Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction (33 page)

When she came back, I asked Mom where she got the strength. She said it just came over her when she saw the man in danger. I couldn’t believe she’d have the same emotion for a stranger as she had for me.

A week or so later Mom began spending afternoons out of the house. She’d get all fixed up—hair, makeup, and everything, plus a pair of workman’s gloves, which was strange, but she said she had to protect her nails. I assumed she was shopping or visiting friends. I was still laid up and couldn’t go with her, not that I would have wanted to.

One day, though, she came home and her jacket was layered with dust. I asked her where she’d been, but she said not to worry about it. Then the six o’clock news came on, and there was Mom again, being interviewed at a construction site. A steel beam had broken from its cable and fallen on one of the workers, and before anyone else could get to him, Mom had lifted a ton of metal, saving his life. I confronted her and she admitted she had been driving around looking for people in peril. How could I berate her for that?

Soon she spent most of the day on the road, cruising by potential trouble spots, places where she thought people might need to have great weights lifted from them, like at the shipyard or at houses with moving vans parked out front. She got herself a new cell phone number and turned it into a hotline for people to call for weighty emergencies. Mom lifted an upright piano off one man, and—I still can hardly believe this one—a city bus off another. She lifted a refrigerator from some guy using only one hand. I stayed at home and saw it all on TV. Each time she was interviewed she said it was just her motherly reaction to seeing people in danger. She got a call from a few talk shows requesting appearances, and from some writer who asked if she’d let him ghostwrite her story.

By this time I should have been recovered from my injuries. I was able to walk and go back to work, but I didn’t have my old vitality. I couldn’t participate in anything strenuous, not even my Wednesday-night bowling league—I could barely get the ball down the lane. The doctor said there wasn’t anything physically wrong with me and suggested I see a psychiatrist to figure it out.
I went for a few sessions but then stopped—the guy kept asking me about my relationship with my father, who had left us when I was small. It was a waste of time. And I still I felt as weak as I thought Mom was before I learned her true strength.

Eventually I quit my job. Mom was making enough from her appearances and endorsements that my income was meaningless. Of course, I didn’t get to see her much, with her being on the road either for guest spots or lifesaving, but at least everything was taken care of. But it was boring. I tried to make new friends and meet girls, but people weren’t interested in me. They only wanted to know about my famous mother. I stayed home to rest and watched a lot of TV, but I stopped tuning in to the news.

Mom was due back from an appearance in L.A.—
Conan
, I think—and I went to the window when I heard her taxi pull up. She grabbed her suitcases—no need for me to help, obviously—and started walking past the crooked tree. It seemed to be bending even more than usual—looming, malicious, its roots tearing out of the ground, like it was ready to attack. It began to move, to uproot. Mom didn’t notice. She kept walking up the path, looking pleased with herself. But I saw it all. She would be crushed under the great weight. Someone would have to save her!

I reached for that pair of workman’s gloves. It struck me that I should move out, into my own place. I was beginning to feel stronger already.

Jamie Lackey

F
ireflies flickered in the trees, and the scent of lighter fluid and seared meat floated on the gentle July breeze. I pulled a wedge of watermelon out of my cooler, plunked down on my porch swing, and tried not to think about Janet. So of course I pictured her on a beach somewhere. With André. The wife-stealing asshole.

The first round of Terry’s handcrafted fireworks display screamed into the sky. The fireflies went dark as shimmering, multicolored lights washed over me. I grinned, in spite of everything. Terry always did the best fireworks. There were benefits to living next door to a wizard.

As the next set of fireworks boomed and crackled overhead, a huge phoenix exploded from the tree line, leaving a raging fire in its wake. It screeched a challenge and dove at Terry’s house. I swore and grabbed my great ax. Living next to Terry had its drawbacks, too.

Janet would have screamed at me for rushing into the fray. For a moment, I didn’t miss her at all.

The phoenix was massive—it loomed in the night sky, half again the size of the biggest dragon I’d ever faced. A swipe from its fiery feathered tail ignited all of Terry’s carefully timed fireworks. They shot into the sky and framed the mythic bird like an explosive halo.

I screamed a challenge of my own and charged across the yard. I felt alive for the first time in weeks.

Terry hurled balls of ice at it. One glanced off of a massive wing. He spared me a single glance when I joined him. “Hey, Doug. I appreciate the help.”

“What did you do to piss this thing off?” I asked, swinging and
missing. For something so huge, it was damn hard to hit. Lucky for me, I’m hard to hit, too.

“I might have stolen some eggshell fragments. For the fireworks.”

“Eggshell fragments?” I asked. “It’s pissed over fragments?”

Terry shrugged. “Baby phoenixes eat their shells.”

“You stole food from its babies?”

“I needed the shells!” Terry shouted. The phoenix snapped at him, and he barely managed to dodge in time. Its beak was longer than the wizard was tall.

“Why?” I asked, swinging again, and scoring a hit this time. Hot blood singed the hair off my arms. “No one’s here to watch the show this year but me and you!”

Terry slammed a bolt of ice into the phoenix’s left wing. “I wanted to cheer you up!”

I stopped and gaped at him. He’d risked life and limb just because he knew how much I liked his fireworks? “You’re crazy.”

Huge, burning claws raked down my back. Terry swore. I blacked out.

