Another STRAP Time Traveller in danger

Only a few days after I first heard about Sarah I got another urgent message From Kaz.

I was riding round on my BMX trying to master jumping on and off curbs without falling off or have to steady myself by putting my feet down and I was just revving myself up to full speed, heading straight towards a curb when a shocking buzzing went straight down my left leg, It was about 100 times stronger than the normal vibrate function on my phone and I swerved my bike to the side and went to pull my phone out of my pocket as quick as I could – I was such an uncomfortable feeling. Just before I lifted it out, I realized it was going to be a message from SHARP and the screen would expand and illuminate  I looked around and spotted a little gap behind the car wash and peddled over. Once I was safe behind some overgrown brambles, I pulled out my phone and the blue screen lifted up and hovered in front of me.

<We have received some extremely disturbing news. STRAP very nearly lost the Sarah girl. They sent her down a mine. Is there anyway you can contact her earlier than planned? STRAP seemsto be extremely interested in mining activity, and we’re worried they might try to send her underground again.>

I told Kaz that if her last name was Lacey, as we already suspected, I would get a phone book and try to phone around all the different Lacey households pretending to be a friend of Sarah’s.

I hoped her family had a number in the phone book, some people only use their mobiles so don’t have a home phone. But I had to try something. I peddled home as fast as I could, the hill I’d crawled over only a few weeks before was getting easier every time I went up – but going down was definitely more fun!

I spent hours going through the phone book, pretending to have found a pair of Sarah’s goggles at the Swim for Life course and finally, after 28 wrong numbers and embarrassing excuses I think I found the right one. But it was getting late and I wouldn’t be able to keep going much longer.

Her dad answered and I started with my rehearsed speech.

“Hello, may I speak to Sarah please?”
“Who is this?” he asked gruffly.
I realized it would seem off that a stranger would be calling Sarah. But I was overjoyed there was even a Sarah Lacey. Most people had said, ‘Sorry there’s no one called Sarah here’.
“My name’s Danny…Danny Higgins…I think I picked up Sarah’s goggles by mistake at the Swim for Life and er….”
“Oh, OK,” he interrupted, sounding a lot more friendly.
“I think we have the same model number and I got confused – STRAP 10812.”

I quoted her time travel number that Kaz had given me, so if it was the right Sarah then she’d know why I was calling.

“I was wondering if you’d like me to return them?”

“Well it’s getting late, perhaps she could collect them from Moorlands Pool tomorrow as it’s the next swimming lesson anyway.”
“Yes, good idea,” I said.

The next morning I got up early and announced at breakfast that I was going swimming. Mark had remembered our mission and knocked on just as I was clearing away my cereal bowl and the milk.

“You ready, then?” he said punching my shoulder.
Once I’d reassured mum we’d be fine and Mark was a sensible on his bike, too, we waved goodbye and rode off. It took us ages to find the pool and Mark’s map he’d printed from google was rubbish!

 

When we finally found it, I ran in and asked at reception about the class. She told me it had already finished and my heart sank.
“But you can go in for the general swim in 10 minutes she said – it’ll be £1.50 each.”
“Great!” said Mark and handed over his cash. But I wasn’t here to swim. I needed to find Sarah. I looked around nervously. Mark had already gone through the turnstiles and was waiting impatiently.
“I’ll catch you up, just gotta check the bike’s are locked properly.”
He rolled his eyes and then followed signs to the changing rooms.

I walked back toward the exit and pulled out my phone, hoping I could get some advice from Kaz and then something caught my eye. Well…somebody.

There was a girl in the little café, she was younger than me and with short blond hair that was still wet at the edges. Was that Sarah?
“Sarah, Sarah Lacey?” I called out?
“That’s me,” she replied and spun round.
“Does STRAP 10812 mean anything to you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. She told me about her contact, who was called Anniz, and how she’d nearly drowned when a mine STRAP had sent her down flooded and then she nearly burnt to death in a fire! I couldn’t believe it.

She seemed offended when I said she was too young to travel, but I quickly explained that it wasn’t because she wasn’t capable, it was because of the medical problems and stuff.

“STRAP work fast and without safety regulations and stuff like that,” I tried to explain to her and told her about SHARP and how they seemed more reliable.
We talked about who SHARP and STRAP might be and what the purpose of this time travelling was.

