Tesla's Attic (9781423155126) (5 page)

“So what are you saying?” Nick's dad asked.

“Simply stating the obvious. That you and your sons are not who you claim to be.”

“What—has Danny's record disappeared, too?”

“That question you'll have to take up with the elementary school.”

The principal said little more, just continued to give them suspicious eyes and make veiled threats until his father finally stormed out to the car.

Nick went to get his books from his locker. School had been over for twenty minutes now, and the hallway was pretty much empty. Finally he let his frustrations fly and slammed his locker shut—to find someone standing there, filling the hallway, blocking any escape.

Heisenberg.

Nick knew, without any uncertainty whatsoever, that he was about to get the pounding of his life.

Heisenberg, his face fixed in a death frown, advanced on him. And before Nick could say a word, Heisenberg lifted him off the ground…and pulled him into a bear hug.

“Thank you,” Heisenberg said. “They told me in my anger management class that I was going to be tested. They sent you, didn't they?”

Nick tried to answer, but the hug was so tight he couldn't breathe.

And with tears in his eyes, Heisenberg said, “Now I've passed the test. I've never been so happy.”

Then he put Nick down and ran off to get some tissues.

C
aitlin had avoided Nick the entire day. She had her reasons, which had little to do with Nick and everything to do with the object she'd bought at the garage sale.

The day before, Sunday, she had planned to spend the morning creating her work of art. She donned her smashing clothes and laid a tarp in the garage, with the poor, defenseless recorder in the center. She approached it, hefting the sledgehammer, wondering how many swings it would take to disfigure it just right.

But she had never used a reel-to-reel recorder before, and she had to admit it intrigued her. Was it possible the thing still worked?

She looked for a power cord and found it had none. But when she pressed
PLAY
, the spools rolled and tape fed across the playback head. Apparently the tape was blank.

She pressed
STOP
, plugged in the microphone, and hit
RECORD
.

“Testing, testing. This is Caitlin Westfield. Testing, testing.”

Then she rewound it, watching the tape counter reverse to 000, and played it back.

“Testing, testing,”
said her voice through the woven speaker grille.
“This is Caitlin Westfield, and this is a waste of time.”

She almost didn't catch it, because to be honest she wasn't really listening closely, and she really
had
been thinking what a waste of time this was.

“That's weird,” she said, and immediately decided that she had misheard. She played it again. When she heard the same thing a second time, she concluded it must have been what she had originally said, because what other explanation was there, really?

Just to prove it to herself, she hit
RECORD
again.

“Testing, testing. I'm testing this stupid machine again so I can smash it and be done with it.”

And her own voice on playback said,
“Testing, testing. I'm test
ing this stupid machine again so I don't freak out.”

Now Caitlin
was
freaking out.

If it was some sort of trick, there was no explanation for it. Her heart began to beat way too fast to be healthy. She hit
RECORD
again, and as the reels turned, she looked at the machine from every possible angle, to see if there was anything unusual about it whatsoever.

That's when her cell phone rang.

She pulled it out of her pocket and looked. It was Theo. Her boyfriend had a penchant for calling at the most inopportune times. She put the phone on speaker and set it down so she had both hands free to study the device.

“Hey, Caitlin, it's me.”

“Hey.”

“Wha'cha doing?”

“Art project.”

“Oh. Because a bunch of us are going to the mall. Maybe we can see that new horror movie.”

“I'd really like to, but I'm kind of busy,” Caitlin told him. “Come over later?”

“Yeah, sure, we can hang out.”

“Bye, Theo.”

“Bye.”

It was only after she hung up that she realized the machine was still recording.

She pressed
STOP
, looked at it for at least a full minute, refusing to believe she was thinking what she was thinking—and knew, if her thinking was correct, this was major.

Then she rewound the tape to 000 and pressed
PLAY
.

“Hey, Caitlin, it's me.”

“Hey.”

“Whatever you're doing isn't important, but I've got to ask, so
tell me anyway.”

“Art project—like you care about anything that matters to me.”

“Oh. Because I don't want to be the only guy at the mall without
a girl. We'll make out at the movies.”

“That sounds awful. I've already checked out of this conversa
tion, but you can come over later, because I might actually be that
bored.”

“Yeah, sure, maybe then we can make out.”

“Bye, Theo.”

