The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson

by Quinn Sosna-Spear

  Quickly, so as not to miss a word or murder attempt, she hurried back to her desk, kneeled onto the ground in a rather un-Tippy-like position, and removed the little gold button she had sewn into the carpet.

  With a yank, it came loose, revealing a black tube. Tippy sat on the floor, eye to ground and nose squashed several times over, looking into the hole and straight into Flasterborn’s office. This was an emergency periscope she’d installed on the duo’s fifth anniversary. Of course, Flasterborn didn’t know about Tippy’s emergency periscope. She hadn’t wanted to worry him. Tippy would be sure to protect Flasterborn at all costs.

  Peeking around, she finally got a glimpse of the horrid woman sitting across from Flasterborn. Even the lady’s appearance paled in comparison to his. She was hunched and gray, while he was straight-backed, smiling, and wonderful.

  Tippy turned up the sound on her gold listening device and settled in.

  • • •

  Hadorah sat in front of Horace Flasterborn for the first time in fourteen years. She had expertly ducked when the train running through the maze had come shooting by, but had forgotten about the Puffumes (one of her favorite of Maxwell’s devices) and was surprised when a cream-colored one plopped out. She watched with dreaded fascination as the little ball wobbled and burst; coils of cream mist spiraled toward her.

  Despite her best effort to stay above all this silliness, Hadorah breathed in when the cloud of Puffume particles hit. She was suddenly soothed by the lovely, familiar smell of magnolias.

  Hadorah’s father had loved magnolias, and for one instant she was transported back to her room when she was a little girl, the yellow-trimmed windows and the stuffed pug plopped onto the pink carpeted floor. (Hadorah’s mother had insisted that all the children have stuffed animals—but it wasn’t until much later that Hadorah had learned that for most people, “stuffed animals” rarely referred to deceased pets.)

  Hadorah recalled waking up to the smell of the top-heavy white flower sloping toward her sleeping nose. Her dad had liked to swipe magnolias from the neighbor’s yard and leave them by Hadorah’s bedside for her to find the next morning.

  She had almost forgotten about that.

  Hadorah pulled herself out of her reverie and was startled to find that her face had slipped into a little smile. She looked up to see the man across from her smiling back. It was a grin she had learned to despise.

  “Hello, my dear.”

  Even his voice sounded the same—somehow booming and crackling all at once. Hadorah’s, on the other hand, just cracked.

  “What have you done with him?”

  “Why, it has been a while.”

  “And the girl, was that your idea too?”

  “I was sorry to hear about Maxwell. I hope you received our card.” He leaned back in his immense chair. Hadorah could see the arms of it creeping around him in a big, cushy hug. “Although, I can’t imagine what he expected. I did warn him. Love makes people do very silly things, sometimes.”

  Flasterborn shook his head and, for a moment, thought he might have heard a whimper from the other side of the door, but he ignored it.

  “That was what it was, right, Hadorah? Love?”

  Hadorah, growing redder and sweatier by the second, slapped a hand on his desk.

  “You’re trying to recreate us!”

  Flasterborn shifted his eyes back to her without a twitch of surprise. His smile curled.

  “Now, now, Hadorah. Don’t be foolish. After all I’ve seen—why on earth would I want to recreate you?”

  • • •

  Fifteen years before, a vibrant young woman with ivy-vine curls winding down her back had worn a million-watt grin and her prized black-and-gold lab coat. The possibilities of the entire world had shone in her eyes, and she’d already been well on her way to discovering them.

  Or so she had hoped.

  “Wrench!”

  Hadorah had adjusted her goggles and rushed to the tool rack to retrieve a wrench, then had brought it back to Flasterborn, who’d been sitting over a solid gold device armed with a claw and many wheels. She had eagerly stood over his shoulder, watching the master at work.

  This is how you achieve your dreams, she had reminded herself as she’d dabbed the sweat rag across her boss’s damp forehead. You have to help others achieve theirs first.

