Walter looked up from his work, ecstatic.
“Ah! There you are!”
Without thinking, he dragged her away. He didn’t seem to notice her sweat anymore, nor the emptiness of her eye as he pulled her to a fresh grave. The dirt had already been replaced, and there were two branches, whittled into gargantuan antennae, poking out the sides. They looked like grave markers because that’s precisely what they were.
Walter cleared his throat, giving Cordelia a meaningful look, then continued his speech where he had left off.
“As I was saying, I really didn’t mean to hit you all with my car. I want to thank you for being such good butterflies and for providing us with this valuable opportunity. We are forever grateful.”
There was a pause as both kids looked down. Walter was being respectful; Cordelia was trying to figure out what in the name of Flasterborn was going on. Then Walter nudged her.
“What?” Cordelia was a bit snappish when she felt close to death.
“Well, don’t you want to say something?”
“They were bugs. Dead bugs. I don’t like dead things, and I don’t like bugs, and I’m not that sorry that they’re gone.”
Walter turned to her and raised his eyebrows. Cordelia groaned and ground out a final: “Thanks anyway.”
But she wasn’t happy about it. Walter, for his part, was very happy.
“Thanks. I really wanted to do it right,” he said, before spinning back to his work, humming his incessant tune.
Cordelia watched him, her vision becoming fuzzy with fatigue. She didn’t understand how someone could care so much about the life of some insects. She instantly felt worse about all the times when she hadn’t cared about stomping on a spider or slapping a fly. She petted the bee, hidden in her hand. He had been a nice bee, after all.
Squatting on the grass, Walter rapidly sewed the tiny wings of the butterflies tighter, and with such speed that Cordelia could hardly keep up just watching him. His precision was perfect, like a machine. He cut the thread with his gold knife.
The woman with the beehive hair circled the park with a clipboard, cheerfully shouting, “Prepare for liftoff, Bumballooners!”
Cordelia turned to Walter. She was anxious because the world wouldn’t stop spinning, “Will it be ready?”
Water nodded, not looking up.
“Will it work?” she pressed.
“My inventions always work.”
It was late, and the sky was growing the color of an eggplant cooked to blister. That meant it was time for the crowd to begin forming. Cordelia could hear the whispers start, winding together with the buzz of the bees into something thoroughly incomprehensible. But she hardly had the energy to care. Her legs were wobbly and were already giving out under the anxiety and strain. She plonked beside him on the grass. “Good.”
Cordelia sprawled out, holding the dead bee so close to her clammy face that her wheezing breaths caused the little thing’s fur to drift back and forth, back and forth.
Someone in Honeyoaks, a long time before, had thought it fit to make tiny candles and put them on tiny saddles, which were then affixed to the backs of the unaware bees—but only the biggest bees (otherwise it’d be silly). Bees carrying candles now circled the grass, the inky trails of the flames following their haphazard paths.
All the balloons but Walter’s were inflated and ready to fly. He was still setting up the burner. Cordelia’s face showed no emotion. There wasn’t energy for that.
“One minute, contestants!” The beehive woman’s voice was high-pitched and seemed to vibrate.
Cordelia stroked the bee with her thumb. During one pass she accidentally slipped over the stinger. It was rounded but still grating enough to break her thin, pruned skin. She watched the blood ooze out in thick droplets.
Her voice was quiet. Walter almost couldn’t hear her. “You said it would be ready . . .”
He attempted to light the wick, the matches burning down to nubs between his fingers. “It’ll fly.”
Cordelia began coughing and wheezing and was unable to stop. Walter turned, panicking. She was staring at her thumb.
“Cordelia! Are you all right?”
She shook her head. Her eye had rolled back and her chest was heaving. She raised a squeezed fist, and Walter forced it open. Inside he found the bee, curled in the nook of her palm.
“Cordelia? Cordelia!”
He laid Cordelia on her side, then jumped up, abandoning the balloon. He rushed toward the high-pitched beehive woman.
