Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

Rodney and Wayne found their Aunt Mildred awake. She was lying in bed listening to her radio. In the stronger light, Aunt Mildred looked very different from her earlier, younger self. She was tiny and frail with a face that wrapped itself so tightly about her skull that she appeared almost skeletal. Save only a few patches of fine, wispy hair, she had no hair at all. “Are you listening to your favorite soap opera, Aunt Mildred?” asked Wayne.

“I was for a while. You may wish to know that poor Delores finally got her memory back. But then a brick fell on her head and the amnesia returned. Just as the program was switching to a commercial for Plash Detergent — you know the one I like with those sweet little girls who sing: ‘Plash, Plash, won’t give you a rash!’—well, all of the sudden there he is — the new mayor, giving a speech! Can you believe it? That hooligan interrupting Helen Grant, Backstage Nurse for no good reason at all!”

“Well, he had to have some reason,” said Rodney.

“Yes,” said Wayne. “What did the hooligan have to say?” “Let me see if I remember. Something about plans to put everyone over the age of one hundred into a special city nursing home. But he wasn’t very clear: did he mean people who were over the age of one hundred before all this happened, or after? If he means after, why, that’s over one third of all the people in this town!”

“I think that’s exactly what he means, Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney. “Well, dear me. I don’t want to go to a city nursing home. There won’t be nearly enough beds and we’ll probably all have to share. And what if I get someone in my bed who doesn’t like cinnamon and won’t let me put my cinnamon sachet under my pillow every night?” Rodney looked at Wayne. Things were about to get even worse than they already were. Jackie was going to get rid of all the old people, pure and simple! He was going to place them all into a big industrial-sized nursing home and lock all the doors and put the matter of how best to care for all the old people totally out of mind. Wayne took his great aunt’s hand, and laid it tenderly into the palm of his own hand. “Rodney and I have a favor to ask of you, Aunt Mildred. It’s something that the Professor wants too.”

Aunt Mildred’s face suddenly lit up. “The Professor wants me to do something for him? What is it? You know I would do anything for that lovely man.”

“We have to hide the Professor’s laboratory. Otherwise the police are going to come and destroy it. Then we won’t be able to finish the new Age Altertron.

“Oh dear. Where are you thinking about hiding it?” “In Dad’s cellar.”

“You mean the one downstairs? You mean the one underneaththis house?”

Wayne and Rodney both nodded. “The Underground Railroad station,” said Rodney.

“But his project is down there — the project he was working on for almost a dozen years. He started it shortly after you were born. It helped him to ease the pain of missing your mother so much.”

“Is it finished?” asked Rodney.

“Well, I don’t know if he’s finished it or not. I suppose he hasn’t. It wasn’t scheduled to be completed, as you know, until 1960.”

“What is so special about 1960?”

“I promised him that I wouldn’t spoil his surprise and tell you anything else about it.” Aunt Mildred thought for a moment, and then she added: “And he would be most upset should you see it before he wanted you to.”

Rodney swallowed hard. “Aunt Mildred. This is probably the only cellar in Pitcherville that Jackie and Lonnie don’t know about. Dad would understand. I’m sure of it. Besides, what if the project he was working on had something to do with his disappearance? Isn’t it important for us to go down there for that reason alone? So you have to give us the key that unlocks that secret door inside the broom closet. We really need you to do this. The Professor really needs it too. Our father may never be coming back. So it may end up making no difference at all whether he would be disappointed that we saw his surprise before he wanted us to see it. But Wayne and I don’t want to lose you. And we don’t want to lose the Professor. That’s what’s important right now.”

“You really think Dad’s not coming back, Rodney?” asked Wayne.

“There is that chance — the chance we may never see him again.”

“Gee, Rodney. I always try not to think about that.”

“I know. I do too. But I’ve also known that there would come some day when we’d have to face that possibility. Maybe that day is today, Wayne.”

Wayne wiped the moistness in his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Oh dear,” was all that Aunt Mildred could say. Then she grew quiet as she studied a pattern on her bedroom wallpaper. Tears began to form in her own eyes. She turned back to her greatnephews and said, “The official name for The World of Tomorrow exhibit inside the big Perisphere at the World’s Fair was ‘Democracity.’ It was a diorama that imagined what the world could look like in the future — a perfect world where there was peace and freedom, and no one went to bed hungry. A place where everything ran smoothly and efficiently. You stood upon a walkway and looked down at the city from the sky. I think it was the largest diorama ever made — tiny cars and miniature buildings, little in size but quite large if one were to actually build them to full scale.

“Well, your father started to build his own Democracity diorama right there on the floor of his secret cellar, fashioning every little tree, every house, every tiny car with his own hands. He wanted to have it finished by the year 1960 for a reason. You see, that is the exact year that was depicted in the diorama at the World’s Fair. It was to be a city of the future — what could the world be like in that far-off year? Every night he would go down there to work on it after he had put you boys to bed. It was quite a labor of love.”

”I wish that you had let us see it right after he left,” said Wayne sullenly. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to make us wait nearly a whole year.”

“Well, considering the circumstances in which we now find ourselves I’m almost positive that your father would now agree to using it for the Professor’s new laboratory. So take the key from that top drawer of my dresser and unlock the padlock and go down to your father’s secret cellar and tuck his city away as carefully as you can. I have not seen it in over a year, but I remember that he was making fine progress with it. Take care not to crush a single tree or wrinkle a single bright-green lawn.”

“We will, Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney and Wayne in perfect unison.

And so down the two boys went into their father’s secret cellar to see the product of twelve years of painstaking, meticulous work. There was no light switch at the top of the stairs but there was a pull cord that hung two or three steps down. Wayne gave it a yank as each boy held his breath, not even imagining how strange and wonderful their father’s own version of Democracity would look to their eager eyes.

Unfortunately, all that lay before them was a bare floor. There was nothing there. Democracity II, or “The World of Tomorrow Revisited,” as Mitch McCall had hoped to call his project, had disappeared along with its maker.

In which things go very well for several days until the day on which things dont go very well at all

he laboratory was quickly and safely installed within the McCall cellar — every diode and every triode, every notebook and tiniest scrap of scribbled paper, every caliper and slide rule, every screwdriver and wrench and pair of needle-nose pliers. This was all accomplished that very night under the helpful cover of darkness and by use of one of Mr. Craft’s appliance delivery vans.