“What does it do?” Eddie asked.
Sly began circling Eddie, tapping his cane on the ground in a repetitive tap-tap, tap-tap. “It’s really quite simple. Imagine everything you are — every moment, every thought, every memory you’ve got locked up safe in your brain. Now, further imagine that someone, such as myself, discovered a way to unlock your brain, allowing all of those little bits of you to filter down into another home. A mechanical home. A repository for everything that is you.”
Eddie put two and two together. “You. You deposited yourself into this device.”
Sly smiled. “Correct.”
“That’s how you survived the flood.”
“Yes and no,” said Sly. “While my mind remained safe inside that box, my body was washed away with the rest of the Mad Scientists of Voltaic Valley.”
The whole scheme suddenly made sense. “My father...”
Sly turned to Roxie. “The boy seems to have pieced it together, don’t you think?” Roxie spat in his direction and missed.
“My father must have found this thing. He was always picking up old junk.”
“Junk?” Sly scowled, taking mock offence. “That’s my magnum opus you hold in your hands!”
Eddie shifted. He stared back down at the black, metal brick. “And you tricked him. Somehow you tricked him into trading places. He got downloaded into this thing, and you got uploaded to his body.”
“Downloaded? Uploaded?” Sly marveled. “I’ve been away far, far too long. There’s so much to catch up on. But, yes. We swapped places, as it were.”
“But... why?”
“Why?” Sly’s anger boiled to the surface. “Because he lived!”
“Who?” Roxie asked.
Sly whirled on her, cane raised. Roxie cowered beneath his fury. “Thomas Alva Edison!” he raged. “Who else? I spent almost a century in mechanical hibernation, years alone in the darkness. My only comfort, the knowledge that he lay dead at the bottom of this lake. But when my Jersey Devil located my Repository, I awoke to find the name Edison everywhere.”
“What are you going to use the belt for?” Eddie asked.
“What does it matter?” Sly laughed. “You have your father, I have the device. Our business is now complete. I’ll have my mechanical friend show you the way out.”
Pudge struggled to his feet. “We’re at the bottom of the lake. I can’t hold my breath long enough to get up top.”
Sly snorted. “That’s your problem.”
Eddie dropped the Repository. It landed on the ground with a hollow clunk.
“What are you doing?” Sly snarled. “That’s a delicate device!”
“I know, I know. It’s your magnum opus,” Eddie taunted. “But you know what? I think it’s a hoax. I don’t believe my father is inside that thing at all.”
Sly fumed, furious at being challenged. “You don’t believe me?” Sly screeched in his father’s voice. “Go ahead! There’s a button on the side. When pressed, he can hear you and you can hear him. Press it. Press it!”
Eddie picked it up. He turned the black brick around in his hands until he found the button. It was set in the side of the device below what appeared to be a small, mesh speaker. He pressed it.
“...anything to try to get his way. Don’t listen to him, Eddie. Please, don’t listen.” The voice that came from the speaker was rapid-fire and urgent, though it sounded nothing like his father. Instead, it was like one of those tinny, artificial voices that old, electronic toys made. Barely a human voice at all.
“You see,” said Sly, obviously proud.
“Doesn’t sound like him,” Eddie scoffed.
“Of course it doesn’t! The speech you’re hearing is the product of a vibrating diaphragm. Oh, what’s the point?” Sly pointed his cane at his metal creature. “Release them into the depths. Begin with Mr. Edison here. I grow weary of his company.”
The Jersey Devil clamped a claw around Eddie’s wrist and lifted him up off his feet. He winced as he felt his bones grind together, but he managed to hold tight to the black box with his free hand, if only barely.
Just as Sly turned away, a large beaker struck the ground next to him, exploding in a cloud of shattered glass. Sly turned in time to see Roxie picking up another beaker, preparing to throw it as well.
“What are you doing?” Eddie whispered to her.
“Buying you time to come up with a plan,” Roxie whispered back. “So... come up with a plan, will you?”
