Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

by Bob Pflugfelder

Coolicious turned around again.

  Silas relit his finger light and stuck his hand straight up.

  Ellen Wharton-Wheeler was halfway up the stairway. A dozen more steps and a turn to the left and she’d be at the doors to her exhibit—and DeMarco and Nick and Tesla would be in real trouble if they didn’t get out of there fast.

  “This stupid mask,” Coolicious said. “I can’t see five feet in front of me. Is the bat—whoa! Is your finger glowing?”

  The big owl had turned back around while Silas was watching Wharton-Wheeler.

  “Yeah,” Silas said, trying to laugh it off. “It glows,” he said. “It’s, uh, another fashion thing.”

  He switched off the LED. If DeMarco hadn’t seen the signal by now, it wouldn’t matter. He and Nick and Tesla were about to get caught, and there was nothing more Silas could do about it.

  “So, anyway,” he said to Coolicious, “have you thought about doing the Dougie?”

  “Finally!” Tesla announced triumphantly.

  “Did you find something?” Nick called to her from the other side of the space exhibit.

  “Yeah! Come check it out! By the moon rover!”

  Nick hurried to join his sister. She was standing by what looked like a dune buggy with a satellite dish sticking out of the hood. It was a model of the lunar rover that had been used by astronauts on the Apollo missions to the moon. Lying on one of the rover’s seats were a coffee mug, an appointment book, and a binder packed with papers. Near these objects, built into the dashboard beside the steering wheel, were a telephone, a computer screen, and a keyboard.

  It was the control panel for the exhibit, hidden in plain sight just like the one in the Hall of Genius. Only here the screen wasn’t displaying the exhibit controls. Before going to lunch, Wharton-Wheeler had been checking her e-mail.

  “All right, we found where she’s been working,” Nick said. “Now what?”

  “Now we do a thorough search of—”

  “Nick! Tesla!” DeMarco hissed from the entrance. “She’s coming!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tesla groaned.

  “Silas gave the signal,” DeMarco went on. “Get out of there. Now. Do you hear me?”

  “We hear you,” Nick said. He took his sister by the arm. “Don’t we, Tez?”

  “But—but—”

  Nick started to pull his sister away from the screen.

  Tesla yanked her arm loose. “I just need a few seconds to—hey!”

  Something Tesla saw on the computer screen made her eyes go wide.

  “We don’t have a few seconds,” Nick said, latching on again and tugging her away. “We never found a back exit. We’ve gotta go out the front—where Ms. Wharton-Wheeler will be coming in!”

  Tesla tried to break free, but this time Nick held on tight.

  “Come on, Tez,” he said. “We can’t stop the sabotage from juvenile hall, can we?”

  “Okay, okay. You’re right.”

  Tesla stopped resisting and started running alongside her brother. But a part of her wanted to turn around and head straight back to the control panel.

  She’d gotten just half a second’s peek at the screen, and a message in the e-mail inbox had caught her eye. It was from Katherine Mavis, the X-Treme Learnasium’s executive director. All Tesla had been able to see was the subject line:

  RE: DESTROYING THE MUSEUM FROM WITHIN

  When Nick and Tesla stepped out of the space exhibit, DeMarco was nowhere in sight. What they could see was the top of Ellen Wharton- Wheeler’s head as she came up the staircase.

  One more step and she’d see them. There was no time to escape around the corner, and no place to hide.

  Nick grabbed Tesla again and spun her around so that she was looking back the way they’d just come.

  “Oh, Ms. Wharton-Wheeeeee-lerrrrrr!” he called out loudly, peering through the gap in the tall white partitions blocking off the exhibit. “Yoo-hooooooo! Are you in there?”

  “I’m back here,” came the curator’s voice behind them. “What are you doing here?”

  Nick and Tesla turned to look at her with (they hoped) convincing looks of surprise.

  “Why, we’re looking for you,” Nick said innocently. “Didn’t Berg tell you?”

  “Who?”

  “Berg. You know. The security guy who’s all hulked out?” Nick said.

  Wharton-Wheeler cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. She’d stopped a few feet away, and she was so tall that Nick had to bend backward a little bit to look up into her eyes. It made her seem even more intimidating—as if she was glaring down at him from a throne … or a judge’s bench.

