Immediately Accelerati flooded into the room to tend to Mark and Cathy, who were too weak to move. Z took off her lab coat and pressed it against Nick’s shoulder.
“It is not deep,” she said, “but you may have a broken clavicle.”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t hurt that much.”
Just then, Edison rolled into the room.
“Brief me,” he said.
Z explained what had happened. All the while Edison kept his eyes on Nick, his expression inscrutable. Then he gestured toward Mark and Cathy, who had not yet been able to catch their breath. “Take them to the infirmary,” he said, “and call in our best physicians. We may need some special equipment.”
“And Nick?” asked Z.
Edison considered him again. “You’ll have a fine battle scar, Master Slate. A medal to remind you of your heroism today.” He smiled widely and shook his head in bemused admiration. “You continue to impress me. Had it been our friend Dr. Jorgenson, he would have no doubt watched as they died and taken copious notes.”
“And if it had been you?” Nick dared to ask. “What would you have done?”
“I,” said Edison, “would never have allowed it to happen.”
Edison instructed Z to take Nick to the infirmary as well, for stitches. But before they left, Edison took a moment to ponder, though his pondering always seemed more like scheming to Nick.
“Acts of bravery are often their own reward,” Edison said. “But this calls for something more.”
Everyone in the room waited for his decree of generosity.
“Rest up tomorrow,” he finally told Nick, “and Sunday I’ll take you to see your father and brother.”
Like any inventor, Thomas Edison despised the bureaucracy of large organizations. But as a businessman, he knew it was a necessary evil. So, when the administrative work involved in running the Accelerati ultimately became too much of a burden for him, he had invented the position of Grand Acceleratus. The person in this role was tasked with handling all the details of the Accelerati’s day-to-day operations, leaving Edison free to do as he pleased.
The first Grand Acceleratus, appointed in the 1930s, had experimented with nuclear fusion. Unfortunately, he’d experimented in the vicinity of Lakehurst, New Jersey, a few miles from Edison’s lab, causing the Hindenburg to blow up, and incinerating himself in the process.
The second Grand Acceleratus was responsible for the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, which knocked out power from Ontario to Pennsylvania. Few people died as a result of the blackout, except for the second Grand Acceleratus and his inner circle. They made the mistake of taking refuge in their airtight safe room inside the Empire State Building. Unfortunately, the lock was electrical, and they suffocated.
The third Grand Acceleratus died in 1980, in the terrible but secret tragedy at Mount St. Helens, which most people thought was a natural volcanic eruption. Since he had gathered almost all of the Accelerati to witness the event, the secret society was decimated. The only ones who remained were those who happened to have the flu that day.
It took years to rebuild their ranks under the next Grand Acceleratus, Dr. Alan Jorgenson, a man whose scientific brilliance could only be outdone by his bloated ego. While Jorgenson was the only Grand Acceleratus to survive his particular catastrophe, Edison had lost all faith in the man, and demoted him.
Now a fifth Grand Acceleratus had been installed, and Edison hoped that with new leadership, the Accelerati would be ushered into a kinder, gentler age.
On the same morning as the antigravity accident, Petula Grabowski-Jones had a meeting with the new Grand Acceleratus.
With her own personally monogrammed bowling ball—one designed by the Accelerati to knock down only the pins that the bowler required—Petula bowled a precise series of frames to unlock the secret entryway to the underground Colorado Springs headquarters. It was difficult to do with a cast on her other arm—but thanks to Accelerati sonic healing therapy, and a very gentle blast of a deep-tissue calcifier, her cast now only went up to her elbow.
As she walked through the great hall of the Accelerati headquarters, she glanced at the windows, and the scene beyond. This month’s holographic projection was of an imperial coronation in ancient Rome, filled with pomp and ceremony, to honor the appointment of the new Grand Acceleratus.
When Petula reached the impressive door to their new leader’s underground residence, she took a deep breath.
