Flower Girls

Chapter 9 - The Crystals

Heartbroken, I walked into the laboratories where Simon and I worked. I needed to tell people what had happened, and I wanted to do it face to face than over the phone.

Amanda was mortified when I told her. We hugged each other and cried, and she offered to help me with funeral arrangements. I said I would appreciate it. Amanda was kind like that.

We walked down the corridor together to Simon's lab to find Matthew. He looked concerned and stood up when he saw us walk through the door with our red, swollen eyes.

"What's happened?" he asked. "Is it Simon? Is he OK?"

I shook my head as more tears started falling, and Amanda told Matthew what had happened.

He sat back down with his head in his hands. "I can't believe it," he muttered. "A heart attack? That's what they've put it down as?"

I nodded.

"Did they say anything else?" he asked.

I tried to remember. Everything had happened so quickly, it had all been a bit of a daze.

"Um ... I think one of the doctors saying that it looked like his blood had been flowing too fast for his heart to cope with, which is why his heart failed. But that can't be right, because surely the heart controls the speed of blood flow?" I shook my head. "Yeah that can't be right. I'm sorry Matthew, I can't have heard them correctly."

"No," replied Matthew. "I actually think that's possible."

"What?" I looked up into his dark eyes. "How can blood flow round a body faster than a heart is pumping it round?"

"Well, normally it can't," replied Matthew, sadly. "But I don't think what happened to Simon could be described as normal."

"Are you saying you know what happened to him?" I asked.

"I don't know for sure," pondered Matthew. "But I have a theory that I think makes sense." He looked round at his boss. "Amanda, I think under the circumstances, Caroline should know what Simon and I were working on."

I felt myself go cold. They were working on something that could have killed him?

Amanda and Matthew looked at each other for a few seconds before Amanda nodded.

Now that Matthew had his boss' permission, he continued to speak.

"About three years ago, Simon and I decided to have a day out at the beach. We were exploring a cave when we found some weird looking rocks and pebbles. They were really pretty ... smooth and pink. We started messing around with them and Simon threw one of them into a rock pool. But when it hit the water, the splash looked like it was happening in slow motion."

Matthew shifted in his seat and pushed his hands through his dark hair.

"We brought some back to the lab with us and discovered that they have some sort of time-distorting properties. We thought we could use them to see whether time travel was possible."

"And ... is it possible?" I asked, bewildered.

"According to my calculations, theoretically it is possible. But Simon was the one doing the experiments, and in practice we couldn't get it to work. We called the rocks "time crystals," because even in the lab, they often distorted time by making things look like they were happening faster or slower around them. But we couldn't control them, and we couldn't time travel. I hardly touched them, but Simon was always handling them for our experiments."

The crystals distorted time by making the world around them move faster or slower. I was brought back to the day with Lily where we had our picnic and she told me her secret.

I was born with an ability to manipulate time. I can make things around me go faster or slower.

I pushed her out of my mind – this wasn't the right time to be thinking of Lily.

"Oh no," I said, shaking my head. "So, Simon was exposed to something which may have made his blood pump faster than it should have done, overloading his heart?"

"Exactly," said Matthew. "Obviously if we'd known this could happen, we would have taken extra precautions, you know? But neither of us guessed what the rocks were doing to him."

"They could have altered his DNA," I speculated. "At least now we know, we can stop the same thing happening to anyone else. The question is, how do we dispose of them without someone else finding them?"

"What do you mean?" asked Matthew.

"Well, this research can't continue," I said. "I mean, these time crystals have literally destroyed Simon's life. We can't let anyone else near them."

"We just need to understand them," said Matthew. "After all, that's what science is about, surely? Understanding things we don't know yet?"

"At what cost?" I blurted out. "Simon has already paid with his life!" I started getting louder. "You can't be suggesting you just carry researching into these time crystals?" I turned to Amanda. "You're going to get rid of them, right?"

Amanda turned to me with a sympathetic gaze.

"Caroline, honestly I don't know. Emotions are running high right now, for all of us. We need time to adjust, and time to think this through sensibly. For now, I think we need to suspend work on the time crystals, but let's not be too hasty about disposing of them yet. We don't even know if this was the cause of Simon's death. Let's lock up the crystals, deal with Simon's funeral and then make some decisions after that."