Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab

by Bob Pflugfelder

  “Uh … no,” Nick said.

  “Uncle Newt?” Tesla said.

  “All right, almost old enough to drive,” said Uncle Newt. “When can you get a learner’s permit? When you’re twelve?”

  “Uh … no,” Nick said.

  “Uncle Newt?” Tesla said.

  “Thirteen, then? Fourteen?” Uncle Newt said. “Anyway, we’ve got plenty of time to figure that out. First things first. Do you have your pilot’s license?”

  “Uh … no,” Nick said.

  “Uncle Newt,” Tesla said. “How do we get you unstuck?”

  “Oh! Right! You need to find a spray bottle filled with purple liquid.”

  Nick and Tesla stood up and looked around. Nick spotted the bottle first. It was sitting beside the goo-filled coffeepot and another spray bottle, this one half full of something orange.

  Nick picked up the bottle with the purple stuff inside.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Now what?” said Tesla.

  “You spray me, of course!” said Uncle Newt.

  Nick walked back over to the blob on the floor and began spritzing it uncertainly. The liquid in the bottle came out in a fine purple mist. It started blistering and bubbling as soon as it hit the orange whatever-it-was covering Uncle Newt.

  “That’s it. I can feel it loosening up,” Uncle Newt said as the orange stuff collapsed and liquefied. “Squirt some more on my legs. Great. Now my shoulders. Perfect. Now a little on the back of my head. Right there! Yes!”

  There was a rrrrrrrrrrripping sound, and Uncle Newt pushed himself off the floor and popped to his feet. No longer was he a just big orange splotch on the floor. Now he was a tall, thin, though still mostly orange, human being.

  “Success!” he said.

  Chunks of sludge were dripping from his back, and half the white lab coat he was wearing had torn away and remained stuck to the laboratory floor. Yet Uncle Newt was smiling.

  Nick hadn’t seen his uncle in years—they lived in Virginia, on the other side of the continent, and Dad always said his brother “didn’t travel well”—but he remembered that smile. It was big and toothy and warm. And a little demented.

  “Now how about a hug?” Uncle Newt said, spreading out arms wet with still-sizzling sludge.

  “Maybe later?” Tesla said. “When you’re a little less … toxic?”

  “Good thinking.”

  Uncle Newt tried to take off what was left of his lab coat. It wasn’t easy. Parts of it were still cemented to the T-shirt and jeans he wore underneath, and everything was coated in orange-purple ooze.

  After some struggling, Uncle Newt gave up.

  “Darn. I loved this T-shirt,” he said. Sadly, he patted the words printed on it: NASA—YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE, BUT THE ALIENS LIVING IN MY NOSE SAY IT HELPS. “Oh, well. It was probably time to get rid of it anyway. It’s smelled like rotten broccoli for ten years now. Anyway, on to happier topics. How was your flight? I hope you weren’t too bummed about suddenly leaving behind everything and everyone you’ve ever known.”

  “Well …” Nick began.

  “Wait,” said Tesla. “What is that orange gunk? And how’d you get stuck to the floor in it?”

  Uncle Newt’s eyes lit up with excitement.

  “ ‘Gunk’?” he said, waving a hand at the goo on his back. “This isn’t gunk! It’s the future!”

  Nick and Tesla looked at each other as Uncle Newt wobbled awkwardly toward the nearest worktable. (The back of his jeans was still coated in stiff orange foam.) Their father had always told them that his older brother was “a self-employed inventor.” But it looked to Nick and Tesla like another job description would fit even better.

  Their uncle was a mad scientist.

  “Observe!” Uncle Newt said, snatching up the spray bottle filled with orange liquid and whirling around to face the kids (and nearly losing his balance again in the process). He pointed the bottle at the back of his left hand and squeezed.

  Vapor shot from the nozzle and coated his skin in a layer of spongy orange. Uncle Newt kept spraying, turning his hand this way and that until it was covered evenly all the way around.

  “What do you think I’ll have once this dries?” he said.

  “An orange hand?” Nick said.

  “Yes. And …?”

