The Extraordinary eTab of Julian Newcomber

by Michael Seese

  Julian’s dad cleared his throat and continued. “Normally, I work very hard to contain my enthusiasm, deferring to you, my beloved children. But I just have to go first. This might surprise you, but I invented something today.”

  Julian noticed his mom getting ready in case his dad violated the no inventions rule.

  “I’m tired of all the floors in this old house creaking and squeaking when even a mouse walks across them. This,” Mr. Newcomber said, holding up what looked like a toothpaste tube, only the size of a jumbo, extra-grande burrito, “will stop it. I call it No Squeak, an obvious play on my mouse comment of just…Never mind. I wanted to call it Sssssh! But the American Association of Librarians has trademarked that word and threatened legal action. Quietly, of course.”

  “I’m not sure I like that idea,” said Mrs. Newcomber. “If the floors don’t creak I won’t hear you sneaking up on me. Which you have a habit of doing.”

  “Is it really that much of an issue?” he asked.

  Mom gave him the patented (or maybe it was trademarked) look that said without words, “Yes, it is.”

  “Then…Maybe you should put bells on all my shoes. That way you’ll hear me coming,” said Mr. Newcomber.

  Julian did not notice his mother’s raised eyebrow, the gesture she made when planning—what the smart folks call “diabolically plotting”—something.

  “So, Julian,” Mrs. Newcomber asked, “how was your day?”

  “Interesting,” said Julian, an answer he felt told the truth. Just not all of it.

  “What new and exciting thing did you learn today?” Mr. Newcomber asked. He was always interested in the new and the exciting.

  “We’re starting to study the Civil War,” Julian said.

  “The Civil Way, eh? That is interesting. Maybe some time we should take a long weekend and visit one of the battlefields. Like, Gettysburg, perhaps. You’d probably enjoy seeing it, Julian.”

  If you only knew, Julian thought. “I probably would.”

  “Oh, if only I were a teacher. The homework projects I could come up with...”

  “Andrew...” Mrs. Newcomber said in that special way of hers which lengthened—what the smart folks call “elongated”—every syllable and told Mr. Newcomber he’d best stop talking.

  Julian interjected so as to save his father from, yet again, having to “yes dear” his way out of another mess-in-the-making. “There’s a project. I have to do a diorama. About the battle of Gettysburg, actually.”

  “A diorama!” Mr. Newcomber said, bouncing in his seat. “I could so help you with it. I’ll bet without too much effort I could make up some miniature cannons. And maybe even—”

  “Andrew...” said Mrs. Newcomber, stretching out his name even more, for a good five seconds, though to Mr. Newcomber it probably felt like eight minutes.

  “But honey! It would be so—”

  Julian’s mom shot a look across the table that would have made General Pickett yell “Retreat!”

  “OK,” Mr. Newcomber said in a quiet, if not subdued and slightly dejected, voice. “It’s just that Gettysburg is so interesting. It was the turning point of the war. And it lasted three days. Three days! Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be able to see it.”

  His dad got that look in his eyes. And Julian realized where he (the other he) got the idea to use the eTab to surf through time.

  Mr. Newcomber continued, “You know another place I would love to see firsthand? Pom–”

  “Tell us about your day, Dylan,” Julian said quickly—what the smart folks call “hastily.”

  “We had library today,” said Dylan.

  “Library day always was my favorite,” said Mrs. Newcomber, who to this day still read about five books each afternoon. “What did you get?”

  “I got a book called Zombies in Nature.”

  “Dylan!” Olivia chided. “Zombies aren’t real!”

  “Oho!” Mr. Newcomber said, “But indeed they are. Many creepie-crawlies have evolved some devious method for taking over some other hapless creature. For example, there is a fungus that infects ants, feeding on their organs. Sloooooowly. But it saves the brain for last, and since the host is an ant, the brain’s little more than a snack. Once the fungus has nearly drained the unfortunate Formicidae, it works the poor thing’s brain like a puppet master, forcing the ant to climb a blade of grass. Having attained a sufficient altitude, relatively speaking, the spores that had been festering inside the ant explode and—”

  “Andrew,” his mother said evenly, as she always did, “perhaps you could find a more palatable, shall we say ‘less grotesque,’ topic of conversation for the dinner table.”

