“But you told me I could stop time,” John protested. “Why can’t I just stop it forever and stay here?”
“Because life is not a television set; there is no here without a there.”
“Well, I’m here now—what if I just refuse to go back? Will the world go on without me?”
“It’s a pointless question,” the Master quipped. “You cannot refuse to go back. You are here in thought time; it’s the in breath of a moment. Your quest is to fill it with as much as you can, before you are drawn back into yourself.”
“I don’t like myself anymore,” John whined. “I’m too complicated.”
“Well, you are what you think, and if you wish to indulge yourself in self-pity and pessimism, go ahead—I cannot stop you. But remember this; when you have finished gorging yourself on dish after dish of negative pie, you are still going to have to work hard at continuing the illusion that you are useless or complicated. Is it worth all that energy to create someone you are not proud of?”
John grunted. This guy had a way with words that just cut to the heart of every situation. “Well, it was only a small thing. I just wondered.”
“There are no small things. If the beating of a butterfly’s wing can affect your whole world, imagine what one single thought can do.”
John felt stupid, and tiny, and ungrateful. He had allowed his thoughts to run away with him. Instead of guiding them and shaping them into a useful emotion, he had very nearly followed them down a crooked path to nowhere.
A thought by itself is actually capable of charming you into believing it, because it is a product of your own mind, and we are all predisposed to believe in what comes from ourselves. History is peppered with deluded despots who fell in love with one idiotic thought, and then proceeded to inflict that thought, and its bastard progeny, on others. Thought is a weapon that can cripple and maim both ourselves and those around us; we need to aim it wisely.
He had never thought about thought; it had always been there ever since he could remember. But from now on he would always bear in mind the power of a single thought and its effect upon others. As he contemplated the strange and tangled web of intrigue he had become embroiled in, he felt the now familiar swirling rush through the tunnel of time, and he turned his head back to find Tex, Cal, and Kate cowering in front of the door with their hands over their eyes.
Chapter 16
DESTRUCTION
As Hunter got out of the car he could smell the trouble. It drifted on the wind and assaulted his olfactory nerves like a mugger in a dark alley. Even though he had prepared for it, the harsh reality always came as a shock, and he knew with certainty that once he discovered its true nature, he would have a mess to clean up.
All of his senses went into high alert, and just as he was about to close the car door, he hesitated and listened. There were a lot of things going on. He felt a subtle shaking accompanied by a low hum in the ground beneath his feet, and somewhere off in the distance he heard screams of fear and panic diminishing into the night. He wondered if this was the same orderly building he had left only a few hours ago, but he knew it wasn’t; it didn’t take a genius to figure that out.
He slowly walked across the schoolyard to the front door, reviewing the elements he had in play. He had four kids imprisoned in the subbasement, one of whom possibly had a special talent, and he had Doctor Leitz, the mastermind behind the machinery, who had supposedly given the kid that special talent, and nothing else.
What could have gone wrong? he wondered as he approached the front door, slipping the card from his pocket that would allow him to gain entrance. Simultaneously, he gripped his revolver, slid it out of its holster, and holding the gun up vertically he swiped the card. As the door swung open, he grasped the gun in both hands and held it straight out in front of him. He aimed it into the darkness, rapidly moving it from place to place to cover all of the spots where someone might be waiting to attack him. But there were no assassins; there was only the palpable throb of the scientific equipment reverberating throughout the building. He stepped inside and began a long creep down the hallway.
***
John stared down at his friends, “He ran away!” he said with astonishment. It was perplexing; they didn’t move, they didn’t say anything. It was very uncharacteristic behavior, and they were too old to believe that if they covered their eyes, he couldn’t see them.
“I said he’s gone! He left! Something spooked him,” he tried again.
“Has that other thing gone?” Kate asked.
“Thing?” John repeated quizzically.
“Yeah, that melting monster,” Tex chimed in.
“Melting monster?” John parroted.
“The one on your head,” Cal added.
“The one on my head?!” John echoed, feeling his hair and glancing up above him. “There’s nothing here,” John assured them. “Just us.”
The three of them removed their hands from their eyes and stared at him strangely.
“What?” he asked. It was embarrassing; they were scrutinizing him in minute detail, he could see it. He felt like a sideshow freak and a lab rat, all rolled into one.
“How do you feel?” Tex asked.
“Okay,” John replied. “But when I looked out of the window, that security guard was already there. He was holding his flashlight under his chin, and when he switched it on, it made the creepiest face. It scared the heck out of me, and I just lost it.”
“Yeah, we saw that,” Cal said, staring at him so oddly that John began to feel acutely uncomfortable.
“That was when the melting monster appeared,” Kate added.
John gazed at them blankly. They weren’t making any sense; it was as if they were concocting a bold tale just for his benefit. That was when he caught on; it was a joke, an elaborate hoax they were playing on him. They had threatened as much just a short while ago, and this was just the time they were likely to do it, directly following a crisis.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said, smiling, suddenly feeling relieved from his burden of embarrassment. “You’re putting me on. Well, I’m not falling for it.”
