“Not unless you can see into the future,” replied Wil. He removed the green glass bottle from underneath Robert’s other arm, and took a cup of hot chocolate for good measure. “I can’t be sure how all of this is going to shake down but whatever we decide to do, I think we’d better hurry. Can you take the rest of this hot chocolate up to my father and Cousin Engelbert, please? Dad always works better with hot chocolate.”
Over at the door, the two goons had finally managed to extricate themselves from their predicament and had moved back into the street to face the music. A disturbingly coordinated sound of weaponry being armed echoed across the buildings outside. Wil guessed a tactical assault on the museum was about to go down in roughly the same manner—and at the same speed—as Marcus James’s share prices.
“Afraid not,” said the Robert. “We usually follow Mr. Dinsdale’s lead in situations like this.”
“Oh, this sort of thing happens a lot, does it?”
“A lot more than you’d think,” said the Robert, enigmatically. And with that parting comment, the handyman headed off upstairs with the tray while Wil sipped at his cup of hot chocolate.
* * *
WITHIN MOMENTS, Robert had crested the stairs and headed off into the bowels of the museum. Wil was now alone in the atrium, save for a few of John Keely’s wayward flying globes, and the little will-o’-the-wisps that seemed to delight in chasing them. Out of the corner of his eye, a couple of the wooden crates tried to grab his attention. Outside, a smaller ninja-bot armed with a blowtorch was rapidly dismantling the hinges on the revolving door. Wil smiled to himself. No doubt even the most vicious and bloodthirsty automated killing machine would think twice before attempting to navigate the museum’s revolving door in the accepted, conventional manner. He could hardly blame Marcus James and his cronies for being cautious in that respect.
Wil grabbed the crowbar and moved toward one of the crates closest to the greeting desk. He dragged it over to one side and placed the crowbar inside one of its wooden slats. In his peripheral vision, the other crates seemed to shuffle in an agitated fashion. Wil paid them no mind. For unknown reasons, his future father (or someone close by) had instructed him to open one of these things, and this was no doubt as a response to whatever was inside, and its potential usefulness in defeating the maddened pitchman who was now moments from entering the museum. As Wil pushed down the crowbar with a slight grunt, a strange feeling began to nag at his mind. For some reason, he could smell mushrooms. He moved to a second slat, and loosened it slightly. All Wil now had to do was pull up the top of the crate to reveal its contents. He paused for a second, listening to his inner nagging feeling, which had been quite a helpful ally over the last few days. The growing smell of mushrooms threatened to overwhelm Wil’s gag reflex. Intuitively, he closed his eyes and pulled the top off the crate. Then, with as much self-control as he could muster, he moved back toward the greeting counter without so much as casting a glance in the direction of the open crate. No, he decided; this little riddle would be left for someone else to decipher.
Wil positioned himself at the counter facing the main entrance, where the smaller ninja-bot had almost finished its task. Despite his curiosity regarding the open crate’s contents, he was going to be damned before he looked first at the contents of the crate. He was immensely disturbed by the notion he could feel eyes boring into the left side of his head. Nearby crates rattled in a manner alarmingly similar to the rattle in his apartment pipes. But still he refused to look.
The Lemon phone buzzed insistently in his left pocket, while the Sequitur seemed to tremble softly in his other pocket. He fished the Sequitur out of his pocket and placed it on the counter next to the lump of blue clay, just in case. He wasn’t sure if it would even work now, since he’d left his stolen Air-Max 4000 in the back of Lucy’s Ford Pinto. With a resigned sigh, he fished inside his pocket and produced the Lemon phone. SARA’s interactive voice function was somehow activated. No doubt, the maniacal phone wished to discuss matters.
“Greetings, Wil Morgan,” SARA began as Wil tapped on her glass screen. “Would you like me to look up ‘what should I do now?’ on the Internet?”
“No thank you, SARA,” replied Wil, cautiously. “Do you have anything relevant on ninja-bots or giant glass blue escape marbles?”
