Authors: George Earl Parker
The Subatomic Kid (5 page)
“You told me to be here.”
“Do you know why I told you to be here?” Mr. Jenkins queried.
“Because I wasn’t paying attention in class,” John sighed.
“And why weren’t you paying attention?”
“Because something weird was going on outside and it distracted me.”
“Something weird?” Mr. Jenkins repeated.
“Yeah,” said John.
“Well, young man,” he lectured. “Lots of weird things happen in this world, but if you concentrate on the task at hand, weird things don’t distract you, do they?”
“I guess not.”
“You can take a seat and write me a haiku on why you weren’t paying attention in class; and remember to keep it as authentic as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” John replied as he sat down at one of the desks, took out a pen and began staring at the piece of paper in front of him. He tried very hard to get into the moment and expand it into a poem but nothing would come. His mind remained blank, and all he could think about was the comic book burning a hole in his backpack.
Time passed very slowly, until there was a knock at the door. Mr. Jenkins stretched his long form lazily, stood up, walked to the door and stepped outside. John saw it as a moment of opportunity; he scribbled on the paper, grabbed his backpack and left by another door.
***
In the hallway Mr. Jenkins stared at a security guard.
“Everybody has to leave the building, sir.”
“What do you mean?” asked the teacher. “I have work to do.”
“I appreciate that, sir, but I also have a job to do, and my orders are to clear the building.”
“But I have a student on detention; and he’s trying to compose a poem!” Mr. Jenkins said irritably.
“Well, he’ll have to do it outside,” the guard replied.
Resigned, the teacher returned to the classroom. Not seeing John, he walked over to the desk and picked up the piece of paper he had left behind. “
Excuse this room without me in it, I’ll be back in just a minute,”
he recited out loud and smiled. “Not bad,” he added, “not bad at all!”
***
John rushed across the huge ballroom, disappeared into the bathroom, hurried into one of the stalls, pulled the comic book from his backpack and began to devour it. His passion for comic books was hard for him to break; they supplied food for his imagination, nourishment for his psyche, and sustenance for his soul. He had to read at least one a day, even if he’d read it before. There were hundreds of them stacked in the bottom of his closet; they were his stash, his sanity. Just knowing they were there elevated his comfort level; his life would be meaningless without them.
***
The teacher waddled out of the school carrying a briefcase stuffed with exercise books. The guard waited for him at the door.
“Goodnight, sir,” he said. “By the way, what happened to that kid?”
“He left,” Mr. Jenkins replied.
“Did he finish his poem?”
“Yes, and it was quite good too.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the guard said as he closed the door, locked it, and began patrolling the perimeter.
***
Doctor Leitz stalked down the spiral staircase toward the ballroom with Hunter following close behind.
“So, where’s the lab, Doc?” Hunter asked, puffing on his cigar.
“You’re standing in it,” Leitz replied.
Hunter surveyed the huge empty space. “I don’t know what kind of trick you’re trying to pull,” he said, “but there’s nothing here.”
Leitz crossed the room and opened a panel in the wall. Then he took a key from his pocket, inserted it into a lock, turned it, and pressed a large red button above it.
Hunter looked on in wonder as the nineteenth century ballroom began to metamorphose into a twenty-first century laboratory. Thick shutters slid down and covered all of the windows. Shiny aluminum air ducts came out of secret compartments in the ceiling and descended downward. The floor opened up and a stainless steel control panel emerged, and beyond that a column appeared topped by a device that could only be described as a ray gun.
“So, this is where the money went,” Hunter blurted out with a smile.
“Do you think I spent it frivolously?” Leitz asked in a sharp tone.
“That remains to be seen, Doc.”
He opened a closet and took out a shiny silver suit and a helmet. “Here, put this on,” he said as he handed it to Hunter. “The process generates a tremendous amount of heat, and I would hate to burn you to a crisp.”
Hunter grabbed the suit with a sudden look of annoyance on his face. Doctor Leitz’ scientific preoccupation, however, prevented him from observing this or any other emotional outburst. Right now he was a god about to add a new wrinkle to the fabric of the universe, and Hunter was no more than a pesky mosquito buzzing in his ear.
***
John turned the last page of the comic book and found that the hero was left dangling on the horns of a dilemma. Would he survive or not? The answer would not be known until he purchased next week’s edition. He felt let down; he had half a story in his head and next week was such a long way off. He stuffed the comic book into his pocket, hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder and walked to the bathroom door.
The moment he opened it he knew something was wrong; an intense bright light beamed into the room and almost knocked him backwards. As his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw the huge room was filled with shiny metal surfaces, and in the middle of it all were two strange figures in silver suits, wearing mirrored visors on their helmets.
He closed the door and leaned against it, breathed deeply and told himself not to panic—then he panicked. Weird scenarios flashed through his head, and the weirdest one kept coming back again and again:
The bathroom has been abducted by aliens! But why? Why on earth would aliens want a bathroom? Was it something to do with the comic book?
***
Leitz sat at his console fine-tuning the equipment. The console was covered with dials, buttons, switches, slide controls, electronic readouts, in fact all manner of gadgetry that the good doctor felt he needed to manipulate the subtle streams of atomic particles whose configuration gave all matter its own peculiar shape and held it spellbound.
Standing behind him, Hunter watched as Leitz reached up and turned a television monitor on, and the image flickered into shape: an old wooden kitchen chair painted red, against a black and white graph background.
