Chloe Collins

Written age 12
The High School of Dundee

ASSASSINATION

'And once again, you MUST NOT change anything. Is that clear, everyone?'

Flora came out of her reverie abruptly to see the other would-be time travellers (a 30ish husband and wife duo, and an excited looking man) nodding and agreeing with the operator. She quickly gave her assent, hoping that nobody had noticed that she had not, until recently, been listening to a word of what was being said. Nobody had, so the operator stood up and beckoned them towards the machine at the end of the sparsely furnished room they were in. It was impossible to describe the machine, long coils and short lengths of piping and the chrome and iron switches, buttons and levers. It seemed like you could only see one part of the machine at any time, as it was hard to focus on two sections, as they became larger and more intricate when you looked at them than they really were.

It was to this very machine that they were directed and as they drew nearer, a strange sound reached their ears, a sort of humming that felt as if it possessed enormous power. The woman from the married duo reached out tentative fingers to the machine's surface. 'Oh,' she giggled, 'it's moving, swaying in time to the hums.'

'Don't touch the machinery,' snapped the operator sharply as the place where the woman had touched pulsed slightly more noticeably than before.

'Sorry,' she mumbled, and the pulsing spot eased into a slower rhythm.

Flora short her a disparaging glance. They all ducked through a door that Flora was sure hadn't been there when she'd first looked at the machine, and inside they found a room, which smashed the laws of physics into tiny fragments. It was far larger than the outside and was a most unusual shape: it had slices of the walls inset, and others jutting out. The shape was one with many corners and curves, and the whole room from the ceiling to the floor, was a strange caramel colour. There were obsidian and pearlescent panels on the walls, and no other item in sight. Flora looked around in awe and wondered how much this would have cost to build. The tickets had been cheap, so she had signed up, just for fun. Maybe the reason that not many had come and the tickets were cheap was that they were scared of doing something they weren't supposed to; scared of changing history. Scared of what could be. Flora found that she wasn't scared; she was exhilarated.

The guide gestured for them to sit on the floor, so they sank to the ground and waited. The guide then flicked the wall casually and joined the group huddled on the floor. The room started to shake, first so slowly that they didn't notice, then tremors that jangled the beads on Flora's bracelets. The humming grew louder, and louder and louder, approaching a crescendo, when it suddenly died away.

'We have arrived,' the guide announced.

Flora tentatively led the others to the door at the end of the room and pushed it open. A beam of light seeped in as the crack between the door and the wall widened and everyone fell silent in awe as the scene beyond became visible. A bustling Victorian marketplace came into view, stalls laden with bread, apples, and all different kinds of meat.

'Amazing,' breathed the other woman, and the spell broke.

The guide snapped back into 'leader' mode and told them to be back before three hours had passed and not to leave the one-mile radius of the machine, for fear of the stabilising connection breaking. 'And do not attract the attention of the locals,' she instructed them, her gaze lingering on Flora's green and purple highlighted hair. Flora scowled and tugged the clip-ons out. The guide smiled triumphantly and went back to the machine, leaning against it when she reached it. 'Go on,' she said.

Flora stepped hastily to the side to avoid a puddle of sick, and then dodged forward to miss an emptying bucket of something far, far worse. She had been wandering the streets nearly an hour now and she was getting hungry. She hadn't dared eat anything in case it contained some kind of awful bacteria. Suddenly, a twist in the road revealed a much more well-kept road: a much more affluent part of town. Strange how two such different lifestyles can be on each other's doorstep, Flora mused. A worn brass plate on the second storey caught her eye. It read, Constitution Hill. A fanfare sounded at the end of the street as a carriage came into view, preceded by a number of policemen. She heaved a sigh of relief; they at least would know how to get back to the market. She could ask for directions. She walked forward to enquire but, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tall brown haired man reading a map. She weighed up the possibilities but decided that, if the policeman didn't know they'd both look stupid. On the other hand, the man had a map. She went up to him, his clothes were not of a rich man's, and he had a slight bulge in his pockets. He did not seem very absorbed in his map but jumped when Flora asked the whereabouts of the markets.

'Do I look like I know? Go away!'

'Not very friendly,' Flora muttered mutinously as she stalked towards the policeman - her final option.

'Please sir, where is the market, about a mile that way?' she asked.

He took her off the road to a small alleyway and told her to follow it to its end.

'And then go right?' she repeated.

'And then go right,' he agreed.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She and the policeman raced towards the brown-haired man, who was now clutching a gun. She supposed that had been the lump in his pocket. He was crying, but the policeman only had eyes for the carriage. 'Is she...?' he asked urgently.

Mute nods answered him.

Flora only realised who 'she' was when she caught a glimpse of the carriage's interior.

It was Queen Victoria.

'You stupid girl! Don't you know how dangerous changing time is? Didn't I tell you? The death of Queen Victoria: an extremely important and influential person in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, would be catastrophic! Greed for the throne will divide the country in civil war, perhaps even revolution. How could you be so foolish?'

The guide's words still ran in Flora's head. Everyone's faces were grim and set as the humming of the machine died away for the second time. The door opened. Flora couldn't bear to meet anyone's gaze. She'd told them everything, and they were all on edge. They all padded out, terrified of what they might see. This is what lay in front of them: a war zone, a no-man's land of churned up earth and the stench of death heavy and thick in the air.

'No!' Flora cried out desperately, dropping to her knees. 'No! No!'