  • • •

  “You were nothing more than a tool belt, and if that was all you had remained, perhaps none of this would have happened.” Flasterborn’s grin was vile in how disarming it was—how disarming it still was. “But that was you—then there was Max. He was one in a million. . . . No, not even that. He was his own kind, wasn’t he?”

  Hadorah was slammed back by memories. They rushed over her with a lucidity they didn’t have at home. She couldn’t escape now and could only gasp as she was plunged into another memory.

  Genius, young Hadorah realized, must take a very long time to grow, because Flasterborn had been screwing and unscrewing little wheels all over this darn device for far too long. And, of all things, this invention he’d been slaving over had only one function: to extract the hair from cats so that they’d stop getting hair balls.

  Hadorah had already figured out what Flasterborn was doing wrong. Now she tried to warn him that if he just moved those wheels over a smidgen, the contraption would stop lighting things on fire. But the second she got out an “Excuse me, Mr. Flaster—” he admonished her for missing the sweat that was precariously balanced over one of his fuzzy gray eyebrows. She apologized and wiped it away.

  It was then that she remembered that Flasterborn didn’t need her thoughts. He was probably figuring out how to do it better on his own. How could he not be? He was famous. And what was she? Only his assistant.

  Just then, she heard the soft tutting behind her. She breathed in deeply as she turned. She knew who it was.

  He had been here only a month or so. Hadorah had been here for at least six times that. But he was special. He’d been brought here to become Flasterborn’s apprentice, but it was clear that he was to be more than that. The promise of his future was written in the way he held himself, in how everyone spoke of him.

  Maxwell was thoroughly unlike Hadorah. It hardly seemed fair. See, rumors rarely held water, but for Max they unveiled an ocean. Max wasn’t just special. He was impossible.

  Just then he was surrounded by his creations. There were so many of them. He tinkered with the ease of breathing. Little invention equivalents of doodles sprang to life around him as he worked. A tiny metal girl spun in a circle; a copper carrot seemed to grow out of the table; and amorphous bubbles and blobs melted themselves, turned to vapor, and then morphed back into bubbles . . . but how? The cogs in Hadorah’s brain ground together so hard, she was worried sparks might fly out of her ears. Still, she could come up with only one answer: Maxwell could accomplish anything simply because he thought it’d be neat.

  Maxwell, Hadorah begrudged, was extraordinary.

  That just wouldn’t do.

  Hadorah snapped out of the memories, sweating. She shook her head. “You know why I’m here. Where is my son?”

  Flasterborn stared at her a moment, sucking the air between his gapped front teeth. “I’m sorry to say, Maxwell’s boy has yet to arrive.”

  She hadn’t considered this. It . . . it couldn’t be right. Where could he be?

  “When he does come, I want you to do the right thing. He’s still a child. He needs to be at home.”

  “I seem to remember another ‘child’ who felt differently.” He leaned forward, face hardening. “The daughter of morticians dreamed of greater things.”

  • • •

  All those many years ago, Hadorah had worked on her own invention as Flasterborn had busied himself. She had been going to prove her worth. Finally he would take her on as an apprentice—he had to if she succeeded.

  It was only a flower—an undying one. It was meant to be simple, just a toy for children; perfect for the vendors, with
pretty cobalt petals. At least, it was supposed to be, but Hadorah was having a hard time finishing it.

  “Assistant!”

  Shocked out of her concentration, Hadorah let go, and the flower fell to pieces. Again.

  Drat.

  “Yes, Mr. Flasterborn! Sorry, Mr. Flasterborn.”

  She turned to him, his station right next to hers. He just waved her away, never looking up from his Cat Dehairer. “Stop fiddling and pay attention.”

  “Yes, Mr. Flasterborn.”

  Hadorah stood behind him, staring uselessly as he screwed a screw, then unscrewed a screw, then screwed a screw, then unscrewed a screw. . . . Her fingers itched to finish her own project, but she didn’t dare even turn to look at it. Then she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  Maxwell stood beside her, leaning against her station, hands behind his back. He smiled and revealed her flower—not only fixed, but made to spin like a pinwheel. Hadorah blushed, taking it from him without meeting his eyes.

