Science Fair

by Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson

  “It’s a Luke Skywalker costume,” said Roger.

  “Yes,” sighed Toby. “They’re my parents.”

  Turow shook his head. “Should have guessed,” he said. “Anyway, they aided the escape, so they’re coming with us.”

  “Please,” said Toby. “Let me do one thing first, okay? Please?”

  “What?” said Turow.

  “Let me unplug those projects,” said Toby, pointing at the ME kids’ section.

  “Hey!” said Jason. “Those aren’t yours!”

  “They’re not yours, either,” said Toby. “You didn’t build them.”

  “You shut up!” said Jason, stepping toward Toby.

  “Hold it!” said Turow, shoving Jason back. To Toby, he said, “You’re not unplugging anything. You’re coming with us.” He took Toby’s arm. Toby shook free.

  “No! Listen!” said Toby. “The blackouts! They’re coming from here! He’s using those projects to cause the blackouts!”

  “You’re nuts,” said Jason.

  “Toby,” said agent Lefkon, “who is using the projects?”

  “I don’t know,” said Toby. “But he’s here!”

  “See?” said Jason. “Nuts.”

  Turow looked toward the ME projects, then back at Toby. “All I see,” he said, “is some stuff on some tables. Let’s go.”

  “No!” said Toby. “You have to believe me!”

  “Why?” said Turow.

  “Because he’s right,” said a new voice.

  “And who are you?” said Turow.

  A tall, thin figure with wild hair and dark glasses stepped forward.

  “My name,” he said, “is Neal Sternabite.”

  Lance Swingle’s face went from red to white. “You!” he said.

  “Yes,” said Sternabite. “Me.”

  THE PRESIDENT, at the insistence of his staff, had been hustled down to the Situation Room in the basement deep under the West Wing of the White House, where he would be safer in case of an attack. He was now standing with his top civilian and military advisors, looking at a large video screen displaying a map of the United States. Overlaid on the map of the States were lines showing the ten major regions of the U.S. power grid.

  The regions that still had power were white; the ones that had lost power were dark gray. At the moment, there were only three areas left with power: Texas, the Southeast, and the Mid-Atlantic states. As the president watched, Texas went gray. The president said a bad word, then spun toward his chief of staff, who was, as always, on the phone.

  “Well?” said the president.

  “FBI is at the school, and they have apprehended some suspects,” said the chief of staff.

  “Have they found the guy who’s doing this?” said the president, pointing at the screen.

  “Not yet, sir,” said the chief of staff, wincing.

  “WELL TELL THEM TO FIND HIM NOW!” said the president.

  On the screen, the Southeast went gray.

  TUROW LOOKED AT STERNABITE, then at Swingle.

  “You know this guy?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Swingle. “And I wouldn’t believe anything he says. He’s insane.”

  “Nice to see you, too, Lance,” said Sternabite.

  “Okay, whoever you are,” said Turow, “I don’t have time for you now. We’re dealing with a matter of urgent national security.”

  “It’ll get a lot more urgent if you don’t listen to that boy,” said Sternabite.

  “Is that a threat?” said Turow.

  “No,” said Sternabite. “It’s a fact. The blackouts are being controlled from here, from this science fair.”

  “Okay,” said Turow. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Neal Sternabite. I’m a scientist.”

  Swingle snorted loudly. Turow ignored him.

  “Mr. Sternabite,” he said, “if you know something about the blackouts, I’m going to ask you to come with us. You can explain your theory when we get back to headquarters.”

  “It’s not a theory,” said Sternabite. “And we don’t have time to go anywhere. Do you know what an EMP is?”

  “No,” said Turow. “And I don’t have time to—”

  “It’s an electromagnetic pulse,” said Sternabite. “It’s usually created by a nuclear detonation, but there are other ways. That’s what’s going on here.” Sternabite pointed toward the ME kids’ projects. “He’s going to shut the power down again, and then he’s going to discharge a capacitor bank into the grid. The grid will act as a giant antenna. He’s going to fry all the electronics in Washington, D.C., and probably for hundreds of miles around. You understand what that means?”

