The Imagination Box

by Martyn Ford

  Before they succumbed to a similar fate, Dee pulled Tim’s arm, and they took off running across the nearby field. Now it was just the two of them against, it seemed, the rest of the world.

  They arrived somewhere dark and cramped. Tim felt his shoulder awkwardly bent across his face, and could smell Dee’s slightly coconutty shampoo.

  “What the…?” she said, her voice loud in Tim’s ear. “Where are we?”

  Reaching out, he found a latch and pulled it down. They tumbled out into his bedroom. Back at the Dawn Star.

  “Why are we here?” he asked, holding on to the orange ball he kept in his cupboard.

  —

  The dead-eyed men in high-visibility jackets had locked Samantha and Phil in their car, next to the gridlocked highway.

  Tim and Dee, however, had ducked through a fence and run, as fast as their legs would carry them, across a field. The jagged rocks and rolled earth made for rough going. Stumbling, panting, Tim had looked back to the road to see that they weren’t being followed. He’d seen Samantha’s upturned car, with steam billowing out of the engine. They’d clambered over a broken, rusty, barbed-wire fence and into a wooded area. It was late enough to be near pitch-black under the canopy of trees. Dried brambles tugged at their pants, and their shoes squelched through mud, but they didn’t care.

  Once out of sight, they crouched. “I think we’re alone now,” Dee had whispered, out of breath. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

  “They took Phil,” Tim said, feeling shock, outrage, and wild confusion all at once. “Controlling members of the public, framing friendly professors, murdering goodness knows how many people…I could let that go. But stealing my monkey? The Mind Surfer, whoever he is, has just made an enemy.”

  “I think you should whip up a cell phone,” Dee said.

  “Now is not the time for Squirrel Boarder.”

  “No, let’s call Fredric. He said he doesn’t use a cell phone, so he won’t be under anyone’s command. Let’s tell him. At least then if we die, someone else will know the truth.”

  “Why are you saying that? Don’t talk about dying.”

  “We could die,” Dee said. “In fact, it seems fairly likely.”

  “Shush. No.”

  Tim again pictured Eisenstone sitting alone in a cell, wrongly imprisoned and miles from home. What other mistakes had they made? Tim wished he could call the professor, wished he could apologize and promise him once more that he would sort everything out. A reassuring voice could be just what he needed.

  But Dee was right. Tim knew that the only person left who could help them was Fredric.

  “I guess you shouldn’t have taken your Imagination Box to school, huh,” Dee said.

  “That is not a constructive comment.”

  Wondering where on earth Phil and Samantha might end up, Tim did as Dee suggested. He found it hard to focus, but, after a few false starts, he conjured a very primitive cell phone in his Imagination Box. It had an old green screen and the number for Fredric’s office landline saved on speed dial. There was no answer, so he flicked through until he found the number for his Nevada facility.

  This time he answered on the first ring.

  “Listen, Fredric, it’s Tim. This is complicated, but some serious stuff is going down.”

  “Really serious,” Dee added. “The world has gone insane.”

  “We got it all wrong, somehow, about Eisenstone, about everything,” Tim said. “The Mind Surfer is still out there.”

  “Huh?” Fredric said.

  “What do you know about IcoRama phones?” Tim asked.

  “Um…I can’t say I know anything about them. Why?”

  “They’ve kidnapped Phil, and Samantha Locke.”

  “Hang on, dude, slow down.”

  “It’s the Mind Surfer. He’s using IcoRama phones to control people.”

  “He’s what?” Fredric sounded, rightly, incredulous. “But they caught him. Daniel is in prison. We stopped him.”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  Tim explained what had happened and, steadily, Fredric seemed to take it all seriously.

  “Right, listen, don’t speak to another soul about this. No one can be trusted. Just come here,” Fredric said.

  “All right.”

  “Have you got a teleportation sphere on you? You can recalibrate it to come straight to my office. I’ll meet you there.”

  “No,” Tim said. “But I’ve got an Imagination Box.”

