Aaron and Moley strode across the park, arriving at the bench Tethis had motioned to find her sitting there already.

‘Hello there, Aaron.’

‘Hi,’ Aaron raised a hand in a meek wave. Moley just made shifty glances about, like a government bodyguard from a cheesy action movie. The two boys sat down opposite Tethis.

‘Please, have a mint,’ she offered a small green tablet.

‘Thanks.’ Aaron took it. Moley took one also, inspecting it doubtfully, only putting it in his mouth when Aaron glared at him.

‘Now. I need to explain something important to you. I wanted to make sure you had the time to grasp it,’ she said with a precise, professional tone.

Moley eyed her suspiciously. ‘Is that so?’

‘…I’m not with National Archives.’

‘The cat is out of the bag, repeat, the cat is out of the bag,’ Moley said nasally, with a finger to his ear and several glances over his shoulder.

‘Moley, will you cut that out?’ Aaron punched his arm.

‘Dude, she’s winding you up. Why are you bothering with this?’

‘Please listen a minute,’ Tethis interrupted, ‘I’m not trying to trick you. I can, and will, back up everything I say. Just let me say it.’

‘Okay then, tell us,’ Aaron said calmly.

Tethis made a small, polite ‘ahem’, as though recalling a routine. ‘My name,’ she began, ‘is Tethis Lithi Arkwright, Chrononaut of the Third Age Unation. I arrived at precisely sixteen-thirty last Saturday, from October the twenty-fourth, thirty-one eighty-nine; in my craft the Novodantis. This was made possible by data you collected, marking the earliest known time jump in human history.’

Aaron blinked. ‘…wh- what?’

Tethis seemed so sincere; it was somehow like truth, if just for an instant. Moley frowned as she went on. ‘I came here on a mission of Peace and Journalism,’ Tethis went on, undaunted by the looks she was facing. ‘I’m with Special Temporal Operatives. We take all the tough and risky jobs like this deep jump into serious pre-history. There were a few others, but you were the first to do it right.’

Aaron stared blankly, his jaw slowly falling away.

‘…I mean, ETRI were scurrying about for years trying to find any data we might use for proto-jumps. When they found yours in the global archive net, tucked in some old European Federation files, they weren’t sure if it’d be feasible to use them. They said we might not come back from something like that. That’s where I come in, you see.’

‘Whoa, hold it a second… time out, lady,’ Moley urged. ‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’

‘Oh. I’m getting ahead of myself,’ she said guiltily. ‘Hold one second, I have a call.’ She then tapped an ornament on her forehead deliberately.

~‘Mother, we may have a problem.’

‘Quick, run,’ Moley whispered. ‘She’s a mentalist.’

‘What is it now?’ Tethis hissed, turning away from the boys slightly.

Aaron shrugged. ‘I’ll hear her out. Just keep an eye out for anything dodgy, there should be nothing to worry about. I mean, what if she really is…?’

~‘The problem with the sensors appears to be severe. The Novodantis was spotted by a child, though I think we got away with it this time.’

‘What!’ Tethis yelled, startling the pair sitting opposite. ‘Be more careful, will you! Do you want to cause a Liang Cascade or something?’

‘I still don’t know what she’s talking about,’ Moley whispered.

~‘I told you, it wasn’t me. It was the sensors. When you left, they failed to pick him up. I think he saw the ship during optical phasing.’

Tethis shook her head. ‘The sensors have gotta be funk-jammed. Just keep checking them until you find something.’

~‘But mom-!’

‘That is enough! Just get to the root of it will you?’ Tethis snapped back. She paused a moment, then sighed wearily. Her eyes slowly returned to the boys and she smiled again politely.

‘Trouble at home?’ Moley asked in an accusative tone.

The smile fell from Tethis’ face. ‘Never mind that.’

Aaron took a deep breath. ‘So… are you’re telling me you’re, a um… time traveller?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Tethis said tartly. ‘The correct term is Chrononaut.’

Moley smirked. ‘I’m sure it is. D’you think that talking to yourself some nonsense about spaceships is going to sell us your act?’

