Speed of the Dark

Chapter 1

"The past is malleable."

That was what he told me. I, of course, politely refrained from laughing in his face.

Poor kid, I remember thinking. He's such a nerd. No wonder he can't make friends.

"Sure thing, kid," I said, ruffling his hair because I knew it annoyed him. "Whatever you say."

I can still recall the way he wrinkled his nose and stared up at me with such indignation, and said; "One day, Raven, I'll take you by surprise."

I guess he took everyone by surprise. No one would ever take him seriously, the little nine-year-old dork, with his massive glasses and his serious face. He kept telling everyone that he'd be a famous inventor one day, and had all sorts of old junk scattered throughout his bedroom that he'd claim was one of his "projects", and his mother was never allowed to touch anything, not even to clean.

In hindsight, I guess I should have seen it coming. There was no way I could have, of course, but I should have. I should have taken that damn kid seriously.

It all began to hit the fan in the summer. Next summer or last summer? Don't even ask. Because I can't answer that. I was at his house - not for him, of course. My best friend was his sister, and I spent as much time there as I did at my own home. Kind of like having two houses, except in my house there was a hideous mutt and in her house there was him. Timothy.

Outside the sun seemed to pour down on the Earth, like water. It was sweltering. Jean, my best friend, was grabbing an egg from the fridge. She wanted to see if she could get it to fry on the pavement outside - that's how hot it was.

I always envied Jean, with her long tanned legs she was not shy of showing off in the summer, something I could never bring myself to do. So who knows, maybe it wasn't all that hot that day, I was wearing my jeans and a shirt. But it was still hotter than usual, and Timothy seemed to be in an unnaturally good mood for someone who, like me, despised extreme temperatures.

"Hey brainiac," Jean said to him as she shut the fridge door, the egg in her hand. "Is it possible to fry an egg on concrete?"

I distinctly remember the way Timothy squinted at her and said, "Theoretically," because he did that to Jean a lot. She tended to ask a lot of weird questions. It's something I kind of miss.

"Would I be able to today?"

"I have a feeling you're going to try no matter what I tell you, so why bother asking?"

"Jeez, fine. Be that way. I'll just do it."

She stalked out of the kitchen and then Timothy and I were alone. While I wasn't keen on baking in the sun outside with Jean to find out if an egg would fry in the sun or not, I did kind of want to know. Luckily Timothy was in that weirdly good mood, the reason for which I was soon to find out, and was more polite to me than he was to his sister.

"In order for an egg to become firm, it has to denature, then coagulate, and that only happens if the temperature you're cooking it at remains hot enough for the entire process, at least 70 degrees Celsius. A hot footpath usually only gets up to about 63 degrees Celsius in the sun, and today isn't hot enough. So no, the egg won't fry on the footpath."

"Cool," I said. I'd made a ten dollar bet with Jean on it, and I knew Timothy would be right. He was always right.

"I was wondering," he said to me out of the blue as he poured himself a glass of apple juice. 

That right there is where I should have interrupted him and left. But I didn't.

"I have a new invention, and there's a small problem. I'm the only one who can work it, but I need someone willing to test it for me."