Chapter 16

Cyn was right ... they should have warned her ... but the Powers that Be aren’t Gods ... they are extremely adept scientists. Scientists generally don’t have time for mundane shit ... like explaining about a watch user materializing in water because the marina isn’t there in the past. They haven’t warned the holder about the invisibility factor either. That should be easy ... don’t wind the watch backwards.

Cyn turned to me, “I don’t want the damned thing ... you take it.”

“Nope ... you’re older ... first born female. I don’t want it.”

“Aw, c’mon ... it’s only an hour,” Cyn said.

Remembering every time she used the excuse of being one day older to put me in my place, “Not even the same day. Not even.”

“Surprise Me Flintkote!” Cyn and her crocodile tears. Too many times.

Then she sneezed. sneet

Cyn is the only Flintkote alive that has had her appendix out. In the recovery process she discovered just how painful a fullbore sneeze can be. The first time sneeze out of the operating room pulled stitches. She quickly learned to moderate the explosion to sneet

So ... standing there ... dripping ... she devolved into a series of sneets that left us, her observers, dying of laughter. But the expression on her face was one of panic. She couldn’t stop ... sneet sneet sneet SNEET SNEET. Each succeeding sneeze was louder than the last ... and she couldn’t catch her breath.

Cyn passed out ... not a ladylike swoon nor a graceful careful where you fall theatrical faint ... nope ... THUD. Face first. Ridged ... stiff as a board ... smack the corner of the mahogany countertop a good one ... a blood everywhere sudden loss of consciousness.

“CYN! Oh SHIT! CYN!” And, of course, one thing led to another, and Cyn and her family finished their first school day in the intensive care isolation room in hospital. We called, explained why we weren’t at school ... but.

Yes. SHE tracked us down ... she said she would ... and did.

“You CANNOT go in there!” said the nurse.

Then they wouldn’t let her out.

The attendancy officer spent two weeks ... with we three Flintkotes ... in isolation whilst the Ministry of Health’s Communicable Disease Control people decided whether or not we were contagious. We were but they nipped in the bud or so they claimed.

Flintkote Syndrome they called it. FS. No one else caught it.

The disease cleared up. The hospital confinement and research cost 1 million, two hundred, fifty thousand New Zealand dollars for the four of us. Cyn, as source, paid. The source is always charged ... usually the charged doesn’t have the funds. Cyn won the Monster Millions ... remember?

So ... what about the Powers that Be ... or as the trips father, John Flintkote, called them, The Seven in One. They were right there at the first sneet. Why weren’t they in isolation with us?

Because the fuckers were outta here at the sn of sneet. They knew ... it’s part of their job description. I’ll bet they’d been vaccinated against FS before it was called FS.