Tethis glared back. ‘Will you just stop being such a fuggwad for a minute and listen? I’m trying to do something important. I got no assistance and any moment now my dysfunctional ship will end up bumping into someone or something significant, causing catastrophic alterations to the present back home. I am not messing around here. Okay?’

Aaron shifted nervously. He had just about followed what she was saying, but he’d abruptly gotten the sensation of reality dropping away, like the ground during a plane takeoff. ‘We’re just finding the, ah… whole idea a little unlikely,’ he said, unsure himself whether he was a sympathetic believer or just underlining the insanity of her claim. ‘I mean, we wanted something to appear. We really did. We just…’ he gestured, somewhat bashfully, ‘didn’t expect this.’

‘Fine, let’s say you’re right,’ Moley leant forward, throwing Aaron a cautious glance before locking eyes with the chrononaut. ‘You must have something you can show us to prove it?’

She took a deep breath to disperse her flared temper somewhat, then gave a begrudging nod. She removed a tiny flat device from her belt and held it before them in exhibition. ‘Observe closely.’

She tapped her thumb against a pad on the device, opening her hand so it sat in the middle of her palm. The two boys watched transfixed as the upper face of the casing appeared to dissolve. Suddenly its edges expanded, scaling upward and outward as an intricate lattice weaved the metallic substance into a small box about twenty centimetres on each edge. It took less than a second. As the completed container sat in Tethis’ hand, Aaron was aware that his mouth was gaping again.

The box appeared to be quite ordinary and featureless, with a grey metallic finish like a dull stainless steel. Tethis opened it naturally, as though containers constructing themselves from small flat slabs was a perfectly normal occurrence. Inside it was an orb about the size of a clenched fist, which she removed.

‘What’s that?’ Aaron couldn’t help but ask.

‘Watch,’ she replied simply. The moment she took the orb in her fingers, it moulded to fit them and sat in her hand comfortably. Then, there was a quiet whine and a pointed beam of bluish light shot from the device with a satisfying ‘swish’. Upon hitting the grass, it became a glowing outline. A moment later the outline became a dog.

‘A dog?’ Moley said eventually.

‘Not a real one,’ Tethis explained. ‘It’s what we call a magnogram.’

Aaron looked at the dog, which looked back in the vacant manner that he was accustomed to dogs looking. It really looked real. So much so that if he hadn’t seen it materialise a moment before, he’d have easily assumed it was.

‘It’s a high resolution illusion which also can simulate the physical presence of its subject,’ Tethis carried on. ‘So it looks and feels like it’s actually there.’

‘That’s… amazing,’ Aaron said, reaching out to touch the dog’s fur. It felt a little strange; but he couldn’t figure out if it was just because his brain was playing tricks, knowing it was an illusion.

‘It’s nothing much really,’ Tethis dismissed. ‘Cheap, easy to use. Make good toys.’

‘So…’ Moley watched the dog run off to play with another that was wandering the park, which happily humoured it. ‘That might be impressive, but can it do anything else other than dogs?’

Tethis nodded. ‘Anything, so long as you’ve got the object you want to hand, or a cubecode version of it.’ She shifted her fingers across the orb’s surface. As she did, the illusion abruptly vanished in a flicker of light. The chasing real dog fell forward on its face, then sat up looking very confused at the disappearance of its new friend.

‘How about… uh, a helicopter?’ Moley asked, grinning at the bewildered dog.

Tethis shook her head. ‘This one has a maximum resolution of eight cubic meters. Big stuff doesn’t work that well anyways. Tend to glitch.’

‘Typical,’ Moley rolled his eyes. ‘Technology never changes. Well before you convince me, you’re going to have to do better than a fake dog.’

‘Impressing you will be easy,’ Tethis scoffed. ‘But for now I just need your attention. I assume I have that?’

The two boys nodded.

‘Good. I would much like to continue this discussion somewhere more private.’ She glanced worryingly in the corner of her eye, which Aaron noticed she kept doing periodically. He took a quick glance over his shoulder to see if he could figure out what she was looking at, but there seemed to be nothing there.