“Hmm, I wonder what's for lunch.”

Calmly, Caitlin turned the machine off, wrapped it in the tarp, then carried it out back and dropped the entire thing in the trash.

Then she went to her bedroom, closed the curtains, and hid beneath the covers.

The device remained in the trash for an entire ninety minutes before Caitlin took it out and hauled it up to her room. Any thoughts of smashing it were gone. She didn't know what this thing was, or why it could do the thing that it did. But there was no doubt about it—somehow this old recorder took the things you
said
and turned them into the things you were
thinking
. Even more than that, the machine seemed to delve deeper, to the things you were
feeling
—and didn't even know you were feeling until it played them back.

To a girl like Caitlin, whose heart was wrapped in so many layers of disguise that she never knew exactly what she really felt, this machine was either her salvation, or her ruin.

On Monday, as Nick struggled to fit into the school, Caitlin struggled with the tiny chink that the reel-to-reel player had put in her armor. Her well-crafted social veneer only worked if she was convinced she truly was the person she presented.

She believed herself to be the kind of girl who didn't play games, who said what she meant in take-it-or-leave-it terms. But the impossible nature of that tape recorder hinted that there were parts of herself she didn't entirely know.

Caitlin had always been a fearless girl. But this frightened her.

Throughout the day, her thoughts kept gravitating to that new kid. Nick. The way the strange light had pulled her, and all the other people, to the garage sale.

Nick had valiantly saved her life. She tried to imagine Theo doing the same, but she couldn't. Not that Theo wasn't a decent guy, he just wasn't
that
kind of guy.

There was a heightened sense of something surrounding Nick Slate. The energy of the school seemed to change around him. He even humbled Heisenberg.

By the end of the day, it was her own interest in Nick that troubled her more than anything, so she resolved to take a healthy step away, and under no circumstances let him into her world.

Nick's world that afternoon had little to do with inexplicable garage-sale items and a lot to do with inexplicable math homework. In spite of Vince's claim that the school was pathetic, it was somewhat less pathetic than Nick's school in Tampa, because Colorado Springs eighth graders were way ahead in mathematics. Nick, in his attic room, was doing his best to get up to speed, because whether or not his principal believed it, he did in fact exist.

Danny, on the other hand, took his official nonexistence as a no-homework pass.

“It's not every day you get to be deleted,” he said. “I'm gonna make the most of it.”

Nick had to admit that, for someone who didn't exist, he had made an impression on his first day at Rocky Point Middle School. He had no idea how he would fare on his second day. Not only academically, but also socially. Caitlin came to mind—and her boyfriend. Theo was tall, mostly because of a long neck featuring an Adam's apple the size of Nick's fist. Nick, on the other hand, had not yet hit his growth spurt, which his father insisted was genetically inevitable.

“It's all about perception,” his father had told him. “Think tall, and other people will think it, too.”

Nick doubted that any kind of mind control would work on a girl like Caitlin.

When he took a break, he went downstairs and saw his brother in the front yard, waiting for their father to come home from a day of job hunting. Danny absently tossed a baseball in the air, only catching it about half the time.

Nick sighed. Danny had been born after their father's major league days, but they still loomed larger than life for him. Wayne Slate had been an excellent pitcher, but unfortunately he was better known by his nickname, “Whiffin' Wayne.” He picked it up thanks to his less-than-stellar batting at away games against National League teams, when a pitcher couldn't take advantage of a designated hitter and had to bat for himself. His father wore the unwanted nickname much longer than his major league jersey. Nick was a pretty good pitcher in his own right, and batter as well. In fact, he was pretty much the star of his Little League team back in Tampa. But for Danny, an early talent in the sport had not presented itself.

Danny dropped the ball once more, and Nick decided his homework could wait. He went out the front door to join his brother.

“Hey, space case,” he shouted, “you need two people to play catch.”

Danny tossed the ball to his brother. “We need mitts,” he told Nick. “Dad says his old one's in a box in the basement, but I don't want to use it. It'll smell like smoke.”

Nick tossed the ball lightly, and Danny caught it. “Back up,” Danny said, which Nick did. Even so, he had to stretch to catch the next throw. At least his brother had a good arm. Nick returned the ball underhand. This time Danny dropped it.

“It's the attitude,” Danny said. “Colorado's got thin air. The ball does weird things.”

