The incident of Jack the Ripper has long fascinated every amateur and professional sleuth in the country, but now it seems there is a new angle to the case. Some fresh evidence has emerged – or is going to emerge – that will completely reshape – or has reshaped – how we think about the character of the famous Victorian serial killer.
Time travellers have (allegedly) returned from the year 5349 with a rather eyebrow-raising perspective. Future historian Professor Les Gobak, who claims to have been born in the year 5296, offered this take on the situation:
“Jack the Ripper escaping from his own time was an accident, and we apologise whole-heartedly. One of my team was doing some investigation in London in the year 1888, and encountered Jack the Ripper who killed her and took her time key. However it was set with a security mechanism which limits unauthorised use. If someone does use it without the proper identification, it will just transport them a century forward in time and then self-destruct, leaving the user stranded in a time completely foreign to them.”
So Jack the Ripper escaped into the late 20th century. That would explain why he was never caught. But then what?
“We detected the unauthorised use of the key, but unfortunately we couldn’t get back to the exact year, too much nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl explosion. Nuclear disasters on that scale make it impossible for us to be accurate within a decade when travelling back. This is the closest we have been able to get to, but we can confirm that ‘Jack’ is still alive and doing very well for himself.”
Does that mean the time travellers from the future can make a positive identification of this scoundrel?
“We can. It wasn’t hard. All we had to do was look for someone with their head in the past, spouting Victorian values. Obviously at this period in British politics there’s quite a lot of candidates for this but we had no difficulty in identifying Jacob Rees-Mogg as the guilty party.”
I was about to ask the professor all sorts of questions about how he was certain but they all died on my lips because his statement actually answers them all. The only question remaining was, if his identification was accepted, what was to be done about him?
“He [allegedly] killed one of my team and escaped from his own time. That means he has to face justice in the 54th century. It will be easier to extract him if he can be removed from his position of power though. The less sway he holds in this time, the less damage he can do to future history.”
Presumably this is why Professor Gobak turned up now?
“Yes. If the people can get rid of him democratically, that’ll be enough, and we can take it from there.”
The whole story sounded crazy, but somehow had the ring of truth to it. Justice is now dependent on the votes in general, and North East Somerset in particular. If you want Jack the Ripper to stand trial for his crimes, vote against Jacob Rees-Mogg and his party come election day.