Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (6 page)

SIX

BENJAMIN JAMES IS MY DAD. He’s one of the best Dad’s in the world, if not
the
best. No one else thinks so, though. They don’t care about what he’s trying to achieve. All they can see are the setbacks. They all think he’s a failure and, worse, a danger to himself and others. But I know better. I’ve been around him and his experiments all my life, and I know he’s not some wacked-out, mad scientist. He’s onto something. Something big.

To tell the story accurately, I have to go back to the day of the incident, a day which started out like any other. I went to school, Dad went to work, and Mom took my six-year-old sister, Lily, to kindergarten. It was such a normal, forgettable morning. Little did I know, later that day my whole life would change.

“Jack? Jack James?” Brenda Gloden stood in the doorway of Mrs. Adams’ classroom. She’s a fifth-grader who works in the office during the afternoons.

“Yeah?” I cringed at the sudden attention.

“It’s an emergency,” the gangly girl was ashen. “Your mother’s on her way. You need to come with me.”

I tried to worm some information out of Brenda. She stonewalled me. Mom was no help, either. Pacing the principal’s office, I’d never seen her try so hard not to be nervous. It made me even more terrified. I knew it was about Dad, and when Lily spoke up in her brash yet charming way, my suspicions were confirmed.

“Dad blew himself up,” she played with the zippers on her denim miniskirt. “Again.”

“Lily!” Mom scolded. “Stop it!”

“Well, he did,” she protested quietly, moving on to chewing the cuff of her delicate, white blouse.

“Let’s go,” Mom led us out the door.

“What happened?” I asked. In silence we went straight to the bus loading zone. The school let her park the Subaru up front. “Is Dad all right?”

I questioned her all the way to the car, but she didn’t answer.

“Get in. Hurry,” she buckled Lily into her safety seat.

I barely had my seatbelt on when she zipped out of the parking lot while pulling her long golden hair out of its pony tail. It was unusual because Mom’s really cautious when she drives, always getting on Dad for the slightest slip in speed or the smallest sharp turn. So when Mom drove that way, we knew something was horribly wrong.

“Mom, please. Tell me what happened!” I begged. She wouldn’t say a word. She was focused on the road, the traffic, checking her mirrors—all while speeding through town like a mad woman.

“I told you,” Lily seemed uninterested, though she’s always like that. “He blew himself up.”

I knew that could’ve meant any of a number of things to her. She’s been around Dad all her life. She’s used to his mishaps. We all are. Because of that, I’m not sure she realized this one was serious.

“Is he okay?” I repeated. “Where are we going?”

“To the hospital,” Mom broke her silence.

That’s when it hit home with Lily. Her self-satisfied smile disappeared, her jaw dropped, and she began to tear up. I felt the same sense of dread. I had to be strong for the two of them, though, and did my best to hide it by slipping under my seatbelt and hugging Lily tight.

“It’ll be okay,” I was reassuring myself as much as my little sister. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

When we got to Dad’s hospital room, I knew everything wasn’t fine. He was an extra in a bad mummy movie. His hands were bandaged to his elbows, his chest was covered in gauze, and they had his whole head wrapped, leaving only his eyes and mouth visible. Lily couldn’t handle it. All she wanted to do was run out of the room.

“Wait, wait!” I held her with all my might. What I whispered next convinced her to stay.

“Dad’s hurt real bad, Lily, and we need to help him get better. We need to be here for him, right now. Understand?”

She nodded, bouncing her tight blonde curls, and we both turned to see Mom crying by his side. I knew she wanted to hold his hand, to touch his face. The bandages made it impossible. He couldn’t move much. He sure could talk, though.

“Honey, honey,” he tried to console her. “Honestly, it’s not that bad. Just a little scratch here and there. Nothing serious.”

He saw us kids. “Hey, you two! What’s with the sourpusses?”

“Dad?” I swallowed hard, trying to be brave. “Are you hurt bad?”

“Naw,” he was his usual, lighthearted self. “Doesn’t hurt a bit. Swear.”

He made an attempt at raising his right arm to solidify the oath. Less than a quarter of the way up, he stopped, wincing and grunting.

