Mr. Fahrenheit

by T. Michael Martin

  And Benji knew now that every last bit of his own pain and embarrassment and fear had been worth enduring. It had meant something. If he didn’t quite know whether he believed in God, he knew he believed in the future, and in fate. No obnoxious voice from stadium speakers or a drunk FIG or his grandfather’s defeated sighs could convince him otherwise. He was strapped in the cockpit with stars in the glass. He was outsmarting the known universe.

  Or at least that was how he felt until they decided to hit the pod with the magnetic hammer.

  When Benji pulled out the hammer, the sound of Mrs. Bainbridge’s TV told him they were going to have to leave soon to get back in time for their one-thirty classes: Drew Carey had just wrapped up the Showcase Showdown, and Wayne Brady was happily welcoming the live studio audience to Let’s Make a Deal.

  CR had been growing antsy as time went on, at one point actually pacing, hunchbacked, around the small tree house. Now he hopped gracefully out of his sitting position to his feet, lifted the corrugated tin cover from one of the windows, and peeked outside in the direction of Mrs. Bainbridge’s living room picture window. “Yeah, Wayne Brady’s on. It’s one o’clock . . . holy shit!” CR breathed.

  “What?” Benji said.

  “Look at that dude break-dance. Look at him go! When I grow up, I wanna be Wayne Brady. Banjo, if I got in a fight with Wayne Brady, who would win?”

  “I think we’ve got time to try one more thing,” Benji said, trying to ignore him.

  CR looked back at Benji. “Yeah, it was a trick question anyway. I would beat myself up, because I refuse to lay a finger on an American treasure like Mr. Wayne Brady.” He spotted the small yellow hammer in Benji’s hand. “Ah, Banjo. A damn spinning saw doesn’t work, and you’re breaking out the Playskool tool set.”

  “CR, you can leave,” Benji said. “If you want to stay, cool. If you’re bored and want to go, also okay.” He wasn’t mad, just stating it as a fact.

  He couldn’t quite see CR’s reaction; the sunlight through the window silhouetted him. CR’s shoulders maybe seemed to tense, but when he spoke, he was friendly enough.

  “I’m just saying, if Bob the Builder finds out you stole his hammer, he’s gonna be pissed.” CR let go of the sheet of tin; it swung down and covered the window again.

  Benji tightened his grip on the roofing hammer’s black rubber handle. CR was right: The hammer did look small. But its tip was magnetic, and that detail seemed to matter; the saucer had apparently come alive last night when the magnetic winch touched it, after all.

  Benji lifted the hammer, preparing to give the pod a firm tap. Outside, Wayne Brady was telling a contestant to choose between Door #1, #2, or #3.

  Benji hesitated with the hammer in midair. An image popped insistently into his head, of Ellie using the hammer instead.

  “Ellie, do you want to do this one?”

  She scooted over to his side of the pod, then said, “How about we do it together?”

  Benji agreed. He had been wearing gloves this whole time, and now CR suggested that Ellie do the same. (For a moment Benji felt an inexplicable, strange anger, then shook his head to clear it.)

  With a voice suggesting the fate of the world would pivot on her decision, the contestant informed Wayne Brady she wanted to go with Door #2.

  Benji tried to put his hand lower than Ellie’s on the rubber grip, but there wasn’t quite room. “Oh, c’mon,” she said, laughing a little, and placed his hand on top of hers, all their fingers intertwining.

  She whispered, “One, two, you-know-what-to-do.”

  There was already an electric quality in the air, and that sensation—as if all the atoms inside Benji had begun to crackle—only surged as the hammer arced down toward the pod.

  Right around the time Door #2 opened, Benji saw the first thin blue thread of electricity leap between the pod and the hammer. The lucky contestant gave a hysterical shriek. The single thread forked in two: a lightning bolt in miniature.