  “No,” said Turow. “And I—”

  “It means the government goes down,” said Sternabite. “And it doesn’t come back up. Even when they get the power restored, if they can, most of the federal government computers are lost, along with a major chunk—a huge chunk—of data. All erased. The government is crippled. Its brain and central nervous system are gone. There are no records, no communications, no money coming in or going out. You, for example, no longer get paid—you and millions like you. Federal authority breaks down everywhere. These blackouts? The riots? The panic? It’s nothing compared with what’s going to happen next. The economy goes, civil society collapses, and the United States stumbles back to the Stone Age.”

  “How do you know this…this EMP is going to happen?” said Turow.

  “Because I built these kids’ projects,” said Sternabite.

  “Wait a minute,” said Turow. “Why would you build them, if you want to stop them?”

  “Because I didn’t realize what he was going to do with them,” said Sternabite.

  “What who was going to do?” said Turow.

  Sternabite looked at Toby, who shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” said Sternabite.

  “I told you,” said Swingle, smirking. “He’s insane.”

  Turow looked at Iles and Lefkon, then turned back to Sternabite.

  “You’re coming with us,” he said.

  “No, listen,” said Sternabite. He took a step toward the ME kids’ projects. “Just give me two minutes and I’ll—”

  “Hold it,” said Iles, grabbing Sternabite’s arm.

  Turow said, “You’re not touching anything.” He turned to the waiting police officers. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get these people out of here. And don’t let any of them touch anything.”

  As two officers approached him, Sternabite looked around desperately. His eyes fell on Micah, who was standing next to Toby and still holding Fester.

  “You,” he said. “Kid. Did your frog levitate?”

  “What?” said Micah.

  “Your frog,” said Sternabite, his voice rising. “Did it float?”

  “What’s he talking about?” said Turow.

  “He’s lost his mind,” sneered Swingle.

  “Did it float?” repeated Sternabite.

  “Um, yeah,” said Micah. To Toby, he whispered, “Why’s he asking about Fester?”

  Toby was wondering the same thing.

  “Because I was thinking,” said Sternabite, as the officers grabbed his arms, “you’d get better results if you increased the power.”

  “Huh?” said Micah. “But you said to keep it at ten percent. You said if—”

  “I know what I said,” hissed Sternabite. The officers were pulling him away, along with Toby’s parents, Vrsk, and Drmtsi. Two more had taken hold of Tamara; four more were coming toward Micah and Toby.

  “You need more power!” shouted Sternabite. “Now!”

  “What is he talking about?” said Micah.

  Suddenly, Toby understood. As the officers reached him he reached for the controls to Micah’s project. The power knob was set at ten percent.

  “STOP HIM!” shouted Turow. “DON’T LET HIM TOUCH THAT!”

  An officer grabbed Toby’s right arm, but his left was still free. He grabbed the knob and cranked it all t
he way to one hundred.

  Suddenly, Toby, Micah, the four police officers, and Fester the frog were lifted off the ground, tumbling in the air above Micah’s project. Micah yelped as he lost his grip on Fester, who floated upward to the gym ceiling.

  “Fester!” shouted Micah, watching helplessly as the levitating frog landed upside down on a heating duct, then wriggled through a vent. Toby and the other humans stopped rising about ten feet above the table, where they waved their arms and legs with no effect other than to accidentally punch and kick each other. Toby heard shouts below, the loudest being Turow yelling, ‘“GRAB THEM! GRAB THEM!” Three more officers lunged forward, only to be swept up in the super-powerful magnetic field. There were now nine bodies thrashing in the air while the FBI agents and the remaining earthbound officers stood by uncertainly.

  In the confusion, Sternabite broke away from Turow and walked quickly toward the ME projects.

  “HE’S GETTING AWAY!” shrieked Swingle, pointing at Sternabite.

  “Stop him!” shouted Turow. Before Sternabite could reach the projects, one officer tackled him to the gym floor, and a second landed on top of them. As they struggled on the floor, Turow turned his attention back to the shouting people suspended in the air above Micah’s project.