  Though his mother opened with “perhaps,” Julian fully understood she was not making a suggestion.

  “So, Dylan, did you get any other books today?”

  “I also got one on King Arthur.”

  “Oooh,” gushed Mr. Newcomber. “King Arthur. Camelot. The Knights of the Round Table. Another really interesting place in time to visit, as long as one is prepared to be disappointed, as it most likely is fict—”

  “Mommy! Daddy!” Olivia broke in, saving Julian the trouble of having to find another way to redirect his dad’s attention. “Did you hear what Dylan did at recess? He—”

  “No I didn’t,” Dylan interrupted.

  “Yes you did.”

  “Did not!”

  “Did!”

  “DID NOT!”

  “DID!”

  Exchanges—what the realistic folks call “inane arguments”—between Dylan and Olivia could go on for hours. At minimum, Julian hoped it would last long enough to make his dad completely forget about visiting other places and, more importantly, other times.

  Mrs. Newcomber snapped her fingers so loudly the chandelier shook and the curtains moved in the breeze created by the shock wave, a talent Julian felt rivaled the homemaking thing. Once the echoes faded away, silence returned to the table.

  “Much better,” said Mrs. Newcomber. “So far, it sounds as though everyone had a pretty good day. This warms my heart. Really. I mean that, kids. I hear so many parents talking to each other about the messes their children are making. So, it makes me very happy to know everyone is growing, in all the right ways. And learning.”

  Mrs. Newcomber had a way of bringing peace to any household battlefield. Julian often thought she probably could just as easily convince warring nations to lay down their arms.

  Perhaps she should go back to the Civil War, Julian thought.

  “Now, tell us about your day, Olivia.”

  “In Shop class I designed and built a combination microwave-convection-conventional oven. I call it the Insta-Cake Bake. Then, in Home Ec., I used it to make a chocolate angel food cake.”

  “I assume you used Grandma’s secret recipe?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Olivia and Mrs. Newcomber performed their secret “girls-only” handshake ritual, which by now took nearly one minute, and required digital contortions Julian had thought not possible.

  “Constructing and cooking. Just like your mother. Combining two amazing—Wait a minute. Did you say an angel food cake?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “But angel food cakes are this big,” he said, holding his hands about a foot apart.

  “More like,” Olivia replied, holding hers about two feet apart.

  “That’s one humongous cake,” said Mr. Newcomber.

  “You know I came from a big family,” said Mrs. Newcomber. “Grandma always cooked everything in massive quantities.”

  “So that would have to be one mighty big oven you built,” Mr. Newcomber said, smiling at his daughter.

  Olivia just shrugged.

  “Impressive, Peanut. Very impressive.”

  Olivia smiled broadly—what the smart folks call “beamed.” She liked it when her daddy called her by her pet name.

  “Impressive, Peanut,” Dylan said in an annoying, bordering on needling
, voice.

  Olivia did not like it when her brother borrowed their dad’s pet name for her. “Shut up, Dylan.”

  “Olivia,” Mrs. Newcomber said, stern of voice.

  “But Mommy!” Olivia whined.

  “‘But Mommy’ nothing.”

  “But he started it.”

  “But he started it,” Dylan said in full-on mocking tone again.

  “Mommy!”

  “I don’t care if he started it,” said Mrs. Newcomber. “You do not tell him to shut up.”

  “Yeah, Peanut!” Dylan said.

  “And you,” Mrs. Newcomber said, focusing her laser-beam eyes on Dylan, “you will, one, not taunt your sister, and two, not taunt your sister. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Hah!” said Olivia.

  “Mama!” Dylan shouted.

  “Olivia.” Mrs. Newcomber repeated, a decibel or two louder.

  “But he started it.”

