Without warning, the sun went out. Only for a fraction of a second, but it was definitely gone. Or so claimed the one scientist who had been paying attention. It was 1975, and the computers monitoring the few solar telescopes that were watching were not very advanced, so it was presumed to be a programming glitch or something like that. All the other scientists said she was wrong.

But the scientist wasn’t wrong. In that split second the sun had disappeared and come back again, and the world had changed, even if no one knew it. Reality had rippled and bent, and there was suddenly something new on Earth that had not been there before.

A small globe, golden and shining, appeared in the shallows of an artificial lake. For a few moments it lit up the water – until it rolled around and coated itself in mud, and the light was dimmed. It continued to roll on, into a patch of weed that wrapped around it, fronds trailing up like hair from a severed head.

It was a twelve-minute ride down to that lake from Kim Basalt’s home, an easy coast even on his heavy old bicycle and a breeze on Bennie Chance’s new ten-speed. Their younger siblings, Eila and Madir, took longer, always following but never catching up.

Kim, whose full name was Chimera Xanthoparmelia Basalt, was twelve years old, as was his best friend Bennie, whose full name was Benjamina Ramella Chance. Their younger sisters were only ten years old, Eileithyia Indigofera Basalt and Madir Sofitela Chance. They had known each other all their lives, but each pair became friends in preschool because, for that time, they had unusual names.

The quartet rode down to the lake almost every evening, after dinner for Kim and Eila because their parents insisted on eating together early, and before dinner for Bennie and Madir, whose meals were generally late and unpredictable. First Kim would ride down from the experimental farm on the mountain (a hill really) where his family lived to Bennie’s house, which was on the highest street of the suburb below the mountain, with Eila trailing behind. Bennie would be ready and ride out straight away, with Madir yelling out to Eila to wait for her as she put on her shoes or looked for her hair band or whatever.

The night the globe appeared was like any other night for the kids, at first. Once they got to the lake, Kim and Bennie put their bikes down by the boat ramp and sat on the park bench by the pebble-strewn foreshore to chat and skip stones, while Eila and Madir lounged on the merry-go-round in the playground behind, idly pushing it with their feet while they talked. The two groups were far enough apart that neither could hear what the other duo was talking about, which was the way they all liked it…

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