by Adam Holt
Our skills improved quickly though. We did railslides along the neighborhood fences and shot jumpshots at the basketball hoop from fifty feet in the air. Sunjay even rescued an old lady’s cat from a tree. That was his shining moment on the Upthruster.
Those days outside cleared my mind, but when we went in for lunch we listened to the news—anything about sports or the Harper Device. There were editorials about my dad’s discovery and what it meant. Sunjay and I read them all. “Research suggests the Device creates enormous amounts of energy. It may even hold the key to unlimited energy,” one scientist wrote. “We should fund all the research possible to unlock the keys to its power. Humanity solved so many problems in the last twenty years—global warming, deforestation, overpopulation—and the Device could teach us how to make even more progress.”
Some weren’t so optimistic. “To bring back something so powerful and mysterious from space could doom us all,” said one politician. “The Space Alliance has gone too far, blinded by their thirst for knowledge and hunger for power. This Device is their new ‘pet project.’ As much as I like pets and ‘pet projects,’ we still don’t know this pet very well. Is it a cuddly kitten or a hungry tiger? Will it help us or destroy us? This isn’t a domesticated animal. It’s a “stray”—we don’t know where it came from or where it was going. We know it almost killed an astronaut. The Alliance should have made sure it was housebroken before they brought it home.”
Of course, some people developed crazy ideas about the Device. They thought it was a sign—like the end of the world was near, or aliens were coming to invade. Others thought it was a message from God. Or aliens. Or Napoleon. Or their great-grandmother’s spirit speaking to them from “the other side.” You get the idea.
A few people even thought my dad was a prophet because he found the Device. For example, I was mowing the lawn one day, and this guy showed up at our house. He wore a homemade t-shirt that read “All Hail Commander Harper, Prophet of the Universe!” Before he stepped onto our front lawn, he took off his shoes. He stepped into the yard in front of the lawnmower, and I stopped the lawnmower. He asked me, “Are you the Son of Harper, Prophet of the Universe?”
I slowly nodded. “Uh, I guess. My name is Tully.”
“Well, my name is Xanthar, and I come to serve the Prophet.” He pointed at his shirt.
I said, “Sir, I don’t think the Prophet of the Universe would make his son mow the yard.”
“How right you are!” he yelled. At that point, he came toward me, which scared me out of my mind, this crazy barefoot guy in a homemade t-shirt. But what did he do? He pushed me aside and started mowing the lawn! He did a good job, too, so I made some lemonade and watched him from the hammock.
Pretty soon my dad came home and saw this weird barefoot guy mowing our lawn and me lying in the hammock observing his work. Dad wasn’t amused. My dad convinced Xanthar to leave, but only after my dad “blessed” him. I mowed the rest of the yard, and dad sat me down afterward. “Some people look for hope in strange places, son. Promise me you won’t take advantage of someone in a situation like that again,” he said, his eyes flicking red. I promised. From then on, I mowed the lawn myself, which was better than chopping wood.
My other problem was Tabitha. She was never home because of an acting camp during the day and Romeo and Juliet at night. One of her brothers also broke her holophone, and I hadn’t talked to her since I returned. I couldn’t stop thinking about her or her mystery note, and I was kind of embarrassed to go see her.
Late at night I peeked out my window and saw her light was on, but it was past my curfew. I considered flying over to her window on the Upthruster and offering her a ride, but I was afraid I might get distracted and dragged home through her rose bushes instead.
I finally got up the nerve to call her on her family phone with my hologlasses. Her parents had a holophone, so I decided to call her one night. It turned out that the Upthruster was a safer idea. Her dad picked up the call. I appeared in her living room. Mr. Tirelli was watching baseball on the couch while her four younger brothers chased each other around. Her dad and brothers were all shirtless, wearing only their boxers. How bad is that? Well, it got worse.
Tabitha’s dad saw me and said, “Hey, Tully. The AC is broken right now. Oh, homerun! Yeah, go Astros!” Then he yelled upstairs. “Tabitha! That Harper boy is in the living room!” She ran downstairs and there I was, hanging out in the room with her dad and brothers in their underwear. We both turned lava red.
