The Nerdy Dozen #2

Per Ardua ad Astra

For Zach

STANDING IN A BEAM OF LIGHT, NEIL ANDERTOL GAZED AT A
crisp American flag and a medal hanging from a silken cord. The award was a lustrous silver, and the word
HONOR
sat above three eagles.

Neil looked at his chest and could almost feel the heft of the medal as it rested above his heart. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. The days of keeping his military exploits a secret would soon be over. Eager to receive the military's highest honors, he stepped forward.

Smack.

“Ow!” Neil winced as he slammed his glasses into a Plexiglas case. He rubbed the grease smudge his nose left behind.

The showcase in front of Neil was filled with uniforms, honors, and a list of the dangerous, declassified missions completed by the American Air Force. Neil pictured himself in one of the flight jumpsuits—they looked exactly like the one Neil had worn when he piloted top secret technology over his Memorial Day long weekend.

Today, Neil's uniform was a gray hooded sweatshirt and wrinkled khaki shorts that had gone unwashed for the entire summer and into the second week of eighth grade at Romare Smythe Junior High. His black hair was shaggy, making him look younger, but also adding an extra inch to his height.

“What's that medal?” said Neil's friend Tyler, who was standing next to Neil and eating a piece of expired beef jerky.

With his pale skin and sunken eyes from late-night gaming sessions, Tyler looked like a cave creature—or, at least, an animal that a cave creature had captured to eat at a later time.

“Oh, nothing important,” Neil replied. “What's the status of the mission?”

With a sideways glance at the nearby security guard, Tyler whispered, “I have acquired the wireless password.” He crumpled his jerky wrapper and tossed it toward a trash can. He missed and went to go pick it up. “And I ran a test video—seven minutes should be no problem. The audio sounds great. We can do this.”

“Copy that.”

The two ran to catch up to their group, a pack of disinterested teenagers, also known as the annual eighth-grade field trip. Neil and his classmates were chaperoned by the gym teacher and wrestling coach, Mr. Rhome.

He was a stocky former semipro baseball player with scruffy hair and a duck-like waddle. To make matters worse, Mr. Rhome's favorite student was the bully Tommy Scott, who was leading the group with his cronies.

The field trip pushed on through the building's main corridor. A series of arched doorways led to the planetarium.

“Welcome to your own Greater Colorado Museum and Planetarium,” a voice resonated from a speaker. The woman's voice was robotic, like a spaceship's evil artificial intelligence. “The next planetarium show will begin in thirteen minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

“Perfect. Just enough time for a new record,” Tyler said, rubbing his nose with the corner of his vest. He seemed to have an “anything goes” policy in terms of personal hygiene, always aggressively blowing his nose or clipping his fingernails in public places. Coming from a household where hands were sanitized roughly every twenty minutes, Neil was always a bit jealous.

“If we break the record, we'll definitely be in the ‘Reboot Spotlight,'” Neil said excitedly.

The current online fad, “Guerilla IMAXing,” involved playing the most difficult level of your favorite game projected in random public spaces. Games were broadcast on movie theater screens, sides of digital bus advertisements, or anywhere else creative nerds could think of. Neil had watched every video uploaded to his favorite gaming site, Internet Piraseas. From an online server aboard his private yacht, the site was run by Reboot Robiski, child hacker and international man of mystery. Videos in the “Reboot Spotlight” received instant fame.

Out of every available online clip, the only one attempted at a planetarium was a measly six minutes, with terrible quality and no audio. A few days before the field trip, Neil had recruited Tyler to help him pull off something much better.

Neil knew their mission would catch the eye of random gamers, but he couldn't help but think it would also impress his friends from the Chameleon Mission. He missed all of them, even Trevor at this point.

“Great job, Lieutenant,” said Neil.

“You too, Viceroy,” replied Tyler, who was still grasping the proper rank terminology.