  “Even better, man, get going.”

  As Tim created a blue teleportation sphere, Dee said, “Someone who works for IcoRama—they can target millions of people.”

  “Well, we’ll go and ruin their crazy little party, rescue Phil and Samantha, and clear your granddad’s name,” Tim said. “Bang. Done.”

  He pulled the small ball from his Imagination Box, swung his backpack onto his back, and put his arm around Dee. He had one last glance across the wide field, the highway stretching off to their left, over hills, and into the distance.

  Together they held the sphere, nodding silently, both clicking the button at the same time. Zip-pop, and they were gone, a small amount of water flooding into four empty footprints.

  —

  And yet, instead of arriving at Fredric’s office, they had appeared here, in Tim’s closet.

  Again he tried to create a teleportation sphere that would take them to Fredric, but again it only managed to transport them to the other side of his bedroom.

  “Why won’t it work? My imagination performs so well when I make random junk for you, but when we really need it, it lets us down,” Tim said. “Stupid box.”

  “Relax. At least we’re safe—no one knows we’re here.”

  “I suppose.”

  Tim went over to his bedside cabinet and used the landline to call Fredric, but there was no answer. Tim left a message explaining the faulty teleportation spheres.

  “Okay,” Tim said, dropping the phone. “There’s a teleportation sphere at the Wilde Tech office in Glassbridge that can take us to London, then straight to the Imagination Space. We can figure all this out with Fredric. We’ll run there, straight across town. As long as no one sees—”

  The door handle tilted, and the door opened. “Tim?” Elisa said. But before she could get a foot inside, Dee dived across the carpet and shouldered it shut, then turned the lock.

  Elisa stumbled back in the hall, and they heard shocked cursing.

  “Wow,” Tim said. “What are you doing?”

  “What kind of phone does Elisa have?” Dee whispered, her back pressed against the wood.

  Tim winced, then closed his eyes. “An IcoRama 2020,” he said. “Everyone has them….”

  “What if she’s…” Dee bobbed her head from side to side. “You know? Cuckoo-cuckoo crazy town?”

  Elisa knocked. “Tim, what’s going on? I want to talk.”

  “Um…just a second.” Tim checked through the peephole. In the long Dawn Star corridor, Elisa was looking down at her feet. As quietly as possible, Tim slid the door’s chain-lock across, to be double sure.

  She lifted her head at the noise, like a dog picking up a scent. “Open it,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Tim, do as I say. We don’t have locked doors in this family.”

  “Uh…”

  “Tim!”

  “Listen, Elisa,” he said. “This will sound really disrespectful, but…no.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve been overruled,” Dee added. “You can’t come in.”

  “Elisa,” Tim said. “Where is your cell phone?”

  “In my pocket,” she answered.

  There was a pause. Tim and Dee stared at each other. Then, with ferocious aggression, Elisa began kicking at the door. It fell open, stopping on the bronze chain, and her arm came through the gap, swinging and clawing at them.

  “Oh, this is a terrible evening,” Tim said, stepping away.

  He sealed the door shut with so
me quickly created mega-glue. Then he made a rope, which they used to scale out of his window, escaping from the bedroom before she made it inside.

  “That was pretty disturbing,” Tim said, landing in the alley. He helped Dee down off the wall. “Like, traumatic stuff.”

  “It’s character building,” Dee shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll grow up to become a fine, well-rounded adult.”

  “Yeah, kids are tough, resilient, right?”

  “After all this, I hope so. There are things I’ve seen online.”

  “Of course,” he said. “That’s why Elisa’s been super cold recently—always on her phone, never caring where I am, what I do…”

  “Classic Mind Surfer.”

  —

  It wasn’t too far to the Wilde Tech office. Once they were there, it was just a quick teleport to safety. It was past seven p.m. now. The streetlights had tinged the town in urban amber, and Tim and Dee ran as fast as they could through the park and across the drawbridge. The water, which seemed black, twinkled below them, and Tim recalled the day he’d jumped it, almost exactly a week before. They made it to the high street without incident.