  “An orange glove,” said Tesla, looking impressed.

  Uncle Newt grinned, delighted.

  “Exactly!” He shook the spray bottle. “Instant spray-on clothes!”

  The spongy orange “glove” on Uncle Newt’s hand kept expanding until it looked more like an orange mitten, and then a puffy orange boxing glove.

  Uncle Newt’s grin faded.

  “Except I don’t seem to have the formula quite right. It gets a little globby. And stiff. And sticky. I was just trying to squeeze in one more quick full-body test before I went to the airport to get you, but, well, it didn’t go so well.”

  It now looked like Uncle Newt had a basketball stuck to the end of his arm.

  “Nick, could you give me a hand?”

  “Right.”

  Nick stepped up with the other spray bottle and coated the blob with purple mist. It immediately began fizzing and melting.

  “Hey!” Uncle Newt said. “The airport! Oh, my gosh! How’d you get here?”

  “We took a cab,” Tesla said.

  Uncle Newt slapped a hand to his forehead, smearing it with orange slime.

  “Oh, wow. I am so sorry. Believe me, kids, I take this responsibility very seriously. Wherever your parents are—”

  “Uzbekistan,” said Tesla.

  “—and whatever they’re doing—”

  “Studying soybean irrigation,” said Nick.

  “—and whenever they’re coming back—”

  “Labor Day,” Nick and Tesla said together.

  “—I want you to know that you have nothing to worry about. I won’t fall down on the job again. I will always be there for you. Always. Now,” Uncle Newt turned and headed toward the stairs, “I’ve got to go take a shower.”

  “Uh … what should we do?” Nick asked as his uncle went up the steps.

  Uncle Newt didn’t slow down.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your father used to tell me you were following in our footsteps. Inventing, like him and me and your mom. Well, now there’s nothing to hold you back. My laboratory is your laboratory. Go nuts!”

  Nick and Tesla looked at each other. They’d never thought of their parents as inventors. They were staff horticulturists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which seemed like about the least inventive thing one could be.

  Also, “go nuts” was not the kind of thing they were used to hearing from authority figures.

  Uncle Newt stopped and pointed at an especially dark corner of the basement.

  “Oh. Only, whatever you do, don’t touch that. Or that. Or that.” Uncle Newt began moving his hand here and there, though it was hard to tell exactly what he was pointing at. “Or that or that or that or that. And definitely don’t touch that. Hoo boy! That stuff over there you could build yourself a rocket with. That stuff over there would melt a hole in the floor. Don’t get ’em mixed up, okay? I’ll see you in an hour or two.”

  “An hour or two?” Nick said.

  Uncle Newt started up the stairs again.

  “I am really dirty!”

  And then he was gone.

  Nick looked around the basement and said, “Great. We’ve got our own lab, and I’m afraid to touch a thing in it.”

  Tesla looked around the basement and said, “We’ve got our own lab! Woo-hoo!”

  She walked over to a machine that had caught her eye: a hulking collection of pipes and wires and tubes and flashing lights.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Was this a ‘don’t touch,’ a ‘definitely don’t touch,’ or neither?”

  “Uncle Newt didn’t say. Which makes it a ‘definitely don’t touch,’ in my book.”

  Tesla step
ped up to a little porthole in the side of the mysterious mechanism.

  “I wonder what this thing does?”

  As Tesla leaned in to peer through the porthole, she brushed against a pair of handlebars. Or what she thought were handlebars. They moved downward with a loud clack.

  The machine began to hum.

  “Oh, man,” Nick said.

  The machine began to vibrate.

  “Oh, man!” Nick said.

  The machine began to hiss and spark and shake so hard it was practically jumping off the floor.

  “Ohhhhhhhh, maaaaaaaan!” Nick said.

  He and Tesla ran for cover.

  They ducked behind what looked like a pile of garbage beside one of the work tables. When they peeked back at the machine, it was spitting out loose nuts and bolts and crackling curlicues of electricity.

  “It’s gonna blow!” Nick yelled. “It’s gonna blow!”

  “Ding,” said the machine. And nothing else.

  Suddenly, it was totally silent, totally still.

