“Come on, tell me. It looks like something to me.”
“Really, it’s nothing. Just one of my projects,” he picked up the black cylinder. “I call it my Holoversarium.”
“Your holo-what?”
He giggled. “Holoversarium.”
“Never heard of one.”
“That’s because there aren’t any others. I invented it.”
She ran her fingers along the outside edge of its domed, crystalline top. “What does it do?”
“It uses the latest high-definition space imagery to create a deep-field holograph of the universe. Then it projects it at any scale I want.”
“Space imagery? You mean satellites? Like Hubble?”
He chuckled again. “Yeah, that’s one of them. The most famous one. There are others, too. And not just satellites. I use all kinds of observational spacecraft, some the public have heard of, some are classified.”
She eyed him. “So, what, you hacked into a top secret satellite?”
“I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” he smiled.
“Show me,” she gave him a look he couldn’t refuse.
He brought the shoebox-sized machine to the center of the room and placed it on a chair which had two large packages stacked already. It wobbled, yet he managed to sit it still.
“There,” he said. “That’s probably high enough. This room’s pretty small, so you won’t get the full effect, but here goes.”
He plugged it in and flipped the on switch, letting its tiny motor hum. Then he shut off the lights and punched a command on his computer. A white beam came out the top of the dome and hit the ceiling. He clicked then dragged his mouse, spreading the ray in all directions at once, making a three-dimensional map of the stars. Tiny speckles surrounded both Jack and Amelia, masses upon masses of glittery objects swirling in slow motion, churning in a vast interstellar sea.
He pointed to a pinwheel of light.
“This is the Milky Way Galaxy,” he pulled the mouse toward him. The small, bright dots slowed their movements and grew bigger and bigger, zeroing in on a ball of fiery gold encircled by lesser spheres. Amelia put her hand on her cheeks.
“Wow! That’s our solar system! Hey! There’s Earth!” she pointed at a blue and white globe.
“Yep,” he rolled the mouse the opposite direction until the planets and sun shrank and a stirring mass of glittering points came back into view. “I can zoom out twenty-eight gigaparsecs to show the entire known universe.”
The field of stars grew even larger. Comets and cloudy nebulas and supercluster upon supercluster sped past them while he brought it to the extreme setting, a full, virtual scope of the cosmos.
Amelia stood in astonishment, her hands drifting, trying to cup one of the minute, twisting constellations gliding next to her, illuminating her eyes with its celestial glow. “Uncanny!” was all she got out. She watched another mass of stars go by, this one elliptical, magenta and hazy. She seemed almost overwhelmed by the nearly endless arrays of different groupings and diverse colors. Canary, indigo and crimson. Violet, lime and auburn. Some were shining beacons, some dimmer and more subdued, all floating past, casting a bold radiance on her fair skin.
Finally she managed to speak. “So, can you, like, zoom in on another galaxy?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Pick one.”
She indicated a striking purple, cartwheel shape with a yellowish center. “Here, this one.”
“Okay. Watch this,” a few strokes on the keyboard and the ring grew larger until it became the dominating feature in the room. A picture of the system showed on the computer screen. He maneuvered his cursor over a random area and double-clicked. The hologram zoomed in even further, penetrating the lavender fog, speeding toward the interior of the galaxy, past star after star until it came upon one bright red giant with several smaller globes circling it.
“What’s this place called?” she asked.
“No idea,” he read the screen. “This is way outside our galactic group. It isn’t even in one of the named local superclusters. It’s uncharted space, so far.”
Amelia stopped with her mouth wide open “What’s this here?”
“What’s what where?”
“Right here,” she pointed. “It gets really dark right here. Halfway into this solar system, it just, like, fades into nothing. See?”
He examined the area she was pointing at, not knowing what she meant. Then he did see something strange.
“Hmm. You’re right. It is dark right there. The stars and planets just disappear.”
“What is it?”
He scratched his scalp. “I don’t know. It may be a blazar.”