“No, no,” Mom intervened, helping his arm to his side again. “Don’t move, honey. Just stay still and rest.”

“Dad, what happened? People are saying you blew up the school!” I asked.

“Geez,” he laughed. “The talk around here, huh? It wasn’t an explosion. Just a small, uncontrolled release of
very
few strangelets. Not many at all. Only a few million or so. They’re so tiny, just a few femtometers each. What’s the big deal? Nobody was hurt.”

“Nobody hurt? Mister, have you seen yourself?” Mom was over being scared, apparently, and had shifted right into angry. “This project of yours has gotten a little out of hand, don’t you think?”

“Well, I don’t…” he tried to get a word in. It was no use.

“I mean, really. When it was laser beams and holograms, it was safe. But now? Now you’re getting a little too extreme.”

“Hold on a minute…”

“I just hope this incident will make you see it’s time to give up before someone gets seriously hurt, or even killed.”

“Whoa-ho-ho!” even through the bandages, I saw Dad’s scowl. “You can’t expect me to stop now. Not when I’ve gotten so close. When today’s unfortunate event occurred, I was right there, right on the verge. Do you understand what that means?”

He didn’t allow her to answer. He becomes a giddy child every time he talks about his project, which he named the Omega/Alpha, or O/A, because he claims it represents the last invention of the old age and the first of the new.

“It means I’ve finally gotten the power source to work, the power source that will let me maximize the O/A’s advanced technology, the dynamo that will make it all possible—the Gravitomiton.”

“The gravito…what?” Mom batted her lashes.

“Gravitomiton. It’s quite simple, really. It’s all about gravity. You see, gravity is one of the strongest forces in the universe, yet it feels weak to us. Heck, the Earth is so massive, its gravitational pull should be smashing us all to the ground like pancakes. Gravity’s pull is weak because its power gets diluted as it radiates throughout all dimensions.”

“Not again with the different dimensions,” she pleaded. “You’re thirty-five. Don’t you think you should’ve outgrown that stuff by now?”

“But, Liz, there
are
other dimensions, other universes,” he tried to spread his arms and groaned. A little pain wasn’t going to stop him. “And gravity permeates all of these realms. As I said, it diminishes as it pushes through the dimensional membranes. By using a surprisingly simple method, the Gravitomiton can gather lost gravitational energy much the same way a sail catches wind. It’s a flawless system.”

“So that’s it?’ Mom alternated her stare between Dad and me. “You’re done? But you just said you weren’t.”

“I’m not,” he explained. “Not quite. I leapt over a hurdle of galactic proportions. Now I have the unlimited, completely harmless power supply I need for the O/A. I tell you, Liz, kids,” he made a point to smile at each of us. “This is going to change our lives. Not only that, it’ll change the world. You watch.”

My dad had been talking like that for years, and I saw, as usual, he wasn’t getting through to Mom, which, as usual, made him try even harder to convince her.

“I’m doing more right now in my tiny lab than whole teams of other scientists are doing with billions of dollars worth of equipment.”

He strained to sit up. Clearly he was in a lot of pain and tried so hard to hide it, though his grunts and groans gave it away.

Mom eased him onto his pillow. “Ben, just sit back. Remember, you need to rest.”

“Listen, Liz,” he wouldn’t be deterred. “I know I haven’t been one hundred percent forthcoming on this project. I just had to be sure. I had to be positive I could do it. That plus…” he peered at the door, then lowered his voice. “If this thing really functions, and it will, people, powerful people, will want to get their hands on it, and there’s no telling what they might do to me, to you, to the kids.”

“Daddy, is somebody gonna hurt us?” Lily shivered.

“Shhh,” Mom picked her up. “Nobody’s going to hurt anyone. Ben, you need to stop talking that way right now. You’re scaring the children.”

Dad sighed at her. “I know what I’m meant to do. I was born on this earth to be your husband, and to be the best father to those two children this world has ever seen…plus one more thing, just as big, just as monumental.”

“Ben,” mom sounded exhausted. “I mean it. You’ve got to quit this nonsense for good. A hobby’s a hobby, but,” she examined him, touching his wrap and frowning. “It’s just not working out.”

