Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

by Bob Pflugfelder

  Berg stepped in front of Tesla and put up his hands.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Those day passes of yours mean that you can be in the museum, but you can’t just go wandering around wherever you want. Stick close to your uncle. I’ll let Ms. Wharton-Wheeler know you want to talk to her the next time I see her.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Tesla said.

  “No prob, little missy. Keep your noses clean, kids.”

  As he walked off, Berg pulled out a flashlight, switched it on, and swung the beam this way and that as if expecting to find “punks” lurking behind every display case.

  “Great,” Nick sighed as he watched the guard walk away. “What do we do now?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s obvious,” Tesla said. “We know Ms. Wharton-Wheeler went out to lunch and we know where she’s been spending all her time when she’s here. Which means we know where we should be going right now.”

  Tesla gave her brother a wide-eyed look that meant “Work it out.”

  It took him about two seconds. It would have been one second, but he disliked the answer so much he thought it through a second time just to be sure.

  “You think we should be going to the very place the security guard just ordered us not to go,” he said.

  Tesla shrugged.

  “I prefer to look at it less as an order and more like a suggestion.”

  “Which you want us to disregard,” said Nick.

  Tesla ignored that comment, too. “The challenge,” she said, tapping a finger against her lower lip, “will be avoiding getting trapped inside when Ms. Wharton-Wheeler comes back.”

  “Getting trapped inside what?” Silas said. “You guys lost me after ‘What do we do now?’ ”

  DeMarco pointed at the closed exhibit on the second level.

  “Tez wants us to sneak in there and try to find out what that crabby curator lady’s been up to.”

  Tesla nodded approvingly. “Very good.” She grabbed DeMarco by the wrist and yanked his arm down to his side. “But maybe we shouldn’t be pointing …?”

  She jerked her head to the left.

  In the dark distance on the other side of the dinosaurs, a little circle of light bounced here and there. They watched as it landed on a pair of human and chimpanzee skeletons in a glass case.

  “All right, punks! Freeze!” Berg’s voice echoed through the atrium. The light lingered on the skeletons a little longer.

  Then a much quieter “Dang.”

  “Right,” DeMarco said. “Sorry.”

  “I see what you mean about getting trapped,” Nick said to Tesla. “If we’re all up there in the exhibit, we won’t see Ms. Wharton-Wheeler come back until she’s in there with us. And even if we have a lookout on the balcony, he won’t be able to see her come into the atrium. The entrance is right below the balcony and around a corner.”

  “You can see all the entrances from right here, though,” DeMarco pointed out. “Maybe we have one lookout up on the balcony and another down here.”

  “But then what’s the lookout supposed to do if he sees something?” Nick asked. “He can’t go shouting ‘Hey! Look out!’ without giving himself away. And it’s so dark in here that if he doesn’t shout, whoever’s watching from up there probably won’t notice him.”

  “Then why not use the darkness to our advantage?” Tesla asked. She nodded again at the beam from Berg’s flashlight, which was slowly working its way down one of the darkened corridors that branched off the atrium. “I mean, look how easy it is to see where that guy is. Light—that’s the answer.”

  “I don’t get that answer,” Silas said.

  “She’s talking about having our lookout use light to let us know if someone’s coming,” Nick explained. “But where’s the light gonna come from, Tez? We don’t have a flashlight. Is the lookout supposed to start a bonfire? Set off fireworks? Turn on the Bat—?”

  Nick’s words trailed off and he turned away, suddenly lost in thought.

  “Turn on the bat?” said Silas.

  “Now I don’t get it,” said DeMarco.

  Nick pointed at the entrance to the Hall of Genius.

  “The stars that Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler are looking at in there. They’re light-emitting diodes. LEDs,” he said. “There must be some spares somewhere. All we’d have to do is figure out how to power one and we’d have our own—”

  “Bat Signal!” Silas blurted out.

  “I love it!” said Tesla, grinning. And with that she darted toward the doors leading back to the Hall of Genius.

  Though usually Nick instinctively followed his sister when she rushed off on this or that mission, this time he lingered behind in the shadowy atrium, looking morose.

