“When you add it all up, I think it’s obvious Marsha’s a god, and if we don’t want to end up like those coconuts, we’d better hit our knees. Are you with me? Good. Because I don’t want to do this alone.”
Marisa and Tom watched the cavemen fall to the ground, raise their hands in the air, and bow down as they chanted “DO-DEE-DOOT-DOOT MARSHA!”
“Awesome!” yelled Tom. He looked at Marisa. “Right?”
She frowned. “Not quite.” Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled “MA-RI-SA! MY…NAME…IS…MARISA!”
The cavemen looked at each other. Then they bowed down again. “DO-DEE-DOOT-DOOT MARISA!”
Marisa smiled. She was getting much better at sticking up for herself. “Okay, let’s build a crane.”
It was a very impressive crane, especially considering that no one involved in making it had ever built one before, and the only tools they had were trees, rocks, vines, and saber-toothed tiger teeth. From a platform of logs built on the shore of the lake, the crane rose ten feet in the air, then jutted twenty feet out over the water. Its tiger-tooth pincers dangled from the ends of two long vines threaded across the crane’s arm like a double fishing line on a pole.
Marisa stood atop the cliff high above the crane, calling out directions to Tom and the cavemen as they maneuvered it into position.
“Farther…farther…okay, stop! Now left a little…too far…back to the right…STOP! That’s perfect!”
The tiger-tooth pincers dangled directly over the submerged fetcher.
“Okay, open the pincers!” On Marisa’s command, Tom unspooled the vine that controlled the pincers. The teeth slowly separated.
“Now let the line out!” Tom turned his attention to a second line, giving it some play. The pincers sank into the water.
Tom slowly let out more line until…
“I think I felt it hit!” Tom yelled to Marisa. “Can you see it?”
“Yes! You’re a little too deep. Pull back on the line a little…Perfect! Close the pincers!”
Tom pulled back on the pincer line.
“You got it! Pull up!”
Tom began to reel in the second line. Ever so slowly, the fetcher emerged from the water, held between the pincers at the end of the vine.
“We got it!” yelled Tom.
“Start swinging it over!” yelled Marisa.
Tom called out to Edd and Jim, who were manning the crane’s arm. “Turn slow!”
They began to turn the arm, swinging the fetcher toward dry land.
“We’re doing it!” yelled Tom. “It’s coming over! We’re going to—”
The fetcher slipped loose from the pincers and fell in the water.
“Oh, rats,” said Tom.
“Don’t get discouraged!” yelled Marisa. “Let’s just do it again.”
They did it again.
And again.
And then four more times.
But finally …
“We got it! WE GOT IT! WE GOT IT!” yelled Tom as the fetcher finally reached dry land.
“I’ll be right down!” yelled Marisa.
Dug and the other cavemen started toward the strangely glowing fetcher. Its control panel was slick with water, and a thin film of radioactive green goo had seeped from one of its seams.
“No touch!” yelled Tom. “No touch! Stay away!”
The cavemen all looked at Dug. He rolled his eyes and shrugged.
“Smurg,” he said.
They all nodded, understanding what he meant, which was: “Don’t ask me, gentlemen. I have no idea what that thing is or why we can’t touch it. To be completely honest with you, I have no idea how the world works anymore.”
A few minutes later, Marisa arrived, out of breath from running down the hill next to the cliff.
By then, Tom had selected the perfect three-foot stick for pressing the big red “RETURN” button on the fetcher.
Marisa pointed to the fetcher and addressed the cavemen. “No touch! Stay away! Danger!”
“Do-dee-doot-doot no touch,” the cavemen chanted as they raised their arms in the air and lowered them at Marisa in a gesture of worship.
“I really hope this fetcher works,” Marisa told Tom. “Being worshiped isn’t as much fun as I thought it’d be. It’s actually kind of…creepy.”
“Creepy do-dee-doot-doot,” the cavemen chanted, raising and lowering their arms again.
Tom raised the stick. “Ready?”
“Go for it!”
He reached out with the stick and pressed the fetcher’s big red button.
