The Unlikely Time Traveller Read Free

stood there, like he hadn’t heard her. So she asked him again. It was pretty clear he hadn’t understood anything. So I blurted out – I couldn’t help it, “The wee mouse is frightened.” Not that I’m an expert on old Scots words, but I probably knew more than Robbie.
    “Yes, Saul, that’s about the sum of it.”
    “Just like Robbie,” somebody muttered. The teacher couldn’t hear, but I could. It was Max again. He really had it in for poor Robbie.
    “Anyway, Robbie, carry on. Try and enjoy the words.”
    So Robbie struggled through the poem and I struggled on listening to him. Halfway through, it seemed like he did start to enjoy the words, or they started to make sense, because he got louder and even Max shut up and listened.
    “But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
    In proving foresight may be vain:
    The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
    Gang aft agley,
    An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
    For promis’d joy!”
    Then he got to a bit that made me really pay attention.
    “Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
    The present only toucheth thee:
    But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
    On prospects drear!
    An’ forward , tho’ I canna see,
    I guess an’ fear!”
    Robbie sat down then and I started the clapping. Next thing the class was in an uproar. Even Mrs Flynn was clapping. When the applause eventually faded away the teacher beamed at Robbie and said, “I’m considering putting you forward for the recitation at the Burns Supper next January! That was excellent Robbie, once you allowed yourself to feel the rhythm of the poem, and the plight of the mouse.” Then she cast her eyes over the rest of us and repeated the last lines. “An’ forward , tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear …”
    I didn’t like the way she was staring at me. She said, “Do you , Saul?”
    “What, Mrs Flynn?” I sat up straight. “Um, do I what?”
    “Fear the future?”
    What a question. It was my turn to be gobsmacked. I couldn’t think what to say. I hadn’t even thought about the future that much, like, not beyond Christmas anyway.
    When I didn’t answer, Mrs Flynn put the question out to the whole class. “What will life be like in the future, do you think? Say, a hundred years from now? Will it be very changed? Will children’s lives be very different from your lives?” No one said anything so she went on, “In the poem the poet says the wee mouse lives always in the present moment, and for that the mouse is lucky, because we humans are often either thinking about the past with regret or dreading the next day. We don’t know what the future will bring and we’re afraid – that’s what the poem seems to say. What do you think?”
    “Yes, Mrs Flynn,” Melody piped up, “I think Robert Burns is right. The future could all be messed up.” Melody was looking pretty miserable. “Climate change, floods, fires. Nature might be all destroyed.”
    “I think in the future we’ll turn into robots.” That was Aaron. Typical thing for him to say. He was always going on about artificial intelligence and computers taking over. “It’ll be wicked.” He beamed round at us, looking like he couldn’t wait for the future and its robot population.
    “Yeah, and we’ll have microchips in our brain. Like the internet, but in our heads.” That was Angus, who got every computer game as soon as it came out.
    Mrs Flynn really started something with her ‘guess the future’ quiz. Lewis said you would order the kind of babies you wanted, like blue eyes and high cheekbones might cost more than a square chin and a flat nose. He only said that because blue eyes and high cheekbones happened tobe what he had. That got a lot of laughs but Mrs Flynn said it wasn’t a laughing matter. Sanjeev reckoned future children would be born knowing everything they need. Darren said in the future you wouldn’t walk anywhere, you would just do a kind of teleporting thing. In fact, he said, future people probably wouldn’t