Chapter 1. The discovery.
It was a Monday in early May, when it was very desirable for Bradley that the weekend was longer so he could go back to the beach to keep watching the surfers practice for their competitions. The surf was pretty high yesterday, so he and his father had a blast watching the surfers, one of whom was actually Bradley’s older brother Dustin. It was so much fun to watch how these guys battled with the waves and successfully rode them all the way to the beach. Too bad neither Huang Fu, nor John, Bradley’s best friends, could make it! Bradley and his father spend some time body surfing and had fun doing that, too. Of course, there were also occasions when they would get into a ‘washing machine’, but that did not spoil it.
The beach was so inviting that Bradley felt like going to school was not at all appropriate. The feeling was so strong that he was willing to take the consequences should his parents find out he was not there. He felt like it was a waste of time, anyway, because they were preparing for the tests and rehearsing over and over again the material that he knew long time ago. Bradley’s parents were very strict when it came to studies, though. They went out of their way to supervise the completion of all his assignments and even gave extra tasks to make sure he was at the top of his class. It was, of course, out of the question to miss school just because they had review. It was possible to go to the beach later in the day, after school. But by the time all the homework was done, it was too late to watch the surfers, just the sunset, which Bradley’s mother and twin sister would enjoy, but was too boring for him. Oh, why was it not the Memorial Day weekend already!
It was particularly annoying that on work days Bradley’s mother liked to get up early. She would fix breakfast for everyone and fellowship with her family before taking off for work. She demanded that all the kids got up as well, of which Bradley did not see the point. He personally could not participate in any kind of fellowship this early. She started at 8 a.m., and in Bradley’s opinion there was no need to get up at six. Breakfast didn’t have to be so sophisticated and take so long.
Bradley postponed getting out of bed under pretense of waiting for Dustin to finish up with his shower. The best would be if he could come up with a clever plan to miss school today without any ramifications. So Bradley was desperately thinking, while still in bed, but nothing came to his mind. Megan was still asleep. She hated getting up early as well and always slept till the last possible moment. Then she would jump out of bed and rush to the table without ever taking a shower. She actually did it in the evenings, which was not that bad at all, because it reduced competition for the bath in the morning.
After breakfast Bradley’s mother left, followed by Dustin who had an early lesson today. In forty five minutes Bradley was ready to go. He and Megan had a math class together in the morning, but Megan was not quite done with her hair. Why couldn’t girls just make it simpler! Bradley felt overwhelming frustration with his sister but realized that the real reason for his being upset was the lack of a plausible idea of how to avoid school. If he pretended to be sick, he would have to stay home all day instead of going to the beach. Moreover, there was really nobody to take him to the beach. How convenient would it be to have an older brother with a car to play a hooky with.
Bradley was stuck. Their father would usually wait for ten minutes for him, Megan and Dustin to get to school to make sure everything was Ok, and then he would leave for work himself. Bradley ran out of time to think of any idea, because their father prompted them to go. Since Megan was not quite ready, Bradley started off without her. It was not uncommon that she would get going later and run all the way to school.
Suddenly Bradley heard the sounds of fast steps behind him and thought it was Megan, but it was his friend John, who lived in the house right next to his.
“Hi! Great day, uh?” John said, slowing down and walking next to Bradley. “I was trying to tell my parents that I was sick so I could stay home, but they did not buy it.”
Bradley objected, “I thought of that already. What good is that pretending to be sick? You would have to stay at home all day. I wish I could go to the beach. This sure isn’t a kind of day to boil at school… and afterwards with the homework.”
“Have you done the math assignment?” John inquired.
“Sure I have. And a bunch of additional problems that my parents made me do. You are lucky yours don’t sit on top of you all the time like mine do. They keep telling me I’m the one who is lucky because I will learn well and be successful in the future.”
Bradley’s parents belonged to the category of people whose parents and parents’ parents were well educated and raised to believe that if one studied hard, one would be very successful in life. His father studied hard, and the choice of his education proved to be just right. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and then Master’s in engineering and successfully landed a job with Boeing shortly after graduation.
