Nick and Tesla's Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove

by Bob Pflugfelder

  He paused for a moment while adding a Migraine Monkey Missile Test refrigerator magnet to the pile Silas was already holding.

  “What’s with the glove?” he asked.

  Silas had refused to take off the gadget glove even though it wasn’t needed anymore for signaling.

  “I’m a cyborg!” he said, lighting up his finger.

  “That’s cyborg,” DeMarco corrected. “No, wait, you got it right.”

  “Uh, okey-dokey,” Mojo said and dropped the magnet onto Silas’s pile, taking a big step backward. “Well, I guess I’d better get back to work. Thanks for dropping by.”

  He closed the door to his office.

  Then the kids heard a loud click as he locked it.

  “Thanks, Silas,” Nick grumbled. “Now he thinks we’re nuts.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said Tesla. Unlike her brother, she sounded like she meant it. “I was afraid he was going to start rapping. Anyway, how’d he say to get to Ms. Mavis’s office? Right, left, right?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Left, right, right.”

  “No,” said DeMarco. “Left, left, right.”

  Tesla slumped and turned to Silas.

  “Go ahead. You may as well say it,” she told him.

  “Say what?”

  “How do you think Mr. Jones told us to go?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure he said right, right, right, right.”

  “Of course you are,” Tesla said, heaving a resigned sigh. “Fine. Let’s just start walking. We’re bound to get somewhere eventually.”

  She was right. There were more wrong turns, but once Nick started leaving Migraine Monkey Missile Test merchandise behind like a trail of bread crumbs, they at least stopped doubling back on themselves. After several long minutes of wandering, they finally ended up in a corridor lined with offices and work cubicles.

  Here, at last, the museum seemed alive. A dozen people in business clothes were talking loudly and quickly on phones, scurrying here and there with paperwork, chattering at each other over cubicle walls. Every conversation seemed to be about the same thing: the museum’s reopening gala.

  The kids got a few curious looks, but the day passes hanging around their necks seemed to do the trick and the looks never turned into stares. The only person who talked to them was a middle-aged man who glanced up from his work, smirked at the CDs and T-shirts they were still carrying, and said, “So Mojo got to you, too, huh?”

  A Migraine Monkey Missile Test calendar hung on the wall behind him.

  A few seconds later, they finally passed Katherine Mavis’s office. The door was open, and they could see the director sitting at her desk. She seemed a bit young to be in charge of a museum—there wasn’t even a wisp of gray in her blonde hair—but she was most definitely head honcho. As the kids watched, she was simultaneously chewing out someone on the phone, pounding out an e-mail, and eating ramen noodles out of a plastic cup.

  “What do you mean Channel 5 isn’t sending a camera crew?” she barked, sending a chunky mist of half-chewed noodles spraying over her computer. “You told me you could leverage major media, maybe take us viral, and so far all we’ve got confirmed for coverage are a couple local newspapers and a lousy NPR station! The opening of a Trader Joe’s gets more traction!”

  She noticed the kids peeking in at her, flashed them an unconvincing here-and-gone smile, and waved.

  The kids waved back and then darted off around the nearest corner.

  “We’ve got to get her out of there so we can get a look at her message to Ms. Wharton-Wheeler,” Tesla said once they had reached a safe distance.

  “I don’t know if that’s such a great idea, Tez,” Nick said.

  “Yeah. What about all those other people back there?” said DeMarco. “I think they’re gonna notice if we just barge into their boss’s office and start fooling around on her computer.”

  Tesla nodded. “You’re right,” she said.

  Nick looked relieved.

  “We’ve got to get all of them out of there.”

  Nick looked horrified.

  “How are we going to get a dozen people to leave their offices all at once?” DeMarco asked.

  “Free food!” said Silas.

  Tesla shook her head. “Nah. What are we supposed to do? Bake ’em a cake?”

  “Stink bombs!” said Silas.

  Tesla kept shaking her head. “Which we’re going to get where?” she said.

  “Fire alarm!” said Silas.

  Tesla suddenly stopped shaking her head.

