by Scott Jarol
“Thank you, Mr. Portman. It was thoughtful of you to protect me.”
He helped her to her feet.
“Whatever could have caused such a violent malfunction?” she said.
“I’m sorry, Gladys, all I did was pour my coffee.” Mr. Portman looked shaken and embarrassed. Blood trickled from a cut on his forearm where a sliver from the glass coffeepot still protruded.
“I’m sure it’s not your fault. We’ll ask Doc to take a look at that coffeemaker. Right now, I want you to go to the nurse’s office and have that cleaned up and bandaged. I’m afraid you may need a stitch or two.”
She straightened her tailored jacket before resuming her morning routine.
“Ready, steady, and smart!” They repeated her mantra together.
But when the principal touched the doorknob to her office, she received yet another shock.
* * *
Zeke knew he had to wring every last watt from the QuARC. He tuned it to match the frequencies surging through Earth’s atmosphere. Photons pelted the airborne antenna, dislodging electrons to bounce back and forth between the QuARC’s wire coils. They gained a little more energy with each bounce, like a playground swing that goes higher and higher with each easy push. On the meter he’d made to measure the strength of the current, the pointer advanced until it had pinned itself at the far right.
The odor of burning insulation and vaporized solder stung Zeke’s nose. Panicked, he started reeling in the kite, but the line shocked him and he dropped it. The kite line burned red hot and evaporated from end to end in a cloud of molten copper mist. The kite’s wooden-stick frame burst into flames, shedding foil leaves, and drifted up and away into the cold sky, buoyed on its own pocket of hot air.
Yet, strangely, current continued to surge through the QuARC. The arc lamp crackled with its blinding spark and the tangy odor of ionized air. Zeke stared in horror as his invention popped and hummed with an energy he couldn’t explain.
* * *
Inside the school building below him, Zeke’s rambunctious electrons escaped their wires. The invisible horde swarmed over checkered tile floors, across walls, and between stacks of books. The electrons wove themselves into sweaters and coiled around tingling limbs.
In the corridors, teachers and students twitched.
Principal Fairchild watched in annoyance as the new history teacher, Ms. Hammond, tiptoed up as if trying to avoid stepping in something unpleasant. “Principal Fairchild, what’s happening?” She reached awkwardly around her back as if swatting a mosquito. “Something keeps biting me.”
“That ain’t no bugs,” said Mr. Bruder, joining them. “It’s more like static electricity, I think.”
“Those are not bugs,” Principal Fairchild repeated, correcting his English.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Bruder. “Them are not bugs.”
She resisted the urge to correct him again, preferring to focus on the more important problem. “Where’s Doc?”
“Clueless, no doubt,” he said.
As they spoke, the history teacher’s short red hair had begun rising until it stuck out in all directions.
“What are you looking at?” Ms. Hammond asked. She reached up and touched her hair. “Oh, my.”
She trotted for the exit on her green high heels.
“Best to sound the alarm,” said the principal.
Mr. Bruder pulled the closest emergency switch, adding clanging bells to the chaos. “I’ll find Doc,” he shouted over the noise.
Principal Fairchild speed-walked from classroom to classroom—running was prohibited in the corridors—calling out “Everyone, proceed slowly but quickly . . .”
Teachers and students puzzled over her instructions.
“I mean, we don’t want anyone injured,” she finished.
Students streamed down the hall, some panicking, a few laughing.
“I’m sure you all understand what I mean. Honestly,” she added aloud to herself, “all those drills, and it’s still complete chaos.”
The fluorescent light tubes overhead flashed and burst in a flurry of sparks and tinkling glass flakes.
“Cover your eyes!” she hollered over the noise of the students jostling through the windowless corridors, heading for daylight at the main entrance.
Cynthia Des Monde trotted up behind her, the hood of her coat pulled up for protection. “Principal Fairchild! Principal Fairchild, I think you need to see something.”
She turned to imply that the principal should follow her.