“Blazar?”
“A supermassive black hole. Or maybe it’s a supervoid. I don’t think it’s either one, though” he clicked and pored over the source code, searching for anything out of the ordinary. “I can’t find a reason for it. Must be some kind of glitch, I guess,” he half grinned. “The Holoversarium isn’t one hundred percent perfected yet.”
“Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she watched a tiny planet with three tinier moons glide above her shoulders. “I gotta tell you, what you’ve made here is amazing.”
“It’s just a little project,” he pressed a key and the hologram collapsed, folding in until it was one solid, vivid line, which withdrew into the black dome.
“A little project, huh?” she laughed. “Jack, that was uncanny. I don’t think you realize just how brilliant you are.”
He flicked the lights back on, his cheeks warming up again. “I can’t take all the credit. My dad helped me.”
“You and your dad are close?” Amelia’s tone soothed him, making it easy for him to open up about a sore topic.
“Yeah, we’re close,” he sighed. “Lately, not so much.”
“I can’t stop thinking about what those boys said. It’s your dad, isn’t it? Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Why not? Jack, I think it might help to get it off your chest. Have you been able to talk to anyone about it yet?”
“No.”
“Well, then I think it’s time you did.”
He felt a little intimidated by her forwardness. Coming to his apartment, marching confidently past his mother—that took guts. It wasn’t her moxie that made him relent, though. Before then, he’d never told anyone the real story, the whole story about his dad and what had happened the day of, ‘the incident.’ Before then, it had been all conjecture and gossip, peppered by little bits of truth, and the tale became weirder by the day. In the end, a rumor was circulating that his dad blew up the high school, created a mini-black hole somewhere in the science lab, and he, along with several students plus half the varsity football team, fell into some other dimension. And the whole time the rumors spread, Jack did nothing to set the record straight.
Until now.
SIX
BENJAMIN JAMES IS MY DAD. He’s one of the best Dad’s in the world, if not the best. No one else thinks so, though. They don’t care about what he’s trying to achieve. All they can see are the setbacks. They all think he’s a failure and, worse, a danger to himself and others. But I know better. I’ve been around him and his experiments all my life, and I know he’s not some wacked-out, mad scientist. He’s onto something. Something big.
To tell the story accurately, I have to go back to the day of the incident, a day which started out like any other. I went to school, Dad went to work, and Mom took my six-year-old sister, Lily, to kindergarten. It was such a normal, forgettable morning. Little did I know, later that day my whole life would change.
“Jack? Jack James?” Brenda Gloden stood in the doorway of Mrs. Adams’ classroom. She’s a fifth-grader who works in the office during the afternoons.
“Yeah?” I cringed at the sudden attention.
“It’s an emergency,” the gangly girl was ashen. “Your mother’s on her way. You need to come wit
h me.”
I tried to worm some information out of Brenda. She stonewalled me. Mom was no help, either. Pacing the principal’s office, I’d never seen her try so hard not to be nervous. It made me even more terrified. I knew it was about Dad, and when Lily spoke up in her brash yet charming way, my suspicions were confirmed.
“Dad blew himself up,” she played with the zippers on her denim miniskirt. “Again.”
“Lily!” Mom scolded. “Stop it!”
“Well, he did,” she protested quietly, moving on to chewing the cuff of her delicate, white blouse.
“Let’s go,” Mom led us out the door.
“What happened?” I asked. In silence we went straight to the bus loading zone. The school let her park the Subaru up front. “Is Dad all right?”
I questioned her all the way to the car, but she didn’t answer.
“Get in. Hurry,” she buckled Lily into her safety seat.
I barely had my seatbelt on when she zipped out of the parking lot while pulling her long golden hair out of its pony tail. It was unusual because Mom’s really cautious when she drives, always getting on Dad for the slightest slip in speed or the smallest sharp turn. So when Mom drove that way, we knew something was horribly wrong.
