Tesla's Attic

by Neal Shusterman

  The well-dressed team fanned out with equipment that looked like metal detectors and dowsing rods. While they examined the field, Mr. Peaches-and-Cream made a beeline for the Slates.

  When Nick’s father saw the man approaching, he left Danny sitting in the back of the ambulance.

  “Can I help you?” Mr. Slate asked.

  Nick and Caitlin watched, keeping a little distance.

  The man flashed his badge, and his father looked at it.

  “You’re from the Department of Defense?”

  “So it would seem,” the man said, flipping the badge holder closed. “I understand there was an incident here today. I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  “It wasn’t an incident,” Nick’s father said, already defensive. “It was a meteorite, not a missile attack. Not exactly a matter of national security. If you’re from the DOD, then you’re wasting your time.”

  The man gave Nick’s father a patronizing grin. “Just doing our jobs, sir. Is it true that your son caught this meteorite?”

  Nick’s father looked away. “So? Stranger things have happened.” Which wasn’t exactly true, and they both knew it.

  Right about then the paramedics pulled Nick’s father away to fill out some paperwork. As he went, Mr. Slate gave Mr. Peaches-and-Cream a suspicious look.

  Then the man turned his head smoothly, like an owl, zeroing in on Nick, and Nick felt his blood temperature drop a few degrees.

  “Hello, Nick,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  Nick turned to Caitlin for support, but she was gone. The man put his hand out to shake, but Nick didn’t take it.

  “You don’t trust me. I don’t blame you. Trust must be earned.”

  “If you’re from the Defense Department, why didn’t you say so at the garage sale?” Nick asked.

  “Defense?” said a passing policeman. “These guys are with the FBI.”

  Nick put his hands on his hips. “So which is it?”

  The man whipped out his badge, flipping the cover open. “You tell me.”

  Nick looked at the official ID and read it out loud: “Dr. Alan Jorgenson, Dark Lord of the Sith?”

  Jorgenson sighed and rolled his eyes. “So it would seem.”

  “What is this, some kind of joke?”

  A little embarrassed, Jorgenson put the badge away. “It’s not an ID badge. It’s a neuro-antagonistic mirror. When you look at it, it reflects back the most intimidating thing you expect to see.”

  “Sorry,” said Nick. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “Good for you,” said Jorgenson. “Neither do we. It’s science. It may appear as magic to the less enlightened, but people like you and me can see through it to the truth. Scientific smoke and mirrors, practically applied.” He smiled. “It’s like that quantum business card I gave you. I’m sure it’s turned up in unlikely places, has it not?”

  He waited for an answer, but Nick refused to give him one.

  “Well,” Jorgenson continued, “quantum physics dictates that it will remain a part of your life until you physically hand it to someone else. Then it becomes their problem.”

  “How about the funky suits?” Nick had to ask. “More smoke and mirrors?”

  “Yes,” said Jorgenson, without hesitating. “They’re made of the fabric of time and space.” He paused for a beat, then said, “That’s a joke.” And when Nick still didn’t laugh, he smoothed out his suit jacket. “It’s Madagascan spider silk. Very rare. Very comfortable. I could get you an outfit if you like.”

  That succeeded in making Nick laugh. Mainly because Jorgenson was serious. Nick looked around at the man’s colleagues and the odd devices they were using on the baseball field.

  “So who are you really?” he asked.

  “We’re scientists from the University of Colorado, nothing more or less sinister than that.” And then he cut to the chase. “Now, maybe your father and everyone else here thinks this was some random event, but you and I both know it wasn’t. So please, Nick, in the name of science, why don’t you tell me exactly how that meteorite was pulled out of the sky.”

  Suddenly, from behind them, Danny said, “It was me. I caught it all by myself.” He climbed out of the ambulance.

  “Danny, be quiet,” Nick said.

  “I’ve been catching stuff all day. I’m really good at it. I never thought I’d catch a falling star, though. Hey, don’t I get a wish or something?”