  All this happened in milliseconds, quickly enough that Benji didn’t have time to find out if the contestant had been shrieking from joy or something else, and quickly enough that they couldn’t stop the hammer from striking the pod. An inch away, the hammer jerked out of their hands, the powerful magnet taking hold. As the hammer made contact, the delicate electricity flared brilliantly, multiplied, and spread, enveloping the entire pod in a complex web made of a hundred threads of dazzling light.

  There was an electrical zap sound, like a great circuit breaker in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab sizzling to life. Benji felt a WHOMPF, an invisible wave of power rushing outward from the pod. It was like wind but also nothing like wind: The wave traveled through him, making his fillings zing. He fell onto his back. As the shock wave left the tree house, the walls shuddered.

  For a moment, Benji was totally still, propped up on his elbows and staring at the pod as the web of light crackled out of existence. He looked at Ellie, who had crashed onto her back, too. She stared at him with eyes wide with shock and something like exaltation.

  He scrambled up and lifted the cover off a window just in time to watch the effects of the invisible shock wave ripple across his neighborhood. One by one, the streetlamps lit themselves in broad daylight. Lights in the houses switched on and burned bright. Mrs. Bainbridge’s TV blared a deafening commercial about reverse mortgages. Car alarms whooped. Radios sang discordant joy.

  And then, all at once, it was over. The streetlamps went dark, and the alarms went silent, and Mrs. Bainbridge’s TV resumed its normal volume. It was just another afternoon in the neighborhood in Bedford Falls, Indiana.

  Except it wasn’t.

  “Kiss my ass,” CR whispered shakily. He’d fallen against the wall on the other side of the tree house. His face pinched into an expression rarely seen from CR: absolute and honest fear. “What was that?”

  Benji looked down at the plastic radiation-detector card on his chest. His card and everyone else’s was the safe color, green. The magnetized hammer, which had been stuck to the pod, clanged to the ground. When Benji would test the hammer later on, he’d find that the magnet no longer worked. Next door, Mrs. Bainbridge’s TV now gently explained that wearing adult diapers was nothing to be embarrassed about.

  “Wh-what do you think this is? Banjo?” CR asked. “Not, like, what do you think it’s made of. What do you think the pod is, period?”

  Benji couldn’t find his voice. He’d asked himself what the pod was a hundred times since last night, of course. Before his close encounter with Agent McKedrick, Benji’s best (if disheartening) guess was that the pod was nothing more than the final random fragment of the miracle of the century.

  But then the Question had come momentarily alive . . . then this pod had unleashed a wave of enigmatic energy. . . .

  We own this magic, Benji thought. These . . . these machines. They’re our secrets, but holy shit, they’re not just little freaking toys we play with, tricks that only seem amazing when we use our imagination. They touched the rest of the world. They have that power.

  We have that power.

  And the same booming voice he’d heard in the dream about the drive-in filled his head, speaking a name just alien enough to suggest something extraordinary: I AM MR. FAHRENHEIT.

  Finally, Benji answered CR: “Whatever it is, it’s important. And we’re going to figure it out. We’re meant to.” His voice was completely steady.

  “You sound pretty damn sure about that,” CR replied, surprised.

  Benji smiled. “Yeah. I am.”

  “Me too, Benji Lightman,” Ellie said. “Hot damn, me too.”

  You grow up being told you’ll change the world. Maybe for most people becoming an adult means giving up on that belief, and letting the world change you. But Benji—Benji and Ellie—wouldn’t let that happen. They were on the eve of gathering fate. It was all happening, and she was in it with him completely. And it was then, for the first time, that Benji began to understand that Ellie might be falling in love wi
th him, too.

  11

  Benji, CR, and Ellie made it back to school just in time for their last classes. After the experience in the tree house, the rest of the day seemed torturously boring. Evening had fallen by the time Benji’s after-school practices ended. When he got home, Papaw was in the living room polishing his work shoes.

  “Benjamin!” Papaw said, looking exhausted and excited, like he had when introducing Benji to McKedrick. “How’d the meetin’ go?”

  Before Benji could answer, their landline phone, the one used only for police business, rang. Papaw grimaced, picked it up, and said, “Sheriff Lightman. This better be good.”