  “Any ideas?” he said to Lefkon and Iles.

  “Maybe we could unplug it?” said Lefkon.

  “Right!” said Turow. “The plug must be under the table.” He studied the situation for a moment, then dropped down onto his belly. “Hold my feet,” he said to Iles. Then, with Iles gripping his shoes, Turow inched forward toward the table. He pulled the drape aside and looked underneath. Micah’s project, he saw, was not plugged into the school electrical system; it was plugged into a small, humming device that looked strangely like a Slurpee machine. The device had an on/off switch. Wincing, Turow reached out and turned it off.

  THUD CRASH CRASH THUD OWW OOOH CRASH THUD

  Nine bodies slammed down onto the table, which slammed down onto Turow. Iles, Lefkon, and the remaining officers lunged forward to help. Moaning bodies were sprawled everywhere. Nobody noticed that when Micah’s table collapsed, it knocked the lid off the fifty-five–gallon drum full of Diet Coke that formed part of Brad Pitt Wemplemeyer’s project. And nobody noticed that, in the struggle to help his fallen comrades, one of the police officers was now bumping into the metal stand that held the giant nuclear Mentos, which was s-l-o-w-l-y falling over into the barrel…

  FWOOOOOOSH

  What happened next was undoubtedly the greatest demonstration of unleashing the power of surface tension in the history of science fairs, although none of the participants actually saw it. Instead, they found themselves engulfed in a wave of brown foam that billowed upward and outward from the fifty-five-gallon drum in a spectacular Diet Coke volcano. Toby felt himself being swept across the floor, unable to see anything except foam, and barely able to breathe. He slammed into a wall and managed to get to his feet, then felt himself being dragged sideways. He clutched the wall, trying to find something to hold on to. He came to an opening—a doorway?—and tried to duck into it, but the foam surge was pulling him past.

  Then somebody grabbed his arm. He felt himself being yanked into the opening. It was, in fact, a doorway. Like Toby, the person holding his arm was covered with foam; his only distinguishing characteristic was his sunglasses.

  Sternabite.

  “Okay, kid,” he said. “Now it’s up to us.”

  AS THE PRESIDENT AND HIS TOP STAFF watched glumly, the last bright section on the electronic map of the power grid—the Middle Atlantic region—went gray.

  The president shot a questioning look at his secretary of Homeland Security, who was on the phone. The secretary nodded and said, “Washington’s dark again, sir. Telecommunications are totally down everywhere, nationwide.”

  The president said a bad word. Nobody disagreed.

  “What about the school?” barked the president. “What’s taking them so long?”

  “Uh, sir,” said the chief of staff, also on the phone. “About the school. There’s been a, um, setback.”

  “What?” said the president.

  “Our FBI people have, um, lost contact with some of the suspects.”

  “Lost contact? How?”

  “There was some kind of…eruption.”

  “You mean explosion?”

  “No, sir. They’re calling it an eruption, a massive quantity of foam.”

  “Chemical weapons?”

  “Uh, no, sir. They’re saying it smells like, um…”

  “It smells like what?”

  “Coke, sir.”

  “Coke? As in…Coca-Cola?”

  “They say it also could be Pepsi, sir,” said the chief of staff. “They’re not sure.”

  The president stared at his chief of staff for five full seconds. “Are you saying,” he said, “that our people have been DRIVEN OFF BY A SOFT DRINK??”

  One of the military men snorted. The president silenced him with a glare.

  “Um, apparently, yes,” said the chief of staff. “The school building has been evacuated.”

  “WELL TELL THEM TO PUT ON GAS MASKS OR SOMETHING AND GET BACK IN THERE!” said the president.

  “Yes, sir,” said the chief of staff, back on the phone.

  The president looked at the map of the country, now totally gray. Then he looked at the circle of people gathered around him.

  “Coke?” he said.

  Nobody had an answer.