Mr. Rhome slowed to a halt in the central hub of the Greater Colorado Museum and Planetarium
and
Homestyle Buffet. It was only recently that the all-you-can-eat buffet had been installed, hoping people would come for the food and stay for the exhibits. Sadly, it only proved that mini corn dogs were more popular than the sum of all human knowledge.

Neil watched the bustling entrance of the buffet, where children and their grandmothers in sparkly sweaters scurried to grab lunch.

“Okay, everyone! Here's the game plan: You all have tickets for the planetarium show in about thirteen minutes, after which you'll have a little time to explore the exhibits,” said Mr. Rhome, handing a stack of tickets to the group.

“I'll meet you back at this spot in two hours,” he went on. “I'd go with you, but it's a full house. Plus I hear this place has endless chicken tenders.” The haggard gym teacher looked down at his watch and added, “Matter of fact, let's call it two and a half hours. Think I saw a soft-serve ice cream machine, too.”

Neil watched his chaperone head off toward the famed one-hundred-foot-long salad bar. He'd worried that ditching the field trip would prove difficult, but Mr. Rhome obviously wanted the mission to succeed as well.

“And the vulture is out of the nest,” whispered Neil to Tyler.

As Tommy Scott and other classmates began looking at a display on Siberian glaciers, Neil and Tyler sidled toward the planetarium. They had ten minutes and thirty-seven seconds to complete their Guerilla IMAXing before the show began. Time was of the essence.

The boys ducked under the velvet ropes at the entrance of a dark tunnel.

“Mission: Guerilla IMAX is fully a go,” Neil said as he and Tyler poked their heads in the empty planetarium. “And we've got the place to ourselves.”

Tyler ran to the planetarium's massive projector and began connecting software. The start-up screen washed over the domed ceiling above them. Neil removed his gaming tablet from a baggy cargo pocket and powered it up.

It all reminded Neil of his mission from the beginning of the summer: the rush of danger, the buzz of the equipment in his hand. Playing games at home didn't give him the same sort of adrenaline—Neil needed more.

“Wanna come over tonight and do some gaming?” Tyler asked as he looked through the inside of his vest, which was lined with rows of cables and electronic adaptors. “My babysitter's pretty cool about curfews. We can stay up all night and play Enchanted Poachers. You can even roll the die first.”

“Ah, thanks, Tyler,” Neil said reluctantly. “But I've got a big team game of—”

“Oh, that's right, Chameleon. I forgot your big match was
this
Friday. Man, you really love this game,” Tyler said. “Well, maybe I can give it another shot? Or just watch you, really. You're like a video game sensei.”

“Um, well, tonight will be rough. Since I've refused to mow the lawn all summer out of protest, my mom's not really letting me have anybody over,” Neil lied. “But Janey's doing karate tournaments all over the place these days, so some weekend I'll plan to stay with you.” Neil tried to sound reassuring.

The truth was, Neil's mom probably wouldn't mind Tyler coming over. But Neil just couldn't risk him being around for the evening.

“I get it, no worries,” said Tyler, his tongue darting at the corner of his mouth as he successfully logged onto the museum's system.

“Next time,” Neil said, handing Tyler his gaming tablet to get set up. “I promise.”

Every weekend since the Air Force had recruited him to rescue a top secret fighter jet, Neil tried to organize a huge game of Chameleon for all his fellow recruits. But whether it was Biggs moving his compost pile or Yuri's boarding school banning the internet, something always prevented the whole group from playing together. Sam was barely around, seemingly always swept along wherever her father was deployed. She was hardly ever logged on to Chameleon.

The game tonight was to be different, though. Neil had heard back from everyone, and all eleven had confirmed they'd make it. He was counting down the hours.

“Okay, we're set up,” Tyler said, handing Neil's tablet back to him. He had a similar one cradled in his skinny hands. “I connected you wirelessly, and I'm plugged in to record. I'll get a screen capture of what's on the projector, and I'll time it as well. And I've piped in the audio to the speakers. This is gonna be unreal.”