Bradley’s mother, on the other hand, even though she studied hard as well, could not decide for a long time what she wanted to do. Since her parents made sure she took all the hard classes in high school, it would have not been difficult for her to continue studying science. However, she decided that it would be much more fun if she obtained her Bachelor’s in history of ancient civilizations. So she did, minoring in literature at the same time. She realized shortly after graduation that this field did not offer many well-paying as well as interesting jobs. She could become a teacher, but this was not appealing to her. She wanted to stay close to her family in California, especially that her boyfriend, future husband, already found a successful job and was not interested in moving. So she went back to school and followed her parents’ advice to study sciences, choosing molecular biology to work in a research lab. Following graduation, she worked in academia for a few years to gain practical experience and then joined Allergan’s Research and Development team.
Dustin, Bradley and Megan were raised to study hard, go to college and choose degrees that would allow them to find interesting, as well as well-paying jobs. Bradley had not decided just yet whether he liked this idea of being so narrowly directed into choosing what to study and how many hours per day to spend studying. But he heard stories of other adults complaining in their later years that their parents did not discipline them enough to study when they were kids, and they had to do it when they were grown-ups instead of making money. So Bradley went along, not that he had much choice, anyway.
“Of course, you and Huang Fu have been math stars from kindergarten!” John exclaimed, and Bradley noticed envy in his voice.
The boys crossed the bridge over a small river. There was a small playground to their right, passing which they cut corners to get to their class. Their class was in the last of the four rectangular wooden buildings, and to get to it, they had to walk through an open grassy area. Between the second and the third building there was a gap one building wide, through which Bradley and John usually passed to get to their entrance. But something was not right… This time, there was a fifth very similar wooden building right there in the middle, which was not there last Friday. When Bradley and John approached in amazement, they noticed that it looked more like a temporary structure and was smaller.
“What do you think this is?” asked John. “Why are they expanding the school at the end of the year?..”
“It’s probably for the preparations for the end-of-the-year events, storage or something,” Bradley suggested, remembering what the teacher told them last week. “I am more curious about how they could have built it so fast. Worked on it all weekend?..”
John suggested, “Let’s see what’s inside. Maybe there’s gonna be a discoball.”
But to Bradley that sounded too primitive, so he exclaimed, “Discoball?! I want to see lasers!”
The boys got closer. John was already pulling on the door, when Bradley heard the sound of footsteps and thought that this time it had to be Megan. And it was. She was hurrying along, blind to everything on her way.
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“Hey, Megan, slow down!” Bradley shouted, surprised that she seemingly didn’t see or maybe just didn’t pay attention to an extra building. “Look what we found!”
“What’s special about it?” Megan slowed down reluctantly. “We’re late for class.”
“Aren’t you curious?” Bradley asked. “This wasn’t here Friday. It will take just a few minutes to check it out, and then we will be right in.” Bradley paused for a few seconds, thinking what might be interesting enough for Megan to incentivize her to peek inside the building and said, “I think there is going to be a ball, like in fairy tales, for the end-of-the-year celebration.” Then he elbowed John, seeking confirmation, and whispered, “Right?”
“You guys think they’re going to have armored suits and swords, don’t you?” Megan teased the boys.
“Yeah, and fancy dresses maybe, like at the medieval fair last year for Dustin’s celebration that we visited. Don’t you want to take a peek?” prompted Bradley.
Megan slowly approached. At that point the door was already completely open, and all three of them went in. Out of the corner of his eye Bradley saw another late person running though the grassy area to the classroom. He thought he would for sure join them, but then forgot about him altogether. Inside, there were no windows, but despite that it was not dark. Neither Bradley, nor Megan or John noticed that the door behind them… closed by itself. In front of them there were four bags.
John rushed towards the one that was the closest to him, untied the rope and exclaimed, “Look here! Money! Lots of it!”
Bradley and Megan came closer and peeked over his shoulder. John started grabbing the money and stuffing it into his pockets, then took off his backpack, threw the books out and started filling it with money as well.
Bradley picked a coin and took a close look at it. “Wait,” he said, carefully examining the coin on both sides, “It’s not real money. At least, they are not dollars. Look closely.”
John stopped. Bradley scrutinized a few more coins and concluded that they were indeed real but of some other country.
Suddenly a voice came out from an unknown direction and proclaimed, “Take as much as you will need. Then open the other three bags.”
“As much as we will need?” Bradley shrugged his shoulders. “Will need for what? We’re not going to any other country. We don’t even know what country this money is for…”
“Well, does it matter? We can take it to the airport and exchange it. My dad travels a lot and changes money at the airport all the time,” John interrupted impatiently. “It’s always good to have money. We can figure it out later, and if we get to that country, it will be handy.”
