Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

“There is a name for the place where Petey and all the other little children of the town are being kept,” he said softly. “But Petey wouldn’t have understood. The place is called ‘limbo.’”

In which Rodney and Wayne and Becky and Grover have an encounter with two preschool fugitives from the law

The next three days were very busy ones for Professor Johnson and for Rodney and Wayne. Although they were not able to help the Professor with the construction of the invention — dubbed the Age Altertron — whose job it would be to end this latest calamity, the boys nonetheless spent as much time as possible with their friend in his home laboratory. They even helped him to give a name to the new calamity. It would forever be called The Age-Changer-Deranger-Estranger.

Aunt Mildred didn’t mind rolling the twins back and forth between the two houses in their big double stroller because it gave her more opportunities to bring fudge and pie and all the other special foods that Mrs. Ferrell had told her the Professor liked. Aunt Mildred would sometimes sit and watch Professor Johnson bolt down a slice of cinnamon-rhubarb pie (so that he could quickly return to his work) and she would let out a little wistful sigh and wonder what life would be like if she could bake for him everyday as his wife. When it was time to go, Professor Johnson would steal a glance at Aunt Mildred through his window and think about what a good cook she was, and how much he liked to see the cheerful lift in her step when she walked.

Rodney and Wayne were busy in large part because the Professor’s house and laboratory at 1272 Old Hickory Road had become a very busy place. All day long Mr. and Mrs. Ragsdale and Mrs. Carter and all of the other parents of the missing children (except for Mr. Armstrong who could not be coaxed from his bathtub) would drop by to find out if they would soon be able to hold their little ones in their arms again.

The Professor’s students from the college, who had once been eighteen- and nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, and who were now seven- and eight- and nine-year-olds, came to visit with the Professor as well. Now that they had the bodies of young children, they could no longer while away their free hours doing the goofy, prankish things college kids generally did, like leading a milk cow up four flights of stairs to the roof of the science building. Now that they were incapable of doing anything more prankish than covering a very short tree with toilet paper, they could spend more time assisting the Professor in those areas of his work that did not require a steady adult hand.

In fact, there were so many people gathering at the Professor’s house that he could scarcely get any work done. “I don’t care how you do it, boys!” he had said to Rodney and Wayne on the third day of the calamity. “You simply must figure out some way to keep everyone away from here who isn’t being helpful to me. It’s a circus in this place and it only delays my work and hurts this town.”

So, here is what Rodney and Wayne decided to do to help the Professor: they set up a reception room in his front parlor. No one was allowed to go to the back of the house to see the Professor unless he or she had a very important and urgent reason.

“I have an idea!” said Becky, sitting with the boys and their friend Grover on the Professor’s front porch. “Let’s make it into a real office, like we have our own company. I’ll be the receptionist and Rodney and Wayne, you can do the interviewing since you know better than anyone else whom the Professor would be willing to see and whom he would not.”

“And what will my job in the office be?” asked Grover. Grover sat at one end of the funny row of chatting babies, each with serious faces and furrowed brows — faces usually only seen on babies with poopy pants.

“There are plenty of things you can do to help our brand new company,” said Becky, who was convinced now that they should turn their work for the Professor into a fully-fledged business operation.

Mrs. Ferrell was watching the four chattering toddlers from the window of the Professor’s front parlor. She smiled. She was pleased that Rodney and Wayne and Becky were including her son Grover in their plans. She had gotten very worn-out lately trying to tend to her chubby baby boy who was not content to simply sit quietly in a playpen and roll a toy car back and forth. At the same time, Mrs. Ferrell still had to cook and keep house for the Professor. She got so worn out that sometimes she fell asleep standing straight up, propped against the Professor’s dusty fireplace mantle.

“I know what Grover can do!” said Wayne. “Grover can be our right-hand man.”

“What does a right-hand man do?” asked Grover.

“All kinds of odd jobs,” replied Rodney. “Let’s say, for example, that someone comes to see the Professor and won’t take no for an answer. Well, it will be your job to show him to the door.”

“But what if he doesn’t want to be shown to the door?”

“Then you’ll have to be forceful about it.”

“But how can I be forceful?” asked Grover. “I only learned how to walk yesterday.”

Rodney and Wayne and Becky all nodded at the same time. Slowly they had been learning how to walk all over again. Running and riding bikes and tramping through the woods and flying kites and playing football — all of these things were out of the question now. For the four children who sat in a little row that day upon the top step of Professor Johnson’s porch, being so young had become a most cruel thing to be.

Not so, though, with the adults in the town. Being made younger worked very much to their advantage. Down the street at just that moment, Mr. Williford rode by on his son’s bicycle, with his arms waving above his head. And there, directly across the street from the children was the butcher’s wife Mrs. Garrison, taking a quick turn upon a sidewalk hopscotch court. And not too far away, the children could see Mr. Watts happily bouncing down the street upon his daughter’s pogo stick.

“You would think by the way they’re all acting, that they’ve all been turned into children again!” grumbled Rodney.

“Better children than little monkeys like you!” said someone coming from the Professor’s side yard. The foursome looked down from the porch to see Jackie Stovall and his chum Lonnie Rowe snickering at them from the Professor’s flower bed, where they had just trampled most of his autumn chrysanthemums.

Jackie and Lonnie, who had both been put back a grade, and were, therefore, a year older than the four sitters on the porch, had easily crept up on legs that functioned just as well as any older child’s. (They did, after all, have the bodies of three-year-olds to work with.) Jackie was the taller of the two boys, but Lonnie had a strong, stocky build, like a young gorilla.

Becky stood up and said in the very serious voice of a nononsense receptionist: “Good afternoon, Mr. Stovall. Good afternoon, Mr. Rowe. Have you gentlemen come to see the Professor, because he is only seeing people with the most urgent emergencies.”

“No, we don’t have to see the Professor, monkeys!” crowed Jackie. “We just want to use his house for a hiding place. We’re fugitives, you see. The law thinks we did something that we didn’t do.”

Rodney stared hard at Jackie and his fellow fugitive. He felt like a judge glaring down at a convicted criminal from his high bench. “What crime did you not commit that someone thinks you committed?” he asked in his official interviewer’s voice.

“ Somebody —really two somebodies — just ran through the Pitcherville City Park and overturned all the baby carriages. And there were about a dozen of them. Maybe more.”