  The process threatened to resume and, more likely than not, simply repeat itself. In some cases, the “Shut up”/“Mama / Mommy!”/“He started it” verbal volleyball match had been known to go through a dozen or so cycles—what the smart folks call “iterations.”

  Mr. Newcomber held up what looked like a large garage door opener, albeit one with two large rabbit-ear antennas sticking out of the top. Painted on the back were the words Attention Getter, underscoring Mr. Newcomber’s love of naming his creations. He pushed a button on the Attention Getter, a clear violation of the no inventions rule. The thing hummed a minute. Then a spark of electricity emerged from the top, at the very bottom of the rabbit-ear V, and traveled up, up, up. When it reached the end, a thunderous boom filled the room. The crack preceded a sizzling sound that reverberated through the room and perhaps as far as low Earth orbit. The lights above the dining room table flickered, faded, then went out. From where he sat, Julian could see the entire neighborhood had gone black as well.

  “Andrew?” said Mrs. Newcomber. This time she spoke in short syllables, which meant Julian’s dad was in a different kind of trouble.

  “Hmmm,” Mr. Newcomber said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  A few minutes later, dining by candlelight, Julian sat, present in body only, his fork tracing circles, squares, and parallelograms on the plate. Though the typical Newcomber dinnertime circus offered some degree of diversion, even this latest installment of the Dylan-Olivia Comedy Hour could not let him completely forget, even for a moment, that a future version of himself sat upstairs, hungry and stranded in the wrong year. In fact, so distracted was Julian that he didn’t hear his mother ask him—three times—if he wanted more mashed potatoes.

  “No, thank you. Wait. Yes, please. And I’d like a large helping of broccoli, too.”

  “You would?” said Mrs. Newcomber.

  “Yeah. Why? What?”

  “You hate broccoli.”

  “I do hate...um...I mean I used to hate it. But now I’ve decided I really like it. So, I’d like some. A lot.”

  “If you insist.” She heaped a massive quantity of ewww on his plate.

  After a few minutes of staring at the offensive green weed and dreading the prospect of having to actually eat it, Julian excused himself to use the bathroom. He didn’t really have to go. He just needed to spend some time away from his plate so he wouldn’t get sick from looking at, and thinking about, and smelling the vile vegetable, the bane of children and devout carnivores everywhere. Also, he wanted to give his mom and dad and brother and sister enough time to finish their dinners and leave the table, so he could sneak back, grab his plate, and take it up to his room.

  Twelve minutes later, he placed the plate in front of Grown-up Julian, who was sitting in the dark with a flashlight on.

  “An invention gone wrong—what the smart folks call ‘awry’?” Grown-up Julian asked, basking in the flashlight’s glow.

  “What do you think?” said Young Julian.

  “He violated the no inventions rule, huh?”

  “Yup. By the way, I hope you appreciate this sacrifice on my part.”

  “Oh, I do!” said Grown-up Julian. “This is great. I love Mom’s cooking.”

  “No. I mean I hope you appreciate the lie I had to tell get the broccoli. I told Mom I love it now. So, she’s probably going to make it three times a week. Six, if you count the breakfast smoothies. Thanks a lot. Why couldn’t your favorite food be peanut butter?”

  “Hey, don’t blame me for the fact that you can’t tell a good lie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you should have said was, ‘I’d like to try broccoli again, Mom.’ Then take one bite and then say, ‘Nah, I still don’t like it.’ Then you would have had an excuse to leave it on your plate. Besides, what’s the big deal? You will love broccoli. Someday.”

  “You know, you need to stop doing this.”

  “Which this?”

  “Telling me about the future. You’re spoiling it.”

  “Look, 95.8% of kids hate broccoli. And guess what? 99.9% will like it as adults. So, I see nothing wrong with pointing out the obvious. Though, I suppose a bigger issue is that I could be polluting the natural timeline.”

  “Polluting the what?”

