Whew – I’m not usually out of breath. I was pushing it. I was scared.
Are those footsteps coming up the stairs? They’re boot steps. There are two pair. How did they figure it out so fast? No one saw me take the chip.
I’ll hide my laptop under my shirt and inside my jeans. I haven’t done this garbage chute dive in two
years. I haven’t grown that much. Everyone’s always on my case about that.
It’s all my gymnastic training. I haven’t started to change shape yet. I only weigh 87 pounds. That’s okay on a girl gymnast. I don’t have T&A yet. Aunt Chrissy’s expression. An interpretive dancer. She tells all her boyfriends that she’s
29. She’s my mom’s older sister and I
know she’s 37. I hate people who call me
“Red” or say how lucky I am to have such beautiful hair. Boys only go for blonde girls with big
boobs. I’m cute, but that’s a long way
from pretty. Chrissy is my legal guardian,
but I wish I could confide in a real mom.
A freak accident at SLAC killed my parents when I was three years
old. They were post-Doctoral fellows, at
Stanford in physics. This whole
boy-thing confuses me. I need help to
sort things out.
I’ll open the window.
They’ll think I’ve jumped out.
Where’s my 49-er cap? I’ll begin
wriggling my legs down the garbage chute, so I’ll be ready. I must be still and listen. I hear someone at the door. It’s the Bush-Police for sure. I wasn’t being paranoid. I hope there’s something at the other end,
like a week’s worth of newspapers. Don’t
let the last person to dump garbage be that woman from the floor below me,
Jessica with her 8-month-old twins.
It’ll be easy, once I’m in the basement.
I’ll run to the other end and sneak across the alley to the apartment
building next door.
Okay -- What is happening?
All I did was to take a high school science project out of the lab for
the weekend. Why was that worth sending
the BPs? I don’t know, but if they
figure out that I’m living on my own, away from my legal guardian, they’ll send
me to a foster home for sure. I’m going
to jot this down on my laptop, which will help me figure things out.
The creepiness started earlier this afternoon when the
California State Inquisitors came to our school and visited Dr. Anderson’s
science lab. Our campus is a combined
junior and senior high school. The
science labs are on the third floor of the shared science building. I am in an advanced technology class and next
year I start the high school.
Dr. Anderson is the head of the science department at
Clinton. He teaches in the high
school. He oversees everything and runs
my gifted student program. He looks good
for an older adult and is the smartest of the whole faculty. He’s just under six feet, with wavy black
hair. His jaw is strong, and he has
penetrating eyes. When he’s talking to
you in class, those eyes bore into your soul.
The Inquisitors were asking Dr. Anderson about his work
while I was entering library data into his pet project, a data storage and
retrieval learning chip. There were two
of them, the Inquisitors. The woman was
older than my aunt, but fat, and dressed in a nice gray suit, except on her it
was two sizes too small. She looked like
a Polish pork sausage. The man in charge
was much older. He wore a crew cut of
short, gray hair. He looked as though he
was in pain and hated life. He was
loudly saying to Dr. Anderson, “You must tell us where the chip is!”
Right then the chip was in my laptop computer. Dr. Anderson gave me this “you will do what I
say” look, with those penetrating eyes and said, “That’s all for today, Patti,
why don’t you take your laptop, just like it is, and continue at
home.” Normally, Dr. Anderson would
never let that learning chip out of his sight.
I figured that he thought the Inquisitors might confiscate it, and so he
was giving me permission to take it home.
That’s enough for now.
Okay. My best plan is
to go back to the school and return the chip to Dr. Anderson. Let him argue it out with the
authorities. It’s only eleven blocks
away. I’ll start walking.
~ ~ ~
There’s yellow tape around the school. And there’s a San Francisco police officer,
except he’s wearing highly polished boots, like a BP would wear.
“I need to go see my counselor about a personal matter.”
“You’ll have to go home, little girl, this school is closed.”
I’ll be whiney.
“It isn’t about Dr. Anderson is it?”
Now be excited.
“There’s people shouting and screaming about him around the
corner.”
