Hawking's Hallway Read online

  “You’ll heal,” Edison told him. “We can’t heal you instantly, of course, but we’ve developed some microorganic salves that will speed up the process. Until then, you’ll have plenty of other hands to help you.”

  Then he called in two engineers to assist: a man and a woman in lab coats who had all the eagerness that Nick lacked.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Edison said, and rolled out.

  The engineers introduced themselves as Doctors Bickel and Dortch, but since that sounded more like a law firm than a pair of engineers, they told Nick to call them Mark and Cathy.

  “So you’re the one who started this whole thing,” Cathy said with a rueful smile.

  Nick didn’t answer.

  “We’ve already captured the technology from the atmospheric kinesis stimulator,” Mark said, pointing at the tornado bellows.

  “We thought we’d work on the toaster next,” said Cathy.

  “Fine,” said Nick, resigned. “Just keep it away from my head.”

  In truth, Nick wasn’t the one who had started all of this, as Cathy had suggested. It had been started by Tesla long before Nick was born.

  But for Nick it had begun on what was, by far, the worst moment of his life: the fire at his home in Tampa that took his mother’s life. He had suppressed the raw pain of it for as long as he could, but was unable to do so anymore. Now it was never far from his mind. Every flame he saw reminded him; every time he flexed his fingers, the sting of his more recent electrical burns reminded him. Those burns were beginning to heal, but the scar from the fire that took his mother several months before never would.

  Yet now there was a new twist to his recollection of that awful night. Something he had only realized the moment he shoved his hands into Tesla’s malfunctioning machine. The shock of the electrical jolt had sparked something in his mind—a single stray memory had leaped to a lonely synapse in his brain.

  Someone else was there that night.

  His father and brother had been just ahead of Nick, scrambling to the front door to escape the burning house—Mr. Slate had thought he was leading his family to safety. Nick remembered glancing back at his mom, his eyes stinging, barely able to see. She was there, urging him forward—then, for an instant in the billows of black acrid smoke, he thought he saw someone else, someone behind her.

  Then he was out on the lawn and she wasn’t. She never made it out, and the porch exploded from the heat and the roof came crashing down, further feeding the flames, and his world had ended, and nothing else mattered.

  Whatever he had seen must have been a false memory—or maybe a reflection off a picture frame. There was no one else in the house, so what else could it have been? And, in that desperate moment, how could he blame himself for seeing things that weren’t there?

  Still, the image sat in his brain like a rusty old fishhook, waiting for Nick to reel it in.

  For him, this breathless misadventure had begun on the night of the fire. As it would turn out, it would end on the night of a fire too.

  Caitlin Westfield felt like smashing something, and not for her usual artistic purposes. This time she was just plain mad.

  “Miss Westfield, this conversation is getting us nowhere,” Principal Watt said, leaning back in his comfortable chair.

  Caitlin wondered how hard she would have to push before he would topple over, but knew she couldn’t do that, no matter how much she wanted to.

  She took a deep breath and said, very slowly, her words evenly spaced to get through to him, “Nick. Slate. Goes. To. This. School!”

  Principal Watt shrugged. “So many people left Colorado Springs after the last disaster, I’m having a hard enough time finding the students whose existence we can prove, much less the ones we can’t.”

  “How could you not remember him?” Caitlin shouted.

  “Whether I remember him or not is irrelevant. In fact, if I didn’t remember him, this would be much easier. But the fact is, there’s no record of him ever having existed, and since he never existed, he couldn’t have disappeared.”

  “Well, obviously the records are wrong,” insisted Caitlin.

  Principal Watt sighed. “I have learned in my many years as a school administrator, Miss Westfield, that it is pointless to stand against the crushing force of public record. Down that path madness lies.”

  “But—”

  Principal Watt put up his hand to stop her. “We’re done here. I have students to discipline and teachers to reprimand. Your friend’s lack of being is not the problem of Rocky Point Middle School.”

  Caitlin knew that Principal Watt’s attitude was less about his devotion to paperwork and more about the fact that he didn’t like Nick. Yes, weird things had begun happening as soon as Nick arrived at his school, but it was shortsighted of the man to assume that those things would stop now that Nick was gone. Pandora’s box could not be closed by merely pretending it had never been opened in the first place.

  The truth was, Nick had disappeared in the blink of an eye. Caitlin had been talking to him in his hospital room after the disaster that had destroyed his house. She’d gone out to a vending machine, and when she’d returned the room was empty, all evidence of him gone. It had to be the work of the Accelerati.

  That was about two weeks ago.

  Colorado Springs was still licking its wounds from the massive electromagnetic pulse that had blown out everything for miles, frying computer hard drives, exploding streetlamps, and melting electrical towers.

  The wreckage of Nick’s house was now surrounded by police tape, a tall fence, and TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs. The site was supposedly under investigation by government agencies, but Caitlin knew it was really the Accelerati. She could see them behind the fence, in their miserable pastel suits, sifting through the rubble. They had taken all the parts of Tesla’s machine, the F.R.E.E., which she and Nick had so painstakingly put together. They were also excavating the underground metallic ring that encircled the house, clearly another part of Tesla’s great invention.