Everything will be different now, she thought as the door opened and she stepped inside.
There, behind an ornate, antique desk, sat the new leader.
“Petula, how good to see you,” said Evangeline Planck.
“I want a raise,” Petula demanded.
Ms. Planck chuckled. “How can we give you a raise when we don’t pay you?”
“Then I want to get paid, and then I want a raise.”
Ms. Planck came out from behind her desk. “The Accelerati don’t deal with things as mundane as salaries, Petula. All of us work on a volunteer basis. You know that.”
“Oh? What about the seven hundred and fifty million that Mitch’s father stole for you?”
“That money will be used to further our causes throughout the world. Do you think the Accelerati paid me all those years when I was working undercover as a cafeteria worker?”
“You got ‘paid’ by being made Grand Acceleratus,” said Petula.
“Exactly,” said Ms. Planck. “Good things come to those who wait. And,” she added with just a hint of menace, “to those who do what they’re told.” Then she clapped her hands and got down to business. “So, what do you have to report to me today, Petula?”
“Mitch has figured out that his father is Accelerati.”
“We know that.”
“Vince LaRue and his mother have vanished, with the battery.”
“We know that too.”
“There are only two other items that are unaccounted for. The globe, and some sort of glass prism.”
Ms. Planck sighed. “We’re aware of all of those things, Petula. Don’t you have anything new for me today?”
Petula smiled. “I overheard Nick talking with Caitlin before his house went kablooey.” She paused, making Ms. Planck wait for it. “Nick knows exactly where that prism is. He just couldn’t get his hands on it.”
That caught Ms. Planck’s attention.
“I’ll have to let Mr. Edison know that,” she said.
“Nick will never tell him.” Then she smiled. “But I can get it out of him.”
“Petula,” said Ms. Planck, “from what I’ve been able to observe, Nick doesn’t like you very much.”
Petula shifted uncomfortably. “So? I can change that. Remember, he never found out I’m Accelerati. I can go to Edison’s lab undercover and charm it out of him.”
“That,” said Ms. Planck, “would require some charm.”
Petula shrugged. “I can fake it.”
Ms. Planck considered it and said, “Come, there’s something I’d like to show you.”
She led Petula to the research and development wing. There, a large window looked upon a soundproofed lab—the same one where Jorgenson had tested the explosive capability of the cosmic-string harp. Today, four members of the Accelerati were shackled to the wall, screaming, although no screams could be heard through the glass.
“What’s happening in there?” Petula asked, as curious as she was horrified.
“A test in sonic dissonance,” Ms. Planck told her. “We recorded a solo performed on the clarinet you provided for us, and are now playing it to them on an endless loop.”
Petula watched as their faces contorted in the absolute agony of the damned.
Ms. Planck went on. “We’re testing to see how much sonic dissonance it takes to crack the human mind—and if it’s possible to build up a resistance against it.” She put a hand on Petula’s shoulder. “Do you recognize them?”
Petula looked closer. Yes, she did.
These four had been Jorgenson’s personal entourage. Three men, and the woman who had been temporarily frozen.
“Their loyalty to Jorgenson made them impossible to work with,” Ms. Planck said. “So I asked them to volunteer as experimental subjects.”
“Asked them?”
“No one refuses the request of a Grand Acceleratus,” Ms. Planck told her.
Beyond the glass, the four Accelerati continued to writhe in torment to awful music that no one outside of that room could hear.
“Why are you showing me this?” Petula asked, trying to sound less troubled than she was.
Ms. Planck smiled. “As always, I just want to give you some perspective, dear. There are all sorts of rewards among the Accelerati. I have a shining new vision for our organization. Serve that vision well, and your rewards will be spectacular. Serve poorly, and your reward will be…well…something else.”
Petula was quick to get the message.
Moss grows on many things in Scotland. Vince found this out very quickly when it started to grow on him.