“Is there a cop there?” asks the BP police officer.
“No, but there’s lots of people.”
I’ll slip under the tape when the BP guy runs up the
street. I’ll go down to the basement
level. Most people will stick to the
main floor. The back staircase will be
safest, all the way to the rear of the hallway.
It’s empty along here and I can easily climb to the third floor. I’d better just peek out around the door into
the hallway.
“None of them are up here.
They’ve got a check-point at the front stairs on the ground floor.”
I don’t know this voice, better turn around.
“You’re Neil Houghton.”
“Yeah, that’s ri …”
“Mr. Bad-Boy of the eleventh grade, right?”
“Well, I nev …”
“Who are you trying to be today, Jason Timberlake or Brad
Pitt?”
“ I don …”
“Whatever! Anyway,
I’ve got to find my science teacher, Dr. Anderson, so we’ll have to continue
this conversation later.”
“Dr. Anderson is bound and gagged in the computer lab,” Neil
blurts out, “and he’s my science teacher too.”
Neil’s on a roll. He
continues.
“He’s training me for a black belt. He’s going to recommend me for college someday,
after I complete my military service.”
I’m ready to move on.
“Ok, let’s go untie him and get out of here. I need to talk
to him.”
“Wait a minute, Patti,” Neil forces out, “They’ve restrained
him for a reason, and they aren’t going to like us freeing him.”
Whoa.
“Did you just call me Patti? How did you know my name?”
“Get serious. You’re the smartest person on our campus. Everyone knows who you are.”
“Really?”
I’m feeling moonstruck.
I’ve got to click my brain back into operation. We need to peek through the emergency door
behind the lab room. We spot poor Dr.
Anderson, yes, bound and gagged.
“By the way, Neil, how did you get in here past the guards?”
Neil is chuckling, “I often come in here after hours. I climb the fence by the loading docks behind
the school. There is a service pit about
thirty feet long, starting outside the loading bay doors. They always cover it with a string of
three-foot square metal plates, but they don’t lock them. The inside doors from the loading dock area
to the rest of the school are never locked.”
“Neil, you know where the sports locker rooms are, don’t
you? Neil’s nodding yes, “Get gym pants,
a sweatshirt and a sharp knife, all large, if you can.”
“You’re not going to hurt anyone, are you?”
“Don’t worry; I’m going to the Biology lab to get a plastic
skeleton.”
~ ~ ~
Good. Neil’s back.
“Let’s sneak into the room and cut those ropes holding Dr.
Anderson.”
“Don’t try to say anything, Dr. Anderson, until we are free
of this place. But you are going to have
to change clothes into these sweats. I’m
going to dress the skeleton dummy in your shirt and pants.”
“Neil, throw open the window and toss the skeleton out.”
Three stories. That
ought to keep them busy for a while.
Just for good measure, before we walk out, I think I’ll pull the Fire
Alarm switch.
“Dr. Anderson, Neil and I agreed that we will exit the
building through his secret access. Stay
on full, silent alert. Neil will lead
the way down to the loading bay.”
~ ~ ~
Okay. Safety. But what a grungy area. Neil’s right, good hiding places and we can
always climb into the pit.
“Why are you two kids back here at school?” Dr. Anderson seems worried.
“Well, Dr. Anderson, I was hoping to see some action with all
those cops and BPs.”
Neil doesn’t realize the danger we might be in.
“Patti?” Dr. Anderson’s looking hard at me.
“I was either followed or somehow they found out where I was
staying. ”
“Probably another student told them where you lived, the
Inquisitors were going to interview every one of my students.”
There’s that eye signal.
“Do you still have it?” and I nod yes.
“Okay, Neil, you can go home, Patti and I are going to have
to stay out of sight for a while.”
Neil’s pleading, “I could go home, Dr. Anderson, but I’d like
to stay and help you and Patti. I helped
you escape, didn’t I?
“What do you think, Patti?”
He’s letting me decide.
“It’s fine by me if Neil tags along, but where are we going
to go?”
