Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

by Bob Pflugfelder

  “Exactly,” Tesla said. She looked at Carstairs with disgust. “So, you came back to get revenge on the museum.”

  Uncle Newt expected him to sneer, “Yes, and I would’ve gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids and your giant owl.”

  Instead, once the man took in a few breaths and his face didn’t look so much like a big red grape, he said this:

  “You’ve got it all wrong. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think there’s a conspiracy to destroy the museum. I’m here to stop it!”

  “He’s lying,” Silas said. “Want me to sit on him?”

  “No! Please!” Carstairs begged. He was still stretched out flat on the floor, helplessly spread-eagled on his stomach as Silas swiveled around and got set to plop back down on him like a beanbag chair.

  “Wait,” Tesla said.

  Silas froze midsquat.

  “You’re here to save the museum?” she said to Carstairs. “By sneaking around in a mascot costume?”

  “Yes!” Carstairs squeaked, eyeing Silas’s hovering haunches with dread. “Just let me explain!”

  Tesla and Nick and Uncle Newt looked at one another.

  “We should at least hear him out,” Uncle Newt said.

  Nick nodded his agreement.

  “Okay, Silas,” Tesla said. “Let him speak.”

  Silas frowned, obviously unconvinced their prisoner would tell the truth without a thorough squashing first. But he turned and sat on the floor again all the same.

  Carstairs sighed with relief and then began talking.

  “While I was building all this”—he said, flapping a feathered hand at the animatronic figures around them—“I started noticing minor adjustments to the control settings. Little changes I couldn’t account for. I figured it was a glitch in the software, but I could never pin it down. Eventually, I started to suspect someone was experimenting with the control dashboard. Someone who was getting access to it through the museum’s network.”

  “Meaning, someone who works for the museum,” Tesla said.

  “Or a hacker. But why would someone like that care about the Hall of Genius?” said Carstairs. “The more I tried to figure out what was going on, the more problems I had with the animatronics. It finally got so bad that the whole Hall of Genius locked up. I tried to tell Katherine Mavis that someone was sabotaging me, but she thought I was just making excuses. All she cared about was a guarantee that everything would be ready for tonight. And when I couldn’t give her one, she replaced me.”

  Carstairs turned his gaze on Uncle Newt.

  “And let me guess,” he said. “You’ve been having trouble, too.”

  “It was smooth as can be until today, actually,” Uncle Newt said. “Then suddenly, just like that— ”

  Uncle Newt tried to snap, but between the owl costume and his fingers being slick with sweat, he couldn’t manage it. He gave up after three tries.

  “Anyway,” Uncle Newt said, “everything went cuckoo. It seems fine now, but we never did figure out what went wrong.”

  “See!” Carstairs cried. “They’re still doing it! Messing with the controls! I wanted to come back and prove it, but there was no way Ms. Mavis was going to let me regain access to the Hall of Genius. So … well … I found this extra costume, and I improvised.”

  Nick looked over at his sister and uncle.

  He was about to say “What do you think?” but before he could open his mouth, Silas rose to a crouch.

  “I still don’t believe him,” he said. “It’s squishin’ time!”

  He started to lower himself onto a whimpering Carstairs.

  “Silas! Stop it!” Tesla commanded in the tone most people reserve for “No! Bad dog!”

  Sulky and sour faced, Silas straightened and crossed his arms across his broad chest.

  “Why are you so obsessed with sitting on people?” Nick asked.

  “I’m good at it,” Silas said with a pout.

  “Kids,” said Uncle Newt, “I do believe Mark.”

  “Yeah … I think I do, too,” Nick said slowly.

  Tesla nodded. “If he was the one who messed up the controls earlier today,” she said, “then why would he need to be here now? He could just keep hacking in from wherever. So, yes—I think he’s telling the truth.”

  Carstairs heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Can I stand up now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Tesla said.

  Silas kept sulking but didn’t make any threatening moves.

