Adam Powerhouse Episode Two: Zero to Hero
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who pushed their groceries to the car. Adam climbed into their car and strapped himself into his booster seat. When he heard the trunk slam, he leaned to the side and pretended to be asleep.
Mom slid behind the wheel, sighed again, and made the drive home. She didn’t talk to Adam, or turn on the radio. Adam wanted to look and see what she was doing, but he didn’t want her to know he was awake.
When they arrived home, Adam pretended to wake up, jumped out of the car, and ran up to his room. He slammed the door shut, hurried to his bed, and pulled the candy out of his pocket.
A small knocking sound on his door made him almost jump out of his skin. He stuffed the candy back into his pocket and answered the door. He couldn’t believe he forgot to set his security system. He cracked the door slightly and looked right into his mother’s eyes.
“Let me see it Adam.”
“See what?” Adam looked away from mom.
“Adam. I know you took something. Let me see it.”
Adam slowly slid the candy out of his pocket, not so excited about having it anymore. He held it out and looked at what he held in his hand. Two Zero candy bars, slightly crushed, sat in his palm. Normally, the silver wrapped candy was his favorite. The bold white letters always made his mouth water. Now they just made him feel sick to his stomach.
“Adam, I am very disappointed in you. More than I have ever been before. You know that taking things from other people hurts them. With your extraordinary ability, you should want to help other people less fortunate than you. Not steal from them. I am not going to take those away from you. I’m not going to call the police, the store, or even tell your dad. If you want to keep them and eat them, then go ahead. You can stay up here for the rest of the day though.”
When dad got home and hollered at Adam, Adam told him he was busy working on something. The two candy bars sat on the bed and reminded Adam of the awful thing he had done. Adam didn’t have the heart to take them back to store now that they were crushed and ruined. He didn’t have the heart to eat them, even when his stomach was growling late at night.
Adam laid awake all night thinking about what he had done. When the sun finally came through Adam’s window and he could hear the robins begin singing their morning song, he got up, picked up the candy bars, and tucked them away into his place under the floorboards where his “inventions on hold” were hidden. Looking one last time at the bold white letters, Z-E-R-O Z-E-R-O, Adam wasn’t sure he would ever be able to eat another one. But he vowed then and there, that he would pay for doing wrong by using his skills and ability to help others whenever and however he could. Reflecting on the double-double helix he knew was floating around in his cells, he thought, I’m not a double-helix super human, I’m a double ZERO.
Scene 3: Turning the Corner
Immediately following Adam’s episode of stealing, Adam began formulating a plan for implementing his powers for good, not evil. The problem with having super-human ability at six years old is that you are still six years old. His parents never would leave him completely alone long enough to sneak out of the house and use his gadgets and strength to fight crime. So for the time being, Adam watched the news and read the paper to begin an analysis of the pattern of crime in the city.
First, Adam let his fingers do the walking by hacking into the police files and checking up on the facts he knew weren’t reported in the news. He could always tell when important facts were left out. Next, he patched into the surveillance network around the city’s transportation system. With this in place, he could zoom in on any events happening around the intersections where cameras were mounted on traffic lights. This seemed pretty limiting, so Adam patched his system into the ATM machines around the city so he could get a view from those security cameras as well. This worked as long as someone wasn’t trying to withdraw money which would block his view of the area in front of the machine. ATM machines were everywhere and Adam could visit about any part of the city from his bedroom.
As Adam began to decipher the pattern of crime around St. Louis, he began to wonder what he could do about it. One night, he put his hard work into practice and patched into an ATM at a convenience store he predicted would be robbed. The camera pointed directly at the counter where the clerk looked rather bored from having no customers at two o’clock in the morning. Adam knew that at 3:20 a police cruiser would pull up and a couple of cops would come in to get donuts and coffee, then business would pick up as people got ready for work that day. He figured the thief would hit the store before the cops’ donut break.
