All Chapters of The Boy who Circled Time: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

The world was frozen around Lila. The walls were frozen, covered in ice.The floors were frozen, covered in ice.And The bed was frozen, covered in ice.And the desk was frozen, covered in ice too. There was ice everywhere, coating each and every surface possible for her lean on for sun-soaked warmth, and the humid air’s touch.It persisted and shone cold.She felt so, so cold, sitting there, in front of her reappropriated fan heater, that she definitely had not stolen due to its place within the recycling centre, when she was supposed to be delivering a message to one of her dad’s friends who took the bus to work to inform him of her father being sick.It wasn’t illegally taken, and she knew it. It hadn’t come from someone’s home, or from some dark corner of one of the school’s storerooms, or from a careless teacher’s classroom that hadn’t been emptied

Lila had been an unwanted, lonely child.Her parents had gotten married because their grandparents had demanded it.Her parents had produced children because their grandparents had demanded it.Lila knew that she wasn't liked, that she was a burden, and that she was unloved.It didn't matter to her at all at the time, the notion and reminders of it only rearing their ugly head whenever she messed something up.Only when she wrote with her left hand, only when she walked with her feet pointing inwards, only when she opened her mouth when her mother didn't want to speak, and only when she liked the wrong colours, the wrong flowers, the wrong shapes, was she punished.It didn't matter. She was born left-handed anyway. She had inherited the wonky, mismatched bones of her legs from her father. Her mother was always changing when she thought it was appropriate to speak, and her tastes on what was a good colour, a good

Emmet, in the throes of the days that ran past him, shifting about with nothing happening, was only sure of several constants.First, he loved Jasper and knew now that he had done one of the worst things imaginable to the man.He shouldn't have tried to isolate him.He shouldn't have obsessed over all the communications in and out of the facility, coveting Jasper as if he had been reduced to a simple object, rather than an individual with his own needs and desires.Those needs and desires human and necessary for survival as well, all of them stripped away from him by Emmet’s selfishness.Human companionship was a necessity, and Emmet had been torturing Jasper.With nothing but the voices in his head, Jasper must have been going insane from the experience, his thoughts whipping him up into a frenzy, with Emmet solely responsible for what had happened next.If he had allowed Jasper any kind of proper company, then his breakdown wo

It wasn’t Jasper’s fault. It wasn’t his fault. IT WASN’T HIS FAULT!   He couldn’t have caused the very future that he had lived in to happen. He couldn’t have. There were far too many variables. There were far too many intricate things that needed to have gone right for an empire to rise up and conquer everything around them. There were far too many things that could have gone wrong with the formation of the grey empire. There was no reason for him to be the cause.   There needed to be the failure to maintain a stable climate, there needed to be the flood, there needed to be the gold mine breakthrough, there needed to be the cyborg labour revolution. All of those things were out of Emmet’s control. And besides, hardly anything survived the Great Flood, in terms of books and paper objects. Hardly any evidence of these things survived, most of the information that managed

Lila sat there in bed, stretching out her muscles, before flopping down onto the thick cover and closing her eyes. She sighed once, rubbed her forehead, and stood up again. She walked towards the bathroom and opened the cabinet behind the mirror that sat there above the sink, attached to the ceiling and the wall, pulling out some painkillers, easily popping two out and swallowing them down, one by one, with a glass of water with ease. She turned then to the bathroom blinds, picking up one of the dry cleaning cloths that she had set out to the side, and began leaning over the bath to dry the plastic, waterproof sheets that prevented the entire world from looking inside. Hissing as she opened the curtains, exposing the steamed up room to the wider world, Lila looked away towards the back wall, covered in dark blue, almost glittery tiles, outlined by white – the colours chosen by her desire to leave not a single room with totally white or grey walls.