by Sue Lange
Meanwhile at the edge of town, down in the marshy area where the Northawken River makes an abrupt turn west, in a shack constructed of corrugated tin and asphalt shingles and overgrown with multiflora roses, a boy lay dying of a knife wound to an area just behind his right ear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The school kids, the parents and teachers, the religious leaders of the Northawken community talked of one thing alone: the dead kid down by the river. Who did it? A pedophile? A satanic cult? A robber or kidnapper? They conjured every film noir scenario produced since the beginning of time. The details in their minds were so lurid, they even imagined the scenes in black and white.
Civic organizations called for more surveillance cameras. Every square inch of town should be watched 24/7, they said. Sadly no one voted to raise taxes. There was no money to implement the ideas.
After days of hysterical hand wringing, the theories congealed into one substantial pointed finger: it was the fault of the anti-RFID movement, the anti-rifs. Had to be. They’re the ones with the horrid initiation rites. This was one of those rites gone bad. Didn’t the autopsy reveal the chip had been mangled?
Of course the death was fodder for the movement itself. “You see!” they shouted in their muddled groups hanging about on street corners and around the public InterConnect booths. Their argument was that if there were no RFID chips there would be no reason for someone to do such a thing. They repeatedly stated it was not one of them that had committed the crime. No one believed them.
The anti-Rifs called for an organized protest along with a manifesto to be sent to the state Senators and Representatives. Being terribly disorganized, their cries barely made it to Harrisburg. The best they summoned was a one-week online flashup consisting of ongoing testimonials from all corners of the anti-rif globe sent to local elected officials. The event produced a slight blip in a daily swarm of emails flooding the barely monitored in-boxes of congressmen. Not bad for a group of drug addicts and dropouts, but still not much noise.
The parent organizations had their own informal protest going: the anti-anti-Rifs. As is the way with the strongest members of society, they did not need to gather in numbers. They simply put their foot down. “You will not hang around with those thugs!” they shouted to their underlings, their children. “They’re sick and depraved,” they all said simultaneously over the dinner tables across the city. The parents added details left over from their own childhoods when they still had imaginations, portraying the anti-Rifs as blood thirsty devil worshippers who danced around the dead bodies of their sacrificial lambs. Which of course made the kids even more interested in the group than before.
And yet there was not one scrap of proof as to who did it or why. In fact, the boy remained anonymous for weeks. His chip wasn’t working.
In the aftermath of the boy’s death, almost everyone in Elsa’s circle forgot about the auspicious Perpetual Motion Club. By-laws and charters can never compete with a cruel murder. Neither Lainie nor May bothered to question Elsa about it. She was herself somewhere else most of the time anyway. But that wasn’t because of the dead boy. That was because she was hopelessly infatuated with the new, tall boy, Jason Bridges.
Elsa was not what was once called “boy crazy.” She was not precocious in that way. Or fake dizzy. She didn’t wear dangly earrings that caught the light and transferred it enticingly to the eye. She didn’t tilt floppy hats jauntily to the side revealing half her face and hiding the remainder in mystery. She didn’t blacken her eyes with kohl, or hitch her jeans so her sexy granny boots would show. She didn’t laugh at boys’ jokes to please them, or smoke cigarettes in roving bands of disaffected teenagers. She rarely went to parties, never drank cheap wine directly from the bottle while driving around in a two-seater with five other kids. She was not popular and didn’t participate in the usual mating rituals those of her age were so good at.
So infatuation for Elsa was new and difficult, complicated and all-consuming. She could not think about much else.
Unfortunately, she was not alone in her infatuation. A flock seemed to follow Jason Bridges everywhere, flitters and batters, gigglers and heavy mascara wearers. Regardless of the competition, Elsa was sure he noticed her above all else. Who amongst us has not deluded themself thusly at some time or another?
She saw the tall, new boy almost daily in the hallway between Fifth period English and Mr. Brown’s class. That passage between his world and hers stood as neutral ground where her love could develop. Every passing encounter nourished the feeling.