  The office they were headed for was in sight at the end of the road but, as they approached, Dee touched Tim’s shoulder. A group of men who looked like they were in their early twenties had stopped up ahead of them. One of their faces was glowing a pale blue color from the phone in his hand. His eyes turned to skeletal holes by the light. Then, to their right, Tim noticed a man was slicing strips of greasy kebab from a rotating hunk of meat inside a bright shop. His face twitched, warped, and then completely relaxed. He threw his legs over the counter and burst out, eyes locked on them, his knife as long as a sword.

  “This way,” Dee said, dragging Tim toward an alleyway as strangers started in pursuit.

  They trampled over some loose garbage bags and scaled a chain-link fence. When they arrived on the next street, there was a long line of people queuing to get into the theater. One by one, nearly all of them turned. The ones who didn’t, Tim reasoned, weren’t IcoRama owners.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said.

  They bolted for a multistory parking garage. The group behind them was now a crowd of perhaps thirty people, chasing with blank faces and lethal intent. A stitch pinched Tim’s chest and his throat heaved with breath as his feet thumped up the spiral ramp all the way to the roof.

  As they arrived, however, a door up ahead swung open, and another group, all shouldering each other, barged out. People were coming from all sides, some clambering over barriers, others stepping across the hoods of cars, storming toward them like robots.

  Like robots, Tim thought.

  He closed his eyes, slammed his Imagination Box onto the ground, and pulled out a device about the size of an apple.

  “What’s that?” Dee said, her back pressed to his, turning and turning, trying to face all of them at once.

  “It’s an EMP grenade,” he said. “À la Squirrel Boarder.”

  Tim tugged the pin out, and the lever pinged off into the night. He threw it into the air as the possessed mob arrived.

  He and Dee tensed, shielding themselves from incoming hands.

  There was a loud explosion above, a blue lightning flash, and, flowing from them like ripples in a pond, streetlights sparked, control boxes whirred down, and every bulb in Glassbridge flickered out.

  Most importantly of all, every cell phone was disabled.

  By the remaining glow of the moon and stars, Tim and Dee looked around at the horde of strangers who were now sober, free, and understandably bewildered.

  “What the heck is going on?” one of them asked, glancing at the other confused faces.

  “It’s a long story,” Dee said.

  “You all own IcoRama phones,” Tim shouted, turning to address everyone. “Smash them!”

  That was all they had time to say, because they needed to make it to Fredric’s Glassbridge office before the electricity came back on.

  After a short, spooky jog through the darkened town, they saw the building they were after. They went to the side entrance, noticing a discreet plaque mounted on the bricks with WILDE TECH engraved in a fun font in the center. The moment they got inside, the lights flicked back on. Tim went straight to the rear room, using his freshly cooked key, to find the teleportation sphere.

  They huddled close, clicked it, and, after the hiss-pop and fuzzy feeling on their skin, reanimated in Wilde Tech’s head office, in London.

  Finally, they felt safe.

  “I’m still not too keen on this sensation,” Dee said as Tim placed the blue counterpart sphere down on its pedestal.

  They left the secret room and then went through to see if anyone was there.

  “Fredric?” Tim said. But the office was empty. He glanced along the walls. The canvas of the Firestone Turbo, the dragon poster, the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city.

  “We’re late,” Dee said. “He knows to meet us here, though—maybe he’ll be here soon….Right, let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  She went straight to the computer and clicked it on, then sat on Fredric’s large leather swivel chair.

  “What are you doing?” Tim asked, noticing Wilde Tech’s familiar colorful logo alight on the desktop.

  “Samantha was right,” Dee explained, opening the Internet browser and typing away. “We need to get as much dirt on IcoRama as possible. Think about it logically, Tim: even with Fredric’s help, who is going to believe us? And if anyone did believe us, the Mind Surfer has the power to change what people think. Or, if that fails, to kill anyone he pleases. We need to expose whoever is behind this.”

