The Genius Files #4 (8 page)

“Down!” Coke yelled. “Turn it
down
!”

“When your body temperature gets to one hundred degrees, you have a fever,” said Dr. Warsaw. “Your sweat gland activity increases. Blood flow to the skin increases. The hair on your arms and legs lies flat so the heat is not trapped close to your body.”

“Help!” Pep screamed. “He's crazy! Somebody! Let us out of here!”

“Your body temperature keeps going up,” Dr. Warsaw said. “If sweating isn't enough to cool the body and you don't replace the fluids, you become dehydrated. That can lead to heat exhaustion.”

“Hellllllllp!”

“You're extremely thirsty now. Your skin is getting pale and clammy. You feel dizzy and weak. Your pulse is going up. Soon you'll start to feel a throbbing headache, nausea, and muscle cramps.”

“I don't want to hear it!” Coke shouted. “Why do you psychos always have to explain how you're going to kill people?”

“Oh, that's part of the fun, Coke,” Dr. Warsaw said.
“If your body temperature gets above 103 degrees, your hypothalamus becomes overwhelmed. Your body temperature regulation fails. Heat stroke sets in. You become confused and lethargic. You may have a seizure. I love seizures! Aren't seizures fun?”

“Turn it off!” Coke shouted. “I'll do anything you want. Just turn it off!”

But Dr. Warsaw ignored his pleas.

“The next step is hyperthermia,” he said, excitement in his eyes. “Your proteins start to denature and break down. The electrical impulses in your nerves and muscles start to fire sporadically. If your temperature reaches 106 degrees, your brain is no longer able to perform the necessary functions to continue life. Vital organs shut down. You stop breathing, then your heart stops beating. And, well, I don't need to go into all the gory details, do I?”

“You already did!” Coke screamed.

“So I did,” Dr. Warsaw agreed.
“Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

His evil, cackling laugh echoed off the walls for a few moments until Pep said something that shut him up.

“How could Aunt Judy love you?” she screamed. “How could
anyone
love you?”

Quite suddenly, Dr. Warsaw stopped laughing and began to weep uncontrollably once again. He
certainly was a man of many moods.

“I . . . can't do it,” he said, leaning against the wall and burying his head in his arm.

The twins breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, how about letting us go, then?” Pep asked.

“What's happening to me?” Dr. Warsaw moaned between sobs. “I used to be able to kill so easily, with no hesitation. No guilt. No remorse. And now look at me! I can't bring myself to kill a couple of spoiled brats like you two. What's wrong with me?”

“Maybe you're becoming sane,” Pep suggested, trying to remain calm. “It's a
good
thing.”

Dr. Warsaw came over to her vapor cabinet and slipped a key into the lock.

“I tried to do something good for the world,” he sobbed. “The Genius Files was supposed to make the world a better place.”

“We know,” Pep said quietly. “We know.”

“If you tell
anybody
I let you go, I'll kill you for sure,” he warned Pep, staring into her eyes. “That includes your parents. Do you understand me?”

“Y-yes!” Pep stammered.

“We won't tell anybody,” Coke said.

Dr. Warsaw opened both locks and stumbled out of the room sobbing, inconsolable. He was a broken man.

Coke and Pep pushed open the doors of their vapor cabinets. They were weak and a little wobbly, but they managed to stumble out of the room and downstairs to the front desk. The woman who had greeted them was still behind the counter.

“Did you see a weird-looking guy wearing a suit and tie?” Pep asked breathlessly.

“No, why? Is he okay?”

“No, he's crazy,” Coke told her. “He must have snapped.”

“Maybe he climbed out a window,” Pep guessed.

They considered giving chase, but thought better of it. Dr. Warsaw was gone, hopefully forever.

Pep remembered that her mother's birthday would be in two days, and she dragged her brother into the little gift shop to look for a present. A package of soothing bath salts seemed like a good idea. She also bought a little refrigerator magnet in the shape of Arkansas. Pep had just finished paying when
their parents came in. Both of them were beaming.

“My Swedish massage was
fantastic
!” Dr. McDonald enthused. “I feel like I'm floating.”

“I feel like I'm five years younger,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Do you kids feel more relaxed now?”

“No!” they barked simultaneously. “Can we get out of here?”

A
t this point, you might be getting a little bit angry because we're eight chapters into the book and Coke hasn't been shoved into a spinning clothes dryer yet.

Don't you hate that? You open a book and the author promises you in Chapter One that one of the characters is going to get shoved into a spinning clothes dryer. Then you read and read and read, and Coke still hasn't been shoved into a spinning clothes dryer. You want to read about some good spinning in a clothes dryer, and you're tired of
waiting for it. You feel ripped off.

