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  That got a few of the judges to scribble some notes on their clipboards, but they weren’t writing a lot. They needed a demonstration.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” I said as I gripped the corners of the cloth. “I give you… Rusty!”

  The crowd gasped when I pulled back the cover to reveal my Rottweiler-sized metallic monstrosity. I had modeled the robot after a crab, but it came out looking more like a clockwork scorpion, with its eight piston-driven spider legs tensed at its side and its pincer-arms poised in front. Rusty’s back was flat and segmented, mounted at the rear by a turret that terminated in a curved radar dish with a long spike protruding from the center. I had tried to make Rusty’s head more friendly-looking by making it long and somewhat dog-like in appearance. I had even given him big, round, friendly eyes, but I think it may have turned out more menacing and predatory than I wanted, especially because those big eyes flickered red as they received LIDAR range-finding feedback from their surroundings.

  Now I had everyone’s rapt attention, but maybe not in a good way. Several of the judges were shaking their heads, perhaps thinking I had been too theatrical in my presentation. The little girl with pig-tails hid behind her mother’s legs, her Raggedy Ann doll forgotten on the floor as she stared at the mechanical monster only a dozen steps away from her.

  “Question,” said the MIT judge. “Can you explain what you mean by ‘wireless electricity’ and why you would equip your robot with this feature?”

  “Sure,” I said, twisting the power knob at the control station. Rusty hummed to life, his limbs twisting and clicking through their initiation sequence. “It’s based on an electromagnetic pulse—EMP for short. This electricity broadcasting is based on the work of Nikola Tesla, who invented the alternating current which runs every plug-in appliance in your home. Tesla was this amazing genius who wanted to broadcast wireless power all over the world, but he never could get funding because nobody could see how it would make money. Anyway, I’m doing it on a small scale and I figured it could be an energy savings if Rusty followed you around in your home. You know, so the lights would come on whenever the two of you entered a room and they’d turn off when you left. No more forgetting to flick the switch.”

  One of the other judges raised his hand. “You really think people would want that… that thing following them around in their houses?”

  I’m not good with sarcasm or rhetorical questions, but I think that question was really meant to say that Rusty was ugly. That kind of hurt. I’d been working on this robot for years. If you noticed, I even call him a “him” instead of an “it,” because to me he was a family pet. Whether you have a cat, a parakeet, or a robotic scorpion-dog, you still love your pet no matter what. You just can’t help it.

  I cleared my throat and moved on, hoping to get back to the important parts of my demonstration. “Rusty can navigate just about any terrain on his own, even climb trees and ladders. If you wear this tracking bracelet,” I held up a black plastic strip about the size of a wristwatch. “Rusty will always follow you obediently wherever you go. Just watch.”

  For some seriously stupid reason, I picked the little girl for my demonstration. I don’t know what I was thinking, except maybe I thought if that little girl could see Rusty as I saw him—a reliable and helpful companion—then maybe everyone else would see him that way, too.

  I don’t think the girl’s mother realized what I was doing when I asked if I could put the bracelet on her daughter’s wrist, but she said it was okay. The little girl didn’t protest when I clicked it into place.

  I returned to the controls and inched the power knob up to ten percent. Rusty hissed as his pistons drew his body up to standing, and the spiked turret on his back twitched. One clanking, growling step was all it took and that little girl screamed and ran. Rusty, following his programming, ran after her.

  Rusty wasn’t trying to catch her; he was only trying to stay two steps behind her wherever she went. The problem was that nobody, especially not the little girl, could see the difference. The girl and her mechanical pursuer careened through the aisles, first bowling through the crowd and then through the tables. Test tubes, telescopes, circuit boards, and all kinds of other expensive experiments smashed to the floor. One of the dads in the crowd lunged for my robot, but he only managed to knock over someone else, who fell against another person. Before I knew what was happening, half the crowd went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Everybody was screaming. The girl started shrieking “Help! Mommy, Help!” but that only made things worse because Rusty is programmed to respond to verbal commands, and “help” means you need a hand up. When she said it, those two pincer-arms deployed, reaching out for her and snapping as they came.

  The MIT judge was right in my ear, yelling at me to turn it off, but before I could reach for the power knob, another judge shouldered me out of the way and cranked the knob as far as it would go… in the wrong direction.

  The thing about broadcasting electricity is that the electromagnetic pulse, the EMP, is the same thing that causes blackouts within a hundred miles of a nuclear bomb explosion. At lower power and at just the right frequencies, Rusty’s EMP could run small electronics for short periods of time. Maybe it was a mistake to have fit Rusty with the most powerful Tesla coil I could make, because at maximum power it made the magnifying transmitter dangerous to anything with circuits or wires.

  The moment the judge accidentally cranked the power to maximum, there was a bright flash overhead as the light bulbs in the ceiling burned out. On the tables all around us, dozens of experiments with electrical components burst into flame, and everyone within twenty feet of Rusty yelped in almost perfect unison as the cell phones in their pockets overheated. At the same instant, Rusty collapsed in place, a pathetic trail of smoke rising from his back, his battery fried by his own sudden output.

