The Great Interactive Dream Machine (3 page)

“I was a kid,” Aaron said. “It was last winter.”

“You said that really wanting to go is part of the deal. You called it—”

“Emotional Component,” Aaron said. “Which is true, but it takes more than that. You've got to line up your need with your numbers. It's like going on-line in the cosmic Internet. You have to find your way through setup strings, com-port settings, baud rates, interrupt conflicts ... quite a bunch of stuff. Interactively—”

“Forget about it,” I said, and we trudged on uptown. Aaron would probably pass Headbloom's quiz on just what I'd told him about the book.

We were coming up on the Natural History Museum.

“I ought to drop in here for a data search,” Aaron muttered. “Maybe a little Emotional Component.”

“Aaron, not the Natural History Museum.” We do about a half dozen school field trips to this museum every year, and I was up to here with it. And on a sunny Saturday?

“Why, Aaron?”

“I need all the information I can get for my computer-camp project,” he said, not looking at me.

But the guard at the main entrance took one look at Ophelia, and we weren't going in. You don't take a dog into the Natural History Museum. It's mostly bones in there anyway.

Dinosaur bones.

“This computer-camp project of yours,” I said. “It's not about dinosaurs, by any chance? Tell me it isn't. We're sixth grade. We should be over dinosaurs by now. They're like Power Rangers.”

Aaron strolled over to a bench outside the museum. He walks funny, like a duck. We sat down. Ophelia settled at our feet. She glanced at my ankle.

“Aaron, dinosaurs have been extinct for a million years. Let's just get on with our lives.”

“Sixty-five million years, actually,” he said, “and that's what my computer-camp project is about.”

“We know they're extinct, Aaron. Have you seen one lately?”

“But why, Josh? That's the question of the ages.” He tapped his forehead. “Why did this great doomsday of prehistory happen?”

I didn't know, but Aaron was going to tell me.

“Picture it.” He threw one small leg over the other. “This giant asteroid, maybe five miles across, maybe ten, comes hurtling into the earth. And
pow.”

“Is this a theory or real?” I said. I try to be skeptical.

“Real,” Aaron said. “They found the crater down in Mexico. It was over a hundred miles in diameter.”

“Was the asteroid in it?”

“No, it vaporized. That's where the theories come in. One is that clouds of dust and sulfuric acid blew all around the world, shut off the light, lowered the temperature, and did in all the dinosaurs. The other theory is that the asteroid's impact set off volcanoes on the other side of the world. They poured so much junk into the air that it was good-bye, dinosaurs. Either way, a K-T boundary happened.”

“K-T?”

“Cretaceous-Tertiary. A layer of clay covered the earth there—sort of asteroid droppings. And this layer was loaded with iridium.”

“Which means?”

“Which probably means we're talking outer-space stuff. The rock that formed above the K-T boundary doesn't have a lot of fossils. Now we're talking Tertiary period.”

“We're talking way over my head, Aaron. Where does your computer-camp project come in?”

His eyes shifted. “I'm working on a formula that's half-fiddled already. It's a sixty-four-character combination of numbers and letters, clustered, with—”

“But what's it for? Don't tell me it's supposed to reorganize your cells back in time sixty-five million years to check on the weather. I don't want to hear that.”

“Okay.” He shrugged and gazed off into space, maybe outer space. “Anyway, it's only a theory. I'm just doing a spreadsheet on it for the computer-camp people.”

By the way, Aaron's voice is changing. It's changing, and he's shorter than I am. I don't think this is fair, but it's happening. Most of the time he talks in a regular sixth-grade alto. Then his voice hits a sound barrier and drops to baritone. He sounds like his dad, like a miniature Mr. Zimmer. Then sometimes in the same word he's both alto and baritone. It's like listening to the Vienna Boys' Choir.

“Come on. Let's go home. There's nothing to do in this town. We'll grab a giant hot dog from the guy with the cart.”

“I'm a vegetarian,” Aaron reminded me.

“You can have the sauerkraut.”