“Ninja-bots are theoretical weapons whose early prototype designs were abandoned by the Industricorp Corporation as a result of their instability under test conditions. They are impervious to fire, explosions, and attempts at reprogramming. Industricorp’s other assets include a ninety percent global market share of skyscraper elevators and the chain of coffee shops known as Mug O’ Joe’s.”
“Yes, I really should have seen that coming.” Wil thought for a moment. “Why were they unstable under test conditions? Do they blow up if you overload their memory banks, or something?”
“Negative, Wil Morgan. Ninja-bots are merely a theoretical design whose existence cannot be proven.”
“That’s good to know,” Wil replied, wryly, as the main revolving door at the museum entrance clattered inward and four or five ninja-bots scuttled toward his position. As they came, hundreds of scattered paper clips began to fly across the atrium. The little pieces of metal caromed into the magnetized hulls of the ninja-bots, creating surreal miniexplosions every time they hit pay dirt. By the time the ninja-bots had arrived at the greeting desk, they were covered in paper clips. A strange blue glow began to illuminate the broken door from outside.
Wil surreptitiously placed SARA and the lightning catcher into his pockets. He began to reach for the Sequitur, whose remarkable—almost impossibly useful—properties had proven very handy in a pinch. But for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he opted for the little lump of blue clay instead. Wil quickly grasped the lump of clay in his hand and lifted it above his head in a sign of unconditional surrender just as the bloodthirsty ninja-bots descended upon his position. He picked up his cup of hot chocolate with his free hand. If he was going to meet his end at the hands of a murderous automaton, he reasoned, at least he was going to meet it in comfort.
The blue glow now filled up the entire door fame. Moments later, Wil was astonished to see Marcus James enter wearing a bright-blue glowing exoskeleton. To his eye, Marcus looked like a refugee from a bad science fiction movie. As the TV pitchman stomped toward the counter, little waves of electrical energy sparked out of his exoskeleton with every heavy footstep. These drifting pockets of Tesla-like energy roamed across the waiting ninja-bots, causing the creatures to glitch, slightly. They seemed slightly embarrassed to be caught in such a degrading situation but resolutely stayed at attention.
“Hello, Marcus,” Wil called, cheerily. “Did you come with my Air-Max 3000 upgrade?”
“No,” Marcus James replied with the kind of sneer that a professional poker player would have been proud of. “I’ve come for a discussion. It’s going to be a little one-sided, I’m afraid. Where’s the old man?”
“Which one?”
“You know which one.”
“I do? Well, that narrows it down.”
Marcus James’s eyes narrowed, dangerously. In terms of comedic articulation he knew he was wielding a slingshot against Wil’s heavy cannons. In reality, however, the TV pitchman was wielding actual cannons and wasn’t about to let himself get outgunned in a different sort of battle.
“I’m going to level with you, Mr. Morgan. This is not going to end well for you.” Marcus’s blue exoskeleton glowed, as if to affirm his murderous intent. “My people have already identified your accomplice, a certain Miss Lucy Price. Since she is a customer at one of my banks, steps have been taken to freeze her assets and bring about her eviction from her place of business. No more Lucy’s Magic Locker, I’m afraid. I’m sure the world breathes a collective sigh of relief.”
Wil sipped casually on his hot chocolate, and tried to ignore the ever-growing sense that a roughly four-feet-tall shadowy figure was now standing inside the opened wooden cr
ate, just barely visible in his peripheral vision. “I’m sure it does. By the way, before we get into this, I just want to make it clear that you should under no circumstances look at that crate over to my left.”
“Thank you so much for the advice. I will do my utmost.”
“It’s for the best,” said Wil with a grin carefully calculated to infuriate. “Now what can I do you for, Mr. James?”
Marcus James’s exoskeleton seemed to fold in on itself—small, revolving panels along both sides collapsed inward, revealing nasty-looking laser weapons built into the suit. “I would like,” said the pitchman with just the right amount of carefully calculated menace, “to get my property back before there is any more damage, intended or otherwise.”
“I’m sure you would. Now, just a couple of points of order before you shoot me, if you don’t mind. I’ve had a phone call from my dad, which means if you were going to kill me, you would already have done it by now. I’m sure he wouldn’t have bothered to call me if you were going to kill me anyway.”