“Well, we can’t go to our own homes, and I can’t use my
car.” Dr. Anderson looks glum.
Should I open my mouth?
“It’ll be dark in another hour and then we can walk to my
Aunt Chrissy’s. It’s only eight
blocks. We’ll be safe there for the
night. But then what?”
Dr. Anderson is hesitating, “Well, I’m not sure why the BPs
want my project, it’s possible they know how it fits into some grander scale of
research, maybe they have found out about my brother up in Mendocino County, he
has been working on the other half of our research. I don’t trust the telephone or the Internet
for communications, I’d like to get up there tomorrow and talk with my
brother. With him involved, we can
understand how much they know about the chip.”
~ ~ ~
“Neil. Dr. Anderson is
writing in his notebook. He can’t hear
us. Why didn’t you want to just go
home?”
“Hell, I’m just staying with my grandma. My dad died in the ’91 Gulf war. He never saw me, he was a marine and burned
up in a tank, two months before I was born.
I plan to enlist when I turn 18.”
“You’re not going to be a Bushie, are you?”
“If he wins a fourth term, I may have no choice. I do want to be a Marine, but no, I’m not a
Bushie and don’t like their policies.”
Hmmm. Neil’s not just a cute jock. There’s something there. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, he’s taller than
Dr. Anderson.
“What happened to your mother, Neil?”
“She struggled as a single mom for a few years, then took to
drinking, and finally ran away from home, leaving me with my grandma.”
“That’s terrible, Neil.
And I was just feeling sorry for myself.
You and I have more in common that I thought.”
~ ~ ~
“Okay, it’s twilight.
We can get going. You two guys
ready?”
“Yes, okay Patti, but I’d like to stop at a delicatessen
along the way and pick up some food. We
all need dinner, Neil?”
“I’m ready and David’s is only a few blocks away.”
~ ~ ~
“I’ll ring the bell and introduce you. It’s about seven thirty, so she’s going to be
surprised to see me.”
Aunt Christina’s eyes lit up when she sees Dr.
Anderson.
“Aunt Chrissy, this is Dr. Anderson, my gifted-program
science teacher and that’s Neil Houghton, a junior at
Aunt Chrissy is shimmering in the
doorway. Her dre … The thing she’s
wearing is so sheer that the evening breeze blows it back and forth across her
body. At least she’s wearing something
under it. The reason we all know this is
that you can read “Chrissy” in script diagonally across the heart-shaped
panties. I’ll think differently about
these things one day when my body develops.
She towers over me, just two inches shorter than Dr. Anderson. Her height is mostly in her long dancer’s
legs. She never dyes her black
hair. She uses makeup expertly. There is always an aura of beauty about her
face. You can never pin it down to a
single feature. Only nods and grunts
from Neil, whose eyes are trying to bore a hole through her chest. But Dr. Anderson is beaming right back at my
aunt.
“Lawrence is my first name, but people call me Larry. Your niece Patti is a wonderful student, the
brightest girl at
“Well, thank you, Larry.”
“But Patti, what are you doing here tonight?”
I’m not sure what I was going to
tell her, but I only get out a, “Well, … “ when Dr. Anderson cuts me off.
“I’m afraid Patti has offered up your hospitality for the
evening, but we have brought along some food and wine. Maybe you and I could go to the kitchen and I
will explain everything while we’re putting together a meal.”
“You two kids call a few friends and tell them you’re going
away for the weekend. We don’t want
anyone worrying about you. And from now
on, you two can start calling me Larry.”
That’s going to be hard.
I wonder if I can bring myself to do it.
~ ~ ~
Where am I? What time
is it? I don’t think I’ve slept this
soundly in years. I can smell food. I’ll just pad down the hall in my socks and
see what’s up in the kitchen. Look at
Dr. Anderson, -- Larry, -- and Aunt Chrissy fixing breakfast together, all
lovey-dovey. His hand is on her ass,
e-e-u-w, how can old people be so gross!
But they have eyes for each other, even more so than last night at
dinner. They hardly knew I was
there.