‘Okay, I’m game,’ he looked at the table, then back at her. ‘Will my house be okay?’

‘That would be much more preferable,’ she said.

‘You’re letting her into your house?’ Moley leant in on Aaron.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Aaron said as they stood. Tethis had begun hissing demands into thin air again, one finger on her temple.

Moley looked up at the evening sky with a half-laugh. ‘If you say so, man. S’your funeral when your mum finds out you invited an insane time traveller to tea.’

---

Tethis walked into the Sellafield residence like a deep space explorer peeking into some fantastic alien cave. Her eyes were full of wonder as she surveyed the hallway, the white-pearl graft near her eye emanating a dazzling light that followed where her head pointed. The beam cut through the dark corridor, illuminating pictures on the wall and a simple swirling wallpaper pattern that caught the light.

Aaron stepped past her impatiently and hit the light switch.

‘Spoil sport,’ Tethis pouted, as her torchlight vanished.

‘Looks like your mum’s not back yet,’ Moley stated.

‘It’s Friday,’ Aaron confirmed. ‘She’s taking the others to Youth Club.’

Tethis continued to ignore them both, inspecting the house with fascination. ‘By Hawking, an original digital-era fibre-optic telephone hub?’ she said giddily. ‘Oh, and I don’t believe it! Cut-wood stair panelling, authentic mortar and breeze-block wall construction…’ she prodded the wall with admiration, although to Aaron it was just a big surface with wallpaper on it.

‘You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ Moley interjected.

Tethis turned and drew up her stature above the two boys, suddenly taking on her professional tone again. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I have work to be getting on with,’ she said, as if she was about to embark on a mission to Mars.

‘Okay. This way,’ Aaron said, then led them to his room. It was downstairs; not particularly big by any account, but it seemed to intrigue their enigmatic visitor. Moley clicked on the small TV on his chest of drawers, which sprung into life on the news channel. Several stern looking people in suits quietly muttered about radio wave interference. That seemed to be on the news a lot lately. A scientist being interviewed explained that a cosmic storm may be causing an unprecedented amount of radio noise at the moment; but it was no cause for alarm, he assured the camera.

While Tethis poked around, Aaron disappeared into the kitchen and came back some minutes later with three cups of tea and some biscuits.

‘Ah, thank you!’ Tethis beamed, taking a cup from him and sipping it. The two boys watched as she took the sugar pot from the tea tray and added a spoonful of sugar, then another, and another… some five or six times.

‘That’s better,’ she sighed, sipping at the drink. ‘Now then, to business.’

She promptly unfolded a tiny case she’d brought with her, no larger than a paperback book. Then she pressed something on it and lay it on the floor. It began to grow, much like the box in the park had earlier, until it was the size of a small table. As it completed its metamorphosis, it became apparent as a fairly contemporary-looking prefabricated scientific desk, complete with floating transparent screens and an attached chair. It certainly didn’t look like it just grew out of a small flat piece of metal. The two boys simply stared.

‘Now then,’ Tethis began, indicating the newly formed seat to Aaron. ‘Tell me a little about yourself.’ She began to pace.

‘Well… I’m not sure what to say,’ Aaron replied, dutifully sitting down.

Tethis waited a moment. ‘Very well, I’ll start,’ she shrugged, and carried on pacing behind him. ‘I’m Tethis Lithi Arkwright, Chrononaut of the Third Age Unation. I was born in the province of Portyuga, of the West European Zone. I’m now in 2.1.C and interviewing the planter of Chronozone… well, Zero, technically.’ She turned to him.

‘Am I on tape or something?’ Aaron asked.

‘In a way,’ Tethis said, squinting a little as though the real answer wasn’t worth the explanation.

Aaron deliberated a moment. ‘I’m Aaron Sellafield… uh, I was born in Warrington and go to high school.’ He looked to Moley, who shrugged. He glanced at Tethis, who seemed exactly the same when being recorded as she was any other time, like it came as the most natural thing in the world. Whereas, he noticed, he’d already begun to talk differently; slower and with less decision.

