Children Of The Crucible

Any Explanation?

Blair's PoV

It felt like Mr Walters went on about bonding for about 5 years. I was only half concentrating on his lesson. I couldn't place the feeling I just experienced. It was almost like an extremely mild electric shock that only lasted half a second. I don't know if there was some sort of malfunction in the apparatus when I took my reading or if it always did that. Judging by everyone else's faces, I assumed it was the latter. But why?

After what seemed like an eternity, the teacher finally dismissed us, and get this, he had the audacity to give us homework. As if I haven't got enough from school. I probably shouldn't complain, though. I've not actually got an issue with homework- it's going to help me pass, so why not put in a little bit of effort. I doubted many of the others would take this outlook, but oh well. It's their grades and it's up to them to chose if they want to put in the effort.

Grabbed my coat and bag, I headed for the door, the others practically running ahead of me to freedom. Well, apart from Stevie, who stayed behind to quiz the teacher on metallic bonding or something like that.

'Hey guys, can I ask you something? This is gonna sound so weird but did anyone else feel kinda strange when you were using the energy machine thing?'

'I was about to ask the exact same thing!' Sami turned to me.

'What do you suppose happened? It felt like a mini electric shock.'

Everyone looked deep in thought before James replied.

'I honestly have no idea. I don't know about you guys, but I went really warm all of a sudden.'

'Wait, you got really warm? I practically froze.' said Gwen.

'Huh, that's so weird that we all felt different reactions. Hey tell you what, let's hang about for a minute and ask Stevie, she might know what's going on.'

Everyone agreed so we waited in the main entrance for her, not wanting to stand out in the cold.

Eventually, after a good ten minutes, Stevie finally emerged from the stairwell. She looked surprised to see us all waiting, if a bit impatiently, for her.

Stevie's PoV

'Thank you, see you next week.' I said politely before exiting the room to go home. It had been a pretty decent lesson. He had definitely given us a lot more detail than Mrs Stanley had. I walked down the stairs towards the main entrance, pulling on my gloves as I went.

I was pleastantly surprised when I noticed the others sitting at one of the tables. They looked as is they were deep in thought as I approached them.

'Hey, were you guys waiting for me?'

'Yeah, take a seat. We want to ask you something. Just so you know, it's gonna sound a bit strange.' came Olivia's response.

'Ok, what's up?'

They all turned to each other, not quite wanting to say it themselves, as if fearing I would think of them as crazy.

'You see, the thing is-' began Tommy before James cut in.

'-we all felt something strange when we were getting the reading on Mr Walters energy thingy.'

So it wasn't just me. I had felt almost like the energy was running right through me, exactly how I would imagine a wire connected in a circuit would feel. I thought for a moment. Why had everyone felt this way? Was it simply an issue with the apparatus or was it something else, something stranger, deeper?

'Yeah, so did I. It was like there was a current running right through me. Is that what everyone else felt?'

'Not really, we were discussing this just now, and everyone went through completely different sensations.' said Blair. 'Gwen, you said you felt as though you were going to freeze, but I felt as though I was going to melt. Tommy felt his whole body tingling, Olivia felt light headed, as though she hadn't had a drink in days, and Sami, you said you felt as though you were going to collapse under your own weight and James felt so energetic he felt he could run a marathon.'

The group nodded along in agreement with their corresponding parts of the story.

'Well, I felt as though the energy was almost flowing through me, almost as if I was part of the machine, which is different to what any of you guys felt. It's strange; I don't think it is a fault in the apparatus, otherwise we would have all felt the same thing. Maybe we should just see how it plays out, you know, see if anything else out of the ordinary happens.'

This got me a disappointed look from everyone.

'Is that it?' asked Olivia

'What do you mean?'

'Well, we thought since you were pretty smart, you might be able to tell us what on earth just happened to us.'

'I'm sorry. I'm no Einstein. To be honest, I think we should just ignore it and only think about it if anything else happens to us. Let's see if we keep getting these sensations, or even try and google to see if there are any reasonable explanations.'

Olivia sighed but the rest of the group seemed pretty satisfied with this answer. For now anyway. We were all tired from the tuition anyway, and none of us wanted to think anymore. We now had the common goal of getting home so we could relax for the rest of the evening.

By the time I got home, I was still racking my brain for some form of logical explanation as to why we all felt so strange when we were using the apparatus. I eventually gave up thinking, well for tonight anyway, and lay down in my bed and to get some sleep.