“You mean altitude,” Nick told him as Danny threw another pitch so wild that Nick had to leap to catch it. “Step into it when you throw,” he said, tossing it back.

“I am.”

“With your other foot.”

“That feels funny.”

“Stop arguing and do what I tell you.”

“You're not Mom. You can't tell me what to do.”

Nick held eye contact with Danny for a moment, then had to look away. His brother's stare felt like an accusation.

It was then that Nick caught sight of a familiar, pearlescent SUV, driving too slowly to be anything but menacing.

He had no idea what to think, but even if he had, the thought would have been knocked out of his head by the baseball that beaned him right on his stitches.

“Ow!” Nick turned to his little brother, who looked both horrified and satisfied at the same time. “Danny, that really hurt!”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to hit you in the same place as the toaster. I was just aiming for your head.” Then he looked down. “I thought for sure you'd catch it. You catch everything.”

Nick found he didn't have the heart to yell at him. And when he looked back at the street, the SUV was gone.

Their dad came home a few minutes later with take-out food and a few sketchy job leads. “When it comes to retired ballplayers,” he told them, “people balk worse than a bush league pitcher.” Back in Tampa he had been exceptional at “odd jobs,” but apparently no jobs were odd enough here.

As they all headed toward the house, Nick saw a small white rectangle on the doorstep. After his dad and brother went inside, he bent down to pick it up. It was the business card of one Dr. Alan Jorgenson. And Nick could tell by the smoothed-out crinkles that it was the same business card he had thrown away at the garage sale.

T
he problem with having too many variables in any equation is that the number of possible solutions begins to seem endless. Although supercomputers can calculate things to the gazillionth decimal, it takes a leap of human intuition to boil pages of calculations down to something as simple as E = mc
²
. The simpler the solution, the harder it is to arrive at.

Nick's garage sale had generated more variables than there were letters to define them, creating a smoke screen that hid the truth: that an elegant solution had already been worked out by a great scientific mind.

One such variable—a rather persistent one—showed up at Nick's house later that evening.

Mitch arrived at Nick's front door after dinner, carrying the clunky See 'n Say thing under his arm.

“Dude, you're my hero,” he told Nick, breathing hard. Apparently he had pedaled here at full speed. “That thing with Heisenberg will live on in legend long after we mere mortals are dead.”

“Thanks,” Nick said, and he couldn't help but smile. All things considered, Mitch might not be such a bad friend, once you got past the nuisance factor. And so far, he'd been the only one to make an effort. That had to count for something.

“Hey,” Nick said, “I was just about to—”

“Get something to drink? Can I have something, too?”

And although that wasn't what Nick was going to say, it worked. “Sure. Come on.”

As they headed into the kitchen, Nick silently counted how many seconds Mitch could stay quiet. He maxed out at seven.

“So, this thing,” Mitch said, giving the See 'n Say a little shake. “I'm telling you, Nick, it's not to be believed. I mean, what it told you at school was useful, right?”

Nick shrugged. “I guess it could have been.” He thought about his cell phone ringing, and wondered if he still had to serve detention if he didn't exist.

“I mean, it
knows
things.” Mitch held it out to him. “Just pull the string.”

Nick opened the refrigerator, where a bottle of apple juice sat on the rack. He took it out and unscrewed the top.

“C'mon, Nick, just pull the string.”

With a sigh, Nick reached out, pulled the string, and let it go. “Fine, but I really think—”

And the machine said,
“
—
you shouldn't drink that
.
”

Now Nick looked at Mitch curiously, then looked at the juice he was about to swig.

He thought it was just unfiltered apple, but now that he looked at it, the color seemed a little off. He took a sniff and a rancid vinegary odor burned his nostrils. Dizzy, he set the bottle on the counter.

“Danny!” he called. “Did Dad buy this juice today?”

Danny poked his head into the kitchen and eyed the jar. “That? Nah, it's probably been sitting there for years. Dad thinks it's one of Great-aunt Greta's urine samples.”

Nick nodded. “Thanks. That is all.”

Feeling sick to his stomach for more reasons than one, Nick took the See 'n Say-ish device from Mitch, who smiled the smile of absolute vindication.

“See? I told you,” Mitch said. “This thing isn't a See 'n Say; it's more like a Shut Up 'n Listen.”

