The Imagination Box

by Martyn Ford

  They began running down the steep hill, clambering over rocks that were almost too hot to touch. Before them, across a large expanse of desert, peppered with cracked shrubs and stones, was an airfield. A white private jet was parked at the end of the runway. Beyond that, distant, faded mountains met the horizon.

  Tim tried to get his Imagination Box to work—some teleportation spheres would be very helpful—but irritatingly, the soaked reader still wasn’t functioning at all.

  “We can’t wait for your hat to dry,” Dee said. “We’ll just have to steal Fredric’s Learjet.”

  “Fine by me,” Samantha added. “I can fly that thing.”

  She was right, Tim thought, they had to get away from here as quickly as possible. Phil’s bear-sharks were probably taking care of one prong of their plan by destroying the entire facility. Now they had to upload that confession onto the Internet.

  They reached the bottom of the incline and, after losing his footing and stumbling to his knees, Tim looked back. He saw the tall rocks behind them. The incredibly large Imagination Space was inside there, hidden away underground.

  But then Tim’s legs tingled with the power of a seismic shudder. Pieces of grit vibrated on nearby boulders; a distorted strain of metal came from below.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  There was an explosion of dust, rubble, and muddy water, and a hole appeared in the side of the steep hill. Behind them, a tidal wave came thundering down, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, galloping amid the torrent was a herd of extremely angry-looking bear-sharks.

  “Phil,” Tim said, sighing with every kind of exhaustion. “Why are they amphibious?”

  “Because they are bear-sharks,” the monkey answered.

  “It does make sense,” Dee added.

  They all bolted for the plane.

  At the airfield they ducked into one of the hangars. The creatures weren’t far behind, eating, smashing, and causing every flavor of chaos around them. There was a short lull in the carnage, so they ran, bent at the waist, along the runway, toward Fredric’s private jet.

  Across the flat section of desert, Tim saw a large gray door in the side of the mountain begin to lift.

  “They’re leaving the facility,” Tim said. “No sign of Fredric. We need to—”

  They stopped. One of the beasts had rolled a jeep onto its roof and was mauling the underside. Then it noticed them. Tim saw its enraged face, snarling like a bear, stretched like a shark, a piece of wheel hanging from its lower jaw.

  “They do look extremely scary,” Tim said.

  “Thank you,” Phil replied.

  It came thumping toward them. They ran, making it to a small outbuilding, Tim at the rear.

  “No, no, no!” he screamed, looking over his shoulder.

  The bear-shark pounced heavily toward him, throwing him inside. Skidding, he rolled over, ears ringing, to see its wide skull stuck in the doorway, which splintered as it writhed. It growled and snorted, snapping rows of razor-sharp teeth together, blowing hot breath on Tim’s clothes. In fact, it was really hot. They all watched, transfixed, as it lowered its head and puffed up its chest, sucking in a gulp of air. Then it opened its mouth with an almighty rumble, and thick fire roared out.

  “What?” Tim asked as he threw himself over a table.

  Samantha tipped it for cover. Dee hit the ground just in time. The flames were blasting above, steam and smoke stinging Tim’s skin. “Phil!” he shouted over the noise. “Why can they breathe fire?”

  “Frankly, Timothy,” the monkey yelled, “I am as surprised as you.”

  The attack eased, and Tim peeked over. Embers crackled throughout the room. The animal was still wedged, so they clambered out of the window as it prepared for another go.

  They were in the homestretch now. There was nothing between them and the plane.

  “We’ve gone and done it,” Dee said, running by Tim’s side. “Got the confession on tape, pretty much destroyed that place. Those sharky bears will surely have done enough damage.”

  Tim looked back to the facility. The tall antenna was falling now, being torn to bits by the beasts.

  They ran and ran until, when only a few strides from their escape, the plane simply disappeared. Tim tripped, almost reaching out to grab what was no longer there. For a second he thought it might have been a mirage. But an American voice from behind said, “Not on my watch.”

