“How does she do it, grandpa?”

     “Aha, now there’s a question!” Elliot’s grandfather chuckled, sitting himself down next to the bed. “We all have our theories. Would you like to hear mine?”

     “Only if it’s the right one,” Elliot said.

     His grandfather laughed again. “She certainly is a remarkable woman. Why, when I was born sixty-three years ago, she was already sixty-one herself! Remarkable! How does she do it, I hear you ask.”

     “I wish you’d hurry up and tell me,” Elliot grumbled.

     “Well then, let me ask you a question – have you ever seen Queen Elizabeth run?” his grandfather asked, smiling.

     Elliot thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure I have.”

     “Have you ever heard her sing?”

     Again, Elliot considered his grandfather’s question. “I’ve heard her sing at funerals. She sang at Prince Philip’s, didn’t she? Does that count?”

     “What about when the national anthem is sung? Do you ever hear her singing then?”

     “Of course not – she’d be singing about herself.”

     “I hear that too much running and singing can wear all sorts of things down,” Elliot’s grandfather remarked.

     “What is that supposed to mean?” Elliot asked. 

     “Let me show you something,” his grandfather continued, and he held out his hand expectantly. As if on cue, a tablet soared into his palm from a shelf in the corner of the room. “This is the day, fifty-three years ago, when Her Majesty spoke to the nation following the death of Princess Diana. She was still young in those days, only seventy-one. Imagine that!”

     The tablet had started playing a video of the broadcast.

     “Notice everything,” his grandfather replied. “Notice the way she pauses after every sentence. And the way her face hardly moves. And the way her body seems to jump up and down as she speaks.”

     “Are these things significant, grandpa?”

     “Only if you want them to be. I remember an expert commenting years later – perhaps in 2030 or 2031 – that this video is the best evidence there is for a particular theory. That, and the occasion in 2026 – during the Queen’s 100th birthday parade – when her ears appeared to be smoking. A lot. Luckily she was whisked away before anything could be made of it. The poor dear.” 

     “Her ears were smoking?” Elliot repeated.

     “Oh yes.”

     “All the royals seem to reach grand old ages, don’t they?” Elliot said. “I want to know why, though. Tell me why.”

     “Alas, we shall never know why. We can speculate, yes, but I don’t think it is possible to reach any concrete conclusions,” his grandfather sighed, and he sipped on his cup of coffee. “But now you mention it, I was in London last week, and I did see her being wheeled out in a box and turned on at the side.”