  “Let her fail on her own, Maxwell. She has to learn. Help is for the weak.”

  Max hummed, passing Flasterborn and then tapping a box of factory-made mechanisms on the old man’s table. “That’s funny. I thought premade parts were for the weak.”

  Flasterborn harrumphed, nudging the box out of sight. Max winked at Hadorah, making the blush creep to her ears as her head shot down and she began fiddling again.

  Max went back to his own device, tinkering on an impressive display of what would later become his Mechanical Puppet Theater (which Walter had enjoyed very much before he could speak but would certainly no longer remember).

  She then looked down at her own measly flower. Suddenly filled with a new disappointment she hadn’t before known, she took it apart, hoping to start again, and maybe . . . just maybe she could prove herself.

  She had managed to remove every screw before Flasterborn had placed even one of his own. Never looking away from his Dehairer, she dropped the broken pieces of her flower onto her table.

  A dark little thought nipped at the back of her mind. There’s nothing to prove when you are a nothing. And though Hadorah swatted the mean gnat back, it was too late.

  The wound had been planted, and it was ripe to fester.

  • • •

  “You never gave me a real chance.” She scowled, trying to look brave, but Flasterborn knew; he always knew.

  “There was no chance to give. You were only an assistant, Hadorah.”

  Hadorah tried to push the lump out of her throat so that she could retort, but no words would come.

  Flasterborn continued, “The biggest mistake I made was assigning you to my most promising apprentice. Where did that leave him?” Hadorah’s eyes prickled. She couldn’t meet his gaze as he placed a hand over hers. He had worn the same black leather gloves every day since he’d met her. They felt cold and sterile. “In the ground. Buried by that daughter of morticians.”

  Hadorah yanked her hand back. “He left because he was too good for this horrid place—”

  “He left because of you.” Flasterborn’s voice broke only for a second; he lost his composure just enough to send a loose hair twanging out of order. He sucked in deeply, smoothing the hair down again, along with his honeyed voice. “I suppose you did prove your worth after all. Speaking of Walter, maybe Maxwell wasn’t the only one who ran away because of you.”

  “Leave my son alone. If you don’t—”

  “If I don’t what? Tell him to leave after inviting him? He’s old enough to decide for himself.”

  Hadorah kept up the veil of anger, but she knew it was slipping in favor of fear.

  Flasterborn spoke with dangerous calm. “I hear he’s smart?”

  “Very.”

  “Then neither of us can tell him what to do. He’s isn’t Maxwell, Hadorah, so you don’t have the same hold over him.”

  With that single truth, Hadorah became deflated and suddenly very, very tired. Those three words, “He isn’t Maxwell,” reminded her of one very sad thing: she couldn’t win. Max had listened to her. Walter did not.

  Hadorah struggled to stand and then slowly headed for the door. Flasterborn’s voice floated after her. “Just tell me . . . is he as good as I think he is?”

  She paused in the doorway, fingers around the handle.

  “Better.”

  The door slammed behind her.

  • • •

  In more than a decade Tippy had learned very few things about Flasterborn’s past.

  She was so struck by what she’d heard in this peculiar meeting, she didn’t even bother standing as the crazed woman, red hair sticking out at every angle, stormed out of the office.

  This was a very strange position for Tippy, and not just because her face was still pressed against the floor. Flasterborn had sounded almost . . . cruel when he’d talked to Hadorah. But that couldn’t be right; Flasterborn wasn’t cruel. And what did Hadorah mean that Walter’s place was at home? He couldn’t want to stay in Moormouth.

  Who should Tippy agree with? Her boss, the most amazing person she had ever met, or the wild woman who couldn’t even keep track of her own son? The answer seemed obvious, and yet she was infested with niggling discomfort. Something about the way the woman’s face had been clenched and flushed as she’d burst out. Something about Flasterborn’s smile . . .

  “TIPPY!”