For years he had looked forward to being old enough to shave. He never dreamed that instead of facial hair, he would be shaving moss from his neck.
“Honeybun,” his mother called from the hallway of the quaint Scottish inn where they were staying. “Hurry on down or you’ll miss breakfast.”
“That was the idea,” Vince muttered.
The beginning of this journey had been fairly simple. It had started the day after the EMP knocked out all electricity in Colorado Springs.
Vince had put it forth to his mother as simply as he could. “I want to go to Scotland,” he’d said as they ate breakfast in their home by candlelight.
His mother had swallowed three measured spoonfuls of oatmeal before she responded. “You know, there is no proof that the Loch Ness monster exists,” she’d said, knowing the way his mind worked.
And although his interest in that particular lake had nothing to do with the so-called monster, he’d said, “They haven’t proven that it doesn’t either.”
She still wasn’t convinced, so he’d added, “And then maybe we can go to Paris to tour the famous sewers, and to Italy to see the catacombs.”
She’d quietly eaten another few spoonfuls of her oatmeal.
Vince knew that his mother loved to travel. In fact, she’d been trying to get him excited about visiting faraway places for as long as he could remember. But the very idea of going anywhere with his mother, all perky and full of liquid sunshine instead of blood, had made his flesh crawl even before it had become undead. But now he was not only open to travel, he was suggesting it.
Therefore, it was no surprise to Vince when, after her fourth spoonful of oatmeal, his mother had asked, “When shall we leave?”
By far the hardest part of their journey had been getting Vince on an airplane. His first thought had been to go as a corpse. But rules governing the international transport of human remains were very strict, requiring either embalming or cremation prior to being loaded as cargo, neither of which Vince had found very appealing.
In the end, his mother had come up with a plan. Somehow she’d managed to get his battery registered as a medically approved life-support device. Which was true, except for the medically approved part.
While he was onboard, however, a truculent flight attendant had insisted that his backpack go in the overhead bin during takeoff and landing, which had left him temporarily dead twice. What made it worse was that after takeoff his mother had left him that way for a few hours.
“So you wouldn’t get jet lag,” she’d told him, still not understanding that he didn’t get tired like regular people. He suspected that those hours of being dead had made him susceptible to moss infestation, and the spore-ridden climate of Scotland in May had just made it worse.
They had been in Scotland for almost two weeks now, staying in a quaint stone-walled inn. They still ate oatmeal for breakfast, but on this particular morning it was served in the boiled stomach of a sheep.
“Vegan haggis,” the innkeeper said proudly. “Just as ye requested. We like to be sensitive to our American guests and their peculiar eating habits.” Of course the sheep’s stomach wasn’t vegan, but the innkeeper was only willing to go so far. “If y’ find it offensive to your meatless sensibilities, eat around it,” he told Vince, then turned to Vince’s mother. “Although if ye ask me, y’ need to get some good solid food into this boy. He looks a wee bit green around the gills.”
The inn, which consisted of twelve bedrooms and far fewer guests, had had several brushes with fame—though those brushes were of the long-handled feather-duster variety. Winston Churchill’s mother had spent time here before the war, and at the far end of the first-floor hallway was a room labeled the HAWKING SUITE.
“Did Stephen Hawking really stay there?” Vince’s mother asked the innkeeper.
“That’s the rumor, ma’am,” the man said a bit flirtatiously.
But after he left the room, one of the other guests said, “Don’t believe him. It’s because someone once complained that the baseboards were full of little black holes.”
As they ate their breakfast, Vince’s mother studied brochures, occasionally trying to make eye contact with him. Vince made it a rule never to meet his mother’s eye, because that was always a prelude to conversation. Yet it was hard not to look at his mother once in a while; whenever he did, she smiled.
“Are you enjoying your time here?” she asked. “You haven’t come on any tours with me. I’m beginning to worry that your morbid preoccupation with Nessie has you missing all the beauty and culture that Scotland has to offer.” Since they’d arrived, Vince’s mother had been all about exploring castles and appraising Scottish realty.
