He picked up his handheld Canon camera off the dashboard and jumped out. “Before we go, let me see if I can get a couple shots,” he said. He wandered out to the middle of the road and snapped pictures of the storms from bottom to top. When he was satisfied, he returned to the truck and they headed back to Dr. Ferganut’s house.
* * *
Back in the living room, John typed up a page full of notes in an attempt to describe what he just witnessed. He gathered radar screenshots from online and inserted a few pictures of his own for later reference. He eagerly awaited any additional data Dr. Ferganut’s wireflies could bring in—assuming the fire did not melt their wings off. At the same time the thought of someone being able to create a storm with a tornado out of thin air made him restless and irritated.
He looked over his list of questions again and decided to resume with a calmer topic—Dr. Ferganut’s teaching career. He began again. “At what point did you decide to become a professor?” John said.
Dr. Ferganut leaned back in his recliner and began to rock. “I’m not sure. I went to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute out in Troy, New York, for a little over four years. Majored in materials science. I did really well and I had a number of professors and teaching assistants telling me I should get a masters degree. I started on it, but gave up after a while.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I wanted to get out and live a little. After about a year of travelling I went back.”
“And then you became a teacher?”
“That’s right. I only taught about fifteen years. I still substitute once in a while, but I’ve spent more time in the past few years doing research.” He looked over at the dark-chocolate-colored wooden coffee table which sat in between the recliner and the couch. On the edge of the table were two books—a barely-used hardcover world atlas and a well-worn, black, leather-bound Bible. He motioned toward the Bible. “What’s funny is out of all the books I’ve read and taught out of, that’s still my favorite one.”
“You mentioned that last year. That you tried to lead Bible studies off and on,” John said, not looking up from his laptop computer. By now another page was half-filled with notes.
Dr. Ferganut let out a sigh. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried. Most of the students I’ve worked with could care less, but a few stick around and at least humor me about it.”
“You said one time you had Dr. Amalynth as a student. How’d that go?” John stopped typing long enough to look up and study Dr. Ferganut’s reaction.
“He was a strange one from what I remember. Very gifted, very focused. Great long term memory down to the smallest detail. But sometimes I wonder if his intensity didn’t work against him when dealing with people. It was pretty difficult to get him to open up to new ideas once he got set in his ways about something.”
Dr. Ferganut glanced over at his own laptop computer on the end table next to the recliner and stood up. “Excuse me a moment. Looks like we have company.” He opened the front door.
Two wireflies flew into the living room and landed in the palm of his left hand. He shut the door and carried them over to the coffee table. He set them down for both John and Captain to see. Both wireflies were blackened and tarnished from the fire and one had a missing wing. In the clutches of the other was a blackened beetle-like object.
“What is that?” Captain said as he leaned over to look.
Dr. Ferganut went into the kitchen and returned with a pair of long metal tweezers and a handheld magnifying glass. He gently pried back the legs of one of the wireflies and out dropped the beetle-shaped object. He leaned over, picked up the device with the tweezers, and held it front of the magnifying glass. “This looks familiar. Yet different at the same time. Gentlemen, I think my old friend has finally perfected the art of wing design.” His face was somber and irritated at the same time.
“You mean Dr. Minton?” John said with hesitation in his voice.
Dr. Ferganut nodded.
“But what would he being doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Captain said. “What do the bugs do?”
Dr. Ferganut held out the bug for Captain to see. “Inside each one of these is an igniter. The bug climbs…or maybe flies…onto a source of fuel. Dry brush, grass, woods…and it sets itself on fire.”
“That’s messed up,” Captain said.
“It’s ingenious, because nobody would expect a bug. The last time I saw one of these it exploded right in front of my eyes. So I sent out some wireflies to try and stop them. One of my flies picked up a bug and dropped it off at the local fire station, but it was charred beyond recognition. This bug isn’t in bad shape, but I can’t prove it started the fires without seeing it myself. Based on what John’s already told me, I’m thinking it’s him again. The real question is…what is he after?”
“What was he after before?” John asked.
“I never figured it out. I ran into him years ago in one of the stores in the area where the fire was. We talked but geez the conversation was forced. He seemed just as angry as the last time I talked to him in college. Wait. Didn’t you tell me before that you saw his name and phone number on a piece of paper when you went through Dr. Amalynth’s lab?”
“Madeline and I did,” John said. “But the lab got destroyed in a storm.”
Dr. Ferganut paced back and forth in front of the coffee table. “Remember that robotic spider I found in my yard last year? Didn’t you say it matched the ones you found in Dr. Amalynth’s lab? Maybe they really were working together.”
Chapter Four
As much as John tried to follow his planned questions for the interview, thoughts of who Dr. Minton was and his whereabouts haunted him. As the evening progressed, he realized he could avoid the subject no longer. “Since we talked about it earlier, would you mind answering a few questions about Dr. Minton?”
Dr. Ferganut smiled uneasily as if he knew all along that eventually he would have to address the topic. “Where do you want me to start?”
