by John Hulme
“Make of what?” said Becker, unable to bite his tongue. “A strange light . . . on the horizon.” Dr. Thinkenfeld turned toward a westward-facing window, as if she could still see something unexpected approaching. “At first, I thought it was some kind of explosion way out in the Middle of Nowhere, but I didn’t hear any sound. I would’ve heard if it was a bomb or something, right?”
She squinted and raised a hand to her face, shielding herself from whatever it was she’d seen two mornings ago.
“All I remember is people running everywhere, screaming, looking for some place to hide before whatever it was that was coming hit us. And I swear, I tried to stay outside until all my people were safe. But Mendenhall, he wouldn’t listen to me, he just grabbed me and threw me in the tank and told me to wait there until he could—” Dr. Thinkenfeld abruptly swiveled toward Becker. “I swear, I didn’t desert my people.”
“I believe you, Doctor. We just need to know where everybody went.”
“Where they went?” Dr. Thinkenfeld began to laugh, as if Becker had just reminded her of a very funny joke. “Where do you think they went?”
The joke ended poorly.
“They’re dead! They’re all dead!”
Before she could say any more, the Administrator of Thought & Emotion collapsed from exhaustion. Hassan scooped her off her feet, then gently laid her on one of the wooden picnic tables. “We need to get her to a Care Giver ASAP.”
“I’ll call it in,” said Becker, already dialing the emergency hotline to the Department of Health. But even as he punched 8-1-1 into his Bleceiver, the fact that the entire staff of Contemplation had potentially been vaporized was starting to make him feel a little queasy about this Mission. And there was an even more grim reality to face: if these people had met with the fate that Thinkenfeld said they did, then it was likely the first team of Fixers had perished the same way.
“Look at her Time Piece, Drane.” Hassan lifted the doctor’s limp wrist. “Just like the End of the Line.”
Becker looked down at the hands of her watch, which came together to form the numbers 7:37. “What kind of weapon is powerful enough to strike two locations twenty miles apart at the exact same time?”
“Nothing I’d like to see firsthand.”
#37 was about to start digging through his Manual when his Bleceiver beeped, indicating another call was coming in.
“Becker, it’s me . . .”
“Hey, Octo. Listen, I gotta call you back, ’cause the Department of Health is on the other line and—”
“It’s Fixer Blaque, dear,” interrupted Sylvia, her voice filled with both excitement and fear. “He found the tracks.”
End of the Line, Department of Transportation, The Seems
Fixer Blaque was leaning on his walking stick, peering directly into the Middle of Nowhere. Only now it wasn’t just wind and sand and mesquite grass that made up the desert before him. Now there was something else that reached into the vastness of the west.
“Train tracks?” Becker knelt before his former instructor, completely befuddled. “But there was nothing here before!”
“Wasn’t there?”
Inexplicably, beyond the rubber bump stop that marked the end of Track #2, another set of iron rails stretched out toward the vanishing point. These were much newer than the ancient I-beams that carried trains back and forth from Thought & Emotion, and Fixer Blaque had used his Brush Duster™ to uncover fifty feet or so from beneath the sand.
“How far do they go?” asked Fixer Hassan, walking out to where the rails disappeared.
“Hard to say,” Blaque speculated. “But I suspect at least as far as that caboose the first team found.”
Hassan gave one of the beams a slight kick, as if to prove its reality, then turned back to face the team leader. “It makes no sense.”
“As you’ll recall, Casey said that Fixer Simms had uncovered some tracks that led to the Middle of Nowhere. At first, I thought she was referring to footprints left by the thieves . . . but then I realized, she was talking about train tracks.”
“But the map says the End of the Line is the end of the line.” Even the Octogenarian, who had been by Blaque’s side ever since he’d let out a whoop of delight some forty minutes ago, still couldn’t figure out what the tracks were doing there.
“It was. Until someone made them go farther.”
