The Pompeii Disaster

by Dan Gutman

  “How hard could it be?” Julia asked. “We just take some little pieces of metal, and—”

  “I can do a schematic drawing,” David volunteered. “My dad showed me how.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Luke said. “Nobody will ever know we weren’t the real inventors of the zipper.”

  “I’ll know,” Isabel said quietly. But she didn’t make a big deal about it, because she couldn’t think of a better way for the team to earn money.

  By this time, the sun had set in the west over New Jersey, across the Hudson River. There was a chill in the air. The Flashback Four wrapped their clothes around themselves tightly.

  “Well, we’re not going to invent the zipper tonight,” Luke told the others. “Right now, we’d better find a place to sleep.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A CRAZY IDEA

  WHILE THE FLASHBACK FOUR WERE FIGURING OUT what to do next in 1912, there was a full-scale panic going on in the twenty-first-century office of Pasture Company (motto: “If I don’t see you in the future, I’ll see you in the pasture”) in Boston, Massachusetts.

  Miss Z picked up her phone and put it down again without dialing a number. Then she looked at her computer screen, and looked away from it.

  “What are we going to do now?” she shouted to her assistant, Mrs. Ella Vader, gesturing wildly and nearly falling out of her wheelchair.

  Miss Z suffered from ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It’s a nervous-system disease that weakens muscles. There’s no cure for it. But right now, ALS was not her biggest problem. No, Miss Z’s biggest problem was the Flashback Four.

  It was impossible to know if Luke, David, Julia, and Isabel were dead or alive. She didn’t know what had happened to them at the moment she’d tried to whisk them back home from the deck of the Titanic. All she knew was that the kids had not arrived in her office, as expected.

  Instead, she had inadvertently transported a Titanic deckhand named Thomas Maloney into the twenty-first century. Now he was sitting across from her, playing with the electric pencil sharpener on her desk. He was a big man, and he looked angry. Who could blame him?

  “Mr. Maloney, tell me exactly what happened those last few moments on the Titanic,” Miss Z asked.

  “Like I told ya,” he said, “I was at the front of the ship. It was tiltin’ forward. The captain told me not to let anybody up there ’cause they might get swept off into the sea. Then these four kids show up and ask me to take a picture of ’em with some funny-lookin’ camera. I told ’em to get out of there and get into a lifeboat, but they wouldn’t budge. They offered me a thousand bucks to let ’em take the picture, so I say okay. And that’s all I remember. Next thing I knew, I was here with you.”

  “And you have no idea what happened to the children?” asked Mrs. Vader.

  “Nope.”

  “This is bad,” said Miss Z.

  While she fretted, Mr. Maloney looked around the office and the modern wonders it contained. He wasn’t so impressed by Miss Z’s computer or her time-traveling smartboard. It was the little things that astonished him. Thomas Maloney had never seen a fluorescent light, a Post-it Note, or wall-to-wall carpeting.

  He stood up unsteadily and went over to the window. When he looked down at the streets of Boston, he grabbed hold of the windowsill for support. It was twenty-three floors up. He had never been so high. He had never even been inside an elevator.

  A helicopter buzzed past the window, and Thomas Maloney looked at it with fear and wonder in his eyes.

  “Holy hotcakes! What in the blazes was that?” he shouted.

  But the wheels in his head were turning. He had recently read H. G. Wells’s book The Time Machine and understood the concept of time travel. It had sunk into his brain that he had been transported over a hundred years into the future. And he was no dummy. There must be a way to turn this into money, he figured.

  “So lemme get this straight,” Mr. Maloney said. “You sent them kids back to my time with that doohickey, but instead of bringin’ ’em back here again, you brought me instead. That right?”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Vader. Miss Z was too upset to answer.

  Thomas Maloney picked up a pencil off Miss Z’s desk and stuck it in her electric pencil sharpener. He marveled as it whirred and put a point on the pencil in a few seconds. The only way he had ever sharpened a pencil before was with a knife, painstakingly shaving the wood away. He stuck the pencil back in the machine and sharpened it over and over again, watching it get smaller and smaller.