For forty-five minutes, Adam watched the clerk pick and wipe his nose, drink straight from the slushy machine nozzle, flip through a dirty magazine, and eat a package of peanut M&M’s. Finally, someone came in.
A guy wearing black pants, a black t-shirt with the writing “Huked On Foniks Wurked Fur Me” across the front, and white tennis shoes, walked to the counter and pulled a gun out of his back pocket. He waved it at the kid behind the counter, who was shaking his head vigorously. Adam couldn’t hear anything because the system had no sound, but he could imagine the shouting going on. Suddenly there was a bright flash and Adam realized the clerk had been shot. As the thief hopped the counter and began trying to tear open the register, Adam stared in disbelief, then sprung into action.
He grabbed a set of earphones with a mouthpiece and slipped them on over his head while using his mouse to access his audio system. He changed the pitch on the microphone to drop the sound of his voice to sound more like a grown-up. Next, he pulled up an internet link that could make phone calls so the police couldn’t trace his call. He dialed the main precincts’ phone number, getting the switch board.
“St. Louis County Police Department.”
“Yes, I’d like to report a crime…”Adam didn’t have time to finish ‘in progress’ before the receptionist cut him off.
“Hold please.”
“NO!” But she was already gone.
Adam waited while some cheesy elevator music played and the bad guy in a minimized window on his computer screen stuffed the money from the drawer into his pocket and poured himself a slushy. Finally, a voice came on the other line.
“Sergeant Rice.”
“Yes, I’d like to report a crime in progress.”
“Why’d you get me, you should have called 911?”
“This is where the receptionist sent my call. Listen, I can see the guy now.” Adam gave a description of the fellow and the location of the convenience store.
“Are you in the store with him?” Detective Rice asked.
“No, but I can see him from where I’m at.”
“Where is that?”
“Listen, I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you back later. Just get someone over there.” Adam hung up.
Five minutes later, the two cops burst in with their guns drawn and found the clerk bleeding on the floor, but the crook was already gone. Adam had seen him leave by the front door, getting an estimate of his height from the marker on the side of the door. Adam placed another phone call.
“Detective Rice.”
“Your men missed him.”
“Where are you at?”
“That isn’t important. What is important is that he is white, about five feet ten inches tall, carrying a cherry slushy, and in two days, he will have a cold.”
“What?”
“Check the surveillance tape from the ATM. The clerk had a runny nose, coughing, and just looked like he didn’t feel good. But he did drink straight from the slushy spout, leaving his cold germs on it. When the robber helped himself to a slushy, he also served himself a cold. It is the weekend, so you should be able to hold him for 48 hours easy until he goes before a judge for bail. By that time, you’ll have the DNA match from the slushy nozzle and the robber.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Trust me. Check out the facts later, but find this guy. Should be easy to find a white guy with a cherry slushy in that neighborhood. I will call back to see how thin
gs went.”
Adam hung up the phone, turned off his computer, and tried to catch a few hours of sleep before his mom came in to wake him up.
The next morning, Adam tuned into the local news to find they had caught the young man who had robbed the store because the cops had noticed a cherry mustache on his face when they caught him walking along the sidewalk.
A black officer was interviewed by the reporter who was rather inexperienced. Adam guessed it was probably an intern who was lucky enough to check out events that happened at three o’clock in the morning.
The reporter shoved a microphone into the cop’s face, “How did you respond to this crime so quickly, Detective Rice?”
Adam sat up straight.
“We received an anonymous tip that the crime was in progress which gave us the description of the perpetrator and what was happening during the robbery. We knew the young man had also taken a cherry slushy from the store and there were none of those sold all night. When we caught him walking, he didn’t have the slush any more, but he did have cherry on his face. After we had him in custody, we retraced his steps from the store and found a freshly emptied cherry slush with his fingerprints on the outside. After we had his prints, we were able to find a couple of his prints among the many prints found on the surfaces inside the store along with DNA evidence that is being processed.”
The reporter leaned in, trying to get more