  She yelped as the device screamed in her ear, still turned up high. She scrambled to her feet, twisting the dial back down.

  “Yes, Mr. Flasterborn?”

  “A cup of molasses when you get a chance.”

  “Of course, Mr. Flasterborn.”

  CHAPTER 21

  •  •  •

  DR. AUTOMATON AND THE IMPROBABLE

  Walter awoke after precisely three hours of sleep, squashed inside a wood-and-wool chair, his knees by his ears. As his eyes groggily found focus, he struggled to remember where he was. This didn’t look like his room. It was far too . . . clean.

  The searing lights were painful. They built a wall in his mind—a blank haze. He peered down, seeing his pocketknife in one hand and the little white sphere he had been working on in the other.

  What the . . . Oh yeah, his invention.

  Last night, just as soon as he’d handed Cordelia off, he’d plonked himself into a chair across from the doors she’d been wheeled through.

  The hour had been late, and he’d known he should be sleeping, but he couldn’t possibly have managed that, with his best and only friend potentially dying right in front of him. Walter had known many dead people, but none of them had been Cordelia.

  As he’d sat, waiting to hear news, a little green marble had hit his shoe. He’d gasped, “How did you get here?”

  That’s it? the marble had thought.

  After all, it hadn’t been easy following around the red-haired boy for the previous day. The boy had been walking over grass, rocks, and mud even. Do you know how hard it is to roll in mud? Then the boy had somehow found himself in the middle of the sky! The marble hadn’t been happy about that but had managed to hop itself right up there with the boy’s stinky black shoes. Then upstairs, across tiles, over many, many sick people’s feet. (Why, the marble hadn’t been sneezed on so much in its entire existence—humans were terribly wet things.) Finally, it had found its way back to the shoes it had been following.

  And those shoes, attached to the boy, had been able to ask one only question: “How did you get here?”

  Maybe the marble shouldn’t have even bothered.

  But then the boy had picked the marble up and gotten an idea.

  In the wee hours of the night, when nearly everyone on Flaster Isle had slept, the boy had pulled something out of his sock, an old frog, made of gleaming white petrified wood. He’d begun, then, to invent.

  That, thought the marble, is more like it.

  But this had all happened the night before, and it was now morning. Walter’s head was so overstuffed with the fluff of sleep that he c
ould hardly remember the color of his underpants (which was uniquely impressive, as all of Walter’s underpants were the same color).

  He was staring down at the white wooden sphere, filled with green, and was trying desperately to push the fuzz from his mind, when an operator-less gurney rolled over his foot, causing him to jump—“Ouch!”—and instantly remember where he was.

  Foot all but forgotten, he leapt to the door across from him, which (he checked for the eleventh time) was still locked. He peeked through the square window, crisscrossed with blue laser lines that zapped anyone who tried to reach beyond it. As he got closer, he could see between the laser lines, into to the empty hallway beyond. He desperately wished to see inside because his skin had started itching in anticipation; he couldn’t wait any longer. He had planned to ask the next person who walked by—but he never got a good chance.

  In the city of inventions, it was no wonder that humans were scarce. The hospital’s janitor was a two-legged broom that sucked debris up through its bristles, and the nurse that patrolled the waiting room was a set of two robotic hands that would pop out of the wall with either a lollipop or a bandage. Very few people had come to wait, and those who had, stayed only a very short time. This worried Walter, though he didn’t want to admit it.

  He jiggled the knob, waiting for the door to open.

  Meanwhile, the marble in his pocket, now surrounded by a strange new shell, was feeling much, much better.

  • • •

  Cordelia sat on a table—at least, that’s what it felt like. It was cold, hard, and metal. Whoever had designed it knew very little about comfort. Neither did the man standing across from her—that is, if you could even call him that.

  Dr. Automaton was very, very famous for being both a very good doctor and very not human. He was, in fact, the world’s first and most successful nonhuman doctor. He had made a name for himself by curing all manner of diseases. The critics said he managed his incredible feats by extracting data in ways most human doctors would find . . . icky.