“I have,” Kyle said, offended. Maybe his intellect wasn’t firing on all neurons right now, but that didn’t mean he was an idiot. Wasn’t it Erasmus himself who pointed out just a little while ago that Kyle was pretty darn smart even without the plasma-powered buffing? “You need to chill out and trust me.”
“I’ll trust you when you get us home and get this wire out of my dock connector.” Erasmus wasn’t backing down.
Kyle shrugged, a motion totally lost on Erasmus, and stood up, dusting off his knees. “Let’s go, then — next stop, Thorul Court!”
It was getting dark, but not yet dark enough to risk flying, so Kyle took a roundabout route to Thorul Court, running at superspeed through the woods and open fields that surrounded Bouring. He made it in less than five minutes, a world’s record in 1987 or any other time.
Walter Lundergaard’s house was a nondescript three-story Colonial at the very center of Thorul Court. In Kyle’s own time, Thorul Court wasn’t a pleasant place to live — there were only a couple of homes anyone lived in and the rest were unoccupied.
Including, Kyle realized now, Lundergaard’s. At some point between 1987 and the present, Lundergaard’s house would be gutted by a fire. No one would ever reclaim it or repair it, so it would just sit for years and years, decrepit and unloved, in a permanent state of disrepair that would drive other homeowners from the court.
But that was at some point in the future. For now, Thorul Court looked like any other part of Bouring, and Lundergaard’s house was whole, its shingles a sparkling pearl gray, with bright, freshly painted white trim and shutters. You could hardly believe a time traveler lived there.
“Kyle!” Erasmus said suddenly. If Kyle didn’t know better, he would say his partner was out of breath. “You’re not going to believe this!”
“Try me. I believe a lot these days.”
“I’m picking up a Wi-Fi signal!”
“What?” That should be impossible. Wi-Fi wasn’t even invented yet.
“We’re at the very edge of the signal’s range. It’s on the experimental Q band, but it’s strong. Origination point is roughly thirty-two meters due east.”
Kyle was facing due east. And thirty-two meters in front of him was smack in the middle of Lundergaard’s house.
“He’s definitely a time traveler. Has to be. How else could he have Wi-Fi in 1987? Can you get into his system?”
“No. He’s using top-grade quantum encryption. Not even available commercially in our time. It would take me roughly three thousand years to hack his system, assuming no microscopic degradation of my circuitry in that time.”
“Well, I’m not waiting three thousand years to figure out what this guy’s up to. I’m going to find out the old-fashioned way.” Kyle marched forward. There was no car in the driveway, so Lundergaard probably wasn’t home. He would have the run of the place.
The front door was locked, as expected, and Kyle didn’t want to draw attention by knocking it down, so he crept around the side of the house to the backyard. There was an old batwing cellar door set in the ground against the rear wall. A heavy chain and padlock kept it secure.
“Well, well,” Kyle murmured. “That’s interesting. I guess the ordinary lock just wasn’t enough, eh, Walter?”
He took the chain in both hands and pulled it apart like shredding cotton candy.
Once opened, the door revealed a set of concrete stairs descending into darkness. Kyle took Erasmus out of his pocket and had him crank up his screen brightness to use as a flashlight.
“This is going to —”
“— drain your battery. I know. Complain about something else for a change; I have a charging cable now.”
“How could I forget? It’s grafted to me like a tail.”
Kyle fiddled with the cord, wrapping it around Erasmus’s shell to keep it from dangling. “You can’t feel it. Stop being a baby.”
He crept down the stairs, shutting the doors behind him so that no one would see anything out of the ordinary, should they happen to look in Lundergaard’s backyard. Erasmus’s screen only lit up a few feet in front of him, so Kyle moved slowly, mincing along, one hand outstretched along the wall to feel for a light switch.
“How’s that Wi-Fi signal?”
“Stronger. We’re very close.”
By the light of Erasmus’s screen, Kyle could tell that he’d gone from a short corridor into an actual room, but he couldn’t make out much in the way of details, just shadowy, blocky shapes. Desks? Workbenches? He felt on the wall to his left, then his right, finally locating a light switch.