  “What’s the matter?” DeMarco asked him. “You figured out how to do it!”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “But I forgot I didn’t really want to do it in the first place.”

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  SUPER-CYBORG GADGET GLOVE

  FINGER #1 (INDEX FINGER): THE NICK SIGNAL

  THE STUFF

  • A comfortable, not-too-tight, not-too-bulky glove (see note below)

  • 1 10-mm ultra-high-brightness white LED bulb (Radio Shack item #3125355)

  • 1 CR2032 3-volt button battery

  • Hot-glue gun

  • 6 inches (15 cm) of 24-gauge solid speaker wire (you’ll need more for other projects, so buy a roll)

  • Scissors

  • Wire strippers

  • Electrical tape

  Note: You should carefully choose the glove that will act as the base for your super-cyborg gadget glove. It should be comfortable and allow you to easily move your fingers. A larger glove will give you plenty of space to attach all your gadgetry, so try one that’s a little bit big for your hand. Choose a glove that isn’t too thick, and avoid one made from fuzzy fabric such as wool or fleece; the fuzz will make it harder for the wires to make contact. Be sure to check with your parents before gluing wires, batteries, and other stuff onto anything from your family glove drawer!

  THE SETUP

  1. The speaker wire consists of two joined plastic-coated strands. Pull the strands apart so that you end up with two plastic-coated wires.

  2. Remove the plastic coating from the end of one of the wire strands, leaving enough bare wire to make a loop around the thumb of the glove (probably about 2 inches [5 cm]).

  3. Loop the bare wire around the tip of the glove’s thumb (check the length while wearing the glove to make sure the loop is big enough) and twist the end around the wire to secure it. Hot-glue the wire to the glove in a few spots to secure it.

  4. Run the plastic-covered part of the wire down the outside of the thumb toward the wrist and cut it so that it ends near the wrist. Remove about ½ inch (1.25 cm) of the plastic coating from free cut end. Hot-glue the wire in place somewhere on the side of the thumb.

  5. Take the other strand of separated speaker wire from step 1 and remove about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of the plastic coating from one end. Bend the bare wire over the glove’s index finger so that the free end is on the underside of the finger. Poke the end of the bare wire into the glove to help secure it; glue some of the plastic- covered wire to the glove fingertip. (Don’t cover the bare wire.)

  6. Bend the free length of this wire so that it runs down the back of the index finger. Cut it so that it ends at the base of the finger. Remove about ½ inch (1.25 cm) of the plastic from the free end.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Place the LED on the index finger on the knuckle closest to the hand, facing the fingertip. Twist the free end of the wire attached to the index finger around the longer (positive) LED wire.

  2. Cut a piece of leftover separated speaker wire that is long enough to reach from the LED to the free end of the wire attached to the thumb. Remove about ¾ inch (2 cm) of plastic from each end of this wire.

  3. Place the short (negative) wire of the LED on the top (negative side) of the battery. Place one end of the free wire that you just
cut underneath the battery against the bottom (positive side). Wrap electrical tape around the LED’s negative wire, the battery, and the end of the free wire. Leave the other (positive) LED wire (that you connected to the index finger wire in step 1) outside the tape.

  4. Adjust the LED so that it points forward when you bring together the tips of your thumb and index finger. Secure the light to the index finger by wrapping electrical tape around the battery and LED connections and around the whole finger. Keep the positive LED wire from touching the battery.

  5. Twist the remaining free wire end around the free end of the thumb wire. Cover all twisted-together wires with electrical tape.

  6. To activate the Nick Signal, touch the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger so that the bare wires connect. When the wires make contact, you complete an electrical circuit, which powers the light.

  It was Silas who came up with the glove idea.

  Nick and Tesla were tinkering with an LED and battery their uncle had found for them, trying to figure out how to hold the objects together, when Silas pointed at what looked like a loose flap of skin lying atop a toolbox nearby. It was actually a flesh-colored latex glove that Hiroko had brought in to slip over one of Plato’s hands. (The rest of the animatronic looked fine, but for some reason the Greek philosopher’s right hand was a ghastly sort of orange, as if he’d left it in a tanning bed about two hours too long. Replacing the new hand would have taken too much time, so Hiroko opted for a shortcut.)

