The Dice That Knew Tomorrow

The Tin in the Cupboard

There were three kinds of things in the cupboard at the back of Class 5F: things nobody wanted, things nobody understood, and things that everybody agreed were probably important even though nobody could remember why. Leo Bell had been given the bottom shelf. This was unfair for several reasons, not least because the bottom shelf contained a box of dried-up whiteboard pens, two rolls of brown paper that smelled faintly of damp, a plastic skeleton hand and something wrapped in a tea towel that turned out to be an overhead projector. "What's this?" Cleo Dennis asked. Leo looked over. She was holding a black cable with three different plugs on one end and none on the other. "No idea." "Keep pile, then." "That is not how sorting works." "It is exactly how sorting works. If we don't know what it is, we can't throw it away." Leo sat back on his heels and stared at her. Cleo had already made four piles on the floor around them. One was labelled KEEP, one BIN and one MAYBE. The fourth had no label at all and seemed to contain anything Cleo personally found interesting. Leo pointed at it. "What's that pile?" "Also keep." "Then why isn't it with the keep pile?" "Because these are better." This was a completely normal conversation with Cleo. Around them, the classroom had dissolved into the sort of organised chaos adults sometimes created shortly before telling children to calm down. Chairs had been pushed aside, cupboards stood open and boxes covered the tables. Ms Fenton was at the front of the room trying to decide whether twelve broken clipboards counted as school property or rubbish. The whole clear-out was supposed to be preparation for the Tomorrow Fair, which would take over the school hall at the end of the month. Ms Fenton had explained it that morning. "Anything to do with the future," she had said. "Technology, inventions, ideas, things that solve problems, things that might change how we live." Hugo Dent's hand had shot up before she had finished. "My dad has a 3D printer." "That's lovely, Hugo." "I can print something futuristic." "Excellent." "I can print a robot." "You can print a robot?" Hugo had hesitated. "A robot-shaped thing." "That is slightly different." Leo had looked across at Cleo then, because if anybody in the class was likely to build something that actually did something, it was her. Cleo had noticed him looking and immediately become very interested in sharpening a pencil that did not need sharpening. Now she was kneeling half inside the cupboard. "Found a dead spider," she announced. "Bin." "Found a calculator." "Keep." "Found another dead spider. Bigger one this time." "It's still dead." "That's species bias." Leo ignored that and reached behind a stack of old exercise books. His fingers touched something cold and metallic. He pulled, but whatever it was seemed wedged against the back of the cupboard. When he pulled harder, something scraped against the wood. "What have you got?" Cleo asked. "Something stuck." That was enough to make her abandon the spiders. She crawled over and helped him shift the exercise books aside. Behind them sat a small metal tin, pushed so far into the corner that somebody must either have hidden it deliberately or forgotten it very thoroughly. It was about the size of Leo's hand. Once, it might have been silver, but now it was scratched and dented and dark around the edges. There was no writing on the lid, no school sticker and no name. Cleo took it from him before he had finished looking at it and gave it a shake. Something moved inside. Not much. Just a dull knock from somewhere within the tin, followed by another when she turned it over. Cleo's eyebrows rose. "Interesting." "That could be anything." "That is why it's interesting." "It could be drawing pins." She shook it again and listened. "No." "How do you know?" "Drawing pins rattle." "You've done tests?" "I have lived." Leo held out his hand and Cleo gave the tin back, although with the expression of someone surrendering an object only temporarily. It was heavier than he expected. He turned it over and examined the base, which was just as battered as the lid. There was no rust, no hinge and, oddly, no obvious join showing where the lid met the bottom. "How do you open it?" Cleo leaned closer. "That is an excellent question." Leo disliked excellent questions. Not all of them, obviously. Some excellent questions had answers. How far away is the Moon? Why does thunder come after lightning? How many biscuits are left? Those were proper questions. You could look things up, measure them or count them. The worst kind of question was the sort adults answered with probably, maybe, later or we'll see. Leo especially hated we'll see. It was what people said when they either did not know the answer or did know it but had decided not to tell you. Cleo ran one thumb slowly around the edge of the tin, then stopped. "There." "What?" She tilted it towards the light. Inside the lid, almost hidden among the scratches, was a tiny symbol: a circle with a line crossing it slightly off-centre and two smaller marks Leo could not quite make out. He rubbed at the metal with his sleeve. The symbol stayed exactly where it was. "Logo?" Cleo suggested. "Maybe." "You hate maybe." "I don't hate the word." "You hate the thing." Before Leo could argue, Ms Fenton called across the classroom. "How are we getting on over there?" "Brilliantly," Cleo said. Leo looked at the four spreading piles around them. "We've made things worse." "Progress often looks like that." Ms Fenton came over wearing the expression teachers wore when they could see a problem forming but had not yet decided whether it was worth stopping. "What have you found?" Leo held up the tin. "This was right at the back." "Was it?" Ms Fenton took it from him and turned it over in her hands. For a moment, Leo thought she recognised it, but then she shook her head. "No idea." Cleo looked triumphantly at Leo, who pretended not to notice. "Is it school property?" he asked. "I doubt it. It's not labelled." "What's inside?" "I was rather hoping you two could tell me." "It won't open," Leo said. Ms Fenton put one thumb beneath the edge and lifted the lid. It opened immediately. Cleo made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh. Leo stared at the tin. "That did not happen when I did it." "Cupboards are mysterious places," Ms Fenton said. Inside were two white dice. At least, Leo thought they were dice. They were slightly larger than normal and had smooth, rounded edges with black pips set into each face. One sat with four showing. The other showed six. Cleo picked one up. "Huh." "What?" "Nothing. It's just warm." Ms Fenton was already being called away by someone holding a leaking bottle of blue paint. She glanced over her shoulder before leaving. "If they're just dice, keep them if you want them. Otherwise put them with the games." Then she was gone. Leo looked back down at the two cubes. After all that, they seemed almost disappointingly ordinary. "That's it?" Cleo rolled one across the floor. It bounced once and stopped on three. "Seems normal." She rolled the other. It stopped on six. "Still normal." Leo picked up the tin again. The symbol inside the lid seemed darker now, although that was probably just the light changing. Probably. Cleo returned the dice to the tin. "You should take them." "Why me?" "Because you found them." "We found them." "You found the tin. I found the dead spider." "That isn't how ownership works." "It is today." She snapped the lid shut and pushed it into his hands just as the bell rang. By lunchtime, Leo had managed to forget about the dice for almost eleven minutes. By the end of the afternoon, he had checked the tin six times. Nothing had changed. The dice were still inside, the strange symbol was still scratched into the lid, and the tin still refused to open for him on the first attempt. After school, Leo walked home with it at the bottom of his bag beneath his reading book and PE kit. Cleo turned off towards her road and shouted after him, "Don't do anything interesting without me." "I'm not going to do anything." "That sounded convincing." Leo carried on. It had started to drizzle, so he pulled his hood up as he walked. At the corner near the postbox, his school bag shifted against his shoulder and something knocked faintly inside it. He stopped. Cars hissed along the wet road beside him. For a moment he heard nothing except tyres on tarmac and the light patter of rain against his hood. Then it happened again. Knock. Leo slowly took the bag from his shoulder. The bag looked exactly like a school bag, which was not especially helpful. He told himself the dice had moved. That was all. Dice rolled, bags swung, things bumped into other things. There was nothing unusual about any of that. He put the bag back on and started walking again. After three steps, two quick knocks came from inside. Knock-knock. Leo stopped once more. This time he was certain. Something in the tin had knocked back.