Edison’s Alley (5 page)

On the rare occasion when a wire slipped off in a public place, Vince had learned the trick of closing his eyes the moment he felt death coming on. That way, when he hit the floor, it would
appear to any onlookers that he was merely unconscious until help arrived.

For this reason, Vince, a loner by nature, had been forced to adopt the buddy system, making sure that he was almost always under the watchful eyes of either his mother one block behind, or one
of the four classmates who knew about the battery.

Mitch was the first member of their little secret society to greet Vince at school that day, at which point his mother sped away.

“Hey, Vince,” Mitch said, a little too loudly, like always. “How you feeling today?”

“Dead to the world,” Vince responded in as flat a tone as he could muster.

Mitch gave him a courtesy laugh, and followed him to class.

Between Mitch, Petula, Caitlin, and Nick, Vince had someone to spot him in five out of six classes. Though he hated having to be babysat, the possibility of dropping dead in the classroom was
worse. Which, on this particular day, happened in English, when his backpack containing the heavy wet-cell battery slipped from his chair to the floor, disconnecting his electrodes.

Nick was two seats away when he heard the telltale thud of Vince’s head hitting the desk. It brought about a titter of giggles around him, because his classmates thought
he had fallen asleep.

The cover story, which came in the form of a note from Vince’s mother to all of his teachers, was that Vince had been diagnosed as narcoleptic. The note said he could fall asleep at any
moment, and that the teachers should not take it personally—which, invariably, they did—and, in fact, a few students were keeping a secret tally of which of Vince’s teachers were
the most sleep-inducing.

When Vince went down, Nick was quick to react, practically jumping over the girl between them to reconnect the electrodes. Luckily, the wires had detached from the battery and not Vince’s
back, because it would have been much harder for Nick to explain why he was reaching up Vince’s shirt to wake him, rather than just slapping him in the face—as many of the other kids,
and perhaps even some teachers, would have been happy to do.

Once the electrodes were reconnected, Vince opened his eyes and popped up in his chair as if it had never happened. “Present!” he said.

The girl next to Vince looked at Nick with an odd expression on her face.

“What did you just do?” she asked.

Nick shrugged. “Nothing. I was just going for his phone to call his mother. She wants to know whenever he has a narcoleptic episode.”

But the girl wasn’t convinced. “What’s that in his backpack? It looks heavy.”

Nick and Vince were saved by their teacher, who insisted that all attention return to her. One of these days, though, Nick knew someone would get a little too curious and realize that
Vince’s condition was grave—in the literal sense.

At the end of the period Vince made a beeline for the door, but Nick followed him down the hall.

“If you’re expecting a thank-you,” said Vince, “you’re not going to get one.”

“Why would I expect that?” Nick asked. “You never thanked Caitlin and me for reanimating you in the first place. And after what happened in the mortuary that day, we
don’t deserve thank-yous, we deserve medals.” Nick shuddered. “I’m still having nightmares about porcupines and pickaxes.”

He looked around, making sure none of the other students hurrying to class were listening. “Hey, I still need your help, Vince.”

Vince crossed his gangly arms, giving Nick a dead-fish kind of look. “Why would I help you? If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t need this battery at all.”

Vince had a point, but there was a much larger point to be made. “Whether you like it or not, we’re all in this together now.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Nick felt his hands ball into fists. “Will it matter whose fault it is when the Accelerati steal your battery and you’re six feet under for good?”

“That’ll never happen,” Vince said. “I plan to be cremated.”

Nick wanted to grab him and give him a good shake, but he thought that might dislodge the wires again, so he took a deep breath to calm down. Nick had to remind himself that this situation had
left Vince worse off than any of them.

“Why don’t you just let the Accelerati get the rest of the stuff?” Vince grumbled. “Maybe then they’ll leave us alone.”

Nick was about to point out that he needed every remaining item to assemble the machine in his attic, but then he realized he had never told Vince that the objects fit together. Vince
didn’t know, and neither did the Accelerati.

And all at once Nick understood that he couldn’t tell Vince, because to finish the machine, the final object they’d need would be Vince’s battery. It was a cold truth that Nick
didn’t want to face right now, so he pushed the thought away. All Nick said was “After what they did to you, don’t you want to take them down?”

Vince hesitated. The hallway began to clear. Nick knew he’d be late to history, but this was more important.

“I’ll sleep on it,” Vince finally said.

“You don’t sleep,” Nick pointed out.

“Which means I’ll have plenty of time to think it over.”

A
power generator is an unpredictable thing. It can blow up, blow out, or electrocute people with the same happy ease with which it charges your
electric toothbrush.

The larger the generator, the more power it delivers, and consequently, the more potential for devastation.

The Three Gorges Dam, capable of providing 10 percent of China’s power with its thirty-two massive turbines, had been the world’s largest electric power generator. But even the
largest turbine is just a quantity of copper wire spinning around a magnet, and can’t compare to a chunk of copper fifty miles across, spinning around the magnetic core of planet Earth. There
was a new mega–power generator on the block, and its name was Bonk.

Everyone was aware of the buildup in static electricity. Most people just considered it “one of those things.” Like the way Wint-O-Green Life Savers spark in your mouth when you chew
them, or how sometimes dry bedsheets flash with microlightning when you shuffle your feet beneath the covers.

Petula was no stranger to the phenomenon of electric shock.

Her parents would often laughingly tell of her many near-death experiences when, as a toddler, she had repeatedly shoved forks into outlets. Eventually they became an all-plastic-utensil
household. Petula remembered it enough to know that she didn’t have an infant death wish—she was just trying to kill the “stinking monster” in the wall that kept shocking
her for no good reason.

