Tesla's Attic

  “If it had gone on for another thirty seconds, there wouldn’t be any building.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting the teensiest bit?”

  Nick stopped walking and looked at her. “I’m holding an earthquake machine in my hands.”

  Caitlin looked at him, looked at the radio-like device, and said, “Point taken.”

  They started walking again. “Can you imagine what the Accelerati would do if they got hold of this thing?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t suppose they need it to get an A in the Accelerati Science Fair.”

  Nick took a deep breath, his resolve setting in. “We have to destroy it,” he said. “We have to destroy them all.”

  The scorched-earth policy is a time-honored tradition of war. Villagers about to be overrun by the enemy would burn their own homes and crops to deny the enemy shelter and food. Armies would destroy their own munitions to prevent their attackers from using their own weapons against them.

  The Russians used this strategy very successfully against a very irritated Napoleon, burning everything they had and retreating into Russia. And since there was no end of Russia to retreat into, Napoleon was pretty much screwed.

  Nick realized that he was now at war with the Accelerati. A very different kind of war, perhaps, but the principle was the same. They wanted to get their hands on this stuff, and like Napoleon’s army, they were a force to be reckoned with. But, like Napoleon’s army, they could be defeated.

  The only way to beat the Accelerati was to get rid of the things they desired, fully and completely.

  Two months ago, Nick had suffered through a fire that had taken the life of his mother. But today he was going to start one.

  Nick still didn’t have all the accursed items from the garage sale. Far from it. But at least he could create a bonfire out of the ones that he had.

  He texted Mitch and Vince to come to his house with their respective items, saying that he’d explain when they got there—knowing that if they had any inkling about his plan to burn them, they’d never show.

  He and Caitlin went out to his backyard with all of Tesla’s inventions, plus an ugly end table left by Great-aunt Greta, because Caitlin insisted it was too hideous not to burn.

  “Now,” said Caitlin after they had piled the items up, “we need an accelerant.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, gasoline or alcohol. Something that’ll make it all catch fire.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Nick went into the house, but all he could come up with was a big jug of cooking oil. He came back out and showed it to Caitlin. “Will this do?”

  “Any porch in a storm,” Caitlin answered, “as Theo would say.”

  Nick untwisted the cap and prepared to pour the oil, but Caitlin reached out to stop him.

  “You know,” she said, “for a long time I’ve wanted to do a photo collage of random objects burning.”

  “Caitlin, this isn’t one of your garbart projects. This is serious business.”

  She looked at him, insulted. “Art is serious business. At least it is to me. I thought you appreciated that.”

  “I do, but—”

  “If we’re gonna burn it anyway,” Caitlin interrupted, “can we at least make it aesthetically pleasing? I’ll take pictures, I’ll do my collage, and not only will it be a work of art, it’ll be a spite bomb for the Accelerati.”

  “Will this take long?” he asked, not bothering to hide his impatience.

  Caitlin didn’t answer. She just went over to the pile of stuff and began rearranging it.

  “If we tilt the reel-to-reel like so, and hook the fan around the neck of the lamp, then we can perch the radio on top, its Gothic point recalling a church steeple.”

  Nick held the jug of oil by his side and watched Caitlin creatively rearrange the objects.

  “They actually have grooves that help them balance on each other really well,” Caitlin noted.

  That’s when something began to dawn on Nick. At first he couldn’t be sure what it was—perhaps an inkling of intuition, perhaps a pattern that his unconscious mind had already begun to put together—but as he looked at the objects and the way that Caitlin was stacking them, it seemed he could tell where she was going to put the next object before she placed it. The notched base of the hair-curler caddy fit perfectly into the top of the reel-to-reel player. The two odd flat paddles of the electric mixer were perfectly spaced to fit in the toaster. This was not coincidence!

  “I’m almost done,” Caitlin told him. “I just can’t find a place for the bat, or this big ugly hair dryer.”

  “Caitlin, what was that thing the Accelerati were looking for?”

  “They called it the Far Range Energy Emitter. Why?”

  “I think we may be looking at it.”

  Now as they stared at the collection of objects before them, there was a sense of things almost snapping into place. Sure, some placements were wrong, and there were tons of parts missing, but each of these items from the attic, Nick realized, in addition to what it did on its own, was somehow part of a larger whole.

  Caitlin visibly shivered. “All the more reason to get rid of it!” She tossed the remaining objects onto the pile, no longer caring about aesthetic placement, then picked up the oil jug. She moved forward, ready to pour it, but Nick stopped her.

  “Caitlin—this was his life’s work. His greatest accomplishment. Right here under our noses.”

  Caitlin sighed. “We’re not setting it on fire, are we?”

  Nick shook his head. He realized they had the upper hand. They knew something the Accelerati didn’t.

  “Let’s take it apart,” he told her. “Let’s take it apart before anyone can see.”

  At any given time, there are believed to be ten rogue waves somewhere in the world: massive mountains of water that exist for no particular reason other than the random compounding of small, chaotic forces—from gravity to tides to wind to the movements of fish.

  When all this randomness converges, nothing in its path can withstand the surge, but since the oceans are so immense, the vast majority of rogue waves go unnoticed. Unless, of course, you happen to be in the path of one.