  “No, Tez,” said Nick. “Setting off a fire alarm when there’s not a fire is illegal and unsafe and immoral and … just no. No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Don’t worry. I know how wrong it would be to set off a fire alarm,” said Tesla.

  She smiled in a way that told Nick he’d won the battle but lost the war. Then she added: “That’s why we’re going to build our own alarm.”

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  SUPER-CYBORG GADGET GLOVE

  FINGER #2 (MIDDLE FINGER):

  TESLA’S FALSE-ALARM ALARM

  THE STUFF

  • Your gadget glove (you know—the one with the signal light on it!)

  • 1 battery-operated buzzer/alarm (we suggest a 90dB Piezo Pulse, Radio Shack item #2062399)

  • Wire strippers

  • Scissors

  • A finger’s length of 24-gauge solid speaker wire

  • 1 9-volt battery

  • 1 9-volt battery connector

  • Hot-glue gun

  • Electrical tape

  THE SETUP

  1. Wire the middle finger of the glove using a single strand of separated speaker wire, following the same technique as for the index finger (see this page): Remove about 1 inch (2 cm) of the plastic coating from one end of the speaker wire. Bend the bare wire over the glove’s middle finger so that the free end is on the underside of the finger. Poke the end of the wire into the glove to help secure it and then glue it to the glove fingertip. Bend the free length of wire so that it runs down the back of the middle finger. Cut it at the base of the finger. Trim ½ inch (1.25 cm) of the plastic from the free end.

  2. Hot-glue the buzzer onto the back of the glove.

  3. Cut the middle finger wire and the black wire from the buzzer to length so that they meet. Remove about ½ inch (1.25 cm) of the plastic coating from the buzzer wire and twist the wires together.

  4. Hot-glue the 9-volt battery to the underside of the glove wrist.

  5. Attach the 9-volt battery connector to the battery.

  6. Connect the battery connector’s red wire to the buzzer’s red wire.

  7. Connect the black battery wire to the thumb wire (see this page).

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Cover the twisted wires with electrical tape.

  2. To sound the alarm, touch your middle fingertip to the thumb tip. The alarm will sound for as long as the wires touch.

  The kids were back in the Hall of Genius. Tesla had noticed a smoke detector in her uncle’s toolbox earlier that day. It was the kind you’d find in most homes—a thick white plastic disk—except that half of it was scorched black and one side seemed to be slightly melted.

  “Uncle Newt,” Tesla said as she pulled it out, “why do you have a smoke detector in your toolbox?”

  Uncle Newt was standing behind Henry Ford with his arms wrapped around the animatronic figure’s chest. He was trying to straighten Ford’s back, but it looked like he was giving the inventor the Heimlich maneuver.

  “I’ve worked at places where safety protocols weren’t up to my standards, so I bring backup,” he said.

  “You have safety standards?” Nick said. He’d once seen his uncle ignore a fire that was spreading up his lab coat because he didn’t want to stop an experiment. “I can’t take my eye off this test tube,” Uncle Newt had said. “Why don’t you just throw a bucket of water on me or something?”

  Tesla turned over the smoke detector.
The power light was off.

  “Does this thing even work?” she asked.

  “Come to think of it, I’m not sure,” Uncle Newt said. “The last time I used it, I blew the place up.”

  “Man,” Silas said with a laugh, “remind me never to go to work with you!”

  “Silas,” DeMarco said, “we are at work with him.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Silas stopped laughing. He looked around at the various arms and hands and heads still scattered around the Hall of Genius. “Remind me never to do it again.”

  Tesla took out a screwdriver from the toolbox and opened the smoke detector’s battery compartment.

  It was empty.

  So much for her uncle’s high safety standards.

  “Would you mind if we took this apart?” Tesla asked her uncle. “We’ll get you a new one. With a battery.”

  “Sure. Fine. Go for it.”

  Uncle Newt tightened his grip on Henry Ford’s chest and pulled. The figure straightened to its full height and then, as Uncle Newt let go, quickly doubled over at the waist, arms flopping to the floor.

