Science Fair (27 page)

“Yes, it’s me,” said Toby. “Listen—”

“Where are you?” said Roger.

“Ask him if he’s al right,” said Fawn.

“Are you al right?” said Roger.

“Please, Dad, just
listen
,” said Toby. “There’s these guys. They’re gonna come to the house tonight.”

“What guys? What are you talking about?”

“Two weird guys. One of them thinks he’s Darth Vader. They want to steal your Star Wars stuff.”

“What? Darth Vader? What are you talking about?”

“I can’t explain it now,” said Toby. “Just trust me. These guys are nuts, and they want your col ection, so watch out, okay?”

“But—”

“I can’t talk. I gotta get to the science fair. You and mom be careful. I’m sorry. I love you. Bye.”

“Wait!” said Roger. But al he heard through the earpiece was the sound of a siren, which was cut off in mid-
whoop
. Toby had hung up.

“What is it?” said Fawn. “What did he say?”

Roger, frowning, hung up the handset. “He said some guys are coming to steal our Star Wars col ection.”

“But how would he know that? Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “But I heard a siren. And Toby said he was going to—”

THUMP.

Roger stopped.

“What was
that
?” said Fawn.

“I don’t know,” said Roger. “But it came from the basement.”

T
OBY, MICAH, TAMARA
, and the Krpshtskanis were trapped. They’d been running away from the sound of sirens, going from street to aley to street, turning in so many directions they no longer knew which way they were headed. They had just emerged from an al ey when they found themselves on a brightly lit, four-lane street with strip shopping centers on both sides.

Toby, leading the way, started running to his right, but before he’d taken ten steps, four police cruisers appeared at the end of the block, sirens whooping and lights flashing. The cars skidded to a stop in the intersection, blocking it; police in riot gear quickly emerged.

Toby turned to go the other way, only to see stil more police cars screeching to a stop. Stil more blue lights flashed at the end of the al ey they’d just left.

“Now what?” panted Micah.

Toby looked around frantical y: from several directions, at least two dozen shouting police officers were running toward them. The only escape path Toby saw was the parking lot across the street, which served a large grocery store.

“This way,” he said, running toward the lot, fol owed by Micah and Tamara, who were fol owed by Vrsk with Drmtsi chugging in the rear. The pursuing police swerved to intercept them; some were shouting into two-way radios.

Ahead, Toby spotted a crowd that had gathered in front of the grocery store; he didn’t know what it was about, but it gave him a flicker of hope. Maybe they could get into the crowd, where, hidden from the police, they could slip into the store and escape through the back.

As he reached the edge of the crowd, Toby saw why it had gathered: parked outside the main entrance to the supermarket was the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

About a hundred children and parents had gathered to look at the giant rol ing hot dog, and get wiener whistles and other trinkets being handed out by the Wienermobile staff.

Adding to the excitement was the presence of an animal-rights group, which was chanting and carrying signs to protest the Wienermobile and the practice of factory-farming animals. As Toby and the others drew close, an angry parent entered into a confrontation with one of the protesters—a person wearing a large, furry, pink pig costume and holding a sign that said PIGS ARE FRIENDS NOT FOOD.

Toby darted past the shouting match, heading for the supermarket entrance. But he stopped suddenly when he saw two police officers standing in the doorway, apparently stationed there because of the protest. One of the men was talking into his radio. His eyes scanned the crowd—and stopped at Toby. The man shouted something into his radio, then pointed; both officers began moving toward Toby and his group.

Toby whirled, looking for a way out; on every side, he saw police officers. He, Micah, Tamara, Vrsk, and Drmtsi stood in a smal circle, watching as the officers approached them warily through the crowd—which was stil focused on the parent-pig confrontation. Toby noticed that some of the officers had their hands on their pistols.

“Use your phone,” said Tamara.

“What?” said Toby.

“Make yourself invisible,” she said. “You can stil get away. Maybe you can do something.”

Toby looked down at the phone. Tamara was right: he could get away. His hand went to the magic-wand icon.

But he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. He couldn’t leave his friends here in a mess that he alone was responsible for. And even if he got away, what good could he do? He’d only make a bigger mess.

“Go on, do it!” said Tamara. “Do it! They’re almost here!”

Toby shook his head.

“No,” he said, his voice choking. “It’s over.”

He bowed his head, not wanting to see the police, not wanting to look at his friends. He’d failed
everyone
. He stared at the ground, waiting. He heard the police shouting at him and the others to “GET DOWN! GET DOWN NOW!”

He started to kneel on the hard, cold, parking lot asphalt.

And then the world went dark.

B
EEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
.

The harsh sound of an electronic alarm echoed through the master control room of the Mid-Atlantic Power Company’s command center, a reinforced-concrete bunker 125 feet underground, where not even a bomb could do any harm. Two dozen technicians, suddenly jerked from their dul routines, sat up quickly to read the trouble messages flashing urgently across their computer screens.

