by David Lubar
“No way.”
“Kilns?”
“Uh-uh.”
“The history of clay?”
“Not a chance.”
“Then you’re in the right place.” She put down the needles and pointed to an elevator in the middle of the rear wall. As I walked over, the doors slid open.
I stepped inside. Is this a mistake?
I had no way to answer that question. The doors closed. There was a seat against the back wall—the kind you see on a roller coaster.
“Please have a seat.”
The recorded voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. It sounded friendly, like my aunt Nina. I sat.
The bar dropped down over my head, cushioning my chest.
“Please remove any loose items.”
I didn’t have any loose items, except maybe my fingers and toes.
“Please hold on.”
I gripped the handles.
The elevator car rotated a quarter turn. Something in the walls hummed like a jet engine warming up.
“Yiiiikes!”
I was thrust hard against the back of the seat as the car shot forward. The acceleration grew until I was pinned flat. I had no idea how fast I was moving, but I was pretty sure I’d never gone this fast before in an elevator. Or even a train. After a couple minutes, the car suddenly swung around the other way.
“Whooaaaa!” I shouted like I was on a carnival ride. It was actually pretty awesome. I felt more pressure as I hurtled backwards. I guess the car was slowing down as quickly as it had sped up.
The car coasted to a stop. It rotated again, and the door opened. As I stepped out, I noticed there was a whole row of elevator doors on either side of me. Each had a number on it. Mine was thirteen.
Mr. Murphy was waiting for me. Once again, he was dressed pretty normally, in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie. “Hello, Nathan. Thank you for coming.”
I couldn’t remember whether I’d ever told him my name. I guess it didn’t matter. Anyone who wanted to learn my name would be able to find it out pretty easily. I handed him the bagel phone. “What was all of that stuff with the buses?”
“We had to make sure you weren’t being followed.”
I was going to ask who would possibly want to follow me, but I realized I was face-to-face with at least one person who fit that description. So I guess there could be others. I also realized he’d done a terrible job of making sure I wasn’t followed.
“How’d you know my friends were with me?”
“I didn’t.” He flashed me a smug smile. “Until now.”
I managed to keep from returning the smile. That was easy enough—dead kids only smile when they want to. I guess he was trying to show me how clever he was. I decided not to let him know that I—or at least Abigail—was pretty clever, too. Probably more clever than he was. Even if she didn’t have a cool elevator that moved as fast as a rocket ship. Or robot squirrels.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.
“I’m a recruiter for BUM.”
“You’re recruiting bums? Are you calling me names?”
“Be You Em,” he said, spelling the name. “The Bureau of Useful Misadventures.” He spoke the words as if they were the name of someone he loved. “As far as I can tell, you’ve certainly had a whopper of a misadventure. Something drastic has happened to you.”
I was about to tell him he was wrong when he held up his hand to stop me. He turned and walked down a hallway. I followed him.
“Where are we?” I didn’t even know if I was still in New Jersey. The elevator had gone so fast, I figured I could be in New York, Pennsylvania, or Delaware. Maybe even Maryland.
“That’s a secret.” He leaned over until his mouth was right next to my ear and whispered, “If you haven’t figured it out already, this is not exactly a public organization.”
He stepped into a room on his left. There was a huge flat-panel screen on one wall, even bigger than the TV Adam’s parents had. He picked up a remote control and pressed a button.
I saw myself on the field with Mookie, right after I’d missed the football. The camera zoomed to a shot of my index finger as I made it crawl back to me. The video showed me gluing the finger on, and only ended when I’d caught sight of the car and started to run across the field. Then it looped back to the beginning.
“Very impressive,” Mr. Murphy said. “But also very dangerous for you. I suspect this isn’t the first bone you’ve broken, is it?”
“No.” I didn’t see any reason to lie about that. “I’ve snapped a couple.”
“But I also suspect you have some very interesting abilities, beyond your control of severed parts. Is that correct?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t be modest, Nathan,” Mr. Murphy said. “We need to know. As I said, this is the Bureau of Useful Misadventures. We don’t care if you can tell M-and-M’s apart by taste or play the saxophone with your nose. We want to know if you can fly through the air or melt steel with your eyes.”
“I can do some stuff,” I admitted. “But I still don’t know what you want.”
Mr. Murphy pointed to a leather couch on the wall opposite the TV. “Have a seat, lad. I have a story to tell you.”
11
Strengthening the Offer
Isat. He pushed another button on the remote, then slipped into an easy chair that faced the couch. An old black-and-white photograph appeared on the screen, showing a kid who was maybe twelve or thirteen.
“In 1915, in a village near London, a boy just a little older than you was playing with fireworks. When he saw his mother coming, he panicked and shoved a large lit firecracker under his sweater. He blew a hole in his stomach. He lived, but he was left with a flap of skin covering this hole.”
“That’s pretty gross,” I said.