  It was Fredric, zapper in hand, approaching from the thick shadow of the nearby hangar, turned relatively black by the afternoon’s glare. He was relentless.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” he said. “Tim, take the reader off your head and throw it on the ground.”

  Realizing he had no other option, Tim did as he said and watched Fredric, without hesitation, zap it away.

  “Now the backpack.”

  It thumped to the ground.

  Zip-pop and it too was gone, just a slight haze of desert dust where it had been.

  The moment saddened Tim beyond measure. That Imagination Box, its infinite uses aside, had a great deal of sentimental value. He had also told Eisenstone he would bring it home safely. Another promise broken.

  “Now, once again, where were we?” Fredric said, his sneakers crunching on the pebbles as he strolled toward Samantha. “And why is Tim back?”

  Tim gave him a quick summary.

  Fredric seemed to admire the illusion. “That’s actually quite smart,” he said.

  They all shared a silence.

  “You killed my husband,” Samantha said, defeated, completely out of ideas, just speaking from the heart.

  “You lied to me. You destroyed my Imagination Box,” Tim added. “You had me chased. You made my own family attempt to kill me. You had me send my friend to prison.”

  “He also shot your clone with a zapper,” Phil added.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “And you led me to believe you’d figure out a way for me to have my own Imagination Box,” Dee said. Fredric frowned. “Yeah, I know, it’s not as bad as the others,” she admitted. “Tim sort of said mine already—about Granddad.”

  “None of this is on,” Phil said. “It is just not right.”

  “I made you a car,” Tim added, still running over all the bad stuff Fredric had done.

  “Yeah, a bear-shark ate that,” Fredric said.

  “Sorry,” Phil said. Dee glared at him. “Oh no,” he added. “Maybe I am not sorry.”

  Strangely, at a time like this, in all probability minutes from death, Tim was able to think clearly. The overriding thought, he discovered, was an odd curiosity about Fredric and all he had done.

  “One thing I don’t get,” Tim said. “Why build an Imagination Space for me to play in? I mean, despite all the manipulation, megalomania, and murder, you seemed…all right.”

  Fredric laughed. “I’ve made a substantial living out of selling technology,” he said. “You learn quickly that you can take whatever you please from people, so long as they think they’re getting what they want.”

  “Then why did you keep me around after I’d served my purpose?” Tim asked. “After TRAD was shut down, after Eisenstone was in prison?”

  “Dude, I like you—this isn’t easy for me. Plus there were too many unanswered questions. I needed to know more about the technology, ultimately to find a way to stop it becoming mainstream. Or, at the very least, find a way to make it commercial. You know, in case the cell phones didn’t work. But the success I had with IcoRama phones was phenomenal. I could take over anyone—more than ninety-nine percent of the time the mind control worked. And when it didn’t, it was down to technical faults. Younger brains were a little harder to crack, but I had ways round it. We developed a game to maximize exposure—dunno if you’ve heard of it, Squirrel Boarder.”

  “Oh, you monster,” Dee said. “That’s it—that’s my thing. That’s the worst one.”

  “However, there was one fully functioning IcoRama out there on the network and its user’
s mind was impenetrable,” Fredric went on. “And who owned that phone?”

  Tim smiled.

  “You did,” Fredric added. “I just couldn’t make it affect you. I needed to know why.”

  “His phone was fake, duh. He made it in his Imagination Box,” Dee said, squinting, shaking her head, clearly still upset about the Squirrel Boarder thing. “Keep up.”

  Fredric glanced at the ground, then looked back. “Oh yeah. Obvious now you say it.”

  “It’s over,” Tim said, staring up into those light eyes. “You must see that? What possible sense is there in killing us now?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve come this far….It’s for the best. I wish you guys could understand.” Fredric stepped to Dee and lifted the zapper.

  This was it, Tim thought, sighing on his knees. No Imagination Box, no one to help them for miles. It was the end. They had lost.

  Dee turned to the side. “Goodbye,” she whispered, with a casual wave.

  Tim closed his eyes.

  There was a flash.

  Silence.