Principal Fairchild frowned. “Cynthia, I think you should go outside with the other students. We’re having an emergency.”
“I know. That’s why this is just so super important. I think I found out what’s causing all this.”
Doc hurried around a corner. “I wonder what’s happening?”
Schrödinger, Doc’s dachshund who followed him everywhere, was sniffing out the situation on his own. Although he couldn’t help jumping each time a spark nipped his nose, he’d seen worse.
“Doc, where on earth have you been?” asked Principal Fairchild, without pausing for his reply. “Mr. Bruder ran off to find you. We’re in the middle of a crisis. Can’t you do something, like flip some circuit breakers or change some fuses or something?”
“It may not be that simple,” said Doc.
She raised her eyebrows and blinked her eyes rapidly. She was not fond of disorder, not at all, and Doc wasn’t showing any sense of urgency. “Cynthia was just saying she’s found something.”
“Hmm,” said Doc. “Okay then, maybe we should take a look.”
Cynthia led them up to the roof, where Principal Fairchild reluctantly ascended the narrow spiral staircase to the bell tower, clutching Doc’s wrist as he climbed behind her.
Schrödinger hopped up to rest his front paws on the first step, keeping an eye on things from below.
* * *
In the kitchen, steam poured under and over the doors that led from the lunchroom. The head cook pushed through the swinging double doors to investigate. Steam billowed from the serving line counter, which was supposed to be warming up to hold heaping tubs of mashed potatoes and vegetable stew that would come out of the kitchen at noon.
“It’s like a sauna in here,” she hollered to the cooks in the kitchen. “The water is boiling away.”
She wrapped her hand in her apron and tried turning down the heat. “Yee, golly!” The knob burned right through the apron.
“That’s strange,” she said to herself. The steam table had been on its lowest setting.
“Did someone already turn this down?”
No one answered.
“Where did everyone go? I didn’t say it was time for a coffee break.”
She burst back into the kitchen just as three huge pots erupted like geysers, blasting their lids to the ceiling and launching potatoes in every direction as the lights flickered out.
“What in heaven’s name is happening here?” she shouted. “Get out. Out, out, out!”
They held on to one another’s chef’s coats and felt their way out of the kitchen, dodging potato bombs and swatting at stinging sparks.
* * *
Zeke was adjusting his meters and dials, trying to bring the QuARC under control, when Principal Fairchild shuffled onto the tiny platform at the top of the bell tower. What was she doing up here? And here came Doc—and Cynthia. This must be Cynthia’s doing.
Principal Fairchild was obviously not fond of heights, and the gusting winds threatened, in her own mind, to toss her right off the tower. She clutched at the railing, temporarily speechless. Doc and Cynthia shielded their eyes from the intense light of the arc lamp, which turned the steeple into a landlocked lighthouse, visible for miles even in daylight.
Doc slipped past Principal Fairchild to examine the QuARC.
“Dig it,” he said with some excitement. “It’s working.”
“I don’t get it,” Zeke said to Doc, ignoring Cynthia and Principal Fairchild. “
No antenna—totally fried. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it can’t be from up there.”
He pointed at the sky.
“Hey, that’s crazy, man. Whatever it is, you lit up the whole town.”
Doc crouched for a closer look while patting his pockets with his left hand in search of his glasses, which, as usual, were not there. “That’s a pretty piece of work.”
Principal Fairchild finally managed to pry open her eyes. “Doc, were you aware of Mr. Kapopoulos’s activities?”
“Yeah,” said Doc. “Groovy little science experiment.”
“Science experiment? This science experiment has made a mess of my school!”
“Might’ve been a secondary resonant field,” he said, thinking out loud. He gazed toward the reflective pyramids of the lab, like a sailor scouting an iceberg from high in a ship’s crow’s nest. “They must be getting pretty close.”
“Excuse me, who do you mean by ‘they?’” asked Cynthia. She pursed her lips at Principal Fairchild in dramatic sympathy for Doc’s apparent delusions.