“And pretty useful. British troops used him to smuggle documents across enemy lines during the First World War. Nobody suspected a young boy. And even when the enemy searched him, the documents were safe. It’s highly unlikely anyone would give the scarred tissue of his stomach a close examination.”
“I guess that’s kind of cool.” I imagined what it would be like to be a spy, doing special work for my government.
“In 1943, in Appleton, Wisconsin, a teenager who was trying to fix a broken toaster jolted herself with enough electricity to melt her fillings. From that point on, she was able to intercept certain radio frequencies in her head. More important, and much harder to explain, her brain was able to unscramble coded messages. She proved to be very helpful in the war effort.”
“Kids are always messing around with stuff. I tried to take our toaster apart once.”
“Exactly.” Mr. Murphy nodded. “Young people have an endless capacity for experimenting with things that are better left alone. Often, the results are tragic. Rarely, one of these misadventures produces amazing results. As in your case.”
“But who are you?” I asked.
“I told you. We’re BUM.”
“I mean, are you with the government?”
“We’re independent. We were formed many years ago by an extraordinarily wealthy man who had done some bad things and wanted to make up for them. We serve many governments,” he said. “BUM provides assistance to the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and other allied democratic nations. We’re here to help the free world.”
That was good to hear. It sounded like Mr. Murphy was with the good guys. “What sort of things do you do?”
“Whatever needs doing,” he said.
“What’s with all the robots and stuff?” I asked.
“As I said, we have a huge supply of funds at our disposal. Potential agents like you come along rarely. We need to do something with our time and money while we search for candidates.”
“How’d you find me?”
“We have lots of ways to search for misadventures. For example, there are certain people who are much more likely to inspire an accident than the average cit
izen. We keep an eye on those people.”
“So you were watching—” I was about to say Abigail’s uncle. But I caught myself. I didn’t want to give Mr. Murphy any information, even if it was stuff he probably already knew.
He nodded. “Yes, we were keeping an eye on Zardo Goldberg. And we learned of his efforts to obtain the corpse flower. We knew it had highly promising properties, though we didn’t know the details. After we learned of his arrest, one of our agents went to the lab and saw the spill. He took a sample, which we analyzed. We’re still not sure about everything that could happen, but we suspected anyone exposed to this formula might suffer insomnia, among other things. I assume you aren’t sleeping.”
I shrugged and waited for him to continue.
“Along with various other methods of investigation, we began checking homes within twenty miles of the lab for online activity at night, especially in accounts where there hadn’t been any such activity previously. Your account popped right up. After that, I merely needed to see whether you were more than just a normal boy who had trouble sleeping.”
“So you were spying on me?” I didn’t like that idea.
“Well, we are spies. So, yes—we were spying on you. And we tracked your Internet usage. And, if I had to, I could listen to your phone calls, read your mail, and access your school records. But I don’t need to know those things. I want to learn about your abilities. What can you do? What use is your misadventure? But before we talk any further, I want to show you a good reason to cooperate with us.”
He got up from the chair and headed out the door. I couldn’t even guess what he was planning to show me. I was still pretty amazed by the fact that I’d taken a highspeed trip through a tunnel to a secret organization. At this point, nothing would surprise me.
We walked down the hall to a place that looked like a doctor’s examination room. There was a large table in the center of the floor, with some kind of machine above it. There was also a woman wearing a white lab coat. I wasn’t sure I liked that. The last time I’d been near a person in a lab coat, I’d been drenched with Hurt-Be-Gone and turned into a zombie.
“We haven’t had much time to investigate all the effects of the corpse flower. But we’re pretty sure your bones are growing brittle,” Mr. Murphy said. “We can fix that. Let me give you a small demonstration. Put your hand in here.” He placed a large plastic container in the middle of the table.
The machine had all kinds of wires attached to it. I had the feeling it had been put together pretty quickly. “It won’t explode, will it?”
“Don’t be absurd. Not everything we use explodes,” Mr. Murphy said.
I guess I had no reason not to trust him. And it wasn’t like my situation could get any worse. Even so, I hesitated.
The woman smiled at me. “Relax, hon. It won’t hurt.” She was pretty, with short dark hair and brown eyes. “We’re just going to use a light test dosage. It will strengthen your fingers, but only for a little while. I can’t do your whole body until I finish upgrading the power supply.”
I put my hand in the container.
“Go ahead, Dr. Cushing,” Mr. Murphy said.
Dr. Cushing went to a small refrigerator in one corner and took out a carton of milk. She filled the container, covering my hand. Then she pushed some buttons and turned a large black dial. I heard a deep hum. The sound rose to a whine. My hand started to tingle. My fingers felt warm, and then hot—but not so hot that they hurt. It was actually sort of nice. Tiny bubbles rose from the milk. The feeling, and the hum, lasted for a minute or two. Then they both faded. It was weird having any sort of pleasant feeling.
Dr. Cushing pointed to the sink. “You can take your hand out now.”
I pulled my hand from the milk and washed it off.
“Check out your fingers,” Mr. Murphy said.
