The car was parked, one tire over the curb, in front of Jon’s house. His mom was gone—she had a Saturday seminar in power networking or something; his mom did so much of that kind of stuff, it was hard to keep it all straight. Megan was asleep, her face pressed against the window.
“Wake up,” he said, nudging Megan’s shoulder. “Come on, we’re here. My mom’s gone. Coast is clear.”
Carla had finally relented on the loud music, after Jon had told her that Megan was not feeling good and was likely to yark all over her car if she didn’t turn it down. Megan had, shortly thereafter, fallen asleep—complete with snoring and drool.
“We’re here, come on,” Jon said—he had placed the briefcase on the curb and extended his hand to her. She took it gingerly. With his help, she stumbled out of the car and staggered on to the sidewalk, looking around, dazed and confused.
“What—why are we here? This is your house, right?”
“Shut the door!” Carla demanded, and Jon did. With a grinding rev of the Datsun’s struggling motor, the car started forward with a jerk. Gears ground, and the car lurched, and moved forward again, making smoother progress and shortly disappearing around a corner. In the distance, there was a screech and a honk.
“I don’t get it,” Megan said blearily. “I thought we were going to the bus station.”
Jon paused. He had been bending down to pick up the briefcase. Instead, he turned around and looked at Megan. “I—you—what did you say?”
She looked back him, her expression more blank than confused. “I thought we were going to the bus station. Why are we at your house? When did I fall asleep.”
Jon blinked. “We went to the bus station.”
Megan looked at him. “You went? You didn’t wake me up? How long was I asleep?” She shook her head. “Shit, I never do that. I can never sleep in the car.” Megan paused, looking at Jon, who was staring at her. “What? What’re you looking at me like that for?”
“We went to the bus station. Into the bus station. You and me. Looking at all the lockers. Finding the locker behind the counter. Remember?”
Megan shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “You’re shitting me,” she said after a moment. “I don’t remember seeing the bus station. I don’t—is this, like, a joke or something?”
“No,” Jon said slowly. “I don’t—you got—” He stopped. You got flash-frozen or You got freeze dried was what he wanted to say. Instead, he finished: “You got shocked. By something in the locker. Maybe—”
Megan looked doubtfully at Jon. “You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not,” Jon said. “Look, we got the briefcase,” he said, and stepped aside, gesturing to where the briefcase was on the ground. Megan turned her head to the side, not looking at it.
“That doesn’t make any sense. How could I just forget—what time is it?”
“It’s almost three o’clock.”
Megan’s mouth opened, then closed. Then opened. “Three hours? I was asleep three hours?”
“Maybe an hour,” Jon said. “You went into the bus station with me, helped me look for the locker—you actually found it, Megan, behind the service counter. You don’t remember any of that?”
Megan shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “I don’t.”
“What about last night? You remember coming over to my house last night? Climbing through the bushes. Do you remember that?”
“Oh, yeah, I still got the scratches on my arms. And one on my butt.” She paused—looking for a moment at Jon and then turning in the other direction. “That just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t remember anything about getting to the bus station. We went in? I was—what did you say I was doing?”
“Looking for lockers. And you found it. Look,” Jon bent down and grabbed the briefcase by its handle and lifted it up. “We found the locker. You did. I got the briefcase.”
Megan continued facing the other direction. “I don’t—maybe I just need to go home.”
“You want to go home?” Jon asked. “Aren’t your mom and dad—I mean, Larry, aren’t they there? You want to go home?”
Megan paused. “I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I need to sit down for a minute. I’m not thinking straight.”
She turned and started walking towards Jon’s door.
“Megan,” he said. She stopped, not turning around.
“Yeah?”
“You think you can turn around and look at the briefcase for a second?”
“Okay. Did you notice that I had a briefcase?”
“Jon, I really need to get inside. I think I’m going to be sick. Maybe I should just go home.”
“It’s not the briefcase from the bus station,” Jon said. “We bought it while you were asleep. Carla bought it for me.”
Megan turned around slowly. She did look queasy. She glanced at Jon, who was holding up the briefcase in plain sight, and then turned back around. “Carla bought you what?” she asked. “That’s stupid. Carla doesn’t buy anybody anything.”
“It’s an old briefcase that belonged to my Dad,” Jon said. At first he thought the aversion she had shown right away to the locker and afterwards to the briefcase was because of what had happened—she had just wanted to ignore it or to avoid it because it had been unpleasant or painful. This was something a lot more than that. She didn’t remember even going to the bus station? And now she wouldn’t look at the briefcase, under any circumstances.
“Jon, please, I’m going to puke, I’m serious. I’ve got to lay down. Can we do this later?”