  “Yes,” Tim agreed, sighing. “And Phil and Samantha? What if they’re…” He couldn’t say the words, but Dee knew what he meant.

  “It’s plausible they’ve been kidnapped, rather than outright killed,” she said. “Why else would the policemen have bundled them into the car?”

  “But why kidnap them?”

  “I dunno. Maybe they’re more valuable alive?”

  They did a number of searches online, reading all about IcoRama, looking for any possible connection, any clue, any link. It was originally a Canadian company that specialized in communication—first broadband, but last year they ventured into cell phones.

  “Owned by Smith and Olsen Limited,” Dee read. “IcoRama was at the forefront of telecommunications during the early 2000s. However, following a fall in profits in recent years, the company was forced to go into administration.”

  “What does that mean?” Tim said.

  “It’s when a business is garbage,” Dee explained. “And someone takes over and fixes it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway,” she continued. “There was a string of layoffs and, early last year, it seemed a certainty that IcoRama would cease operations forever. But an eleventh-hour offer from investors called DuskFire proved to be the lifeline the company needed. Now IcoRama commands the lion’s share of the cell phone industry, with profits in the billions.”

  “Falling profits, a takeover,” Tim mused aloud. “That’s what Samantha said in the car.”

  Dee started typing again, to search for more info, but the browser crashed. “This is supposed to be a technology company,” she huffed.

  Once more she keyed in a search and a load of documents appeared, all entitled “DuskFire.”

  “No,” Tim said. “That’s not the Internet. See?” He pointed. “Local results. These are documents on Fredric’s computer.”

  Dee opened one up.

  “ ‘DuskFire, a subsidiary of Wilde Tech Inc., was discreetly set up as a venture capital firm to allow us to invest in projects with no paper trail,’ ” Tim read aloud. “What does that mean?”

  Dee scrolled down.

  “ ‘Therefore from August last year,’ ” Tim read, “ ‘Wilde Tech has been controller and majority shareholder of IcoRama, without any unwanted interest from the press.’ ”


  “Wilde Tech?” Dee said, slowly turning to face him. “Fredric is the investor. He owns IcoRama.”

  Tim’s breathing picked up a bit of pace as goose bumps drifted down his arms and across his shoulders. “But he said on the phone…he said he knew nothing about the company.”

  “Well then,” Dee said, “Fredric Wilde is a liar.”

  On the top floor of Wilde Tech Inc.’s London offices, Tim and Dee sat in silence, both allowing what they’d read about Fredric to settle.

  “So…you think…you think he has been working with Harriet this whole time?” Tim whispered. “Why would he turn on her?”

  “Not working with her,” Dee said. “Maybe…maybe against her. Of course. We’ve helped him destroy TRAD. It was the one organization that would have been able to stop him.”

  “But, but…I just can’t…No,” Tim said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to believe it. “There must be another explanation.”

  “Was that why you couldn’t create a working teleportation sphere?” Dee said. “Why we kept coming back to your room? Maybe subconsciously, you knew? Or the information was finding its way to you….So does that mean the fortune cookie was right? Granddad is innocent? Harriet too?”

  Was it possible? Tim wondered. Were the clues there? Had he missed them? Or worse, ignored them? He bit his fist, pacing across the room to the window. From the top of the building, the city seemed pretend, like a static backdrop in a game. He paused, then turned back. “So what now?”

  “He doesn’t know that we know,” Dee said. “Let’s play dumb.”

  “But…let’s say it’s true. Won’t he try to get rid of us? He knows we know about the phones.”

  “Yes, but not that he’s connected to them. It’s the only way we’ll get close enough to strike.”

  “Strike?” Tim said. “What do you mean?” Somehow, he thought this revelation meant they’d need to come up with an entirely new strategy.

  “We’re going ahead with the plan,” Dee said. “We’ve got to stop him. What we need is a two-pronged attack. We need to get a confession out of him, everything he knows, something to make it public. We’ll…we’ll post it online, somewhere that he can’t control. Let the world know.”