"I don't know if this will make sense to you but I'm a hundred and ten percent sure about it", drawing a line with chalk at a random area on the wide expanse of the class board, Dylan turned around to meet eye-to-eye with the professor who had made herself seated in the first row of tiered seating in a lecture hall, hands folded in loose fits, positioned on either cheek, her face cupped in them.
"Atoms have a chemical nature whereas cells are the structural biological unit", on the left side of the line, he drew small circles with plus and minus signs in their centers.
"Cells have receptors. They can be replicated, I mean they can make copies of themselves, they reproduce, are responsible for conversions of nutrients into energy, their size changes as they grow. How? Because they're living building blocks", moving to the other side of the line, the boy made a circle and pulled out different circles from it, each linked to the circle in the center with the help of roughly drawn arrows. He labeled some circles as 'growth', 'respiration', 'reproduction', 'metabolism', and 'transportation' leaving the rest empty.
"In contrast, atoms cannot because they aren't a living thing. They can't reproduce", resting the tip of the chalk on the left side that had what looked like atoms drawn by him, he faced the professor who was looking at him with bored expressions, clearly lacking interest in her friend's lecture.
"Why are you telling me all of this? I know this shit", a few moments ago when Dylan practically dragged her to the empty lecture hall, it seemed as if the boy had solid facts to aid his assumption about time sucking on the living units. By repeating everything the girl had brought up hearing, he was doing great at making the topic lose its colors.
"Hehe...I was creating a base", silly smiling to himself, he answered the girl. How would it sound if a high school science teacher came into the class and read the first line of the content that the universe might have been created from a black hole without describing what actually the black hole is?
Well, to students, it would be a straight, to-the-point lecture no beating around the bush and they would be very much grateful for it. Like who would even care if the universe came out of a black hole or not? Would you?
"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that time absorbs the life out of a living thing when it travels back. We sent the banana two times and every time the inner side was lost without the peel opened. I can't say anything about the duration yet. Maybe, if the banana had remained in the past for longer, the peel would've never come back and if it had stayed shorter, the inner side would've been traveled back with the peel either one-fourth of the original or one-third or whatever the proportion would be, maybe", stressing out the word 'maybe', he put the chalk on the bottom plate of the chalkboard and walked up to the girl who was unfazed by every logic he had presented.
"You think you can convince me to not travel by all of this?", her one eyebrow raised a little, lips slightly parted. She didn't disagree with anything her friend had said. He was speaking facts, logical reasoning. But did the professor care? Not at all. She didn't make a time machine to stand on the console and see things and people travelling back.
"The necklace coming all intact adds a solid point to my explanations. Life is getting eaten by time in the past", he couldn't be more clear in his words. Perhaps, he could. But he didn't want their conversation to go there.
"I'm not disagreeing with your theories here", she responded, leaning against the wooden back.
"Let's say, for instance, that time doesn't eat all the cells in your body. Do you care to explain for how long you will stay in the past? I don't see your machine having a button that once pushed, would pull you back in the present from any point in the past", every time the matter was touched, Dylan would stand on his grounds with guns to shoot the girl down, well, her stupid thoughts were acting insanely fearless, but before he could do that, the professor had her missiles bringing him laying weapons on the ground.
If she had made her mind once, especially when it revolved around her experiments and inventions, it was almost impossible to change the course of her thoughts.
"I don't know. If we never try, we will never know", she shrugged her shoulders. She also had no idea about the amount of time it would take her to come back. It was different for the first two travels, the period of seven to ten days approximately. It would be different for her as well.
"Don't bullshit me those lyrics. I'm dead serious", Dylan wasn't the type of person to lose his calm. He would barely for the persons he really cared for. And Scarlett was one of them. How sensitive the matter was and the girl was sitting leisurely as if she wasn't involved in it.
"So am I. I already listened to you two times. The third travel will be me travelling", the professor knew that her friend was only worried about her and that was the reason she was calmly responding to him. One had to be water to put down the fire. If not, it could burn out both entities.
"F*ck it! It could cost you your life! You could be lost in time", and he finally said the words he was holding back. He didn't have a sister. Ever since he had met the girl, he always thought that if he had a younger sister, it would be like her. Playful and mischievous at times, pretty savage.
He loved her. Up until this moment, he also didn't know that he loved her this much. She had always been an amazing friend and a good team member with a stubborn and bossy attitude sometimes. He would always give in before her stubbornness but this was insane. It was stupidity and madness for a human, for Scarlett, to travel in the past without being sure of when to come back or...not.
"I don't care."