Again, dear reader, I ask for your continued patience. I said that Coke would be shoved into a spinning clothes dryer, and I promise you that before the end of the story, Coke will indeed be shoved into a spinning clothes dryer.

In fact, this book comes with a money-back guarantee. If, by the final chapter, Coke still hasn't been shoved into a spinning clothes dryer, you will receive a full refund. No questions asked.

For now, let's get back to the story. In the car after leaving the Quapaw spa, Coke and Pep did their best to put the strange confrontation with Dr. Warsaw out of their minds. It seemed as though the guy had finally lost his marbles, and thankfully was in no condition to do anyone harm. But with crazy people, you always have to stay on your guard.

There was something about being in the car that made the twins feel safer. The RV had felt like a rolling prison. But the little Ferrari was almost like a steel cocoon that would protect them from harm. They felt private and free.

After some debate about whether or not they should visit the Arkansas Alligator Farm in Hot Springs (Coke was the only one who really wanted to go), the McDonalds decided to “blow this pop stand” instead.

His mind and body refreshed, his pores fully opened, Dr. McDonald was so relaxed that he decided to turn off the GPS. He put the car in drive, and just drove. The compass said they were heading
WEST
, and that was good enough for him. Soon the family found themselves on Albert Pike Road, also known as U.S. Route 270.

There are more than 53,000 square miles in Arkansas, and there are a lot of interesting places worth seeing. Inside the Ferrari, a great debate commenced to determine which sites were worth stopping at, and which ones should be bypassed.

Dr. McDonald cast his vote for a side trip to Bentonville, where Sam Walton opened up the first Walmart in 1962.

“There's a museum there now,” Mrs. McDonald said, reading from her guidebook.

“Gee, what a shock,” Coke said with his usual eye roll.

He voted to visit the town of Eureka Springs, where the Museum of Fake Frogs is located. According to the guidebook, the old man who runs it has been
accumulating frog collectibles for fifty years, and now he's up to six thousand frog-themed items.

Coke insisted that anything to do with frogs was cool, but if he couldn't go there, he would instead be willing to see (and use) one of the world's only double-decker outhouses, which is in Dover, Arkansas.

Don't believe me? Go ahead and look it up. That's why they invented Google.

Pep was always fascinated by morbid curiosities such as the Donner Party, settlers who resorted to cannibalism to survive the winter of 1846 in the Sierra Nevada. So when she heard about the Boggy Creek Monster in Fouke, Arkansas, she was intrigued.

The monster, sort of a southern version of Bigfoot, is supposed to be seven feet tall and hairy all over. It has been known to kill and eat chickens, cattle, dogs, and livestock, if not small children.

It was highly unlikely that they would actually catch a glimpse of the Boggy Creek Monster, so Pep said her second choice was to visit Crater of Diamonds State Park, in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. It's the only diamond-producing site in the world that's open to the public. In fact, in 2007, a thirteen-year-old girl found a 2.9-carat diamond there.

Mrs. McDonald, as always, was on the lookout for new material she could use in
Amazing but True.
But
it was difficult to choose from the wealth of oddball tourist attractions in Arkansas.

“Maybe we should go to Alma,” she suggested. “It's the Spinach Capital of the World.”

“No more capitals!”

“We could go to Stuttgart and see the World's Championship Duck Calling Contest,” said Mrs. McDonald.

There was just too much to see in Arkansas. Obviously, they couldn't do it all. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, as they say, and you've got to sleep sometime.

The discussion continued as the McDonalds drove past Lake Hamilton and through the little towns of Royal, Joplin, and Hurricane Grove. The Caddo Mountains were in the distance now, and soon they were deep within Ouachita National Forest and Queen Wilhelmina State Park, drinking in the spectacular scenery.

Sometimes we spend so much time and energy thinking about where we want to go that we don't notice where we happen to be.

The McDonald family was still discussing which sites to visit in Arkansas when a sign appeared at the side of the road. . . .

S
o much for Arkansas. They crossed the Oklahoma state line.

Spontaneously—and inevitably—the entire McDonald family burst into the song “Oklahoma!” from the 1955 Rogers and Hammerstein musical of the same name. I would print the lyrics for you here, but we would have to pay a lot of money for the rights, so forget that idea. YouTube it, and you can hear the whole song for free.

“Woo-hoo!”
Coke shouted when the family couldn't remember the words to the second verse. “We're in
the Sooner State, baby! Hey, ya know why Oklahoma is called the Sooner State?”

“Nobody cares!” Pep shouted.

“I'll bet you guys can't name four things that were invented in Oklahoma,” Coke said.

“Here we go,” grumbled Pep.

“Genetically engineered soybeans?” guessed Dr. McDonald.

“No, it was the shopping cart, the aerosol can, the parking meter, and the automated twist tie machine!” Coke proclaimed proudly. He had learned this while Googling “American inventions.”