  Most of the rest of the day passed in a blur. Thankfully, no one was hurt beyond a few minor burns and bruises. All the same, I got some mean looks from the students whose experiments I had ruined. The judges wouldn’t talk to me, either, and the guy from MIT wouldn’t even look at me—although I did see him talking with the antimatter kid for a long time.

  I felt lower than the scavenging worms at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Even for me, this was an unprecedented disaster. My experiment had even burned out some of the wiring in the gymnasium. My Dad, being an electrician, had negotiated to repair the gym himself, but it would probably take him days to do it, and that didn’t cover the cost of all the cell phones and other electronic devices that were wrecked by the EMP. Here we were, so poor we couldn’t afford anything but the crummiest of cell-phones, and now somehow we were going to have to pay to replace everybody else’s high-end devices. I couldn’t even look at my Dad all the way home.

  The weird thing, the amazing thing, was that it turned out the science fair fiasco wasn’t the most important thing to happen that day. When we got home there was a letter from the Mechanical Science Institute waiting for me.

  I recognized the name of the Institute because about a month ago a professor named Denise McKenzie had sent me a get-to-know-you letter saying she wanted to look into scholarships for me. It seems my cousin Dean had told her about me, but I don’t know what he said because I hardly knew him and the last time I saw him I think I was ten, back in the days when the whole family would get together for holidays sometimes. (I remember Dean because he stomped out the fire I accidentally started on the rug after rewiring the Christmas lights.) I guess he and my Dad must stay in touch a little, and my Dad must have bragged (or complained) about my inventions, and that’s how word got out to Professor McKenzie.

  Anyway, I didn’t think much of the Mechanical Science Institute at the time. The letter said it was a special program at some school called Langdon University, which was located in the weirdly-named town of Bugswallow, Minnesota. I had never heard of it before, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to look into it as one of my safety schools, so I s
ent Professor McKenzie the paperwork and copies of a few of my blueprints. Now I finally had her reply.

  With a sigh, I decided my day couldn’t get any worse, so I opened the official-looking envelope and pulled out the letter.

  Dear Sophia Lazarchek,

  I have reviewed your transcript, your personal statement, and, most importantly, your schematics. I am particularly impressed with your knowledge and implementation of Tesla’s work with wireless electricity broadcasting. I regret that I will not be able to see your demonstration at the science fair, but I trust all will go well.

  I am pleased to offer you enrollment in the Mechanical Science Institute with a full scholarship, including expenses for tuition, room, board, and books. Our classes begin on September 13th. I apologize for the short notice, but I hope you will join us this very year, as we are in need of a student with your skill set.

  Sincerely,

  Professor Denise McKenzie

  Dean of Students, Mechanical Science Institute

  Chapter 4 ~ Dean

  From his parked pickup, Dean took a moment to study the front door of the Ichiban Sushi Buffet while he wondered if he might be going crazy. McKenzie always had that effect on him. That fact, along with his desire not to spend the rest of his life twiddling his thumbs in some little cow-town as a professor’s husband, was probably the reason why they had never been able to stay together. The trouble was, he was even worse off without her, and he knew it. There had been plenty of women in his life, but McKenzie was different. She was like a drug addiction, and withdrawal always left him empty and confused.

  The first time she had dumped him, he had transferred from UCLA to the fire academy just to get away. The next time it was his turn to break it off, but that hadn’t stopped him from needing to escape the pain again, so he joined the army and shipped out to the Middle East. When he returned, they got back together, but the long distance between their lives was too much to overcome. When they split up again, Dean crawled so far into a bottle that the chief had to give him a choice between the psychologist’s office or the unemployment line. The thing that hurt Dean the most was that he knew each of these breakups wounded McKenzie just as deeply. Even when he got angry, he couldn’t stand to see her in pain: anything that injured her felt like it hit him twice as hard. Over the years, their romantic collisions had left a lot of debris on the road behind them.

  When he had seen her on the street yesterday, he had realized that he never wanted to lose her again. Still, he feared something was terribly wrong. She had seemed so distracted and worn down, and her request that he take over her job was both bizarre and worrisome. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew he wanted to be the guy who would save her from it.

  After work, he had swung by the bank to open his safe-deposit box to retrieve his great-grandparents’ wedding rings. Damn the consequences, Dean thought. McKenzie was the woman he would spend the rest of his life with.

  The sushi buffet had just opened for lunch, but when he walked in he found that McKenzie was already seated in a booth with a good view of the parking lot so she could see him coming. They exchanged a deep, warm hug, and then sat down as she slid a plate of sushi across the table at him.

  “You have to tell me what’s going on,” he said.

  He watched as the conflict played out across her face. “You can’t help with it. It’s best you don’t know.”

  “Dammit, why?” There was silence between the two of them. She looked like she wanted to answer, but when it became clear that she wouldn’t, Dean went on. “This idea of yours,” he said. “Me running your school? It’s crazy.”

  “May I ask why you think so?” Now she was using her professor voice. It made her sound detached and objective, and Dean knew it would get him off track, just like always. He wanted to skip to his counter-proposal, but he decided he might as well show why her idea was a bad one before he brought up his own plan.