  Jorgenson knelt down to Danny’s level. Nick watched as the man’s eyes, smooth as spider silk, slid to the glove sitting on the bumper of the ambulance behind them. Then his gaze turned back to Danny and he smiled broadly.

  “And what might that wish be, young man?”

  “Excuse me,” said their father angrily, stomping away from the paramedics. “Who gave you permission to talk to my sons?”

  Jorgenson stood, a bit flustered. “I apologize if I was a little forward.”

  “Since when does the DOD interrogate children?”

  Jorgenson put up his hands. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  A woman from Jorgenson’s team, as sharply groomed as he, brought him the charred chunk of space rock. Jorgenson held it up, turning it in his hand, regarding it like it was a crystal ball.

  “Is this it? Remarkable.”

  “And,” said Danny, reaching up and grabbing it from him, “it’s mine.”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Slate. “First rule of baseball—you catch it, you keep it.”

  “Besides,” Nick said, “a meteorite is like a piece of land, right? It belongs to the first person who claims it, fair and square.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” said their father with a smug grin. “Now, if the United States government wants to seize my son’s property, I’m sure there’s some slow, painful, legal process that can get you what you want.”

  Jorgenson gave an exasperated sigh. “No one said anything about seizing your property. We’re willing to pay for the meteorite.” Then he nodded toward the bumper of the ambulance. “And the glove that caught it, of course.”

  “Dad, no!” said Danny.

  Jorgenson pulled out a pad and wrote down a number.

  “Will this amount be sufficient?”

  He showed the paper to Nick’s father. His eyes widened, but only slightly.

  “Well…”

  “No way,” said Danny.

  So Nick’s father stood firm. “Sorry. It’s not for sale.”

  “How about now?” Jorgenson showed him another, higher number.

  Nick’s father was like a house of cards ready to fold, until he saw Danny’s eyes filling with tears.

  That’s when Nick jumped in.

  “Which is more important, Dad? Money or your son?”

  Their father took a deep breath and turned his house of cards into a stone fortress. “I’m sorry. My decision is final.”

  And Nick thought it was over…until Jorgenson produced a checkbook.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Slate. I understand you’ve been out of work. As it so happens, I know of an opening at NORAD for a man just like you. With your qualities.”

  “A job?” their father said.

  “The benefits are excellent. This check represents your first month’s salary.”

  He filled out the check and handed it to his father.

  Nick didn’t see the amount of the paycheck, but whatever it was, it made his father turn to Danny and say, “Give the man his rock.”

  Jorgenson wrenched the meteorite out of Danny’s hands against the boy’s protests.

  “And the glove,” reminded Jorgenson.

  “Forget you!” Danny cried, although forget was not precisely the word he used.

  “Let it go, Danny,” said Nick. “It’s probably better with them anyway.” He went to retrieve the mitt, then held it out to Jorgenson. “If this gets Dad a job, then it’s worth it.”

  Jorgenson took the mitt, but he seemed a little suspicious as he looked it over. “Rather unrem
arkable, isn’t it? It’s clearly old, but it shows very little sign of wear…and the pocket—it’s perfectly clean.”

  Nick took a deep breath. He knew that the mitt showed absolutely no sign of having caught a red-hot hunk of iron. This fact wasn’t lost on Jorgenson, an observant man. Very observant.

  “What is that you have there, Nick?” Jorgenson asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come now—what are you hiding behind your back?”

  Jorgenson reached behind Nick and found the other mitt that he was hiding. This one was also old, and it showed heavy wear, as though it had been through a war.

  Jorgenson smiled. “I believe that is the glove I just purchased,” he said.

  Nick looked down, his face going red.

  “Well played, Nick,” Jorgenson said, taking the glove and dropping the first one on the ground. He studied the stretch marks in the glove’s pocket. “You almost had me.” He handed it to one of his associates, who slipped the mitt in a plastic bag and quickly trotted back to where the SUVs waited.

  Back in control and infinitely pleased with himself, Jorgenson turned to Nick’s father. “The job is real, the salary is real. You and your boys will come to see that we are very much your friends.”

