The Great Interactive Dream Machine Page 8

  He held her in his arms. He was a lanky young guy in a World War II army uniform.

  “Don’t tell me you’ll wait for me,” he said in a harder voice. “It will be no different later, and you know it. Marry me now, Margaret. Fling caution to the winds. It is now or never.”

  She pulled back from him, and her face dropped into her hands. She had bright-red fingernails.

  “Oh no,” she said through her hands. “This is not how I will want to remember this moment.”

  As soon as she said that, it happened. Maybe her words made it happen.

  It was like a 747 roaring through the room—that quick and that loud. It wasn’t my cells reorganizing this time. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t happening to me, but everything around us changed. The lights blinked and surged. The upholstery on the sofa back changed color. So did the walls. They’d been blue or something. Now they were white. The pictures on the walls rearranged themselves in quick moves. The magazines melted. The picture in the silver frame clicked. The old man in it became somebody else, a young guy. For a second I thought I recognized him, but how could I? We felt the sudden rush of air-conditioned air.

  I looked over at the Stromberg Carlson, and now it was a TV—not new, but from modern times.

  The room sizzled and settled. Our knees were on a different rug. Miss Mather was standing in the doorway, alone. All these years later, she was a little shorter. She was wearing a bathrobe and a nightcap with wisps of gray hair sticking out. When she began to lift her old face from her wrinkled hands, we ducked down.

  But Nanky-Poo jumped out of her shopping bag. She waddled away, twitching her little flag of a tail, happy to be home now. She circled the sofa, heading for Miss Mather.

  We didn’t breathe.

  “Naughty Nanky-Poo,” Miss Mather said in her old voice. “I turn my back for... a moment, and you vanish.”

  We were looking under the sofa at them with our chins on the rug. Nanky-Poo’s flag tail was all over the place. Her claws dug into the carpet. When Miss Mather’s hand reached down for her, she ducked. Nanky-Poo was looking back past her tail, across the floor, under the sofa, at us. She let out her version of a growl.

  Now she whipped around, and her weird little chin was on the floor, like ours. Her mustache drooped on the carpet, and her hindquarters were sticking up. Her tail was going like a windshield wiper. Her marble eyes were beady, zoning right in on us, letting Miss Mather know we were there. She was like a bird dog, and we were dead ducks.

  Then we saw Miss Mather’s robe being grabbed up. She made a dash for the fireplace. We heard her grabbing a poker out of her fire tools.

  So this is how it ends, I thought. I’m fifty miles from soccer camp, and still I’m going to get my brains battered out.

  “Door,” Aaron said. Without a thought in our heads, we came out of a crouch, vaulted over the sofa, and made a run for the front hall. Aaron took a flying leap over Nanky-Poo, who was screaming in circles. I had the Sharper Image shopping bag in my hand. I guess I didn’t want to leave any evidence.

  “Halt!” Miss Mather yelled behind us. “This is a citizen’s arrest!”

  We hit the front door. There were three locks on it: high up, middle, and down by the floor. Light flooded the front hall, and we were trapped. I saw the shadow of a poker sweeping across the locked door.

  12

  Trouble in the Making

  “Turn around nice and easy,” Miss Mather said, “hands high, feet wide.” We obeyed. The Sharper Image bag hung from one of my high hands.

  The poker rested on Miss Mather’s shoulder, and she gripped the handle with both hands. It was like she was coming up to bat. Her old eyes burned big holes in us. “You are the boy who—”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “And you are the boy with—”

  “Here,” Aaron said, like she was calling roll.

  “Back into the living room.” Her poker pointed the way. We filed past her. Nanky-Poo sat in the doorway with crossed paws like she didn’t have anything to do with it.

  We settled on the edge of the sofa, and Miss Mather bent over us, leaning on her poker. “How interested I will be in your explanation for this unwarranted intrusion. I will be glad to hear, and there is nothing wrong with my hearing. It is alibi time. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  My mind was a blank, like in Math class. Aaron cleared his throat and said, “We were returning Nanky-Poo. She got out, and we brought her back.”