Vince shrugged. “Beauty and culture is your thing. I don’t mind hanging out here and watching the lake.” It was fine with him if she never discovered his real purpose.
So, that day, while his mother took her tour, Vince once again walked the shoreline paths of Loch Ness, searching for clues to the missing globe.
“Why, we had a monster sighting just the other day,” said a one-eared guy who was selling plastic Loch Ness monsters made in China. “Rumor has it that if you buy one of these charms, Nessie is sure to come to the surface.” Then he proceeded to spin the tale of how he’d lost his ear to Nessie.
Vince knew he’d get no information from the local vendors. Their only interest was in telling tourists what they wanted to hear. He knew his best information would come from people who didn’t want to talk to him.
On the water’s edge, he found a cottage with a garden just coming into bloom, and a rusted wrought-iron fence to keep visitors out. Despite the weight of his backpack containing the battery, he handily hopped the fence, and with a rusty iron knocker, pounded on the door until a person emerged.
It was either a woman in a skirt or a man in a kilt, Vince couldn’t quite be sure.
“What ye be wantin’?” the man or woman said. “This is private land.”
“I’m sorry to bother ye,” Vince said. He tried to put on a Scottish accent to be more endearing, but it was so bad he realized it was only insulting, so he stopped. “About two months ago, something strange happened on the loch. And it had nothing to do with Nessie.”
The dowager/geezer looked away. “Cain’t say I know what yer talking about, laddie.” But his/her nervous body language said otherwise.
“There was this house,” Vince continued. “It came out of nowhere and sank to the bottom of the lake.”
The codger/biddy said, “If ye know all about it, then why are ye asking me?”
Peering through the door, Vince could see knickknacks and “charming” memorabilia of all sorts on the shelves. “Well, you see,” he said, “it was my grandmother’s house. It fell victim to a secret military experiment, and her things, the knickknacks, well, they’re of great sentimental value.”
That seemed to touch a warm spot in her/his breast/pecs. “Then it’s m
y nephew ye’ll be wanting to speak to. He runs the dive outfit that found it.”
Mitch had never been the most popular kid in school. Spending time with Caitlin Westfield, who was one of the popular kids, raised his cool quotient several notches.
And the fact that he had beaten up Stephen Gray for throwing pennies at him didn’t hurt either. After that, nobody teased Mitch about his father stealing billions of virtual pennies.
Mitch had confronted his father in prison a few days after Nick disappeared.
“How?” Mitch had said to him. “How could you be one of them? One of the Accelerati?”
His father went pale at the mention of the word, and looked around the visitors’ room, as if the Accelerati were listening to them. Perhaps they were.
“How did you find out?” his father asked, his head hanging in shame.
“Maybe I’m smarter than everybody thinks,” Mitch said. “Maybe I figured it out myself.”
His father smiled with pride. “You are smart, son. Never let anyone tell you you’re not.”
Mitch waited for an answer to his question.
Finally, his father said, “They offered me membership in the most exclusive club of geniuses in the world. They told me I was the greatest computer programmer they had ever seen, that I was destined to change history. And then they put in my hands the power to do it. Who could say no to that?”
“I could,” said Mitch. “You should have.”
“No one was hurt by what I did, Mitch. It was a victimless crime. One penny from seventy-five billion bank accounts worldwide. Not even the poorest of the poor missed that cent.”
Mitch shook his head in disbelief. “But just the idea of it is wrong! Billions of tiny victims add up to one big one. Especially when you think about how the Accelerati are going to use that money.”
“I don’t know how,” his father said, and Mitch believed he honestly didn’t. “Maybe we don’t want to know.”
“Oh, you’ll know all right,” Mitch said, anger and disappointment in his voice. “Every time you hear of something horrible they’ve done out there, you’ll know that you’re the one who made it possible.”