by Mark Dunn
“Look at me. I can hardly walk. Let alone breathe. My asthma is much worse. It is for the best. I was at the new mayor’s office this morning. There was a very long line. People are worried and depressed. This calamity is taking a terrible toll on the oldest citizens of this town and on everyone who loves them. But the ones waiting in line took some pity on me and let me go ahead. When I stand for too long, my knee joints seize up and then I walk around as if I am walking on stilts.”
“So what did you need to see the mayor about?”
“There has been no mention of whether I am entitled to a pension. My wife and I have no income now. I needed to find out if there will be a little money for us to live on.”
“And what did the Mayor say?”
“That I had to discuss it with his new police chief.”
“Who is the new police chief?” asked the Professor. He held a cup of warm beef broth in both hands. Becky had just brewed it for him. It was not as fine a meal as oatmeal and mashed bananas, but it did keep the hunger pangs away for a while at least.
“It’s Lonnie. Lonnie Rowe, the boy my partner and I arrested for helping to incite the City Park baby carriage riot. Jackie, now Mayor Stovall, eluded us. But we got Lonnie and kept him in jail for a whole day. He is now the new police chief. I’m sure that he will take vengeance on me and I will see no pension. But that is neither here nor there. Oh look, there’s your little terrier, Professor. Where are his earmuffs?”
“He only wears them when there are loud noises to contend with. Please, go on.”
“Yes. Well, as you can see, it takes me a little while to get from Point A to Point B. It took me an extra minute or two to leave the Mayor’s office after our chat. During that time I overheard a conversation between the Mayor and his new police chief that he probably didn’t think I could hear. But I can actually still hear quite well. Perhaps it comes from all those years of listening closely for potential noise violations.”
“What did you overhear, Officer Wall?” asked Becky.
“The Mayor was asking the police chief to send some of his men—the younger men, that is, those who have just joined the force—not any of the old codgers like myself who are now too rusty to do our jobs—to send them here to this house, with an order to destroy all the equipment in this lab. All the tools, all of your notebooks, everything. He wants to shut your laboratory down, Professor Johnson.”
“Upon what grounds!” cried the Professor. So unsettling was this report from the former police officer that Professor Johnson started to rise up from his chair, knotting himself in his blanket and sloshing his broth all about.
“Upon the grounds that your laboratory poses a danger to the town of Pitcherville. He said that he heard there was a fire here last night. Now, I don’t know if there was one or not…”
“There was,” admitted Rodney solemnly.
“And he says he cannot trust that there will not be other fires with a doddering old fool at work here.”
The Professor grimaced when Officer Wall said “doddering old fool.” It was a look of anger and hurt.
Officer Wall continued: “And with all the chemicals and potentially explosive materials in this laboratory no one could be sure that the next fire wouldn’t be far worse than the last, or could even result in the whole neighborhood being blown to smithereens! And that is all of the conversation I heard, for by then I had reached the door. But that was plenty to hear, don’t you think?”
“Oh it was more than enough, Officer Wall, and I appreciate your telling us.” The Professor settled himself back into his chair. “Do you children see what our new mayor is doing?”
Rodney nodded. “Jackie must know that we are working on a new Age Altertron. And he must know that once we finish it and all of us have been returned to our true ages, he won’t be able to hold on to his power over this town any more—that his days of being a dictator will be over. Then he and Lonnie will have to go back to being the two juvenile delinquent nobodies they have always been!”
“Well put, Rodney,” said the Professor. “So where shall we move all of this equipment to continue our work on the machine in secret?”
“How about your sub-basement?” suggested Wayne. “And who was it who told us about the Professor’s sub-basement, Wayne?” asked Rodney, arching an eyebrow at his brother.
“Well—let me—oh. It was Jackie. But is it true, Professor?”
“It is true. I am trying to think of how Jackie would come to know about my several basements, though.”
“Well, Professor,” said Officer Wall, “he and Lonnie have always made it their habit to sneak into places where they could hide from my fellow officers and me.”
“And you do like to leave you laboratory door unlocked, Professor,” added Wayne.
“Well, now that the truth is out, Wayne, I will admit that I not only have a basement and a sub-basement but even a cellar and a sub-cellar below those.”“Why so many underground rooms, Professor?” asked Wayne.
“I will tell you some day, but not today. Suffice it to say, Jackie and Lonnie know of the basements, so we will have to think of some other place to move our lab. Let us put our heads together, kids; where is the last place that those two thugs would think of looking for my Age Altertron?”
“Well,” said Rodney, “I know of a cellar that few people know about—a cellar that even I have never seen.”
“Where is it?”
“Beneath my very own house.”
“What is Rodney talking about, Wayne?” asked Becky. “You two never told me there was a cellar under your house.”
Wayne nodded. “It’s a secret cellar. It was built over a hundred years ago, at the time that the house was built.”
“The cellar was a place for slaves to hide,” explained Rodney. “Slaves who were escaping from their Confederate masters before the outbreak of the Civil War. You see, our father’s house was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
The Professor whistled his surprise. “And in this case the word ‘underground’ may be applied quite literally! I had no idea, Rodney. And I happen to know a great deal about the history of this town.”