Twelve thousand years later, the time machine stood on the CEASE auditorium stage, hidden under a large black velvet sheet that was much fancier than the cotton one Dr. Vasquez had used for the initial Show and Tell.
She’d rented the velvet sheet from a local magician who’d charged her thirty dollars. It seemed like a lot of money for just two hours of a giant black velvet sheet’s time, but Dr. Vasquez decided it was worth the extra expense. It looked much more impressive than the plain cotton one. Plus, she was about to become fantastically wealthy, so she could afford to splurge.
She stood backstage with Dr. Palindrome, peeking out at the assembled throng of reporters as the CEASE director reviewed the index cards on which he’d written his introductory speech.
“Should we get started?” Dr. Vasquez asked. This was a very big day for her, and on the outside, she looked as composed and confident as ever. On the inside, though, she was so nervous that she had to keep reminding herself not to bite her stylishly green fingernails.
“Ready when you are!” said Dr. Palindrome.
Just then, they heard a strange whooosh sound from the stage, followed by a collective gasp from the audience.
Dr. Vasquez poked her head back out to look at the stage and uttered her own gasp of shock.
The black velvet sheet lay in a heap on the floor.
The time machine had disappeared.
Twelve thousand years earlier, the time machine reappeared…on top of Dug’s foot.
“OOOOOOW!” he yelled, which was the only word in the caveman language that had the exact same meaning as it did in English.
The other cavemen gasped, fell to their knees, and began to bow to the giant metal box that had mysteriously appeared in front of them.
“Do-dee-doot-doot…” they chanted.
Dug did not chant. He also didn’t fall to his knees, because there was a time machine on his foot. Instead, he just kept yelling.
“OOOOOOW!”
“Sorry, Dug! We’ll get that off your foot in just a skosh!” Tom patted Dug on the shoulder as he ran into the time machine.
Dug did not seem to appreciate Tom’s concern.
“OOOOW! OOOOW! OOOOW!” he kept bellowing.
“No touch!” Marisa yelled, pointing to the radioactive fetcher.
“Do-dee-doot-doot no touch,” the other cavemen chanted.
“I promise we’ll send someone back to clean that up!” Marisa ran into the time machine.
Inside the machine, Marisa found Tom staring, confused, at a framed Star Trip poster on the floor. “What’s an original one sheet for Star Trip II: Excelsior’s Revenge doing in here?”
“More important question: How does this control panel work?” Dr. Vasquez hadn’t bothered to make it user-friendly for anyone except herself. Other than the part of the display that read “10,000 B.C.,” nothing made sense…except for the green lever that had started all the trouble in the first place.
“Don’t we just pull the lever?” Tom asked.
“Fingers crossed,” said Marisa as she pulled the green lever forward.
In an instant, the time machine disappeared from the Stone Age.
Since they were standing inside it, so did Tom and Marisa.
With the weight suddenly gone from his foot, Dug stopped screaming and began to hop around on one leg, muttering caveman curse words.
“Haooga?” asked Edd. In caveman language, that me
ant, “Dug, are you okay? That looks like it really smarts. Also, what the heck just happened? Where’d that giant magic box come from? More importantly, where did it go? Are we ever going to see Tom and Marsha—I mean Marisa—again? And what’s this glowing box, and why aren’t we supposed to touch it?”
Dug sat down heavily on the crane platform and began to massage his rapidly swelling foot. The other cavemen watched him nervously, waiting for instructions.
Finally, Dug sighed and said, “Gurg.” Which meant: “Gentlemen, I give up. Let’s just get up and walk away—or in my case, hobble away—and pretend none of this ever happened.”
The other cavemen nodded in agreement. It had been a very long week for all of them.
Twelve thousand years later, an auditorium full of reporters was buzzing with confusion about the sudden collapse of whatever was underneath that black velvet sheet on the stage.
Backstage, Dr. Vasquez was panicking.
“It’s gone! I have no idea why! Or where! Something’s catastrophically wrong! We’ve got to cancel the press conference!”