  “Why not glue the light and the battery onto that?” Silas said. “Then the lookout could just wear it. It’d be like something Iron Man would have. Except, you know. Not iron.”

  Nick and Tesla looked at each other in amazement.

  “That’s actually a good idea,” said Nick.

  “I know,” said Tesla. “Except the latex probably wouldn’t be strong enough, and it might react with the glue.”

  Nick and Tesla had been working on the floor in the Hall of Genius, near Plato’s feet. Tesla crawled over to the toolkit, opened the lid, and began rooting through it. She pulled out a screwdriver, a monkey wrench, a soldering iron, two highlighter markers, a yo-yo, a scorched smoke detector, a stuffed (fake) rat (they hoped), and a half-eaten submarine sandwich. This being her uncle’s toolbox, none of the contents came as a surprise to Tesla. Until something spoke.

  “Hello! I’m Alan Turing!” said a man’s voice with a clearly bogus British accent. “I’m the genius who laid the groundwork for the modern computer by blah blah blah yada yada yada et cetera et cetera. Li li li la la la and so forth. How long will this keep recording, I wonder?”

  Tesla dug deeper into the toolbox and discovered that the voice was coming from a small metallic disk at the bottom. Several identical disks were scattered around it.

  The voice did more li li li la la la-ing before abruptly cutting off.

  “Uncle Newt,” Tesla said, “was that you?”

  Uncle Newt and Hiroko were working hard to get Darwin’s newly reattached head to turn to the left, toward a giant Galapagos iguana, instead of spinning in circles atop its neck as it had been for the last ten minutes.

  “Yeah,” Uncle Newt said. “I did some experimenting with recordable sound chips. Thought we might wire them onto some of the animatronic figures so we wouldn’t have to run all the sound files through the museum’s network. The chips have memory for only about 30 seconds of sound, though, which wouldn’t be enough. And the sound quality wasn’t up to snuff, either. Or so some people insisted.”

  “It sounded like you were standing in a cave with a pillow over your face,” Hiroko said. “And you can’t imitate an English accent.”

  “Says who? Pip, pip, cheerio and—darn it, Darwin! You keep messing everything up!”

  Darwin’s head had come loose again.

  Tesla went back to searching the toolkit and quickly found what she was looking for: a pair of dark work gloves.

  Half an hour later, one of the gloves had a battery and LED attached to it.

  “Aww,” Silas groaned as Tesla flicked the light on and off. “It would’ve been way cooler with that skin-looking glove. As if the light was built right into your hand, like you were a mandroid.”

  “Cyborg,” DeMarco corrected.

  “Whatever,” Silas said.

  “The important thing is that it works,” Tesla said. “Now we just have to hope Ms. Wharton-Wheeler takes really long lunch breaks.”

  “Yeah,” said DeMarco. “It’d stink if we spent all this time making a gadget glove to signal that she was back from lunch and it turned out she was back from lunch already.”

  Tesla took off the glove and started walking toward the lobby.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out if she’s back, right?” she asked.

  Silas and DeMarco followed her.

  Nick gulped, and then followed.

  At first it looked as if Uncle Newt and Hiroko were so busy with Darwin that they might not even notice the kids were leaving. But just as Tesla reached the big white partitions at the entrance, Hiroko called out to them.

  “Where are you going this time?” she asked.

  “We want to test the range of the signal glove we just made,” Tesla said.

  She held up the glove and gave the LED a couple quick flashes.

  Hiroko looked at Uncle Newt, obviously deferring to him. Nick and Tesla were his responsibility, after all. Would he just let them and their friends amble off unsupervised?

  Uncle Newt threw a quick glance at the glove.

  “Cool!” he said.

  Then he got back to work on Darwin’s rotating head.

  That’s one silver lining when your Mom and Dad disappear, thought Nick. You’re constantly worried about them, but, man, you sure do get away with a lot.