“Liz, please,” he seemed desperate. Mom had never been so insistent about him giving up before. “You say that, but it’s only because I haven’t told you everything.”

“You haven’t told me
anything
.”

“You’re right, you’re right. That’s why you need to know. Right here, right now. Jack, Lily, come closer,” he acted like Santa Claus. “I want to tell you all a wonderful secret.”

Dad has a way of adding a little flair to his stories about his ideas and inventions. This time he pulled out all the stops.

“Liz, kids,” he beamed. “Hold onto your socks, because what I’m about to tell you will blow them right off your feet. Someday our name will be famous. They’re going to have to rewrite every science text, rethink every branch of philosophy, revisit every fact known to mankind. I’ve done it. I’ve found the holy grail of science.”

He paused for effect, took a deep breath, then continued.

“Guys, I’ve developed a device that will harness the power of the omnidimensional field, giving its user the ability to basically become a…a superhuman!’

“What?” Mom was incredulous.

“Sorry, visiting hours are over,” a man in white stirred us from the confusion. Dad clammed up.

“You can’t be serious,” Mom challenged the nurse. “We just got here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask you to leave,” the nurse checked the IV stuck into Dad’s arm. “Hospital rules.”

“I said I’m not going anywhere,” Mom repeated, and she meant it. She called grandma to come and get us at the hospital, then stayed there with Dad for three days.

When they let him come home finally, Mom told us she was hoping it would mean a new start, a change for the better. There was a change, all right. It wasn’t better. The instant Mom and Dad rolled up the driveway there were at least three news vans following. Reporters had been bothering Dad at the hospital the whole time, and Mom had been doing a good job of keeping them away. Out in the open they were fair game, though.

I couldn’t understand why they were so interested. It wasn’t an explosion at all. Apparently, people were talking. Dad, with his big mouth, let a few things slip to some of the student assistants and parents caught wind of it. Some pretty outrageous stuff was being said, so I guess it was natural the TV stations picked it up.

The reporters camped on the lawn for a week. Then came the phone calls. They started out just silly pranks, but soon became threatening. It all climaxed on the night of the emergency school board meeting, called especially to address Dad’s accident.

“MISTAKES ARE COMMON in scientific discovery,” wearing his trademark suit jacket and jeans combo, Dad had healed surprisingly well by then. Most of his eyebrows had grown back, and his scars were barely noticeable.

He defended himself valiantly in front of a packed house. They’d anticipated the attendance to be high that night, so they moved the meeting from its normal location at the school board offices to the Loo Wit Room, a mini-auditorium at the high school. The space sat 400 easily, and even then it was standing room only. It wasn’t a lynch mob, though there were lots of people pretty upset at Dad. The sternest of all was Dan Freeburn, the superintendent. He sat at the front table along with four other school board members, casting a skeptical eye on Dad.

“Mr. James,” Freeburn harrumphed. What was left of his graying hair clung like a sickly ferret. “Mistakes are things we try to avoid, not encourage.”

“On the contrary,” Dad waved his arms wildly. He’s theatrical that way. “We
should
encourage mistakes. We should leave room to allow children to fail.”

A collective gasp from the gallery. Freeburn, too, was flabbergasted.

“I-I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he exclaimed. “You’re a teacher, sir!”

“See? That’s what I mean,” a woman in the audience stood up. She’d been complaining about Dad the whole night. “This man is insane! He shouldn’t be allowed to supervise our children.”

“Yeah,” an anonymous woman agreed. “Somebody’s gonna get hurt for real!”

“Not to mention the money he’s already cost the district!”

“Okay, okay, folks,” Freeburn pounded his wooden gavel on the table. “Let’s all come to order here, thanks. Mr. James, you do understand that we teachers have a solemn responsibility. It’s our job not only to teach, but to make sure the student learns what we teach. And if the student fails, the teacher fails.”

Dad clasped his hands and rested his chin on two extended fingers, evoking a pose of deep contemplation. Then he spoke again, gesturing passionately. It really embarrasses me when he does that.

“Ah, but in science it’s different. We need mistakes. Sometimes the best ideas and inventions have come directly from them. Really, sometimes the best way to learn is to make a mistake.”