  “Will you please stop that?” asked Mrs. Vader.

  Miss Z was deep in thought. The Flashback Four were stuck in 1912, possibly for the rest of their lives. How would she tell their parents what had happened to them? There were four signed permission slips in her desk drawer. Within the hour, the parents would realize their children were missing. Then the phone calls would begin.

  There would be lawsuits, for sure. Multimillion-dollar lawsuits. Miss Z had made a large fortune with Findamate, the online dating service she had created, but if the kids were gone, it would ruin her. She’d have nothing left, and her reputation would be shot.

  Reputation? She realized that was the least of her worries. The police would get involved, of course. There would have to be a criminal investigation. How could she ever explain what had happened to these four kids? The cops would probably dig up her backyard looking for the bodies. And they wouldn’t find any.

  She would go to jail, of course, and spend the rest of her life there. Everything she had ever accomplished would have been for nothing. She would always be remembered for the mysterious kidnapping of those four children, who were never heard from again.

  And what was she going to do with this Maloney guy? He seemed like a real troublemaker.

  Maloney was looking at the photos all over the walls, many of which had not been shot until long after his lifetime. He stared at the picture of Neil Armstrong on the moon and just shook his head.

  This was not good. Miss Z’s mind, usually so sharp, was scattered and confused.

  Mrs. Vader was upset too. But she wasn’t as personally invested in the Flashback Four, and so she was able to think more clearly.

  “Maybe the kids were able to get on one of the lifeboats,” she said hopefully. “What happened to the survivors of the Titanic?”

  “A ship called the Carpathia picked them up,” Miss Z said. “They were taken to New York City. So what?”

  “Well, what if we used the Board to send Mr. Maloney to the spot where that ship docked in 1912?” suggested Mrs. Vader. “The kids should be there, right? Then couldn’t we use the Board again to bring them back here? I know it’s an outrageous idea, but is it possible?”

  Miss Z wrinkled her brow and thought it over. Because of a technological glitch, the Board is unable to send the same people back to the same place or time more than once. But this was a different place and time, with different people. It wasn’t out of the question. A little smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.

  “That just might work!” she said excitedly. “What have we got to lose?”

  “Let’s try it!” said Mrs. Vader.

  They snapped into action. Mrs. Vader turned on the Board to warm it up. Then she took out her smartphone to look up the precise location where the Carpathia had docked in New York City. Miss Z rolled over to her computer and began tapping keys rapidly.

  “Mr. Maloney, I would like you to stand in front of that large board over there, please,” she told him.

  Thomas Maloney didn’t rush over to fulfill her request. He didn’t get up from the chair.

  “Wait one gosh-darned minute,” he said, putting his feet up on the edge of Miss Z’s desk. “Maybe I don’t wanna go to New York. I kinda like it right here. Maybe I’ll stick around awhile.”

  “You can’t stick around,” Miss Z said sternly. “You have to go back to your own time.”

  “Says who?”

  Thomas Maloney leaned back in the ch
air and clasped his hands behind his head. He was feeling cocky. And wealthy. There were ten hundred-dollar bills in his pocket, a small fortune, to him. He wouldn’t need to get a job for quite a while.

  “America’s still a free country, ain’t it?” he asked. “The land of opportunity, right? Looks like you two are livin’ the good life, with your fancy contraptions and such. I could get used to this.”

  Thomas Maloney was a big man, but Miss Z had sized him up and decided she could take him. She had negotiated hundreds of deals with politicians and businesspeople around the world. It shouldn’t be that hard to cut a deal with a deckhand who’d never gone to high school.

  “Mr. Maloney,” she said. “Do you know how much it costs to rent an apartment here in Boston?”