A door banged open; a tal man with a footbal -flattened nose strode from the only enclosed office in the command center. This was Bernard Kosar; he was in charge and thus responsible for the entire Mid-Atlantic power grid. He hated alarms.

“Turn that off!” he shouted. Somebody hit a switch, and the beeping stopped. Kosar nervously slapped a footbal back and forth between his hands; he carried it everywhere, except the shower.

“What do we have?” Kosar said to the nearest technician, a woman named Laura Schweitzer, who real y wanted to be a rock singer but had learned the hard way that being a power-company technician was steadier work. Although she often hummed at her computer station.

“It’s down,” she told Kosar.

“
What’s
down?” he said.
Slap, slap
went the footbal .

Schweitzer waved an arm and said, “Everything.”

“That’s impossible,” snapped Kosar. Technical y, he was right: the power grid was designed with many safeguards and backup systems. Parts of the grid—even large areas—

might go down. But only very rarely, and never for long.

Technical y.

“Look at the tree,” said Schweitzer, pointing. Kosar’s gaze went up to a map high on the wal , dotted with over a thousand lights. This was the Master Grid Status Indicator Board. It was more commonly known as the Christmas Tree, because normal y most, if not al , of the lights were green, indicating that electricity was flowing everywhere in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Sometimes, during lightning storms or bad winter weather, parts of the Christmas Tree—little patches here and there—might glow red. Even then, it was mostly green.

Not now.

Now, every light—
every single light
—was red.

The entire grid was down. This meant that Maryland, Virginia, and much of West Virginia and Delaware had no electricity. It also meant that al of Washington, D.C., was dark, except for buildings that—like the command center—had emergency generators.

As Kosar stared at the Christmas Tree, a chil ing thought came into his mind: nuclear attack.

“Anything from the military?” he asked, keeping his voice calm.

“Nope,” said Schweitzer.

Kosar exhaled. “Weather?” he said.

“Nope,” said Schweitzer.

Phones were ringing al over the command center. Technicians were answering them, speaking urgently while tapping their keyboards.

Kosar raised his voice, addressing the room: “Can someone tel me what’s happening?”

A young man two desks over looked up. His name was Robert Joseph, and he was the command center’s sharpest computer jockey. He was also Laura’s boyfriend; they thought nobody knew this, but everyone did.

“What?” said Kosar.

“We’ve been hacked,” said Joseph, pointing at the screen.

“So un-hack us,” said Kosar. He felt a bit of relief; Mid-Atlantic Power’s computer network, like most big corporate and government networks, was often attacked by hackers. They rarely succeeded, and even if they did penetrate the system, the problem was usual y corrected quickly.

“We’re trying,” said Joseph, his eyes back on his screen. “But whoever they are, they’re good. They got the whole net, and they’re shutting us out.”

“What do you mean?” said Kosar, frowning.

“I mean, right now, it doesn’t respond to anything we do,” said Joseph. He quickly tapped some keys, hit ENTER, and pointed at the screen. “Nothing,” he said.

“Is
anybody
getting anything?” Kosar asked, looking around the room. Al the technicians shook their heads. Every phone in the room was ringing now. Behind him, Kosar heard his office hotline phone ringing; that would be somebody very important and very unhappy.

Kosar ran a hand through his wiry hair. “ALL RIGHT, PEOPLE,” he shouted. “WE NEED TO FIX THIS
RIGHT NOW
.” This was unnecessary; the technicians were al working furiously on keyboards and phones. Kosar again looked up at the Christmas Tree, a mass of red dots. For every tiny dot, he knew, there were more than ten thousand people—people who had just been jolted out of their comfortable, brightly lit, electrical y powered cocoons; people who were now confused, frightened, and vulnerable.

Kosar turned away and walked toward his office to answer the insistent ring of his hotline. But his mind was stil on al those helpless people without electricity.

Bad things happened to people in the dark.

W
HEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
, Toby’s parents had been in the kitchen, arguing in whispers about the
thump
they’d heard in the basement. Fawn Harbinger wanted to cal the police in case it was an intruder. Roger was balking.

“We’l look stupid if the police come and there’s nobody down there,” he said.

“I’d rather look stupid than get shot by a burglar,” Fawn replied.

“There’s no burglar down there,” he said.

“Then what went thump?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the plumbing.”

“If it’s the plumbing,” said Fawn, “why are you whispering?”

Roger didn’t have a good answer for that. The truth was, he’d been a little spooked by the
thump
. But, being a guy, he was reluctant to admit this even to himself, let alone his wife.

And he definitely didn’t want the police to see the basement fil ed with rare Star Wars memorabilia. He didn’t want word of the col ection to get out.

“I’m gonna go look,” he whispered. He went to a drawer next to the sink and began rummaging through it.