Stories of his feats on the court provided fuel. She attended one of the home games and considered joining the glee club or trying out for the cheerleader squad. May talked her out of that one, reminding her of the hot pants and pom poms.
“Besides,” May said, “I just don’t think you’re popular enough. Only the popular girls get picked.”
Elsa agreed. She contented herself with catching sight of him in the hallway between classes and reading about his career in the Northawken Gazette’s Sunday sports section. Evenings were spent working out conversation starters that would downplay her spastic side.
Her thoughts of Jason linked to those about the Perpetual Motion Club. If it was an actual entity, she reasoned, this thing—her thing—could show her off as something special. Maybe as a mover and shaker on the same level as Jason Bridges himself.
Right?
She organized a first meeting, returning to Gerry Martin’s website to research a talk on PM. The group would have to come up with a killer FutureWorld project, something that was sure to win. She had no doubt the event would go swimmingly and everyone would appreciate her efforts.
Sadly by Halloween, the Perpetual Motion Club had still not moved beyond the talking stage. There had been no meetings other than a few discussions between May and Elsa in the school hallway.
One day, during the height of the murder hysteria, Jimmy Bacomb crossed her path. “Hey Elsa,” he called to her.
She turned to him with raised eyebrows. He walked to her and asked, “What time are you and May walking home? I mean maybe I should walk with you.”
“I think,” she began heroically, just as a tall figure carrying an Adidas bag lumbered into the corner of her eye. Despite the fact that she had indeed said, ‘I think,’ the moment the Adidas logo caught her attention, all efforts at thinking halted.
“Not sure,” she answered Jimmy who stood staring at her with a puzzled look. “I have to work out the logistics.”
“Logistics?”
Since Elsa had no idea what logistics she needed to work on, she changed the subject. “So what do you think of your anti-Rifs now?” she said. Pretty macabre.”
“You don’t know it’s them,” Jimmy answered.
“Oh, please, Jimmy. Don’t be so naïve. It’s them.”
“I could say that if it wasn’t for the kid’s chip being there in the first place it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Oh, okay, and then all the missing kids that have been found because of RFID don’t count. They’re more good than bad. You know this.”
A passing junior overheard her remark and decided to enter the conversation. “That’s just PR,” he said. “You need to check the Newser website for the truth.” He was covered in Microsoft, Techworld, and Sun patches. Total code nerd.
“Oh, and Newser’s not PR. No, not at all,” Elsa shot back. “Tell me this, how much do the ‘reporters’ get paid at Newser? As opposed to say, the writers at Ncubed which as we all know hires its bloggers.”
“Yeah, they’re paid by the corporate slave owners,” the nerd said.
Elsa shook her head. “You’re just brainwashed.”
“Same as you,” he responded.
Elsa watched Jason Bridges disappear around the corner and admonished herself for letting these nitwits, Jimmy included, engage her.
A crowd had formed around the two debaters. It was composed of hipsters, righteously angry at the bad rep the anti-Rifs were sud
denly getting because their parents had finally discovered the movement and naturally disapproved. So naturally their kids defended them.
Elsa looked around for an opening to exit through. Everyone in the crowd was dripping with sponsorship bling. She scanned the backpack and t-shirt logos and then turned to the nerd. Pointing out the group with a thumb-over-the-shoulder gesture, she said, “Well, do me a favor, count up all the patches and then tell me who’s more brainwashed?”
She pushed between two skinny girls with shoulder length braids and “I’m a TwitterPro” armbands. Once beyond the mob, she turned and holding her arms wide said, “See any logos here?”
The guy retorted but she didn’t hear, she was already around the corner. Didn’t matter what he said, she easily won that argument. As aware of the average high school student was of the military/industrial complex and their heinous control over free will, not one of them would ever turn down a sponsorship from that complex.
