Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

“I do, Wayne. What better way to keep the guinea pigs of these experiments— us! — from escaping from our town-sized cage! Yet I am hopeful that it will only be a matter of time before I am able to solve the riddle of the force field. For is it not turned on and off at times and in certain places to send the radio and television signals on to us? Or to place the things we need to survive upon the shelves of the town warehouse? Say, Wayne, what makes you think that it is people who are conducting these experiments?”

“Who else could it be?” asked Wayne, his eyes rolled upward in thought. “It couldn’t be horses or — or elephants — or Venus Fly Traps doing this to us.” (Wayne was fascinated with Venus Fly Traps and all other plants that had the ability to take revenge upon members of the Animal Kingdom, and so he sought whenever possible to bring a Venus Fly Trap into a conversation no matter how very much it did not have to do with Venus Fly Traps!)

“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps our experimenters might not be earthly at all!” posed the Professor.

“You mean that they could be Martians?” asked Wayne.

“Or maybe beings from some planet we’ve never even heard of before!” marveled Rodney.

“I have no idea who it could be. Perhaps we should start to gather the clues that will someday give us that answer. What, for example, do we know of our situation here besides the fact that we are subjected to these periodic calamities?”

Rodney thought for a moment and then said, “That we are cut off from the rest of the world.”

The Professor nodded.

“And that we cannot send letters or make telephone calls to anyone who lives outside of Pitcherville,” continued Rodney.

“And nobody calls us ,” sighed Wayne, “or sends us letters. Or birthday cards. Or Christmas cards or anything .”

Rodney nodded and brought forth a sigh of his own. He was thinking of how much he missed his father and how the force field kept him from going to look for him. But it was not just their father whom the twin brothers missed; they also missed having a mother around — for Mrs. McCall had died when they were born. They missed all of their relatives who lived outside of Pitcherville whom they wondered if they would ever see again: Grandpa and Grandma McCall (who was the sister of their Great Aunt Mildred) and their Uncle Doug, who was a traveling magician, and even their father’s friend Trixie, who was a dancer and would sometimes come to town and laugh too loud and get on Aunt Mildred’s nerves. There were a lot of people whom Rodney and Wayne missed seeing and whom they would miss even more if they were destined to live the rest of their lives trapped in Pitcherville.

And there it sat: the Force Field-De-Ionizer all in pieces, because the Professor had little clue as to how he should put it all together in such a way as to do the town some good and remove its invisible fence forever.

“So that’s the Professor’s theory, Petey,” said Rodney, summing things up. “And he could be wrong, but it sounds like as good a theory as any other that I’ve heard.”

Petey agreed, and said that his mother would be glad to hear it. It would be good for him to give her a possible reason behind all the Troubles — to give her some theory that had nothing to do with sunspots (which few people believed anyway). But Petey said this using only words that did not contain a “b.”

“Of course there is one other thing that Mom wants to know,” said Petey. “She’d like to know when the next experiment is going to happen. She said she wasn’t very prepared last time, and doesn’t want that to happen again.”

Rodney shrugged. “Sometimes we have two whole weeks between calamities,” he said.

“But gee, other times,” Wayne joined in, “there’s hardly even time to take a good breath.”

“A good what?” asked Petey.

“A good inhalation,” said Rodney, thinking of a “ b ”-less word that means “breath.”

The school bell rang. This meant that it was now time for all the children who had been talking and chasing one another upon the front lawn to go inside and begin their school day. Rodney and Wayne didn’t hurry, for they knew what would be waiting for them in their classroom, and wanted a little time to prepare what they would say. And, of course, their guess was right on the money; there it was: a cake — a big peach-frosted cake baked by their teacher Miss Lyttle “to thank you boys and the Professor for ending yet another town catastrophe! Have a piece, boys. We’ll wait to begin class until after you’re done.”

In which Rodney and Wayne wake to discover that they have been sleeping like babies because they ARE babies!

Nothing new happened for several days. Each morning Rodney and Wayne woke to a bright and sunny room, with nothing whatsoever out of place. Down to breakfast they would go to eat their cinnamon biscuits and their cinnamon-sprinkled grapefruit (which, though it sounded strange, actually tasted pretty good), and to gather their books for school, and then to jump upon their bikes. Petey would be waiting, patient as usual. Mr. Craft’s aqua-colored Buick would pass the boys on its way to the school, and Becky would roll down her window and wave and sometimes she would shout, “Don’t you love this good, beautiful, normal day!”

Some days the three boys were joined on their Schwinn cruisers by Rodney and Wayne’s friend Grover. Grover was a stocky boy in the twin’s eighth-grade class whose mother was Professor Johnson’s housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Ferrell. Grover was always trying hard to lose weight. In fact, the Professor had built an exercise machine for him that was like no other exercise machine in the world. It was part rowing machine and part stationary bicycle, but also had a medicine ball that came out of its own accord and pushed at him here and there, which Grover had to fend off when he wasn’t looking. He never used the machine without acquiring a bruise or two, and finally, the Professor was forced to concede that the “Grovercizer” needed further work. It was Grover’s dream to lose weight and not have to shop in the husky young men’s section of Lowengold’s Department Store, but he would prefer to do it without acquiring bruises.

Grover hoped to grow up to be a champion wrestler like the wrestlers he saw on television. His favorites were Whipper Billy Watson, Bobo Brazil, Killer Kowalski, and Gorgeous George who preened and strutted in a silly way and made Grover laugh. Sometimes Grover would pull one of the twins down to the ground without warning and pin them and shout, “You’re pinned! I win! I win!” even when the boys had not been aware that there had been a wrestling match in progress. But Rodney and Wayne could not help liking Grover who just like Becky and them, had only one parent, and who, just like the two boys, had never even met one of his parents. You see, Grover’s father had died in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. He had died a war hero, and Grover kept all of his medals in a little box next to his bed.

Rodney and Wayne spent their normal school days listening to their pretty, young eighth-grade teacher Miss Lyttle talk about the differences between reptiles and amphibians, and the differences between acids and bases, and the differences between Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. And all of these noncalamitous days were generally good days, except that they were sometimes a little boring.

And a little bothersome. The bothersome part went by the names Jackie Stovall and Lonnie Rowe. These were two boys in Rodney and Wayne’s class who had no friends other than each other. There was a very good reason for this: nobody liked them. And there was a very good reason why nobody liked them: they tried their best to make trouble for their classmates whenever possible. Lonnie liked to put out his leg and trip anyone walking past. (Most of the students in the class had learned to give him a wide berth.) However, Jackie’s mischief was more cunning. He would think of things to hurt people that no one had ever thought of before. And it was not only children who were the victims of his naughty behavior. Sometimes he would steal the newspapers left by the paperboy in the early morning. (This would have a double benefit to Jackie; people would have to start their day in a sour mood without their Pitcherville Press Morning Edition , and they would blame the paperboy for not delivering it.)