We came back past the Dakota. I tried one more time to get Aaron's mind away from the K-T boundary and off dinosaurs and his formulas. I told him a story about the ancient apartment building, the Dakota. It was a story of the weird and unexplained.

“Hey, Aaron, one night late this guy who lives at the Dakota was coming home. He looked way up at the windows of his apartment, and he was amazed. There were people in his living room having a party or something. All the lights were on. And there was a big old-fashioned gaslight chandelier blazing away in the middle of his ceiling. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he couldn't believe it. He thought he was looking at the wrong windows. He counted up. He counted over. They were his windows, and guess what.”

“What?”

“He didn't have a chandelier. Never had. So he raced upstairs and opened the door of his apartment. It was dark. Nobody was there. No chandelier. Is that eerie or what?”

“Was he a substance abuser?”

“Aaron, you're no fun anymore.”

“Just because I don't believe that lame story about a ghost chandelier?”

“It could be true. Strange stuff happens. There have been sightings.”

“Nothing scientific,” Aaron said.

“You want some frozen yogurt?” I said.

 

By the time we got back to our building, Ophelia was beginning to whine. I hadn't shared any of my hot dog with her, and she knew her walk was over. In the park she'd been prancing on ahead, showing off, looking down her muzzle at other dogs. Now she was pulling back. We got her past Vince and into the elevator.

Then it happened.

Somebody stepped into the elevator right on our heels. And not just anybody. It was Miss Mather. She's the one who lives under us and says we're jumping on her head. She's the meanest woman in Manhattan. Which is saying something. She doesn't like anybody, and she has a dog.

Sort of a dog. It's a shih tzu, so it looks like a small mop with paws. It doesn't bark. It screams. Miss Mather isn't that big either, and she's incredibly old. They built the building around her.

Suddenly the elevator was completely filled up with three people and two dogs. Ophelia whipped around, spotted the shih tzu, and lunged. When Ophelia attacks, she attacks. The pom-pom on her tail goes straight up. Her floppy ears seem to stand straight out, and she's all teeth.

The shih tzu's eyes bulged through all the hair on her face. She screamed, backpedaled, rear-ending the door which was closed now, and tried to climb Miss Mather's leg.

“Nanky-Poo!” Miss Mather screamed. Nanky-Poo was halfway to her knee, but Miss Mather was kicking Ophelia with her free foot. Where else but New York are you going to see an eighty-year-old woman kick-boxing a poodle?

 

I dreamed Saturday night. I was falling as usual. This time I was plunging out of the Fuji Film blimp and down to the K-T boundary. It looked like concrete. I was between a blimp and a hard place.

Sometimes I wake up before I land. This time I hit the ground. Except it wasn't the K-T boundary. It was a soccer field. I bounced at the foot of a terrible monster that ought to be extinct.

It was Miss Mather. Nanky-Poo was with her, and in the nightmare Nanky-Poo was as big as a horse. They both started kicking me.

On Sunday night I was looking ahead at another five days of school. At least I never have to decide what to wear. We have a dress code at Huckley School: black blazer, blue-and-white Huckley tie, big shirt, gray flannel pants, any shoes but sneakers. I had my dress code laid out on a chair, so all I have to do in the morning is walk into it.

I was in bed and thinking about turning out the lights when Heather barged into my room. She feels free to drop in anytime, but don't try going into her room. Heather goes to the Pence School for Girls, which has a dress code too: a lot of Pence plaid and only one earring per ear. But for the last month of school they can wear what they want to. It's a big privilege, and we'd been hearing about it all weekend.

Heather was wearing combat boots and a long, flimsy skirt with flowers on it and an oversized denim jacket that sort of filled out her chest—everything from Urban Outfitters.

“What do you think?” she said to the chair, where my school clothes were laid out. I'd arranged them so well, she thought they were me.

“I'm over here in bed, Heather.”

“What do you think?” she said, whirling around.

“I think it's still night. It's not time to go to school yet.”