Curiously, Dr. Palindrome wasn’t panicking. Instead, he was trying to stifle the smile that had been threatening to cross his face ever since he realized what an opportunity this was for him.
“I couldn’t agree more about the ‘catastrophically wrong’ part,” he told Dr. Vasquez. “But as for the press conference, if we cancel it now, it’ll devastate CEASE’s reputation. We’d lose all our credibility with the public. It could ruin us!”
Hearing this—and seeing the strange-looking grimace that she didn’t realize was just Dr. Palindrome trying desperately not to smile—made Dr. Vasquez’s sense of panic much worse. She began to hyperventilate. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“Not to worry, Doctor—I have a solution!” Dr. Palindrome finally allowed his smile to break out.
Dr. Vasquez looked confused. “You know how to bring my time machine back?”
“Oh, heavens, no. Your time machine’s cooked. But I’d be VERY happy to save the day by announcing my solar panel invention instead. Back in a jiff!”
He ran to his office to fetch the panel, beaming with excitement at the thought of becoming rich and famous even sooner than he’d expected.
Dr. Vasquez watched him go, still hyperventilating over the fact that she had no idea where her time machine was.
A few feet away, Jason the janitor leaned on a broom as he yelled after Dr. Palindrome.
“Don’t take all day, pal! Ninety minutes, tops, and I’m booting everybody out so I can sweep up. Just so you know.”
Approximately a hundred and forty years before that very moment, in a nineteenth-century science lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, a determined young scientist flipped an electrical switch attached to a small carbon filament and took a step back to watch the results.
As the filament began to glow with brilliant light, Tom Edison—yes, THAT Tom Edison—raised his hands in triumph. He’d just successfully created an electric lightbulb!
Unfortunately, his triumph was cut short when a time machine landed on his foot.
“OOOOOOW!” he yelled.
Inside the machine, Tom Edison—OUR Tom Edison— heard the scream and looked out the window into the pained face of one of his idols.
“SORRY!” he yelled to the man. Then he turned to Marisa. “Why does that keep happening? And where are we?”
Marisa looked at the control panel. “Not sure ‘where,’ but the ‘when’ is October 21, 1879.”
Tom gasped. “OHMYGOSH THAT’S THOMAS EDISON! I knew he looked familiar!”
“How do you know what Thomas Edison looks like?”
“From my Famous Scientist Trading Card set! He’s inventing the lightbulb RIGHT NOW! TODAY! Look out the window—that’s it over there! And we just landed on his foot.”
“OOOOOOOOOOW!” not-our-Tom-Edison kept yelling.
“We’ve got to save him!” Our Tom started for the door. Marisa grabbed him by the arm. “Wait! First, let’s try this—”
She pulled the green lever all the way back.
In an instant, the time machine disappeared.
Tom Edison stopped screaming and began to hop around his lab on one leg, muttering scientist curse words to himself.
He sat down heavily on a lab stool and began to massage his sore foot.
What the heck just happened? he thought to himself.
What was that giant box that appeared out of nowhere? Who were those people inside it?
How’s my lightbulb doing?
He looked across the room. The filament was still glowing. The lightbulb worked! It was ready to announce to the world! He was about to become rich and famous! Nothing could stop him now!
Except possibly a deranged-sounding story about a mysterious giant box with people inside it appearing out of nowhere, landing on his foot, and then vanishing again.
If I tell people about this mysterious vanishing box, I’ll sound like a lunatic. That could really muck up my whole lightbulb announcement.
Tom Edison looked around his lab. Nobody had seen the giant vanishing box except him.
Maybe I should just pretend this never happened.
And that’s what he did.
As her body was flattened into a sheet one atom thick and twisted around itself half a million times, Marisa prepared herself for the worst. She couldn’t understand why they’d wound up in Thomas Edison’s research lab in 1879, and she had no idea where the time machine would send them next.