Revealed in the lights that flickered to life along the ceiling was the most magnificent workshop Kyle had ever seen. It was the workshop of his dreams. He wanted his basement to look like this someday.
All along one wall were gigantic flat-screen monitors, six of them tiled to take up the entire wall. On another wall were mounted two large whiteboards — each covered in multicolored marker script — and several corkboards, which were studded with tacked-up papers and drawings. And along the third wall were rows and rows of filing cabinets.
In the middle of the room were desks and workbenches, all neatly organized and arranged, piled high with all the gadgets and gear any budding genius could ever want … including a sleek and slim laptop computer. The room felt cool, despite all of the computer equipment, and Kyle realized that air conditioning vents blew frigid air from the ceiling, even though it was November.
“Wait a second,” he muttered.
“The Wi-Fi is coming from close by, Kyle. Only a few yards —”
“Flat-screen TVs weren’t this big in 1987. And that laptop is from our time. Lundergaard is definitely a time traveler.”
“How is that possible?” Erasmus asked. “We invented time travel.”
“Technically, I invented it. You helped.”
“We’re stuck in 1987 and in the basement lab of someone who shouldn’t even exist, and you’re really going to argue technicalities with me?”
“Facts are facts.”
“Just poke around and see if what we need is around here.”
Kyle chuckled. “Trust me, Erasmus. Everything we need is around here.”
Peering around again, looking beyond the wealth of electronic treasure gathered in the basement, Kyle noticed a flight of stairs leading up, into the house itself, no doubt. There was also a door made of steel — riveted and reinforced with bands across it, and a massive lock that might as well have had a sign reading KEEP OUT! SERIOUSLY.
“I wonder what you have hidden in there, Walter?” Kyle murmured.
“Stop wondering and start gathering up the stuff we need to fix the chronovessel,” Erasmus complained.
“Sure, that makes sense.” But Kyle couldn’t help himself. After being stuck in the primitive 1980s, seeing all these signs of civilization made him almost dizzy with homesickness. He made a beeline for the laptop and tapped its space bar. The screensaver flickered off and the current project window came to life. Kyle blinked. It looked familiar.
“Are you getting what we need?” Erasmus asked.
“Wait. Give me a second.” Kyle clicked around a little bit, popping open some other windows. Various technical drawings and schematics appeared on the screen. “This all looks …” He drifted off, thinking, then turned to look at the whiteboards and their multicolored scrawl. Equations. Heady stuff — black hole event horizons and neutron star densities …
“What are you up to, Lundergaard?”
Back at the computer, Kyle stared and stared at the windows until suddenly he realized why it all looked so familiar — it was the onboard telemetry circuit design for the chronovessel.
It was Kyle’s own design, decades before he’d invented it!
“He is a time traveler,” Kyle whispered. “It’s the only explanation. In the present or maybe even in our future, he must have gotten his hands on my chronovessel and come back to the 1980s. That’s why Lundergaard Research is so advanced in our
time; he started off with our technology in the past and had decades to improve it. But why?”
“Money,” Erasmus said. “World domination. Any of the standard villainous reasons for executing a nefarious plot. Does it really matter? Lundergaard is a bad guy, but he has the equipment we need to repair the chronovessel. Take it and run.”
“We don’t know he’s a bad guy, though. He could be a good guy.”
“He was working with the Monroe brothers. He stole the time capsule.”
“But that’s not necessarily —”
“Not necessarily what?” asked a new voice.
Kyle knew even before he turned around that it would be Walter Lundergaard.
He turned.
Sometimes he hated being right all the time.
Lundergaard stood at the bottom of the staircase that led to the rest of the house. He held some sort of gadget in one hand and a gun in the other, pointed at Kyle. Normally guns didn’t scare Kyle — he knew from experience that he was bulletproof. Not to mention bomb-proof, fireproof, and bazooka-proof.
But this gun didn’t look like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill pistol. It was a dull silver color and the barrel was bulbous, as if it had tried to swallow something too big to get down in one gulp. For all Kyle knew, that gun could hurt him very badly. He thought of the Mad Mask’s force field — it was definitely still possible to hurt Kyle, with the right science.