  That afternoon the convergence of random forces upon Nick’s house was going to leave one of those forces dead in the water. The only question was, who would it be?

  Random Force number one: Danny.

  Danny could not have been happier with the week’s turn of events. People were already calling him Danny the Star Catcher, which could have been a bad thing, if people weren’t really impressed by it.

  Rumors were already circulating that he was part of a government project, and the fact that his father had a secret job “repairing copy machines” for NORAD gave the rumors some weight.

  Whenever he was asked about it, Danny quoted a line from one of his favorite movies, Ninja Nanny 3, and told them, “I’m sworn to secrecy about it. All I can tell you is that I’m a registered weapon.” It made the bullies too scared to do anything but sneer and most everyone else vie for his attention. In fact, several kids at school had their cell phones confiscated when they tried to take pictures of him to post online.

  And just when he thought things couldn’t get any better, today he’d gotten an A for his presentation on the Transcontinental Railroad, which included an authentic iron railroad spike that he had painted gold and secured to a wooden base, point up.

  It was a pain in the neck to carry it home on the bus, but he wasn’t going to part with something he had worked so hard on, no matter how dangerous the bus driver thought it was.

  “You’ll put somebody’s spleen out,” the driver had said, but Danny wasn’t worried. It was destined for a shelf in his room at a safe distance from any random spleen. Of course, for now, he was satisfied to leave it in the front hallway along with his backpack, completely forgotten as he went to turn on the TV.

  To his frustration, the TV screen still showed nothing but static.
r />   “What?” He knew the cable guy was supposed to come that day, sometime between eight a.m. and the end of time, but with no one to let him in, who knew if they’d ever have cable?

  As Danny pondered the hellish idea of a television-free existence, the doorbell rang, and he hopped up, almost tripping over the golden spike as he answered the door.

  It was not the cable guy, however, but that creepy dude Vince, carrying something that looked like a car battery.

  “Oh, it’s just you.”

  “Where’s your brother?” Vince asked.

  “How should I know?”

  Then Nick barged into the house from the backyard, with an armful of junk, allowing Danny to get back to the business at hand. Bemoaning his media blackout, he hurled himself onto the old sofa to wait for the cable guy.

  He landed with such force that it summoned up a cloud of dust and shook the heavy portrait of Great-aunt Greta on the wall above him, loosening the framing hook.

  Random Force number two: Vince.

  Vince suspected that Nick was going to try to convince him to give up the wet cell. He almost didn’t bring it, but there was the small chance that Nick was calling with a new and previously unconsidered way to use it.

  Vince, of course, had his own thoughts about that. For instance, he could set up his own private detective agency. Solve crimes by secretly talking to the deceased, like a show he saw on TV once. There was definitely money to be made. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough murders in Colorado Springs to really make a business of it. He’d have to go to a larger criminal capital, like Bogotá or Denver.

  “Good, you’re here,” Nick said when he saw Vince. “You got it?”

  Vince held the wet cell a little higher so Nick could see it over the stack of stuff he was carrying. All items from the attic, no doubt.

  “Good. Bring it upstairs.”

  “Why, so it can go back into that attic and rot for another seventy-five years? I don’t think so.”

  “Do it, Vince!” Caitlin said, on her way in with a few antiques as well. “I think he’s onto something.”

  “On something, you mean. You can’t have it back. Period.”

  “What do you think I’m gonna do? Burn it?” Nick said, and Caitlin unaccountably laughed. “Just let me borrow it, okay? I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  “And if I am?”

  “Uh…correct me if I’m wrong,” said Caitlin, “but isn’t disappointment where you live?”

  Vince had to admit she had a point, and he followed them up to the attic.

  Random Force number three: Theo.

  Theo was not stupid. It took a huge amount of intelligence to calculate exactly how little schoolwork he could get away with doing and still pass all of his classes. In fact, he prided himself on manipulating his GPA to being exactly where he wanted it to be: C-minus. Because when it came to college acceptance, grades wouldn’t mean a thing until high school, at which time he would start miraculously getting A’s, which his overjoyed parents would reward by buying him a car. He would manage his GPA the way his father managed stock portfolios, and that would get him into at least half the universities he was interested in, with or without a baseball scholarship. Then once he was in college, he could go back to getting C-minuses again. He had this thing wired.

  So skilled was Theo at being mediocre that he deeply identified with Nick’s dad, who, according to Theo’s research, was a pretty mediocre baseball player. “Whiffin’ Wayne,” as he was known during his two short years with the Tampa Bay Rays, was a pretty good pitcher, but his pitching wasn’t stellar enough to shut down the nickname. Poor guy. What he needed was a fan. And what Theo needed was a way to wedge himself between Nick and Caitlin. As they say, “this could be the big inning of a wonderful friendship.”

  Theo lurked behind a hedge, out of view of Nick’s home, until he saw Nick’s father drive up and park. The man grabbed two take-out bags from the car, and Theo intercepted him before he got to the front door.

  “Mr. Slate, could I talk to you for a second?” He put on his best “aw, shucks” expression, which worked well on girls, adults, and certain breeds of dog.

