling in the date
and the time…

Well, not the time. Not just yet.

Because the time was the secret, he was sure of that. When he typed in 10.03 he had gone back to 10.03, but did that mean
if he typed in a different time he would go back to that one instead?

There was only one way to find out.

The clock on the right‐hand side of his desk said the time was 10.21. He tapped in 10.20 on
the keyboard, then moved the clock from the right‐hand side of his desk to the left before pushing down the Control key and
tapping the Z.

Instantly, the clock disappeared from the left‐hand side of the desk and was back on the right.

And it said the time was 10.20.

He did the same thing again, just to check. This time, as an experiment, as well as moving the clock from one side of the
desk to the other, he moved some books from the shelves by the window to the middle of the floor, and a pair of slippers on
to the bed. Sitting back at his desk, the clock said the time was 10.22. He tapped 10.20 into the computer and pressed Ctrl‐Z
again.

In an instant, the clock had moved back to its original position, the slippers were back under the bed and the books were
back on the shelf. Everything was back to exactly how it had been at 10.20.