  When he looked back, a brick wall had appeared in front of Dee. “What the…?” Fredric said, confused.

  Tim then calmly rose to his feet.

  Fredric took aim, but Tim simply lifted his palm and the zapper melted, landing at their feet in a twisted, steamy glob.

  “What’s going on?” Fredric yelled.

  Pointing with his other arm, his face straight with concentration, Tim watched handcuffs appear, as if from nowhere, around Fredric’s wrists. Then prison bars, carved from desert rock, jutted from the ground all around him. Within two seconds, Fredric was lifted high in a cage, tied, taped, bound, and chained—restrained in every way Tim could imagine. It was a one-man jail, custom-built in an instant, surrounded by swirling dust, which began to clear with the breeze.

  “How is this possible?” Fredric yelled, tugging. “How is this hap—”

  A gag appeared, snaking around Fredric’s mouth, so tight it locked him in a painful-looking smile.

  Without a word Tim sat down, cross-legged, on the warm ground beneath. A laptop materialized in front of him, arriving as his fingers lowered to type. Next to that was a small satellite dish connecting it to the Internet. He plugged in the memory stick and, within a minute, the loading bar was full and footage of Fredric’s confession had been posted online.

  The truth was set free.

  A few paces away, Samantha and Dee were bewildered, even scared, both clearly wondering how he was doing this, how he was creating things in the real world.

  “Tim,” Samantha said, her voice quivering. “What’s going on?”

  “I can do it,” he said. “I can make anything…anywhere.”

  “How?” Dee asked.

  “The reader.” Samantha pointed to her own head. “When you recalibrated it in the control room…”

  “Yeah…I…maybe somehow, the technology fused, did something to me. I feel like I’m in the Imagination Space.”

  “This is serious business,” Phil said. “I submit a visit to a GP might be appropriate.”

  “But…otherwise…you’re still all right?” Dee asked, cautiously stepping closer.

  “I think so,” Tim said, scanning across the flat desert, where heat waves turned the air to jelly toward the horizon. “I’m just…thinking outside the box.”

  “I was honestly going to say that myself,” Phil said. “But I thought better of it.”

  Looking down at his hands, Tim could feel it. He knew. Whatever he imagined would appear. He had absolute control.

  “Mind over matter,” the monkey added. “That is what you should have said.”

  On the first evening of the Easter vacation, Tim, Dee, and Phil ventured up to the edge of Pine Common, where the long, striped fields sailed down the valley back toward Glassbridge. Up here they could see for miles, even farther when they lay on their backs, on the ground, and looked up at the clouds above.

  The past few weeks had seen the steady return of normality—or as close to it as they were able to get. After they’d stopped Fredric, the army, police, and some men Tim assumed were FBI agents arrived at the facility. The remaining bear-sharks were tranquilized by some extremely confused animal-control workers. Their weighty, sleeping bodies were loaded onto flatbed trucks, covered with tarpaulins, and driven who knows where.

  The authorities, understandably bewildered, arrested them all. Fredric, Tim, Dee, Samantha, and Phil were driven to a strange military base, deeper in the desert. They were kept in separate cells and faced seemingly relentless interviews by suited men with earpieces, poker faces, and a distinct lack of humor.

  Eventually, everyone but Fredric was allowed to go home.

  Professor Eisenstone’s release from jail was a triumphant moment. Tim and Dee watched from the back of the car as he strode out of the prison gates a free man, carrying a small suitcase and a worn expression of sheer relief.

  “I feel I might be doing something wrong,” the professor said, greeting them both. “Indeed, ending up in a cell is becoming quite, quite the habit of mine.”

  Tim and Dee explained what they’d done, the efforts they had gone through—first to get the box back and second to clear the professor’s name.

  Later, Tim told Eisenstone about his new “ability”—his apparent total control over physical matter. However, while he was able to prove it by creating a few objects on a small scale—a carrot, a marble, and a fortune cookie—he struggled when he tried too hard. He supposed it had been the stress of the situation that had allowed him to restrain Fredric, and that, without such raw necessity, he would need to practice.