Pudge tried to tip over a workbench, but it was bolted to the floor. Instead, he swept his arms across its surface, sending boxes of machine parts scattering across the floor. “Yo, Slime!” he shouted. “Clean up on aisle three.”
As Sly started for Pudge, Roxie beaned him with a particularly heavy gear. Enraged, Sly swung his cane her way, and as he did so, a bolt of electricity shot out of the end. It struck Roxie square in the chest, causing her already wild hair to stand up straight. She was thrown out of her mismatched shoes as she absorbed the force of the jolt.
“You like to pick on girls, huh? Big man.” Pudge shot Eddie a look that told him Pudge was about to do something amazingly stupid.
Which he did. He turned his back on Sly, dropped the back of his pants a few inches and mooned the evil genius.
Sly was flummoxed. “I’ll teach you some respect,” he sputtered.
He swung his cane in Pudge’s direction. A second bolt of electricity caught Pudge in the rump, causing him to howl like an injured dog. He toppled over, every muscle in his body twitching violently with the burst.
“Enough of this foolishness,” Sly said. “It’s time I took my leave.” He grabbed the belt and cinched it about his waist.
“Wait!” Eddie shouted at Sly. “Before you go, there’s something I need to know.”
Curious, Sly considered Eddie. The boy’s companions were both out of commission. No harm in indulging the boy his final question. “And what might that be?”
“Come over here.”
Sly grinned. “If you think I’ll step within kicking distance you’ll be sorely disappointed. Still, I’ll come closer, if you wish.” He walked until he was standing directly in front of Eddie, dangling in the grip of his mechanized servant.
Eddie stared at the man. He had so longed to see his father’s face again, but to see it twisted by the malignant Sly nearly broke his heart. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
Sly’s eyebrows shot up, and he almost doubled over with laughter. “I’ve traveled over a hundred years into the future without the assistance of a time device, kept myself sane whilst trapped inside a mechanical box and reemerged not only with the means to return to my own time and bring the great Thomas Edison to justice but with a brand new body to boot. And you ask if I think I’m pretty smart?”
Sly made a short circle with his cane, and the mechanical monster gripped Eddie’s wrist even harder. He felt it pop.
“Yes,” Sly sneered. “I do believe I’m pretty smart indeed.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me about the upgrades I made to the belt that’s around your waist?”
Sly’s face dropped. He quickly glanced down at the device buckled about him. His hands flew to his waist to remove it, and as he did so, Eddie pursed his lips and whistled as loud as he could.
He felt his stomach drop as time came to a screeching halt. Not quite a halt, but near enough. And not for him, but for everyone but him.
Eddie could see Sly’s hands moving ever so slowly toward the buckle. Thirty seconds. That’s all he had. Aside from upgrading the belt’s charge capacity, he had built in a thirty-second remote delay. Not a very practical upgrade – that is, unless someone who wasn’t operating the belt might happen to want to give themselves a brief moment to take control of the situation.
Someone like Eddie, that is.
He glanced over at Roxie and Pudge. Both sprawled on the floor, victims of Sly’s electric shocks. No time to worry about them right now. He had work to do, and the clock was ticking.
Eddie hooked one leg behind the Jersey Devil’s back, using it to draw him nearer to the thing. “This sure would be easier if I had two hands and wasn’t dangling three feet off the floor,” he thought.
Twenty seconds. Not enough time! “Don’t rush,” a voice in his head said. “One step at a time.”
He set the black box back into the mechanical creature’s open belly, then reached inside and began pulling out wires. Step one: ground the box. Step two: create a static link. Step three...
He was just completing his last connection when his stomach flipped again, and he felt the air, which had gone heavy and stale at the commencement of the thirty seconds, lighten considerably.
The sound of the time travel belt dropping to the floor made Eddie look back toward Sly.
“What upgrades?” growled Sly. Eddie didn’t say a word.