Larry’s leaving. “I’ll
be right back, Chrissy dear.”
“What are you cooking for breakfast, -- Auntie dear? -- ”
“What would you like my dear,” she’s all cheery and happy,
“Larry is cooking pancakes and I’m grilling sausages, but there’s cold cereal
as well.”
“You like Larry, huh?”
She’s sighing. “It’s
his eyes that are so sexy. When he talks
to you, there are waves of sensuality flowing out of him, all through those
eyes.”
“Well, maybe you’ve finally hooked up with the man of your
dreams, Aunt Chrissy.”
“I hope so, Patti.
Look, I’m glad we got a chance to talk, just you and me. Larry spoke with me last night and I want you
to know how proud I am of you.”
“Thanks, Chrissy.”
She’s no mom, but I love my aunt Chrissy.
“No wait. Your parents
would have been proud too. I know I’m
not much of a replacement for your mom.
She always used to tell me that her plan was to raise you with total
freedom. Even at three, she thought you
were a strong-minded kid that needed every opportunity to spread her own
wings. That’s why I’ve allowed you to
have that study apartment, so you could be on your own. You’ve managed that maturely. Your mother couldn’t have asked for
more.”
“Chrissy, I’m getting all teary-eyed.”
It was true, I needed to get out of here.
“One more thing, Patti.
This little adventure is serious stuff.
You and I are each other’s only family.
I’m going to stick to you like glue sweetheart. Whatever happens, we’ll be together.”
“I love you too Aunt Chrissy; now how about some hot Quaker
Oats oatmeal?”
“It’ll take me a few minutes, Patti, but I’ll be happy to do
that.”
“I’ll go wake up Neil.”
~ ~ ~
What’s that smell coming from his room? It’s an aroma I’m not sure about. It’s like raccoon, a male animal, amazingly
not completely gross. Interesting.
I’ll whisper, “Neil, it’s time to get up.”
“Huh? Okay, okay. I’m up.”
Why is he stopping halfway out of bed? Oh, my.
“I’ll meet you downstairs in a few minutes, Patti, okay?”
“Neil, how old are you?”
“I’ll be 17 this summer.”
“Neil, I’m almost 16.” Fingers crossed. “I know all about
morning erections. Just get up and I
won’t look. I don’t want to break up the
morning lovebirds downstairs again.”
~ ~ ~
“Chrissy, it’s gracious of you to drive us up to the wine
country.”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Larry. And don’t worry, I always figure, if I can
cross the Golden Gate by ten o’clock, we’ll be in the wine country by noon.”
“I spoke with my brother late last night, kids. He is going to meet us at his neighbor’s
winery, Russian River Cellars, where we will have lunch. Then we’ll go up to the laboratory.”
“What does your brother do Dr. Anderson?” Neil’s on an adventure.
“Gerald is my older brother, by nine years, he’s 58. He retired five years ago, a Professor in the
biotech field. Gerry loves the
winemaking community, but he knew nothing about it, so he bought an established
vineyard. The sun and the rain do most
of the work.”
~ ~ ~
“There, I told you it would be easy, there were marker signs
showing the turning points all along the way, and hey, it’s just noon.”
That strange man is wildly waving at us, but he doesn’t look
a thing like Larry.
Larry seems excited, “There’s my brother Gerry! Standing in the restaurant doorway.”
He’s five inches shorter and broader than Dr. Anderson, but
they have the same wavy hair, Gerald’s is graying.
“How do you do, Professor Anderson?” Neil is so formal.
“I’m going to take you two kids,” he means Neil and me, “and
show you around the winery where my grapes are pressed, then we will have
lunch, … and please call me Gerald.”
~ ~ ~
I’m starving. It must
be the fresh sea air that has stirred up an appetite in us.
“This is really your wine, Professor?”
“Yes, Neil, Patti, would you like to taste a sip?”
“This is my brother Gerry’s, Anderson Estate 2004 Pinot
Noir.” Larry is proud of his brother.
Gerald is enjoying this, “This Pinot is the only grape
variety that I raise, and this is the inaugural vintage of my wine.”