Fixer Blaque pulled out the same locket he’d purchased from the Man of Substance(s), then flipped it open to reveal a blue powder inside. There wasn’t much of it, perhaps a thimbleful, but what there was had a slightly phosphorescent glow.
“Scratch,” said the Octogenarian, shaking her head at Blaque’s ingenuity. “Of course.”
At the very mention of the basic building block of The World, Becker and the others began to grasp how the thieves, whomever they were, had managed to make a brand-new set of rails. When heated even a few degrees, Scratch could literally bring thoughts into existence. All one needed to do was place the powder between thumb and forefinger, generate a modicum of friction—and there were simply no limits to what the volatile substance could be used to create.19
“Plan help us if The Tide’s got their hands on Scratch.”
Hassan gave voice to his teammates’ greatest fear.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Fixer Blaque closed up his case, and with the help of his walking stick, finally rose to his feet. “All we can do is have faith in the Plan, and see where these tracks lead us.”
Like a flash, the second team was in motion. While Blaque handed out Extremely Cool Outfits, the Octogenarian wrapped Administrator Thinkenfeld in a Security Blanket™ to ensure she was safely tucked away until the emergency Care Givers arrived. Meanwhile, Fixers Drane and Hassan found a rusty old handcar that someone had parked behind the switchman’s hut and lugged it over to the tracks.
“Now remember, our 7th Senses will be virtually useless out there.” Fixer Blaque dropped his Toolkit onto the front of the car and motioned to the Middle of Nowhere. “It’ll be like a compass that can’t find its way north.”
A gust of wind arose, whipping sand and dirt in their faces and underscoring the warning that was posted on a single “No Trespassing” sign.
“Jelani.” The Octogenarian folded her umbrella, which had been shielding her from the sun. “Look at the sky.”
They all looked to the heavens, where a once crystalline blue was slowly darkening. Huge black storm clouds had gathered above the mountains to the west—as if somehow called by their defiance of the warnings— and were now rolling toward them with alarming speed.
“Maybe we should wait till it blows over, sir,” said Becker, leaning upon the seesaw lever that powered the car.
“No can do, Mr. Drane.” Their leader removed his blue-tinted glasses and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Unprocessed Scratch only has a half-life of three days. Which means these tracks could disappear at any moment.”
Fixer Blaque replaced his shades, then reached into Becker’s Toolmaster 3000 and began to remove the strange brass helmets he’d purchased at the Black Market.
“It also means we better put these on.”
19. For more on this delicate pro cess, see Appendix B: “Making Things from Scratch.”
6
Powers That Be
12 Grant Avenue, Highland Park, New Jersey
As soon as Benjamin Drane got home from school, he dropped his bike on the front lawn and trucked up the wooden steps of 12 Grant Avenue. His trusty easel was waiting for him in the foyer, and after ditching his bookbag and sneaks, he lugged it straight upstairs to the door with the Bob Ross poster out front.
“Not so fast, half-pint!” babysitter Samantha Mitchell shouted from her favorite spot by the cordless phone in the kitchen. “No painting till after you do your homework!”
“Sorry! Ze artist formerly known as Benzamin cannot hears you. But he shall be in his room should anyone needz him.”
Ever since he was little Benjamin
had drawn everything in sight, and the walls of his room had been covered with napkin portraits, crayoned menus, and pencil sketches of downtown Highland Park. But when his older brother had hooked him up with private Sunset painting lessons from Figarro Mastrioni, Benjamin raised his game to an entirely other level. “The Maestro” had trained him in all aspects of the profession— from horizon to clouds to the Emotion instilled within—and the wallpaper had quickly disappeared in favor of glorious panoramas, painted directly on the plaster itself.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Benjamin tied on his smock and picked up his pallet from atop a pile of dirty underwear. “Come inz!”
The door swung open, and in walked what looked remarkably like his brother, Becker. So remarkably that it could only have been that lifelike invention of the masters at the Toolshed known as a Me-2.
“Hey, Me!” Benjamin bumped elbows with the replica like they were old pals. “What’s shakin’?”