Zeke bent closer to Doc, too curious to even consider the other two. He had a feeling Doc knew something he and others didn’t. “Where could something like that come from? There’s nothing around here that powerful.”
“Nothing up here, anyway,” said Doc. “Hey! You never know. You’re kind of trekking the undiscovered country here. Revolutionary stuff.”
The principal shook her head in frustration. “Can you please shut it down before someone is seriously injured?”
“Right,” said Doc.
Zeke snapped upright. She couldn’t make him stop now!
But Doc nodded an apology at Zeke, then unfolded his pocket tool and snipped one of the QuARC’s connecting wires. The arc lamp went out, leaving a pair of glowing stubs that quickly cooled and faded to ashen gray, the same color as Zeke’s face.
Zeke became vaguely aware of the sound of the Chairman’s massive limousine speeding away below them, escorted by the bodyguards riding their four roaring snowmobiles. Would the Chairman consider today’s test a success? He would, wouldn’t he? He had to!
Zeke started toward the stairs to chase after the Chairman when the principal grabbed his shirt and spun him around. “Well, Mr. Kapopoulos . . .”
Zeke blinked, his emotions overloaded.
“Gladys,” Doc tried to calm her. “This is a pretty impressive little invention.”
Principal Fairchild removed her glasses and glared at Doc in austere silence, making clear her complete lack of interest in Doc’s justification for Zeke’s irresponsible behavior.
“Terrible waste of talent, don’t you think, Principal Fairchild?” Cynthia lamented.
“I hope you’ll talk some sense into him, Cynthia. Pay attention, young man. You may learn something from Cynthia’s leadership skills. If not for her quick thinking, you might have destroyed this entire school. There are serious consequences for damaging school property. Ingenuity is no excuse for recklessness. Doc, you will destroy and dispose of this dangerous contraption.”
Zeke roused himself.
“You have no right to take it,” he croaked in panic. “It’s mine!”
The principal had no more patience. “I do not appreciate your disrespectful tone, young man. I am transferring you immediately to the Agricultural Sciences program. You will report to Mr. Bruder.”
She pointed down the steep staircase, holding her position until Zeke grudgingly turned to descend. Behind him, he could hear Cynthia helping her down the metal staircase as Doc dismantled the QuARC, his last hope at saving himself and his mother, not to mention how the Chairman would deal with him.
Chapter 3
North Star Laboratory
Two hundred feet underground beneath the pyramids of the lab, Dr. Howard Steiner looked up to see his boss enter the dimly lit control room. More than forty technicians monitored computer displays to make sure every subsystem of Triton, the largest and most complex machine ever built, was functioning correctly.
Masked behind dark, reflective glasses, Dr. Nigel Willis appeared expressionless. In his black suit, black tie, and pressed white shirt, he looked more like a corporate CEO than a physicist.
“Audio, please,” he ordered.
Howard flipped on an audio channel that rose and fell like a chorus of violins, turning numbers into sound. He took his hands off the controls as Dr. Willis listened for the slightest variation in Triton’s heartbeat, an incredible ability unhindered if not actually boosted by his blindness.
Triton guzzled power from the overhead cables shouldered on steel towers stretching over hills and prairies from a distant hydroelectric dam. It drank so much power that it dimmed the lights in homes and buildings receiving their daily electricity rations. Deep underground, protons orbited Triton’s three enormous accelerator rings, each thirty miles in circumference.
As the particles approached the speed of light, relativity multiplied their masses 10,000 times. A network of computers herded them through super-cooled magnets powerful enough to pull down a skyscraper. The ultrahigh energy particle beams split from three into twelve and again into more than one hundred, snaking every which way through knotted pipes that fanned out and penetrated the walls of a huge, spherical cavern, entering from all directions to surround a pellet suspended at the cavern’s precise center.