“We’re not!” Cal said. “There was a bubbling mutant on your head.”
“I thought it was a melting monster,” John shot back.
“It was a bubbling, melting, mutant monster,” Tex piped up.
“If you’re gonna do this guys, you’ve gotta keep your story straight,” John warned, getting to his feet.
“It’s not a joke,” Kate said seriously. “You had a gruesome gargoyle boiling on your head!”
John laughed; it was pathetic. Why were they going on with this charade when he had already uncovered their ruse? “Nice try, but I’m not falling for it.” He cracked the bar that released the lock on the door, and pushed it open. “We’re free,” he said, stepping outside.
Tex, Cal, and Kate couldn’t believe it. Had they lost the power of coherent speech? They had explained the phenomenon as literally as they could under the circumstances, and yet, it had sounded silly.
“He didn’t believe us!” exclaimed Kate.
“And he doesn’t even know it happened,” Tex added.
“That’s double weird!” Cal moaned.
“What will we do?” asked Kate.
“We have to look after him,” Cal said. “He can’t go doing that in the middle of a supermarket; he’ll scare some poor old lady to death.”
“Yeah, and what if some scandal rag got pictures?” Tex proposed.
“The government would grab him, and lock him up,” Kate declared.
“They couldn’t lock him up,” Cal warned.
The implications were astounding, and such was the price of fame…or infamy. John was no longer an ordinary kid; along with his newfound molecular talents came a tremendous responsibility.
To avoid the scrutiny of government scientists, secret agents, and petty hustlers, he would have to live an impeccable life. He would have to cloak himself in normalcy, and se
ep ordinariness. Displays of the type they had just witnessed were completely out of the question.
Whereas others may scream, or shout, or curse, John’s subconscious mind had free reign over his atomic structure. It was capable of displaying his feelings visually for added emphasis. But the subconscious mind is far more powerful and ingenious than the conscious mind; its imaginary inventions cause devastating consequences, as the security guard discovered when John’s subconscious mind responded to his tomfoolery.
Besides, John’s mind was still a child’s mind. His imagination roamed over wild ranges, and through jungles of fantasy. There was no telling what kind of response it might have when confronted with any minor daily surprise, and if he were revealed, and the scientific world got hold of him, the jig was up.
He would be examined and pushed and prodded and tested. He would be charted, x-rayed, measured, and weighed. He would be visited, browbeaten, psychoanalyzed, and coerced by an army of white-coated, humorless technicians who cared nothing for his feelings, and that was if he decided to go along with it.
If he didn’t decide to go along with it, he would be hunted down. His life would never be his own again. He would be moving from place to place trying to hide his identity. It would be simple for him to take on another form, but imagine the mental stress of never being allowed to be yourself. It would have devastating consequences that might even kill him.
“He needs us,” Cal proclaimed sincerely. “He needs us badly.”
“He’s powerful, but he’s just a baby,” Kate added softly.
“Without us, he’s lost,” Tex warned in his take-charge voice. “We’re the only ones capable of understanding him. To anyone else, he’s a monster.”
The realization slowly dawned on them. Their lives too had changed; nothing would ever be the same again. They had been thrown together by fate, and now they were bound by loyalty to a common cause—John.
***
Doctor Leitz had become a complete contradiction. On the inside he was fuming as he watched all his precious work going up in smoke. But on the outside he was the happiest he had ever been as he danced around the laboratory creating havoc and chaos.
“Confuse, confound, bewilder, befuddle, muddle, puzzle,” he sang deliriously. Every so often he would stop and listen to the sane part of himself as it voiced its extreme displeasure at what he was doing. But then he would dissolve into a flurry of giggles and prance off to another part of the lab to put things in motion for the floorshow he was planning.
“Addle, fluster, bewilder, perplex, befog,” he declared dramatically. The words helped to drown out that other insistent voice, the voice that never had any fun, and the words also helped to keep in mind his intention, because he felt like his brain had shrunk to the size of a pea.
“Skidoo, poo poo, lalou, shoo shoo, ga goo,” he trilled as his tall, slender body moved rhythmically. He wasn’t sure if they were words or not, but it didn’t really matter; he was his own audience. If his hands hadn’t been busy programming the finale of his extravaganza, he would have given himself a standing ovation.
He stood back and surveyed his handiwork. He had pushed all of the buttons in the way he had remembered them being pushed before; there was only one thing left to do—a test before he put everything on autopilot. And then he planned to dance; dancing was fun, having legs was fun, what else was there if you couldn’t have fun? He leaned over and pushed the button, and as the machinery howled and moaned, he waited and watched.
***
Hunter crept slowly down the corridor, stabbing the shadows with his gun. Having his gun in his hand felt like overkill, but he consoled himself with the thought that it only took one bullet to snuff someone’s lights out, and his candle still had a lot of burning to do. It was better to be safe than sorry.