“Mom, please. Tell me what happened!” I begged. She wouldn’t say a word. She was focused on the road, the traffic, checking her mirrors—all while speeding through town like a mad woman.
“I told you,” Lily seemed uninterested, though she’s always like that. “He blew himself up.”
I knew that could’ve meant any of a number of things to her. She’s been around Dad all her life. She’s used to his mishaps. We all are. Because of that, I’m not sure she realized this one was serious.
“Is he okay?” I repeated. “Where are we going?”
“To the hospital,” Mom broke her silence.
That’s when it hit home with Lily. Her self-satisfied smile disappeared, her jaw dropped, and she began to tear up. I felt the same sense of dread. I had to be strong for the two of them, though, and did my best to hide it by slipping under my seatbelt and hugging Lily tight.
“It’ll be okay,” I was reassuring myself as much as my little sister. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
When we got to Dad’s hospital room, I knew everything wasn’t fine. He was an extra in a bad mummy movie. His hands were bandaged to his elbows, his chest was covered in gauze, and they had his whole head wrapped, leaving only his eyes and mouth visible. Lily couldn’t handle it. All she wanted to do was run out of the room.
“Wait, wait!” I held her with all my might. What I whispered next convinced her to stay.
“Dad’s hurt real bad, Lily, and we need to help him get better. We need to be here for him, right now. Understand?”
She nodded, bouncing her tight blonde curls, and we both turned to see Mom crying by his side. I knew she wanted to hold his hand, to touch his face. The bandages made it impossible. He couldn’t move much. He sure could talk, though.
“Honey, honey,” he tried to console her. “Honestly, it’s not that bad. Just a little scratch here and there. Nothing serious.”
He saw us kids. “Hey, you two! What’s with the sourpusses?”
“Dad?” I swallowed hard, trying to be brave. “Are you hurt bad?”
“Naw,” he was his usual, lighthearted self. “Doesn’t hurt a bit. Swear.”
He made an attempt at raising his right arm to solidify the oath. Less than a quarter of the way up, he stopped, wincing and grunting.
“No, no,” Mom intervened, helping his arm to his side again. “Don’t move, honey. Just stay still and rest.”
“Dad, what happened? People are saying you blew up the school!” I asked.
“Geez,” he laughed. “The talk around here, huh? It wasn’t an explosion. Just a small, uncontrolled release of very few strangelets. Not many at all. Only a few million or so. They’re so tiny, just a few femtometers each. What’s the big deal? Nobody was hurt.”
“Nobody hurt? Mister, have you seen yourself?” Mom was over being scared, apparently, and had shifted right into angry. “This project of yours has gotten a little out of hand, don’t you think?”
“Well, I don’t…” he tried to get a word in. It was no use.
“I mean, really. When it was laser beams and holograms, it was safe. But now? Now you’re getting a little too extreme.”
“Hold on a minute…”
“I just hope this incident will make you see it’s time to give up before someone gets seriously hurt, or even killed.”
“Whoa-ho-ho!” even through the bandages, I saw Dad’s scowl. “You can’t expect me to stop now. Not when I’ve gotten so close. When today’s unfortunate event occurred, I was right there, right on the verge. Do you understand what that means?”
He didn’t allow her to answer. He becomes a giddy child every time he talks about his project, which he named the Omega/Alpha, or O/A, because he claims it represents the last invention of the old age and the first of the new.
“It means I’ve finally gotten the power source to work, the power source that will let me maximize the O/A’s advanced technology, the dynamo that will make it all possible—the Gravitomiton.”
“The gravito…what?” Mom batted her lashes.
“Gravitomiton. It’s quite simple, really. It’s all about gravity. You see, gravity is one of the strongest forces in the universe, yet it feels weak to us. Heck, the Earth is so massive, its gravitational pull should be smashing us all to the ground like pancakes. Gravity’s pull is weak because its power gets diluted as it radiates throughout all dimensions.”
