A Laird for All Time by Angeline Fortin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

the machine.  “Would you like me to leave you alone?” Emmy asked hesitantly.  Perhaps she had pushed him too far for now.  It might be best to give him time to digest her news, to come to terms with it.  Emmy was encouraged however.  Aside from his astonishment and awe, he seemed between his bouts of head shaking denial to be curious.  Curiosity was good and often lent itself to positive conclusions.  At least Connor was not staring at her with fear and disgust…yet.

Emmy pushed back from the table and started to stand but Connor caught her hand and she sat back down.  “‘Tis extraordinary this device,” he admitted.  “A part of me wants to know more about it.  CD’s?  Movies?  I don’t know what those things are and I’m interested in knowing.  However, connecting this fascination with immediately accepting yer claim…” he shook his head once again, “it defies logical and is, therefore, difficult to accept.”

“It’s alright,” Emmy assured him.  “While in a perfect world you would have just accepted my word on the whole thing, I think you are taking it all pretty well so far.  I was half-afraid you might completely freak out, so all and all I’m proud of you.”

“I don’t believe I have ever freaked out, as ye so elegantly phrase it,” he replied squaring his shoulders.

“I am curious though.”

“Curiosity is good.”

“Not for the cat and I fear I might take its place with this current state of affairs,” Connor admitted letting loose a long shaky sigh.  “And while I am not yet admitting that I accept yer entire story, I must know, how does it work?”  He pulled the iPhone back and laid it flat on the table in front of him.

Emmy demonstrated the menu to Connor showing him how to navigate the programs and get from one application to the next.  When he questioned the music, she chose some examples of different genres of music for him.  As she might have predicted, he leaned toward show tunes or ballads finding the rhythms to be similar to those he was used to.  He did not seem to care for most of it though Emmy could only assume the sounds were so foreign to him that he could not enjoy it.  She assured him that if he grew up with it he would enjoy it.  Connor looked so doubtful that Emmy had to laugh.

“Here then, if you’re going to appreciate rock and roll, maybe we should start at the beginning.”  Emmy flipped through playlists until she found what she was looking for.  “This is Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll.  He was there at the beginning of the whole shebang.”  Tapping the screen, the open bars of “Don’t Be Cruel” thrummed out.

Emmy waited expectantly for him to catch on and start tapping his toe to the beat but after a long moment, Connor only looked skeptical.  “Surely not?”

“Are you kidding me?” she gaped at him in denial.  “This is Elvis for crying out loud!  Everyone loves Elvis.  Millions of women worldwide screamed and wailed for him!  He would get up on stage and do his gyrations,” she stood and demonstrated.  “It drove the women crazy!”  Connor looked shocked and finally laughed out loud.

“Now I truly doubt yer sanity,” he chuckled.  “Such music sung and danced to in such a fashion will never become popular or socially acceptable.”

“Oh, it will,” she assured him.  “It already has.  Elvis is the king and I wish someday I could prove it to you and tell you ‘I told you so’.”  Still Emmy frowned at him.  “You didn’t like my music?”

“There were some pieces that are nicely done, but...” he shrugged helplessly.

“I think I might have to hate you now,” she muttered taking the iPhone back and flipping through the menu idly.

“Perhaps with continued exposure, as ye suggested, I might come to appreciate it more,” he offered in consolidation.

“Don’t do me any favors,” she pouted.

“Tell me more about this ‘movies’ ye spoke of.  I’ve never heard that word before,” he tried to pull the device back to her but Emmy hung on tightly with a muttered, “I’ll do it.”

Emmy scrolled through the movies she had loaded for the plane trip over trying to pick one for him while giving him a little background.  “A movie or motion picture was originally made by linking a series of pictures together, printed on celluloid and projected at a theater on the big screen, a white space about twenty feet wide.  Light beamed through the film and the images would show on the screen.  Just like music, there are dozens of different styles of movies. But basically you could say they are stories like books brought to life for you to watch them happen rather than use your imagination only to picture them.”

Inspiration struck and Emmy started one, forwarded over the credits and hesitating only briefly before turning it toward him.  Connor leaned forward in amazement as the actors spoke and the scenery moved by.  “Incredible,” he whispered.  “Marvelous.”  After watching for several minutes, he turned to her with a surprised look.  “I know this story!”

“I thought you might,” she beamed, pleased at his excitement and enthusiasm.

“It is Sense and Sensibility, the Jane Austen work.”  He watched with excitement for a while longer.  “It is not precisely right, however.”

“No, it’s not,” she told him.  “While books and plays are often adapted for a movie, books usually have too much detail to translate in their entirety on to the big screen.  Gone with the Wind for example, I’ve heard would have been a movie seven days long if they had filmed every word and action as it was written in the book.”

“Gone with the Wind?” he questioned.

“It’s another book, a long one.  You’ll read it one day,” she shrugged and teased.  “You might even like it.  It’s about the Civil War.”

“So they take books and make these movies from them.”

“Not just from books, though stories like the Time Machine have been made