How to Survive Time Travel by Larry Hayes

How to Survive Time Travel by Larry Hayes

Author:Larry Hayes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2022-05-26T00:00:00+00:00


‘It’s tiny,’ said Sadie, seeing the same thing as me. ‘What are they doing? Feeding it and hoping it’ll grow?’

‘No, ya numpty, that’s just the tip. It’s buried,’ said the boy.

‘Is the whole thing covered in gold?’ Sadie’s eyes were suddenly big. ‘We’ll be the richest people, like, ever.’

‘If you can find a rich enough fool to buy it off you,’ said the boy taking a bite of his sandwich. ‘It’s just fool’s gold.’

‘Iron pyrite,’ explained Johnnie. ‘It just looks like gold.’

Sadie shrugged. ‘So what are they chucking into it?’

‘Guano,’ said the boy, all matter-of-fact, ‘AKA bird poo.’ As if it was totally normal to do anything with bird poo.

‘I suppose you’ve got to put it all somewhere,’ said Johnnie, and he laughed, but everyone else went back to their vegetable sandwiches.

Sadie was the first to finish lunch – she eats like a carnivore, even when no meat is involved – and she asked the questions I’d been thinking about all along:

‘So who are you? And what are you doing here?’

The boy smiled. ‘I’m doing my history homework.’

Sadie snorted. ‘History homework?’

‘Yeah, we get one school trip a year, anywhere in time and space and—’

Sadie didn’t let him finish. ‘You’re on a school field trip? To 5000 BCE?’

‘The future sounds so cool,’ Johnnie said through a mouthful of bread. ‘Does everyone get a field trip?’

‘Shut up, Johnnie,’ said Sadie ‘What’s your name?’

The Boy-God looked a bit surprised by that.

‘My name?’ he said, finishing his sandwich. ‘We don’t have names. You don’t really need them in the future.’

Sadie looked at me as if to say, ‘Do you believe that?’

I just pulled a face. Would you really need a name in the future?

‘We just use a 256-bit crypto hash function because we communicate virtually.’

I looked at Johnnie; he was nodding. ‘So everyone just has a unique string of numbers and letters? That’s so cool.’

I looked back at the boy. The bites on my back were driving me crazy.

‘Who wants ice cream?’ he said abruptly, looking pleased with himself.

And, without waiting for an answer, he raised his hands above his head and clapped three times. Like some kind of ancient sultan or emperor.

There was immediate activity below, and we saw someone running out into the desert along the length of the Sphinx, a tall girl with long black hair. She ran fast, disappearing round the back.

Thirty seconds later, she’d returned, still running fast, but carrying something – a tub.

‘Did she just pull a tub of ice cream out of the Sphinx’s butt?’ asked Sadie.

Boy-God smiled. ‘It’s where we keep the freezer.’

Johnnie gave me a meaningful look, as if to say, ‘I told you it was the Riddle of the Sphinx’s Butt.’

And then, well, then all my questions bubbled out.



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