The Great Powers Outage
Page 19
The crowd began chattering in surprise as I whipped out the document I had found buried away amid a sea of paperwork and records down at city hall. I handed it to the mayor who scanned it quickly.
“The boy is right,” he said as he looked back at the crowd. “Professor Brain-Drain’s candidacy is illegal. Ten years ago, he served one week in prison—for failing to properly register a blimp.”
EPILOGUE
The Race Is Run . . . or Only Begun?
Cannonball’s team trounced mine in the elections on Tuesday. Don’t even ask me why I was surprised. Despite having delivered on my promise to return everyone’s powers before the election, my classmates decided they had already gotten what they wanted from us. Cannonball, on the other hand, had brought a bag of candy bars and offered to hand them out to anyone who voted for his side. It was a landslide.
The Spore had cemented his uncontested run when he showed up the day before with a campaign poster. It had shown a blown-up image of a photo he had gotten with himself and Captain Radio on Sunday. The poster read: CAPTAIN RADIO ENDORSES THE SPORE: “HE’LL BE THE LAST GUY TO LET YOU DOWN,” SAYS THE CAPTAIN.
I suspect he’ll get lots of work as Transparent Girl’s financial dealings lead to ever more fish floating to the top of our aquarium tank. Of course, I could just be bitter.
But the truth was I had other things on my mind as I made my way toward downtown and police headquarters after school. I had been summoned there by Professor Brain-Drain himself. I didn’t have to accept his invitation, but something told me I should.
As I walked up the sidewalk toward police headquarters, I had the sudden impression I was being watched. Among all the people coming and going, I caught sight of a familiar figure sitting on one of the benches that lined the main pathway. It was Dr. Telomere.
“Well done, boy,” I thought I heard him say. “And, remember, time will always tell.”
I was just about to approach him when a figure stepped between us.
“I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude, young man,” Mayor Whitewash said as he stuck out his hand for me to shake. “I doubt I would have won the election without your detective work.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” I replied. “I feel responsible for that, too.”
“I lost my father fifty years ago.” The mayor shook his head sadly. “He chose to pursue a plan of domination rather than raise my brothers and me. It took all my abilities in my first election to convince the people of Superopolis that I was not my father’s son. Besides, he was always embarrassed by me because I only had a pale version of his power.”
As the mayor patted me on the shoulder and continued on, I thought how lucky I was to have a father who was proud of me with or without a power. And Dr. Telomere hinted that I might just yet turn out to have one. I turned back to the bench he had been sitting on, but it was now empty. I shrugged and continued on my way.”
Once inside, I was led down a long gloomy hallway by a police officer and brought before a solid glass wall. On the other side stood Professor Brain-Drain.
“Prison isn’t so bad the second time around,” he said as my escort left us alone. “And, thankfully, the sentence for lying on a candidate registration form is only two weeks. I’ll be out before you know it.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, there’s still a mountain-size chunk of prodigium waiting for me beneath Crater Hill.”
“You wouldn’t try using it to send everyone back in time again, would you?”
“Of course not,” he sneered. “I would never repeat myself. I don’t need to. There is no end to the mischief I could make with the amount of power stored in that rock.”
“Yet you still have no power of your own.”
“Yes, you’re right.” He smiled sinisterly. “Everyone’s abilities returned except mine. Why would that be?”
“Because everyone stopped eating the PseudoChips,” I said as I felt my nerves begin to twitch with concern.
“But I never started eating them,” he pointed out. “It was only in the last twenty-four hours that I began to realize that the problem wasn’t with what people were eating. It was what they weren’t eating that had made all the difference. The same thing that I also haven’t eaten for ten years now.”
The feeling in my gut turned to icy fear, and the Professor could see it reflected in my eyes. It was only then that I noticed the bowl of potato chips sitting on the table in Professor Brain-Drain’s cell.
“I have to give you credit, boy,” he said as he casually reached toward the bowl and took a single chip from it. “Your manipulation of events this past week has been nothing less than masterful.”
He raised the chip to his mouth and then paused. As his hand began to shake, a look of revulsion crept across his face.
“You’ve kept the truth a secret from everyone,” he said. “Everyone . . . but me.”
And then he popped the potato chip into his mouth and began to chew.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM BONIFACE may or may not exist. Ordinary Boy, after all, tells his own story. Mr. Boniface could simply be a creation of the publisher in order to fulfill the requirement that an author be listed on the cover of this book. Given that possibility, there is no harm in revealing that Mr. Boniface has lent his name to over two dozen far less wordy children´s books that were also in need of an author. Unless, of course, he didn´t, which would make this entire biography irrelevant.
For exclusive information on your favorite authors and artists, visit www.authortracker.com.
CREDITS PAGE
Jacket art © 2008 by Stephen Gilpin
COPYRIGHT
The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy,Book Three: The Great Powers Outage
Text copyright © 2008 by William Boniface
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Stephen Gilpin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © February 2009 ISBN: 9780061881121
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boniface, William.
The great powers outage / William Boniface ; illustrations by Stephen Gilpin. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The extraordinary adventures of Ordinary Boy ; bk. 3)
[1. Heroes—Fiction.] I. Gilpin, Stephen, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.B6416Gr 2008
2007049579
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
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FIRST EDITION
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