Waking up in the hospital isn’t a new sensation for me. “Janet?” I called, groping for her hand. She’s always hated waiting in the hospital.

“She’s not here,” Terry said. “And she’s not coming.”

Memory came rushing back, and I let my hand fall. “Right.”

“Thanks for your help back there. If you hadn’t distracted it, I would have been a goner.”

“The phoenix. You didn’t kill it, did you?” I thought about its babies, hungry for eggshells, missing their mother.

Terry shook its head. “No. I bribed it. Gave the damn thing half my stock of dragon claws.”

I stared out the hospital room window. The view was familiar. “I can’t believe she didn’t come.”

“Not everything rises from the ashes,” Terry said.

Jay Werkheiser

P
rofessor Thomson, I’m here to save your Plum Pudding theory.”

J. J. Thomson looked up from his desk. The stranger wore gentleman’s clothing, but they were dirty and disheveled. His deep-set gray eyes sparkled with intelligence.

Thomson grunted and dropped his pen into its well. “Who the devil are you? And how did you get into my office at this hour?”

“I’m a friend of Herbert Wells.”

“What’s he teach? Physics? Chemistry?”

“He’s a writer. Perhaps you read his chronicle of my exploits a few years back?”

Thomson looked over his glasses at the untidy man. “Can’t say I’ve had the opportunity.”

The stranger shrugged. “Pity. In the future, your Plum Pudding theory—”

“Stop calling it that. The term is a gross oversimplification of my model.”

“Oh, dear. Do I have my history wrong? Aren’t you the physicist who said that the atom is like a plum pudding?”

Thomson drew back in indignation. “I never uttered such rubbish. My model proposes a diffuse positively charged cloud through which negative corpuscles revolve.”

“The point is,” the stranger said, his gaunt face hardening with resolve, “next year Lord Rutherford will design an experiment that shows your model to be wrong.”

“Ernest Rutherford? My old student? Brilliant man, but no Lord.”

“Not yet. He won’t get the title until a few years after he
proposes his nuclear model of the atom.”

Thomson leveled a sharp gaze at the stranger. “And how would you have knowledge of the future?”

“I’ve been there. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Rutherford’s work will lead to a new theory called quantum mechanics. It’s nearly an inverse of your model, a central positive nucleus surrounded by a negatively charged cloud.”

Thomson raised his eyebrows. “And Ernest does all this?”

“No, but he gets it started by disproving your model. And you have to stop him.”

“Have I, indeed? Young man, even if I believed you, why on Earth would I want to impede scientific progress?”

“You don’t know the terrible things I’ve seen.” The stranger’s face reflected the pain of his memories. He faltered, staring straight ahead as though seeing the horrors of the future once more.

Thomson looked into the unfortunate man’s haunted eyes and his heart softened. “Stiff upper lip, old boy. Tell me what you found.”

“It’s Rutherford’s nucleus! Once you have the nucleus, you can split the nucleus, and then—you’ve no idea the horrors mankind unleashes—will unleash—with that theory.”

“But my good man,” Thomson said, “even if I were to dissuade Ernest from his experiment, someone else will find this nucleus.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong. The new theory that arises in the future, quantum mechanics, says that reality exists only as a set of probabilities, none of which are truly real until observed. So don’t you see? The nucleus didn’t exist until Rutherford searched for it. Upon his measurement, nature rolled the dice and they came up nucleus. In essence, he created the nucleus by observing it.”

Thomson struggled with the odd notion. “So you’re saying that if Ernest doesn’t do his experiment—”

“Then nature doesn’t have to decide on the location of the atom’s positive charge, and it can remain diffuse. The Plum Pudding atom becomes reality.”

“So all I have to do is write a letter dissuading Ernest, and my
model of the atom becomes true.” The ghost of a smile played across Thomson’s lips.

The stranger’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Will you do it?”

“But it’s all nonsense.” Thomson threw up his arms and laughed. “Of course I shan’t write to Ernest with such rubbish.”

The stranger grabbed Thomson’s arm in a grip like iron. “But you must! Consider this,” the man said, and his face became cunning. “Your letter cannot do any harm. If I’m wrong, someone else will discover the nucleus. But if I’m right, you’ll have saved the future. You must send that letter!”

“Oh, very well,” Thomson conceded. “If it means that much, then I shall send it. He’ll likely ignore it anyway.”

The man grabbed Thomson’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “Thank you, Professor. You won’t regret it.” With a start, he withdrew his hand. “I must be off. I can use my machine to find out…”

Thomson never heard the end of the sentence, because the man was already out the door and trotting down the hallway. With a wry smile, Thomson watched him retreat from the Cavendish Laboratory. After a long moment, he returned to his desk and pulled a fresh piece of paper from a drawer. He lifted his pen from its well and wrote “Dear Ernest,” at the top of the page. He paused, allowing the pen to hover over the page. With a sigh, he reminded himself that he had given his word.

His head snapped up when the door to his office flew open and the stranger burst through. In the few moments he had been gone, his hair had thinned and his eyes had acquired the first hint of crow’s feet. “Put down that pen!” he shouted.

“Good sir, did you not moments ago convince me to write this letter?”

In a voice just short of hysterical, the stranger said, “You’ve no idea the damage mankind will do with your Plum Pudding model!”