“Well that was the idea—that no one should know about it, except the people who were supposed to know about it, the people who wanted to help the runaway slaves.”
“But why have you two never seen it?” asked Becky. “What is down there now?”
Rodney lowered his voice dramatically, as if to add a note of mystery to his story. “Well, that is the second half of the tale. My father started building something down there. Something secret. He began building it when Wayne and I were very small. He said that some day he would show it to us. In fact, he said that he hoped to be able to show it to us when we turned seventeen.”
The Professor looked puzzled. “Why seventeen, Rodney? Is there some significance to that age that is momentarily escaping me?”
Wayne answered for his brother: “There is no significance about our being seventeen, Professor. What is significant is the year that he wanted to show it to us: 1960.”
“1960. How curious. I cannot think why that year should hold such meaning for your father. Can you, Officer Wall?”
“I didn’t know your father very well so I couldn’t say. The year holds no special meaning for me, although 1960 will be the year I turn ninety if your machine doesn’t return us all to our real ages.”
“We must go talk to Aunt Mildred, Rodney,” said Wayne. “She knows about the cellar. And she also knows what’s down there. Maybe she’ll let us work on the machine there if what our father has left there can be set aside. It can’t be any more important than what we are doing to save this town. I’m sure that Dad would agree.”
The Professor nodded. “Wayne, you make a very good case.”
“An astute case?” asked Wayne, hopefully.
“Most astute, my boy. Now you and Rodney go speak to your aunt. I’ll remain and nap so that I will be fresh to continue work on my calculations. We cannot afford
for me to make another mistake. I must have seven naps a day, you see, and by my latest estimation, I am two behind.”
Rodney and Wayne found their Aunt Mildred awake. She was lying in bed listening to her radio. In the stronger light, Aunt Mildred looked very different from her earlier, younger self. She was tiny and frail with a face that wrapped itself so tightly about her skull that she appeared almost skeletal. Save only a few patches of fine, wispy hair, she had no hair at all. “Are you listening to your favorite soap opera, Aunt Mildred?” asked Wayne.
“I was for a while. You may wish to know that poor Delores finally got her memory back. But then a brick fell on her head and the amnesia returned. Just as the program was switching to a commercial for Plash Detergent—you know the one I like with those sweet little girls who sing: ‘Plash, Plash, won’t give you a rash!’—well, all of the sudden there he is—the new mayor, giving a speech! Can you believe it? That hooligan interrupting Helen Grant, Backstage Nurse for no good reason at all!”
“Well, he had to have some reason,” said Rodney.
“Yes,” said Wayne. “What did the hooligan have to say?” “Let me see if I remember. Something about plans to put everyone over the age of one hundred into a special city nursing home. But he wasn’t very clear: did he mean people who were over the age of one hundred before all this happened, or after? If he means after, why, that’s over one third of all the people in this town!”
“I think that’s exactly what he means, Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney. “Well, dear me. I don’t want to go to a city nursing home. There won’t be nearly enough beds and we’ll probably all have to share. And what if I get someone in my bed who doesn’t like cinnamon and won’t let me put my cinnamon sachet under my pillow every night?” Rodney looked at Wayne. Things were about to get even worse than they already were. Jackie was going to get rid of all the old people, pure and simple! He was going to place them all into a big industrial-sized nursing home and lock all the doors and put the matter of how best to care for all the old people totally out of mind. Wayne took his great aunt’s hand, and laid it tenderly into the palm of his own hand. “Rodney and I have a favor to ask of you, Aunt Mildred. It’s something that the Professor wants too.”
Aunt Mildred’s face suddenly lit up. “The Professor wants me to do something for him? What is it? You know I would do anything for that lovely man.”
“We have to hide the Professor’s laboratory. Otherwise the police are going to come and destroy it. Then we won’t be able to finish the new Age Altertron.
“Oh dear. Where are you thinking about hiding it?” “In Dad’s cellar.”
“You mean the one downstairs? You mean the one underneath
this house?” Wayne and Rodney both nodded. “The Underground Railroad station,” said Rodney.
“But his project is down there—the project he was working on for almost a dozen years. He started it shortly after you were born. It helped him to ease the pain of missing your mother so much.”
“Is it finished?” asked Rodney.
“Well, I don’t know if he’s finished it or not. I suppose he hasn’t. It wasn’t scheduled to be completed, as you know, until 1960.”
“What is so special about 1960?”
“I promised him that I wouldn’t spoil his surprise and tell you anything else about it.” Aunt Mildred thought for a moment, and then she added: “And he would be most upset should you see it before he wanted you to.”
Rodney swallowed hard. “Aunt Mildred. This is probably the only cellar in Pitcherville that Jackie and Lonnie don’t know about. Dad would understand. I’m sure of it. Besides, what if the project he was working on had something to do with his disappearance? Isn’t it important for us to go down there for that reason alone? So you have to give us the key that unlocks that secret door inside the broom closet. We really need you to do this. The Professor really needs it too. Our father may never be coming back. So it may end up making no difference at all whether he would be disappointed that we saw his surprise before he wanted us to see it. But Wayne and I don’t want to lose you. And we don’t want to lose the Professor. That’s what’s important right now.”