“What does he look like?”
“The last time I saw him he had black hair in a ponytail. He’s about six feet tall, often rides a motorcycle, and sometimes wears glasses. He’s around my age but a lot more athletic than me.”
John took notes but froze midway through typing.
“You okay?” Dr. Ferganut asked.
“I wonder if Madeline and I saw him.”
“When?”
“Last year. A man rode up to my church on a motorcycle. He was looking for my pastor. Madeline thought he looked familiar. I’ve been thinking about it all winter.” John shook off the thought. “So how did you meet him?”
“I met Dr. Minton…Dr. Julius Minton for the record…back in my first year at Rensselaer. We lived across the hall from each other in the dorms. I met him in the cafeteria one day and somehow we got to talking about classes, girls, and then board games. Lots of board games. We started hanging out a lot and a few weeks later we founded a little board game club and got about fifteen people to sign up. It was informal but in some ways I think it became a defining dimension of our friendship.”
“What kind of board games?”
“Everything. Scrabble. Risk. Axis and Allies. Chess. Sometimes one of the club members would bring in a new or an imported game just to mix things up. And then there was Stratego. That was one he was obsessed over.” Dr. Ferganut pointed toward the end table next to his recliner.
Captain got up from the couch and withdrew the game from a stack of well-worn games. He set the box onto the coffee table and lifted off the lid. “John and I used to play this all the time,” he said with a laugh. “But we kept changing up the strategy on each other so no two games were ever alike.”
John reached over and pulled out the midnight-blue folding game board and set it to the side. He smiled as he stared on at the black plastic tray beneath that held ninety-six thumbnail-sized plastic pieces. Forty-eight pieces were red and forty-eight pieces were bl
ue and each piece resembled a miniature section of a castle wall. One side was blank and the other had a sticker with a picture of a ranking military officer, a spy, a miner, a scout, a bomb, or a flag.
He picked up the red flag piece since it summed up the purpose of the game—to capture your opponent’s flag with one of the pieces of your army. He turned to face Captain. “Remember the time I put the flag in the second row and stuck clusters of bombs everywhere else? It took you an hour to figure it out and I wiped out three-quarters of your army in the process.”
“Yeah, but it took you several games to figure out my misdirection strategy,” Captain countered. “I kept moving so many pieces around you thought the bombs were moving, too.”
“That’s something Julius became good at, too,” Dr. Ferganut continued. “But the other thing about him was that when he’d lose he wouldn’t forget about it. At first I thought he was frustrated because he got beat but it wasn’t long before I realized he was taking it personally. I wasn’t the greatest at the game but I wasn’t an easy win either. That’s why I preferred chess instead.”
John set the flag piece back into the box and took more notes. “How long did you remain friends with him?”
“Until the end of our junior year. Everything took a darker turn at that point.” Dr. Ferganut looked away from the game box and down at the floor. “I don’t know what changed about him but when we all started looking for jobs he took the rivalry to a new level.”
“In what way?” John said.
“At that time there were a lot of recruiters visiting the school. Defense companies, private contractors, even the military paid a visit or two. So naturally we’d end up talking to the same people and it seemed he was trying to outmaneuver me at every turn. This carried on beyond college. Anyway as I went into teaching, I always was still making attempts at getting contracts and funding for my research work. But no matter where I went I kept running into his name. It was like he had my list of the contacts and would call them the day before I even started talking to them.”
“So did he make it difficult for you to get your work done?”
“Oh yes. And I had confirmation of this many times. Then he’d complain that contractors preferred me to him. But they like me because I always came up with more designs than he did. One guy even called him a copycat and that made him even madder.”
“Was that true?”
Dr. Ferganut beamed as if knew he had the upper hand on his old friend. “To some extent. A lot of his initial designs were imitations of devices I created months or years earlier. I was just quicker at coming up with multiple prototypes for a client.”
“Did you ever collaborate with him?”
“No. In fact I usually worked things out on my own. I had a few scientists and business people visit my lab, though.”
“Do you think he was jealous of your work?”
“That’s a good question. Maybe he was. It got even worse once I became a public speaker. He thought he was a better lecturer and would publicly claim that I was a hack and stole other people’s designs.”
“Did he ever threaten your family?”
Dr. Ferganut shifted in his recliner uneasily. He stared at John with a simmering intensity. “Harassed is a better word. From a distance. Although there was a break-in years ago when I lived in Wisconsin. I came home one day and found a couple of prototypes missing and my filing cabinets were dumped out on the floor. One of the lamps was turned on in the living room so I think someone was trying to mess with my head. I don’t know if it was him or not.”
“Did you have security cameras?”
“No, I never have. Since then I’ve figured out other means of defense.”
“Does he know you live here now?”
“We know Dr. Amalynth knows I’m here. And you said those two might have been in contact with each other.”
John leaned back on the couch and crossed him arms. His thoughts went back to the storms from earlier in the afternoon and how they erupted out of the pure blue sky.