She didn’t seem worried about the serious danger STRAP had put her in, “…but even if it was scary,” she said, “I still really wanted to go back a second time.”

“Didn’t they tell you it could be addictive?” I asked.
It turns out STRAP hadn’t given Sarah any of the safety information or advised her how to deal with Time Slip and how it can be addictive. Maybe they relied on it being slightly addictive. I guess that’s why SHARP left such big gaps between missions, so we don’t get hooked!

I tried my best to warn Sarah against STRAP and gave her my number so she could call if they got in touch again. I got her number too, which would help SHARP keep tabs on any irregular activity from STRAP.

Then a message buzzed across the screen from Kaz.

<Well done Danny. Please look in your left pocket>

I reached in and felt a flat metallic object that wasn’t there before.

<Please award Sarah with the BAFTA on behalf of SHARP. A BAFTA is an award that stands for BEST AGENT FOR TERRESTRIAL ASSISTANCE, it’s because she encouraged the children to escape before the mine collapsed and saved hundreds of lives!>

I slid the shiny metal plate across the table and Sarah was over the moon.

She agreed to keep in touch and to read my blog so she could find out how SHARP treated its xrosmonauts…

…and then I realized Mark had been on his own in the pool for about 20 minutes! Ooops!

 

There’s Another Time Traveller Out There! Another One!

All the time travelling in Edinburgh over the summer was starting to catch up with me. Kaz said they don’t normally send travelers on missions close together cos it can get too addictive and cos it doesn’t give you chance to recover. So I guess this is the come down from it all. Blurgh!

I’ve never had Time Slip this bad before. It’s like you feel sick and dizzy and it’s really hard to think clearly. If there’s too much light, or sound, or movement, then it’s like your brain gets really overwhelmed. That’s why I’d spent most of the this half-term week lurking in my room. I wanted to shake it off before my Mum, or even worse – Jenny – knew I wasn’t feeling well.

I couldn’t stop thinking about STRAP and how much danger they’d put Alex in, I can’t believe they sent him back in time knowing he’d have to climb a mountain without any safety equipment, what a good job he’s really skilled! He could have died.

I opened up my laptop to see if Alex had emailed or sent a facebook message when the screen went totally white. I started to panic for a moment and then realized it was just SHARP making contact: A message from Kaz flashed onto the screen.

Standing by for a message from the future. Standard.

<A ten-year-old girl from your area is to be sent back to the 19^th century by STRAP without proper precautions. Stand by.>

More text flooded the screen but the dizzy feeling was back and the letters just danced around my vision. I tried hard to focus but it was no good.  I got up and wandered over to the window and did a gnome count. It didn’t take long to notice the two gnomes playing cricket had moved to the front of the lawn and the penguin gnome was now sat under their front windowsill. And if you’re wondering what I’m going on about, here’s the full story about the gnomes:

https://travellingthroughtimeispossible.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/gnomes/

Even though it’s totally freezing outside now, I opened the window for a bit of fresh air. All that gnome counting had cleared my head and when I returned to the computer the screen was illuminated with a new message from Kaz:

<We have detected a lot  of STRAP activity in your area. At first we thought they might be trying to get to you, but we got a very clear message today that the target was a ten-year-old girl called Sarah. We didn’t get the rest of her name though it might have begun with an ‘L’.>

I don’t understand SHARP’s technology but all I have to do is type back and although I can’t see what I’m writing – they pick it up. I don’t like that I can’t check what I’ve written before I’ve sent it – what if I spell something wrong? They might think I’m really stupid, or a clumsy typer.

Anyway, we communicated this way for a while. I couldn’t believe that STRAP were using kids as young a ten. Kaz said that it’s really dangerous and could mess up her bone growth and also her physiology. He started talking about serotonin and brain synapses and I got totally lost for a while.

He said it was really important I try to find her before they send her on a mission. But the only clues I have to go on are that she’s called Sarah, lives within 10 miles of me, her last name begins with an  L and she might be involved with a local leisure centre – possibly to do with swimming.

To be honest I wasn’t hopfeul – at all! There were about 5 girls named Sarah just in my year at school. I did some quick maths and worked out that that would mean that there’s about 35 people named Sarah at my school, there’s 16 schools within a 10 mile radius of my house – that’s 560 potential Sarahs. And there’s 7 leisure centres. And Kaz wasn’t even sure about the 10 mile thing.