***
John had never felt quite this strange before; reality as he knew it had ceased to be. He had simply opened a door on what he expected to be a familiar scene, and had encountered the unfamiliar. His mind was a blaze of confusion, his heart was racing, blood surged through his veins, and his breaths came out short and shallow.
Still, somewhere deep inside himself he knew he couldn’t stay here cowering in a bathroom; he had to get away. To where, he didn’t know, but at least he had to try. Summoning all the strength he had left, he pulled the door open and ran out. The bright light hit him first; there was so much of it, it was like a fog. Then there was a deafening sound, and he thought he’d better make himself some earplugs before his head exploded. Crouching in a corner, he began shredding pages of the comic book and rolling them into tight little balls.
***
Doctor Leitz was now working on pure adrenaline…every switch, button, and dial in front of him was a product of his imagination; they were the variables of his formula for success. He fine-tuned all of them to assure that the outcome of the experiment met his expectations. Above him, the image on the monitor was washed out by the intense light. He adjusted the contrast and the kitchen chair on the graph background came back into ghostly focus.
He sat back and flexed his fingers; the moment had come for the beginning of the endgame. He flipped a switch and an electronic readout displayed the words: ATOMIC SUSPENSION UNIT. He stabbed a button and another read: STANDBY. Leitz relaxed momentarily as Hunter gazed over his shoulder, the whole scene eerily mirrored in their visors.
***
After pushing huge wads of paper into his ears, John took off in search of a way out of this madness. It was like he was lost in a hall of crazy mirrors; every surface reflected his distorted image, and the intensity of the light made him feel like he was dissolving into nothingness.
With every step becoming more frantic than the last, he wound his way through the stainless steel maze until he turned a corner and saw what he was looking for, a red chair standing in front of a huge graph background. More importantly, behind the chair was a hole in the wall, a chute going somewhere—and anywhere would be preferable to where he was.
***
Leitz was becoming drunk with anticipation, and he was giddy from the flawless way his machinery was performing the functions he had intended. He also knew the burst of energy he was about to unleash was so powerful it could potentially blow the town and a good amount of the surrounding countryside clear off the map.
He hesitated for a moment and double-checked all of the output dials. He needed a small, localized explosion at the sub molecular level—not an explosion that would destroy, but one that would unglue the atomic structure and suspend it until he reconfigured it into a new shape, weight, and density.
The thoughts danced in slow motion through his mind as he stabbed at the penultimate button on the control panel, and the electronic readout glowed: MOLECULAR ACCELERATOR.
A low hum began, so deep it could not be heard, but Hunter felt it. It was so pronounced, he thought he was going to come apart at the seams, and it got deeper and deeper, until every molecule in the room was vibrating at the same rate.
***
John felt the low rumble too; it affected his vision. His eyeballs felt like they were bouncing around in their sockets, and the blood throbbed in the veins throughout his body. He noticed another phenomena; he had the feeling his feet were becoming one with the floor. He knew if he didn’t do something soon, he wouldn’t be able to move; it was his final motivation, and he began running toward the chair.
***
Leitz stared fixedly at another dark readout below the last one until it glowed: MAXIMUM OSCILLATION.
He opened a small panel, moved his finger over the firing button and watched the countdown begin: FIVE…FOUR…THREE…
***
John felt the gravity in the room double, and he could have sworn that he was running in slow motion, but he knew this was impossible. So he ignored the feeling, and focused all of his attention on the chair.
***
Leitz flexed his finger in anticipation as the countdown fell: TWO…ONE…ZERO.
He stabbed the button down and a brilliant white light completely obliterated every feature in the room as the huge ray gun above him exploded into life.
***
John leapt onto the chair at exactly the same time that the gun unleashed its deadly subatomic ray, and as he disappeared into the hole in the wall, both he and the chair dissolved into clouds of billions of shining particles that shone super brightly and then were gone.
***
As the room returned to normal, Doctor Leitz hit the SUBATOMIC MANIPULATION SWITCH, and as if by magic, glowing particles appeared from nowhere and lazily coalesced into a bright yellow sunflower thrusting itself jokingly out of a bright red flowerpot.
Hunter lifted his visor and stared at the video monitor. “Holy moley,” he said incredulously. “Did that used to be the chair?”
Leitz lifted his visor. “Yes, it used to be the chair.”
“Well, you were right,” he said, “That is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Doctor Leitz turned from him in disgust, and began re-calibrating his machinery. Regardless of the outcome of the experiment, he had opened a portal into the unknown. The mystery of transmogrification was within his grasp; the door once sealed was now opened. His mind raced; he had unglued the elements that held space and matter together, and he had reconfigured them with his mind. This was the discovery he was born to unearth…this was his legacy to the world; in one push of a button he had become the supreme being he had always known he was. He smiled.
Phenomenal
, he thought,
absolutely phenomenal
.
BLOWN INTO BEING
John felt like his brain had exploded. One moment he was heading into a hole in the wall, and the next he was in a cloud of stars. But not just any stars; these stars were alive, or more accurately, they were living and dying at incredible rates of speed.
He had no idea how he knew this, he just did; it was as if his consciousness existed in a billion places at once, watching the beginning and the end of everything. Then just as he’d exploded he began to fall like dust through eternity, until there was nothing left but the drumbeat of his heart, which inexplicably also disappeared into a silence that masqueraded as sleep.
He awoke in darkness and looked around; it was so black he couldn’t even see his fingers right in front of his eyes…and then his memory kicked in. Did he even have any fingers, or any eyes for that matter?
“Hello?” he ventured hoarsely. “Is anyone out there?”
“Well, of course there is, there’s me!” came the curt reply.