  “Anyway,” Nick continued, his voice cracking, “Berg said he’d let you know we wanted to talk to you. But, well, I guess we got a little antsy, so we decided to find you ourselves.”

  “Why would you want to talk to me?” Wharton- Wheeler asked.

  “Well, uh, we wanted to apologize again for the head in the refrigerator.”

  “And we were curious about the you-know-what,” Tesla threw in.

  Wharton-Wheeler scowled at her.

  “The what?”

  “The big secret whatever in that other new wing downstairs.”

  Wharton-Wheeler smiled politely but said nothing. But her silence did say something: Tesla had guessed right. The you-know-what was in the new wing downstairs.

  “We’ve got a theory about it,” Tesla continued.

  “You do?” Wharton-Wheeler said.

  Nick turned to look at his sister in a way that said “We do?”

  “It’s got something to do with Nikola Tesla,” Tesla said.

  Wharton-Wheeler looked both surprised and impressed. But certainly not friendly.

  “That part of the museum is not my concern anymore,” she said. “Like that tourist trap sideshow attraction your uncle’s working on. I’ve got just my little corner here to do with as I think best. Speaking of which, I have work to do.”

  And with that she stepped forward.

  Nick stepped aside.

  Tesla did not.

  “We couldn’t resist a peek at your exhibit,” she said. “What’s it about?”

  Wharton-Wheeler paused.

  “It’s called Whatever Happened to the Final Frontier?” she said. “It covers the history of space exploration and the reasons our country should recommit itself to it.”

  “Cool!” Nick said.

  “I like it,” Tesla said.

  Their obvious sincerity warmed the curator a bit.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I like to think it turned out well.”

  “Could we go in and look around?” Tesla asked.

  Wharton-Wheeler immediately cooled right back down.

  “You’re welcome to come back once the X-Treme Learnasium is open for business,” she said, her voice dripping with scorn as she pronounced the museum’s new name.

  She then stepped around Tesla and slipped through the gap in the partitions.

  “For now, you two should stay with your uncle and his friend,” she said. “This is no place for curious children.”

  She took hold of the big white doors from the inside and slammed them shut in Nick and Tesla’s faces.

  A moment later, Nick and Tesla were heading down to the first floor.

  “Hey! Wait up!” someone said behind them.

  DeMarco came hurrying down the steps to join them.

  “Did you make it around the corner?” Tesla asked him.

  “Naw. Somebody waited too long to give us the signal. After I warned you guys, I managed to duck behind one of those big nasty organs. I think it was a kidney. Or maybe a liver. Anyway, I heard your conversation with Ms. Wheeler-Wharton.”

  “Wharton-Wheeler,” Tesla corrected.

  “Right. Good job talking your way out of trouble. If you’re gonna get caught, that’s the way to do it. So was it worth it?”

  “No,” said Nick.

  “Yes,” said Tesla. And she proceeded to tell Nick
and DeMarco about the e-mail subject line she’d seen.

  “Regarding destroying the museum from within? On an e-mail from that Katherine Mavis lady, the museum director?” Nick said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she and the head curator want to destroy their own museum?”

  “Ms. Wharton-Wheeler obviously hates the new direction it’s gone in—all the ‘X-Treme’ stuff,” Tesla pointed out. “As for Ms. Mavis, I don’t know … but I sure want to find out.”

  DeMarco grinned. Nick did not.

  They both knew what was in store for them all: more risky snooping.

  DeMarco was neutral on snooping, but he loved taking risks.

  Nick didn’t like either.

  They found Silas still waiting by the big brain. He was trying to teach himself how to moonwalk.

  “Why were you so late with the signal?” DeMarco asked. “By the time you flashed your little light, Ms. Wha-Whee was halfway up the stairs.”

  “Sorry. I got distracted by Coolicious McBrainy.”

  “Who?” Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco all said at the same time.

  “He’s an owl,” Silas explained, still trying to glide backward but just scuffing the floor. “And, I have to admit, a really good dancer.”

  Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco were all speechless at the same time.