  “Well, this has been fascinating,” Uncle Newt said, “but it hasn’t gotten us any closer to finding DeMarco.”

  He walked to Sir Alexander Fleming’s laboratory and picked up the phone mounted by the control panel.

  “What are you doing?” Carstairs asked.

  Uncle Newt punched in three numbers and then put the phone to his ear.

  “We have a young friend who’s gone missing,” he said to Carstairs. “We thought you could tell us where he is. But now that we know you can’t …”

  Carstairs looked like he wanted to lie back down on the floor and let Silas flatten him.

  “You’re calling the police?”

  “Re-calling them, actually. They were supposed to be here by now. I’m sorry, Mark. I know you could get in trouble for trespassing and impersonating an owl and all. But the clock is ticking and—yes, hello?” Uncle Newt held up a finger and focused his attention on the phone. “I’m calling from the X-Treme Learnasium on Kearny Street. Or maybe it’s on Stockton. Or Chestnut? I’m one of those people who navigates by landmarks, not street names. Sometimes I even forget my own address! Anyhoo, I’m in that big glass building? Looks kind of like the Great Pyramid of Giza, but more see-through? Used to be called the Northern California Museum of Science, Industry, and—yes! That’s it! Powell Street! Well, we have a bit of a situation here and—oh, really? Really? Really? Okay, then. Thank you.”

  Uncle Newt hung up the phone with a puzzled, perturbed look on his face.

  “What did they say?” Nick asked.

  “That they knew about the earlier call. That a squad car would be here any second.”

  “So what’s the problem?” said Tesla.

  “I could’ve sworn I heard Katherine Mavis speaking in the background.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment. So silent that they could hear Katherine Mavis’s voice echoing in from the atrium.

  “… anxious to begin our tour,” she was saying. “But before we show you the wonders of the X-Treme Learnasium, there are a few people I should thank …”

  “Are you sure you heard it coming over the phone?” Tesla asked.

  Uncle Newt nodded.

  “Could it have been some kind of interference from the P.A. system?” asked Nick.

  Uncle Newt shook his head.

  “If—if someone could access the museum’s network and sabotage the Hall of Genius,” Tesla asked, “could they reroute 911 calls to a personal cell phone?”

  Uncle Newt nodded slowly.

  “So you think you were talking to the bad guy just now?” Nick asked.

  To Nick’s immense disappointment, his uncle nodded again.

  “Was it a man or a woman?” Tesla asked.

  This time, Uncle Newt shrugged.

  “You can’t tell when you’re talking to a man or a woman?” Silas asked, incredulous.

  Uncle Newt shrugged again. “Whoever they were, they were trying to disguise their voice. It was muffled, squeaky. It could have been a woman with a low voice or a man with a high voice.”

  “Do you think Berg was talking to the same person when he called 911?” Tesla asked.

  “The fact that the cops haven’t shown up answers that question,” Nick said miserably. He perked up for a moment, struck by a thought, but then drooped again, looking more miserable than ever. “Unless Berg didn’t call 911 at all. For all we know, he’s the mastermind behind whatever’s going on.”

  Tesla looked skeptical that Berg could be the mastermin
d behind anything.

  “Or it could be his boss, Ruffin,” she said. “He’d have access to all the museum’s security codes and communications systems and stuff.”

  “Oh, man. What if all the guards are in on it?” Silas said. “That’s a lot of people to sit on …”

  “Well, there is a simple way to resolve all this,” Carstairs announced. His wings went limp, and something began slithering around beneath his owl chest.

  Carstairs grimaced, contorted his shoulders, and then said, “There. Got it.”

  Out of the neck hole of his suit popped a hand holding a cell phone.

  “Eww,” he said. “It’s kinda slimy.”

  He managed to push some buttons on it anyway.

  Then he pushed the buttons again.

  “That’s weird,” he said. “I was going to call the police myself, but I can’t get a signal.”

  “I couldn’t get one either,” said Uncle Newt. “And I heard someone at the party saying the same thing.”

