Curioddity (35 page)

“But that's impossible.… Wait a minute.” Wil placed the Whatsit on the floor, moved sharply to the rows of brand-new Air-Max 4000 golf clubs, and selected the one that looked most suited to his height. “That's it!” he yelled. “Concentrate on relaxing!”

“Leave those alone!” yelled Marcus from outside the melting and cracking glass. “Those are brand-new! They're not for the public!”

Ignoring Marcus James's cries of protest, Wil now settled in by the wall and began to whack imaginary golf balls, pretending he was hitting them high into the night sky over the adjacent rooftops. As long and straight as the pros.

“What are you doing?” shouted Lucy above the ever-increasing din.

“Ssh! I'm trying to concentrate!”

“Concentrate? By practicing your golf swing?”

“I don't have a golf swing! I need to concentrate on relaxing! You're not helping!”

“Oh! Sorry!”

Wil swished the club a few more times, feeling the shaft whipping around him. He tried to pretend he'd just split a nice, green fairway to the polite applause of an adoring public. A few days ago he'd had a dream of finishing second in a long drive competition. This time he would reset his expectations and finish first.

“
Wil Morgan,
” interrupted SARA. “
A structural breach will occur in approximately seventeen seconds.
”

Looking toward the glass, Wil could now see that a small legion of angry ninja-bot foot soldiers was gathering along the far wall. The two larger ninja-bots were making headway, and one side of the cracking wall was now almost completely melted. “Lucy!” he yelled. “Grab SARA and stand back!”

“What are you doing?”

“I have no idea!”

He moved toward the little Whatsit device, which continued to make plaintive beeps from its position in the center of the office floor. With the Air-Max 4000 in his right hand, he wet the index finger of his left hand and checked the imaginary wind direction. Satisfied, he lowered the golf club so that it rested against the Whatsit, and aimed in the direction of the glass wall.

Over at the office desk, Lucy removed SARA's charging cord from Marcus James's laptop computer. Seeing Wil address the Whatsit with the driver, she squeaked with fear and took cover behind the desk.

Wil closed his eyes, and concentrated. He thought of Nikola Tesla and marshmallows, and Lucy's oh-so-cute ankle bracelet. And his mom. And the Perpetual Penny.

And he swung with all his might.

*   *   *

T
HE
W
HATSIT
device seemed to freeze time at the very moment the head of the Air-Max 4000 made impact. In that split second, Wil imagined a lot of things. He imagined he could see the look of utter horror on Marcus James's face as the Whatsit came flying toward the bulletproof glass. He imagined his imaginary golf ball splitting the fairway, and landing at a distance roughly equal to the pros. He imagined himself kissing Lucy, and buying SARA a spiffy new carrying case. He imagined Mr. Dinsdale's beaming face as he presented the coveted electric bill that would prove the old man's ownership of the museum property, and Mary Gold's grudging look of admiration. He imagined his mother, in every atom around him. Living inside every electron. He imagined his dad ruffling his hair.

The Whatsit flew off the face of the golf club like a bat exiting the underworld. It had time to beep just once before it impacted with the surface of the bulletproof glass and turned it into a sheet of liquid. The Whatsit then took a quick left turn and clattered into the torch-wielding ninja-bot, turning the automaton into a small pile of plastic coat hangers and thereby rendering it completely ineffective as a weapon of mass destruction. Lucy chanced a peek over the top of the desk, and Wil opened one eye. The Whatsit caromed off the first ninja-bot and clattered to a stop in front of the second bot armed with the sledgehammer. There was a moment of silence. Wil closed his eyes again. And when he opened them, the ninja-bot's hammer had somehow turned into a banana, much to the surprise of the confused automaton.

With an impressive
whoosh,
the Whatsit suddenly let out a huge cloud of chalk dust, and then zipped out of existence. Wil felt a lump in his pocket, and found the Whatsit back where it had started the evening.

“So that's how it works,” he muttered, genuinely impressed. He looked at the head of the Air-Max 4000, impressed. I'm keeping this, he thought.