  “Wonderful,” Uncle Newt said with a sigh. “Now he’s doing yoga.”

  “I’ll be over to help you in a second,” Hiroko told him. She was scrolling through the exhibit’s computer controls, looking for glitches. She wasn’t finding any.

  Next, she turned to look at the kids.

  “I’m sorry you’re all stuck here while we have to keep working. I hope you’re finding ways to amuse yourselves.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tesla said. She started trying to pry apart the smoke detector. “We are.”

  Nick was nearby, leaning against Sigmund Freud’s chair.

  “I think you and I define ‘amuse’ differently,” he said to his sister.

  Tesla just smiled as the top of the smoke detector popped off in her hands.

  Despite Nick’s reluctance, he helped his sister remove the alarm horn—a round component about the size of a quarter—from the smoke detector. Silas and DeMarco hovered nearby, watching.

  “Now what?” Silas asked.

  “We connect this horn to the power source and wiring we’ve already got handy, so to speak,” Tesla said.

  She looked at the gadget glove, which was still on Silas’s hand.

  Silas grinned. “Excellent,” he said, holding out his hand as if he expected Tesla to slip the alarm horn on it like a ring. “Do it!”

  “You’re going to have to take off the glove, Silas,” Nick told him.

  Silas snatched his hand back.

  “What? No! It feels like a part of me now. I don’t know if I can take it off.”

  “Silas, I have a plan,” Tesla said, keeping her voice low so that Uncle Newt and Hiroko wouldn’t hear. “And for it to work, the person using the alarm—and the glove—needs to be the quickest one, the quietest one, and the best hider. Do you think that’s you?”

  “Umm … yes?” Silas said.

  Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco shook their heads incredulously. Silas outweighed each of them by at least thirty pounds.

  “Okay,” Silas finally said. “You win.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, he peeled off the glove.

  “I’m gonna miss being a cyborg,” he said.

  Ten minutes later, the new and improved gadget glove was ready. Maybe.

  “Hey, guys,” Tesla said to Uncle Newt and Hiroko. “There might be a little beep in a second. It’s just us, okay?”

  Hiroko was still hunched over the controls.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Uncle Newt just gave a thumbs-up sign without looking away from the bent spectacles he was trying to put back on the face of Carl Jung.

  Tesla moved the thumb of the glove toward the alarm-horn wire on the middle finger. The wires connected and…

  A sudden screeching NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE made everyone jump.

  Tesla released the connection, and the alarm horn went silent.

  “Well, that definitely works,” Nick said, rubbing his ringing ears.

  “Why do you need your glove to beep?” Uncle Newt asked as he bent down to retrieve Jung’s eyeglasses, which in a moment of synchronicity had flown out of his fingers when the alarm went off.

  “It’s a long story,” Tesla said.

  She was hoping her uncle was too busy to want to hear it, and she was right. He simply went back to fumbling with the Swiss psychiatrist’s glasses.

  “So,” said DeMarco, “the quickest, quietest, and most daring of us gets to wear the glove.”

  “Who said anything about most daring?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, I added that because I know who Tesla was talking about.” DeMarco smiled smugly. “Me. Right, Tez?”

  “But I can be quick and quiet and daring,” Silas whined.

  He was staring at the glove so intently that Tesla almost expected him to call it “my precious” and try to snatch it away.

  “You have an important role to play, too,” she told Silas.

  “I do?”

  “Absolutely! Quick—nod your head and say um-hmm.”

  Silas nodded his head and said “um-hmm.”

  “Wow! Perfect!” Tesla exclaimed.

  Silas brightened a bit.

  “So what’s my job?” Nick asked.

  “That depends,” Tesla said. “Do you want to distract or snoop?”

  “What if I don’t want to do either?”

  “Then we’ll have to let Silas do all the talking.”

  “Um-hmm,” Silas said, nodding. “Um-hmm. Um-hmm.”

  He was practicing.

  “Fine,” said Nick. “I’ll distract.”

  “And I’ll snoop,” said Tesla. “I’ll explain on the way back to Ms. Mavis’s office.”