Elsa was a singular free spirit in the modern, over-advertised world. It wasn’t by design that she had no sponsorship, though. She simply wasn’t slice enough for Nabisco or Sunny D. But those kids didn’t need to know that. For the first time in her life, her social ineptness was a route to power. And she played it perfectly just to get out of an argument and go find Jason Bridges.
Jimmy watched her leave in the opposite direction from what he knew to be her fifth period class. He knew her entire schedule by heart. He watched her watching the tall, new boy.
Jimmy Bacomb did not have an RFID chip behind his right ear.
***
Despite her laxity with getting the club started, Elsa was actually thinking about perpetual motion a lot. Fascinated with the subject, she scanned websites for current projects of the gurus of the PMM world, learning about the history and physics of the various phenomena as she went.
The superstars: Gerry Martin, Sven Ongerstom, and Len Chiang held rallies and exhibitions periodically to raise funds for developing their inventions. Gerry Martin was the queen of the scene. She had mp3 files of audio lectures extolling the virtues of perpetual motion and how it will save mankind in the end because of the implications for clean energy and cheap power.
Elsa listened intently, admired the selfless way Martin worked tirelessly for little money against the established scientific circles. She was a renegade. No one understood her, but that was okay, they didn’t understand Galileo either.
Gerry Martin’s difficulties with the established scientific world only attracted Elsa to the phenomena further. She identified with that. Couldn’t get enough of it. When she discovered a free energy day was scheduled to appear at the Red Rapids Convention Center, she began scheming. Red Rapids was an hour’s drive away. Suddenly the PM Club was of dire importance. She finally scheduled a meeting to take place in the basement of her home.
Jetstream Soda and chips were available on the buffet (a battered out-of-date desk consigned to the basement). May sat on a stool shaped like a baseball mitt on one side of the bar. Elsa stood opposite her to give herself a little presence and authority. She’d fortified herself with a minute of iHigh and so was calm and clear of purpose.
“This meeting will now come to order,” she said. This is a meeting of the Perpetual Motion Club.”
“I know that,” May said.
“I know you know that, but I need to state it as part of the procedure.”
May rolled her eyes and began picking at a crack in the bar top where minuscule bits of chips and finger grime had built up over the years.
Elsa continued. “I was going to give a talk on the history of perpetual motion, but I need to make a motion.”
“Make a motion?” May looked up from the crack. Tonight she was wearing a white turtle neck under a corduroy jumper and a hoodie, all white. She had no interest in motions, perpetual- or Robert’s Rules-wise.
Elsa slitted her eyes for a second, annoyed with May’s lack of respect for meeting decorum. She cleared her throat and began again.
“I’d like us to take a field trip to Red Rapids next weekend. There will be lectures and displays on free energy.”
She explained what free energy was and what it had to do with perpetual motion. “Basically, it’s the same thing,” she said. May’s eyes didn’t glaze over, but she listened only half-heartedly.
“And I’m going to invite a few more students too,” Elsa finished up her explanation.
May’s eyes widened, her white eyeliner and shadow exaggerating into a skeletal socket look. “Who else would come?”
“You’ll see,” Elsa said mysteriously. She quickly adjourned the meeting and broke out the chips, soda, and bean curd now that the participation of the club member seemed assured.
Of course she still had to get not only her mother’s permission, but her agreement to chauffer the club members and cover the entrance fee. It would not be an easy task and Elsa was not at all sure she was up to it.
***
“I thought that was just a joke,” Lainie said the next day after being told of the news of the PM Club and its first outing. She had just returned with the week’s groceries and was in the process of stacking the goods in the pantry.
“No, it’s quite serious,” Elsa said, putting eggs and milk and other cold commodities into the fridge. “And we need to do research. The Internet is very spotty on the subject.”
“Of course it’s spotty. It’s lunacy,” Lainie said.
“Just like circumnavigating the globe was lunacy. People are so sure something is impossible because they’ve been hearing it all their lives. They don’t ever bother trying,” said Elsa.”