Thinking about the possible amount of people called Sarah in my area boggled my mind and the Time Slip dizziness started creeping back in. I lay down for a while until Jenny shouting up the stairs pierced the calm.

“Tea’s ready, Danny!”
“Down in a sec,” I shouted and stood up as slowly as possible and went down quickly so they wouldn’t suspect anything was up.

But I needn’t have bothered. When I got downstairs the three of them were huddled around the TV waiting for a news report about the discovery of a Viking helmet or something. There was no way Dad was going to miss this, his university was hoping to take possession of it for analysis. But first they had to wait for all the other local news  – a post-office robbery, an award-winning restaurant, a scandal at a care home and then something made me sit up to attention, like I’d been jabbed in the side with a pin.

A girl with short, blonde hair was standing inside a leisure centre talking to the camera about swimming and at the end the interviewer said:

“Well thank you Sarah Lacey for answering our questions about the Swim For Life course.”

Could it be the same Sarah SHARP needed me to find. But I couldn’t tell which pool in particular it was.

I ate as fast as I could and made out I had loads of science homework to do and needed to research on my laptop. Jenny was giving Mum and Dad a blow-by-blow account of every lesson she had at school and who were the best people to sit next to, so they didn’t really notice me leave.

When I got upstairs I messaged Kaz straight away and said I thought I’d seen the Sarah they were after on the telly. I’d done a bit of digging and found out that this course was only on at three possible leisure centres. I text Mark and got him to help me out on my secret mission to the 3 different leisure centres next Saturday morning – it was easy really – I just told him there was a girl I fancied. I didn’t tell him we’d have to pretend to go on three different swimming courses and cycle to each them all in one morning. I hope he’s feeling fit!

Olympics!!

I can’t believe we spent the whole weekend watching the Olympics!

By the time we’d got home from climbing, we were all on such a high we totally forgot it was the opening ceremony. Griff’s Aunt and Uncle bought us all fish and chips and let us stay up and watch the entire thing.

It was mental, to be honest I didn’t really get much of it. It was kind of odd. The music bit in the middle was cool but the bit where the athletes came out – wow that was boring and it went on forever! I’d never even heard of half of the countries.

There were some countries that had women competing for the first time – can you believe that? I wonder why they weren’t allowed before. I know in history we learnt about women not being able to vote and stuff, but that was like hundreds of years ago. Weird.

We watched it right till the end cos Griff’s uncle wanted to see who lit the flame, when it turned out to be 7 kids he was shocked. He bet a tenner on it being Roger Bannister and said he was going to the bookies to get his money back!

Then Paul McCartney came on and totally messed up his song, even I noticed and I never notice musical stuff. Dizzee Rascal was cool though.

I had to google who Roger Bannister was, turns out he was the first guy to run a mile in under 4 minutes – wow, I’m pretty sure it takes me at least double that when we do the 1500m at school (and I’m one of the fastest!)

On saturday we started off watching the cycling cos we’d be so excited after Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France…

…then we switched to swimming and the women’s football. Team GB absolutely smashed their match.

I text our friend Beth, who plays football in the playground to see if she was watching. She text back saying her dad reckoned after this girls might get more chance to play football in schools and stuff. I though about that for ages and then I realised that even though she’s really good, and even though Mark won’t admit that she can curl the ball better than him, she isn’t allowed to play on our school team. Come to think of it, I’d never seen women’s football on telly before either, or women’s basketball, which we watched in the evening.

On the Sunday, we watched the women’s cycling race – which was way more interesting than the mens, cos it was raining and there were loads of crashes. The British girl came second and we were all cheering her on from the living room, it was awesome! Then we watched beach volleyball and GB’s women won their match.

Finally Griff found the mens football after flicking through a million channels and we watched Team GB beat the UAE 3-0.

Anyway, can’t believe that’s the whole weekend gone and now we’re watching some rowing before we go into the city for the day.

I think the Olympics are awesome, but Griff’s Aunt and Uncle keep moaning about money and the NHS and stuff. Apparently it all cost £9 billion – that’s crazy, I can’t even imagine that amount of money – I think a hundred pounds is a lot!

Stuck in 1588 – now what?

