Chapter 27 – A Trip in Time
Emmy woke with a start. She looked around, trying to remember where she was. Then she sighed. She sat up and turned to her uncle, who was still fast asleep on the sofa. She stroked his hair gently and got to her feet. After looking around the room for a moment, she realised that Hershel was not where he had been sleeping that night, on the floor across the room from her. She went to the kitchen and poked her head in the door, but Hershel wasn't there either. She sloped off down the hall and saw that the ladder leading up to the attic was down. She climbed up and looked around.
Hershel was tinkering with the time machine, frowning as he did so. None of the buttons or screens were lit up, and Hershel didn't appear to have the faintest idea what he was doing.
Emmy smiled. "Need some help?"
Hershel jumped at the sudden sound of her voice and smiled back. "Yes, please. I know nothing of this sort of thing."
"Did you try svitching it on?" Emmy asked.
"Well, yes," Hershel laughed. "But still nothing."
"Are you sure zat you pushed ze right button?"
"Well, it is marked," he pointed out, gesturing to the button.
"Ah..." Emmy thought for a moment. "Did you plug it in?"
"Yes, I did," Hershel smiled, pointing to the plug. It was plugged in correctly. Emmy frowned.
"Perhaps zere is anozer connection break, no?"
"Hmm... maybe..." Hershel began to carefully check the cable while Emmy watched, sighing heavily. They were going to get nowhere at this rate. Little Emmy sighed heavily and plonked herself down on a bean-bag beside the plug. She looked up at the plug once more, only to realise something. The switch hadn't been flicked, and therefore there would be no power going to the machine. Emmy sighed again, mentally scolding herself for not seeing it earlier and jumped up to her feet to flick the switch. As soon as she had done so, the machine came back to live, whirring and flashing once more.
Hershel jumped out of his skin at this, nearly falling backwards. He turned to Emmy, who was stood next to the switch, grinning from ear to ear.
"You forgotted to flick ze svitch," she pointed out.
Hershel frowned. "Switch?"
"Yeah. Ze svitch on ze plug. Here, look," Emmy pointed.
"What does it do?"
Emmy gave Hershel a funny look. "It make ze el... elek...ticity... come. Because... is not safe if svitch is not zere... little children get shocks. Like you." Emmy smiled again.
"What do you mean 'like me'?" Hershel enquired with a frown.
"Vat, don't tell me zat you actually vent to ze hairdresser and paid zem to make your hair look like zat?" Emmy laughed.
Hershel pouted. "I'll have you know that my hair is the height of fashion in my time. It's cool."
Emmy snorted. "Yeah, if you say so, Hershel..."
Hershel rolled his eyes. "Come on, Emmy. Let's get serious, shall we? We still need to figure out how to work this machine..." He poked around it some more, trying to figure out which button did what merely by looking at them, and sadly failing miserably. Emmy leaned forward and looked carefully. "Is zis it?" She pointed to a red button.
"Ah... right..." Hershel looked really sheepish now.
Little Emmy noticed his expression and smiled. "Is okay. I press now, yes?"
"Er... I'm not sure..." Hershel trailed off, frowning yet again. "You appear to be the expert on these things..."
"Yeah, okay, I press now," Emmy decided and jammed the button with her thumb.
As soon as she did this, the arms began to spin. The arms started spinning, round and round, faster and faster, creating a curvature in the centre of the room. Slowly, the curvature began to open up in the middle. Emmy and Hershel looked at one another for a moment and, taking deep breaths, walked forward. The opening in the curvature got larger and larger and began to swallow up the machine and the children too. The speed of the spinning arms increased even further until the two young time travellers were completely engorged by the curvature.
Eventually, the spinning began to cease and, after a while, the curvature was gone.
And Little Emmy and Hershel were gone with it.