Spin the Golden Light Bulb

by Jackie Yeager

  Great. Now he hates me. “I’m sorry! I’m just not used to having a friend who sticks by me. I told you that before, and now I’ve wrecked everything! I’m the worst friend ever.”

  He looks me right in the eyes. “You’re not the worst friend ever.”

  “Yes, I am and now you hate me.”

  He punches me in the arm. “KK, cut it out. I don’t hate you.”

  “Well, you should.”

  “Why, because you need to take remedial friendship classes? Maybe they have them here at Piedmont.”

  I punch him back.

  He shakes his head and smiles. “So what do we do about this computer thing? The idea is okay, but I don’t think it will get us one-hundred and fifty points. Everyone knows how to make a computer program.”

  “There has to be something cool we can think of. Maybe we should just scrap our question and start over. Think of one that can be answered using our same costumes and same script.”

  Ander walks around the table. “Wait a minute. I might have an idea.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe. Hold on. I’m thinking.” He walks to the door and back again. Then he takes a random pencil eraser out of his pocket and tosses it in the air. “You know how we were talking about our ancestors—that day by the pond?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “How I said that sometimes I wonder what mine were like, and I try to find stuff out about them, especially my great, great grandpa Jim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so one night after Evening Announcements, I couldn’t sleep. So, I started thinking about hockey, and it got me thinking about him again. So I started playing on the air screen.”

  “The what?”

  He walks over to the white board where Swissa posts our daily itinerary, and pushes a button.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Accessing your air screen.”

  “My what?”

  “Didn’t Seraphina show you this? It’s so cool.” He waves his hand out in front of him. I hear a flutter and a glass-like monitor appears in front of him floating in mid-air!

  “What is that?”

  “It’s like a computer but smarter.”

  He pushes buttons that I don’t even see. It must understand him because images and words appear and disappear with each click.

  “I found out some cool stuff. I already knew he was a great hockey player when he was young.”

  “Right.”

  “But I wanted to know more so I looked him up. I found his basic information, so I created a document where I listed as many facts about him as I could, like his full name, his birthday, where he lived, where he worked, his hobbies, hair color, eye color . . . all that kind of stuff.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Well, it gets cooler. I was just messing around and found even more information—all his private records. I guess there are records stored permanently for each person in our country. They’ve been put into a database.”

  “Really? What kinds of things?”

  “Like, if the person was ever interviewed, then the database would have it in his file. If that person ever sent a message to another person with their phone or computer, then that would be in there too.”

  “You mean if I sent you a message or talked to you on the phone, our conversation would be saved.”

  “Yup.”

  “Forever?”

  “I think so.”

  “But that’s invasion of privacy.”

  “Anyway, I wondered if since my great-great-grandpa was into sports, if any of his conversations about that would be saved and I guess they are because I found some. Watch.”

  He types his great, great grandfather’s name, along with the facts on his list, with buttons in mid-air. When he’s certain he’s found the right person, he clicks on his name, somehow floating in the air screen. Then he types a question using the air buttons: Did you like to go to school?

  A written response appears on the screen:

  I didn’t mind going to school that much. I was competitive, probably too competitive, and that’s how I treated my class work. As long as I did well on my tests, I figured I’d beaten the questions. I’ve been competitive my whole life and that’s what led me to sports.

  “Oh my gosh. He answered you!”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “So we can ask our ancestors questions and their answers will appear?”

  “As long as the information has been stored in the database. I guess if the person was ever recorded giving that answer, then it will work.”

  “That’s awesome!”

  “It’s like my great-great-grandpa is right here communicating with me.”

  I think about that for a second and an idea swirls free. “What if we could see him at the same time?”

  “Do you mean have his picture appear too?”

  “Sort of. If each person has facts and conversations on file in the database, maybe there are pictures and videos as well. What if we could find a way to get a video of the person talking while their answer appears on the screen or comes out of their mouth? If their lips were moving from one video, even if they were saying something else, we could match it up with the audio recording of an answer they gave another time.”

  “That’s it, KK! There has to be recordings of the person’s voice on that database somewhere. What if we could put it all together? Video images. Voice recordings. Facts. Everything!”

  I grin when Ander calls me by my nickname again. “That would be amazing. Can you imagine being able to really talk to and see our ancestors?”

  Ander jumps up on the chair. “That can be our object—our invention! That’s what we can make!”

  “But how?

  “We’ll need help. We need the rest of our team.”

  I narrow my eyes. “You mean we need Jax.”

  When Jax and the girls come back, we bombard them with our idea.

  “What do you think, Jax?” Ander asks. “Can you build a computer app that could put all of this together? Do you know how to do that?”

  Jax stares at the air screen and then at his own computer. “I’ll try. I think I can interface the information you found on the database with any videos and pictures and social media posts. Then I’ll program the app to splice it all together to produce an image with a voice.”