  That was brilliant. It was even true. I held up the shopping bag to help explain.

  “And how could Nanky-Poo get out of this apartment when the pair of you could not?”

  The questions were getting harder.

  Aaron shrugged.

  “Are you suggesting that I let Nanky-Poo out myself?” Miss Mather’s eyebrows climbed high on her forehead, making more wrinkles.

  “Maybe Nanky-Poo got out when you went... back in your mind,” Aaron said, stroking his chin.

  Miss Mather’s old eyes narrowed. “What business is it of yours where my mind goes, you cheeky boy? I am old. My mind often drifts back to ... earlier times.”

  “But tonight you really went back,” Aaron said, “big-time.”

  Her poker scraped. “What do you two know of going back? What are you, nine?”

  “Eleven,” we said, somewhat hurt. “Almost twelve.”

  Miss Mather didn’t get it. She didn’t know that Aaron’s formula had reorganized her cells. She didn’t realize she’d been cybernetically interactivated. How could she? She just thought she’d been remembering. Now she looked away.

  “Perhaps I am older than I thought,” she said to the room. “Perhaps the past has become too real to me. I might be slipping.” She looked back at us. “Old age creeps up on stealthy feet. Then one day you reach for the past as for something you have... misplaced.”

  That was truly spooky and a little bit sad, but I wasn’t so worried about the poker now. Miss Mather pulled herself together.

  “I would never be so forgetful as to let Nanky-Poo out. I am not that far gone. You two got in here somehow by jimmying the locks on my door. There is no other explanation.”

  We jimmied all three locks? Inside locks with bolts?

  “I have observed you both since you were infants. I knew even then that you were trouble in the making.”

  She touched her chin with one finger. Her nails hadn’t been red for as long as we’d lived. “It is no use my informing your parents. They clearly have no control over you. I expect they are asleep in their beds this minute.”

  I hoped so.

  “The trouble with children today is that they still have too much energy by bedtime. In my day, children were tired at night.”

  We sat there while Miss Mather decided what to do with us. I still thought she might call 911. I thought we might be booked on a breaking and entering. My hands tingled as they thought about being fingerprinted.

  “You cannot walk out of here scot-free, of course,” she said. “There is no question of that. I must think of a punishment to fit your crime.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Of course,” she said. “I will put you in charge of taking Nanky-Poo on her afternoon walk, since you are both so interested in her welfare. She likes to get out, you know.”

  We knew.

  “She must ride in her carrier bag, naturally. She isn’t allowed on the sidewalk. The sidewalks are filthy now. But you may take her to a pleasant, grassy spot in the park where...”

  “She can do her business,” Aaron said.

  “As you say,” Miss Mather said. “Four o’clock sharp for the foreseeable future.”

  The foreseeable future stretched ahead of us for as far as we could see.

  “Otherwise I shall have to call your parents in for a rather painful interview.” Miss Mather turned on her heel back to the fireplace and replaced the poker with a clang. “And now you’d both better be off. It is well past your bedtimes, if you had bedtimes.”

/>   Then we were out in the hall, and my head was pounding. “Miss Mather every day at four o’clock? I’d rather be grounded. At least I was in Mom’s custody. Even soccer camp doesn’t look that bad to me now.”

  Aaron was doing his duck walk down the hall.

  “And now what?” I said. “Is that little guy in the buttons and the hat going to be running the elevator?”

  “Are you kidding?” Aaron said. “He’d be like seventy years old now and retired from some other job. He’s probably down in Florida eating early-bird dinners. Josh, the last time we stepped on that elevator, it was 1942.”

  “So it’s like that story I told you about the Dakota apartment building, when the guy looks up at his window and sees the chandelier from gaslight days. It’s like that.”

  “It’s nothing like that.” Aaron rang for the elevator. “That was fiction. This is fact. That was rumor. This is real. That was myth. This is—”

  “Aaron, talk to me. Tell me why. Ten minutes ago it was 1942. Now it’s not. Spell it out.”

  “Electronically—”

  “No. In English.”

