‘How did you do that?’
‘Easy baby, I just stuck my arm out and he stopped.’
‘Not the taxi, the watch, how did you do that?’ She spoke to him in English and he found her accent in his native language incredibly attractive. He leaned forward and lowered his voice.
‘Do you know why your heart beats, or why you blink?’ He switched to back French again. He found it sounded so much more poetic, and hoped it would make his words sound more convincing. ‘Or why your hair grows? Or why you think about things the way you do, why you like one thing, and not another?’ He paused for effect, and neither member of his audience attempted to reply.
‘We can come up with ideas, answers, but in the end there are no reasons, no explanations. These things happen simply because they can, because there is no reason for them not to. I do not know why I can do them, I only know that I can. I am seeking answers, but I do not question these occurrences, as if I do, it may stop them from happening. I am having too much fun to wonder how it is hapening.’
The pair looked at him, hypnotised, hanging on his every word as if it were honey and they were bees.
‘Now, let’s see if this thing still works shall we?’ Stone turned his attention to his old watch. He twisted a dial, pressed a couple of buttons, and from the watch face a projection appeared, it showed a strange collection of points of light, shaped like a rugby ball, with a small flashing point blinking in the centre. Dimitri and Andrea both let out an impressed ‘Oooo’ sound. Stone studied the shape for a moment, the position of the blinking light, the shape of the ball and the elegant dance the lights played around each other.
‘Yes, that’s still useless.’ he muttered to himself, and turned another dial. The rugby ball was replaced with a 3D picture of streets, houses, cars and people.
‘Oh, nice, ok, you’ll like this, look, here’s us,’ Stone indicated a small taxi weaving its way through the streets. Their eyes opened wide in awe. A tweek here and a button pressed there and the map sprang out to give a wider view of the city. The tiny cars were all perfect tiny replicas of those around them, the tiny people stalking the thin streets hustled and bustled about. Stone waved his hand on the map, dragging the view across and around with his fingers.
‘Here's the museum.’ Stone pointed out the massive building they had just left. As they looked, a collection of police cars arrived, lights flashing. A collection of tiny policemen jumped out and ran up the steps.
‘It would appear your handy work has been noticed.’ Dimitri observed. Andrea remained silent.
‘Yes. Well, nothing we can do about that at the moment, now let’s see.’ Stone pressed another collection of buttons, and the map was replaced by a collection of numbers. The first set was obviously referring to the current time, the second the date.
‘You’ll like this Dimitri, you see this number here?’ Stone pointed at a string of nine numbers;
148,273,142
That’s how long the watch has been running for, in other words, how long it was under ground for.’ Dimitri’s face brightened in to recognition.
‘So this is how old the nest is that I found?’
‘Exactly.’ He replied. ‘Give or take 800 years or so.’ He smiled wryly at Andrea. She smiled back. ‘I was hoping it might have stopped when I took it off, to give a more accurate age for you, sorry.’
‘That’s ok.’ She replied meekly, embarrassed at having ever doubted him. ‘Does this mean you’ve lost count forever?’ Stone pressed a button and the numbers vanished from the air. The object around his wrist stopped being a mystical alien device and returned to being a strange looking watch.