  We take turns reading the information we found on Jax’s computer, as he types it into the air screen. Then we watch him program it all together. After a long while of him typing and us watching, a tornado looking image swirls on the screen.

  “Hey, KK, that’s your brain!”

  I roll my eyes and watch the swirl. Before long, it morphs into a picture of a man—Ander’s great-great-grandfather! Jax pushes another air button and the picture morphs into a live version of the picture. Ander’s great-great-grandpa is surrounded by a smoky haze but appears to be alive—like a video or a ghost back from the dead! He scratches his nose and blinks his eyes. The image looks like he’s walking down the street.

  “How did it do that?” asks Jillian, her eyes wide open.

  “Just wait,” says Jax. “Ander, ask him a question.”

  Ander types the same question as before, “Did you like to go to school?”

  The image of the man moves his head and leans against the side of a building. A voice recording plays along with the image. “I didn’t mind going to school that much. I was competitive, probably too competitive, and that’s how I treated my classes. As long as I did well on my tests, I figured I beat the questions! I’ve been competitive my whole life. That’s what made me successful when I got into sports.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I say. “It worked!”

  “Computer apps can do anything,” says Jax. “You just have to have an idea. All I did was mix
the town records, which includes all the facts found on the database, with any pictures they had on file and also the social media posts. I merged them together. Then I instructed the app to make the pictures move. If the database had any voice recordings, then the image will sound like the person really did. If they don’t have a voice recording on file, then the app will assign a voice to them.”

  “So you don’t know if that’s the voice Ander’s great, great grandpa really had?”

  “Not for sure, but since he did interviews, it probably sounds close.”

  “Do you think it would work for relatives that are still alive too?” I ask.

  “Probably.”

  “Can I try? I know everything about my Grandma Kitty.”

  “Okay. Ander will type—you talk.”

  “Her name is Katharin Riley. She was born October 25th, 2009. She grew up in Rochester, NY. She played soccer and won the very first Piedmont Challenge.”

  Ander types in the information. The tornado swirls and we wait. Finally, it morphs into a picture of Grandma Kitty. Her hair is sparkly, and she’s wearing dangly earrings! The side of the screen list facts about her, like the names of my grandpa and their children—including my mom! It tells where she went to school and what her job was, but it doesn’t say anything about her winning the Piedmont Challenge.

  “That’s her!”

  “Ask her a question,” says Mare.

  “Okay. What did you want to be when you were twelve years old?”

  The image wiggles and morphs into a little girl. Her clothes are bright, but her boots are brown and ugly. “I’m twelve-years-old and in the sixth grade. I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. I’m going to build my own rocket ship and be a taxi driver for people visiting other planets.”

  “Aw, she’s so cute! I didn’t know she liked science and space. This must have been before she won the Piedmont Challenge.”

  “Let’s try another age,” says Ander.

  “Okay, let’s try fourteen. She was probably at PIPS then.”

  Ander types again. The image morphs slightly. Her clothes aren’t as bright but she’s wearing dangly pineapple earrings!

  “I’m in eighth grade, my second year at the School of New Technology. I love it here, but the classes are hard. I’m working on an idea for powering an inexpensive rocket ship. I want to test it out but my teachers won’t let me. I have to send my research to PIPS. The kids who won the Piedmont Challenge get to do all that fun stuff. It’s not fair. I want to test my own ideas.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I say, covering my mouth. My knees almost buckle under me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I take a deep breath. “Is the stuff she’s saying true?”

  “I guess so,” says Jax. “She must have said the same thing to one of her friends while talking on the phone sometime. The app had to have gotten the information from somewhere, why?”

  “But the image said she didn’t win the Piedmont Challenge. She told me she did.”

  “Maybe there’s a mistake.”

  “Yeah, there has to be. I’ve seen her Golden Light Bulb. Maybe some of her information got mixed up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I mean there must be a glitch somewhere. We’ll have to find it.” I shove the Piedmont Challenge thought out of my head and look at Grandma Kitty’s face practically floating in front of me. “I can’t believe how real it looks. It feels like my Grandma Kitty is really in this room with me!”

  My teammates and I stare at each other smiling. This idea could be the thing that helps us win. It’s just as good as floating sparkles and robotic monkeys. Maybe it’s even better!

  THE GOLDEN LIGHT BULB

  The next morning before breakfast, my phone lights up. I click on my mom’s face, flashing on the screen. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Honey. I’m glad you’re awake. I heard about what happened to your project! Grandma Kitty told me.”

  “It was awful.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I know you’re disappointed and it’s terrible how it happened. You just have to realize that things don’t always turn out the way you hope they will. You and your teammates did your best. I’m very proud of you for that.”

  “But Mom, we’re still working on our solution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re creating a new one!”

