Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

Cinnamon, to remember her by.

In which Wayne finally gets to drive the Professor’s car and you the reader finally get to the end of this book

Petey and Grover would be the decoys. They would come out of the McCall house looking as much like Rodney and Wayne as they were able (considering that Petey was shorter and Grover was wider). They would wear fedora hats with the brims tilted down and hiding their faces in shadow and would mount Rodney and Wayne’s bikes and then ride slowly to the Professor’s house by the street route. The boys hoped somebody would be watching the McCall house and would take the bait. Then Rodney and Wayne could slip out and go the opposite way on foot, taking a circuitous route that wound through several backyards, and down a drainage ditch and through City Park. If they were quick enough and their friends Petey and Grover slow enough Rodney and Wayne would beat their friends to the Professor’s house and would be in and out, deflector in hand, before anyone else arrived. This was the plan.

And the plan worked. At least the first part.

An unmarked car, which had been parked a block from the McCall home, now began to shadow Petey and Grover as they steered their bikes slowly down the street, both boys wobbling a little because their older heavier bodies sat differently upon the light Schwinn cruisers. Rodney and Wayne made very good time with their foot route, which required some fence scaling and some ditch crossing that taxed their new-old muscles and tired their newold lungs.

As planned, the twins arrived first at the Professor’s house and quickly stole through the back gate. They entered the house through the back door to what had earlier been the Professor’s laboratory. The old house was dark, but they did not dare turn on any of the lights.

Stumbling a little in the darkness Rodney and Wayne made their way to the stairs and then up to the Professor’s bedroom. While Rodney stood just outside the closet, Wayne stepped inside and closed the door so that he could turn on the flashlight he had brought, and no one would see its light from outside the house. “Gee, there sure are a lot of lab coats in here!” remarked Wayne in a muffled voice from inside the closet.

“Then you’ll have to look through all the pockets,” said Rodney to the closet door. “The deflector shouldn’t be hard to find. It’s about four inches high and two inches around. Be careful not to prick yourself on the connectors.”

After a moment, Wayne said, “I can’t find it. There’s nothing in any of these pockets but a couple of peanuts and a piece of paper.”

“Pull out the piece of paper.”

“Can I have the peanuts too, Rodney? I’m kind of hungry.” “The paper, Wayne. What’s on the paper?”

“It’s probably nothing. Wait. It’s something.”

“What does it say, Wayne?”

“It’s a letter to us !”

“Is it from the Professor?”

“No.”

“Who else would put a letter to us into the Professor’s lab coat pocket?”

“Who do you think, Rodney?” Wayne read the note aloud to his brother:

Hi Monkeys,

Guess what used to be in this pocket? Something important, I’ll bet. And how do I know this? Because of how carefully the Professor cleaned it before he put it in here. And how do I know this? Because I was watching him from a dark corner of the lab after I had quietly let myself in on that fateful night. Didn’t you think it was strange that the door was locked the next morning? I locked it. I was going to tie up the Professor and then take an axe to his precious Age Altertron. I didn’t want any sudden witnesses.

My father sent me, you see. He even paid for the axe.

But guess what? I didn’t have to do anything since your friend, the brilliant man of science, did such a good job destroying that machine himself. My father got his wish sort of. But I got a lot more. I could hardly keep myself from laughing as I crawled through the darkness to let myself out through one of the back windows.

But now it doesn’t matter. You can know everything. And the most important thing you should know is that your precious gadget will be waiting for you whenever you want to come see me at City Hall. Come there during my office hours and let’s do some business together.

Sincerely,

You Know Who

Wayne flicked off the flashlight and stepped out of the closet. “Jackie doesn’t want to do business with us, Rodney. He just wants to arrest us.”

“You could be right, Wayne. Unless maybe he wants to work out some kind of deal: if we tell him where the Professor is, he’ll let us go.”

“And then he’ll probably make sure that the Age Altertron II gets chopped to pieces. That won’t be any kind of a bargain, Rodney.”

“You’re right. Our freedom in exchange for losing everything and everyone we care about: Aunt Mildred, the Professor. And the next calamity that hits this town just might be our last. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Come on. We have to get out of here before Grover and Petey arrive.”

Wayne glanced out of the Professor’s bedroom window and down at the front gravel drive. The decoys had just ridden up on their bicycles. A car was pulling up behind them. “Uh oh. Too late.”

“Not too late. We have at least thirty seconds to get out the back door before whoever is in that car discovers that it isn’t you and me on those bikes.”

Off the two boys raced through the Professor’s large dark house, their eyes better adjusted now to the lack of light.

Meanwhile, in the front yard, bright car lights illuminated Petey and Grover as they started to dismount their bikes. At the same time, three men got out of the car that had been following them. One was Police Chief Rowe. The others were two new police recruits. The two men were very good friends. Only a couple of weeks earlier they had sat next to each other in kindergarten.

“You’re not Rodney and Wayne,” said Lonnie, looking at Petey and Grover.

“And you have no business being a police chief, you big baboon!” taunted Petey.

“Why Petey!” whispered Grover. “You said the word ‘baboon’ and some other ‘ b ’ words too!”

“I did, didn’t I?” said Petey with a proud grin. ”Maybe my brain has finally found a way to get around my ‘b’ problem.

Before Grover could respond, Lonnie barked, “You know what I ought to do? I ought to arrest the both of you!”

“Hey! Lookit! Arrest them !” said one of the police chief’s officers, pointing at Rodney and Wayne. He had just caught sight of the twins coming through the Professor’s backyard gate. The rookie officer was now jumping up and down, both from excitement at spotting the culprits and from having to go to the bathroom.

“We’ve been tricked!” cried the Police Chief. “Shoot to kill, men.”

“Bang! Bang!” said the obedient second officer, pointing the toy gun he had put into his holster in the place of the real one he had been issued.

Lonnie was losing patience. “What is that? Where is your gun?”

He turned to the other officer. “Take your gun, like this…” He cocked the trigger of his own service revolver “And give it to those two criminal house breakers right between the eyes!”

Rodney and Wayne were just rounding the corner of the Professor’s backyard fence so they could run off through the adjoining back yard (retracing the route they had taken to get here) when Lonnie Rowe raised his gun and took aim. Part of the beam from the car’s headlights shone perfectly upon his two fleeing targets. Grover thought of jumping Lonnie and pinning him to the ground, but there was too much distance between the two of them. Petey had a better, quicker idea. He angled his head so that his steel head plate would catch some of the car’s headlight beam and bounce it back into Lonnie’s eyes, temporarily blinding the police chief at just the moment that he was about to fire two bullets — one for Rodney and one for Wayne.