  Nevertheless, the professor was both astonished and alarmed by the news. He told Tim he would need to study him for answers.

  There was still a sliver of guilt when Tim thought about what had happened. Of course, it had all started with him taking the Imagination Box to school. However, when he apologized to Eisenstone, he could tell that all was forgiven.

  “Tim,” the professor had said, “every mistake is a single step down the wrong path. As a consequence, indeed, the right path only glows brighter.”

  The familiarity of Elisa’s and Chris’s attention had been comforting in ways Tim couldn’t comprehend. After everything, it seemed strange to feel a sense of absolute security in the simple fact that they were interested in his well-being, now no longer under the command of that nefarious technology.

  Following the confession, which was spread globally by Samantha’s news report and prime-time documentary, people took to the streets in crowds to celebrate smashing their IcoRama phones. Headlines, TV reports, radio, the Internet—everywhere seemed abuzz with what had happened. As a result, shares in Wilde Tech plummeted and the company dissolved. Fredric himself was imprisoned—a photo of him, stubble-faced and shamed, became an iconic sight around the world.

  Harriet Goffe’s innocence was made public and she was reappointed as director of a re-formed TRAD. Tim apologized and, to his surprise, there were no hard feelings.

  “Hey,” she said, “these things happen.”

  “Do they?” Tim asked.

  “Well, no, but you know what I mean.”

  The monkey’s identity crisis was, as Tim had suggested, addressed to some degree by creativity. His pursuits led him to paint great, vast works of art, which were framed and hung throughout the Dawn Star Hotel. Pride of place in the lobby went to his vibrant canvas featuring the Pigosaurus rex engaged in mortal combat with a bear-shark (depicted in this case with, for some reason, wings) atop an erupting volcano. On Mars. It was really weird stuff, and Tim was quite surprised Elisa allowed it to be displayed so prominently. To be fair, all Phil’s paintings were well-crafted pieces.

  The monotony of school had reared its head again, and although what had happened with IcoRama was common knowledge, Samantha insisted that Tim and Dee stay anonymous when it came to the coverage.

  “You don’t want fame,” Samantha had said. “Trust me
.”

  School had been alive with the news and many began showing off their replacement phones. However, Tim and Dee stayed quiet, closer now than they’d ever been, bonded by another shared secret that, to an outsider, was no more than a glance and a smile from across the classroom.

  Without his Imagination Box, Tim was back to doing his work the old-fashioned way. Although, of course, it often sucked, there was still a certain pleasure to be had from honestly attained achievements. After all, he knew better than anyone the plentiful pitfalls of getting what you think you want.

  As for Samantha, her career was boosted dramatically by the biggest story of the year, and before long, she was a household name. She even had her own show.

  On a cool, fresh spring evening, she invited Tim, Dee, and Phil to visit Park Ridge Cemetery. Samantha had a small bouquet of yellow flowers and a special gift in her pocket. It was an unusual setting for a reunion, but somehow still jubilant. The cemetery was surrounded by bold fences and bare gray trees that reached over the boundaries like curious hands—Tim saw buds and the beginnings of leaves arriving amid the twigs. They strolled down the long, straight, paved path to her husband’s plot. Samantha placed the tulips on the grass in front of the granite stone that had, around its base, the early shadings of moss.

  JOSEPH LOCKE, the engraving read. LOVED AND MISSED, TAKEN TOO SOON.

  “I told you I’d find the truth,” Samantha said, rolling her hair, now longer and back to a natural brown, behind her ear. “Hiding in plain sight.”

  She then removed a broken IcoRama phone from her coat and, after digging a shallow hole in the turf, slid it inside. Tim watched her pat down the mud, then return to her feet, before hugging him and Dee in turn. They left the grave, the yellow tulips still visible as they passed through the gate. Samantha didn’t look back, however. Not once.

  And so today, from the top of the hill, Glassbridge spread out before them, Tim, Dee, and Phil were lying on the uncut grass admiring the clouds.