  Then he turned and left, while Danny looked at the ground, kicking up sod with his cleats. Nick still looked away, red in the face.

  Caitlin came running back from wherever she had disappeared to. “Nick, I saw what happened—I’m so sorry.”

  Nick glanced at the scientists getting back into their vehicles and driving off the field.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  “Well, maybe this will make you feel better,” she said. “I was going around doing my best to be a general nuisance and find out from the other scientists what they were up to. They gave me the garbage you might expect: ‘We’re taking readings,’ ‘We’re looking for anomalies,’ blah blah blah—basically trying to sound scientific without saying much of anything. And then the guy who was measuring the trench Danny created tripped over a clump of sod, and this fell off his lapel.”

  She held out to Nick a gold pin, smaller than a thumbnail. It looked like the letter A, but the crossbar, instead of being a straight line, was a figure eight—the symbol of infinity.

  “Wait a second,” Nick said. “Jorgenson had a pin, too.”

  “They all do,” whispered Caitlin. Then, with a smile, she said, “So, they have something of yours, and now you have something of theirs.”

  Nick looked up and watched the last of the SUVs pull off the field.

  “Who says they have something of mine?” Then he reached down to the grass and picked up the baseball glove that Jorgenson had dismissively discarded. This was the glove that Nick had so freely offered Jorgenson. The one that showed no signs of ever having caught anything, much less a meteorite.

  The corners of Caitlin’s mouth curled into a smile. “You didn’t!”

  “Hey,” said Nick, shrugging, “he’s the one who specifically requested the one I was holding behind my back…which was, I believe, dropped by the second baseman when he ran screaming off the field.”

  Caitlin looked at him admiringly. “That,” she said, “was masterful.”

  “No,” Nick said, “just smoke and mirrors, practically applied.”

  While Nick and Caitlin were experiencing baseball on a cosmic level that Sunday, Petula was experiencing her own personal world of wonder. Although she tried to keep a low profile as she took a number of photographs downtown that morning, the box camera was cumbersome—and an oddball object held by an oddball girl had an exponential quality about it that was bound to square, or possibly cube, any amount of public attention.

  Well, let them gawk. I don’t care. She wished she could aim the camera at the people who looked at her strangely and snap away their souls, as some cultures believed cameras had the capacity to do—but alas, that was not one of the box camera’s qualities.

  Acacia Park, located in a part of Colorado Springs that brochures called “quaint,” offered many opportunities for experimental photography. Uncle Wilber Fountain, for instance, the source of joy for small children who desired to catch their death of cold, was a fine photo op. Even this early in April it was surrounded by kids, perhaps reliving past summers when the many spouts and blowholes of the irritatingly whimsical fountain had drenched them and allowed them to claim they didn’t need to take a shower when they returned home.

  Petula was curious to see if, at night, the fountain was frequented by drunks, derelicts, druggies, and dealers—the four D’s of every downtown American park. Would the pictures she took in the child-infested light of day, when developed, show Uncle Wilber’s nighttime seedier side?

  To her delight, Petula discovered that the camera’s “focus ring” was marked from one to twenty-four, giving new meaning to the word focus. All the pictures she had taken thus far were set at twelve, which clearly meant they snapped pictures twelve hours in the future. But to see tomorrow instead of just tonight would be a fine thing indeed!

  Near the corner stood a newspaper kiosk, clinging to a dwindling hope for a nondigital future. The attendant of the little wooden booth was a man so old he could probably already smell the embalming fluid. Petula observed that he already spent so much of his time in a small wooden space, the transition to a coffin would be none too difficult. She laughed out loud. These were the kinds of lighthearted observations that made her so enjoy being out in public.

  “A candy for you this fine day, young lady?” the old man said, seeing her jovial demeanor.

  “No,” Petula told him, “just a picture.”