Inside the broadcast area, Marcus James was having a pretty extraordinary coughing fit. “SARA!” shouted Lucy, urgently. “We have to get out of here! Which way do we go?”

“
Greetings,
” said SARA, innocently pretending to be waking up from a nap. “
Would you like me to look up ‘which way am I supposed to go' on the Internet?
”

“Yes!” yelled Lucy and Wil in unison.

“
It's about time,
” said SARA. And with that, her entire screen lit up. “
Please proceed to the highlighted route. In ten yards, turn left.
”

“You can't be serious!” protested Lucy.

“Just do as she says,” responded Wil. “I think we owe her that much!”

Blinded by chalk dust, Wil and Lucy raced forward, unable to see exactly where they were going. Wil was vaguely aware of the recovering smaller ninja-bots now converging on his and Lucy's position. After exactly ten yards, he turned left and found himself leading Lucy through a small corridor filled with red flashing lights and chalk dust.

“
At the next junction, turn left,
” instructed SARA. Wil and Lucy duly obliged, only to be met with a second wall of angry, buzzing ninja-bots, this time armed with smaller blowtorches. “
At the first opportunity, make a legal U-turn!
”

“Quick! Back the way we came!” yelled Lucy above the din as the wall of bots bore down.

“We can't go back! There's a hundred more of them following us!”

“Just go!”

Wil and Lucy doubled back, quickly. “
In three feet, jump abruptly to the right,
” said SARA in her metallic matter-of-fact manner. Wil and Lucy immediately jumped to the right and found themselves inside an open storage closet just as the two converging legions of ninja-bots bore down on their position. In the resulting confusion, the two armies began to attack each other in the hallway, while Wil and Lucy looked on from their hidey-hole, confused beyond measure.

“
At the earliest opportunity, please step out across the smoldering piles of slag in the hallway and move east,
” said SARA.

“Shouldn't we let them finish first?” said Wil.

“
Time is of the essence,
” replied SARA. “
Please proceed to the highlighted route.
”

Wil checked the screen. The highlighted route would take he and Lucy up across the rooftops, down a drainpipe, and through a thirtieth-story window. It would culminate in a madcap dash across seventeen more floors before calling for them to squeeze through a series of air ducts while, presumably, taking a few bullets to the shoulder.

“Are you serious?” Wil cried. “We'll never make it that way!”

“Can't we use the elevator again?” asked Lucy.

“
Recalculating…,
” said SARA. On the screen of the smartphone, her navigation widget revolved for a few moments while she pondered the problem. And as the commotion in the hallway began to die down, she found a solution. “
Please proceed directly to the elevators, which have been rerouted. Do not initiate conversation, and try to avoid stepping on that green thing. Temporal paradox in T-minus seventy-three seconds.
”

“Uh, okay. Are you sure?”

“Affirmative.”

“What green thing? And for that matter, what temporal paradox?”

The screen of the smartphone simply glowed. SARA was no longer in the mood to be forthcoming.

“I think we might have overloaded her inputs,” said Lucy. “She's gone completely off the deep end.”

“I think we were already past that stage,” replied Wil, grimly. “Come on.”

Wil and Lucy stepped out into the hallway, where the remnants of a ninja-bot war smoldered. Farther along, a single ninja-bot groaned as it tried and failed to pull itself back to wherever some kind stranger might repair it. With their choices limited, Wil and Lucy began to pick their way through the debris and head toward the elevators.

“
Temporal paradox in T-minus twenty seconds,
” SARA reminded them, though she remained unclear on the nature of the approaching countdown.

“What on Earth is she talking about?” asked Lucy. “Is something going to happen?”

“Probably!” shouted Wil over the noise of the alarms. “She doesn't like to be specific!”

“Wait a second! I think I know what it is! Pass her to me!”

As they rushed toward a rapidly building clattering sound coming from the direction they were headed, Lucy examined the smartphone's screen to discover the telephone function had been activated. “SARA!” she cried, “Please call Mr. Dinsdale at the Curioddity Museum!”

