Darren looks like some ugly, exotic bird doing a mating dance round the golden ball sitting in the slowly freezing grass.
“Don’t touch it,” he says, reaching out to where he expected my hand to be. He seems a little disappointed to find me standing in the same spot as before, my arms crossed and my patience quickly waning.
I will admit, the sudden arrival of this… bobble, has earned him a little more of my time, but he looks too entranced to notice if I left. Still… I half turn and look anxiously back toward my house… curiosity gets the best of me.
I poke Darren hard with my foot.
“Alright spaz, you’ve had your fun, now tell me what’s going on.”
He looks up from his crouched position and smiles that big shit-eating grin and says, “It’s a time machine!”
I can feel my face go flat. “No way.”
“Yeah, the real thing! Time AND space technically, but let’s not get into that.”
“How does it work?” I say, moving in to get a closer look.
“I’ll show you,” he says, and quickly snatches it up from the frozen grass.