  “Well, I guess it’ll be CHEESE, then!” He chuckled at his own joke and gave her a smile. She snapped a picture that only caught half of his face, because he wasn’t the actual subject of the photo—the newspaper next to him was. She had already set the focus ring to twenty-four. It would be most interesting to read tomorrow morning’s headline this afternoon when she developed the negative, and to think of a way to exploit her foreknowledge.

  Then from behind her she heard, “Is that an old-fashioned box camera? My grandfather had one of those!”

  She turned to see someone who looked familiar, and yet not.

  “Petula Grabowski-Jones! I should have known you’d be the one holding such a blatantly anachronistic object.”

  Only now did Petula realize this was Ms. Planck, the lunch lady. It was the first time Petula had seen her out of her natural habitat. And without a hairnet, even. It was disturbing. The fact that she was carrying several bags from a gourmet food emporium further messed with Petula’s grasp of reality.

  Ms. Planck caught Petula’s astonished gaze and, guessing the reason, laughed. “Honey, I may serve slop for a living, but that doesn’t mean I take my work home with me.”

  “Sorry,” said Petula, looking away in uncharacteristic embarrassment.

  Ms. Planck put down her bags. “So let me see this camera of yours.”

  Petula hesitated, then realized that refusing might mean inferior lunches for the remainder of the year. If there was one thing she had learned in her years at school, it was that there were two people you needed to befriend: the Lunch Lady and the District Superintendent. Currently Petula had the latter in her pocket should she need to influence a districtwide vote. But Ms. Planck had always put up a food-service wall when it came to Petula. Here was an opportunity to tear it down.

  “Of course,” Petula said, handing her the camera. “Careful, it’s old.”

  Ms. Planck turned it in her hands like it was a puzzle box. “My grandfather’s was a Seneca Scout—but this one has no company name.”

  “I think it was a beta model. You know, a prototype.” She was glad Ms. Planck didn’t notice the initials scratched on the bottom.

  “Exquisite!” Ms. Planck handed the camera back to Petula. “Take good care of it, honey—a prototype in such good condition could finance
your college education.”

  Which, to Petula, was an insult. “I’ll be getting a scholarship,” she announced. “Academic or badminton.”

  “Is that so? I didn’t know anyone played badminton anymore.”

  “They don’t,” Petula responded. “Hence the ease in getting a scholarship.”

  Ms. Planck nodded in seeming approval, then bent down to pick up her bags. Apparently her fennel-infused truffle oil had sprung a leak, and when she lifted her bag, it split open, dumping everything from foie gras to porcini mushrooms all over the pavement.

  Ms. Planck shouted a word she often heard in reference to the lunches she served, then knelt down to pick it up. Petula, not wanting to appear unhelpful, joined in the recovery effort, using her foot to stop a bottle of kalamata olives from rolling into the street.

  The old man in the news booth handed them several small plastic bags, but without the gourmet shop’s oversize shopping bag, it was clearly too much for Ms. Planck to handle herself.

  “Are you going to help me home with all this?” Ms. Planck asked Petula. “Or are you going to make me struggle on my lonesome? I just live across the park.”

  “Hmm…” Petula said with a grin she hoped was disarming. “Larger lunch portions, and I get to choose my own pizza slice?”

  Ms. Planck returned the smile. “I think that goes without saying.”

  “And my choice of dessert?”

  “Now you’re pushing it.”

  Petula accepted the terms, they shook hands, and the deal was struck. With the box camera in one hand and a few bags in the other, Petula crossed through Acacia Park, making a point, as she always did, to sneer at Uncle Wilbur ensconced in his fountain.

  “So how long have you been interested in photography?” Ms. Planck asked.

  “As long as I can remember,” Petula said. “Slices of life are easier to digest than the unedited version.”

  Ms. Planck laughed. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  She lived in a trendy town house that was far from what Petula expected a woman of her nature to inhabit—but as Petula set the groceries down on the kitchen counter, she was coming to realize that the nature of a lunch lady is a very unpredictable thing. A point brought home even more when Ms. Planck said, “Come downstairs, I’ll show you my darkroom.”