  In school, people had already stopped talking about the electric surge from the asteroid, which would have wiped out practically all life on Earth had not Tesla’s machine grounded all that electricity.

  The massive chunk of celestial copper was still generating power with each orbit. The next deadly electrical discharge was only two weeks away, yet people acted as if nothing were going on, just like they had the first time.

  “People never learn,” Mitch said to Caitlin as they waited in line for lunch in the cafeteria.

  “Now that the Accelerati have Tesla’s machine,” Caitlin said, “it will be up to them to save the world next month. Somehow I don’t put much faith in that.”

  “Oh, they’ll save the world, all right. And then take credit for it. And then make the world pay for having been saved.” Ever since the incident, Mitch hadn’t been himself. He’d been gloomy and fatalistic, as if he were channeling Vince.

  Like Nick, Vince was also AWOL—although at least they knew where Vince was, off in Scotland with his mother. He had told them he was going there to get himself and his life-giving battery away from the Accelerati, but Caitlin suspected there was more to it than that.

  Around them, students complained about the length and slowness of the food line. “New staff,” someone commented. Caitlin didn’t think anything of it at first.

  “The Accelerati have Nick,” Caitlin told Mitch, “and we’re just sitting here, taking pop quizzes and doing homework. We should be out there finding him.”

  “The only way to free him,” said Mitch, “is to bring down the Accelerati, once and for all.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “Grinthon,” Mitch said. “Brandon Gunther’s alligator.”

  “You keep saying that,” Caitlin said, throwing up her hands. “What does it even mean?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mitch. “But when I do, it’ll be the key to everything.”

  Mitch had told her h
ow he’d extracted that puzzling piece of information from a terrified Acceleratus by threatening to pump him up with the windstorm bellows.

  Apparently, even under threat of death, the Accelerati still spoke in riddles.

  With the line barely moving, and scores of hungry kids getting more and more disgruntled, Mitch abandoned his spot. “I’m not hungry anyway,” he said, and left, allowing Caitlin plenty of space to stew and simmer on her own.

  The snaking lunch line finally reached the steam trays, filled with earth-toned glop that someone had convinced the Board of Education was nutritious.

  And as she looked up above the trays, Caitlin stopped short.

  “Hey!” the kid in front of her said to the new server. “What happened to our regular lunch lady?”

  “Ms. Planck no longer works here. I’m the new lunchroom attendant,” said Dr. Alan Jorgenson.

  Back in the Middle Ages, before science was even a thing, some very educated men sought to discover how the universe was put together. These men were alchemists, and they began with the flawed premise that there were only four basic elements in nature: earth, air, water, and fire. This threw them profoundly off track.

  They believed that by combining these four elements in the proper proportions they could achieve three goals: the distillation of the Elixir of Life; the production of the Philosopher’s Stone; and the transmutation of lead into gold. Many alchemists, including such early scientists as Sir Isaac Newton, spent decades of their lives fruitlessly trying to turn lead into gold. Of course, the alchemists never bothered with turning gold into lead. What would be the point?

  But in this instance, it would appear that is exactly what had happened.

  The gold that had been Dr. Alan Jorgenson, Grand Acceleratus, was now Rocky Point Middle School’s second assistant lunch server. Instead of a vanilla spider-silk suit, he wore a white cotton apron. And in place of his vanilla fedora was a black hairnet.

  Caitlin’s glare could have liquefied steel. “What are you doing here?”

  To which Jorgenson replied, with the flatness of a man condemned, “Chicken or fish?”

  “Where’s Nick?” Caitlin demanded. “What have you done with him?”

  From the line behind her, another kid shouted, “Will you shut up and pick one?”

  But Caitlin would not be bullied while she was bullying the grand bully. “Answer me or I will scream so loud they’ll hear me in that stinking bowling alley of yours!”

  Jorgenson still showed no sign of emotion beyond abject resignation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He handed her a plate with chicken, string beans, and Jell-O. “And even if I did, I’d have nothing to say to you.”

  Caitlin banged her tray down on the counter, making the Jell-O bounce. “What did you do with Ms. Planck?”

  “She is in a better place,” said Jorgenson. “And as you can see, I am not.” Then he called to the next kid in line. “Chicken or fish?”

  By skipping lunch, Mitch Murló had missed out on the fact that Dr. Alan Jorgenson had been demoted to being a sleeper agent at their middle school.

  It might have given Mitch a small amount of satisfaction to see what goes around coming back around, but the humbling of Jorgenson was only a drop in the deep well of retribution he wanted to exact from the Accelerati.

  My father is one of them.

  He had known the truth from the moment he had tamed the tornado. When those winds had stopped spinning both in front of and inside of him, he’d been filled with a rare clarity of thought.

  His father was Accelerati. Petula was Accelerati.

  Everything he thought he knew about his life had funneled its way down the toilet, leaving him with the burning desire to make the Accelerati pay the ultimate price. For over a hundred years they had worked behind the scenes, manipulating science. They’d used his father to steal $750 million, one penny from every bank account in the world. And yet, even though his father was one of them and had known what he was doing, Mitch still believed they had used him and then let him take the fall.