The man wearing his father’s body limped over to where Roxie lay in a shivering heap. He placed the tip of his cane directly over her forehead. “Tell me, or I shall scramble the girl’s brain.”
Roxie lifted her head ever so slightly. Eddie could see that all of her moxie had fled – Roxie was terrified.
Eddie twisted around until he could look the Jersey Devil straight in the eye. “You there?” he shouted.
The metal beast let loose with a piercing whistle. A whistle that slowly morphed into a scream, then a gasp.
“I’m here,” the creature said.
Two things happened at once. First, the claw that had held Eddie above the ground opened, dropping him to the floor. Second, the Jersey Devil reached out and grabbed hold of the belt.
“What are you doing? No!” cried Sly. He pointed his cane at the beast. Nothing happened. The monstrosity raised the belt above its head with both claws as if it would rip the thing apart. Eddie rose and stood in front the mechanized beast.
“Stop!” Sly shrieked. He stepped away from Roxie. “What do you want? Tell me, it’s yours. You want your friends back on the surface? Fine.” He twisted the top of his cane. A hum filled the room and then... poof! Roxie flickered out of view.
Sly pointed his cane at Pudge. “Hey, wait a minute,” said Pudge, but before he could complete his thought, he too flickered out of sight.
“They’re safe?” Eddie asked, his voice steely.
“Yes, I swear,” said Sly.
“Up on the surface?”
“Yes, blast you!” Sly hissed. “Now, put the belt down.”
Eddie glanced back at the Jersey Devil. “You heard the man, Dad.”
“You got it, Sport,” the creature boomed.
Sly’s face went white. “Sport?”
Eddie stepped aside as the hulking metal brute dashed the belt to the ground. It raised one of its silver hooves and brought it down with a crunch. Sparks flew as Eddie’s father, his mind now housed inside the monster’s head, stomped on the device over and over until there was nothing left but bits of metal, glass and shredded pieces of leather.
Eddie squared off with Sly. The man was quivering with rage. “I guess you’re stuck here in the present with us,” Eddie said, sounding braver than he actually felt.
Sly raised his cane. His father took a clanking step forward, ready to launch himself toward the man who had stolen his body.
“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Edison. But don’t you worry. If I could master the nuts and bolts of my own time, imagine what I can accomplish today. I’ll rise again, stronger than ever. And when I do, you shall be the first person on whom I will call. Until then...”
Sly swung his cane toward one of the enormous windows that lined the wall of the lab. An electric bolt shot from the end, hitting the fortified glass. The window cracked, tendrils of splintering glass spreading out across its surface like a spider’s web.
Eddie caught one last look at Sly, one last look before he disappeared in a flash of shimmering light. The expression on the man’s face was one of seething hate.
Bill Edison wrapped his metal arms around his son as the window shattered, water rushing in. “Hold on!”
Before he knew what was happening, Eddie was flying upward toward the broken window. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and took the biggest breath he could.
They hit the incoming water with such force that Eddie must have lost consciousness momentarily. When he came to, he was lying on the beach, the Jersey Devil standing over him. He coughed up a gallon of lake water, but other than that he was okay.
“Where’d you learn that little trick?” his father asked. “Shifting me from the Repository into this?” He banged his new metal chest.
“From Abel. He may be confused about a lot of things, but he makes a lot of sense.”
His father leaned down to face his son, his blazing red eyes dimming ever so slightly. “I’ve missed you, Sport.”
“I’ve missed you too, Dad,” Eddie said, trying to keep from crying and failing miserably. “More than you know.”
His father put his powerful, steel arms about him. “Let’s get you home.”
It was the middle of the night when the Jersey Devil dropped Eddie off at his home.
“I won’t be far off,” his father had said. “Take care of your mother, Sport. Let’s not tell her anything until I’m out of this... this...” He couldn’t finish. Eddie heard the mechanical equivalent of a sob welling up within the creature’s metal chest, and he gave his father one last hug.
