Nick gently touched her knee, a gesture that would have felt terribly awkward a week ago. “I know,” he said. “Thanks.”
They sat in silence for a moment, pondering Tesla’s incomplete device before them.
“Without all the pieces,” Caitlin said, “we’ll never get it to work. In fact, we’ll probably never even know exactly what it does.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Nick. He stood up and approached the odd-looking device, taking it in from all angles, as he had done since yesterday. “Did you know that the asteroid is made mostly of copper ore?” he asked. “NASA’s already talking about sending up a mining probe.”
“Great,” said Caitlin. “So what?”
“The thing is,” said Nick slowly, “I’ve been thinking. The core of the earth is mostly iron, right? That’s why we have a humongous magnetic field. And you know what happens when you send a bunch of copper spinning around a magnetic field?”
Caitlin thought for a moment and gasped. “It’s a generator.”
“One so big it could power the entire world. For free…or for F.R.E.E.…”
“The ‘Far Range Energy Emitter,’” Caitlin said.
“Exactly. The only device that can harness that energy.” Nick glanced at Tesla’s incomplete electronic puzzle, standing in the sweet spot of his room right beneath the pyramidal skylight, waiting for the rest of its wayward parts. Yet even incomplete, the machine gave off a sort of electric anticipation. It was as if somehow Tesla had planned for all of this—the garage sale, the asteroid, Nick’s father’s triumphant baseball swing.
“I know this sounds weird,” Nick told Caitlin, “but it’s like we’re all a part of this machine. The things we’ve done—the things we still have to do—they’re all connected.”
He thought Caitlin might think he was nuts, but instead she said, “I know exactly what you mean.”
The ramifications made them both light-headed. Nick had to sit down on his bed. And when he did, he felt something crinkle beneath the covers.
Caitlin smirked. “Eating chips in bed?”
“That wasn’t a chip.”
Nick threw back the covers to find a picture. Not of someone, but something. A starscape.
“I know what that is,” said Caitlin. “It’s the Horsehead Nebula.”
Nick went slightly pale. “The Accelerati.” There was no other explanation. They had been here, and they had left the Horsehead in his bed as a warning.
He turned it over. On the back was a paraphrase of a quote attributed to the Accelerati’s founder, Thomas Edison. We never do anything by accident.
Nick took a deep breath and said to Caitlin, “Well, neither did Tesla. And neither do I.” He crumpled up the photo in his hand.
Then he went to the device and made a decision. No outcome is certain, even when it seems so. Fates can change with the swing of a bat, or the flip of a switch, or the closing of a circuit. The somewhat mad genius who had orchestrated the world’s potential end, its potential salvation, and all the potential energy it might ever need, knew that better than anyone.
It all came down to how far you dared to go to accomplish what the world thinks can’t be done.
And so, taking a lesson from Tesla, Nick knelt down and pulled the wet cell out from the heart of the device, because currently it was needed elsewhere.
As he tugged it out, the toaster, perched slightly higher, fell, once again hitting him on the head.
“Ow,” he said, putting his hand to his forehead. Caitlin hurried over to him. “Great,” Nick said, “just what I need; another trip to the emergency room.”
“Let me see,” Caitlin said, taking his hand and moving it away. “Well, it’s not bleeding, although you may have a nasty bump.” Then she took his head in his hands, leaned forward, and kissed it. “There. All better.”
For a few seconds Nick felt like he had been knocked off his feet by Tesla’s cosmic bat, but he only smiled. “That’s much better medicine than stitches,” he told her. Then he stood up and headed for the ladder. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Caitlin asked, standing up.
“Where do you think?” he said. “To find Vince.”
Caitlin glanced at the wet cell in his hands and understood. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
Caitlin stuttered. “I mean, it’s not like we can keep that thing hooked to him twenty-four/seven.…”
Nick shrugged. “Why not?”
And since Caitlin could not find any reason why not, she shrugged back and said, “Okay.”
“Besides, it’s what Vince always wanted, isn’t it? To be undead. He was already something of a zombie. Now it will be official.”
“Shouldn’t it bother us?” Caitlin asked as they clattered down the ladder. “Messing with life and death and things we don’t fully understand?”
“If we fully understood them,” said Nick, “what would be the point of messing with them?”
And together Nick and Caitlin set out into the bright afternoon, their hearts filled with a rare and special joy, as they went to reanimate their dead friend.
NEAL SHUSTERMAN is the author of thirty books for young readers, including the best-selling Unwind and Skinjacker trilogies, and the critically acclaimed The Schwa Was Here and Downsiders. As a screen and TV writer, Neal created scripts for the Goosebumps and Animorphs TV series, and he wrote the Disney Channel Original Movie Pixel Perfect. Neal has two grown sons, and he lives with his two daughters in Southern California. For more information, go to www.storyman.com.
ERIC ELFMAN is a screenwriter, a professional writing coach, and the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Very Scary Almanac and The Almanac of the Gross, Disgusting & Totally Repulsive; three X-Files novels; and two books of scary short stories, Three-Minute Thrillers and More Three-Minute Thrillers. He has sold screenplays to Interscope, Walden Media, Revolution, and Universal Studios. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son. Visit his Web site at www.ElfmanWorld.com.
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