‘’Kay,’ she said, sensing Aaron’s pause was for lack of further input. ‘When did you and your friend here begin attempts at Chronozones?’

Aaron scratched his nose, looking perplexed. ‘You mean that time data we made?’

‘Well, yeah. Duh,’ Tethis answered. She didn’t seem much more professional in an interview than when she was off-tape.

‘Um… I got the idea while in a class discussion, so Moley and our teacher Mr. Kaufman discussed-’

‘Ooh!’ Tethis blurted suddenly. ‘Your teacher helped? Can we include him?’

‘N-not… really,’ Aaron said slowly. ‘He lives in Oldham, and apparently goes away a lot at weekends.’

‘More to the point, he might not be so easily lured in as our young genius here,’ Moley spoke up, until this point watching the interview with folded arms.

‘Damn,’ Tethis clicked her fingers. ‘Meant to ask earlier.’

‘They sent you on an historical mission and you forget who you’re supposed to be interviewing?’ Aaron asked, trying not to sound accusatory.

Tethis put her hands on her hips, striking a twisting pose. ‘Look kiddo, I’m the best damn chrononaut there is. If I forget things every now and then, it’s all part of the package.’

Moley snorted. ‘If you say so…’

‘I do.’ She smiled childishly, then carried on pacing. ‘Okay, so you and your friend set up experiments to record the required information… how exactly?’

‘Trial and error,’ Moley grunted.

‘Tu-rer-ror?’ Tethis gibbered, cocking her head to one side. ‘Seriously? You had nothing to go on? At all?’

‘I was just brainstorming,’ Aaron twiddled his thumbs absently. ‘Lucky guess, right?’

‘Interesting… yes, interesting indeed…’ Tethis reached over and tapped at the side of the desk-like device she’d sat Aaron down to.

‘How many successful attempts did we make?’ Moley asked.

‘Oh, just the one,’ Tethis turned her attention to the corner of her vision again. Whatever she was looking at, it seemed to be something only she could see. ‘The last one.’

‘What was so different about that?’ Aaron asked.

‘It was the only one with a feasible bootstrapper. Something to work with at our destination, inanimate and inconsequential. You had a, uh, footnote in the last recording that gave us the necessary clue. You know that vehicle, you called it a Fiat I think-’

There was the sound of two heavy clunks of the front door’s knocker.

‘Someone at the door?’ Moley said after an awkward pause.

There were another three knocks.

Aaron sighed. ‘Guess I’ll have to get it.’ He stood and made his way out of the bedroom and into the hall.

As he walked through the doorway he froze at the sight of a teenage girl standing in the hallway.

‘Hope you don’t mind, thought I’d better come in,’ she said.

‘Wha-?’ Aaron simply stared.

‘Who are you?’ Moley emerged behind Aaron.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Tethis roared from behind them both.

The girl looked up at her. ‘Calm down, mother.’

Mother?

The boys looked at Tethis then back at the girl. There could certainly have been some resemblance.

‘I told you not to leave the ship!’ Tethis said with exasperation.

‘But it’s really important, I had to come find you,’ the girl replied. ‘You weren’t answering me.’

Tethis rolled her eyes. ‘I switched off the Com for the precise reason that I didn’t want any more interruptions!’

‘You’re her… daughter?’ Moley said eventually.

Tethis nodded grudgingly. ‘Yes. This is Ro.’

Ro looked very much like her mother but for the fact that her hair was a deep chestnut hue; her figure was shorter and she had a rounder face with softer features. Her clothes looked much like Tethis’, but Ro’s jacket was shorter and open, revealing a dark turtleneck crop top. Stylish, Aaron thought; yet somehow sophisticated.

It suddenly struck Aaron just how close in age Ro and her mother appeared. Ro looked on the younger side of sixteen. Tethis looked like she was barely half a decade older. He wondered if the future had somehow mixed up the words for ‘mother’ and ‘sister’ as he extended a hand to her. ‘Hi,’ he said, then after a long pause: ‘I’m Aaron.’