“Are you okay? You look spooked,” Dr. Ferganut said.
“In all my years of chasing I’ve never seen anything like I saw today. Do you think he was testing a new weapon out there?”
Before Dr. Ferganut could respond, John’s cell phone rang out. He answered the phone in a mechanical voice. “Hello?”
“Hi, John,” Madeline said in a perky voice. “How’s the interview going?”
John looked on at Dr. Ferganut and then back at his laptop screen. He stared at the blinking cursor but did not respond.
“John? You there?”
“I’m here. When are you coming down?”
“Why don’t you tell me more about the interview first. What questions have you asked?”
“I asked him about his childhood, college, his teaching career…”
“Uh huh. Anything else?”
“I was hoping to talk more about his inventions but we got sidetracked earlier today because of the storm and the fire.”
“The fire?”
John continued to stare at the screen but his thoughts were scrambled. He sunk further into the couch. “There was a wildfire just down the highway from here. It put so much heat into the atmosphere that it kicked off a few thunderstorms. And then there was a tornado.”
“Did you chase it?”
“We tried but it got too dangerous. We thought about launching rockets into it, but we couldn’t get close enough. We think it may have been started by the bugs.”
“The bugs? How do bugs start a fire?” There was sarcasm in her voice, as if she doubted everything he was saying.
“On the way in Captain and I saw bugs. Clouds of bugs. An hour later the fires started. So your dad sent out a few of his wireflies. One of them came back carrying a metal bug with wings.”
“Uh huh. Has he talked much about Dr. Minton yet?”
“We were just talking about him.”
“And let me guess. He thinks the guy is harassing him and he’s been interfering in his work for years. Was that the line he gave you?”
John frowned. “I don’t think it’s a line, Madeline…”
“Sure. Aren’t you seeing it yet, John? The instability with my dad? Dr. Minton is a phantom character he made up years ago. It was just an excuse he used so he could spend more time in his lab. Has he shown you his lab yet?”
“We’re getting to that point.” John took a deep breath and gave a tired look to Captain and Dr. Ferganut. He did not know if she just called up to rant or if she really was going to visit.
“And did he tell you about the time…”
John cut her off. “Look, are you coming down or what? Have you made up your mind yet? Would you like to see my notes? How about the bug on the coffee table right in front of me? And what about the note we found in Dr. Amalynth’s lab last year with Dr. Minton’s name and phone number on it?”
She did not reply for half a minute. When she did respond her voice was solemn but there was still a sarcastic edge to it. “Maybe you should come home.”
“Maybe you should come down. I’m not ready to leave yet.”
Again, another block of silence opened up between them. She spoke up. “Okay, I’ll come down there. I’ll head out early tomorrow. Just answer me one question.”
“What?”
“Has anybody seen him? This Dr. Minton guy? Did you see him setting the fire?”
John threw his head back and looked up at the ceiling. “No. Nobody has seen him on this trip.”
“You should ask Dad what Dr. Minton looks like. I’m curious.”
“I already did. And I think we met him already. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
John ended the call and tossed the cell phone onto the table in frustration. The back cover popped off and the battery tumbled out onto the floor. He grumbled as he picked everything up and reassembled the phone.
“Was that Madeline?” Dr. Ferganut asked.
John gave him a half smile and p
ulled his laptop closer.
Dr. Ferganut gestured toward the Stratego game and the robotic bug on the table. “I should warn you. I don’t know if she ever bought into any of this. She saw him a few times as a child, but I don’t think she ever really believed. I look back now and realize I did a horrible job of communicating the danger to her and her mother.” He stood up and walked toward the kitchen. “Maybe we should take a break. And then I’ll take you on a tour of my upstairs lab. It’ll make more sense, then.”
“Do you still have the robo-bees? I don’t care for bees,” Captain said in jest.
“Bees,” Dr. Ferganut chuckled. “Wait until you see the robotic fish I’m working on.”
* * *
Across from the guest bedroom, Dr. Ferganut led John and Captain on a tour of his laboratory. Although the room was small, along the wall near the window was a long workbench with an array of electromechanical devices. Several of the devices had wings and resembled flying insects. “This is the upstairs lab,” Dr. Ferganut said. “And there is more lab space in the basement as well as an area where I can do test flights in the winter.”
“Can I take pictures?” John said as he held up his cell phone.
“Sure. But if you’re going to publish them in a book check with me first about what you can use and not use. Some of these devices are public but a couple of them haven’t been fully field-tested yet.”
Dr. Ferganut started at one end of the room and gestured with his right hand. “Let’s start here. You can see all my bookcases. I’ve got more stored in the basement if you’re interested. Books on electrical theory, materials science, physics, nature. The medieval literature books are in the living room. Along with a few computer programming manuals.” He then motioned for them to stand at one end of the wooden workbench along the wall.
John followed and started to take a series of pictures of the devices. He focused on one device at a time and recorded the audio for future reference.
The Fire and the Anvil Page 3