Its wings beating like industrial fans, the metal beast lifted up into the night sky and disappeared just as the porch light came on. The front door opened, and there stood his mother, her robe pulled tight around her, a look of both anger and relief on her face.
Eddie got the scoop while sitting crouched down in his father’s chair in the living room while his mother stalked back and forth. Shortly after Eddie had ‘borrowed’ Lance’s car, the police had shown up at the house. When Martha had gone to Eddie’s room to retrieve him, she was shocked to find Reggie perched on the bed spouting, “I don’t feel so good,” over and over again in between rej-jips.
One phone call from Martha, and Eddie’s mother had turned around, abandoning her meeting in the city to instead join the search for her son.
It was only Jimmy Ticks’ insistence to police that Eddie was trying to save him from a pack of bullies when he took Lance’s car that kept Eddie from facing more serious repercussions. As it was, he knew he would be on the Mustache Mafia’s hit list. Oh, would he ever.
The next day, Roxie and Pudge had shown up at his door. From the stern welcome Eddie’s mother gave them, they knew their friend was in hot water. They also knew he was safe, and Eddie was relieved to learn that they were as well.
The fallout of his adventure consisted of being grounded for a month, having to deposit his lawn mowing money into an account to partially reimburse Lance for his wheels and, since he hadn’t had any time to come up with a science project for Mr. Hubbard’s class, Eddie knew he’d be facing some serious repercussions.
So it was that Eddie found himself fidgeting in Mr. Hubbard’s class that last day of school. After the de-wigging incident, the crusty old teacher had decided to abandon any hopes of fooling people into thinking he had hair and, instead, had gone to the barbershop on the boardwalk and let them shave his head. Eddie had already heard kids whisper chrome dome behind Mr. Hubbard’s back.
Jimmy Ticks had swapped seats with the kid to Eddie’s left so he could be closer to his new friend. Every time Eddie glanced over, he’d catch Jimmy staring at him, a grin on his face. Ah, well. Befriending Jimmy Ticks was a small price to pay.
An overeager girl was wrapping up her science presentation — the exciting effects of watering bean sprouts with energy drinks. Mr. Hub
bard kept watching the clock.
Somehow, Roxie had managed to pull off her presentation without a hitch. She had probably already completed it before the Jersey Devil whisked her away from the bowling alley. Pudge didn’t fare half as well. Pudge stumbled through a presentation everyone in the room could tell was a last-minute effort, but at least he had a project to present.
“Mr. Edison?” Hubbard asked. “Should I take it from your empty desk that you are unprepared for this, the most important part of your grade?”
Eddie didn’t meet his glance.
Mr. Hubbard shook his head. “What a shame. Not only have you deprived your classmates of a presentation, you’ve just guaranteed yourself the next month in summer school.” Eddie could hear Pudge give a sympathetic moan.
Presentations over, Hubbard made a final note in his grade book and slapped it shut. The class tensed, ready to make a break for the door. “Wait,” Hubbard said, tapping his watch. “You’re mine for one more minute. And with that time, I’d like to let you all know that you have been the most lackadaisical, uninspired class that I have ever had the misfortune to...”
The bell rang — forty-five seconds early. “Too bad, Hubbard,” Eddie thought.
Kids rushed the door, knocking into each other to escape their fifth grade teacher and get down to the business of enjoying the summer break.
“Summer school students stay behind,” Hubbard commanded. “I’ve got business to take care of with you.” Eddie and the other few unfortunates who had had their summers robbed from them remained seated.
Jimmy Ticks rose and leaned over Eddie’s desk. “Wanna go play ball or something later, friend?”
Eddie shook his head. “Can’t. I’m grounded.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe I can come over to your house. I’ve got a new card game. Friendly Wizards. Could be fun.”
Eddie tried to hide his grimace with a grin. “Sure, Jimmy.” At that, Jimmy bounded away like a happy dog.
The Mad Scientists of New Jersey (Volume 1) Page 13