But now the monster was back, and it was no longer confined to the wall.

Petula knew it wasn’t going to be a good day when she awoke to discover that the static she had kicked up in her sheets during the night had caused her braided pigtails to stand almost on
end, like Pippi Longstocking. It took the painful touching of many doorknobs to discharge the static, and industrial amounts of hair gel to keep her braids in place.

Petula suffered through her morning classes, but ever since the day Ms. Planck, the so-called lunch lady, had invited her to join the Accelerati, the busywork of institutionalized curriculum
seemed like a nonsensical waste of her time.

The problem, Petula only now realized, was that Ms. Planck had inducted her into a sleeper cell of two. They were supposed to do nothing but watch and wait.

Petula was skilled at watching, but waiting was something she could not abide. She had gathered information on Nick Slate’s activities. She had reported to Ms. Planck which objects Nick
had in his possession. She had taken remarkably dull pictures of the future on Ms. Planck’s orders, and she kept expecting Ms. Planck to ask her to actually do something important, but no
such luck.

During history class, while the teacher was droning on about Manifest Destiny, Petula decided it was time to manifest her own destiny. The instant the lunch bell rang, she made a beeline to the
cafeteria.

Ms. Planck was at her usual station behind the steam table. The woman, who had worked undercover all these years, was one of the few people in the world Petula respected and one of the fewer she
actually liked. But at the moment, she was holding Petula back.

There were other kids already waiting for lunch. Petula allowed them their place in line ahead of her so she could formulate her thoughts and build her resolve. When no one was looking, she
reached up and felt the hidden gold pin she wore, running her thumb and forefinger over the smooth little
A
with an infinity sign as its crossbar. “Wear this close to your heart, but
don’t let anyone see it,” Ms. Planck had told her. Well, membership had to mean more than a stupid pin. It had to be a doorway to greatness, and Petula was tired of knocking.

When Petula finally approached, Ms. Planck must have read something in her face, because she offered a conspiratorial smirk and said, “You look like you could use some food from my special
surprise stash.”

Seventy-five percent of surprises, Petula had concluded, were unpleasant, but she had to admit she was curious.

“Sure,” she said to Ms. Planck. “What ya got?”

The lunch lady reached a pair of long silver tongs below the counter, then dropped a perfectly broiled lobster tail on Petula’s tray.

“Impressive,” Petula said. “Who do you usually serve this to?”

“Anyone who deserves it and isn’t allergic to shellfish,” Ms. Planck said.

“There are kids I know who
are
allergic to shellfish, and deserve to be given some.”

“Give me their names,” Ms. Planck said with a wink, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Hey,” said the kid behind her in line. “How come she got the big shrimp? I want a big shrimp too!”

“Can’t do it,” said Ms. Planck flatly. “Serving you a bottom-feeder could be considered encouraging cannibalism. You get soy pizza. Next!”

Kids were pushing forward to get their lunch, but Petula blocked the flow, refusing to move on. “We need to talk,” she told Ms. Planck.

“Later” was all Ms. Planck said, and she then ignored her, serving up slop as if Petula wasn’t there. So Petula found a table, sat down, and ate the lobster tail unnoticed by
the other kids. This didn’t surprise her—she was convinced she could have done a hula dance with the lobster tail on her head and, with the exception of the one kid who wanted
“big shrimp,” no one would have paid any attention.

That
, Petula resolved, was one more thing that needed to change.

After school, Petula took her daily photographs for the Accelerati with the focus ring of Tesla’s old box camera set twenty-four hours to the future. She snapped a photo
of the newspaper kiosk, where tomorrow’s headlines would appear. She took a few pictures of the digital stock ticker that wrapped around the Wells Fargo Bank building. And finally she took a
shot of the front of the neighborhood bowling alley.

When she was done, she went to Ms. Planck’s darkroom and developed the negatives. Together they pored over the enlargements, studying tomorrow’s newspaper headlines, noting the next
day’s closing stock prices, and confirming that the bowling alley looked unchanged. Ms. Planck had never explained the significance of snapping this last photograph every day, and not knowing
why made Petula feel even more like an outsider.

“Look,” Petula said, pointing at a news headline. “The Phoenix Suns are going to beat the Lakers in tonight’s playoff—that’s a pretty big upset.”

“Yes, it is. I’m sure the Accelerati will find the information most useful,” Ms. Planck responded.

“You mean they’ll place a bet?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, honey. They’ll buy the team.”

Thanks to me!
Petula wanted to shout. Not only was she their eyes and ears on Nick Slate and his attic, she was also feeding the Accelerati reams of priceless information about the
future. But did they even know about her, or was Ms. Planck taking all the credit? It was that thought that pushed Petula over the edge.

“Enjoy those pictures,” she told Ms. Planck. “Because they’re the last you’re going to get. As of now, I’m on strike.”

Ms. Planck didn’t seem bothered. She just smirked. “Really. Is it just you or the entire future-tographer’s union?”

“I don’t mind being used,” Petula told her, “as long as I get something worthwhile in return.”

Ms. Planck considered that, then said, “Maybe it’s time to introduce you to the brass.”

Petula’s only context for that sentiment was a gangster movie she had seen once on TCM, in which being “introduced to the brass” meant a beating with brass knuckles.

“Are you threatening me?” Petula asked, and she assumed a ready position she had learned in her online theoretical jujitsu class.

“Take it easy, honey,” Ms. Planck said, arching an eyebrow. “I only mean to say I think you’re ready to meet some of the higher-ups in our little association.”

Petula let out a small breath and smiled at the thought. This was what she had been waiting for: her moment to make an impression. With her personality and perfect elocution, she had no doubt
that this was her opportunity to open the door wide.