  Mitch might not have been a computer genius like his father, but he was smart enough to know that the stolen $750 million was a direct path to the jugular of the sinister organization. No one, not even his father, knew where that money was. If Mitch could find it and take it from them, he could bring the Accelerati to their knees.

  And then what? thought Mitch. He decided he would cross that bridge when he came to it. But to see the Accelerati on their knees…what a fine bridge that would be.

  Caitlin walked home alone that day, politely refusing invitations from her friends to hang out at the local coffeehouse. While most everyone else in school was gearing themselves up for finals, the prom, and the annual field trip to Washington, D.C., school was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Since the day she’d met Nick at his life-changing garage sale, she had found that the mundane social niceties of Rocky Point Middle School interested her less and less. She now felt disconnected from the life she had grown so comfortable in.

  “It’s like you’re becoming, I don’t know, a hermit or whatever,” her friend Hayley had commented, and her other friends were quick to agree.

  “It’s like, you’re so, kind of, you know, out there, or something,” said her friend Brittany.

  Caitlin was fluent in this dialect; she knew exactly what to say to get them to leave her alone. “I know, right?” she began. Then, rather than telling them that she was involved in something larger than they could possibly imagine, she said she was “still stressed out, you know, about the world almost ending and everything,” hoping to leave it at that.

  “Really? That’s so last month,” said Hayley.

  Caitlin fought the urge to tell them that it was going to be next month too, and the month after that. People assumed that the discharge from the Felicity Bonk asteroid had solved the problem—and that whenever the electrical charge built up again, it would just spend itself in another massive lightning strike somewhere on the globe, blow out some lights in a place they didn’t care about, and life would return to normal.

  Only a few people knew the truth: that the only reason the discharge happened at all was because of Tesla’s F.R.E.E. device. Without it, the charge would continue to build until the planet became a massive bug zapper—one that would zap a whole lot more than just bugs. Without the F.R.E.E., life on Earth would come to an electrifying end.

  But she didn’t tell them that. What would be the point? By her calculations, there were fourteen days, more or less, until the charge reached lethal proportions again. Fourteen days for the F.R.E.E. to be reassembled by the Accelerati. And if they didn’t…well, all the worrying in the world wouldn’t amount to anything.

  As she walked home, she took note of Colorado Springs’ recovery. The EMP had burst every light bulb and blown out every electrical device in a three-mile radius of Nick’s house—even the ones that weren’t plugged in. Stoplights were still all out, but that was less of a problem than one might expect, because more than half of the cars in town were still nonoperational due to fried electrical systems, despite auto mechanics working 24/7. Utility-company cranes could be seen on dozens of corners, replacing transformers and streetlights. The mayor had assured the public that the city’s electrical infrastructure would be up and running at full speed by July.

  The confused despair that had followed the electrical surge marked what newspapers called Colorado Springs’ “Dark Time.” But that despair was now giving way to a dizzy sort of hope. The kind that usually follows a war. There were still lunatics prophesying doom on downtown street corners, of course. Sadly, the lunatics were closer to the truth than they knew.

  The appearance of Jorgenson behind the lunch counter was an unexpected left hook for Caitlin. Once she recovered from the shock, she realized it could work in her favor.

  Because now she had someone to question. And even though he would continually give her non-answers, the nature of those non-answe
rs would provide her with plenty of information.

  For instance, she already knew he was here against his wishes. And if her incessant and insensitive badgering made him lose his temper, she was bound to learn a whole lot more.

  My God, Caitlin realized, I sound just like Petula.

  The thought of Petula made her jaw clamp so tightly it hurt. That two-faced, pigtailed, poor excuse for a human being had been working against them all along! Caitlin had always known she couldn’t be trusted. And although Petula had never openly confessed to being part of the Accelerati, it was clear she’d been working for Jorgenson.

  Caitlin had confronted Petula when Nick disappeared from the hospital. Petula was also there, being treated for the arm she had broken during the disaster at Nick’s house.

  When Caitlin got to her hospital room, she thought Petula was waving hello, until she realized that the wrist-to-shoulder cast and accompanying brace kept her arm in a perpetual hand raise.

  The moment she’d seen Caitlin, Petula had begun frantically hitting the nurse call button.

  “If you don’t tell me what they’ve done with Nick,” Caitlin had threatened, “I will break your other arm and both of your legs.”

  Threatening Petula had been a mistake. Petula had managed to make a case to hospital administration that Caitlin was a mentally unstable stalker. Caitlin’s parents were called, anger management therapy was suggested, and Petula took out a restraining order that prohibited Caitlin from being anywhere near her.

  It would have made going to school very difficult for Caitlin, but so far Petula hadn’t turned up there again. Caitlin had no idea what Petula was up to. She only knew that she had to be a hundred yards away from whatever it was.

  But now, with Jorgenson slinging slop, and no sign of Nick for two weeks, Caitlin decided it was time to throw caution to the wind and pay a visit to her least favorite citizen of Colorado Springs—even if it landed her in jail.

  Petula Grabowski-Jones had already lost three pen caps down her cast trying to scratch beneath it.