by David Potter
Two of us take a step to the rear, leaving Brandon up front, and alone.
“Why is this not surprising,” says Mr. Hart.
“I thought there would have been some kind of password,” Brandon says. “I just started hitting some keys to get the thing to wake up. How was I to know it would send us back in time?”
“You couldn’t have,” Professor Moncrieff says. “That much is certain. But why were you in this basement? It is the only place I could find on such short notice that had an available supply of electricity.”
“Fooling around,” Brandon admits. “We were upstairs and saw you leave. And we wondered what you were doing down here … and you know.”
“One thing led to another?”
“Exactly.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Wait just a minute here. Who is Kurtis? And just what is Things Go Wrong, Inc.? Are you part of that?”
“Calm down, Mel,” Mr. Hart says. “There’s no reason to fly off the handle.”
“No reason to fly off the handle? There’s every reason to fly off the handle. How do you explain this?” I show them Kramm’s leather satchel, with the initials T.G.W., INC. stenciled on the side. “Do you know what he did? This guy Kurtis? He paid a guy to assassinate General George Washington!”
“You didn’t mention that,” Mr. Hart says.
“Of course I did not!” Professor Moncrieff says. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I would trust you or any man with information like that? The very point of this entire exercise has been in jeopardy the moment these … these … these children interfered with my computer!”
“Mr. Hart, we need to call the police,” I say. “This guy is trying to mess around with … with history itself!”
“Not I!” roars Professor Moncrieff. “Not I, you child! I am attempting to save history, not destroy it! And you lousy kids are getting in my way!”
“Tell it to the cops,” Bev says. “I’m sure they’ll love to hear it.”
“Don’t call anyone!” Professor Moncrieff shouts. “Especially not the police! They cannot be trusted! I warn you! You do not know the danger!”
“We almost got our heads shot off,” Brandon says. “So we know all about danger. Let’s give him two minutes, guys. He explains everything or we call the police.”
Professor Moncrieff manages to take a deep breath and closes his eyes for second, as if he’s trying to keep a lid on it.
He’s old. I mean, way old. He’s got the stoop, the liver spots, the wrinkles, the snow-white hair, the huge ears—but his eyes are as sharp as anyone’s. They’re dull blue, those eyes. They narrow their focus a little. Then become hard as cobalt.
“Well. I will explain this much to you: I was a very young man when I studied with Dr. Einstein. And he himself was a very young man when he made his most important discoveries regarding the nature of time. I only fleshed out his ideas, carried them to their logical, if extreme, conclusions. You are by now familiar with the app called iTime. I am its intellectual father, but, sadly, only its co-inventor. I required the services of an advanced programmer. I did not, unfortunately, possess the necessary—how is it phrased these days—the necessary skill set.”
“Okay,” I say. “And?”
“And what?” says Professor Moncrieff.
“Well, are you going to tell us why we were zapped back to 1776?”
“No. This is classified information.”
“Classified by the government?”
“Classified by me, young man. I don’t trust the government. Never have. Never will.”
“You have to tell us more than that. We only just risked our lives to save George Washington. We did it, by the way. In case anyone is wondering.”
“And you’re welcome,” says Bev. “Boys, let’s call the cops. He hasn’t told us a thing.”
Professor Moncrieff holds up a hand. “Very well,” he says. “It is my co-inventor who has betrayed us. It is the Kurtis you speak of. He decided our program was worth somewhat more than what I could pay him. Kurtis has gone, as they say, off the deep end. Quite a bit off. He has stolen the code for the iTime app.”
“And not only that,” I say. “He also formed a company: Things Go Wrong, Inc. Of which he is the president.”
“And the sole employee,” Professor Moncrieff says. “He intends to make a billion dollars. Or possibly ten billion dollars. Among other things.”
“How is he going to make a billion dollars?” Bev asks.
“Two ways. He can sell iTime to anyone who is willing to pay, and they can do what they wish with it. And second, Kurtis believes that he stands to profit if he can rearrange the outcome of things. He can place bets, if you will. On an outcome that will be entirely of his own making. But most dangerous of all, Kurtis is not primarily motivated by money. He merely requires a great deal of money to further his most fundamental desire. Kurtis is, I fear, a practitioner of the darkest art of them all.”
“You mean, like, witchcraft?” says Brandon.
“No. I mean chaos theory. He is the world’s foremost expert, and now very unfortunately, he is putting into practice what he has long contemplated in theory.”
“Chaos theory?” says Bev. “What in the world is that?”
“Technically, it is the study of dynamic systems. You may have heard of the famous example—an extra flap of a butterfly’s wings in Asia could alter a weather system by the tiniest amount—but enough to cause, ultimately, a hurricane of gargantuan proportions on the other side of the world. Kurtis, alas, is not interested in experimenting with butterflies. He requires a figure of consequence. From his perspective, George Washington is a very suitable candidate.”
“He left a note,” I say, pointing to Kramm’s satchel.