“What on Earth are you rambling about?”
“It’s a bit of a temporally anomalous situation. I know I don’t really understand it so I’m pretty sure you won’t. Now about those paper clips: they’re significant, as is this piece of clay I’m holding in my right hand and the cup of hot chocolate I’m holding in my left. I don’t know exactly why but I’d say we’re about to find out.”
To the side of Wil’s awareness, the strange black shadow inside the box seemed to be growing in size, so that it was less of a figure and more of a growing mass. Wil felt a shiver run up his spine. The smell of mushrooms was becoming overwhelming.
Marcus James raised his right arm to reveal yet another weapon protruding from below his wrist. “I’ll give you one last chance: tell me what you’ve done with my property or this hand cannon you’re looking at will most definitely be discharged in your direction. Do I make myself clear?”
“For once, yes.” Wil gulped. It was now or never. In his peripheral vision, the black mass was clearly moving toward them. Wil refused to allow his eyes to wander from Marcus James’s glare. “Incidentally,” he said with a level of saccharine equivalent to an American factory full of soft drinks, “I meant what I said: don’t look at that crate over there.”
“I’m not falling for such an obvious diversionary tactic, you buffoon.”
“Glad to hear it. That means you won’t notice when it sneaks up on you.”
What—?”
* * *
TO WIL, the next few moments seemed almost frozen, like they had been written into a book and could be stopped or reversed with the simple application of a bookmark. He’d carefully judged the measure of his opponent’s resolve, and knew that a man as greedy and weak willed as Marcus James would always be the one to crack first under duress. That is why it was to no one’s surprise—not even Marcus James himself—that the TV pitchman cracked first.
Marcus turned to look in the direction of the growing black mass, which at this point simply could not be ignored. At the exact moment it was being detected, the black mass suddenly folded in on itself and vanished from Marcus James’s awareness, leaving only a residual impression of something extremely nightmarish and unpleasant. Using this momentary distraction to his advantage, Wil did the most arbitrary (and, frankly, pointless) thing he could think of: he threw his cup of hot chocolate over Marcus’s blue exoskeleton suit.
Absolutely nothing happened.
Wil blinked. That had not gone at all as planned, despite his absolute lack of preplanning. Slowly—in the incredulous manner of a lion that has just been bitten by a small deer—Marcus blinked. He looked at Wil, astonished, and burst into as genuine a fit of giggles as a man of his minimal capacity for humor could be expected.
“Did you…” Marcus tried to gather himself. “Did you just throw coffee all over me?”
“It was hot chocolate.”
“Ah, I see. So hot chocolate is more likely to short-circuit an Industricorp Hammerhead A27 military-grade exoskeleton?” Marcus was trying hard to contain his delight, which made him seem all the more obnoxious.
“I don’t know,” replied Wil, defiantly. He couldn’t help but pout a little bit, given that his expectations of success had been so sorely dented. It had been a day full of triumphs, and this sudden setback was the last thing he might have thought would happen.
Marcus James’s hand cannon began to whine as it came to a full charge. At that moment, the tiny will-o’-the-wisp carrying Wil’s paper clip floated in on the scene and fluttered toward Marcus’s position.
“I’m going to have my evidence back,” said Marcus with a villain’s flourish. “But since my people have this museum on lockdown, I’m not entirely sure I’ll need you to help me get it. Goodbye and good riddance, Mr. Morgan.”
Marcus began to depress the built-in trigger for his hand cannon, which initiated yet another wave of sparking electricity that floated across the area, like rippling water. At that moment, the little globule of plasma moved to a position directly above Marcus, just as a small puddle of hot chocolate dripped down the exoskeleton’s leg and made contact with a few of the remaining discarded paper clips.