  “Okay, for starters: why would you want me to take care of a bunch of college kids? I don’t know anything about teaching or colleges or whatever it is you need me to do. Can’t you find somebody else to pack their lunches and wipe their noses?”

  “They need someone prepared for emergencies,” she looked at the L.A.F.D. emblem on his blue t-shirt. “This group doesn’t need someone with an advanced degree, they need someone to keep them from causing disasters. Don’t sell yourself short: you’re smart, and with your military and firefighting background you’ve got an honorary Ph.D. in disaster control as far as I’m concerned. Besides, it should only be for a few weeks. I didn’t know I would need your help when I sent the offer to your cousin, but I thought with her there now, you might…”

  He popped a salmon roll into his mouth and studied her while he chewed. “A few weeks?” he asked. “Where will you be during that time?”

  “I have to take care of some business. There’s a… professor. He wants something only I can find. But—never mind. I just need a few weeks to take care of it, and in the mean time I need you to watch over my students. Please.”

  “No dice,” Dean said. “I’m going wherever you go. Besides, what do you expect me to do—lie on my résumé? In case you forgot, I don’t have a lot of experience teaching biology or whatever it is you need me to teach.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she shook her head. “It isn’t necessarily a teaching position. I get sole discretion in naming my replacement. It’s in our school charter. Here,” McKenzie rummaged around in her handbag and produced a pen and an old pad of yellow sticky-notes. “I hereby name Dean Lazarchek as my replacement at the Mechanical Science Institute. Signed: Prof. Denise McKenzie,” she wrote the words as she spoke them. “I’d prefer to write you a proper letter when we get some real paper, but this is all you really need.”

  “I’m still not taking the job,” he said, handing the note back to her without even glancing at it. She folded his fingers closed around it and gestured that he should keep it anyway.

  “You still haven’t given me a good reason why not,” she said.

  “Because I’ve got a better idea,” Dean looked right into her green eyes. “Let’s get married.”

  “What?” She almost choked in surprise. “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m serious. As long as you’re running away, let’s run together.”

  He looked at her hopefully as he produced the worn little box containing his great-grandmother’s ring. The matching groom’s band was in his pocket. He had hoped that they might wear them out of the restaurant.

  “Do you want me to get down on one knee?” He realized her hands were shaking. And so were his.

  “You know I can’t,” she said. “Especially not right now.”

  “I know you can. Especially right now.”

  She opened her mouth to say something but her words were cut off by the roar of an engine in the parking lot. Dean watched McKenzie’s eyes as they widened first with recognition, then with fear.

  Dean spun in his chair to see a huge motorcycle weaving its way through the lines of parked cars outside. The bike was glossy black and adorned with airbrushed skulls; its handlebars, muffler, and other chrome fixtures were lined with jagged spikes. The rear wheel had been modified to ride on two wheels instead of one, giving the machine a distinctive wedge-shape. On the enormous gas tank was stamped a huge, white swastika.

  As big and as evil as this bike seemed, its rider was even bigger and meaner. He wore black, studded leather from head to foot, but wore no helmet to cover his scalp. It looked as though an avalanche of fat and muscle had started on top of his head and tumbled down his body, piling up around the ledge of his shoulders before spilling over to land in a heap at his midsection.

  The biker was moving slowly through the parking lot, turning his head side to side to look at each car he passed. He paused by a silver Lexus with Minnesota plates—McKenzie’s car. Revving his engine twice, he put on a burst of speed and roared away.

  McKenzie stood up so fast tha
t she bumped the table, sloshing water out of her glass and onto their shared plate of sushi.

  “What?” Dean said, also standing. “You know that guy? Is that—is that the guy you’re running from?”

  “I have to go.”

  He grabbed her by the wrist and held her until she looked into his eyes. “We go together from now on.”

  She shook her head. “First we need to get somewhere safe.”

  “My house.” Dean said. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a statement.

  “Okay, but… give me your keys. We’re switching cars. You drive around for a while to throw them off. If they catch up to you, they’ll see it isn’t me and they’ll leave you alone.”

  “They?” Dean repeated.

  “I’ll meet you back at your place. Hurry—before they come back.”

  Dean felt light-headed as he fumbled his fat key-ring out of his pocket while she shoved her electronic key-fob into his hand.

  “Wait! What about this?” he lifted the box with the ring off the table and placed it in her hand.

  “I—I’ll think about it. Let’s just get home first, okay?” She slid her hand around his neck and pulled him close for a hard, urgent kiss.

  “One more thing,” she whispered in his ear. “What they want is in our founder’s head.”

  “…The founder’s head? McKenzie, what’re you talking about—”

  She was already out the door. He followed her, each ducking into the other’s car. They pulled out onto the three-lane arterial, she heading straight and he pulling a u-turn at the intersection.

  Dean wanted to believe that the whole thing was crazy, but it wasn’t like McKenzie to act irrationally. Why would she be running from that big biker? For that matter, why would she want him, of all people, to cover for her job? And what was that business about the founder’s head?