I grabbed my right little finger and bent it a little. It didn’t snap off. I bent it harder. It was as strong as it used to be.
“This is great,” I said. That was the worst part of my zombie condition. Things broke too easily. I tried not to think about it too much. Now, it looked like there was hope. “You can do this to my whole body?”
Mr. Murphy nodded. “Absolutely. As soon as you agree to work for us and let us run some tests.”
“So, if I don’t work for you, you won’t help me?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sorry. That’s how it is. We might strive for the good of the free world, but we aren’t a charity.”
I actually kind of liked the idea of being a spy. Though I definitely didn’t want to smuggle documents inside my body. And I still thought superheroes were a lot cooler. “If I agree to work for you, what happens next?”
“First, we need to run some tests. We want to find out about your abilities. You must already know some of them, but there might be much more to discover. What do you say? Are you the newest member of BUM? Imagine how exciting it will be. I’ll even let you play with the squirrels.”
As much as I wanted them to strengthen my bones, I didn’t want to give him an answer before I talked with Mookie and Abigail.
I looked at the machine that had zapped my hand, and tried to memorize as much of a description as I could. It was made up of four different parts. There was some stuff written on the side of the parts. Abigail might know what it all meant. If BUM could strengthen my bones, maybe someone else could, too.
“Can I have some time to think about it?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he said. “But don’t take too long. If you’re already breaking fingers, your arms and legs aren’t too far behind.”
“We’ll need time to set up the tests, anyhow,” Dr. Cushing said.
“Monday?” Mr. Murphy asked her.
She nodded.
“Come here after school,” Mr. Murphy said. “Unless you decide you’re better off without our help.” He made a choking sound. It took me a moment to realize he was holding back a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I had an impulse to say something else, but I realized it was totally tasteless.”
“Don’t let that stop you,” I said. “I like tasteless stuff as much as you like exploding squirrels.”
“Well, all right. If you turn us down and your leg breaks off, don’t come crawling back to me.”
He chuckled. Dr. Cushing shook her head and sighed.
“Not bad,” I said. Despite his weirdness, I thought I might actually be able to get along with him.
He walked me back to the elevator. I sat and had another rocket ride, returning to the lobby at the Museum of Tile and Grout.
“What happened,” Mookie asked when I met back up with him and Abigail at the Gas ’n’ Snack.
I told them everything. After I described the machine to Abigail, I asked her, “Do you have any idea what it is?”
“I think so. It sounds like a modified neutron beam.” She paused, then smacked her forehead and said, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? They’re running it through a splitter, and then setting one half out of phase. The dissonance forces the cells to absorb calcium. You get it?”
“Not at all.”
“That’s okay. At least we know the technology exists to strengthen your bones.”
“Is there a machine like it anywhere else?” I asked. I figured if things didn’t work out with BUM, maybe I could go somewhere else to strengthen my bones. I kind of liked the idea of being a spy, but I didn’t like feeling that I had no choice.
“Not anywhere around here,” Abigail said. “They might have something like it at Fermi Lab, or CERN.”
“Now you’re just making up names to impress us,” Mookie said.
Abigail ignored him.
“Could you build one?” I asked.
“Sure,” Abigail said. “If I had ten or fifteen thousand dollars for the parts.
“Whoa,” Mookie said. “That’s a whole lot of money.”
“It’s a lot of parts,” Abigail said.
“I guess I just have to agree to work for them,” I said. “That should be okay.”
“You don’t even know what they want you to do,” Abigail said.
“I’ll find out soon enough.” I flexed my strengthened fingers, then gave Mookie a hard poke. It would be great if all my bones were this strong again.
12
Winging It
Mookie showed up at my door at noon on Saturday. “Your problems are solved,” he said. “You can start saving up for your own bone machine. You’re going to make a ton of money today. Abigail isn’t the only one with great ideas.”
“What are you talking about?”
He held up a folded newspaper and pointed to an ad. “There’s a hot-wing-eating contest this afternoon at the new supermarket. You can win it easy.”
“But I don’t eat.”
“You don’t need to eat. But you can eat. And you won’t get sick or anything. You’ll be able to stuff your gut a lot better than anyone else. How cool is that?”
“I’m too skinny,” I said.
“Are you kidding? Have you seen those champion hot dog eaters? They make you look like a blob. They’re totally thin.”
“I don’t know.” I thought about the last time I’d forced food out of my stomach. It hadn’t been fun.
“I’ve got two words for you,” Mookie said.
“What?”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“That’s three words.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mookie said. “The dollars part isn’t a word. It’s that ess thing with the lines through the middle.” He stuck out two fingers and drew lines in the air.
“It’s a word if you say it.”
“It’s also first prize.”
“We need at least ten thousand dollars for the parts to make one of those machines,” I said.
“So after we win this, we’ll only need like . . .” He counted on his fingers for a moment or two, then shrugged and said, “Five hundred dollars less.”
“It just doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“Come on. It will be awesome. You’re a winner, Nate. Haven’t you noticed? You’re winning everything these days.”