The Age Altertron

by Mark Dunn

  Off the two boys raced through the Professor’s large dark house, their eyes better adjusted now to the lack of light.

  Meanwhile, in the front yard, bright car lights illuminated Petey and Grover as they started to dismount their bikes. At the same time, three men got out of the car that had been following them. One was Police Chief Rowe. The others were two new police recruits. The two men were very good friends. Only a couple of weeks earlier they had sat next to each other in kindergarten.

  “You’re not Rodney and Wayne,” said Lonnie, looking at Petey and Grover.

  “And you have no business being a police chief, you big baboon!” taunted Petey.

  “Why Petey!” whispered Grover. “You said the word ‘baboon’ and some other ‘b’ words too!”

  “I did, didn’t I?” said Petey with a proud grin. ”Maybe my brain has finally found a way to get around my ‘b’ problem.

  Before Grover could respond, Lonnie barked, “You know what I ought to do? I ought to arrest the both of you!”

  “Hey! Lookit! Arrest them!” said one of the police chief’s officers, pointing at Rodney and Wayne. He had just caught sight of the twins coming through the Professor’s backyard gate. The rookie officer was now jumping up and down, both from excitement at spotting the culprits and from having to go to the bathroom.

  “We’ve been tricked!” cried the Police Chief. “Shoot to kill, men.”

  “Bang! Bang!” said the obedient second officer, pointing the toy gun he had put into his holster in the place of the real one he had been issued.

  Lonnie was losing patience. “What is that? Where is your gun?”

  He turned to the other officer. “Take your gun, like this…” He cocked the trigger of his own service revolver “And give it to those two criminal house breakers right between the eyes!”

  Rodney and Wayne were just rounding the corner of the Professor’s backyard fence so they could run off through the adjoining back yard (retracing the route they had taken to get here) when Lonnie Rowe raised his gun and took aim. Part of the beam from the car’s headlights shone perfectly upon his two fleeing targets. Grover thought of jumping Lonnie and pinning him to the ground, but there was too much distance between the two of them. Petey had a better, quicker idea. He angled his head so that his steel head plate would catch some of the car’s headlight beam and bounce it back into Lonnie’s eyes, temporarily blinding the police chief at just the moment that he was about to fire two bullets—one for Rodney and one for Wayne.

  “Lookit!” Wayne called to his brother. “Petey’s used his own head as a beam deflector!”

  Lonnie cursed and tried to block the reflected light with his hand but by then it was too late. Rodney and Wayne had disappeared into the darkness of the adjoining yard.

  “Don’t just stand there! Go after them!” Lonnie yelled to his two rookies, one of whom was now crying.

  “We can’t!” said the one who was still dry-eyed.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because we’re both afraid of the dark!”

  “Where are we going?” said Wayne, huffing and puffing at his brother’s side. “To City Hall. I have a feeling that the deflector is somewhere in Jackie’s office.”

  “Why would you think that? Why wouldn’t he just toss it away?” “Because I just thought of another reason that Jackie might

  want to meet us tomorrow. Something else that he might want to bargain for.”

  “And what is that, Rodney?”

  “Let’s stop here, at this picnic table and catch our breaths.”

  The boys were now in City Park. It was quiet and dark and cool. It was a sweater kind of night. “Don’t forget your sweaters, boys!” Rodney could picture his great aunt saying as the two boys rushed out to meet up with their buddies for some moonlight touch football. Sometimes their father would also join them. “And you too, Mitchell!” Aunt Mildred would add. “The night has a nip to it!”

  This night had a nip to it too.

  “Did you ever think, Wayne, that Jackie might start to get tired of being the mayor of a town in which nobody is younger than fiftytwo? And next year will be fifty-three and then fifty-four. We will be an old and dying town for the rest of our days, Wayne. Now at some point, if you were the mayor of a town like that, wouldn’t you start to think about maybe turning back the clock a few years— maybe not all the way back, but just far enough back so you’d get to keep your power and your guns and get to keep telling everybody what to do, but still get to be a young man while you’re doing it? Remember how much Jackie’s father wanted to stay a younger man? So much that he sent Jackie to the Professor’s laboratory to destroy the original Age Altertron!”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. It makes sense.”