  Maloney thought it over. He had been paying twelve Irish pounds a month for a small flat in Belfast before setting sail on the Titanic.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Twenty pounds a month?”

  Miss Z and Mrs. Vader laughed.

  “Try two thousand American dollars,” said Miss Z.

  “You kiddin’ me?”

  That was about as much money as he earned all year working on ships. He calculated that the thousand dollars in his pocket would only pay for two weeks’ worth of rent. No food.

  Miss Z noticed that Thomas Maloney was wearing a wedding ring.

  “And how much does it cost to take your wife out to dinner, may I ask?”

  “About five pounds, give or take,” he replied.

  “It will cost you ten times that much money here,” Miss Z told him. “Mr. Maloney, a gallon of gas costs over two dollars now. A gallon of milk is more than twice that.”

  Thomas Maloney was doing arithmetic in his head, quickly trying to convert American dollars into Irish pounds. He was starting to sweat.

  “What’s your wife’s name, Mr. Maloney?” asked Mrs. Vader.

  “Katie.”

  “I suppose you miss her.”

  Miss Z didn’t say anything for a moment. She wanted to give Maloney time to form a mental image of his wife and realize he would never see her again. He may have had children, too.

  “Think about it, Mr. Maloney,” Miss Z finally told him. “You have no place to live here. No job. The thousand dollars in your pocket is not going to last long. And then there’s your family . . .”

  Family. There’s something about that word. Everybody wants to go home to their family at some point.

  Thomas Maloney looked out the window again. A jet plane flew by, startling him.

  While he was thinking it over, Mrs. Vader had done her research and found that the Carpathia had docked at Pier 54 in New York City, at the end of Fourteenth Street. If the Flashback Four had survived the Titanic, that’s where they would be, at least for the time being. She wrote it out on a page of scrap paper for Miss Z.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll go back,” Maloney finally agreed. “But I think I deserve some, uh, compensation for the trouble you put me through. I didn’t ask for this mess. And it’s gonna cost me a lot of dough to get back home to Ireland.”

  Miss Z sighed. She needed Maloney more than he needed her. Fortunately, she had more money than he could ever imagine. She was used to people asking her for cash. It’s an occupational hazard of being extremely wealthy.

  “Would another thousand be helpful?” she asked as she reached into her desk drawer for her checkbook.

  Maloney had been hoping for a hundred. This was going to be a big payday.

  “That’ll do,” he said quickly. “But in bills, please. You know as well as I do that I ain’t gonna be able to cash your check in 1912.”

  “Smart thinking, Mr. Maloney,” Miss Z said with a little smile.

  She wheeled herself over to a safe on the wall behind one of her many pictures. She opened it and took out an envelope.

  “You can count it if you want,” she said as she handed it to him. “But I assure you there are a thousand dollars in here.”

  Maloney pocketed the envelope without opening it.

  “It’s been a pleasure doin’ business with you,” he said, getting up to stand in front of the Board.

  “But you need to do something else for me,” Miss Z said.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to send you to a specific location in New York City in the year 1912,” Miss Z explained. “If those four children survived the sinking of the Titanic, that’s where they will be. When you get there, I want you to gather them together at the exact spot where you landed so I can bring them back here. Do you understand?”

  “What if they ain’t there?” Maloney asked. “What if they went down with the ship?”

  “That will be my problem,” Miss Z said. “You keep my thousand dollars and continue on with your life. I promise you will never hear from me again.”

  “Sounds fair,” Maloney said, “but I could really use another thousand. . . .”

  “Enough!” she shouted. “Our negotiation is complete. Quickly! Stand in front of the Board. They might have already left the pier. I just hope we’re not too late.”

  Miss Z pointed a small remote control at the Board. It buzzed gently and flashed some quick messages to indicate it was booting up. She tapped the exact latitude and longitude of Pier 54 into the keyboard.

  “Is this gonna hurt?” Thomas Maloney asked.