“Very typical. Kurtis is starved for attention. He, unlike me, was not willing to labor for decades in obscurity. But what Kurtis doesn’t know is that I have inserted spyware into his copy of the source code. So I am able to track the movements of anyone who uses the iTime app. I was quite aware, therefore, of Kurtis’s activities. Once I learned where Kurtis programmed his iTime app, it was not difficult to guess his intentions. Kurtis himself went back in time in order to secure a change agent. Or, in other words, someone to do his dirty work.”
“Kramm,” I say.
“The ugly German dude,” says Brandon.
“I am assuming,” Professor Moncrieff says, “that you have met the change agent.”
“Yep,” I say. “Things didn’t work out so well for him.”
“Wait a minute here,” says Mr. Hart. “Hold on. Has anyone thought through the risk of all this?”
“Do you mean the risk of doing nothing?” says Professor Moncreiff.
“I mean the risk of sending … children … into an incredibly dangerous situation!”
“They interfered,” Professor Moncrieff says. “They admit to it themselves. They stuck their noses where they didn’t belong. It is entirely their fault. I had other plans to … remedy the situation. I had assembled a team. Of men. Not kids. Men with specialized, shall we say, abilities. Ex–Navy Seal. Ex-CIA. Ex–Army Ranger. They were nearly ready to be … inserted into the deployment zone. Then? You kids interfered with my plans!”
“Well, we kids remedied it for you,” Bev says.
“Yeah,” says Brandon. “When we last saw him, George Washington was alive and well.”
“They crossed the Delaware,” I say. “They won at Trenton. So all’s well that ends well, right?”
“Right,” says Bev. “Now I just want to get out of here. I need a hot shower in the worst way.”
“You will be free to go in a minute. In any case, from this point forward, further information is classified. Know that Kurtis is a most relentless man, however. Most relentless. He no doubt will make other … arrangements. Please now give me your phones. They must be deprogrammed.”
Now, this I’m not expecting.
Give up our phones? After what we’ve been through with th
em?
I check with Brandon. I check with Bev.
Bev shakes her head no.
No.
On this one we most definitely have a united front. As our self-proclaimed leader, I step up, so I’m standing directly in front of this Professor Moncrieff guy. I look him dead in the eye. “That’s not going to happen,” I say. “Not in a thousand years.”
This is a very satisfying thing to say, and I mean every word. I feel good about myself, even. I stood up to The Man.
But Professor Moncrieff only smiles. A very crooked smile. Then he snaps his fingers, and the door to the basement opens.
Three men step in.
Men.
Not kids. Military-type dudes. Each one is maybe six-foot-two and 220 pounds. Hands as big as waffle irons. Close-cropped hair. Shades. Arms crossed, like they mean business.
This must be the team he was telling us about. The one he assembled.
“A thousand years?” Professor Moncrieff says. “These days it just doesn’t mean as much as it used to, does it?”
Uh-oh. Maybe we haven’t come to the end after all.
I have to confess that although I’ve tried to stick pretty close to the historical record of Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware, I’ve taken a few “liberties” here and there. The biggest one involves Ben Franklin. I really wanted to include Ben because I think he’s such a wonderful character, and besides, who else would be able to recharge an iPhone? The real Ben Franklin was not in Philadelphia in December 1776, however; he had in fact made it to France, where he bedazzled all of Paris as the lead representative from the Continental Congress. Other than this, I don’t think I’ve made other deliberate variations in the timeline or the events of the crossing itself, although as a fiction writer I have certainly made up scenes that never occurred.
The portrayal of both Ben Franklin and George Washington are my own interpretations, but I hope my admiration comes through. Certainly each man wasn’t perfect, but what strikes me most about them is how much they risked to help create a new nation. Ben and George were successful, prominent men who could have kept their heads down and played it safe—but didn’t. The risk wasn’t simply losing an election or having a piece of legislation voted down, either. Had the British prevailed, they would have been prosecuted as traitors, or simply hanged from the nearest tree. On the other hand, both men knew full well that if the revolution succeeded, they would be remembered—and honored—throughout history. The stakes were as high as they get.
I grew up a few miles from George Washington’s headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey, where he spent the winter of 1779–1780, and it must have been from passing by the place so often that I first developed my love of American history. I was a curious kid and liked to find things out, which sometimes meant I had to read books and go to the library. (I would have been all over Wikipedia had it been around!) I learned that if you have sharp eyes, you can notice stuff. Scattered throughout New Jersey are dozens of historical markers that trace Washington’s routes and pathways along the grid of today’s highly developed road system. Although New Jersey surely has many more highways, bridges, buildings, golf courses, and industrial complexes than it did two hundred years ago, beneath all that we have the same land, the same rivers and streams, the same hills and ridges, and the same ocean. Fewer trees, perhaps. Well, definitely fewer trees.