“You're getting a promotion, soldier,” Neil said, excitement and nervousness competing for first place in the pit of his stomach.

Neil took a deep breath and lay down in a chair looking up. With shaky fingers, he pushed start, and Chameleon appeared overhead, projected out into the dome of the planetarium. It looked a little distorted at first, but Neil's eyes quickly adjusted. It was almost like watching a kaleidoscope.

“Awesome,” Neil and Tyler said in unison as Neil's jet fighter appeared overhead. It sped ahead and executed a series of controlled rolls, the audio piping into the theater with crystal clear surround sound. A summer of playing Chameleon had Neil's skills in peak condition—not to mention, of course, that he had flown the real thing, a jet that actually turned invisible. As Neil executed flawless dives and took out countless enemy fighters, he lost sight of the fact that he was playing in a planetarium, completely illegally. He felt like he was back on the mission—back with his friends.

“We've passed seven minutes. The record is ours!” Tyler shouted, before quickly covering his mouth with a clammy hand.

Neil smiled, but heard a rustling from the doorway—the sound of the velvet ropes out front being unclipped.

“The vulture is coming back to the nest!” Tyler whispered. But Neil pressed on, knowing each passing second could lead to online celebrity. His palms grew sweaty, and he soon heard Tyler clanging around somewhere inside the projector. Neil turned his eyes from the planetarium's ceiling to the small screen of his tablet. He pressed a flurry of buttons, and his fighter was soon invisible. Neil tried to remember the subtle buzzing he felt when doing so in a real-life Chameleon.

But Neil's heart jumped as he heard a voice that was distinctly not Tyler's. Time was up.

A thin museum worker was leading the rest of Neil's class inside, ushering them into the open planetarium with a raised hand.

“Hello, everyone. My name is Nebula, and I'm an
extremely
unpaid volunteer at your favorite museum, planetarium, and buffet,” said a girl who could've passed for Biggs's sister. She had chin-length brown hair that was clumped in dreadlocks and tied back. Over a long flowing skirt, she wore a blue polo with the museum's logo on it and a large round button that said
ASK ME ABOUT OUR WALKING SUNDAE BAR TOUR!

“Oh, and nice to see a few of you already enjoying the facility,” she said, looking at Neil and Tyler. Neil panicked and looked upward but was impressed to see only stars. Tyler had managed to switch the source on the fancy projector with only a second to spare. As if they were just waiting patiently, the two waved awkwardly from the cushy reclined seats adjacent to the projector.

Mission: Guerilla IMAX was a total success!

“Our state-of-the-art telescope is one of the largest in the West—able to see galaxies unfathomable distances away,” Nebula explained. “Okay, everybody, time for the show!” she announced, drawing closed a heavy, light-blocking curtain in front of the planetarium's doorway. “I hope everyone has their exploring caps on. I know I do. I made it myself,” said Nebula, who clearly wasn't wearing any type of visible real-world headwear.

Neil was impressed Tyler was miraculously able to change the video feed to the projector, and he slyly exited the game on his tablet before any noises gave him away. He breathed a sigh of relief. He'd done it.

“Hey, Night Light, don't get scared when it gets dark in here,” yelled Tommy, biting into a vanilla ice cream cone despite the
NO FOOD ALLOWED IN THE PLANETARIUM
sign on the wall. “You can sit near an exit sign if you need the light.”

After Neil beat Tommy at Chameleon—at Tommy's own sleepover—the bully's hatred of Neil had only gotten worse. He'd stopped calling Neil “Neandertol,” but now he had a new nickname. While Neil had really left the sleepover to go help the Air Force, Tommy told everyone that Neil was too scared to stay over because he was afraid of the dark. And so “Night Light” was born.

As a promise to Major Jones, Neil made sure his adventure remained a secret, but it wasn't easy when he kept finding Disney princess lights plastered to his locker.