  Back in the museum’s big, gloomy lobby atrium, Tesla handed out the assignments. She and Nick would sneak into Ellen Wharton-Wheeler’s second-floor exhibit because they were more likely to spot evidence of high-tech sabotage. DeMarco would stand guard on the balcony outside the exhibit because he was small and quick and less likely to be spotted by anyone—a roaming guard, say—down on the first level. And Silas would be the first-floor lookout, watching for Wharton-Wheeler while stationed outside the Hall of Genius, because that meant he wouldn’t have to go anywhere and therefore couldn’t get lost. (Tesla didn’t mention that last reason out loud, but Nick figured it out.)

  “Excellent!” Silas said. “So that means I’m the one with the cyborg gadget glove! Gimme, gimme!”

  “Okay, okay. Just be careful with it,” Tesla said as she handed it over. Until that moment, she hadn’t considered what might happen to the glove if Silas were the one using it. She tried not to think about what his enthusiasm might mean for all the careful wiring they’d just done. “You saw how to turn the light on and off, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw.”

  Silas tugged the glove onto his hand. He brought his thumb and index finger together, completing the electrical circuit that lit up the LED.

  “E.T., phone hoooooome,” he croaked, poking the glowing finger at DeMarco.

  “What are you talking about?” DeMarco said, swatting Silas’s hand away.

  “You’ve never seen E.T.? What’s wrong with you, man? It’s a classic.”

  “Silas,” Tesla hissed. “Turn off that light before someone spots it.”

  “Right. Of course. Sorry.”

  Silas separated his thumb and finger, and the LED went dark.

  “Don’t turn it on again unless you see something, understand?” Tesla said.

  “We should have a system for the signal. Like Morse code,” Nick suggested. “Maybe a short flash and a long flash if Ms. Wharton-Wheeler comes in, but two shorts and a long if Berg or one of the other security guards is heading up the stairs to the second level. And how about two longs and a short if someone else comes along and … oh, forget it.”

  Silas had stopped listening and was once
again aiming the lit-up LED at DeMarco.

  “P-shew! P-shew!” Silas said, making the internationally recognized sound for “I’m shooting you with a ray gun.” “Don’t make me mad, dude,” he said. “I’ve got a laser on my hand. Oooh! That could be my super- hero name. Laserhand! P-shew!”

  Tesla stepped between Silas and DeMarco.

  “If you see someone coming our way,” she said to Silas slowly, between gritted teeth, “make—lots—of—blinkies—with—the—pretty—light. Okay?”

  “Lots of blinkies. Got it.”

  “Wonderful,” said Tesla with a tight smile.

  She turned to her brother and muttered, “Let’s go, before I kill him.”

  “Good idea.”

  And off they went.

  As Tesla, Nick, and DeMarco headed for the staircase that led to the second level, they passed near the other closed wing on the first floor. Unlike the partitions at the entrance to the Hall of Genius, these tall white doors were shut tightly.

  From somewhere on the other side of the doors came the sound of voices and whirring, whining machines.

  “You know what I think is back there?” Tesla said, keeping her voice low. “A you-know-what.”

  “I bet you’re right,” DeMarco agreed.

  “Don’t get too curious—the you-know-what has nothing to do with sabotage in the Hall of Genius,” Nick warned them. “Just hope the doors to Ms. Wharton-Wheeler’s exhibit aren’t totally closed like those are.”

  And they weren’t. When Tesla, Nick, and DeMarco reached the curator’s wing on the second level, they found a gap between the partitions that was just big enough for them to slip through.

  Before passing through, however, the kids crouched outside the doors and listened. They didn’t hear a thing. And when they cautiously peeped their heads into the exhibit, there wasn’t much to see, either. It looked a lot like the lobby: dim lights, dark shapes, deep shadows.

  And no movement. No people.

  Or at least none that they could see.

  “Well, I guess we’re going in,” Tesla said. “Watch out for Ms. Wharton-Wheeler, DeMarco. And that Berg guy. If he thinks you are a punk, there’s no telling what he might do.”