  “It actually makes a lot of sense,” said a voice from the darkness. The owner of the voice stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself. It was Jackie. “In fact, I was thinking about it this very night.” “What are you doing here?” asked Wayne.

  “Well, certainly not chasing after you two. You’re a lot faster than I am, I can tell that.”

  “Lonnie tried to kill us,” said Rodney.

  “That sounds like Lonnie. He’s a juvenile delinquent you know.”

  “So what are you doing here?” repeated Wayne.

  “Sitting here thinking. Remembering how much fun Lonnie and I had turning over all those baby carriages. I miss those days. Simpler times. Good times.”

  Jackie sat down on the top of the picnic table. He took something out of his pocket and set it down next to him. It was the tertiary beam deflector. “Is this what you guys want?”

  Rodney and Wayne nodded, too surprised even to speak.

  “And you’re right, Rodney. It’s a pretty good bargaining chip. So why don’t you listen to my proposal and tell me what you think?” Jackie didn’t wait for a response. “Give me a year to put things in place—to firm up my hold on this town. One year. And during that year and all the years after that, you two will be free men. You have my promise. Give me that year and then we’ll pull the Professor out of mothballs and get him to activate his Age Altertron, and take off, let’s say thirty years from all of our ages. I’ll be—let’s see—thirtyseven then. That’s not a bad age to be, don’t you think? Think of all the things we could do that our parents would never let us do. And all the things that we could keep them from doing for a change.”

  “There’s nothing I can think of that I would want to keep my dad from doing,” said Wayne. “I’d be pretty happy just to have him come home!” Wayne stared into a bank of moonlit clouds, his thoughts partly on his father and partly on the tertiary beam deflector he had just slyly picked up and slipped into his pocket.

  “And what are you going to give us, Jackie?” asked Rodney. “Besides not throwing us in jail for the rest of our lives.”

  “How about the privilege of working with the Professor, just as you always have, to save this town from future calamities—to be the big heroes two, three times a month. I mean, that’s what you guys love, right?”

  “I’ll tell you what we would love even more,” said Rodney. “Not having to live in a town with a Jackie Stovall for a mayor—a town where my Aunt Mildred has to lie on a cot, and nobody knows if they’re going to get shot at by your crazy police chief.”

  “I can’t speak for my crazy police chief, monkeys, but I’ll tell you this: we’ll close that nursing home down the minute we’re all young again, and those old folks can start pulling their weight around here again. Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Boy Scout, Jackie,” said Wayne. “And you know what else, Jackie? I have the deflector in my pocket now. And you know what else? I’m going to knock you right off this picnic table the same way you knocked over all those baby carriages last week.” With that, Wayne did exactly what he said he would do. He took a big swing at Jackie that sent him straight to the ground. Then he and Rodney took off.

  Out from behind a st
and of evergreen trees, several police officers now appeared. “What were you doing back there—playing Tiddly Winks?” Jackie shouted at them and then waved at them to go after Rodney and Wayne. As they ran off, Jackie pulled himself to his feet and massaged his throbbing hip at the place where it had struck the ground. He started walking—with a slight limp—in the direction that Rodney and Wayne and his police officers had gone. He continued his conversation with his twin adversaries as if they were still there: “I was giving you boys the chance to keep yourselves out of jail! I was giving us all a way to be young again! And you blew it! You stupid goofball idiot-numskulls!”

  Every now and then an officer would fire a shot, but it was too dark for them to get a good aim, and besides, most of them had never even picked up a gun before, except a toy cowboy six-shooter. But Rodney and Wayne weren’t taking any chances; they ran faster that night in their sixty-six-year-old bodies than they had ever run as thirteen-year-olds.

  “ They’re on foot and we’re on foot,” said Wayne panting, as the boys reached Old Hickory Road.

  “So we have to get the upper hand. We have to get a car.”

  “There’s the Professor’s house just a block away,” said Wayne.

  “And lookit! Lonnie’s patrol car is gone,” said Rodney, noting the Professor’s empty driveway. He grinned. “I’ll bet that ol’ Nash will give us just the head start we need to beat Jackie and all of those nursery school police officers to our house.”

  Wayne nodded, a big grin curling his own lips.