By the time my wife, Cindy, and I had our own children, I was eager to show them what I knew of Washington’s travels within our state, and in a process of mutual discovery we began exploring the realm around us. I think we must have gone to our first reenactment of Washington Crossing the Delaware when my oldest son, Thomas, was six and his brother, Charlie, was three. It was a beautiful Christmas afternoon, cold but bright and clear, and I distinctly remember asking myself, as I looked out upon the thousands that had gathered for the occasion, what would we do if we were suddenly transported back to 1776? Would we have the same courage, the same resolve, as Washington and his troops? Could any of us modern-day citizens endure what our forefathers endured?
Thus an idea for a novel was born, although the research took about ten years. During that period I tried to read, see, and experience as much as I could of Washington’s Crossing. I’m afraid I cajoled Thomas and Charlie to join me as wingmen as we traced the foot route from the landing to Trenton, saw reenactments of the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton, and poked our noses into backyards and byways along the route that we hoped might still retain important, and heretofore undiscovered, evidence of the journey. So far we haven’t found anything, but we’re still looking.
DP, Pennington, NJ
Allen, Thomas B. George Washington, Spymaster: How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolutionary War. Washington, DC: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2004.
Freedman, Russell. Give Me Liberty! The Story of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Holiday House, 2000.
Fritz, Jean. And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? New York: Putnam & Grosset, 1996.
———. What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? New York: Putnam & Grosset, 2001.
Hale, Nathan. Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy. New York: Amulet Books, 2012.
Lawson, Robert. Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos. New York: Little, Brown, 1939.
McGovern, Ann. The Secret Soldier: The Story of Deborah Sampson. New York: Scholastic, 1990.
Murphy, Jim. The Crossing: How George Washington Saved the American Revolution. New York: Scholastic Press, 2010.
Murray, Stuart. The American Revolution (DK Eyewitness Books). New York: DK Children, 2010.
Raum, Elizabeth. The Revolutionary War: An Interactive History Adventure. New York: Capstone Press, 2009.
Schanzer, Rosalyn. George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides. Washington, DC: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2004.
Sheinkin, Steve. King George: What Was His Problem? The Whole Hilarious Story of the American Revolution. New York: Square Fish, 2009.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Letters of George Washington, University of Virginia (gwpapers.virginia.edu)
Meet George Washington, Mount Vernon estate (www.mountvernon.org/georgewashington/facts)
All About George Washington, White House (whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewashington)
Washington’s World, A Game for Kids, MountVernon.org (washingtonsworld.org)
All About the War of Independence, Smithsonian (amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/printable/section.asp?id=1)
The Smithsonian’s History Explorer: The American Revolution (historyexplorer.si.edu/themes/theme/?key=123)
The American Revolution (theamericanrevolution.org)
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Ben Franklin, PBS (pbs.org/benfranklin)
Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids (bensguide.gpo.gov/benfranklin)
REVOLUTIONARY WAR
A Timeline of the Revolution, PBS (pbs.org/ktca/liberty/chronicle_timeline.html)
Road to Revolution Quiz, PBS (pbs.org/ktca/liberty/road.html)
Revolutionary War Maps, Library of Congress (memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/armhtml/armhome.html)
EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY
America’s Story from America’s Library, Library of Congress (americaslibrary.gov)
Archiving Early America: Your Window Into America’s Founding Years (earlyamerica.com)
FOUNDING DOCUMENTS
Transcript of the Declaration of Independence (archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html)
Transcript of the Constitution (archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html)
Transcript of the Bill of Rights (archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights.html)
The Washington Crossing Historic Par
k hosts an annual memorial re-creation of Washington Crossing the Delaware River. A dress rehearsal of the Crossing occurs in early December, and the “official” Crossing occurs each Christmas Day at approximately 1:00 pm. Located at 1112 River Road in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit ushistory.org/washingtoncrossing.
Living history programs about the Revolutionary War are ongoing at the Old Barracks Museum, located at 101 Barrack Street, in Trenton, New Jersey. For more information, visit barracks.org.
There is a reenactment of the Battle of Monmouth each June in Tennent, New Jersey. Sponsored by the Friends of Monmouth Battlefield, Inc. For more information, visit friendsofmonmouth.org/index.html.
Reenactment and living history events take place annually at Fort Ticonderoga in New York. Reenactments have included the 1775 Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, American Soldiers Retreat by Bateaux to Ticonderoga, and the 1777 Capture of Fort Ticonderoga. For more information, visit fortticonderoga.org.
A reenactment of the Battle of Great Bridge is held annually on the first Saturday in December at the Great Bridge in Chesapeake, Virginia. For more information, visit virginia.org/Listings/Events/BattleofGreatBridge.
A Revolutionary War Reenactment Festival takes place each fall at Mount Harmon in Earleville, Maryland. For more information, visit mountharmon.org/events.html.
The Brigade of the American Revolution is a nonprofit organization that reenacts the life and time period of soldiers of the Revolutionary War. For more information and a list of events, visit brigade.org.
The Continental Line, Inc. is a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania that reenacts events from the Revolutionary War. For more information and a list of events, visit continentalline.org.
The Northwest Territory Alliance (NWTA) is a Midwest-based nonprofit reenactment organization. For more information and a list of events, visit nwta.com.