Having said that, John continued filling up his bag. Bradley stuffed his pockets but decided that he did not want to empty his schoolbag and lose books for some money he was not sure would ever be useful. He noticed that Megan was not very vigorous picking the coins either. She turned around ready to leave and go to class and started moving towards the door. Bradley and John were opening the other three bags when she shouted, “The door disappeared! This is some kind of funhouse!”
Bradley turned to her, but John did not hear. Bradley figured that John would be more interested in checking out the remaining bags than going to class. He knew that John had a wagon at home, and, if necessary, he would bring it here to load all the bags onto it to haul them away. Under normal circumstances, John was usually reluctant to play with his wagon publicly since they started junior high last fall, despite the fact that his dad helped him install an electric motor. Bradley played with this wagon himself a few times when John let him use it, and he was pretty sure that with a car battery it could do thirty miles an hour. Even though without a speedometer they could never test it precisely.
When John opened the other two bags, Bradley saw that they were full of feathers, not money. So John would not have to bring the wagon after all. Bradley joined Megan to look for the door in the wall where it used to be. He touched the wall all the way around, but did not feel any unevenness indicating the presence of the door. All of a sudden he heard John shout “Ouch!” as the rope of the fourth bag flew off with explosive force. The entire building was filled with feathers that came from the three bags. As Bradley was flying off into the air, he saw John grab his schoolbag with the money that he had on the floor.
When everything cleared, Bradley saw that he, Megan and John were flying in the air over a beautiful countryside. More precisely, since there was no wind and no sensation of gaining speed, it appeared that they were not flying but were suspended in the air, and the countryside was passing below them. Forests, fields and rivers, occasional villages, and forests and fields again, just as in old grandfather’s clock with rotating pictures. Some of the money fell out of their pockets, but was still floating nearby. After some time a town floated underneath them, then more of the countryside, and then something different - a large city with something Bradley knew should have been impossible. It was not a building; it was like a tunnel slide at McDonald’s playground, only a thousand times bigger. And it did not have any stairs leading to it. When the slide entrance came up to the children’s level, the city stopped moving. The position of the tunnel was adjusted so it was right under their feet and the kids could reach the opening.
“So, what are we supposed to do?” Bradley whispered. “This is very suspicious. Of course I did not want to go to school today, but I did not expect anything of the kind.”
To Bradley this tunnel reminded of a subway tunnel, even the worn out yellow caution line that they were about to cross over. But something else was not quite right. There did not seem to be anybody in control of this thing or insisting that they go down. Bradley was wondering how they were supposed to go down if they were suspended in the air and there appeared to be no gravity? They could reach the railing along the sides, but what good would that do? Past the railing there was a completely smooth surface. Bradley doubted that they could pull themselves along the outside of the structure since there were no ladders or hand holds. The hint came from coins that fell out of pockets and were still floating around. As few coins floated past the yellow line, Bradley saw strobes flash and a terribly loud horn sounded next to him. When the horn stopped sounding several seconds later, Bradley could still hear the clinkety-clink of the coins dropping down the slide.
While Bradley was still thinking of the implications, John exclaimed, “That’s it, it’s automatic, just cross that line, and down you go to the city! It’s just as the escape slide that the astronauts have on the launch platforms. It takes them all the way underground in a blink. This is an adventure! We’ll tour around a little bit, and then figure out how to get back. Maybe in this country we can use that money that we found.”
It was just like John. Bradley did not expect anything else from his friend. Ready for an adventure! “Ok, I guess it’s better than hanging in one place,” he agreed and patted John on the shoulder. “You go first.”
“You bet I will!” John exclaimed and moved to the side of the slide opposite of the horn. “Plug your ears.” As John pulled himself past the threshold, the horn sounded and lights flashed, and Bradley heard his friend scream. He figured that John really enjoyed his ride, like a roller coaster. Bradley could not understand the reason for the horn, but it was simple enough to disconnect because of what looked like temporary wiring, badly installed just like Bradley used to do when he was six or seven. As he began to untwist the wire cap, Megan scolded him, “Don’t, you’ll break it or get shocked!”
But Bradley reasoned there was no electricity at that moment, since the horn did not sound until one crossed the line. Then Bradley pushed Megan, who hesitated, and dove in right after her.
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