“Dad, what are you doing!” she said. “Seriously? Sorry, Tully. Our air conditioning is out, so this is ‘No Pants Night’ at the Tirelli house.”
“You wanna join us?” her dad asked me, but Tabitha glared at him.
“Just ignore him, Tully. So Romeo and Juliet is almost over. Let’s hang out sometime soon.”
“Yeah, good to see ya, Tully! You should come over for a game sometime,” said Mr. Tirelli, chuckling to himself.
I told them both that sounded fantastic and disappeared as quickly as I could. Mr. Tirelli in his underwear. You’d think he could show some respect to the Son of the Prophet of the Universe—or at least not embarrass his daughter to death. She already had to die every night on stage. I decided to be patient and wait until Tabitha finished her performances, but every time I let my mind wander when I was on the Upthruster, I found myself hovering over her house and wanting to knock on her window.
A SUDDEN CHILL IN THE SUMMERTIME
Getting distracted on the Upthruster was a bad idea. Sunjay dared me to do a rail slide on the roof of my house. I did okay until I looked down the street and saw Tabitha getting in her car to head to rehearsal. When I looked back, the chimney was only inches away. Crack. The chimney gashed a hole in the Upthruster. A few bricks rolled down the roof into the pool. The Upthruster and I slid down the roof after them, but fortunately the Upthruster had enough power left to drop me slowly into the pool below. I chucked him my holophone before I went underwater. Sunjay pulled me out and started to give me CPR for some reason—I was breathing fine. When I limped in the front door with the broken board and a soaking wet shirt, my dad was in the kitchen. He looked up from his coffee and just shook his head.
“It looks like we’ve got a man down. I guess it’s time to air up the bike tires, huh?”
I didn’t like that idea, and Sunjay didn’t either. We sat down with my dad, and Sunjay seized an opportunity to ask him about the mission to Mars. My dad was one of Sunjay’s heroes, and his enthusiasm caught my dad off guard and made him open up about his near-death experience.
“So what happened on Mars, Commander? I’ve read everything and heard all the interviews, but I just want to hear it from you one time. Just one time, I promise.”
“Well, I was out searching for water. That was our mission—to find water on the South Pole of Mars, just like we found it years ago on the North Pole. You know why we were searching for water?”
“Of course,” said Sunjay. “My father tells me all the time. Mars is like a big rusty desert. There’s still some water, but it’s below the surface. The more we find, the more we can expand our colonies.”
“That’s right.”
“So you took off by yourself to explore?”
“Yes. We needed results and weren’t getting any. So I finally arrived at one of our better locations. After a bit of scanning and drilling, I found nothing and was about to leave. At that point, I felt something strange. The hairs on my arms stood up and I could feel a tingle in my fingers. I knew that feeling well from my time in the mountains. Lightning was about to strike, which didn’t make any sense. So I dismissed the feeling and began the long ride back to The Adversity. That’s when I saw a bright flash in front of me. Then the ground rumbled, like an earthquake, so I assumed an asteroid hit the planet right in front of me.”
“That was the Device hitting the surface?”
“Yes. Then a gigantic dust cloud formed in front of me. The impact caused the dust cloud, and that
cloud threw me out of the rover. When I awoke—it had knocked me out cold—I gathered my senses and walked down into the crater that was now in front of me. Of course, you saw what I saw—the Harper Device. I also saw an enormous crack in my visor.”
“Your oxygen escaped through it!”
“Yes, I checked my oxygen gauges. My tanks were empty. I should have been dead—you know that the Martian atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide, no oxygen. At that point I figured I was either dead, hallucinating, or was in the presence of some sort of oxygen source.”
“So the Device made oxygen and revealed the spring of water?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but what I don’t understand is this: did you discover the water or did the Harper Device discover the water?”
“My best answer is this: the Device, the water, and I all met in the bottom of that crater. I don’t know who found whom, but I do know that somehow the Device supplied the oxygen that kept me alive.”
“And almost turned you into astronaut applesauce! Did it also give you that funky red streak through your hair?” Sunjay pointed toward my dad’s hair.