  “He left just a second ago,” Silas went on. He bumped into the brain, spun around, and started dancing in the opposite direction. “Said he had to go to the staff changing room and adjust his costume.”

  “Ahhh. Costume,” DeMarco said, sounding relieved. “I was starting to worry about you, dude.”

  “I’m still confused,” said Nick. “Why is there a guy walking around the museum in an owl costume?”

  “He’s the Learnasium’s new mascot. He got here early to warm up for the big opening whoop-de-doo tonight.” Silas finally stopped moonwalking and gave his friends his full attention. “So what happened up there, anyway?”

  “Later,” Tesla said, heading for the Hall of Genius. “Right now we need to talk to Uncle Newt and Hiroko.”

  But Uncle Newt and Hiroko did not want to talk to them.

  “Do you realize how much we still have to do?” Uncle Newt asked as he struggled to straighten Charles Darwin’s nose, which had been knocked sideways the last time the scientist’s head fell off. “Hiroko and I still have to get Isaac Asimov back on his feet, strengthen Louis Pasteur’s grip so he won’t throw any more beakers, retest Nikola Tesla’s head—”

  “I just noticed one of Jane Goodall’s chimpanzees lost an arm,” said Hiroko, who was on her hands and knees looking for an eyeball that had popped out of Aristotle. “And something went wrong with Henry Ford’s back. He looks like the hunchback of Notre Dame.”

  “Great. So we’ve got to rearm a chimpanzee and reback Henry Ford.” Uncle Newt stopped twisting Darwin’s nose and thought for a moment. “Although maybe we should leave Ford as he is. I never liked that guy.”

  Uncle Newt took a step back and considered Darwin’s nose, which was still so crooked it looked like the naturalist had been punched by a prizefighter. “Good enough! Next!” Uncle Newt hustled over to the jungle scene that Jane Goodall shared with Dian Fossey and began literally beating the bushes looking for the chimp’s loose arm.

  “I just had a few questions about Katherine Mavis,” Tesla said.

  “Don’t really know her! Talks a lot of gibberish! Just happy she called! Eureka!” Uncle Newt said.

  He pulled out a hairy black appendage from under a fake fern and then started looking around for the ape it belonged to.

  “Why did she call you?” Tesla asked. “I mean, I know you’re a genius and all, but how’d she find out about you?”

  “Mark Carstairs! Original designer! Worked together once! Recommended me! Eureka again!”

  Uncle Newt squatted down beside an animatronic chimp and began examining a silver rod jutting from its shoulder.

  “Can you think of any reason Ms. Mavis might have to—”

  “Tesla!” Uncle Newt said. “Getting clue? Speaking loudly in incomplete sentences! Stressed! Busy! Later!”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Just one more question,” Tesla said. “Where is Ms. Mavis’s office?”

  Uncle Newt waved the chimp arm at Einstein’s chalkboard and the exit hidden behind it.

  “Right, left, right, right,” he said.

  “No,” Hiroko said. “Right, right, left, right.”

  “No. It is definitely right, right, left, left,” said Uncle Newt.

  “That’s not even what you just said,” Hiroko told him.

  “It’s not?” Uncle Newt scratched his head with the monkey’s paw. “Well, anyway, it’s definitely turn, turn, turn, turn. You can’t miss it!”

  They missed it.

  The kids found a broom closet, various storage rooms, and even the staff workout room. But they couldn’t find the office of Katherine Mavis, the X-Treme Learnasium’s executive director—and, as Tesla kept saying, its executive traitor.

  Then Nick heard a vaguely familiar voice echoing down one of the museum’s seemingly infinite hallways.

  “We’re ska-funk-punk-emo-metal with a retro grunge twist,” the voice was saying. “And I rap.”

  The kids followed the sound to a door in a dead-end hall. When they peeked in, they saw a scruffy-looking man with thick glasses and gelled hair that stood on end like a little patch of black grass. He was sitting at a clutter-covered desk, his back to the door, holding a cell phone in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other.

  “Hey,” DeMarco whispered, “it’s the computer guy.”

  “Senior system manager,” corrected Nick.

  “Yeah. The monkey T-shirt dude,” said Silas. “Hobo.”