“Sir,” Freeburn sounded patronizing. “I’d prefer to let other people make fools of themselves and then learn from
their
mistakes.”

Giggles percolated the room.

The superintendent continued. “However, this isn’t about differences in educational philosophy. This is about you putting children in danger.”

“Sir, that’s not true,” a teenage boy with a bad case of acne stood up in front. It was Walter, my dad’s student lab assistant. “He’s not putting us in danger. It was just an accident. A tiny, tiny accident.”

Again the audience grew restless. Murmurs led to passionate exchanges, which devolved into outright shouting. Then the rapping of the gavel and Freeburn’s pleas brought everyone down to general silence.

“Mr. James, I’m sure what you were working on was interesting…”

“It’s more than interesting,” Dad interrupted. “And when it’s done, it’ll have such a profound effect on the human race, they’ll have to enshrine this place. Willow High School will be forever recorded in the history books—where it all began!”

“You see? It’s that right there,” Freeburn had a firm grip on his own head. “You keep saying you’re developing this groundbreaking invention that will change the world. Well, I say show me, don’t tell me.”

“Ahhh!” Dad’s face came alight. “I’m so glad you asked! Finally, I’m ready to share it with an audience. Jack? Walter? That’s your cue!”

“Wait! No, I didn’t mean now!” Freeburn protested.

In a wink I was helping Walter cart Dad’s repaired and revised machine from the storage area behind the Loo Wit Room. It wasn’t too big by itself, just the size of a palm device. But the large power source increased the overall mass, making it difficult to move out to center stage without wheels.

“When you observe our world, what do you see?” Dad addressed the crowd. “It’s just simple, three-dimensional space, four if you want to count time. But what if I told you there were
more
dimensions, an infinite amount, and therefore, infinite copies of each of us?”

“Now hold on, you two!” Freeburn tried to stop Walter and me from setting up the O/A’s complex fractal array. He couldn’t reach us.

Dad continued. “Imagine a device that actually lets us interact with those other dimensions…and much more!”

“I said, wait a minute!” Freeburn reached over the table, not ready to concede defeat.

“For years, now,” Dad said. “Hundreds upon thousands of scientists have toiled endlessly, spent untold fortunes and built particle colliders that have spanned small countries, and still haven’t been able to come close to the breakthrough I’ve accomplished, here, at Willow High School with this, the Omega-Alpha.”

“Benjamin James, I swear, if you fire that thing up in this room I’ll have you arrested for…for being stupid in public!”

“Don’t worry, sir. It’s on the lowest power setting, only a fraction of its capabilities,” Dad held his hand in place over the smooth interface, letting the machine sparkle like a
blue-violet
diamond. That’s when it started to sing. It’s the only way I can describe it. It sang. Chirps and tweets and other sounds—long, melodic humming and short, rhythmic notes pulsing with its own internal light.

Dad raised his voice above his invention’s vocalizations.

“If things go as planned, we will all be witnesses to a monumental event! Mark this down, boy—seven twenty-three p.m. Pacific Daylight Savings Time, October 3rd, 2011. Willow, Oregon…the first time human beings get a glimpse of another dimension!”

I scribbled down his dictated message.

“These four hundred-plus people are all officially members of a new age!” Dad imitated an orchestra conductor, sweeping his arm in his usual, dramatic fashion, bouncing to a standstill above the machine. He raised his brows and let the colored brightness twinkle in his eyes. Then he looked at me and pressed the single button, his smile so proud, so satisfied.

“Somebody STOP HIM!” Freeburn belted his final command.

Some people got up and attempted to leave. Others followed Freeburn’s request and tried rushing down the steps to get at Dad. Nobody got anywhere, though. The place was too packed. Most sat in stunned silence, cellphones up, cameras recording. Even pimply Walter looked like he knew he was about to see a ghost.

The second Dad pressed the button, it seemed everything stopped. People got caught in midstride. It was lucky, because one really large, toothless and angry man was about to throw himself on Dad. Nobody moved for what seemed an eternity, which turned out to be actually a fraction of a second. It was eerie. The eeriest of all was the dead silence. The machine quit singing and went mute, filling the air with a void even more deafening than the noise had been.