“Everybody seemed to enjoy lunch.” Gerald was the big eater,
“I’ll take you up to my place. Follow
me, we’re going behind these huge vats, to the loading dock area.”
Wow. A large tramcar, on rails.
“Hop aboard my private car, folks,” Gerald is smiling at our
confusion, “I’ll show you how I get the grapes from my vineyard over the hill
to the winery.”
This thing is taller than I am. Use the rungs he says.
We can’t be going more than five or six MPH. We enter a pitch-black tunnel.
Gerald knows we’ll be nervous, “The tunnel has no lights, but
the tramcar has headlamps front and back.
It takes about 5 or 6 minutes, all uphill, just enjoy the ride.”
Larry and Chrissy are whispering to each other and giggling
in the rear seats. There are six rows of
seats. I’ll bet they’re going to treat this
like a Tunnel of Love. Neil and I sit in
front. Suddenly, I feel Neil’s hand on
my cheek, softly and gently, but his hand is huge, his palm on my jaw, and his
fingers stretch to my ears. He wants to
whisper something to me. No. Oh-My-God, he’s kissing me. Oh, wow that feels good. I can feel it in my toes.
Neil’s pulling back, “I can see light ahead, the sunlight’s
almost blinding.” We’re out of the
tunnel.
“Oh, Aunt Chrissy, look at the beautiful vineyard rolling up
and down the hills. And look toward the
west. I can see the
“Hold on kids, until the tramcar comes to a stop inside my
basement cellar.”
“Okay, Gerry, I think the time has come to let these kids in
on our brotherly secrets. I’m afraid we
may have already put them into some danger with our project.”
“Right, Larry, I’ll start with the explanations upstairs in
the lab. I’ll show you around the house
above all this later.”
~ ~ ~
Wow, this laboratory looks like a scene from Dr.
Frankenstein.
Gerald stands like a school lecturer, “Larry and I have two
innovations that we’re working on. I’ll
assume you are familiar with Larry’s chip, which can organize all the available
Internet information on a subject into a customized educational
presentation. All nice if you’re trying
to do away with writing textbooks, but you’d still have to go to school for
years to master a language.”
Aunt Chrissy actually raises her hand, “Larry told me about the
chip last night. It sounds cool.”
Larry looks embarrassed, “Go on, Gerry.”
“My invention decimates a person’s learning time. Normally information goes into short-term
memory and the brains organizes and indexes it with other data. The short-term processing logic transfers the
data to long-term storage with all its relevant hooks for later retrieval. When the short-term processor fails, as in
older people, little information gets through to long-term storage. Old people find it more difficult to learn.”
Neil is smiling, “My grandma is getting that way, but why
can’t she remember yesterday?”
Gerald moves closer to Neil, “Day-to-day information is lost
because there just isn’t enough room for it all. The brain doesn’t use short-term memory for
retrieval. Yesterday’s events have to go
into long-term storage to be remembered.”
Larry gets up and walks behind me, “I haven’t mentioned it
yet, but Patti shows all the signs of a photographic memory.”
“That’s interesting,” Gerald smiles. “Would you kids like to participate in an
experiment?”
Gerald’s over by his computer, “Neil is going to swallow a
capsule containing my nanobots, cellular-sized robots that can perform a few
simple tasks.”
Gerald opens a large briefcase containing thousands of
packets of blue capsules.
Gerald is in lecture mode again.
“In the first experiment, Patti and Neil will each separately
view copies of the same video tape, containing three lessons in beginning
German. They will each be able to
control the speed of playback. Neil
should be able to speed up the tape ten-fold because of the help the bots will
give him in long-term storage acquisition, even without the chip. Normally I would say Patti should take 45
minutes to view the tape, but she will be faster because of her photographic
memory. I’m going to take them into that
soundproof booth and sit with them until the experiment is over.”
~ ~ ~
Chrissy’s jumping up.
She must have been worried about me.
“Patti, what happened? Tell me
everything.”
“Well, apparently Neil was done in nine minutes. What did he say to you, Gerald?”