  Benji was about to go to his room when Papaw hung up. “That plane crash has opened an unbelievable can of worms,” Papaw said, frowning. “We were inspectin’ the crash site and came across a cannabis field on Deegan’s property. The whole property’s roped off. I get the pleasure of giving the DEA a tour at five thirty in the a.m. tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You and me both. So, that meetin’, how was it? I bet it was interestin’.”

  Benji answered honestly. “You have no idea, sir.”

  Papaw smiled.

  Benji woke up the next morning just before dawn. He’d managed to sleep only a little, his dreams filled with images of the drive-in and the Dream Machine Cadillac, but he didn’t feel tired at all.

  After Papaw had left around five thirty to show the DEA Deegan’s field, Benji called the school’s band director to let her know he wouldn’t be able to make it to today’s six a.m. parade practice. It had been a long time since he’d faked a stomachache to skip out on something; he thought he did pretty well, especially considering that his legs were bouncing with excitement the whole time.

  He thought about calling Ellie, Zeeko, or CR to come over, but even if they were awake, they’d be too busy: Ellie was constantly in the media lab finishing the nostalgia-a-thon video for the assembly, Zeeko in the community health truck with his dad, CR at morning practice. Still, despite being alone (perhaps because he was alone), Benji smiled. He could spend time alone with the pod, and the thought filled him with relief and anticipation as strong as any he’d ever felt.

  Benji grabbed his old laptop, which took a couple of minutes to boot up. As he waited, he looked out his window at the tree house. It all still seemed so unreal. Not just the pod and the Question, but that expression on Ellie’s face yesterday, the way roses had appeared in her cheeks when he gave her the scarf.

  But it is real. Actually, it’s the realest thing that ever happened to me. He felt like he existed in a way he never really had before.

  When Windows finally loaded, he opened the browser and put it into Private Mode. (Despite the shock wave from the pod, his phone still worked fine, but he felt more comfortable using the laptop because he wasn’t sure if his search history showed up on their cell phone bill.) As he had last night, he checked the local TV station’s website. After scrolling past several headlines about Friday’s homecoming game, he clicked on a headline reading Bedford Falls Power & Light Co. Outage Reported.

  The story still just said that the power had gone off very briefly due to a surge, which the power company was investigating. There was nothing to indicate anyone suspected anything extraordinary had occurred.

  Satisfied, Benji jogged downstairs. He went out the front door, making sure Papaw hadn’t unexpectedly returned while Benji had been online.

  As soon as Benji stepped onto his porch, he heard a squeal of brakes.

  At the end of the street, a black SUV, which had been turning onto his road, bucked to a stop. In contrast to the older cars in the neighborhood, the brand-new SUV practically glittered. Benji stared. There were government plates on the front of the car. Although he couldn’t quite make out the face, he could tell the driver was wearing a black suit.

  Is that McKedrick? Maybe he’s dropping off the pamphlets.

  Except, no. Benji had told him he had practice this morning. Why would McKedrick come now, in spite of thinking Benji wouldn’t be home?

  The SUV reversed quickly, did a U-turn, and sped away.

  What if, Benji’s mind whispered, he was coming because he thought I wouldn’t be home? What if he wanted to have a little look around? Paranoia stiched into Benji, his mouth suddenly spitless.

  I can’t keep the pod here anymore.

  12

  “You want to do the thing? SERIOUSLY?!” CR shouted.

  “ASAP.”

  “You want to do the thing ASAP?! (Hut-hut-hike.)”

  The center snapped the ball into CR’s hands. The offensive and defensive lines collided, the sound like firecracker pops in the wintry air of the after-school practice. CR faded back several yards, checking for a receiver. Seeing none, he momentarily looked back to Benji on the sidelines.

  “I LOVE this, Banjo! What changed your mind?”

  “You’re being blitzed.”

  “I’m BEING BLITZ—oh, shitty shit.”