“Chillin’ like a villain,” Me-2 said as it plopped down on Benjamin’s race car bed.
“Hey, guess what?”
“That’s what?”
“Better.” Benjamin dipped his brush into a spot of Alizarin Crimson and laid down a base. “Figarro says all I need is one or two more signature pieces and I’ll be ready for my show.”
“When’s your show?”
“Next week. Administrator Nye from Public Works is gonna be there and if everything goes well, I could totally get a job as a Junior Scenic.”
“Sweet.”
“Tell me about it. If you play your cards right, I might be able to score you an original Benjamin Drane at half price.”
Me-2 smiled proudly. With Becker gone as much as he had been, the lifelike Tool had become almost a brother to Ben, and seeing his excitement and his blossoming artistic ability gave its mechanical heart real joy. Which only made what was about to happen that much harder to swallow.
“What’s wrong, Me?” Benjamin dabbed a small blob of Phthalo Blue into a patch of sky on his canvas. “Why the long face?”
There were a few things that weighed heavy on the Me-2’s mind that day. First and foremost was the fact that the precocious Sunset painter would probably never have his long-awaited show. Because of the Court of Public Opinion’s ruling, Benjamin would never remember that there was a Seems, except as a figment of his brother’s imagination. But if that brother had no L.U.C.K. in finding the Lost Train of Thought, unremembering would be the least of their problems.
“Actually, I’m a little concerned about this whole Unthinkable thing.”
“I thought you said Becker’s team had it under control?”
“They do, it’s just—” Me-2 held up in midsentence, not wanting to let on that just minutes ago it had abruptly lost contact with its real self. “The last update from Thought & Emotion wasn’t so hot.”
The other Becker grabbed the remote control off the night table and fired up the TV that had been installed on Benjamin’s ninth birthday.
“C’mon, Me, I’m trying to get some work done here!”
“I just wanna see what’s going on in The World.”
As Benjamin tried to tune out the video and get back to his sunset, the Me-2 flicked between the nine-hundred and seventy-one available channels. And if what it saw on CNN and BBC was true, things on the ground were even worse than feared.
Someone had started a wildfire in the hills of Santa Barbara, and the flames now stretched across a hundred-mile radius. The fans of two soccer teams had clashed outside a stadium, and the resulting riot had left scores of people injured and three innocent bystanders fighting for their lives. Worst of all, the rebels were on the move in the Congo again.
“I told you, B. CLOTs are popping up left and right!”
“What’s a CLOT?”
“Complete Lack of Thought!” Me-2 threw up its synthetic arms. “From there, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to the—”
“Those aren’t CLOTs, doofus— that kind of stuff happens every day. Why do you think I never watch the news?”
“Then explain Zurich!” Me-2 pointed to the picture-in-picture, where the capital of Switzerland had erupted in a torrent of political protests. “The Swiss are neutral about everything!”
“You’re crazy, Me. In fact, you’re doing exactly what my science teacher Dr. Isakoff says not to do: come up with a theory first and then find evidence to support it!”
The Me-2’s liquid crystal eyes took another glance at the events transpiring around the globe.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right, B. Maybe it’s all just part of the Plan . . .”
“That’s the spirit!” Benjamin yanked the clicker away from his alternate brother and turned off the boob tube. “Now beat it and let me get back to work.”
Seemsberia, The Seems
After the bus carrying Simly had passed through the gates of Seemsberia proper, he had been escorted down the steps and led directly to processing. Like every other Seemsian whose fate it was to reflect on their deeds behind these stone walls, he was searched, showered, relieved of his personal property, and issued a standard jumpsuit and prisoner ID number. Then, per Fixer Blaque’s agreement with the Warden, the Briefer was locked in the relative safety of a twelve-by-twelve holding cell until the next morning. That agreement had suddenly changed.
“But why can’t I stay in the Pokey?”
Simly Frye’s feet were in shackles, which didn’t exactly help him keep up with the Corrections Officer who was leading him down the long, dank hallway.