“Neil’s first words were, ‘Ach du lieber Gott.’ ”
“I asked him a question in German, ‘Aber was haben Sie
gelernt, Neil?’ ”
“And he responded correctly,” “Ich habe gelernt, ‘Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor,’ zu sagen.”
“Patti was done five minutes later and could speak the same
KinderDeutsch.”
“This second time, I will connect them to Patti’s laptop with
the chip broadcasting hundreds of lessons through a Wireless networking, Wi-Fi
radio signal to the nanobots. But first,
Patti, you will have to take one of these capsules, like Neil did.”
“I’ll see you in thirty minutes, Aunt Chrissy.”
~ ~ ~
“Oh, Patti, I’m so
glad you’re back and okay. It seemed
like so long. I think even Larry was
getting nervous.”
“Just a second, Aunt Chrissy.
Neil, hast du das Goethe Gedicht gelernt? Es ist ein Frühlingsgedicht
und erinnert mich an die Weinberge hier.”
Wie
herrlich leuchtet
Mir die
Natur!
Wie
Glänzt die Sonne!
Wie lacht
die Flur!
Es
dringen Blüten
Aus jedem
Zweig
Und
tausend Stimmen
Aus dem
Gesträuch
Und Freud
and Wonne
Aus jeder
Brust
O Erd, O
Sonne,
O Glück,
O Lust!
“Ja, ich habe es gelernt aber ich erinnerte
mich dabei an dich. Wie ginge es weiter? ”
Wie ich
die liebe
Mit
warmem Blut,
Die du
mir Jugend
Und Freud
und Mut
Zu neuen
Liedern
Und
Tänzen gibst.
Sei ewig
glücklich,
Wie du
“What are they talking about, Professor?”
“They are discussing a poem by Goethe, Chrissy, a 19th
Century German poet.”
“Neil, hast du die Werke von Frau Schaffner gelernt? Sie
befaßen sich mit der Beziehung zwischen moderner Kunst und Dichtung”
“Nein. Ich glaube du bist mir da ein Jahrhundert voraus.”
Neil looks anxious to ask a question, “Professor Anderson,
can you tell us how these nanobots work and why you are working on them in the
first place?”
“That’s a reasonable question, Neil; I hope I can keep things
simple enough,” Gerald is pacing around the lab. “I started out this venture with a contract
from Steven Spielberg’s Light & Magic Company to develop something they
might call SensuDrama. I authored a
research paper years ago on the effects of inhibiting the transfer of signals
to the brain from sensory senders. In
rat experiments, I blocked the olfactory pathways to the brain. More interesting was that I could stimulate
an artificial smell, further up those same pathways. I was able to trap the blocked signals of
smells and capture them in digital form.
I put a plate of cheese in front of the rat, blocked the smell of
cheese, and replaced it with the smell of fire, and the rat became confused and
tried to escape.”
“Step it up a bit, Gerry,” Larry is impatient, “You’re going
to bore everybody.”
“A long way from Smell-O-Vision, but Spielberg saw the
possibilities and thought it was cheap to fund my research. But you can’t wire up every movie-going
customer. There had to be an agent for
blocking and switching signals along someone’s neural pathways. That’s the job of the nanobot. I noticed something else; the rats seemed to
be learning things amazingly fast.
Something was opening the door to long-term memory, so that new data
didn’t have to pass through short-term memory.
This could be like high-speed photographic memory. Someone could learn Latin overnight. Larry and I decided to quietly pursue this
line of research without telling anyone.”
Larry’s pacing, “We would continue with the Light & Sound
research as well. Their concept was to
take Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, wire them up from each of their five senses
and have them record a lovemaking scene.
A viewer would pop a nanobots pill, then watch the movie. The female viewer, for instance, would feel
Brad’s rough tongue gliding across her nipple, smell his hot body writhing next
to her, taste his … … well, you get the idea.”