There, massive collisions unleashed streamers of energetic photons like wraiths fleeing shackles forged in ancient stars. The photons struck the pellet’s palladium atoms over and over again, ringing them like submicroscopic bells. Vibration piled on vibration until the wild oscillations ripped them apart. Shreds of matter dematerialized into pure energy, with the potential to meet the needs of every person on the planet.
It could reboot modern civilization—that was the theory, at least. But the universe prefers to follow its own rules, Howard thought, and Triton wasn’t yet working according to Dr. Willis’s design.
“Dr. Willis.” It was Dr. Gary Chang, another research assistant and Howard’s friend. “I really need to talk with you.”
Howard flinched. He knew what was coming next.
“Dr. Chang,” said Willis, “I would advise you to save your hobbies until we’ve proven to the trustees that your incompetence shouldn’t deprive this project of continued funding.”
“I’ve run the calculations over and over again,” said Gary. “The void will expand until it becomes self-sustaining and probably irreversible.”
Willis was not fond of bad news in general, but when it contradicted his own theories, you were just setting yourself up for intellectual target shooting—and Willis was an expert marksman. Gary was putting himself at center stage as the sitting duck.
Willis adjusted his suit jacket, measuring by feel to expose one inch of crisply pressed cuff below the ends of his sleeves. “Mr. Chang, I’ll be happy to discuss your analysis next week. I’m sure I can help you find your error.”
Howard knew Willis was well aware of Triton’s most serious side effect, a hole in time and space—a perfect void—that had first opened up in Triton’s core during the earliest experiments. Willis considered the phenomenon to be under control. With a casual flick of one intellectual talon, he would snag any loose thread in Gary’s argument and rip it apart stitch by stitch. Why couldn’t Gary just shut up?
“ . . . and I don’t think you understand what’s really happening in there,” Gary was saying a little too loudly.
Howard realized his friend’s protests were whining into a control room now utterly silent, empty of the usual key-tapping fingers and murmured consultations of the other engineers, physicists, and technicians. He braced for the firestorm of insults.
But instead of unleashing his wrath, Willis paused to reflect. He shifted to a paternal tone of voice. “I acknowledge your concern, Dr. Chang, and you must act on your own conscience. Therefore, please choose: Either return to your station and continue your work, or resign your post and leave the facility.”
Howard jumped as a warning message flashed on Triton’s control room monitors.
“Malfunction in the Beta Ring,” announced one of the technicians.
Howard swiped through screen after screen of spiking graphs.
“It’s coming from the school,” he mouthed soundlessly to Gary.
“Is it Doc?” Gary asked with equal silence.
Howard and Gary had already deduced that a man-made, high-frequency electrical field had swamped Triton’s delicate sensors like a raging solar storm. Although neither of them would mention his name aloud, they both suspected their friend Doc had something to do with it. Doc’s crazy experiments had been harmless so far, Howard thought, but he sure had built some weird gear. Now it appeared he’d finally found a power source with enough juice to fire up his equipment.
“ . . . more precise, please. What kind of malfunction?” Dr. Willis was asking.
“Power drain,” Howard replied. “Sir.”
“Can you stabilize it?”
When Dr. Willis asked a question, he intended it as a command. With a flick of his fingers, he summoned Howard and Gary closer for a private discussion. He clasped his hands behind his back and breathed slowly, with the deceptive calm of a crouching tiger. “We’ve completed countless tests and adjustments. Why are we still experiencing critical failures?”
Howard opened his mouth to begin, but Gary shook his head to let him know he’d do the talking.
“We may have had an overload,” Gary said.
“Perhaps I misunderstood,” said Willis. “First Dr. Steiner told me we had a power drain, and now you say it was an overload. Which is it? You contradict each other, Dr. Chang.”
“Excuse me, sir, I was unclear. We had a drain, which caused the adjacent units to compensate and become overloaded. Then the next one repeated the process. It was a domino effect. The computers shut them down one at a time until the effect cascaded all the way around the ring.”
