Would you like, my child, for me to tell you a story? Quick, eat another bite of pie, and then give me your eyes, your ears, for a moment and I will tell you one quite scary. It is a story about mutation.

Your body is made of tiny little beings – millions of them, and so small! Would you believe that some of them even crawl and climb, right at this moment they are doing it. They are moving, squirming and finding a comfortable spot inside you to settle.

But, these little beings – we call them cells – they do not live very long. Rather than die and go away, they duplicate themselves twice-fold, which means there are more of them. And that is growth. You are in constant flux, constantly changing, exchanging, and don’t blink too quick or you’ll be made up of different stuff now.

These cells, they have a little bit of code – text, inside of them that tells them what to do. When they die, they share this code to their children by way of copying, just as I am sharing this story with you now. Sometimes, though, they make tiny little errors when they share, just as you might retell this story to your children, and make a few changes. Most errors have no effect, all is well. But sometimes these errors can cause unknown and dangerous changes to the cell’s children. This is a mutation.

Oh, what do we do if a cell is mutated? Well, sometimes the cell can be removed if it is found. Other times the cell just doesn’t do much for such a long time that it goes unnoticed. And then, suddenly, it might rear itself in a very dangerous way!

Oh? What of the Crystal People of Mrynx? Well, that’s a very different tale I’m afraid but – okay, okay, let me see. Ah yes, we can talk about them then. The Crystal People, they do not have cells like you and I, but they do grow, and they suffer from mutation, too.

If we were to hold a powerful microscope up to a Crystal Person – say one that sat here with us now – what would we see? Well – millions and billions of tiny little spheres organized together in wonderful patterns. You’d see an army of these little sphere we call atoms and most of them will be orderly, just like an army too.

Poke one? Well, that would be very hard to do, that’s for sure, because they are so tiny. But you can sometimes poke them with a very specially poking device called a photon.

No, no: photon. Yes. It’s a beam of light, like the one coming through this window onto your palm there. Yes.

Now we have our Crystal Person under our powerful microscope and we are looking all over it, seeing this lattice of atoms, some like a grid, some like stars, some even more wonderful and complex shapes. Um, well, there might be one in the shape of a whale, but that would be very rare. Perhaps one day you will be the one to discover the Whale Crystal. Yes, the Whale Crystal. I do not know. Out there – look up – out there, it is full of What Crystals, Bird Crystals, even You Crystals.

Have I seen a Whale Crystal? I do not think I will ever see one – but you, you could. My days of travel are behind me, but I did know a Crystal Person once.

They are gone now, this was before they all left. They went – well. They were forced to leave, somewhere far, far away from here. Where? Somewhere quite dark, not a nice place to go, especially when you are being made to go there. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you.

But now look – look there! Out the window! See its wings? How they have three bends per one and – see! There, how it undulates, ripples. Like a wave, yes. You must now make a wish, quick before it is gone behind the bridge.

I’ve made my wish. Did you make a wish? No, you must not share it, or it will not come true.

Ah no, no, that is not a Crystal Person. Did that look like a person to you? Crystal People are so elegant, they walk like their toes are made of blown glass. And every colour you can imagine! Blues, yes, reds, greens, even violets, emeralds, vermilion, peach, plum, and uranium.

Yes, that’s a colour. Sort of a smokey green.

Let’s see, ah yes, we were above our microscope – our powerful microscope, thank you – and looking at a Crystal Person. All of their little atoms, so orderly. But I said they are like you and I, how? Well those atoms can grow old, like our cells, they can slip and slide, and fall off. New ones must be put in place, more ones must be put in place, if the Crystal Child is to grow into a Crystal Person. Here comes a new one, and it slides right into its proper place because all the other atoms tell it where to fit. This happens many times over.

But sometimes, one atom slides into place, but another atom comes right in behind so fast that neither has time to fit into an empty spot and instead they stick to each other and leave a little hole. This is an imperfection, a skew. A mutation. This little anomaly might form a bend, like a fork in a river, and as more atoms come in they stick to it and it grows – grows and grows, longer and longer, until the crystal might be entirely different now.

These are not entirely bad though, they are what gives the Crystal Person their shape – their legs, their swinging arms, their smile and their twinkling eyes, all little imperfections.

But some imperfections get out of hand, they are not the imperfections the Crystal Person wanted. Usually these go unnoticed, exactly like our cell mutations – all is well! Very, very rarely though, a crystal bend might bend, and bend, many times over – untamed it becomes strange, twisted, abnormal. This is not so good for the Crystal Person. These types of growths are called compounded skews.

Again though, there are smart people out there, scientists and doctors, who have figured out ways to mend people. Whether it is people like you and I, the Crystal People, or – yes! Or the cloud surfer we saw – there are ways we can heal. This we have only learned through careful study, education, and some people taking incredible risks.

What? Where is the cloud surfer now? Well, it went behind that bridge over there. I’m sure now it is high in the clouds, perhaps in orbit. Yes, orbit – they can go high, high up into space. There they have no need to flap their huge wings, they let the gravity spin them around, take them to wherever they wish to be – much like our moons.

Have I seen a Crystal Person? Hmm. Yes, long ago. They are not here any more now, though – you’ll likely never see – or. Perhaps you might. They fled to – well, you see Ovus just there on the horizon. That’s our second largest moon. That’s where they live now.

Why did they flee? Well if we knew the answer to that like we know our answers to mutation, they might be back with us now. That is a problem far more tricky for even scientists and doctors. And, even those people are not free from imperfection.

Imperfection? Ah, not crystal imperfections, I mean imperfections of the mind. An altogether different and strange imperfection, something we do not understand at all. Some of the most intelligent minds of our time, people who had done amazing things to make the world better – they did equally amazing things to make our world far worse. It is not their fault though, it is the imperfections in their mind.

What sort of things did they do? What sort of things. A story for another day, when your cells have multiplied many times over and you’ll be this tall. Yes you will! I promise: this tall. Those cells are tiny, but my when they work together can they move mountains.

What did I say to the Crystal Person I saw? Lots of things, we were good friends. We used to fish together, out on that lake there in fact, and she told me all sorts of myths and tales – like the ones I am telling you now – but from her people instead. She was the smartest person I ever knew.

Did she walk like blown glass? The most fragile and elaborate glass you’d ever seen. But you could smash it with a hammer and it would not even dent.

The last thing? Do you mean the last thing I told her?

Frix, turned away from the world for a moment. From the child, the cup of coffee bubbling before him, from pies and pastries, the bridge, the sky – he looked through it all to somewhere else, another realm that no one could see but him, deep in his mind, yet focused very much on the moon of Ovus. The child looked at him, her eyes expecting more answers, like treats to her young brain. It sought them almost with cruel, merciless fascination. Such was its algorithm: it sought answers by way of innocence. The silence was not the answer it wished from Frix. The child asked again: what was the last thing you said to her.

Frix let out a long breath he did not know he had been holding. His eyes were still glazed over when the cloud surfer emerged, with sweeping flaps from up high, bashing away an accumulation of cumuli. This motion brought Frix’s awareness out of that realm, to the action before him, and he watched it, for a second time, dip down below the bridge. Frix turned back to his coffee, back to the child. He swallowed down a deeper thought and it seemed to catch on the way down. This answer came far more softly than his others – Frix spoke:

“The last thing I said?” Frix clacked his teeth, as if his jaw would not comply. He finally continued:

“I said: I am sorry.”