  “Jammers?” said Carstairs.

  “It’s possible,” said Uncle Newt.

  Both men fell silent, looking uneasy yet impressed.

  “So the police aren’t coming and we can’t call them,” Nick said. “DeMarco is still missing, and we have no idea who the bad guys are or what they’re up to.”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Newt murmured. “That sums it up pretty well, Nick. You are good at synopsizing.”

  “So what are we gonna do?” Silas asked.

  When no one answered him, he instinctively turned to Tesla. She always knew what to do. Or she acted like she did, anyway.

  But not this time.

  Tesla just stared back at Silas, speechless. Then she abruptly turned away, unable to face the dawning disappointment and fear she saw in her friend’s eyes.

  “It’s all my fault,” she said softly. “Whatever happens to DeMarco, I caused it.”

  The boy loved taking stupid risks, Tesla told herself. But this was one she’d steered him toward. She’d steered all of them toward it. And why? Not just because she was worried about her uncle’s reputation or what might happen to the museum. There was something more.

  Tesla felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Her brother had stepped up beside her.

  “Maybe you were right about me this morning, Nick,” she said to him. “Maybe I can’t fix the big problem—getting our parents back—so I go looking for other problems to fix.”

  “Tesla—”

  “Or maybe I’m just becoming as much of an adrenaline addict as DeMarco—”

  “Tesla.” Nick interrupted her with that firm voice he hardly ever used. “We’ll figure something out,” he said to her. “I know we will.”

  “I—”

  “Hey,” he continued. “Don’t give up now. They didn’t give up, right?”

  They? For a second, Tesla didn’t know what “they” Nick was talking about. Then she remembered where she was: the Hall of Genius. And right after that, she remembered who else was in the room.

  Marie Curie. She’d been excluded, dismissed, denigrated, but that didn’t stop her from becoming one of the most groundbreaking scientists of her time.

  Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. All accused of heresy, mocked, and even threatened for suggesting the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. Despite that, their ideas eventually persevered.

  Even her namesake, Nikola Tesla, had been forced to endure his share of hardships.

  “Tesla!” Tesla blurted out. “That’s the key to everything!”

  “Is she talking to herself?” Silas asked.

  Nick was too busy smacking himself on the forehead to answer.

  “Yes! Of course!” he said as his sister hurried over to the Nikola Tesla display. He darted after her.

  Side by side, they stared down at the duct tape covering part of the inventor’s biography. Without a word, they began picking at the tape, Tesla working on one end, Nick the other. After a few seconds, they each had enough tape peeled to grab and pull hard.

  And this is what they saw:

  In 1901, Tesla began building what became known as “The Tesla Tower,” a power plant designed to wirelessly transmit electricity. Unfortunately, it was the visionary inventor’s greatest failure. The tower never worked and was eventually torn down. But a century later, the solar power pioneers at Solanow have made Tesla’s dream of wireless energy transfer a reality—one that you can see for yourself in our exhibit

  SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN!

  Tesla pointed at the last sentence.

  “The you-know-what.”

  “There was something about it in the space exhibit, too,” Nick said. “It must be related to space-based solar power. Like what Mom and Dad have been working on.”

  Tesla nodded grimly.

  “We know someone’s after their project, whatever it is. I think someone’s trying to get their hands on this Solanow thingie, too.”

  Two large, feathery figures loomed behind Nick and Tesla. “When the Hall of Genius went haywire this afternoon, it overloaded the power for the whole museum,” said Uncle Newt. “Everything went down—including the security system.”

  “They’re not out to sabotage the Hall of Genius after all,” said Carstairs. “They’re planning to rob one of the exhibits!”

  Silas finally joined the others by the Nikola Tesla display.

  “All that from reading one sign? Wow. I’m going to have to start paying more attention to those things.” He looked at Tesla, his expression turning hopeful. “So does that mean you know who’s got DeMarco?”

  “That’s obvious now,” Tesla said.

  “Oh, come on!” Silas cried. “What’s obvious?”