With a resigned shrug, Wil flipped the small lump of clay he’d been holding. It narrowly missed the will-o’-the-wisp, causing the fairy-like creature to flutter a little and drop its precious cargo. Almost immediately, the discarded paper clip landed in the puddle of hot chocolate just as the wave of sparks flew over it, and from what Wil could tell as the resultant explosion threw him backward across the counter, it completed a full circuit that fried the operating systems of everything in the vicinity. By happy coincidence, the immediate vicinity happened to contain a large number of very surprised ninja-bots who until the moment of their demise had been programmed to believe they were invulnerable. The first of the bots exploded with a vigor normally reserved for a dynamited mine shaft, while the rest of the creatures took this opportunity to whirl about in frantic circles, blasting their cannons in whichever direction they happened to feel was worth obliterating. Outside, a number of presumably tank-fueled explosions rocked the front of the building. Marcus James screamed loudly as his exoskeleton went into full “armor” mode, locking up his faceplate and rendering him temporarily immobile as bullets spattered off his chest and limbs. Thinking quickly, Wil grabbed the Sequitur from the counter and made a beeline for the stairs, ducking underneath stray hollow-points as he made his escape. And to the forlorn sounds of Marcus’s yells of anger, he made his way up the stairs and into the hallway leading back into the museum.
* * *
AT THE top of the stairs, Mr. Dinsdale and Mary Gold were moving quickly in Wil’s direction. At the far end of the hall, Lucy and Barry were also making their way up from the temporal exhibit with little Engelbert in tow, clutching a bundle of important-looking papers.
“Wil!” called Lucy with a look of relief spreading across her face. “We heard those explosions! I thought—”
“It’s okay! I’m okay!” interrupted Wil so that Lucy wouldn’t have to complete her thought. “Everything’s not okay, though: I think Marcus James will be up here any second now! He’s a bit miffed at me!”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know but you would’ve liked it!”
The little museum curator made his way breathlessly to Wil’s side, with Mary Gold gliding alongside him. “I’m glad to see you made it out alive, Wil! I never doubted you, of course!”
“Gee thanks!” yelled Wil in response as he took stock of the moment. “Where are we at with that electricity bill?”
“Wil, you’re never going to believe this!” cried Barry Morgan as he, Engelbert, and Lucy made their way rapidly along the hall. “There was a discrepancy in the Edison Company’s accounting! It’s a miracle!”
“No! Dad, Lucy … we have to go back the other way!”
“What?” Barry didn’t seem to “getting it” quite as quickly as Wil migh
t have liked. And this would only lead him to “getting it” in a far less pleasant way within moments.
“Go back! Marcus James! Explosions! Ninja-bots!” yelled Wil, breathless. His protestations, however, did not seem to be having much effect. Luckily (at least for the point Wil was trying to make), the atrium below was rocked by a huge explosion, which sent strange blue flames shooting up the stairs and into the hallway.
Barry and Lucy slowed, so that Engelbert bumped into them from behind. Wil quickly turned to Mary and Dinsdale. “We’ve got to get to the perpetual motion machines! Hurry!”
“Why on Earth would we go in there?” asked Dinsdale with a look of genuine confusion. “Those machines are practically useless beyond just whirring about and violating the first law of thermodynamics.”
“Because SARA told us to from the future!” called Wil as he set off toward the room full of pointless machines. “Come on! Hurry!”
Farther down the hall, Barry, Lucy, and Engelbert were now shuffling about and looking confused. Barry seemed to be taking the fact that Wil wasn’t interested in his heroic accounting conclusions to heart. “Wil,” he said, halfheartedly. “I did as you asked. We’ve made a major breakthrough.”
“That’s nice, Dad. Can we please go now?”
“Why? We have all the proof we need to end this thing once and for all.”
“I have a feeling we might find something like heavy machine guns or bulletproof armor more useful, Dad!”
As if to help Wil make his point, the building was suddenly rocked by another tremendous explosion and all of the lights went out. A blue glow suddenly appeared at the far end of the hall in the direction of the atrium stairs. “That’ll be imminent death,” said Wil as he gently pushed his father in the direction of the perpetual exhibits. “He’s not really all that interested in proof right now.”
“I drew up a very nice legal agreement!” said Engelbert, hopefully. “We’ll certainly be able to get this sorted out once both parties have reviewed and signed!”