“Finish your thought, young man,” Lundergaard said in a very calm voice. “Not necessarily what?”
“I … uh …” Kyle’s mind raced and his eyes flicked over to the way he’d come in. At superspeed, he could make it before —
“Ah, ah, ah!” Lundergaard said, and clicked the gadget in his hand. A shimmering field of energy blocked the exit. “A force field. I assure you passing through it will —”
Kyle didn’t let Lundergaard finish. He moved, quickly. Not at the exit and the force field, but at Lundergaard himself, reaching out at superspeed for the gadget with one hand and the gun with the other.
He never made it.
A strange pain — strange both because it was pain and also because it was somehow familiar — buzzed through Kyle like a whole fleet of bees with steel stingers. He collapsed backward, stumbling away from Lundergaard and crashing into a workbench, which promptly fell into pieces at contact with his superstrong, super-resistant body.
“He’s definitely a bad guy,” Erasmus commented as Kyle shook his head to clear it.
“How on earth can you still be standing?” Lundergaard marveled. “That burst should have rendered you unconscious or —” He broke off and gasped, his entire expression changing to one of amazement, his eyes filled with sudden recognition.
“You … You’re Kyle Camden!” Lundergaard cried. “You’re Kyle Camden as a child! Of course! I should have known I would encounter you in this time period. It makes perfect sense.”
“Not to me,” Erasmus admitted.
Not to Kyle, either, but he didn’t care. “Turn off the force fields, Lundergaard. I’m taking what I need and leaving.”
“I don’t know if I can let you do that.” Lundergaard paused for a moment, confused. “But … I also … I don’t know if I can’t let you do that. The time paradoxes …”
“I told you there were time paradoxes!” Erasmus said.
“Not now.” To Lundergaard: “Look, we can do this the easy way —”
“Or the hard way. Yes, yes, I under —”
“No, I was going to say that we can do this the easy way or the way where I break every bone in your body. Your choice.”
He had expected Lundergaard to be intimidated or scared, but instead the older man just sighed and shook his head. “Oh, Kyle. You haven’t outgrown your childish bluster yet, have you? You told me that you were a smug, petulant child, but I didn’t believe you.”
“What do you mean I told you?” Kyle thought for a second. “And I am not smug and petulant!”
“Well …” Erasmus started, and Kyle shushed him.
Lundergaard, safe behind his force field, went on talking, as if to himself, as though Kyle weren’t even in the room. “So it’s … it’s 1987. Which means this is your first trip through time. Which means you’re only twelve years old …” He drifted off for a moment, thinking. Kyle wanted to rush him at superspeed again, push through that force field, but he was paralyzed by shock: first trip through time?
“Kyle,” Lundergaard said, “I suppose I should have expected this all along. I don’t know why I didn’t.” He lowered the strange-looking gun and his face relaxed. “Believe it or not, I’m not the ‘bad guy.’ I’m not your enemy at all. I’m going to turn off the force field in a moment … and then I’m going to invite you upstairs for something to drink and tell you what I know.” Lundergaard smiled. “Is that all right?”
Kyle nodded, knowing that as soon as the force field was down, he could race over there at superspeed and …
But his curiosity got the better of him. Lundergaard clicked the button and turned to go up the stairs.
Kyle followed.
After the modernity of Walter Lundergaard’s basement workshop, his kitchen was a second shock — it was just as boringly ancient as every other part of the 1980s Kyle had seen. The microwave oven, for example, was huge and actually had a dial on it, as well as an analog clock.
“I can’t upgrade the whole house,” Lundergaard said, as if he could read Kyle’s mind. He had put the gun and the other gadget on a shelf near the fridge, as if he didn’t care for them anymore. For some reason, that gesture made Kyle want to trust him. “Sometimes people come over. I have to keep all of the future stuff down in the basement, under lock and key.”
“What about that big steel door?” Kyle asked. “More future stuff?”