  She passed the gadget glove to DeMarco and then started walking toward the rear exit hidden behind the Einstein display.

  Suddenly she came to a stop in front of Nikola Tesla.

  “What is it, Tez?” asked Silas, who’d been following so closely he almost marched right over her when she stopped.

  Tesla was looking at the biography of her namesake—and in particular at the part covered with duct tape.

  She reached out and started to pick at one corner of the tape. When she’d peeled up enough, she pinched it and started to pull.

  “Tesla?” Hiroko said. “Is there something wrong over there?”

  “No,” Tesla said, quickly smoothing the tape again. “I’m just wondering why part of the Nikola Tesla sign is covered up.”

  “I’ve wondered about that, too,” Hiroko said. “All I know is that Katherine Mavis asked us not to remove that tape, so I haven’t even taken a peek. You know, out of respect to the museum. We are basically guests here.”

  Hiroko cocked an eyebrow at Tesla.

  Tesla tried to smile at her.

  “Sure! Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more! Well, come on, guys. Let’s go get those Migraine Monkey Missile Test CDs that DeMarco wanted for his sisters.”

  “Huh?” Silas said.

  Tesla grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit.

  “Hiroko’s starting to wonder what we’re up to,” she said once they were all in the corridor.

  “Why don’t we just tell her about the e-mail message you saw?” Nick asked.

  “Because if she doesn’t believe us, we’ll get sent home for sneaking around,” Tesla said. “And if she does believe us, we’ll get sent home to keep us safe from the saboteurs. Either way, we lose. Now come on. I’m starting to get the hang of these hallways.”

  Tesla turned right and started walking.

  “I don’t know,” she heard her brother mutter behind her. “What’s so bad about being sent home where it’s safe?”

  He did have a good point.

  Which is why Tesla ignored it.

  Nick and Silas walked past one work cubicle after another, looking lost. Fortunately, the museum’s employees were still too busy to pay much attention to them.

  “I think the restr
oom’s this way,” Nick said, just in case anyone was listening.

  Silas nodded. “Um-hmm,” he said.

  Finally, they reached Katherine Mavis’s office. The door was still open, and once again the director was simultaneously typing and talking on the phone.

  “No shrimp puffs or mini quiches? Are you not conceptualizing what I’m telling you?” she barked. “We’ve been forward-promoting this infoccasion for months! You do know we’ve confirmed some C-list celebrities for tonight, don’t you? Maybe even a B-minus or two? Well, you don’t transition those affluentials into donors by serving pigs-in-blankets and potato chips! This is a major soirée, not a PTA meeting! I need you to value-add these hors d’oeuvres right now because I have zero cycles for this. JDI!”

  “Hey,” Nick said loudly. “Do you hear something?”

  “Um-hmm,” Silas said, nodding.

  A high-pitched whine was echoing from the hallways ahead of them.

  NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

  “Hold on a sec,” Mavis said, lowering her phone.

  She cocked her head and listened for a moment.

  One of the workers left his cubicle and poked his head into her office.

  “Katherine,” he said, “do you know what that noise is?”

  “Proactive question, Matt. I was about to come out and ask you the same thing,” she replied. “It sounds like some kind of alarm.”

  “It’s not the fire alarm,” the man named Matt said. “That makes more of a BEEEEE-uhhhhh, BEEEEE-uhhhhh sound.”

  Another worker popped out of her cube to join the conversation.

  “And it’s not the security alarm,” she said. “That goes whooooo-EEEEEE-chirp-chirp, whooooo-EEEEEE-chirp-chirp.”

  “That’s a car alarm, Amy,” Mavis said.

  “Yeah,” said Matt. “The security alarm goes CHEEEEE-errrrrrr, CHEEEEE-errrrrrr.”

  Amy shook her head skeptically.

  “What’s going on?” someone else said. It was Mojo Jones, the computer guy, hurrying up the hall to join the conversation.

  “Hi, kids,” he said when he noticed Nick and Silas. “Had a chance to listen to the CD I gave you yet?”