“Miss, my friend needs help!”
The crowd, to his surprise, offered nothing, their faces painted on wax, watching the show. Beehive was just the same; her teeth were spectacularly white.
“How can I assist you?”
“Call an ambulance. She needs a hospital!”
She laughed, batting him away. “Oh, Honeyoaks doesn’t have a hospital. We hardly ever get sick here.”
“Where’s the closest one?
“On Flaster Isle, of course, just over the bay.” She smiled warmly, checking her watch. “You have thirty seconds.”
“You have to help me.”
“Good luck! May the best Bumballoon win!”
The woman teetered away on her swirly-heeled shoes. Walter ran back to Cordelia and felt her pulse. She opened her eye and managed to wheeze, “I wanted to thank you . . .”
Walter’s eyes whipped across the crowd.
“Please, is anyone a doctor? Anyone?”
“What you did for Grandpa . . . No one liked Grandpa, except for me.”
He looked down at her, panic exploding across his face.
“He would have loved that more than anything.”
“Cordelia, I don’t know—”
“Ten seconds, contestants!”
“We have to get there.” That was the last thing Cordelia said before drifting off.
“Five seconds!”
Walter shot up and desperately tried to light the burner, and to his shock, it flickered on—but still the wretched balloon refused to inflate. No matter. He hurriedly picked Cordelia up and placed her inside as gingerly as he could.
“And, liftoff!”
All the balloons but one rose upward, their flickering fires adding to the light of the stars.
Walter rushed, tripping on his own feet as he cut the lines for his weights.
He flicked his flame as high as it would go, and the onlookers were astonished to see the balloon finally inflate. Walter threw himself into the basket just as it began hovering.
Then, in a most miraculous feat, it hobbled into the air.
As soon as it was up, however, there was no stopping it. Walter’s balloon soared, careening through the clouds, speeding above the rest.
Those below were in awe of the sight—the butterflies glowed, like a gorgeous kaleidoscope, spinning with warm colors, contrasting with the stark strips of black. In a moment of ingenuity, Walter had even affixed dead flies to the top with long, rigid wires, making it appear as if they were the ones carrying the craft toward the moon.
Walter’s creation stood out among a blanket of pastels. For all their bright happiness and festivity, the other balloons paled in comparison to the black one.
Walter wasn’t thinking of the other balloons, however. He was too busy looking down at the girl curled into the corner of the wooden basket.
He kneeled to her, hesitantly brushing the wet strands of hair out of her eye. “It’ll be all right, Cordelia. Dr. Automaton will save you. He can do anything.”
Walter then pretended he was rocking her to sleep, humming his tune as they finally disappeared into the night.
• • •
Fourteen years before, a brilliant black-and-gold balloon had floated down as the rest had floated up.
The basket had sparkled as if made of real gold.
When it hit the ground, Maxwell and Hadorah could be seen kissing inside.
He held a box. She wore a ring.
They hadn
’t a care in the world.
And that was just the way it was.
CHAPTER 19
• • •
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE
Flaster Isle was renowned for its spectacular sights (and equally outstanding smells).
It was a city built on an ordinary rock sticking out of the sea. At least, it used to be an ordinary rock, before Flasterborn went to work on it. Then it became a very shiny rock.
Its namesake had designed the metropolis in his image—and, as stated on the flashing sign entering town: FLASTER ISLE IS THE FUTURE ! Below that was another flashing sign that said 50% OFF ALL TOAST BOXES, but that had very little to do with the point.
And what was that point? That this bubble of a city—literally, surrounded in some marriage of glass and plastic that Flasterborn had trademarked “glasstic”—represented everything Flasterborn thought the future should be.