  The little porthole glowed with an eerie yellow light.

  Tesla stood up and walked toward it.

  “Tez,” said Nick.

  Tesla looked through the porthole, then reached up to touch it.

  “Tez, don’t.”

  There was a shallow groove in one side of the porthole glass. Tesla put her fingers in it, then pulled to the side.

  The porthole slid open. Something small and dark sat in the chamber just beyond.

  “Tez!” Nick said as his sister reached in and pulled the little something out.

  It was a porcelain cup.

  Tesla sniffed the steam rising up from it.

  “Cappuccino,” she said.

  She put the cup back in the chamber and closed the porthole.

  “So … it’s a coffee maker?” Nick said.

  But Tesla had already lost interest in the big contraption behind her. Now she was looking at the junk that she and her brother had taken cover behind.

  “Hey,” she said. “That’s the stuff Uncle Newt said we could use to make a rocket.”

  Nick looked down. All he saw was a jumble of white plastic pipes, a manual air pump, a beat-up roll of duct tape, and a half-empty bottle of diet soda.

  “Are you sure that’s not the stuff that’ll melt through the floor?” he said.

  “Sure, I’m sure. Can’t you see how we’d build the rocket?” Tesla challenged her brother with a cocked eyebrow.

  Nick looked over the junk again. The adrenaline and fear were fading, and he was beginning to think clearly again.

  A small, cautious smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He still felt jumpy, on edge, but at least he knew a good way to distract himself.

  “Of course, I see how to build it,” he said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  LOW-TECH (PRACTICALLY NO-TECH) BOTTLE ROCKET AND LAUNCHER

  THE STUFF:

  • 3 pieces of 10-inch (25.5-cm) PVC pipe (labeled ½ inch [1.25 cm] wide at hardware stores) (A)

  • 3 pieces of 20-inch-long (51 cm) PVC pipe (B)

  • 3 90-degree-angle pieces (C)

  • 1 T connector (D)

  • 2 end caps (E)

  • 1 threaded end cap (F)

  • 1 bicycle pump (G)

  • 1 TR413 tire valve (can be acquired from an auto parts store or a garage that fixes tires) (H)

  • 1 1- or 2-liter plastic soda bottle (I)

  • Water

  • Electrical tape

  • PVC cement

  • A drill

  • Pliers

  • Safety goggles

  THE SETUP

  1. Ask an adult to drill a ½-inch (1.25-cm) hole into the center of the flat side of one of the caps.

  2. Feed the valve through the hole from the inside of the cap. Use the pliers to pull the valve through the hole so that the cap sits in the groove at the base of the valve. It may take a little twisting and tugging.

  3. Gather the pipe, angle, and connector pieces together and lay them out as shown in the illustration. Working with an adult, follow the directions on the PVC cement to attach all the pieces snugly.

  4. Let the completed launcher dry for as long as possible, preferably overnight.

  5. The bottle goes over the vertical pipe in the middle. Wrap electrical tape around the threaded end cap until you get a tight fit when you place the neck of the bottle over it.

  6. Go outside and make sure your launch area is clear of people and obstacles.

  7. Fill the bottle one-third to halfway with water.

  8. Turn the launcher upside down and twist the bottle snugly onto it.

  9. Turn the launcher right side up and attach the bicycle pump securely to the valve.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Put on your safety goggles and start pumping.

  2. Be ready for the pressure to send the rocket flying!

  3. If the rocket launches too soon (or doesn’t go very high), add more electrical tape around the threaded end cap to create a tighter seal against the bottle.

  WARNING: Never stand over an unlaunched rocket. If the rocket fails to launch after excessive pumping, it’s possible the electric tape seal is too tight. Remove the pump from the tire valve. Then push the small pin inside the valve until all the air has been released (much as you would flatten a bicycle tire). Have an adult remove the bottle. Peel off three layers of electric tape from the launcher and give it another go.