  “Josh, the past, the present, and the future are a multiple program running concurrently, with peripherals. Lacking an electronic nudge, the human brain processes sequentially, a nanosecond at a time with tunnel vision. But all times are happening at the same time.”

  “Thanks a lot for clearing that up, Aaron.”

  The door opened, and it was our regular elevator, empty and automated. We got in.

  “And tonight was the best example of electronically nudged, emotionally driven time slip we’ve had so far. Do you realize—”

  “Aaron, all I realize is that so far we’ve been dropped on a dune; we’ve been nailed for pilfering upper-school lockers; and the meanest woman in Manhattan has just given us a life sentence with a shih tzu.

  “Not only that, Aaron, but a really scary Watcher is monitoring our every move. Possibly as we speak.”

  That got to him. He glanced around the elevator like it might need debugging. His eyes were haunted.

  “Aaron, let me give you some advice. Pull the plug permanently on your technopolis. Ban yourself from the Black Hole. Take up something else. Get a hobby. Get a life.”

  “You crazy?” he said. “Things are just getting interesting.”

  I got off at twelve. The next day summer school started. It’s just one thing after another.

  13

  Backward Is Forward

  In summer school you get a few people whose lips still move when they read. But a lot of us were just dodging soccer camp. We weren’t a big group. Some of the other guys from our grade were Dud Dupont, Pug Ulrich, Wimp Astor, Zach Zeckendorf, and Fishface Pierrepont. It was a fairly laid-back atmosphere. The dress code was Huckley golf shirt and khakis. Without Daryl and Buster, a lot of the pressure was off.

  You only do a couple of classes, so it’s not a full day. I was in Mr. Thornburg’s Math refresher class called “Discovering Decimals.” Aaron did an independent study in the Black Hole on “Next-Generation Cybernetics.” You can’t do an independent study until upper school, but Aaron cut a deal. He has a lot of creative ways of keeping school from interrupting his studies.

  For the other class though, everybody including Aaron had to do a History seminar with Mr. L. T. Thaw.

  Mr. Thaw clutched his craggy old brow when he saw Aaron strolling in with his new IBM ThinkPad for classroom use. The ThinkPad replaced his old one-chip Toshiba laptop. Aaron has never been that popular with teachers for some reason.

  Even before he could find a seat, Mr. Thaw was on his case.

  “Our subject this summer is the 1940’s and World War II, and so we will maintain military discipline in this classroom,” Mr. Thaw announced in his croaky voice. “There will be no absence without leave. There will be no oral reports without notes. Deserters will be shot. This goes for everybody and double for you, Zimmer.”

  Aaron crumpled into the nearest seat, and Mr. Thaw cranked himself up at the front of the room: “December seventh, 1941, Day of Infamy, when the attack upon Pearl Harbor found America asleep at the switch...” Already he was beginning to drone.

  He didn’t run down till one o’clock. By then I could have personally consumed Cleveland. The school lunchroom wasn’t open in the summer, but I was ready to hit the deli on Madison Avenue.

  “You hungry?” Aaron said on the way out of class.

  “I could eat.”

  “Because I want to drop by the Black Hole first.”

  He would.

  Officially, the media center was closed, but they leave it unlocked for summer school. The headmaster’s secretary is supposed to be the paraprofessional in charge, but she’s never in there. To be on the safe side, Aaron had borrowed Mrs. Newbery’s keys and had a set made for himself.

  He hung the BOTH COMPUTERS DOWN sign on the Black Hole door. Then he went in and started hustling around, plugging his ThinkPad pigtail into the phone line to see if he had e-mail, checking to see that his formula was stored on the computers. I can read part of his mind, and he was worried about The Watcher.

  He was keeping busy, but then he froze.

  “Listen,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I said listen.” He was definitely jumpy.

  I didn’t hear anything. Aaron pointed to the closed door and put a finger to his lips. I still didn’t hear anything. But I was right by the door, so I jerked it open.

  Fishface Pierrepont fell in. He spun around to leave, but I closed the door. I probably looked reasonably big to him. Next to Aaron, he’s the shortest kid in our grade, and the scrawniest.