Nick set the thing down on the table, held it in place with one hand while he pulled the string with the other, and said, “My father…”

And the machine said,
“
…
should play baseball again.”

“Your dad was a baseball player?” Mitch asked.

Nick nodded. “A long time ago.” He looked at the device. “How does it do that?”

“I don't know,” Mitch said. “It was in
your
attic.”

Then Nick thought about the toaster and how, without any direct electrical connection, it had blown out all the bulbs in the kitchen. Not to mention incinerating the toast.

What if these weren't the only two things that were beyond ordinary?

Nick looked at Mitch, who was still too pleased with himself and the device to see the larger implications. He lifted his baseball cap and scratched his head, as if it might stimulate his memory. Who had bought the various items at this garage sale? Besides Mitch, there were only two names he remembered. “Mitch, do you know where Vince and Caitlin live?”

Even though it was long after dark by the time they got to Vince's place, the house in its own way beamed perpetual daylight. It was overlit with way too many garden floodlights, all designed to make the house “pop.” The home was blue with pink trim. Brightly colored flowers lined the path to the front door, and there were hummingbird feeders everywhere.

“
This
is Vince's house?” Nick asked. He couldn't even fit that dark, brooding kid in the same brain hemisphere as this house.

“I'm sure living here makes him feel miserable,” Mitch said.

Which, Nick realized, was what Vince would want.

A doormat with a daisy pattern announced,
WE'RE
SO
GLAD YOU'RE HERE
. However, there were scorch marks on the edges, as though someone had tried to set it on fire.

Nick knocked, and the door was answered by a woman who was all sweetness and manic energy.

“Hi! How can I help you boys?”

“Uh, we're here to see Vince?” said Nick.

The woman couldn't be more overjoyed. No, really, she couldn't be.

“Well, isn't that wonderful? You know, Vince doesn't have many visitors. I'm
so
glad you're here.”

“Yes,” said Nick, “the doormat already told us.”

Vince's mother led them into the house and opened a door to stairs leading down to the basement. “Vince!” she called down. “Two of your little friends are here to see you.”

And from down below came a voice sopping with discontent.

“Go away. You're trying to trick me again.”

“No, not this time.” Then she turned to Nick and Mitch. “Go on down. I know he'll be happy to see you.”

Nick and Mitch descended the stairs into the basement. To call it “unfinished” would be a wistful hope. Two walls had been covered with wood paneling, now painted black. The other walls were the original, rough-hewn rock from which the lair (because what else could it be called, really?) had been carved. In the middle of the room sat a desk, a number of disorganized bookshelves, and an army cot. The only window, near the ceiling, was covered with a sheet. On news reports, when astonished neighbors said things like, “He was always so quiet and kept to himself,” the next image would be this basement.

“Oh,” said Vince, with supreme disappointment. “It's you.”

“Cool place you got,” Mitch told him, looking around. “What imaginative things you've done with dirt.”

“Color gives me a headache. So what do you want? I've got stuff to do.”

“We wanted to talk to you about what you bought at the garage sale,” Nick said.

Now Vince became suspicious. “I bought it fair and square. You can't have it back.”

Nick didn't argue the point. Not yet, anyway. “I just want to know if you've used it yet.”

“Yes,” said Vince.

“And when you used it, what did it do?”

Vince's suspicious look intensified. “How do you know it did anything?”

Nick gave Mitch a nod, and he took out the Shut Up 'n Listen and pulled the string. Mitch said, “If I were you, I'd—”

“—avoid an untimely death,”
the machine voice whirred.

And while Nick and Mitch were a little troubled by that, Vince only said, “It couldn't be avoided. Come on, I'll show you.”

On his desk, next to a pile of dust-covered schoolbooks, was a murky fishbowl. A single goldfish floated lifelessly on the surface of the water. Its death was most certainly untimely.

Then Vince lifted a rag to reveal the old wet cell, looking just as crusty and toxic as when he bought it. He hesitated. “You're sure you want to see this?”

Nick nodded. He could see that whatever it did, Vince had been itching to talk about it—but other than his mother waltzing around upstairs with a feather duster, he had no one to talk to.

“Sashimi died a couple days ago.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” said Mitch.