Ro looked down at his hand. ‘Please explain to me what to do.’

Aaron looked incredulous. ‘Don’t people shake hands in the future?’

Ro shook her wrist and watched it with a frown, as if to make sure she was doing it right. ‘I guess my mother may do things better than I. She’s more junked-up than me when it comes to 2.1.C, tebyach.’

‘What’s junked? And two-one-see?’ Moley asked. This girl was even harder to understand than her mother.

Ro gave him a bemused but light-hearted glance. ‘It’s… ’Junked’… you know? To upload data to the brain. Thereby learnin’ things? And as for 2.1.C, that is the century we are in. Yeah? I am speakin’ English, right?’

‘Well, yes.’ Aaron nodded. ‘Although I dunno what tebyach means.’

Ro frowned. ‘Like, a qualifier for informal certainty.’ She looked at Tethis. ‘Are you sure this is the right dialect, mother? I’ve junked the 2.1.C dictionary, so I should be using the chronolocal words.’

‘Well unless you haven’t noticed,’ Tethis said, ‘we’ve still got plenty of 2.1.C that hasn’t happened yet.’ She glanced at Aaron with a knowing grin. ‘The word ‘tebyach’ originates from the acronym for ‘to be honest’.’

‘Hmm.’ Ro fidgeted. ‘I’m soundin’ unfamiliar.’

There was something a little awkward about the way she spoke, but it was still fluent. Like a foreigner who’d lived with English speakers for many years but still had her own native accent. Not that he could place her accent; it sounded a little like Swedish, or Russian. Aaron realised Tethis had the same accent, although it was more subtle.

‘I might try junking more 2.0.C instead,’ Ro suggested. ‘I found those words fun.’

‘It’s okay. You speaking full-on 21st century is kinda cool.’ Moley smiled.

‘Tote?’ Ro raised an eyebrow. She had a blank look; an innocent, almost robotic stare. She seemed so remote and foreign that she may as well have been from another planet. But Aaron had to agree with Moley on this one; she was pretty cool.

Aaron nodded and she grinned at him. Her soft, tanned face seemed to exude a vibrant and warm glow. It made him feel light-headed.

‘So,’ Moley said, looking Ro up and down. ‘Tethis didn’t mention you.’

‘Yes, well,’ Tethis said testily. ‘I didn’t want to complicate matters. Now it seems there’s little I can do about that.’

Ro nodded patiently. ‘Mother, have you seen the ‘Gauge lately?’

‘I know,’ Tethis closed her eyes, massaging the bridge of her nose. ‘Risen to seven-nine-hundred.’

‘What does that mean?’ Moley beat Aaron to his question.

‘It means that proverbial faeces may soon hit the rotary cooler,’ Ro explained.

‘BUT- I am hoping to rectify that. And you hardly made it better by coming here,’ she scolded Ro. ‘It was completely unnecessary. I already knew about the Liang Oscillation anyway-’

‘That wasn’t why,’ Ro interrupted, her dark eyes fixing on her mother. ‘It’s about the sensors. I know what the problem is.’

‘Yeah?’ Tethis said expectantly.

‘They’re bein’ blocked.’

Tethis scoffed. ‘Oh, yes I see, that solves everything, I never thought of that!’

Ro maintained her gaze, while Tethis’ temper was clearly boiling up again. ‘Dammit,’ Tethis said, ‘aren’t you forgetting when we are? This is 2.1.C! Blocking quazon sensors?’ She slapped her forehead in exasperation. ‘I mean think, child!’

‘I know, but-’

‘The only Chronozone for the next thousand years was the one used by us, therefore there’s nobody here with such technology. Nothing here that can block quazon-based equipment. It’s not something blocked naturally; that’s why we use them. You’re starting to see how impossible this is, hm?’

Ro paused a moment. ‘Yes. But the Novodantis agrees. We completed a full met sweep and totes scanned up.’

‘Well it’s wrong too, then,’ Tethis said, folding her arms.