  It took Nick and Tesla less than forty minutes to build the rocket. But Tesla insisted they take another ten minutes to search the basement (very, very warily, in Nick’s case) for paint they could use to decorate it. Not long after they found some (in a cabinet marked MONKEY PROOF!!!, for some reason), the rocket was gleaming white with black panels and tips, classic NASA style. Tesla christened it with a name she painted on the nose cone in curly red letters: THE ALBERT AND MARTHA HOLT.

  Albert and Martha Holt were their parents.

  “Dad always said he became a scientist because he wanted to ride on the space shuttle,” Tesla said. “Well, now we can give him his ride. In spirit, anyway.”

  “How do you go from being a wannabe astronaut to being an expert on soybeans?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Dad.”

  “Yeah. The next time we talk to him … whenever that’ll be.”

  “Hey, they said they’d call when they could. They’re in Karakalpakstan, remember?”

  Tesla was proud of herself for getting out Karakalpakstan on the first try.

  Nick just nodded glumly.

  Karakalpakstan was the region of Uzbekistan their parents were traveling to. Nick and Tesla had looked it up on Wikipedia. It was six times bigger than Texas and had one twenty-fifth as many people. Its one and only radio station had opened just a few months earlier.

  Needless to say, there probably weren’t many cell phone towers there.

  Nick brought his hand up and touched his chest where the pendant their parents had given him made a little lump under his shirt. Tesla knew what he was thinking.

  “We want you to wear these,” Mom had told them as she hung the pendants around their necks. “So you’ll always feel us with you, no matter how long we might be apart.”

  The next day, Nick and Tesla had been on a plane for California.

  “Don’t worry,” Tesla told her brother, unconsciously bringing her fingers up to touch her pendant, too. “Mom and Dad’ll be all right. Karakillpookstun—”

  Tesla grimaced and tried again, enunciating carefully.

  “Karakalpakstan isn’t dangerous. It’s just kind of … empty.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure you’re right,” Nick said.

  But it didn’t sound like he meant it.

  While they waited for the cement and paint on the rocket launcher to dry, Nick and Tesla went looking for Uncle Newt. They found him in the same place he’d been the last time they’d looked for him: the master
bathroom on the second floor. They’d dragged him out of the shower for help with the rocket—even Tesla, bold as she could be, knew better than to try her luck with a power drill—and he must’ve jumped right back in the second he could. It was understandable, actually. His hair had still been half orange.

  The bathroom had what looked like a submarine airlock instead of a normal door, and unlike before it was now closed up tightly. When Nick and Tesla pressed their ears to the metal, they could dimly hear the sound of running water and Uncle Newt crooning “Winter Wonderland.”

  Outside, it was sunny and seventy degrees.

  “Gone awaaaaaaay is the something! Here to staaaaaaaay is the something! We da-da-da daaaaaa, la-la-la la laaaaaaa! Something in a something booby baaaaaaaa!”

  “Uncle Newt!” Tesla yelled.

  “Uncle Newt!” Nick yelled.

  “Uncle Newt!” they yelled together.

  “In the meadow we can something-something!” Uncle Newt sang. “And da-something something la-la-laaaaaa! We’ll have something something with the something! Until the who-who ha-has jooby jaaaaaaaa!”

  “Great,” Nick sighed. “He’s ignoring us now.”

  “I guess I can’t blame him,” said Tesla. “His hair was still half orange the last time we pulled him out of there.”

  “Well, I’m starving. Can we go see if the cat left us some cake?”

  Tesla thought it over, weighing her hunger against the chance of eating cake a cat had licked.

  She was very, very hungry.

  “Good idea,” she said.

  Apparently, the cat had tired of icing after cleaning off a quarter of the cake. It was nowhere to be seen now, and Tesla guessed it had staggered off somewhere to sleep off its sugar buzz.

  Already on the table were plates and forks and a knife, and Nick and Tesla served themselves slices of cake that were (they hoped) cat-spit free. Since there were no chairs in the room, only the strange straps dangling from the ceiling, they would have to eat standing up.

  Nick put a forkful of cake in his mouth.

  Tesla put a forkful in her mouth.

  “Gah!” Nick said.

  “Bleah!” said Tesla.

  They spit the cake back onto their plates.