  Rodney raised the garage door. And Wayne drove her out. And she was beautiful. And Wayne thought it was a shame that there wasn’t time to pull down the top and give the Nash Ambassador convertible the full appreciation she deserved.

  Rodney was surprised at what a good driver his brother was. He only drove up over the curb twice.

  The tertiary beam deflector was put into place. And the cover plate was screwed on. And once again the Professor found himself in the frustrating position of having to engage one of his inventions without properly testing it first. But Rodney and Wayne and the Professor had no choice. Jackie and his thugs would soon be at the McCall house. And it would not take long for them to figure it all out—that there had always been a secret room underneath the house—a perfect room for Professor Johnson’s new laboratory. And why wouldn’t it be? Wasn’t the Professor fond of secret cellars? And it would not take Jackie and his men long to find the door and break it down, or they could always remove the floorboards— anything to get to that cellar as quickly as possible and stop the Professor and Rodney and Wayne from activating the new Altertron.

  No, there was no time to test the machine, to run the usual diagnostics. And this was a machine that perhaps required even more testing than usual. For the very first time the Professor had delegated the construction of one of his inventions to his two apprentices. Rodney and Wayne McCall, with Professor Johnson’s guidance, had put every piece of it together with their own hands. Would the new Age Altertron succeed? There was only one way to find out.

  At the City Nursing Home Aunt Mildred lay upon her narrow cot, praying. Former Pitcherville police officer (Loud Noises Unit) Woody Wall, was saying a little prayer himself as he soaked his tired feet in a tub of hot water. At the Ragsdale house Petey and Grover sat Indian-style on the floor of Petey’s bedroom surrounded by all the trappings of Petey’s boyhood (his model airplanes, his bug collection under glass), their eyes closed tight, their fingers crossed. In the Craft living room Becky waited nervously upon the edge of the sofa, sitting next to her father who was just as nervous as she was. There would be no waiting for midnight this time. Because, as luck would have it, midnight was already there. It came just as the switch was flipped, and within the bat of an eye every Pitchervillian was returned to the age he was before.

  Aunt Mildred sat straight up on her cot and let out a happy yell. Others around her sat up as well, and when they realized what had happened, they started to hoot and yip and jump up and down in their now much younger bodies. Officer Wall felt the pain lift from his soaking feet. Becky touched her neck to find it smooth and youthful again. Petey and Grover felt the tops of their heads and discovered hair—and two quite bushy mops of hair at that!

  And standing next to the machine that Rodney and Wayne had built, the machine that finally saved the town of Pitcherville from its worst calamity yet, Rodney looked into the face of his brother and saw his mirror image, and Wayne looked at Rodney in the same way, and each twin was pleased to see a reflection in the other of his own boyish grin.

  As for Jackie Stovall and Lonnie Rowe:— well, we’ll tell what became of them in the very next book.

  RODNEY’S NOTEBOOK

  What we learned from the Age Changer-Deranger-Estranger:

  1.) The calamities are getting harder to correct. Being eighteen months old one day then being sixty-six the very next day is much harder than being the color of peaches.

  2.) The calamities are getting more dangerous. Several old people almost died and I bruised both of my knees learning how to walk all over again.

  3.) The Unknown Entity took our Dad but it also took his diorama “Democracity II,” even though it wasn’t finished yet. Why did they want to see it? Is he still working on it?

  4.) Why can’t I call my Grandpa and Grandma McCall on the phone but Aunt Mildred gets to listen to her radio shows and Petey gets to watch his wrestling shows on TV and Wayne and I get to keep watching our cowboy shows?

  5.) Petey and the other young children were taken to a special place without walls or floors. A place where they floated as if they were in space, where there was nothing but a telephone. Where is this place?

  6.) Are Jackie and Lonnie working for the Unknown Entity? Lonnie is too stupid. But maybe Jackie…

  The End

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes to thank the following individuals for helping to launch this new book series through their support and valuable input: my wife Mary; Ariel, Jake, and Laura Atlas; Kira and Pat Gabridge; and Jack Walsh. The author also wishes to thank his literary agent Amy Rennert and his editor David Adams, as well as his publisher David Poindexter and editor-in-chief at MacAdam/Cage Pat Walsh, for their many years of dedicated support to this quixotic scribbler.