The first thing you might notice upon entering the golden gates was that Flasterborn apparently had decided that there were no cars in the future—too primitive. Instead people traveled in enormous situlas—massive iron buckets, with the achievements of Flasterborn carved into the sides. The situlas slid on invisible wires that crisscrossed the city (horribly dangerous for parachuters—which is why, Flasterborn decreed, there were no parachuters in the future). The wires were so traceless that the only way one could tell precisely where they were was by the lines of crows perched on top of them—oh, but not regular crows, mind you. In Flaster Isle future-history classes, it was discussed how all the crows would die as a result of a combination of a very hot summer and an uprising of aggressive slugs. Because of this, Flasterborn had preemptively created robotic crows for any and all of your crow needs.
In any case, the streets had to be extra wide, not only because they were already jam-packed with tourists, but also because the buckets zoomed every which way, pouring people out at their destinations as an afterthought along the journey. No one had any idea how the buckets knew where to drop them, but the buckets were always right. . . . Well, usually right. If they weren’t, it was probably the passenger’s fault for not wanting to be in the right place.
Buildings, made entirely of glass and gold, shot so high into the air that there were constant fears that Flaster Isle would one day fall over from the weight of them. Flasterborn, however, had reassured his citizens that he would find a way to permanently get rid of falling. No one likes falling anyway—well, except maybe parachuters, but fortunately, in the future, they won’t exist.
Vendors sat on every corner of every street, wearing flashing ties and glasses, peddling Flasterborn’s inventions from their carts. Even the carts themselves were impressive. They spun, both upward and outward, in gyroscopic patterns. There were endless products piled into them that could only be revealed by spinning the spherical cart this way and that. The vendors would do this as they put on shows to entice visitors into their webs. There the guests would be hypnotized into buying many more gadgets than they had planned. Luckily, every product was one that the buyer definitely needed, whether they had known it before or not.
And the smells—oh, the smells. Flasterborn had invented a system by which the grates in the ground puffed out delicious scents. First Street smelled like fresh, steaming bread. Second Street smelled like a warm cup of cocoa. Third Street—well, Third Street was Flasterborn’s personal favorite smell. Third Street smelled like sugar that had been burned in just the right way.
Flaster Isle was a wonderful place, or at least that was what just about everyone thought. Those who didn’t were probably just upset that they couldn’t live there, in the high-rise houses, sleeping in the clouds. (Literally on clouds, actually. Flasterborn had invented a bed of clouds to replace beds, for obvious reasons.)
The fact was that everyone wanted to live on Flaster Isle, with its flashy lights and glasstic halo. As a result, the city was packed, sprawling with people and the results of those people.
The streets were so often clogged, in fact, that only those who paid a fee were allowed to walk on them. Everyone else was relegated to the underground passage system that coursed beneath called the Elevator Highway (or “EH” for short). Tourists were advised to steer clear of storm drains, as you never knew when someone would be shot straight out of one—to hobble on to their next destination. Flasterborn didn’t imagine there would be any other kind of elevator in the future, because elevators were widely known to be very scary and very dangerous.
The only trouble with Flasterborn’s EH occurred after the holidays. If you ate one too many Figgy Flasterpies or a bit too much Hamborn, that extra weight would get you into a sticky jam in the middle of a lift. Such an accident was occasionally fatal and, even worse, quite embarrassing. But that was unavoidable, Flasterborn proclaimed, because his elevators were simply much better than any other variety.
Walter had dreamed of seeing Flaster Isle his whole life. Not only was it the subject of innumerable glorious tales, but he knew that his father had worked there many years before.
Even at night—which, for Walter, floating into the city, it was—Flaster Isle looked constantly in the middle of a celebration, filled with lights, sounds, and people.
As Walter passed over it, however, he didn’t see much. He was too focused on Cordelia’s slowing pulse. He needed to find the hospital immediately—or, preferably, before then.
Fortunately, that wasn’t very hard.
The Flasterbornian Immortality Center and Laboratory was an unbearably large building. It was the kind of absurd structure that if you tried to see the top of it, there was a very good chance that your neck would stay that way forever.