‘Don’t you think we should at least checklist?’

‘I’m not at luxury to entertain shot-in-the-dark theoretics,’ Tethis said dismissively. ‘If something doesn’t fit the facts, it doesn’t fit the facts; no matter how hard it is to find another answer. Anyway. Now that you’re here, you may as well help. Where’d you leave the ship?’

‘Just out front,’ Ro replied.

‘Lazy. Well, that’s typical.’

Aaron went wide-eyed. ‘Isn’t that a bit… conspicuous?’

‘Nah.’ Moley shrugged. ‘Car, car, spaceship, car—it’ll blend in easily.’

‘Oh no no no…’ Ro said with a giggle, ‘it uses optical camouflage, silly.’

‘That’s like a big whooshy-thing that makes stuff invisible!’ Tethis said, making a patronisingly illustrative gesture.

‘Yeah we know what that means,’ Moley said.

‘They actually have them in science fiction,’ Aaron added.

Tethis smirked. ‘I read some 2.1.C science fiction once. Couldn’t stop laughing. There was this one about teleportation-’

‘Mother,’ Ro interrupted. ‘You’re rambling again.’

‘Alright, alright,’ Tethis waved a hand at her. ‘Let’s resume the interview, or we’ll be in the fourth millennium again by the time we’re done. Ro, move the ship into the back garden. Don’t want anyone bumping into it.’

Ro nodded, then pressed an index finger lightly on the temple-graft she wore above her eye, much like her mother’s. She stared into space for a few moments while Aaron watched her closely, much to Tethis’ mounting frustration.

‘If you must know,’ Tethis said eventually, ‘The ship’s view is being projected onto her retina so she can instruct it where to go.’

‘Sounds uncomfortable.’ Aaron continued to gaze wondrously at Ro, who was still staring ahead with the look of someone watching TV. After a few moments she blinked, then turned to him as if she’d just woken up.

‘Ship’s moved,’ she announced. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Aaron replied.

‘If you please,’ Tethis said, then gestured for them to follow and they returned to Aaron’s room. As the interview resumed, she began to talk to the boys about the Chronozone ‘planting’ procedure. Ro watched and listened silently. They discussed the calculations and attempts, while Tethis explained a little about why they needed this and that and how nearly ETRI didn’t allow her to use the data to make a jump.

‘You see, it’s a complicated thing,’ Tethis leant back. ‘It isn’t how it is in your science fiction where you travel through time like getting on a train or a car. It’s a momentous procedure. It requires planning, permissions, chemical signatures, cross-permissions, tests, more signatures, sacrifice, risk, advisors, meetings, even more signatures… you’d be closer comparing it to a nuclear missile launch than a car journey.’

‘Well, I suppose every time there’s a chance you could ruin history,’ Aaron mused. ‘That needs careful steps.’

‘But why was it so important to come here? I mean, now?’ Moley said.

Tethis shrugged, looking thoughtful. ‘Why is it so important to be the first into space? Or to climb a mountain nobody’s ever scaled? It’s difficult to question why we do these things; only that your Chronozone was the first by a long way, and that made us want to come see it.’

Ro slipped a smile, looking around as she spoke. ‘I still can’t believe I’m in 2.1.C! This is immeasurably cool, mother.’

‘Ro, please don’t interrupt the interview.’

‘Can’t we edit it out?’

‘It’s being edited out as we speak. It’s my time you’re wasting.’

Ro snorted. ‘You normally don’t need my help.’

‘I said be quiet.’

Aaron cleared his throat politely.

‘Anyway!’ Tethis clasped her hands together, her tone light and pleasant again. ‘Before I get down to the important issues, have you got any sugar?’

‘Sugar?’ Aaron blinked.

‘A high-sugar drink would be good,’ she nodded.

Aaron got up and went out of the room. He returned a moment later with a can of cola and handed it to Tethis, who took a healthy gulp. Her expression changed to mild disdain.

‘That’s not bad I suppose.’

Ro leant forward to talk to the boys as Tethis swigged the can again. ‘She sometimes needs to med it, but it’s not a proper sugar addiction like some people.’