“Not again with the different dimensions,” she pleaded. “You’re thirty-five. Don’t you think you should’ve outgrown that stuff by now?”
“But, Liz, there are other dimensions, other universes,” he tried to spread his arms and groaned. A little pain wasn’t going to stop him. “And gravity permeates all of these realms. As I said, it diminishes as it pushes through the dimensional membranes. By using a surprisingly simple method, the Gravitomiton can gather lost gravitational energy much the same way a sail catches wind. It’s a flawless system.”
“So that’s it?’ Mom alternated her stare between Dad and me. “You’re done? But you just said you weren’t.”
“I’m not,” he explained. “Not quite. I leapt over a hurdle of galactic proportions. Now I have the unlimited, completely harmless power supply I need for the O/A. I tell you, Liz, kids,” he made a point to smile at each of us. “This is going to change our lives. Not only that, it’ll change the world. You watch.”
My dad had been talking like that for years, and I saw, as usual, he wasn’t getting through to Mom, which, as usual, made him try even harder to convince her.
“I’m doing more right now in my tiny lab than whole teams of other scientists are doing with billions of dollars worth of equipment.”
He strained to sit up. Clearly he was in a lot of pain and tried so hard to hide it, though his grunts and groans gave it away.
Mom eased him onto his pillow. “Ben, just sit back. Remember, you need to rest.”
“Listen, Liz,” he wouldn’t be deterred. “I know I haven’t been one hundred percent forthcoming on this project. I just had to be sure. I had to be positive I could do it. That plus…” he peered at the door, then lowered his voice. “If this thing really functions, and it will, people, powerful people, will want to get their hands on it, and there’s no telling what they might do to me, to you, to the kids.”
“Daddy, is somebody gonna hurt us?” Lily shivered.
“Shhh,” Mom picked her up. “Nobody’s going to hurt anyone. Ben, you need to stop talking that way right now. You’re scaring the children.”
Dad sighed at her. “I know what I’m meant to do. I was born on this earth to be your husband, and to be the best father to those two children this world has ever seen…plus one more thing, just as big, just as monumental.”
“Ben,
” mom sounded exhausted. “I mean it. You’ve got to quit this nonsense for good. A hobby’s a hobby, but,” she examined him, touching his wrap and frowning. “It’s just not working out.”
“Liz, please,” he seemed desperate. Mom had never been so insistent about him giving up before. “You say that, but it’s only because I haven’t told you everything.”
“You haven’t told me anything.”
“You’re right, you’re right. That’s why you need to know. Right here, right now. Jack, Lily, come closer,” he acted like Santa Claus. “I want to tell you all a wonderful secret.”
Dad has a way of adding a little flair to his stories about his ideas and inventions. This time he pulled out all the stops.
“Liz, kids,” he beamed. “Hold onto your socks, because what I’m about to tell you will blow them right off your feet. Someday our name will be famous. They’re going to have to rewrite every science text, rethink every branch of philosophy, revisit every fact known to mankind. I’ve done it. I’ve found the holy grail of science.”
He paused for effect, took a deep breath, then continued.
“Guys, I’ve developed a device that will harness the power of the omnidimensional field, giving its user the ability to basically become a…a superhuman!’
“What?” Mom was incredulous.
“Sorry, visiting hours are over,” a man in white stirred us from the confusion. Dad clammed up.
“You can’t be serious,” Mom challenged the nurse. “We just got here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask you to leave,” the nurse checked the IV stuck into Dad’s arm. “Hospital rules.”
“I said I’m not going anywhere,” Mom repeated, and she meant it. She called grandma to come and get us at the hospital, then stayed there with Dad for three days.
When they let him come home finally, Mom told us she was hoping it would mean a new start, a change for the better. There was a change, all right. It wasn’t better. The instant Mom and Dad rolled up the driveway there were at least three news vans following. Reporters had been bothering Dad at the hospital the whole time, and Mom had been doing a good job of keeping them away. Out in the open they were fair game, though.
Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear Page 5