  “The problem is, we still don’t have any proof,” said Nick. “How do we stop them?”

  Unfortunately for Silas, the conversation was moving along without him.

  “Reverse that and you might have our answer,” Uncle Newt was saying to Nick.

  “Uh, how do we stop them? The problem is, we still don’t have any proof,” Nick said.

  Uncle Newt shook his head.

  “Maybe we could get our proof by not stopping them.”

  Nick, Tesla, Carstairs, and Silas all looked confused.

  “Ah!” Tesla said after a moment.

  “Oh!” said Nick a moment after that.

  “I like it!” said Carstairs a moment after that.

  “Tesla and I came up with an idea a few weeks ago that we could reuse now with just a couple modifications,” Nick said. “It’s a—”

  “Semi-invisible fluorescent ink tracker,” said Tesla, already heading for her uncle’s toolbox. “I’m on it!”

  “I still don’t understand!” Silas wailed. Then: “Oooooh! I get it.”

  Did he really get it? By then, everyone was too busy to ask.

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  SUPER-CYBORG GADGET GLOVE

  FINGER #4 (PINKY): NICK AND TESLA’S

  SEMI-INVISIBLE BAD GUY TRACKER AND SECRET MESSAGE MIXTURE

  THE STUFF

  • Your gadget glove

  • 1 5-mm High-Brightness Ultraviolet LED (Radio Shack item #3107633)

  • 1 CR2032 3-volt button battery (Radio Shack item #2102855)

  • Small bowl or cup

  • Water

  • Highlighter marker

  • A finger’s length of 24-gauge solid speaker wire

  • Hot-glue gun

  • Scissors

  • Wire strippers

  • Electrical tape

  • Highlighter marker

  • Cotton swab

  Note: Nick and Tesla are going to [SPOILER ALERT] spill their secret message mixture on the floor, but you should NOT do that! You could ruin the floor or carpeting, which will make your parents mad and could put an end to your adventures for quite a while. Instead, make the message mixture in small batches and use it to write secret notes that only the wearer of the gadget glove can read.

  THE SET
UP

  1. Wire the ultraviolet LED and battery to the pinky of the glove the same way that you wired the Nick Signal to the index finger (see this page). The positive (long) LED wire should connect to the pinky wire, and the negative (short) LED wire should connect to the negative side of the battery. Another wire should connect the positive side of the battery to the thumb wire.

  2. Pour 2 teaspoons (10 ml) of water into the small bowl. Dip the highlighter in the water and hold it there until the water turns yellow.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Dip the cotton swab into the mixture and use it to write a message. Let dry. If the message is too visible, add some water to the mixture and write a new message.

  2. Bring together the exposed wires on the thumb and pinky to activate the ultraviolet LED. Shine the light on the message to make it visible!

  It was Silas’s idea to use the glove again.

  “You guys are making another doohickey?” he said to Nick and Tesla. They were pulling markers from the toolbox while Uncle Newt and Carstairs removed an ultraviolet LED from a box of fake plutonium in the Robert Oppenheimer display. “You should stick it on Glovey. It’s all set with batteries and wires and stuff. Plus, it’ll add to my awesome powers!”

  “We’d just be adding a teeny little ultraviolet light,” Tesla said.

  “Exactly.” Silas clenched his fists and stared off into the distance. “Now Laserhand shall be invincible!”

  Tesla didn’t point out that Glovey didn’t really belong to Silas (or that a UV light would hardly make someone invincible). She just hurried off to get the gadget glove.

  Silas might have been losing his mind, but a good idea is a good idea.

  “Be right back!” Tesla shouted.

  “You’d better be!” her brother yelled after her.

  For once, Tesla didn’t get lost as she ran through the museum’s back corridors. She usually worked best under pressure, and there was plenty of pressure now. They had to be ready by the time Ms. Mavis led her party guests into the Hall of Genius or else they’d miss their chance to catch the bad guys in the act—and never find out what they’d done with DeMarco.