She had on a lot more eyeliner than Pence or Mom allows. “Josh, I'm rehearsing. Like a dress rehearsal.” She spun around twice and held up handfuls of her skirt. “Of course, I'll be wearing a backpack to complete the look.”

“You look like a street person,” I said.

“Like you know all about girls' clothes,” she said. “It's what everybody will be wearing.”

“So isn't that the same as a uniform?”

“Let me explain,” Heather said. “When adults decide what you wear, it's a dress code, and it's wrong. When Muffie McInteer decides what you wear, it's fashion, and it's right.”

Muffie Mclnteer is Heather's friend for life. Last winter her friend for life was Camilla Van Allen, but Heather switched. She made herself at home on the end of my bed. She hadn't come in here to discuss fashion. Her eyes were bright and beady. “I've got summer sewed up.”

My eyes narrowed. “How?”

“Two words,” Heather breathed. “Muffie McInteer.” She let that soak in. “Her parents have a big house on Dune Road out in the Hamptons. Servants. Heated pool. And a beach full of boys. This is where I'll turn thirteen. I'll enter my teen years with a perfect tan line and a boy on every dune. Parties, Josh. Summer nights under the moon. Perfect?”

“Perfect,” I muttered.

“What's Pencil-Neck doing this summer?” Heather asked. Pencil-Neck is her name for Aaron. Don't ask.

“He's probably going to computer camp,” I mumbled.

Heather heaved up a big sigh. “So that leaves you, Josh.”

“Don't start, Heather,” I said. “We got through the weekend without hearing Mom's plans for me.”

“What choice does she have?” Heather said. “It's too obvious to mention. You're going to soccer camp. You must look hilarious in soccer shorts. It's hard to know
what
to do with you. You're at the awkward age.”

“Give me a break, Heather. I'm only fifteen months younger than you.”

Heather sighed again. “It's different for a woman, Josh.”

Then she left.

 

Aaron wasn't on the bus Monday morning. He goes in early to work on the terminals in the media center. If he's more than five minutes from the nearest computer, he starts keyboarding the air. Then he seemed to have signed himself out of his morning classes. At noon I checked the salad bar in the lunchroom, but he wasn't there. The trouble with a best friend is that when he's not around, you don't have anybody. Later on in life I think you can have more than one friend, but not in sixth grade.

As I reached for a tray, I got a sudden flash.

What if Aaron had gone into the media center this morning and started fiddling this new formula of his ... and it had worked? What if he'd had a cellular meltdown or reorganization or whatever? What if he'd e-mailed himself back to the dinosaurs or someplace?

I panicked.

Frederick “Fishface” Pierrepont was behind me in line. I nearly trampled him as I headed for the door. I pounded down to the media center. The terminals are in a back room Aaron calls the Black Hole. There was a sign on the door:

But that didn't mean anything. Aaron puts up that sign whenever he doesn't want to be interrupted. Really scared now, I turned the knob.

Aaron was in there, and so was Mrs. Newbery, the media specialist. She was hunched over one of the keyboards, and Aaron was standing beside her. They were eye to eye, and he was giving her a lesson.

“It's a piece of cake, Mrs. Newbery,” he was saying. “The instructions for loading the disk are inside the front cover holder. You've inserted the CD-ROM in the drive, right?”

“Did I?” Mrs. Newbery said faintly.

“Okay, now choose from your File menu and type 'd colon backslash setup' in the Command line box. No, wait. Don't press Enter till you've clicked OK.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Newbery murmured.

“So now the rest of the instructions are right there on the screen. All you have to do is double-click the icon, and you're in business.”

Mrs. Newbery's hands hung in the air. Aaron patted her shoulder. “Let's go over it one more time. A bit is a piece of information, remember? And a byte is the basic collection of eight bits that makes computing possible. Are you with me on this?”

The back of Mrs. Newbery's head quivered. She turned around and saw me at the door. She seemed relieved. “That's about all I can absorb today, Aaron. You two better cut along and get some lunch.”