For a large man he moved with surprising grace and skill, part ninja and part ballerina. If it weren’t for the drone of the machinery coming from the open door at the end of the hall, there would have been no sound at all. His martial arts training had taught him to hug the wall like a shadow, and he had a chameleon-like way of blending into his surroundings so that no one was aware of his presence until the very last moment.
Everything in life added up to the last moment; the moment the train left the station, the moment the bus left the stop, or the moment the plane left the ground. Everything up to that point was just preparation for being there; the last moment was the moment you revealed yourself, and the last moment was the moment you were most vulnerable.
The light spilled out into the darkness from the door at the end of the hallway and splashed across the floor. It was like someone had left a massive television set on; he could hear snippets of voices talking and singing and he could hear peals of half-crazed laughter. He slowed to the speed of a snake; this was the moment he had prepared for. He needed to peek inside and he needed to keep his head attached to his shoulders.
***
Doctor Leitz stood in the middle of a sea of computer printout paper and watched in awe as the MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR slowly turned to fire on its own equipment. In his head he was listening to the wonderfully evocative tango rhythms of Carlos Gardel, accompanied by piano and violins. It reminded him of home; white sand beaches, blue seas and skies, and moonlit nights on the terrace sipping sparkling champagne with a beautiful woman, while listening to soft guitars.
It was a fabulous memory, but it wasn’t his. He’d been born in upstate New York and had never even left the country. But still, who cared at this point? It was the tango that mattered—the tango with its seductive looks and its suggestive moves, tight dresses and even tighter pants, and its dramatic poses. They were not to be forgotten: a hat strategically dipped over one eye, and a rose between the teeth: a red rose, red lips, and black, black, black clothes.
“Can we please stop this drivel about tangos and save my laboratory from destruction?” he heard himself ask.
There was that pesky nuisance of a voice again, always trying to ruin the moment, but it was becoming less and less insistent as time went by, and pretty soon it would have nothing to say at all. He glanced up at the MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR as it came to a stop. It was trained on one of the computer printers, a printer that was not long for this world.
He leaned over the control panel and absentmindedly picked up his gun with one hand, as his other hand fought to reach for the firing button. It was a struggle of momentous proportions; his hand became both an irresistible force and an immovable object. Under any other circumstances, it would have been considered as the age-old struggle between good and evil. But good had long ago shrugged its shoulders and left the scene in disgust.
“You cannot win,” he shouted, as his arm inched slowly but surely toward the button. “I am in control now!” he wailed, and with a superhuman effort he fought off the challenge. His finger shot down like a laser-guided bomb and hit the target, square in the middle. The MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR exploded into life, and a white hot energy beam flashed across the room, seeking to suspend and reconfigure the atomic particles in the printer.
The printer seemed to explode into a giant puffball of teeny tiny, sparkly shiny points of light. It was his favorite sight in the whole world; he could watch it over and over again, and he planned to. Next, he hit the button that sucked the suspended atoms back into a new form, and the giant cloud reversed and snapped into the shape of a giant sunflower in a big red pot.
He was just about to congratulate himself and admire his wonderful new plant when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a dark head sporting a crew cut poking around the frame of the door. He lifted his revolver hurriedly, aimed as best he could, and fired.
“Begone!” he howled, and he fired again. “Scram!” And again, “Vamoose!” And again, “Skidaddle!”
The room suddenly reeked of cordite, and there was a chorus of bells ringing in his ears. He knew from the shape of the head and the haircut that it was Hunter, that party pooper. Well, he would show
him. He reached down and opened a drawer beneath the console; it contained another gun and boxes of ammunition. He watched the doorway like a hawk, grabbed a handful of ammo and stuffed it into his pocket.
***
Hunter yanked his head back as plaster dust sprayed into the air, and he ducked down low as bullet after bullet thudded into the wall above him. It hadn’t worried him that Leitz had fired at him; that was just part of the job. He kept his eye on him all the time he was surveying the room, and when the Doc had lifted the gun, he knew it was time to duck.
What had struck him as odd though was the Spanish accent. Doctor Leitz sounded like the bandit who terrorized the town in “The Magnificent Seven” movie. Hunter lowered his muscular frame to the floor and sat down, leaning his back against the wall. He needed a tear gas grenade and a gas mask, but they weren’t the kind of thing he carried around in his pockets.
He wondered where that kid was, and exactly how he fitted into these shenanigans as he listened to the giggles and shouts coming from the room. The MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR charged up and fired again, and he imagined the laboratory slowly turning into a greenhouse. It was an alarming vision; it was going to be a long night.
Chapter 17
HOMEWARD BOUND
Tex stood up from the improvised powwow behind the door and offered a hand to Cal and Kate. They grabbed hold, and he pulled them up from the floor in a swift and assured motion that brought them all tightly together.
“I just wanna be sure we all mean what we say, and we’re gonna stick by it, regardless of what happens,” Tex solemnly told them.
“You know, you’re really cute when you’re serious,” Kate cooed as she ruffled his curly hair.
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