The two boys just nodded slowly like they knew what she was talking about. The afternoon had got weirder and weirder, to the point where it had become completely nonsensical. Aaron considered himself pretty unflappable anyway, but in this instance he supposed it was more down to the utter absurdity of the situation that kept him calm, as though he was expecting at some point to wake up and it’d all be a great big weird dream.

Eventually, as ever, Moley became bored.

‘Sorry Tethis, but when will we be impressed, as promised, by this future technology of yours? You’ve already got pretty much a whole interview out of us and we still haven’t seen anything special yet.’

Tethis glared at him. ‘Later.’

‘Do better,’ Moley countered, then turned. ‘Aaron, don’t say another thing until she makes up her end of the deal.’ He talked like a business shark sometimes, Aaron thought.

Tethis’ glare turned to a scowl, but it was Ro that broke the ensuing, uncomfortable silence. ‘So that’s why the Liang Gauge has been going berserk.’

Her mother looked affronted. ‘How else could I get these primitiva to talk to me?’ She frowned. ‘And since when was it up to you?’

Ro looked at the two boys. ‘If mom’s been tryin’ to, like, grab your attention with toys and gadgets, she shouldn’t. Causes problems, seenot.’

‘As you are now,’ Tethis pointed out.

‘The measure of which is-’

The slam of the front door made Ro pause mid-sentence. A moment later came the sound of plastic bags coming to rest swiftly with the floor.

‘Aaron, I’m home,’ came the weary voice of Aaron’s mum.

‘Hi Mum!’ he called back.

‘Did you have a nice day at school-’ her voice broke off abruptly as she stepped into the room. Tethis and Ro sat opposite Moley and Aaron, all looking up at her.

‘Oh, hello there,’ Aaron’s mother said with a friendly smile. ‘Are you Aaron’s friends from school?’

‘I’m conducting an interview!’ Tethis said, in a manner Aaron could only think of as ‘dorky’.

Ro discreetly nudged her in the ribs, then added ‘It is a school-related intrep.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Aaron’s mum nodded. ‘Well would anyone like a cup of tea?’

‘No thanks, mum. Just had one,’ Aaron dismissed.

‘Okay. Well could you unload the shopping in the fridge for me? I’ve got to ring BT.’

‘In a minute, mum.’

Tethis stood. ‘I think it’s time we were leaving, Ro.’

Ro nodded and followed.

‘I hope to conclude our talk soon, though!’ The chrononaut smiled. ‘You’ve both been very interesting.’

Aaron folded his arms. ‘What about the demonstration?’

‘I’ll show you tomorrow. Meet us out the back there.’ Then she strode out.

‘Gotta run,’ Ro gave a slight bow, then followed her mother out of the house.

Aaron’s mother watched them go puzzledly. ‘Isn’t that the back door they went out of just now?’

‘Yes,’ Aaron replied with a sigh. He got up then walked to the kitchen, looking out the back door. Sure enough, the pair had disappeared. As he stood in the kitchen doorway, Aaron suddenly became aware that their hidden ship could be staring back at him and he wouldn’t even know it.

Hang on, what was he thinking? It couldn’t be real, could it?

Yet there were too many things he could not refute. The holographic dog, while a modest display, was still totally unexplainable. Ro’s appearance made the possibility of a ruse even more intricate. And then there was the whole interview desk that had materialised from a cigar case. Which, he remembered, was still in his room. Tethis was just too haphazard to be a scientist.

None of it made much sense, but it was certifiably real.

‘They were rather unusual,’ his mother said as he walked back into his room. ‘I didn’t know you had any motorbiking friends, Aaron.’

‘And older girls too,’ Moley grinned. ‘’Cause he’s such a gentleman, Mrs. S.’

Aaron glared at Moley dryly.

‘Oh, he is, isn’t he!’ Aaron’s mum pecked his forehead with a light kiss, then nudged him toward the hall. ‘Now go unpack some shopping for your dear mother.’

‘…okay, mum.’