I finally went time travelling again. It seemed like it had been ages, I was starting to think I’d done something wrong, like maybe I shouldn’t have brought that button back with me from 1914. Kaz contacted me when I was on my own in the house, Dad was working and Mum and Jenny had gone shoe shopping. I can’t think of anything worse than shoe shopping, but they love it so I knew they’d be gone for at least a few hours.

I took a picture of my phone with the next mission displayed on the screen.

It’s not as exciting as World War One, but I couldn’t wait to go. I dialled the number and quickly pressed the green button. I landed flat against a thick wooden wall; one degree off and SHARP would’ve landed me on the roof of the building. And then the time-slip hit. Everything started to go fuzzy around the edges, even the thick walls of the barn I was in started to distort, as if through atmospheric interference. I sat cross-legged on the floor and tried hard to concentrate on my surroundings, like Kaz had told me, and finally the edges of objects began to sharpen and the dizziness wore off. I took in a deep breath – that was a mistake. There was a horrible smell of manure, I was in a farmyard.

SHARP had left me some weirdo 16^th century clothes to wear – massive pantaloons and body warmer-type garment. Mum told me it was called a ‘doublet and hose’ – I didn’t tell her why I was asking though ;-). Kaz said in his brief people would recognise me – I guess it works kinda like I’m taking over the character of a real person who exists and they get frozen in time and space until I go back.

Three boys came running into the barn, they spoke fast in strange phrases about me hiding from something, which I quickly denied. They laughed like I was the funniest person they’d met so I guess it was the right response. I quickly realised my character, Tobias Moreton, had got himself into an awful mess – an age-old family feud he couldn’t win involving sporting activities. A thought crept into my mind – maybe I could do better than Tobias. His friends certainly didn’t think Tobias was up to much. But I love sporty things and I jumped at the chance, feeling the thrill I get back home when I’m about to score a goal or win a race.

I finally met my challenger, an obnoxious teenager called Edward and we drew straws. A crowd gathered round us and four musicians played strange instruments I’d never seen before. Edward won, of course, and challenged me to a swimming competition across the mill pond first. My supporters consoled me by telling me there was a man with a boat standing by to fish me out if I drowned – great. I followed Edward to the mill pond, suddenly remembering that this must be somewhere I’d visited before, cos SHARP can only really send me to missions to places I’ve been in my real life. But I had no idea where I was. I pretended to stop and gather my thoughts as my friends rushed on. Once their backs were turned I took a few sneaky pictures.

Edward turned out to be a nasty little oik, once we were in the water and out of earshot, he told me he hoped I’d drown – what a moron! I felt the anger rise inside of me on Tobias’ behalf. But Edward didn’t know I had over 400 years experience on him. He was doing some strange stroke that was so ineffective, my gran could swim faster – I had to pretend to struggle and even tread water at points so I wouldn’t overtake him too quickly. The challenge Edward had set was for me to stay in the pond longer than him. He assumed I would tire out before he did, or worse! The thing is, Edward was a stubborn git and even though he was really struggling and starting to drown, he wouldn’t give up. I couldn’t let him kill himself over this (even if he wanted me to do myself in). Then I remembered he tried to scare me about the depths of the pond. I dove down into the murky water and swam towards Edward’s flailing legs – and then yanked hard on his ankle. Still underwater I swam back away and emerged as he started freaking out. Edward was convinced there was a monster trying to drag us down so I suggested we swim together to ward it off. We finally made it to the edge; Edward was a mess, coughing and spluttering and ranting about evil monsters in the water.

I was still treading water, suggesting to him we settle for a draw. But he was having none of it – he reckoned that because he was in front all the time he should win. But I had the last laugh.
“Oh all right,” I said, “you were faster. You win.” Edward tried to mock me, but was too busy choking on all the pond water he’d swallowed and as he began to wade out of the pond, I turned and swam to the other side. So I won! Tobias won!

All of Tobias’ friends and family were so excited and proud, they couldn’t believe he had won. I didn’t have much time to celebrate, as we had to get on with the other challenges. I was really gutted that Edward beat me at the football contest. I’m not making excuses, but I’m not used to 16^th century footballs – it was like kicking a stone, I was terrified I’d break my toes! The next one was a running race. I paced myself behind Edward so I could overtake at the last minute and not embarrass him too much, but my phone started vibrating halfway through the race. I ran as fast as I could to complete the race and get to a secluded spot. But it was too late. By the time I got my phone out and dialled in the number, nothing happened! Nothing! I was stuck in 1588!