“Yes, it seems that way. Anyway, I hope your dad has more answers soon. He is one of our top researchers. I just happened to find the Device. Your dad will unlock its mysteries.”
“Oh, he wants to! He said it stores and keeps enormous amounts of energy. It could help us build better batteries, cleaner fuels, more efficient machines. But the Harper Device isn’t cooperating. It doesn’t like to be researched, he said. That’s weird.”
“I’m sure your dad will figure it out.”
“Commander, do you think it’s dangerous? Do you wish you left it on Mars?”
My dad took a sip of his coffee and looked out the window. “Yes, I do. It’s caused a bit more trouble than we expected.”
“Trouble, sir?”
A glimmer of red appeared in my dad’s blue eyes. It was a rare slip-up by my dad. As usual, he knew more than he could say, but just this once he said more than he intended. He corrected himself.
“It could cause trouble. Your father is a good researcher, son, and he will be more cautious than I was, going off by myself on Mars. That’s all I meant.”
But it wasn’t what he meant. Clearly the Device was causing problems, but not many people knew. We both wanted to know more about the problems, but my dad wouldn’t say a thing. Sunjay looked satisfied and moved to his next line of questioning.
“Will you go back to space soon?” Sunjay asked.
“Will you ever stop asking questions?”
Sunjay pursed his lips and thought for a second. “I guess when I get all the answers, Commander.”
“Well, you let me know when you have all the answers, Sunjay. Then I can stop flying and we can have some longer conversations.” He grinned at me but looked over my head with that strange red glimmer in his eyes. “Now do we still have a trampoline you guys can jump on—or did Tully crash that into our chimney, too?”
“Commander, too funny!” Sunjay died laughing and punched me.
“Dad, you want to jump, too? You could double-bounce Sunjay into oncoming traffic for me.”
“That’s tempting,” he said. “But I’ve got some things to do in the office.”
“I thought you had the summer off,” I said.
“Uh, you guys get on out there and trampoline yourselves to death for a while. I’ll—we’ll chat later.”
My dad tousled my hair and jogged down the hall to the home office.
The whole conversation frustrated the heck out of me. My dad answered all of Sunjay’s questions. When I asked, he hadn’t told me a thing.
But that’s not what really got me. I knew that look in his eye and tone in his voice: he wouldn’t be hanging out with us today. He would be in his office the rest of the day and maybe the night. He might as well not be there at all. What happened to a summer off? Why was he working? It gave me a sudden chill.
LITTLE SPIES, BIG PROBLEMS, AND A STRANGE COMMAND
My dad wanted the whole truth, but he won’t like this part of the account. It’s hard to write because technically I did something wrong, but what was I supposed to do? I needed to know what he was doing in his office, and I felt betrayed because he told me he was free for the whole summer. So what did I do? I used one of my gifts against him.
The gift was a hand-sized Android, or a Handroid, a miniature robot programmed to walk, talk, and think like a human. Handroids are not as impressive as full-sized Androids because of their limited size and abilities—my Handroid stood one foot tall and wasn’t the most profound thinker in the world. He also wasn’t a “top of the line” Handroid. I really wanted an Einstein or Schwarzenegger model—one could run science experiments and the other one had all these hilarious one-liners from those ancient Terminator movies—but they were way too pricey. Instead, I settled for the Sir Francis Bacon model, a famous 17th century philosopher and scientist. He looked like the perfect miniaturized English nobleman. He wore a colorful, poofy-sleeved shirt with a frilly white neck collar and a floppy black hat—I named him Little Bacon. Sunjay loved to ask Little Bacon questions, but I didn’t find him all that interesting after a few weeks. “LB” had about as much personality as Wikipedia. I put him in a shoebox in my room until my dad started spending all those hours in his office.
The idea came to me as I sat there eating cornflakes for dinner. Mmmm cornflakes. I was alone in the kitchen with Little Bacon, who sat on the counter and kept me company with science facts.
What’s he planning? I thought. Maybe it’s nothing. It felt like something though. I heard voices coming from his study. A conference call. My mind spun in circles for ten minutes before I looked at Little Bacon sitting there on the counter.