“
Dialing…,
” said SARA, knowingly. “
Paradox complete.
” At the other end of the line, Mr. Dinsdale's garbled voice could barely be heard over the sound of the chaos in the upper levels. “You have reached the Museum of Curioddity,” said his recorded voice across the ether. “If you wish to leave a message … uhm … leave a message. Boop.”

“Wil!” shouted Lucy in the direction of some point in the not-too-distant past. “We're inside Marcus James's offices! There's no time to explain! Whatever you do, make sure you bring SARA's charging cord so that you can plug her in. You'll understand this later.” She cut off the call abruptly, and handed the phone back to Wil with a smug grin. “There you go. I think that about wraps that up.” And with a wink, she jumped over the closest piece of debris and made her way toward the central lobby.

At the end of the hallway, they finally cleared the debris field. Wil looked out into a larger corridor to make sure the coast was clear. The blue lights now seemed to be dimming, and the batteries on the shrill alarm systems had weakened dramatically. The alarm now sounded more like a tired goat. Seeing no one in the corridor, Wil and Lucy stepped out. Suddenly, a small, greenish individual rounded the far corner. Wil had to jump back to avoid stepping on the little creature. The alien raised a clipboard over its eyes and let out an unintelligible squeak before bolting in the direction of the accounting offices. Wil and Lucy watched the “camera operator” rush off with bemused looks on their faces.

“That must've been the green thing SARA was talking about,” said Lucy. “Where d'you think it's going?”

“With any luck? Back where it came from.”

“Attention!” came a voice from the weakening loudspeaker system. “All personnel: please attach trumpets bleating five nations!” Wil and Lucy glanced at each other. “Correction: all personnel, please abandon life markers plenty chop station!”

“I don't think English is their strong suit,” said Wil.

“I kinda like it,” replied Lucy. “Makes running away sound less formal.”

*   *   *

L
UCY KEPT
her back to the wall and peered frequently behind them so that she could keep a lookout for errant ninja-bots. Despite the decreasingly frantic nature of the alarm systems, the upper levels were still in a state of chaos. On a large screen above the upper atrium, Marcus James's looped infomercial for rubberized gutter protectant was now playing for the third time in a row. The man himself was nowhere to be seen.

As Wil and Lucy rounded the corner to the elevator doors, they were surprised to find the secretary they'd met earlier standing at the elevator call buttons. With no apparent understanding of the situation, the secretary was simply waiting for the elevator to arrive, as opposed to finding an escape route or a panic room somewhere. To all intents and purposes, the girl simply seemed to feel that this was business as usual; in fact, she was more startled by Wil and Lucy's disheveled appearance than by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the building around her.

Lucy raised her eyebrows to acknowledge the girl, and together the three of them waited in uncomfortable silence for the elevators to arrive. Much to Wil's dismay, the elevator seemed to be stopping at every single floor on the way up. As they waited, trying to avoid making eye contact, a couple of the producers rushed by, making unintelligible noises. A single machine cog rolled past, covered with burning oil. Still no response from the secretary, who had found solace in her hairdressing magazine and was doing everything in her power not to make small talk. Despite the escalating danger, Lucy seemed to be encouraged by the comedic possibilities of the moment. Wil glared at her to be silent.

The girl finally looked up, annoyed that the elevator was taking so long. “So,” said Lucy, gleefully. “Busy day?”

“Kinda,” said the girl, not wishing to talk about it.

Lucy tried her best to let the moment die. Her best was not good enough. “Anything interesting happen at work today?” she asked, innocently.

“Nah,” said the secretary, and returned to her magazine.

By now, the elevator was just a few floors down, and Wil had lost all semblance of control. “Come on … come on…,” he muttered, impatiently. “What's the holdup?”

“Where's Marcus?” hissed Lucy. “I don't like it. It's too quiet.”

Wil was inclined to agree; surely, the little TV pitchman would not go this quietly, would he? On a whim, he retrieved the Civil War periscope that had been slung across his back, and extended it upward. The secretary tried and failed to contain her annoyance.