“New batch a’inmates comin’ in,” said the guard, ignoring the catcalls coming from the cells that lined both walls. “Gotta make room.”
“But I’m only here for one day!”
“Sorry, kid. Warden’s orders.” The Officer stopped before a tall steel door, then brusquely undid the shackles. “Suggest you wear these.”
He handed Simly a thick wool jacket and cap, pulled a fat brass key off the rings on his belt, and inserted it into the heavy latch on the door.
“Is it safe out there?” asked Simly. His teeth were already chattering, but not from the cold.
“Long as you don’t get on nobody’s bad side.”
With that, the guard opened the door and pushed the prisoner outside.
“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” Simly whispered to himself. But when his eyes adjusted to the harsh light and he took the first look at his home for the next twenty-five hours, he was pretty sure he couldn’t.
Fenced in on all sides by barbed wire and overseen by four separate guardposts was a football-sized yard of frozen tundra. Inmates dressed in heavy layers were scattered across the ice and mud, pumping iron, playing chess, and engaging in the ancient sport of Distraction. Most were broken into clearly delineated cliques, and Simly recognized people in The Know, as well as the infamous Rocky Road Gang and even a crew of Seems Firsters.20 But as he tucked his hands in his pockets and found a quiet corner, there was one posse that scared the Briefer more than all the others combined.
There were at least a hundred of them, all congregated on the stone stairs that overlooked the east side of the yard. At first glance, there was little they had in common with each other, for Pencil Pushers sat alongside Reality Checkers who chewed the fat with Drifters and Degenerators. But upon closer inspection, even the casual observer could spot somewhere on each prisoner’s body a tattoo or patch or piece of jewelry depicting what would have been a mark of shame in mainstream Seemsian society, yet here was considered a badge of honor:
A sinister black wave.
“You must be a newbie!”
Simly turned to see an old man with a Seemsberian monkey on his shoulder limping toward him and extending a gnarled hand.
“I’m Bill. Bill the Lifer, they call me.”
“Simly Frye.” He hadn’t forgotten Becker’s admonition not to talk to anybody, but the man’s wrinkled smile made it hard not to say hello. “I’m only in for one more day.”
/> “Time is relative, young fella. Some people live an entire lifetime in a day! Ain’t that right, Fumbles?”
The old convict petted the monkey on his shoulder, which disturbingly turned out to be a mangy stuffed animal. Even worse, a few eyes in the yard were beginning to turn their way.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Bill.”
Simly started to look for another spot, but Bill followed.
“What you in for, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Trespassing,” said Simly, not wanting to get into the embarrassing details.
“Got caught with my hand in the Cookie Jar,21 myself.”
“Sorry to hear that, bro. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just wanna pay my debt to society in peace and quiet.”
“C’mon, Fumbles! We can tell when we’re not wanted!”
As Bill the Lifer and his closest friend stormed off in a huff, Simly did his best to tuck into the shadows and make himself invisible again. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
“Well, well, well. Look what Seemsberian Snow Cat dragged in.”
Much to Simly’s horror, the entire Tide clan was drifting in his direction. The way they moved was like a sailboat tacking, plotting just enough of a circuitous route as to avoid the suspicion of the guards, who sat with their binoculars in the towers above. But in a very short amount of time, they had formed a semicircle around where he was standing.
“If it ain’t Kid Fixer’s string-bean sidekick!” An ex–Flavor Miner whose beard was tied with a rubber band got right in Simly’s frostbitten face. “Looks like Seemsmas came early this year, eh, boys?”
“I’m not lookin’ for any trouble,” muttered the frightened newbie, backing up the two inches that separated him from the wall behind him.
“Well, it’s looking for you.”
As The Tide started to roll in, Simly instinctively reached for the Fists of Fury™ that were clipped onto his belt. But then he remembered the collection of Tools that were normally strapped all over his body were now sitting in two cardboard boxes in Seemberia’s property room. So he put up his dukes— just like his grandpa Milton had taught him—and prepared to take his lumps.