  “Yes?” the man said, a little apprehensively.

  “I know you’re Nick’s father…but I was just wondering…are you also the Wayne Slate, of the Tampa Bay Rays?”

  Nick’s dad stood just a little bit straighter. “You’ve heard of me?”

  Theo took precisely three steps closer. “Heard of you? Are you kidding me? You’re the only pitcher who ever struck out Tyler Spornak twice in the same inning.”

  Slate chuckled. “Nothing to be proud of, getting all the way through the batting order in a single inning.”

  “Naah—if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re seeing the grass half empty. You were the best thing the Rays had going for them back then. I bet you’d have taken them all the way to the World Series if you didn’t blow out your pitching arm.”

  Mr. Slate looked at Theo in disbelief. “How do you know all this? You were a little kid when I played.”

  “I’m a pitcher, too. Historical perspective is an important part of the game.” Then Theo took one more step forward and delivered the winning fastball.

  “I would be honored if you’d sign this for me, sir.” And he presented an official Topps baseball card featuring Wayne Slate looking a little bit leaner and a little bit younger than he did today. It had cost Theo a buck-fifty on eBay and twenty-five for overnight delivery. If all else failed, the signed card might earn him back his investment.

  “Whaddaya know,” the man said, shaking his head. “I used to have a bunch of these, but we lost them in the fire. You got a pen?”

  Theo checked his pockets, which he already knew to be empty. “Darn, I forgot one. Duh.”

  “Why don’t you come inside,” said Slate. “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Theodore,” he said with a winning smile. “I’m a friend of Nick’s.”

  “In that case, why don’t you join us for dinner?” He held up the large take-out bags he carried in his card-free hand.

  “Smells good—what is it?”

  “Thai.”

  “Cool. Never had Thai before.”

  Which wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that Thai cuisine relies heavily on peanuts.

  Random Force number four: Caitlin.

  At first Caitlin was sure Nick was out of his mind when it came to his new theory that all the objects fit together somehow. However, as they positioned and repositioned them in the center of the attic, Caitlin could see that the odd shapes and unnecessary grooves and divots in the framework of each device were not mere decoration.

  Yes, they were individual inventions with remarkable properties, but they were also puzzle pieces, and Caitlin had to accept that the real reason for her denial was that she hadn’t thought of it first. After all, she was the visual artist with a keen dimensional sense.

  She had to admit, though, that since she had known him, Nick had had several moments of genius-like inspiration, grasping the big picture in a way no one else had. It made her like him all the more.

  Nick and Vince figured out the placement of the wet cell, and not to be outdone, Caitlin finally made the missing visual connection. She lowered the clear egg-shaped salon-style hair dryer over the bulb of the stage light.

  As soon as it was in place, it clamped on and stayed there, with the bulb in its center.

  “Excellent,” said Nick. The light was the only object that had a power cord, but he didn’t plug it in. At the garage sale, it had attracted buyers by the dozens. Caitlin wondered exactly what it might attract now if he turned it on, and then she decided she’d rather not know.

  “We’re still missing too many pieces,” Nick said.

  “Are you sure you want to put the entire thing together?” Caitlin asked. “I mean, Tesla was a genius, but he was also a lunatic. Right? Who knows what this thing will do.”

  Nick didn’t offer an answer
. Maybe he was as uncertain as she was. Even incomplete, the strange device was taking shape, like the intricate gearwork of a clock. Caitlin could already imagine it humming and sparking with lightning, doing whatever it was that it did.

  Nick, Caitlin, and Vince considered the objects for a moment more, and then Nick said, “Hey, what about the hair curlers?”

  “They’re still out back,” said Caitlin. “I’ll go get them.” She went down the attic ladder and then the main staircase to the first floor. Then, as she hurried through the kitchen toward the back door, her brain did a serious double take.

  Why was Theo sitting at the kitchen table with takeout in front of him?

  She turned slowly, fully convinced it must be someone else, that her mind was playing tricks on her. But Theo was still right there, leaning back with a smug look on his face, just waiting to be noticed by her.

  “What are you doing here?” she heard herself ask.

  Theo shrugged, like it was nothing. “Can’t I hang out with my friend Nick Slate and his famous father?”

  Caitlin was rarely speechless. Her mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish gasping for air. Finally she wrangled her brain enough to say, “Huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Theo, crossing his arms. “I’m a regular friend of the family now. Mr. Slate’s down in the basement at this very moment, digging up some sports paraphernalia as we speak.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I’m very serious,” Theo told her. “And from now on, Nick and I are gonna be stuck together like toupees in a pod.”

  Caitlin gaped at him.

  “In fact,” Theo continued, “I plan to be here every time you are. Who said three’s a crowd?”

  The idea of Theo poisoning the air between Caitlin and Nick by his presence was unthinkable. Awkward didn’t even begin to describe it: her sort-of-ex-boyfriend hanging out with her kind-of-prospective boyfriend was almost enough to make her head explode.

  But of course it wouldn’t. Making her head explode was the job of the miniature Tesla coils she was about to innocently retrieve from the backyard.

  Random Force number five: Petula.