Curioddity (33 page)

“If Marcus James has anything to do with it, sure. Or at least they're making his signal stronger so that no one can resist his brainwashing. We have to stop him!”

“We have to get that electricity bill!” cried Lucy.

Wil chanced one more look through the periscope. With nine minutes to go down below, Marcus James had moved into the broadcast area, leaving his office empty.

“I hate that guy,” said Wil, understating things as usual. “Let's go rock his world.”

*   *   *

W
IL AND
Lucy moved across the roof and found the fire escape leading to the windows outside Marcus's now-empty office. The air was becoming massively charged with static electricity as a result of their proximity to the Swiss clock, which churned out volts, amps, and (probably) ohms at an alarming rate. As he descended toward possible death by ninja-bot, Wil fussed about the fact that his hair looked less than perfect standing on end, and resolved to visit a hairdresser at the earliest opportunity and buy some pomade. Preferably, one endorsed by a professional hockey player.

At the base of the first staircase, they peeked over the window ledge into Marcus's office: no one home. The coast was clear. The window, unfortunately, was locked.

“How do we get in?” asked Lucy. “Should we smash it?”

“It'd make too much noise,” said Wil as he quickly checked inside his plastic bag and produced the crystal he'd seen earlier. He was beginning to find a new appreciation for useless objects. Affixing more of the blue clay to the window to act as a dampener, he described a large circular hole. The crystal cut through the glass like a knife through butter. Wil reached through to unlatch the window, convinced now that Mr. Dinsdale's “random” kit full of crappy caboodles was in fact a carefully designed set of predictive cat burglar tools.

As they climbed through the window, Lucy knocked over two or three of the new Air-Max 4000 golf clubs that were stacked up against the wall. Luckily, the noise of their fall was dampened by a multitude of fleece blankets with strategic holes in them. Breathing a sigh of relief, Wil climbed in after her. Inside the office, two massive HD televisions showed the continuous broadcast feed from next door. Marcus James stood with his eyes closed as a suspiciously greenish hand applied makeup to his forehead from off-camera.

“As long as he's broadcasting he won't be back in here,” said Wil. “We need to be quick and get out of here as fast as possible.”

Lucy scowled at the television screen. “Let's lock the door just to be on the safe side,” she said.

Wil and Lucy poked their heads out of the empty office to make sure they were unobserved. Along the upper halls of the Castle Towers, the penthouse was now a hive of slightly confused efficiency, centered around the studio area. Every so often, red lights would flash, and a loudspeaker operator would loudly announce the countdown to broadcast. It all seemed rather harried and terrifying, which felt entirely in keeping with everything Wil had ever heard about live television broadcasts. At this stage of the imminent transmission, the upstairs area seemed completely deserted while all of its otherworldly occupants busied themselves with the brainwashing of humanity in small chunks of unnoticeable micropayments. Lucy closed the door and locked it shut.

Wil moved to the wall safe, struck by the sense that things were going entirely too smoothly. He went over a mental checklist, trying to determine if anything had ever gone as easily for him, and for the life of him he could not think of a single event that matched up. This was beginning to make him very nervous indeed. Up above, the television indicated Marcus James's broadcast was going live in less than three minutes. The two combination locks on the safe waited, dangerously. This was going to be too easy.

“SARA,” said Wil, nervously, “can you please bring up the tumbler sequence for the combination locks and read them off to me?”

“
Affirmative,
” said SARA, smugly. “
The first combination is thirty-one, fifty-four, seventy-six.
”

Wil moved the tumblers as instructed. Much to his surprise, they settled into place exactly, and the first combination lock gave off a little flashing green light to indicate it had been opened. Wil gulped.

“Are you okay?” asked Lucy.

“Yes, I think so,” he replied. “It's just … is it me, or does it strike you that this is all too easy?”

“We have the numbers. How hard did you expect it would be?”

“Oh, I don't know. Rottweilers-and-ninja-bot hard, I suppose. Things don't ever come this easily for me. I don't like it.”