If one could see the very top of it, past layer upon layer of reflective gold glass, one would find a lone tower. Rumor had it that this tower, of bronze and white, was solely for Flasterborn’s own efforts against dying.
That was the ultimate prospect. Flasterborn insisted that there was no point in a future if you had to die before you got there. Therefore, there was no death on Flaster Isle. . . . At least, they pretended there wasn’t. It wouldn’t be long, Flasterborn insisted, before he’d finally rid the world of its ultimate calamity.
Below the tower was the finest hospital in the entire world. It was so successful because Flasterborn’s main goal was to keep the inhabitants alive at all costs—or, rather, at whatever cost they were able to pay.
Walter found the hospital easily. All he had to do was navigate toward one of the gated entrances lining the glasstic bubble and pay a small fee to enter.
Once he did, he saw the flashing red building. Plastered on every side were advertisements for casts that wrote on themselves and bandages shaped like lips that delivered kisses straight to booboos every five minutes.
There was no parking lot because there were no cars, so Walter let the balloon down as easily as he could onto a wide street near the entrance. He bumped only one situla wire on the way down. It sprang up, scattering birds above and causing the passengers stacked inside the situla to bounce madly as they listened to their newspapers. (Flasterborn had decreed that people wouldn’t read in the future—it wasted time—so these newspapers read to you.)
Walter staggered a bit as he carried Cordelia in.
To keep himself awake, he repeated the same mantra that had been running through his mind for their entire journey: “Everything will be all right.” Then he added to himself with a relieved sigh, “We made it.”
• • •
It was so late when Hadorah’s ferry arrived at the gates of the small island that the sun had reawakened.
The woman, her head a torch of red, stumbled over the lip of the boat as she stepped out.
She trudged up the familiar rocky path to the wrought iron spikes—decorated with vines made from precious gems in green and amber. In between were solid gold letters: WELCOME TO FLASTER ISLE.
Hadorah approached, and the spikes opened for her, glasstic gleaming from between the bars, offering a g
limpse of the dazzling lights in the city beyond.
CHAPTER 20
• • •
TIPPY THE SNOOP
Tippy was early to work on Friday, because Tippy was always early to work. She hadn’t, however, expected to see Hadorah Mortinson waiting for her at the door.
Tippy was not excited to make her acquaintance.
The moment Tippy had unlocked her office and stepped in, Hadorah followed, stalking her uncomfortably closely. Tippy finally turned to face her, forcing them nose to nose.
Tippy counted things when she was nervous. There were precisely twelve and a half wrinkles around Hadorah’s mouth when it moved.
“Where is he?”
Tippy set off the Code Red strategies in her mind. These strategies had been put in place for the most dangerous intruders. She was prepared to take Hadorah out if necessary.
“Good morning, madam. Can I offer you a beverage on your way out?”
Hadorah released a squawk that Tippy thought sounded uncannily like a robotic crow. Then Hadorah said, “You cannot. You can offer me Horace Flasterborn or else . . .”
Hadorah tried to push passed Tippy, but the taller woman held firm, pushing right back. Hadorah fought her the whole way, muttering terrible things about Flasterborn, which only made Tippy push harder.
Alas, just as Tippy had a hand on the hallway door, she heard a hollow ding. She closed her eyes tightly, knowing exactly what that sound meant.
She and Hadorah both looked to the opposite side of the room, where a large, ornate vase began glowing. Moments later Flasterborn’s bowler-encased head burst out the top of it (followed, thankfully, by his suit-encased body). This was his personal elevator.
“Ah, Hadorah. Pleasure to see you again! Come in.”
Then Flasterborn, in full tailcoat, removed his bowler and entered his office.
Tippy let herself be pushed aside as Hadorah barreled into the room after him. But this wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. This was a Code Red, and Tippy knew that in Code Reds she had a job to do—privacy be rot! So Tippy did what Tippy did best: she took care of Flasterborn.
The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson Page 13
