Ellen Blake Destined To Return

24 - Blueberry

Marianne held the Ivory-C a foot from her face and just marvelled at the smiling face, contained within its frame, beaming back at her.

'It's like a real person. I know it's not and I realise now this is you, but I've never seen anything like it before. What is it?' said Marianne in disbelief and turning the device over to see if the image could be seen from the back.

'It's just a photo,' replied Ellen.

'A photograph? That's not a photograph. I've seen photographs. We've got a few at home and they're nothing like this. They are pieces of card with dull pictures of mostly dull people on them. This is bright and so colourful. It's unbelievable.'

Billy jumped across the compartment and sat down close to his sister, leaning over to get a better view of this wondrous object.

'It's nothing like a photograph,' he said. 'It's as though we're looking through a window to another world.'

'In a weird way ... you are,' said Aaron. 'Another world called the future.'

'Do you realise that all you've done so far is seen the screensaver?' pointed out Ellen. 'If that has blown your socks off wait till I start it up properly.'

Ellen retrieved the gadget, hit the side button again and entered a pin number to gain access to the apps.

'Right. Where shall we go first? How about some music?'

'Music?' said Marianne.

'Yeah! It's an MP3 player.'

'What's an empty free player?' asked Billy.

Whilst Ellen was looking for some good examples of music to demonstrate to the uninitiated, Aaron tried to answer Billy's question.

'Do you know what CD players are? No? Cassette players? Still no? Oh what did they have before those? Vinyl. That was it ... record players. Surely you've heard of record players?'

'Do you mean gramophone players?' asked Marianne. 'They play gramophone records, which are flat black round disks. We don't have one, but our Aunt Florence has. She has lots of music on lots of gramophone records.'

'Maybe that could be the same as a record player,' said Aaron, whilst Ellen was unravelling her headphone cable and plugging it in. 'You know all that music? All those songs on the disks ... the records. Well each one of those has been shrunk down in some magical way, which I can't even dream of explaining, into a format called an MP3 file. Because they are so small they can all be stored inside that.'

Aaron pointed at the small rectangle in Ellen's hands.

'But what you might not be able to believe is just how many of those songs ... those records ... can fit inside it. I don't know the actual amount but I'd say over ten thousand songs.'

'How many?' challenged a near speechless Marianne. 'You mean in that small thing you can somehow squeeze every gramophone record in the world and it all fits inside your pocket. That's not possible.'

'Here. Put these on,' said Ellen, as she helped Marianne with the headphones, with the blue skull star, over her ears. 'I'll ease you in gently with an absolutely amazing song called Philippa by Lorna Hana.'

Marianne felt a little put out and uncomfortable with this contraption smothering her ears and pressing down on her perfectly sculptured hairstyle. She watched as Ellen touched an orange triangle in the centre of the screen and within seconds her eyes were owl like and her mouth ajar. Without turning her head she looked in Ellen's direction, then Billy's and Ellen again.