  “A new one? You don’t have time to start over, do you?”

  “Well, we are. There’s no way we can win without a solution.”

  “Oh, Kia—it’s a little late for that. Don’t you think?”

  “We know, but we’re going to try anyway.”

  “Well, Honey, I hope it all comes together.”

  I pick at the emblem on my shirt. “I thought you would be proud of me for not giving up.”

  “I am. It’s just that I’d hate for you to go to all the trouble and then—”

  “What, Mom—not win? You don’t think we can do it, do you?”

  “I didn’t say that, Kia.”

  I think about erasing her face from my phone. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I never said you were stupid.”

  “You don’t think we can win,” I say as mean as I can.

  “Of course I do. But at this point, your chances aren’t good.”

  “I have to go now, Mom. We have a lot of stuff to do.”

  “Kia, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to upset you. I know you’ll come up with another solution. You can do anything you put your mind to. You always have. It’s just—I miss you terribly.”

  Maybe she does miss me, but she still just doesn’t understand me at all. “I miss you too.”

  “You’ve been gone all summer, and I don’t have anyone to make mint chocolate ice cream pie for.”

  “Ryne would eat it.” I try not to spit the words out.

  “Yes, but Ryne isn’t you.”

  I don’t want to fight with her, but ice cream pie doesn’t always fix everything. “I guess not.”

  “I’ll see you soon, okay, Honey? I love you.”

  “Bye, Mom. I love you too.” I hang up and pretend she thinks we can win. I’ll just have to show her we can.

  After breakfast, my teammates and I meet in our bedchamber. Pieces of our Ghost Gallery and supplies are scattered everywhere, even on our star bed, but we ignore them for now. We have to find a way to use our new invention in our play.

  Jillian gets this far off look on her face. “I’ve been thinking about our Ghost Gallery, and I have the best idea.” She flips open to a clean page and doodles a giant circle. “I think we should use as many circles in our solution as we can.” She scans the room like she’s looking for something.

  “Why?” asks Mare.

  “Because that must be the secret theme of this year’s task.”

  “What do you mean secret theme?”

  “Think about it. Our problem begins by stating, ‘The earth is shaped like a circle.’”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “There are other clues I’ve found too,” she says. “Look around this room.”

  “The walls are covered in circles,” I say.

  “Keep looking. There’s more,” says Jillian. She stands up with a know-it-all smile on her face.

  “Look at our closet,” Mare says. “Our clothes cubbies are circle shapes.”

  “Wait a second,” says Ander. “Remember that place on the aero-bus where we drank blueberry milkshakes?”

  “I don’t remember that,” says Jax.

  “KK, you remember—it was called the Circle Café.”

  “It was!”

  “I noticed something else,” says Mare. “What about the flower thing on our tables at dinner that first night. The one that spun around in a
circle?”

  “Oh, yeah!” says Ander. “The one that spit our food out.”

  “This whole place is set up like the shape of the Earth,” Jax adds. “I bet the Piedmont Organization is trying to see how many teams notice it.”

  Ander walks around the table. “So we should probably add as many circle shaped things as we can.”

  “That might get us more points,” says Jax.

  Jillian sits back down. “So, do you want to hear my idea or not?”

  “Yes,” I say. “What is it?”

  “What if we change our universal question to: What will I be like when I grow up? We can change our script around so that instead of Kia wondering where she’ll go after she dies, she can wonder what she’ll be like when she grows up. We can be characters who help her figure it out—using the computer app you guys are working on.”

  “That could work,” says Ander.

  “I can change the script around,” I offer.

  “We could turn our Ghost Gallery mess into a giant circle object, and divide it into five sections—the phrases in our team mantra: The Five C’s.”

  “But why should we add the Five C’s to the giant circle,” asks Mare.

  Jax turns to her to explain. “The circle represents all of us.”

  I’m starting to see how this can work. “This is what Andora was talking about, and Seraphina and Gregor too.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Ander.

  “Remember on the first day of camp, when we registered inside that giant atrium of Piedmont Chamber?”

  “Andora was sitting at that fancy table,” he recalls.

  “And you almost started yelling at her,” Jillian remembers with a giggle.

  Ander jumps out of his chair. “She said she’d expect more from our team since we came from the same school!”

  “That’s what I mean,” I say. “I think the judges are hoping that we can create a solution that shows how special we each are, but how much stronger we are as a team.”

  “And we can make a mural thing to show how well we fit together as a team,” says Mare.

  “Good idea!” I say. We crowd around the table and our pencils can hardly keep up with what we’re saying. We sort out how we’re going to build and decorate the mural first. Then we spend the rest of the day super gluing and duct taping the broken wooden pieces into one giant flat circle shaped object. We turn the pieces backward so that the plain wood is showing. That way we can decorate it all over again.