That changed in a hurry. From the earth’s mantle, the deepest, lowest frequency hum I’d ever heard rumbled toward us. I felt my ears pop. That was the least of my worries.

“Whoa!” Dad yelled, studying his invention’s configuration, shaking under the strain of some unseen force. He didn’t have time to make any adjustments. The machine came alive in such a brilliant, deep purple light that he had to take a step back. I tried to turn away, then I noticed something just above Dad’s device, suspended in midair. It was a vortex, a bending of space. Behind it, the wall warped and twisted, becoming mirrors in a funhouse.

Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!

One by one, each light bulb along the walls and ceiling shorted out. It sounded like a machine gun, and would have been kind of cool if it weren’t for the fact that some were those big, florescent tubes. Shards of glass falling on you isn’t fun, especially when it seems the ground is about to swallow you whole.

“Uh, oh!” Dad screamed while trying to shield me. Then my guts jumped into my throat. The floor seemed to drop a thousand feet in a second. An extended gasp from the crowd told me everybody else felt it, too. In an instant, the vortex became one incredibly blinding light, bursting in all directions. I mean it was fast, and powerful. A hot, gale-force wind hit us, blowing people and paper and other stuff all over. It knocked me down, too. A still silence pervaded the room. I refused to look, wishing the whole thing had never happened. But it had. Dad diligently reminded me.

“Duck Soup!” he crawled to his feet. That’s his way of saying, ‘
Eureka!’
or ‘
I’ve got it!’
For the life of me I don’t know why he can’t just say, ‘
Eureka!’
or ‘
I’ve got it!’
“Jack, my son, tell me—was it you who set up the Gravitomiton?”

“Y-yes,” I squeaked, shyly glancing at the gaunt faces, made even more ghostly by the glow of the emergency lights.

“Did you calibrate it exactly the way I told you?”

My blood iced over. He was onto something. Since Dad was public enemy number one at the school, it was up to me to assemble the O/A’s power supply. I had detailed instructions, and Dad had spent hours going over them with me, drilling them into my brain. Despite all the training, though, when the time came for me to actually perform the setup, I must have done something wrong.

“I think so,” I swallowed hard.

“Well, you did something different, and you know what? I think you found a way to reduce its size exponentially! It’s genius, my boy! You’re a genius!” Dad hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe.

“But…but it just broke. I screwed it up,” I managed to get out of my deflated lungs.

“You haven’t been listening to me, have you? There are no screw-ups in science, or in life, only breakthroughs!”

People started to come out of their catatonic states. Mr. Freeburn emerged from behind the table, which had toppled over in the blast. He stood and swept the dust from his jacket and tie, then cleared his throat while glaring at Dad.

“All in favor of firing Mr. James, say ‘
aye
.’”

“Aye,” the other board members mumbled in unison, each still on the floor.

“All opposed?”

Silence.

“Mr. James, you’re fired!” Freeburn ruffled through the mess of coffee cups and notepapers to find his gavel. He swung sideways and hit the overturned table. “Meeting adjourned!”

As usual, Dad wasn’t daunted. Even while the O/A lie in pieces on the floor, he continued on and on about how my mistake was going to further revolutionize his invention. I was more focused on the people. I wondered what they were thinking. What kind of stories were going to emerge when they all filtered back to the community?

It didn’t take long to get my answer. The court of public opinion came down hard. Not only did Dad lose his job, he was also under investigation by the police. They confiscated his machine and examined it, but couldn’t figure out how it worked, so they gave it back and no charges were filed. Still, he was all over the papers and the news, even popped up on YouTube. It was ugly.

And it got even uglier. A little later, Mom went ballistic when she found Dad rebuilding the O/A in the garage. She accused him of putting us kids in danger, saying he might have killed us, and she wasn’t going to give him the chance. She threatened to take us and leave right then and there, so Dad volunteered to move out. Before he left, he promised to pay for the family’s expenses. But since he was a marked man, nobody would give him even a minimum wage job. Mom got work at Winmart. That doesn’t pay enough, so the house went into foreclosure and here we are, at glamorous Tangled Trail Estates.

That was over seven months ago. I see my dad sometimes. Not enough. He’s determined more than ever to make his invention work.

That’s the end…for now.”