Flip Side: What If?

"It doesn't take much to wipe things out," I said. "Everything on earth burns. Did you ever think about that? Everything."

"Diamonds, steel, rocks..." said Rhys. "I used to think only paper and petrol and stuff would burn, till we saw that movie about the volcanoes. Man, they were hot!"

"And there's another thing I realized too" I said. "You know the humans called Neanderthals?"

"Those people they keep digging up?"

"Yeah, well, do you know, they weren't much different from us in what they used. They had rock all round them, and we have metal and glass, which are both different types of rock. They probably used stone knives and wooden tables and maybe chairs, and we do too, only our knives are made of rock shaped into steel. It's amazing, isn't it? You think of a car. What's it made of, mainly? Metal? That's rock. Plastic? That's a bi-product of oil, which comes from rock. Glass? That's rock, too. Rubber? That comes from trees. We're just souped-up cavemen today! Same stuff - but it looks different."

"Ugh!" grunted Rhys. "What about hi-tech stuff, like computers?"

"Same thing," I said. "It's still metal and glass, which is rock."

The rain was starting to fall steadily now so Rhys and I walked over to the big golden ash and sheltered under it. We could hear the rain pattering on the leaves above us, and now and then a big, wet drop would plummet through the branches and smack into the ground.

"It's like us," said Rhys. "We're made of rock, too."

"You mean our bodies?"

"That's right," said Rhys, tossing his apple core into a basket, "If you boil a body down you get water, and carbon, and magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and a bit of gold, and a few other things. We're made of the same stuff the ground is made of."

"Talking rocks!" I said. "I am a talking rock!"

"But where does the life come from?" asked Rhys.

Neither of us knew. It was another silly question.

"That's something I've always wondered about," I said. "When does life begin? Is it when we take our first breath, when we're born, or sooner than that?"