  “Polluting the timeline. It’s something they talked about in that class. Though, if memory serves, I think I bombed the quiz on that topic as well. No matter. Like I said before dinner, if someone from 1863 finds my cell phone, it will alter history, assuming he doesn’t just throw it out. Telling you about the future probably is the same thing. Would anything I tell you make the future better or worse? No one can say. It’s just that changing time is bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like they gave us any timeline-altering homework assignments. Or lab exercises. Or field trips. Or—”

  “I get it.”

  “I suspect they didn’t want to give us any stupid ideas.”

  “You think? I wish you had listened to me.”

  “What?”

  “Remember? In the library the other day? The vow I took? We took? The vow to never go back in time? What about that?”

  “What about the vow you took—you took—to never hit Dylan?”

  “I stopped. Didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. But not until he got bigger than you.”

  “Wait! Dylan gets bigger than me?”

  “Yup. And that’s not all. He—”

  “Stop it! You know, we’ve really got to come up with some ground rules about this. About your spoilers.”

  “Ground away.”

  Young Julian thought, in the absence of his older version doing so. Ever, it seemed.

  “OK. If it’s a matter of life or death, tell me. Otherwise, ix-nay on the abbing-blay. Do we have a deal?” Young Julian said, extending his hand.

  “Yeah. Sort of. But no promises.”

  “What? No. You need to pinky swear.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “How would you grade your current level of impulse control? Specifically, your ability to hold your tongue and not blab out whatever comes to mind, regardless of who is speaking, or watching a really good movie.”

  “I would give myself an A...”

  Grown-up Julian looked funny at his junior self.

  “...a grade of B minus or so.”

  “’Nuff said. Don’t tell me anything else about my future. I just want to be clear—what the smart folks call...‘CRYSTAL CLEAR’!”

  “Point taken. Oh! But there is one thing you do need to know.”

  “What?”

  “Make sure you tell Dad to—”

  “Wait! Are you trying to...what did you call it? Pollute the natural timeline?”

  “No! Of course not! Don’t be silly. Well, OK. Yes. But it’s no big deal. It’s not like it will change the course of human history if I let you know—”

  Young Julian put his fingers in his ears, and sang, “La la la. I
can’t hear you!”

  So he did not hear Grown-up Julian say, “Tell Dad to sell all of his Apple stock. In a few years, they’re going to come out with iHam. It’s going to be a huge flop. The company will tank. If he sells now and banks the money, I...you won’t need to take out any loans for college.”

  When Grown-up Julian’s lips stopped moving, Young Julian took his fingers out of his ears.

  “Are you done?” Young Julian asked.

  “You really should have listened. If you had, you wouldn’t be getting that job at the pizza place.”

  “I said life or death!”

  “Have you ever worked at a pizza parlor?”

  “I’m twelve, I can’t get a job yet. Besides, I like pizza. And I don’t like the thought of being responsible for messing up the future. Capisce?”

  “Caposh.”

  “Heh-heh. We do say that.”

  From the other side of Julian’s door came a sound. Faint, at first, it grew louder. Thump thump thump thump thump THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

  It should have grown quieter.

  THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

  But it did not. It stopped at its loudest.

  “Uh-oh,” both Julians said simultaneously.

  The door flew open, and in flew Dylan, a barely contained ball of excitement on his calm days.

  “Julian! Julian! You’ll never believe what I just built and—”

  Seeing Grown-up Julian immediately shut Dylan up, something Young Julian wished he could do on demand. Dylan’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes grew as big as saucers.

  “I think we’re in trouble—what the smart folks call ‘up a creek without—’”

  Dylan found his voice. “MMMMMOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!” he screamed as he ran from the room.

  “We’re dead. She’ll be here any second now,” Young Julian said.

  “Nah. We have forty-five seconds. Or more,” Grown-up Julian said.

  “What’”

  “It will take Dylan at least twenty seconds to find Mom. Another ten to explain it to her. And then fifteen for her to get here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Experience, Young Me. Experience.”

  “Maybe we should just come clean.”

  “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  “Sure. Maybe she can help us.”