Lucy chuckled. “You're on my team now. Things are always groovy in my world.”

“I suppose so. Just keep an eye on the door.” With great trepidation, Wil moved to the second combination lock. “SARA, can you please give me the second sequence?”

“
Affirmative, Wil Morgan,
” said SARA, as if she was about to tell the punch line to a joke. “
The second combination is seventy-four, thirty-four, thirty-six.
”

Wil began to sweat a little as he moved the second tumbler. He had a feeling something was about to add up, and that the resulting calculation would not work in his favor. “SARA, just out of interest, is there any significance to this series of numbers?”

“
Calculating…,
” said SARA, already knowing the answer. “
Thirty-one point five four seven six, north; seventy-four point three four three six, east. These are the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates for Lahore, Pakistan.
”

“Is there anything,” said Wil as he struggled with the placement of the final tumbler, “that isn't connected to something else today?”

“
Negative, Wil Morgan. Please be advised all building security systems are correctly coupled and functioning within normal parameters.
”

“What?”

*   *   *

A
T THAT
very moment—just as the final tumbler settled into place and the safe door sprang open—Wil Morgan's week suddenly resumed normal service, and he found himself experiencing his usual late-Thursday crisis. There in front of him was a yellowed electricity bill, courtesy of the Edison Electric Company, circa 1891. The old piece of paper sat in pride of place next to a pair of silver cuff links and what looked to be a small ceramic ashtray with a picture of a carnival on it. Ordinarily, these items would have intrigued Wil; why, for example, would someone treasure an old ashtray that looked as if it had been purchased at a coastal tourist trap sometime during the 1980s? Were the cuff links made of pure silver, or were they just cheap knockoffs? All of these questions and more raced through his mind, and were immediately rejected for the fact that the entire upper floor of the Castle Towers was suddenly filled with a piercing alarm, and flashing red lights.

“Caution! Intruder!” yelled the building's loudspeaker system, just in case someone had missed the point. “Caution! Intruder!” Not to be outdone, a few flashing gold lights joined in to compete with the flashing red ones.

Wil hastily grabbed the old piece of paper and examined it. A corner of the ancient bill crumbled in his hand. Scanning the thing hastily, he noticed the word “Dinsdale” written clearly in a bottom corner. He spread the paper on Marcus James's office desk with a terrible nagging feeling that he had been down this road many times before, though it always looked different every time. The triumph of finding the very thing he and Lucy had come to steal was to prove very short-lived indeed.

“Wil, look!” yelled Lucy, pointing to the windows that fronted two sides of the office. To his dismay, Wil saw that they were now being locked down by rapidly descending metal slats, which completely blocked out the outside world. The massive slats clattered to their resting place, and the building shuddered slightly. Another series of metal slats blocked the inside of the office door. Wil and Lucy were trapped.

Up on the HD television screens, Marcus James was being given the bad news that intruders had broken into his office. His face looked like thunder. Wil noticed a couple of very grayish producers flapping their arms about as they rushed to the back of the set. Their features were difficult to pick out, however—each time the cameras caught any of the gray aliens, the video feed short-circuited. Like so many actual producers, these guys clearly preferred to do their work off-camera. With the broadcast counting down from ten to one, Marcus clearly had no choice but to continue as if everything was perfectly fine, despite the obvious difficulty with the flashing red and gold lights and the cacophonous alarms.

“We are live,” said a garbled, disembodied voice, “in five … four … three…”

“Hi there!” yelled Marcus enthusiastically in the direction of camera A. “We are going deal crazy over here! Our best deals of the year have just set off the uh … supercrazy deal alarm! All of our best items are on red light special! Gold means go! Buy now! Operators are standing by!”

Wil found Marcus's white teeth grating in the extreme, and his fake smile to be revolting beyond words. But he had to admire the little man's chutzpah. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.

“Wil! We're locked down!” yelled Lucy in a desperate attempt to state the obvious before Wil could beat her to it.