“The Laws of Thermodynamics preclude any possibility.”
“The Laws of Thermodynamics haven’t been officially proven yet.”
“I think we can assume they’re pretty good, though, can’t we?”
“Still, they have not been proven officially. And remember what Ernest Rutherford said.”
“What?”
“‘ . . . anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of atoms is talking moonshine’.”
Lainie took a breath to ask who the hell Ernest Rutherford was and furthermore who cared, when Elsa interrupted. “Anyway, there’s a group of people, experts, giving a demonstration. They have an angle, a different approach. We should at least go and see. That’s what the club is all about—leaving no stone unturned, discovering possibilities. You know, that sort of thing.”
“You sound like a commercial for the Discovery Channel,” Lainie said.”
“Oh Mom, this is a really important event. A chance to learn something. Why are you against it?”
“This isn’t real science stuff that you’re talking about. The Science Society, that’s real science.”
“Ugh!” Elsa turned up one side of her lip in disgust. “Tsk,” she added and then, “That again? You know I haven’t been invited. What’s the use of bringing it up?
“Yet! You haven’t been invited yet. No one has. If you do get invited, I would like you to at least consider it.”
“I have considered it.”
“No you haven’t. You went to one meeting.”
Lainie had finished with the groceries and she was now going about the downstairs rooms lighting potpourri candles to freshen the air. The movement at each one was exactly the same. She’d strike a match, hold it downward a moment to catch, lift the bowl, and light the candle there. Once it was strongly lit, she’d replace the bowl, stir the leaves, and move on to the next, adding the burnt match to the group in her palm.
She turned from the current pot on the InternetConnect shelf. “Listen,” she said. “Promise to consider it seriously. If you’ll promise, I’ll take you and your club friends on this trip.”
Elsa lifted her head up. She’d been standing in the door frame at the entrance to the family room, kicking at a nail in the threshold piece, something that should have been pounded into the composite material there, but had been mistakenly left for chi
ldren to kick at when confounded by their parents. Her foot stopped and she opened her mouth to say something but settled into a broad smile. Then: “Okay! It’s a deal.”
Lainie shrugged and reached for the pot on the coffee table, no longer interested in further discussion on the subject.
Elsa tapped her teeth with her index fingernail as she watched her mother’s methodical movements: an efficient stroke to light the match, an effortless dip of the match to light the candle without burning herself as the flame climbed against gravity, a chemical reaction occurring right at her mother’s fingertips, one right after the other in perfect grace and flow, her mother as perpetual motion machine.
Somehow Lainie Webb, genius, perfectionist, saintly public advocate, helper of those less fortunate, had never developed a robust connection with the real world. Could not even see it. Could not even see the place her own daughter, clicking her fingernails against her teeth, had in it. It saddened Elsa, but at the same time emboldened her. Challenged her to bring her mother to the light. She’d make Lainie understand. It wouldn’t be hard. All she had to do was win the FutureWorld competition.
Somewhere in the midst of all that planning and thinking and rationalizing and tooth tapping, Elsa Webb evolved from smug skeptic to open minded optimist on the subject of perpetual motion machinery. Somewhere in the middle of that transition, she made the biggest mistake of her life. She believed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The residents of Northawken were preoccupied with two things: the dead boy’s ID and the basketball scores. What mid-sized American city doesn’t love its home team? In this case, the Northawken High’s Senior Varsity basketball squad. They were especially proud of its college bound, star point guard, Jason Bridges. They talked of him constantly.
Elsa thought nothing of this special attention. She believed all basketball players received the same worship. Jason Bridges was just one of the jocks. Elsa believed these jocks were like other people: interested in the world and how it worked.
Little did Elsa know, not only were jocks not interested in how the world worked, very few non-jocks were interested either. What non-jocks were mostly interested in were people like Jason Bridges. He was quite spoiled, but Elsa had no idea.