  “I just wanted to play some SimCity,” he squawked.

  “Fishface, can’t you read?” Aaron’s hands were on his hips. “Both computers are down.”

  “Give me a break,” Fishface said. “You put that sign up yourself. It’s common knowledge. You think you own the computer room. Anyway, Mrs. Newbery said I could.”

  “Mrs. Newbery’s at the American Library Association national convention as we speak,” Aaron snapped. “She didn’t tell you squat.”

  Now Fishface and Aaron were nose to nose. In a way, it was funny. “Oh yeah?” they were snarling at each other. “Oh yeah?”

  “Get out of here before I lose my temper,” Aaron said.

  Fishface left.

  Aaron was really hot under the collar. I personally thought he was overreacting. “Aaron, if you’re starting to suspect Fishface of being The Watcher, you’re going to have to suspect everybody on the Upper East Side.”

  “I do.” Now Aaron was snapping at me.

  I got him out of there. He needed some air. I needed lunch. We went to the deli, where he could graze the takeout salad bar and I could grab a BLT-double-mayo-to-go. We went to do lunch on our rock in the park. We wandered around. Before you knew it, it was time to report for dog duty. As Aaron said, being hung up between Mr. Thaw and Miss Mather set up a real matrix.

  We were a couple of minutes late, and Miss Mather was looking at her watch when she opened the door. Nanky-Poo’s topknot just cleared the carrier bag as she was handed over. Aaron was still carrying his ThinkPad, so I had to carry her.

  “Don’t let her jump out into traffic,” he said as we crossed Fifth Avenue. “Having to bring her back to Miss Mather three feet long and an inch thick with tread marks is all we need.”

  We made it to a little grassy spot in the park. Nanky-Poo peeled out of her carrier bag. She knew we were stuck with her, so she went sniffing around, taking her time. We dropped down for some sun, and Aaron flipped open his ThinkPad.

  “Aaron, give it a rest.”

  “I’m just trying to reconstruct whatever I entered that put Nanky-Poo in my lap and sent Miss Mather back to—”

  “Aaron, whatever your formula did has stuck us with dog duty for the foreseeable—”

  “But last night was a giant leap forward.”

  “I thought it was 1942. That�
�s a giant leap backward.”

  “In this case, backward is forward.”

  I kept an eye on Nanky-Poo in case she got ideas about wandering off.

  “We’re seeing a clear pattern here,” Aaron said. “First Ophelia and Heather, then you and me. Now Nanky-Poo and Miss Mather. Get it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a two-for-one deal every time. My formula’s still cuckoo, but one thing’s certain. As things stand now, it takes the Emotional Component of two people to line up with my numbers.”

  “Some of those people are dogs,” I pointed out.

  “Whatever.”

  “But then why did Nanky-Poo come up to the penthouse while Miss Mather went back in time?”

  “That’s basic,” Aaron said. “That’s like fifth grade. You can figure that.”

  I gave it a shot. “You mean that Nanky-Poo cellular-reorganized up to your microprocessors because when Miss Mather went back to 1942, it was before Nanky-Poo existed? Like Nanky-Poo was running for her life?”

  “Bingo,” Aaron said, pointing at my brain. “Of course, she’d probably have been okay curled up in a quiet corner, but she panicked.

  “Miss Mather was running for her life too, in a way. And it really booted up her Emotional Component. My formula could have picked up her signal a mile away. Her biggest wish in life is to go back to that night in 1942.”

  “But she told her boyfriend that it wasn’t how she wanted to remember that moment. Why go back?”

  “Because it’s the one evening of her life she’d like to change. It was a now-or-never moment. She never got married. Maybe her boyfriend never came back from the war.”

  Dusty New York sun filtered down through the trees. You could hear Fifth Avenue traffic in the distance, but nothing else.

  “Like he died?”

  “Could be. Maybe we could find out. It was World War II. We could work it into a project for History class. Thaw’s going to make us do oral reports. You know how he thinks.”