  PRMKT CHECKED HIS SCREEN. The power grid, except for Hubble Middle, was completely shut down. This left the country’s huge power-transmission network free of electrical charge, ready for the Pulse. He checked the capacitor bank, which stored the electrical voltage he would use; it was fully charged and ready to go. The Pulse would travel through the empty grid and every wire plugged into the grid. It would attack any magnetic medium—including computer chips and hard drives; the data stored on them would be erased or permanently corrupted. Anything that used these media would instantly become junk. Computers would be useless, as would telephones, televisions, elevators, microwave ovens, refrigerators, even some toasters.

  One more command to enter. Prmkt typed it slowly, carefully. He checked to make sure it was correct. He put his finger on the ENTER key, took a breath, and thought for a moment about Gmygmy.

  Then he pushed ENTER.

  Nothing happened.

  Prmkt cursed in Krpsht. Swiftly he retyped the command and again pressed ENTER.

  Nothing.

  Prmkt clicked on a diagnostics program and ran it. In a few seconds, he saw the problem—a cable had come unplugged from Farrell Plinkett’s project. Prmkt had heard shouts and the sounds of a struggle outside; apparently, the cable had been knocked loose in the commotion.

  Prmkt didn’t panic; he never did. This was a setback, but a minor one, easily corrected. Plinkett’s project had been set up close to the utility door. Prmkt would simply slip out, reattach the cable, return to the utility room, and proceed with the Pulse.

  He went to the door, unlocked it, and carefully opened it a crack. A spray of brown foam shot through the opening. Prmkt quickly shut the door and staggered back, sputtering and frantically wiping the foam from his face. His first fear—that it was a chemical attack—dissolved when he realized that the foam was a cola-flavored soft drink. He didn’t know why the gym was suddenly filled with cola foam, and he didn’t much care: all he knew was that he had to get to the cable.

  Prmkt stood for a moment with his hand on the doorknob, visualizing the layout of the science-fair projects outside. Then he took a breath, opened the door, and stepped through the surge of incoming foam. He closed the door behind him, electing not to lock it, so he’d be able to get back in quickly. He dropped to his hands and knees. He found that, even though he was engulfed in foam, if he kept his head down, he could create enough of a pocket so that he could breathe foam-free air.

  Slowly, surrounded by the swirling
, blinding foam, Prmkt began crawling across the gym floor.

  TOBY WAITED ANXIOUSLY in the small air pocket formed by the doorway, cut off from the world by the wall of Diet Coke fizz. A dim, brown-colored light filtered through the foam from the gym lights, which, somehow, were still burning.

  Toby wiped off the face of his watch: Sternabite had been gone for five minutes now. He’d told Toby to stay in the doorway, while he’d crawled off through the foam to try to disable the ME kids’ projects. Toby had offered to go with him, but Sternabite had said no.

  “You don’t know what to look for,” he said. “You might touch the wrong thing and kill yourself.”

  Toby looked at the foam, still thick, still surging. He wondered how Sternabite could breathe in that stuff. If he could breathe.

  He jumped as he felt something touch his leg. With relief he saw that it was Sternabite, returning from his mission. He got to his feet, sputtering and dripping foam from head to toe. He still had his sunglasses on.

  “From now on,” Sternabite said, “I am drinking Mountain Dew.”

  “Did you find the projects?” said Toby.

  “I found one,” said Sternabite. “I pulled out a cable. I wanted to do more, but the foam is really thick by the floor; I was starting to drown out there. For now we’re okay. He can’t launch the EMP without that cable. Now we need to find him.”

  “How do we do that?” said Toby.

  “He has to be nearby,” said Sternabite. “He could be in a classroom or in a room right off the gym, like this one.” He tapped the door they were standing next to, which they had already determined opened to a small supply closet.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We start with the gym,” said Sternabite. “We go along the walls—the foam’s not as bad there—and we open every door we come to. If we don’t find him, we start looking in the rest of the school.”

  “How do we know what he looks like?”

  “We don’t,” said Sternabite. “But he’ll have a computer, and it’ll be near some gear that’s hardwired into the school electrical system. He won’t be able to move it. We’ll know when we see him.”