  “You won’t feel a thing,” Mrs. Vader said. “Close your eyes for the next minute or so. There will be a very bright light. But it won’t hurt.”

  The technology inside the Board is far too advanced for me or just about anybody to explain. Even if I could explain it, you would be bored to death and probably stop reading this book right now. So let me just say this. It works. You’re going to have to trust me on this. You know how grown-ups always say you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it? Well, imagine how much you can accomplish if you put your mind to something and throw in a few billion dollars for research and development.

  The crucial point is that the Board can send a person—or a group of people—to any moment and any spot on the globe if it has the exact date, time, latitude, and longitude.

  A buzzing sound came off the Board, and then it lit up in a brilliant blast of bright blue. It glowed for a few seconds, and then the blue split into five separate bands of different colors. Mr. Maloney peeked and caught a glimpse of the bands of color merging together to form one solid blast of intense white light. He closed his eyes again.

  The light appeared to stretch out and away from the surface of the Board until it reached Mr. Maloney. The Board seemed to be sucking him into it.

  “It will all be over in a matter of seconds,” Miss Z said. “Hang on. Soon you will be back in the year 1912. Back to your time.”

  The Board began to hum and vibrate, a low-frequency rumbling that was pleasant to the ear. It was like the purring of a cat.

  “This better work,” Miss Z muttered under her breath.

  Thomas Maloney began to flicker, as if a strobe light was shining on him. The humming was getting louder.

  It was happening. Maloney was making the transition from one century to another. He had reached the point of no return.

  “I could use . . . another hundred bucks,” he said, trying to extend his hand.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Maloney!”

  And then he vanished.

  CHAPTER 3

  ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE

  MEANWHILE, ON PIER 54 IN NEW YORK, THE FLASHBACK Four were alone, depressed, and anxious about their future. And their past. It was getting dark and cold outside.

  “We’d better find a place to sleep,” Luke told the others as he stood up. “Let’s go. It looks like that building down the street might be a hotel—”

  All four of them stood up. At that instant, before anyone could take a step, there was a flash of bright light off to the right and a puff of smoke. And then, not more than ten feet away, Thomas Maloney appeared.

  “Eeek!” screamed Isabel as she grab
bed David’s shirt.

  David jumped back in terror, almost falling over and taking Luke down with him.

  “Holy—”

  Mr. Maloney stumbled for a moment before regaining his balance. Then he looked around to get his bearings.

  “So we meet again,” he said to the group.

  “Who are you?” asked Julia.

  “He’s that guy!” said Luke, pointing. “The guy at our meeting spot on the Titanic! Remember? He disappeared from the deck just as I was about to take his picture. And now he’s here!”

  “Thomas Maloney at yer service,” Mr. Maloney said, making a little bow before checking to see if he still had his envelope full of cash. “Nice to see we’re all safe and sound on dry land.”

  “How did you get here?” asked David. “Where did you come from?”

  “Boston, Massachusetts, from what I understand,” he replied.

  “Were you in a big office building?” asked Julia.

  “That’s right,” Maloney replied. “Never seen one so high. And there was an aeroplane flying around in the sky.”

  Luke snapped his fingers.

  “Miss Z must have been trying to zap us back from the Titanic, but she zapped him back instead!” he said.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said David.

  “I couldn’t believe it, neither,” Mr. Maloney told them. “I met your lady friend. In the wheelchair. She gave me a thousand bucks to send you home.”

  “Hey, I gave you a thousand dollars so we could take your picture!” Julia said. “We never took it. By all rights you should give me that money back.”

  “By all rights you should be floatin’ belly-up in the Atlantic,” said Mr. Maloney. “And if it wasn’t for me, you’d be stuck here forever. So you can kiss your thousand good-bye. Do you want to go back to your own time or not?”

  “Of course we want to go back!” Isabel said.

  “Then gather together in a group right over here,” Maloney said. “That’s what your lady friend told me to tell you. Hurry up. There ain’t a lot of time.”