“Little Bacon, you’re pretty small. Could you do me favor?”
“A favor is an act of kindness beyond what is usually due,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Could you sneak under a door to spy on someone for me?”
“Spies are often used to acquire information that cannot be gathered by traditional means, such as asking or researching.”
“I’ll also take that as a yes,” I said. Little Bacon nodded at me, proud of his definition.
He hopped from the counter to a chair to the floor. I handed him the hologlasses. He scrunched them between his hat and frilly collar, which l hoped was enough to keep the oversized glasses on his face.
“Hologlasses can be used to project a person’s image into another place,” said Little Bacon.
“You are so right. I need you to be my eyes and ears in dad’s study. I’m going to give you some instructions. You’re going on an adventure.” He was about to define adventure before I cut him off. “Can you keep those hologlasses on your face?”
“Yes. Hologlasses can be used to project an image—“
“Yes, I know, Little Bacon, but you can’t say a single thing while you’re in the room. Just stand there like a statue. No definitions.” He nodded and didn’t say a word.
Little Bacon and I crawled down the hall like soldiers ducking under barbed wire. I pointed at my dad’s office door, and Little Bacon gave me two thumbs-up. He crawled under the door, but his floppy hat and the oversized glasses fell off. This was a stupid idea, I thought, but moments later, a small hand reached back and grabbed the missing spy gear. He was in! I ran upstairs to my room.
I turned on my holophone and sat it beside my bed. The screen lit up and projected a 3D image in the middle of the room. I could now see what Little Bacon saw.
I expected to see my dad sitting in his leather chair on a conference call, surrounded by his books and awards. Instead, a room I had never seen appeared before my eyes. My jaw dropped to the floor. Not a single book, chair, or desk was in sight. My dad’s study was a virtual room the size of a stadium! Magnificent Roman columns stretched to the ceiling, supporting a beautiful dome that was painted with dozens of spiral galaxies. At the center of the dome I recognized
the Eagle Nebula with its famous “Pillars of Creation,” three brown, yellow, and red dust clouds blown into shape by the radiation from surrounding stars. Little Bacon scanned the room, unable to find anyone there.
Massive marble statues lined the walls. Some of them I recognized from reading mythology—Zeus with a thunderbolt, Poseidon with a trident, Perseus with a gorgon’s head. In between the figures were statues and paintings of great moments in space exploration—Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon, the Apollo rocket launching from Cape Canaveral, the Friendship circling Mars. In the middle of the room was a model of my dad’s ship, The Adversity. Near the ship I saw a group of people in blue Space Alliance jumpsuits, including my dad.
“Little Bacon, you see them now?” He nodded and focused on the group.
Three of them were crewmembers from his last mission, but the last time I saw them they weren’t standing in a virtual wonderland. They were in my backyard at a barbecue before the mission. “Buckshot” Lewis and Sylvia Moreline played water volleyball with me and the other astronaut kids in the backyard. “Redshirt” Anderson helped my dad cook fajitas.
Then there was Gallant Trackman. I recognized him from the barbecue, too. His small features—eyes, ears, and nose—were all shoved close together, leaving him with an oversized, egg-shaped head. He was a high-ranking Space Alliance official. He wasn’t on the last mission and wasn’t an astronaut, but he wore a blue jumpsuit along with the rest of the crew.
The last member of the meeting I didn’t recognize at all. He was thin, athletic, and slightly shorter than my dad. His hands were clasped behind his back like an officer at “parade rest.” At first I thought he was just another young astronaut, but something seemed strange about the way he moved. Or didn’t move. During most of the meeting he stood as still as a rocket on a launch pad. I never really thought about it until I saw him, but humans are constantly in motion—tapping, swaying, twitching, bending, stretching, coughing, and yawning. We’re a little “spastic,” like Dr. Vindler liked to say. But not this figure, who exercised perfect control over his every movement. When my dad began to speak, the astronaut turned so that I could see his face. Then my suspicions were confirmed. His glowing, blue eyes gave him away, blinking in perfect rhythm in an effort to make him look more human. He was an Android, a robot in human form, and later I learned his name—Lincoln Sawyer.