“I'm aware of that!” he yelled back. “I've got what we came for. We need to get the heck out of here!”

“How? The windows are blocked off.”

Wil looked around him for any sign of a way out, only to be met with obstacles. The windows and main door to the office were clearly impassable. Thinking quickly, he produced the Civil War periscope and searched for any air ducts just below his feet (despite the fact entering them was likely to get him shot at sixty times). No luck: the floor below seemed to contain the packing warehouses for most of Marcus James's infernal TV-only items. Ordinarily, Wil would have been intrigued by the strange little gnome-like creatures down there that seemed to be loading boxes and driving forklift trucks. But this was no time for spying: he and Lucy had to find a way out. All he could see inside the office were piles of useless TV-only items, an open safe with an ashtray and cuff links in it, and Marcus James's open laptop computer.

The computer! Suddenly, Wil was struck by the strongest notion yet that this entire affair had been scheduled from the start. From within his pocket, the Whatsit beeped, plaintively. He reached inside his other pocket instead.

“SARA!” yelled Wil. “I need your help!”

“
Greetings, Wil Morgan,
” said SARA. “
How may I be of assistance?
”

“I'm not sure yet. Do you know how to break into a security system?”

“
Would you like me to look up ‘how to break into a security system' on the Internet?
”

“No, I just want you to hack into one for me.”

Wil moved toward Marcus James's open laptop, which displayed a screen saver depicting Marcus James holding a tube of Gleemodent toothpaste.

“Wil, what are you doing? We have to get out of here,” said Lucy, urgently.

“Something illegal, probably!”

“Well, it can't be any less legal than what we've already done, can it?”

“Good point! Just keep an eye on the door!”

Wil produced SARA's charging cord and stared at it, a pit forming in his stomach. He didn't really have anything against preordination, he just hated it when things seemed to be preordained by a little old man in a mustard jacket aided by quite possibly the world's most insane smartphone. With a sharp intake of breath, Wil plugged one end of the charging cord into a free port in the computer. “Whatever you're going to do,” he informed SARA, “I'm counting on you.” With that, he kissed the smartphone's screen and plugged the other end of the cord into SARA's open charging slot.

SARA glowed.

Wil found Lucy staring at him with astonishment, causing him to blush. After less than a week of exposure to Mr. Dinsdale and the Curioddity Museum, his judgment had pretty much gone off the deep end. He smiled, weakly. “Just in case,” he said to Lucy.

“Just in case of what?” she countered, and went off to examine the metal slats that made the door to the office impassable.

Wil watched Lucy go with a feeling of bewilderment usually reserved for husbands and boyfriends who have just purchased a set of socket wrenches for their wives and girlfriends, and are genuinely confused as to why their significant other just whacked them over the head with one. Was it his imagination, or was Lucy jealous?

“We're going to take a quick commercial break from this, uh … commercial,” said Marcus James up on the main HD screen. “We'll be back in a jiffy!” And with that, a five-minute looped infomercial for a strangely familiar galvanized blue wall putty began to play. Meanwhile, the alarms suddenly stopped, and the red and gold lighting was replaced with a calmer and only slightly less dangerous blue. The Castle Towers had fallen silent but for Marcus's inane drivel on the broadcast and, presumably, the imminent arrival of a legion of angry ninja-bots.

“SARA, can you break into his system?” said Wil, eyeing his phone with a nervous look. “Or break us out for that matter. Can you find us any way out of here?”

“
Calculating…,
” replied SARA, mischievously. “
Please remain calm.
”

Wil assessed the situation: while he and Lucy had reached the goal of securing the fabled electric bill Mr. Dinsdale so coveted, the fact could not be ignored that only half the battle was won. In truth, an exit from the Castle Towers seemed of equal importance to its access. He moved over to Lucy, just to see how she was doing. At the door, Lucy was pondering. Wil took her by the hand and looked into her eyes.

“I'm really sorry about this,” he said in a grave voice. “I mean I know we've only started dating recently—”