Puttering at the stove, his back to Kyle, Lundergaard shrugged. “No. I, well, I’m building a reactor. To power my own time machine. Very radioactive and very dangerous.” He turned around to face Kyle. “We can’t all be supergeniuses like you, Kyle. I can’t construct my own zero-point energy filtration system out of the guts of a PlayStation. For one thing, the PlayStation hasn’t been invented yet. For another, well, I’m just not that smart. Really smart, sure. Kyle Camden–smart? Nah.” He dropped a wink. “I’m making coffee for myself. What can I get for you?”
Kyle was surprised to find that he was thirsty. “Do you have soda?”
“Sure do.” Lundergaard rummaged in the fridge and brought out a nice, cold can of soda for Kyle. Moments later, the coffeemaker chirped and Lundergaard sat at the kitchen table, gesturing for Kyle to join him.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Erasmus demanded as Kyle sat.
“Later,” Kyle murmured, covering the sound with the snap-hiss of opening the soda can.
He covered the sound of the word, but not the motion of his lips. Lundergaard’s eyes lit up. “Are you talking to Erasmus?” he asked excitedly.
Kyle blinked. “You know about Erasmus?”
Lundergaard reared back his head and laughed, a long, honest burst of laughter so infectious that Kyle almost joined in. “Do I know about Erasmus? Oh, Kyle … I keep forgetting…. Even though you’re only twelve, you seem so much like the Kyle that I already know. Knew. Will know.” He frowned. “Time travel really messes up verbs, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah! Exactly! I was just thinking that yesterday.”
“Is that how long you’ve been here in 1987? Since yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
Lundergaard nodded and sipped at his coffee, then grimaced. “I’ve been here considerably longer. And trust me when I tell you that the worst part of being stuck in the past is that it’s impossible to get or make a decent cup of coffee.”
Kyle knew from previous experience that there was no such thing as a “decent cup of coffee,” even in the twenty-first century, but he couldn’t be bothered to explain this to Lundergaard. It was as though something happened to adults’ taste buds when they grew up, something th
at made them think coffee was “good.” He kept quiet and drank his soda.
“You’re probably dying to ask me a bunch of questions,” Lundergaard said. “So fire away.”
“How did you get here?” Kyle asked. “What are you up to? Why did you take the time capsule? How do you know me? How do you know about Erasmus? What is —”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Lundergaard held up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, there! Let a fella collect his thoughts!” He grinned again and saluted Kyle with his coffee cup before taking another reluctant sip of the sludge within. “Let me try to explain this to you….
“Many years in the future — in your future, Kyle — you and I will meet. You’ll be older when we meet. In your twenties.”
Kyle tried to imagine himself that old, and found that he couldn’t do it. “How did we —”
“One at a time,” Lundergaard admonished, waggling a finger. “Let me tell the story the best way I can. It’s confusing enough, with all the time travel stuff.
“Anyway, by the time I met you, you had already traveled in time. Obviously.” He gestured across the table at Kyle. “You and Erasmus were working on a way to perfect the system, though. The biggest problem was that only someone indestructible — like you, for example — could survive the time travel process. You wanted to make it so that anyone could travel through time.”
“I did?” That didn’t really sound like something Kyle would be bothered with. But who knew what he would be like when he was older?
“Yes, you did. I volunteered for one of the tests.” Lundergaard shrugged. “As you can see, it worked. Sort of.”
“So … you’re stuck here? Because of me?” The soda suddenly felt thick and viscous in Kyle’s throat, and he pushed the can away from him. “It’s all my fault?”
“Don’t blame yourself. Remember: I volunteered. I knew there was a chance I could be stuck in the past, or even worse. But it was worth it, to help you with your project. Of course, now that you’re here in 1987, you can help me figure out how to get home.”
Lundergaard’s smile was so wide and joyous that it killed Kyle to tell him, “I don’t know if I can do that. I can’t even figure out how to get myself home right now.” He explained how the chronovessel had burned up and melted down during its maiden voyage and how his own superintellect was on the fritz. Lundergaard’s smile faded with each word until the man was staring down into his coffee cup as though it were an endless pit of blackness and sourness. (Which, really, coffee was, but Kyle realized it wasn’t helpful to point this out at the time.)