Chapter Seven

Day Three, The Rules

Ray had made some proper food for supper, they were having meatballs in tomato sauce with fusilli pasta and a baguette. It was Ray's own recipe, modified slightly to reflect what was available locally. The sauce was pretty standard, Ray made with, tinned tomatoes, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, tomato purée, tomato ketchup, various herbs and an OXO. The meatballs though were made from four, 100% Pur Boeuf, Steake Hache Burgers, from Lidl France, grilled, cut into chunks and thrown into the tomato sauce.

It all went down nicely with a another wheat beer, Lidl's Nobelaner Blanche from Germany, it seemed like a good idea to stick with the same style of beer for the night.

The amount they were eating showed just how much more relaxed Ray and Dona were tonight and they hadn't stopped talking about what they were going to do in the half hour it took Ray to slap the food together. Also the fact that they both mopped out their bowls with the bread was a sign that they were getting used to the idea of jumping (jumping seemed like the right word for it or was it).

As Dona cleared the table and went for more Nobelaner, Ray started to make up two lists. One a list of things they had to try, to see what they could and could not do with the artifact, to see what the limitation were, if any. The second, a list of rules, if they were going to keep and use the artifact, then they would need some rules and this list could be added to if and when required (a bit like Asimov did with robot laws).

After an hour or so and a few more bottles of Nobelaner (they are only small bottles), they had a short list of things that had to try.

How far we can jump, (they didn't know if there was a limit to the distance they could travel, they did know it was instantaneous, Ray had checked the time on his phone before and after the jump back to Scotland. They only knew a few places long haul flight distance, so it would have to be one of them, they would have to decide later where).

Where can we jump to, (so far they had only been to places they had already been, would it work to anywhere they could get the address and phone number for, yes it needed both, they had tried to jump home with just the phone number and it didn't work. They now had their home details in the phone contacts for the first time ever).

Can we jump to an inside location, (up to now every jump had ended outside and Ray suspected they couldn't. So that was bank robbery out of the window. Ray had an idea how the could check this, pick a shop in the centre of a shopping mall and see if they jumped to outside the shop but inside the mall, or would they end up outside the mall, or something like that. How would that work with the football, could they get inside an open stadium, Dona didn't care).

The list of Rules was short and simple, for now anyway.

Rule one, keep it a secret, only the two of them should ever know about the artifact.
Rule two, do not call it a jump better to call it a trip, less chance of a slip up.
Rule three, do not try to do anything illegal or immoral using the artifact.
Rule four, for now, only use it out of day light hours.

The last thing they decided before bed, was where they were going for tomorrows drive. This was all very different, it was like being on two holidays at the same time.