  Two defenders surged through holes in the offensive line. They were zero trouble: CR tucked the ball into his elbow, deked left before dashing to the right, and the poor JV defenders, who had dived to tackle him, got nothing for their efforts except mouthfuls of snow and laughs from the hundreds of people watching the practice from the stadium’s bleachers.

  With the effortless grace of his mighty and Einsteinian arm, CR let the football fly toward an open receiver on the very far end of the field. The throw was a spiraling leather missile slicing through the flurries, and the crowd gasped in a kind of exalted amazement.

  CR didn’t seem all that interested. He was bending over to help the defenders up even as the receiver downfield pulled the pass into his chest and sprinted into the end zone. Men in the stands shouted, “Hell yes!” and “Go, Magic, go!” and (this one made Benji laugh out loud) “God bless America!”

  Coach Nicewarner blew his whistle, clapping. “Don’t think we can end better than that! That’s practice, gentlemen!”

  CR took off his helmet, his hair matted and sweat soaked, and jogged toward the sidelines. In the cold, his head steamed a little. There was a murmur of excitement from fans in the stands, but CR didn’t go for them. He stopped in front of Benji, looking him straight in the face.

  Benji worked to appear calm, which was tough after the most uncalm day he could remember. After seeing the SUV, he had waited at the house until Papaw got back from work mid-morning; he didn’t feel safe leaving the pod at the house, and he didn’t think McKedrick would come back if Papaw was home. Benji had told Papaw he’d forgotten his history book, then biked to school, spending the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do. He didn’t know if McKedrick had been in the SUV, let alone if he knew anything about the saucer. In fact, as the day went on, Benji felt increasingly confident that things would work out the way they were meant to: perfectly. But he refused to take the chance.

  “I can’t believe you want to do the prank, Banjo,” CR now said quietly, beaming. “What changed your mind?”

  “I was just thinking that it’s something I know you wanted to do for a long time,” Benji said.

  “What a sweetie pie my friend is.” Then CR giggled, pulled Benji in, and gave him a noogie. It was too affectionate, too loving, for Benji to get mad. After CR was finished, he kissed the top of Benji’s head with a cartoon sound: mwah!

  “So we should figure out what we’re gonna do, right?” Benji said.

  “Oh, baby, I know what we’re gonna do. I’ve only been planning this for a million years. Step one is, we need to grab Zeeko and tell him to get some of his dad’s supply of Icy Hot. And you know those things the cheerleaders use to shoot shirts at the games?”

  “The T-shirt cannons.”

  “Right, we’re gonna go grab those bad boys, too.”

  So they grabbed those two bad boys from the field house equipment closet. They found Zeeko outside the stadium gates with his dad in the community health truck (which looked like a s
ilver-plated UPS truck) and got him to come with them. After they bought a couple of additional supplies from Walmart, Benji called Ellie. She sounded excited when she picked up, and after Benji explained the plan and asked her to meet them at his house, she said, “I want you to know, Benji Lightman, that I’m doing this only because I am a better getaway driver than Christopher Robin, and I do not want you to get in trouble. See you in ten minutes.”

  “Why do we need to go to your house?” CR asked Benji after they’d hung up.

  “I just have to grab a couple things.”

  But it was just one thing, really.

  Adrenaline had helped Benji move the heavy pod into his magic steamer trunk by himself earlier. But the adrenaline had faded. Papaw was in his bedroom, trying to catch up on sleep. As Benji struggled to quietly pull the trunk from the closet where he’d hidden it, CR jogged over and said, “Allow me, buddy.”

  Before Benji could object, CR picked up the trunk. He grunted. “What you got in this thing, a dead body?”

  “Some new props for the assembly tomorrow. I was thinking we could drop them off in the theater at school after the prank. Ellie’s got a key, and I wanted to get there early tomorrow to practice anyway.”

  CR looked at him a moment, and Benji could not read his expression. Then CR just said, “Sweet!”

  They decided to take the RustRocket because the guys from Newporte High School in Indianapolis might recognize CR’s truck. After they loaded the magic trunk into the back of the station wagon, Benji took the front seat, and he smiled. Ellie was wearing his scarf.