Gerald’s animated and back up, “Our concept, instead, was for
a learning machine. With the learning
chip, we could transmit knowledge to our positioned long-term memory bots. Say you wanted to learn classical Latin. The chip would organize a learning plan,
which would be high-speed streamed into your brain and you’d be able to quote
Dante.”
I’ve got to say it.
“Dante wrote in vernacular Italian, not Latin.”
A loudspeaker.
Somewhere out in the fields,
Screaming at us,
“GERALD ANDERSON, YOU ARE SURROUNDED. WE WANT YOU DEAD OR ALIVE.”
“Professor, what are we going to do? If the BPs are after us, it’s all over! Just give them what they want, and they’ll
let us go.”
“I wish it were that easy, Chrissy. We all know too much for one thing, and for
another, once they have the bots and the chip, we don’t matter.”
Everyone’s hysterical.
Neil’s trying to say something, “Why don’t you just smash the chip and
the bots and tell them, ‘sorry’.”
“The problem with that, Neil, is that they’d torture us for
instructions to recreate our experiments.”
Gunshots. I hear
gunshots.
“blam, crack, blam,”
Aunt Chrissy is on all fours beside Larry. She’s screaming,
“Oh My God, Oh My God, He’s been shot!”
Gerald’s kneeling over her, “I’m sorry Chrissy, -- he’s dead.
-- A straight shot through the
head.” Aunt Chrissy’s still screaming,
“Oh My God, Oh My God, He’s dead!”
Blood. “Gerald, is
that Larry’s blood or are you bleeding?
“Sorry, Patti, I think I’ve been shot through the shoulder
and it’s gone through my liver and lung.”
“You’ll be okay, Professor, we’ll give up and they’ll take
you to a doctor.”
“Kid, I hope you’ll grow up in the next few days or you’ll
all be dead. I’m not coming out of this
alive.”
“Neil,” Gerald motions Neil in close to his face. “Take Patti and Chrissy down to the cellar
and use the tramcar to get the three of you away.”
“We could carry you with us,” Neil’s sobbing.
“No. Then they’d just
be chasing all of us and right now, they don’t know about you. I’m going to blow this place up and it should
take them a long time to guess that other people might have been here.”
“You’re going to blow yourself up?” Neil is screaming,
horrified.
“It’ll put an end to the searching. I’ll give you thirty seconds, Neil, Get the
tramcar going as fast as you can. It’s
all downhill from here.”
Neil’s got Chrissy in his arms, “Come on Patti. Let’s get out of here. Grab your laptop and the suitcase, twenty-three
seconds.”
Neil is counting aloud.
He places Chrissy in the tramcar,
“15, -- 14, -- 13”
Oh, I’ve got to climb the rungs again. What’s that?
Neil’s giving me a shove.
This is not the time to be thinking about Neil’s big, strong
right hand on my butt. I wonder if he
touched me there on purpose.
Neil’s pushing and causing the car to move faster.
“3, -- 2, -- 1,”
Good. Neil’s in the
tramcar.
“It didn’t work, Neil. Maybe they got Gerald before he could do
anything.”
Is that an earthquake?
“Do you think that’s it, Neil?”
Neil’s looking up over the top of the tramcar,
“Oh My God. Keep low,
Patti, and keep your face down. There’s
a smoky fireball coming our way. It
should pass over our heads just as we emerge from the end of the tunnel.”
Whoa. I’m upside
down. “What happened, Neil?”
“We were going so fast that we upended when the tramcar hit a
mound of dirt expressly for runaways.”
“Patti, is Chrissy okay?”
“She’s fine. You’d
better drive, Neil. Get us away from
here fast.”
~ ~ ~
“Okay, Patti, looks like we’re safely on the highway back to
the City.”
Chrissy’s sighing, “We’d better start planning our
future. We’ll rest a week. Then you can each tell your friends that the
AP program found you a wonderful scholarship for summer camp. We’ll disappear into Canada, take a year to
master these inventions and then we’ll be back to put them to appropriate use. What do you say, kids?”
Neil’s smiling at me.
My thoughts are spinning on what the next year might bring. It feels good to just curl my arms around
Neil’s right hand, lying in my lap.
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