Fortunately, the machine was behaving exactly as Dr. Vasquez had pre-programmed it—to go back to 1879 for Thomas Edison’s autograph, then return to the press conference just in time for the triumphant climax of her presentation. It landed back in the CEASE auditorium atop the black velvet cloth, three feet behind Dr. Palindrome, at the very moment that he reached the climax of his replacement presentation.
He held up Marisa’s solar panel and crowed, “I’VE SOLVED MANKIND’S ENERGY NEEDS FOREVER! WITH ZERO HARM TO THE ENVIRONMENT!”
The crowd gasped.
Dr. Palindrome beamed. That was a heck of a gasp! he thought. They must really be impressed! Just look at their jaws dropping!
It took him a moment to realize the jaw-dropping wasn’t entirely about the solar panel. In fact, it was mostly about the giant metal box that had just appeared like a magic trick behind him.
The crowd gasped again when Marisa and Tom stepped out. Marisa had heard the end of Dr. Palindrome’s presentation, and she was both confused and angry.
“What are you doing with my solar panel?” she demanded.
The question was followed by a moment of stunned silence.
Then an awful lot of things happened at once.
“Her solar panel?” yelled at least three reporters.
“Tom’s back!” yelled at least five scientists.
“So is Marisa!” Dr. Vasquez yelled. “And my time machine!”
“It’s a time machine?” yelled at least seven reporters.
“Dr. Morice! So glad to see you again!” Dr. Palindrome said, trying to stall for time as his eyes darted from one exit to the next.
“Hey, guys!” Tom waved to the scientists. “We had the craziest week ever!”
“That’s right!” Dr. Vasquez replied to the reporters. “I’ve invented a time machine!”
“Wait a minute!” yelled Dr. Overtree. “That’s what’s-her-name up there! The solar panel woman who ran off to a Buddhist monastery!”
“And TOM is with her!” yelled Dr. Pulaski.
Fifty-eight scientists and a receptionist ran for the stage to greet Tom, back from the dead.
At the exact same time, 106 reporters ran for the stage to question Dr. Martina Vasquez, inventor of the world’s first time machine.
And one sneaky weasel of a lab director tried to run for the door.
“Stop that man!” thundered Marisa. “He just tried to steal my idea!”
Fortunately, it is physically impossible f
or even a very sneaky weasel to push his way past 165 extremely excited people who are all moving in the opposite direction. Dr. Palindrome found himself stuck onstage, blocked by the crush of scientists trying to quiz Tom and the crush of journalists trying to quiz Dr. Vasquez.
“Where were you?” Dr. Overtree asked Tom.
“We were stuck in the Stone Age!” Tom replied. “Dr. Morice and I accidentally went back there on the day Dr. Vasquez unveiled the time machine!”
“BOTH of you?” Dr. Overtree turned to Marisa. “But I thought you ran off to a Buddhist monastery!”
“I’ve never been to a Buddhist monastery in my life! Who told you that?”
“Dr. Palindrome!”
“It’s not true!” Tom yelled. “She was with me! We accidentally traveled back in the time machine, and—”
“But that’s impossible!” Dr. Salaam interrupted. “We checked the security camera footage! The time machine never left!”
“WHO checked the footage?”
“Dr. Palindrome!” the scientists all answered at once.
“The same guy who just tried to steal my solar panel idea?!” Marisa cried out. “And lied about me being in a Buddhist monastery?!”
“Hey, Dr. Palindrome!” bellowed Dr. Overtree, swiveling his head as he searched the crowd for the director. “Did you know where they were all along? Did you set them up so you could steal the solar panel idea?”
“Where is Dr. Palindrome?”
“Block the exits, everybody!”
Catching a whiff of scandal, some of the reporters who were crowding around Dr. Vasquez for news of the time machine turned around and started asking questions about Dr. Palindrome and the solar panels.
“Is this a scandal?”
“Is the director of CEASE a crook?”
“Where is he?”
“Did anybody block the exits?”
Dr. Palindrome hadn’t managed to get to an exit. Instead, he’d ducked inside the only hiding place he could find in the middle of the mobbed stage: the time machine.
Stuck in the Stone Age Page 10