“You really think Dad’s not coming back, Rodney?” asked Wayne.
“There is that chance—the chance we may never see him again.”
“Gee, Rodney. I always try not to think about that.”
“I know. I do too. But I’ve also known that there would come some day when we’d have to face that possibility. Maybe that day is today, Wayne.”
Wayne wiped the moistness in his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Oh dear,” was all that Aunt Mildred could say. Then she grew quiet as she studied a pattern on her bedroom wallpaper. Tears began to form in her own eyes. She turned back to her greatnephews and said, “The official name for The World of Tomorrow exhibit inside the big Perisphere at the World’s Fair was ‘Democracity.’ It was a diorama that imagined what the world could look like in the future—a perfect world where there was peace and freedom, and no one went to bed hungry. A place where everything ran smoothly and efficiently. You stood upon a walkway and looked down at the city from the sky. I think it was the largest diorama ever made—tiny cars and miniature buildings, little in size but quite large if one were to actually build them to full scale.
“Well, your father started to build his own Democracity diorama right there on the floor of his secret cellar, fashioning every little tree, every house, every tiny car with his own hands. He wanted to have it finished by the year 1960 for a reason. You see, that is the exact year that was depicted in the diorama at the World’s Fair. It was to be a city of the future—what could the world be like in that far-off year? Every night he would go down there to work on it after he had put you boys to bed. It was quite a labor of love.”
”I wish that you had let us see it right after he left,” said Wayne sullenly. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to make us wait nearly a whole year.”
“Well, considering the circumstances in which we now find ourselves I’m almost positive that your father would now agree to using it for the Professor’s new laboratory. So take the key from that top drawer of my dresser and unlock the padlock and go down to your father’s secret cellar and tuck his city away as carefully as you can. I have not seen it in over a year, but I remember that he was making fine progress with it. Take care not to crush a single tree or wrinkle a single bright-green lawn.”
“We will, Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney and Wayne in perfect unison.
And so down the two boys went into their father’s secret cellar to see the product of twelve years of painstaking, meticulous work. There was no light switch at the top of the stairs but there was a pull cord that hung two or three steps down. Wayne gave it a yank as each boy held his breath, not even imagining how strange and wonderful their father’s own version of Democracity would look to their eager eyes.
Unfortunately, all that lay before them was a bare floor. There was nothing there. Democracity II, or “The World of Tomorrow Revisited,” as Mitch McCall had hoped to call his project, had disappeared along with its maker.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In which things go very well for several days until the day on which things dont go very well at all
he laboratory was quickly and safely installed within the McCall cellar—every diode and every triode, every notebook and tiniest scrap of scribbled paper, every caliper and slide rule, every screwdriver and wrench and pair of needle-nose pliers. This was all accomplished that very night under the helpful cover of darkness and by use of one of Mr. Craft’s appliance delivery vans.
Rodney and Wayne and the Professor had sought to keep the circle of those who knew the location of the new laboratory to a very small number of trusted individuals: Mr. Craft, of course, and his daughter Becky, and Petey Ragsdale and Grover Ferrell, and Officer Wall and Aunt Mildred. There were others such as Mrs. Ferrell and Mr. and Mrs. Ragsdale who knew some things about the laboratory
’s relocation but didn’t know everything, and then there was a large group of people, including Mayor Stovall and Police Chief Lonnie Rowe, who knew absolutely nothing at all. And that was the way that Rodney and Wayne and the Professor liked it.
The next morning, the Professor and his two apprentices set up their new laboratory. The morning after that they resumed work on Age Altertron II. Comings and goings at the McCall house were kept to a minimum to reduce suspicion. The sofa in Mr. McCall’s bear cave was turned into a bed for the Professor. Places were made on the floor for Gizmo and Tesla (at opposite ends of the room). The Professor was not concerned by the small size of the room so long as its occupancy did not exceed six at any one time. All the nights he stayed there he never once found it necessary to put his head out of the window and suck in air.
For her part, Aunt Mildred was so delighted to have the Professor for a live-in guest that she found the strength to leave her bed and even to prepare a light snack or two for him in the kitchen. In return for her hospitality Professor Johnson spent a little time instructing Rodney and Wayne in the invention of a “Rotary Liquidizer,” which worked the same way as a blender. The Professor’s Liquidizer allowed the two oldest members of the household to eat more foods than they had previously been able to eat.
When she heard about the Professor’s new invention, Becky, being a considerate girl, decided to come over to the McCall home each night to liquefy food for the benefit of the hungriest of her older neighbors—and especially those who had run out of things to barter with the Mayor. Then, when she was finished at that late hour when the Professor could no longer keep his eyes open, either Rodney or Wayne, or both of the boys together, would walk her home.
During these walks Becky would open her heart and talk about how much she had wanted to be a pediatrician, and how much she loved little children, and how much she wanted at least seven children of her own, and how sad it would be if she lost her youth forever. Rodney and Wayne would become silent and tongue-tied in the face of her deep, empty longing. The twins would feel affection for her but not know quite how to show it, since she was a girl and since girls had to be handled in a different way than other people.