“No you're not. Don't lie about things like that. It's annoying.” Vince stared morosely down at the bowl. “I was going to give him the traditional swirling blue funeral, but I didn't get around to it. Then yesterday I was messing around with the wet cell, right? And I dipped both electrodes into the bowl—”

Nick interrupted him. “Why would you dip two electrodes from a battery into a dead goldfish's bowl?”

“Why
wouldn't
you?” Vince asked, blinking, like it was a trick question. Then, rather than say any more, he went to the wet cell, grabbed both wires, and dipped them into the water.

There was a faint electrical hum, and in that instant Sashimi, who had been floating on his back, righted himself and began to swim around the murky bowl like he had nothing better to do.

“No way!” said Mitch, taking a step back.

“It's alive!
ALIVE!
” Vince said, contorting his hands like a mad scientist. Then he dropped his arms to his sides. “Sorry; I always wanted to say that.”

Nick could only stare.

“Cool, huh?” Vince said, and folded his arms, proud of himself. “Bet no one else in town has an undead goldfish.”

“I bet you're probably right,” said Nick.

Nick reached over and carefully pulled the wires from the water. As soon as he did, Sashimi was a floater once more.

Nick stared at the wet cell, not wanting to believe what he had just seen. “Do you even
get
how not normal this is?”

“Yeah,” said Vince, as though that were obvious. “But isn't it great? I knew there was something about that thing when I bought it. I could feel it. I just didn't know what it was.”

“Like the way you felt drawn to the garage sale?” Nick suggested.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Vince with a shrug, but then as he thought about it, the shrug became a nod of recognition. “Yeah—exactly like that!”

Nick had noticed how, at the garage sale, people seemed drawn to specific items. He hadn't thought much of it at the time. He didn't quite know what to make of it now.

Mitch picked up the wet cell and carried it over to the wall, where a shadow box contained a variety of dead bugs, including a large tarantula. He placed the twin electrodes on the spider's back, and the dead creature reared up on its hind legs and spat at him.

Vince yawned. “Knock yourself out, I already tried all those.”

“So does it work on bigger things?” asked Nick.

“Hmm,” said Vince, “hold that thought.” And he trotted up the stairs. He came back a minute later with a raw chicken fresh out of the refrigerator, marinating in a glass bowl.

The three looked at each other, and Nick nodded. Vince touched the electrodes to the pink flesh.

The dead chicken's drumsticks began to pump up and down, and the featherless, naked wings began to flap frantically back and forth, spattering lemon-soy marinade all over them.

Nick and Mitch screamed, and Vince heaved a very satisfied sigh. “I've waited my whole life for that,” he said. And then Vince did something he very rarely did: he smiled. “I was thinking of making it my science-fair project,” he said. “I think I have a chance of winning, even if Heather North does ‘Chemistry of the Cupcake' again.”

“You can't bring this to the science fair. You can't let other people see it.” Then Nick took a deep breath, knowing what he had to say, and how it would be received. “I'm sorry, Vince, but you can't keep it.” He turned to Mitch. “And you can't keep yours either.”

Both Vince and Mitch clutched their objects closer to them.

“These things—whatever they are—need to be in the hands of…the hands of…”

“The hands of who?” asked Vince. “The government? Some corporation? Our parents? Can you imagine my mother with this thing?”

Nick sighed. “I don't even want to try.”

And then Mitch sheepishly said, “My dad would be able to figure out what to do.”

Vince laughed at that. “Your dad? Are you kidding me? I wouldn't give a penny for your father's thoughts.”

Mitch seemed to fold at Vince's words.

“All I'm saying,” said Nick, “is that we aren't meant to use these things.”

And Mitch said, “What if we are?”

They both turned to him. Mitch clutched the Shut Up 'n Listen a little bit tighter. “I don't know about you—but I feel like this thing was mine even before I ever saw it.”

“Me, too,” said Vince.

Nick pursed his lips, a bit irritated. “Why does everyone feel that but me?”

Mitch shrugged. “Maybe because you gave all the stuff away.”

The two of them held their objects in white-knuckled grips that suggested Nick would get them back only when he pried them from their cold, dead fingers. Nick thought back to the garage sale. All those faces he didn't know, all those people desperately grabbing things and hauling them away. How many people had been drawn to his garage, and filled with a feeding frenzy? All that stuff, that “junk,” was scattered now throughout the neighborhood.