  “Mojo,” said Tesla. “Mojo Jones.”

  “I sent you a link to our website. Did you get it?” Mojo was saying into his phone between bites of potato chips. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, I’m sure you get a lot of e-mails like that. But you really ought to take mine out of your spam folder and check it out because you haven’t heard a band that rocks harder than—hello? Hello?”

  He tossed his phone onto the desk.

  “Jerk,” he sighed.

  Tesla cleared her throat.

  Mojo slapped his hands on his computer keyboard and began typing furiously. The bag of chips fell to the floor.

  “Work-work-work, code-code-code,” he started saying, fingers flying across the keys. Then he swiveled in his chair to face the doorway. “Oh, hi, kids. How can I help you?”

  “We’re trying to find Katherine Mavis’s office,” Tesla said.

  “You’re almost there. A right, a right, and a left. It’s with all the other administrative offices. You can’t miss it.”

  “Wanna bet?” said DeMarco.

  “I know you’re busy, Mr. Jones,” Tesla said quickly. “But can I ask you something?”

  “Well…,” Mr. Jones said, finally halting his banging on the keyboard. “I guess I could spare a few seconds.” With his left foot, he carefully shoved the potato chip bag under his desk.

  “Thanks,” Tesla said. “I’m just curious. The computer controls for the animatronics in the Hall of Genius—how complicated are they?”

  “Not very. I’ve tried to make all the interfaces pretty idiot-proof.”

  “So just about anybody could change the settings or whatever?”

  “I suppose, as long as you had the right log-ins. Is your uncle having trouble again?”

  “No, no, he’s fine,” Tesla said. “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask a question?” said Nick.

  “Sure,” Mojo said with only the slightest hint of exasperation.

  “Your boss, Ms. Mavis, uh …”

  Nick scrunched up his face and rolled his hands in the air as he fought to find the right words.

  “… umm … hmm …”

  “Yeah?” Mojo said.

  “Well … what’s her deal?” Nick said finally.

  Mojo shrugg
ed.

  “Her deal? I don’t know. She was brought in to shake things up at the museum, and that’s what she did. Before coming here, she was head of marketing over at the San Francisco Scientastic Explorezone. There’s always been a big rivalry between them and us, so it was kind of like having the quarterback of the 49ers come in and, uh, do plays for the, uh, whoever the 49ers fans don’t like. Sorry. I knew I shouldn’t try to make a sports analogy.”

  “That’s okay. I get it,” Nick said. “She used to play for the other team.”

  He gave his sister a significant look.

  Motive? it said.

  “Can I ask a question?” DeMarco said.

  Mojo winced. For a half second, he looked like he was in pain.

  “Sure,” he said through gritted teeth. “What do I have to do today, anyway? It’s not like we have a massive rededication ceremony in”—he checked the time on his computer screen—“four hours and forty-four minutes.”

  DeMarco ignored the sarcasm and pointed at the words on the man’s T-shirt.

  “What’s a Migraine Monkey Missile Test?”

  And in that instant, Mojo Jones’s demeanor changed completely. He went from being an irritated sourpuss to a beaming, grinning, excited puppy.

  “That’s my band!” he said. “We’re a ska-funk-punk-emo-metal-grunge power trio. With rapping. I’m the front man. We’ve been trying to get established. Get some gigs, you know? It’s tough, though. The ska-funk-punk-emo-metal scene isn’t what it used to be, and the grunge thing throws some people off. And not everybody’s into my rapping. Sooner or later, we’re gonna get noticed, though. It’s just a matter of making a splash at the right moment. We’ve been working on a video, but we ran out of … well …”

  Mojo’s smile had begun to fade, but with a wave of his hands it came back full force.

  “Never mind that. Gotta keep it positive, right? That’s our plan. Keep on rockin’, build word of mouth, and then conquer the world. And you guys can help!”

  He yanked open one of the desk drawers, and started pulling out Migraine Monkey Missile Test CDs, T-shirts, posters, and bumper stickers. Then he jumped up from his chair and started handing them out to the kids.

  “Here you go,” he said. “Enjoy! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook and review us on iTunes and Amazon.”