“Okay, okay,” Jon said, walking in front of her, briefcase in hand. He couldn’t help but notice that she turned her face away as he walked to the door. He pulled out his key, unlocked the house, and walked inside, placing the briefcase out of view.
“Come on in,” he said. She did, shuffling past him, face turned away from where he had put the briefcase, even though it was out of view. Jon shook his head. What the hell had happened to her?
“Bathroom is over there,” Jon gestured, and Megan disappeared into it. Jon moved the briefcase into his bedroom closet. He closed the closet door, and glanced at the floor at the base of his bed. The corner of the book stuck out from underneath. He nudged it warily with his shoe. It shifted slightly, but did nothing spectacular. He bent down, and pulled it out.
Immediately, he struck by the warmth—it felt warmer than before, almost hot. Is this thing radioactive? Jon wondered. Am I going to start losing my hair in chunks and bleeding from my gums? Wouldn’t surprise me.
He sat down on the bed and flipped to the middle. The pages shimmered, refracting rainbows, as he flipped—they felt almost like a cellulose film, rather than paper. Much on the pages were obscure, but some illustrations were almost grade school in their elementary simplicity, and most of the captions and page titles were simple and clear. Hover Craft. Repulsion Bomb. Midfield Light Distortion (Invisibility). Accelerated Information Assimilation Visor. Transparent Body Armor. Suspension Mines. Hypnotic Transfer Gun. Magnetic Projector. Jon paused on a page. Time Bender. The diagrams were complicated, and, as with most of the pages, the information seemed to go not just up and down on the page, but into the page, spilling into the depths, not just floating off the surface. Jon just shook his head. Portable video cassette holographic projector or not—booby-trapped, flash-freezing locker or not—this shit was just crazy. Time Bender? Interstitial Travel? What the hell was Interstitial Travel supposed to be? He turned a few more pages. Healing Elixer. Oh, of course, what was a book of magic without some potions?
Jon shook his head. This was just crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Getting rid of it all—somehow, someway—seemed to be the best idea. Send it back the government or send it all to Hell, just so it was out of his life.
The door to the bathroom opened—Jon could just see it from where he sat—and Megan stepped out. “In here,” Jon said, and she walked into his room warily.
“I thought I was going to get sick. I thought I was about to puke. It—it’s cleared up, I guess. I got in there and all I needed to do was pee.” She shrugged sheepishly. “What’s that?”
Megan was looking at the book. Jon was sitting on the end of the bed, legs crossed, the oversized tome open on his lap. He couldn’t see the point anymore in not telling her, because he was going to turn it over, anyway, and she was already in it deep. He also felt like he was going to explode if he couldn’t talk about it with somebody. “It’s—well, it’s a book. At least it looks like one.”
“Yeah, it looks like one,” Megan said. Her tone and expression was more like her old self. “What’s it about?”
“Well,” he started. “I’ve told you about Dr. Bernhard before.” Actually, they had talked about just two hours ago, but if she didn’t remember the bus station, she wouldn’t remember that, either.
“I think you did. He didn’t teach at school, did he?”
“No. I probably told you about the time we set his kitchen on fire.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I remember you talking about that. You were experimenting with gasoline and about blew up the house.” Megan looked down at the book. “Did he write that?”
“Well, no—I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not sure how to answer that.”
Megan looked at Jon, mildly puzzled. “You don’t know if he wrote it or not?”
“I don’t know anything,” Jon said. “I—he stole this. From the government. He was working on some top secret project and this was what it was about—” Jon held up the book to Megan. “—and then I get this—this video tape that’s not really a video tape and he tells me that he’s stolen this thing from the government and it might be a doomsday device and that it can’t be destroyed and that I need to get rid of it.” Jon stopped and took a breath. “And it’s crazy. And then he tells me there’s this package he’s hidden in a locker and I’ve got to figure it out from things he talked about way before that I only half-paid attention to and guess and he’s not going to be any help because he’s dead—”
Megan sat down on the bed next to Jon. She didn’t look queasy any more. “Okay, hang on a second. He’s dead? When did that happen? What happened?”
“I don’t know. The video cassette, he said if I was getting it he had to be dead, and I don’t know when it would have happened. The last time I saw him was maybe three weeks ago.” Jon looked up at Megan. “The video cassette—maybe I can play it for you. It’s proof that—“ Jon stopped.
“What? What is it?”
“The key. It’s not supposed to play with anybody else around unless I’ve got the key and I don’t have the key I left it.”
“Left it?” Megan asked. “Where’d you leave it?”
“The bus station in Knoxville. When we got the briefcase. When you got—shocked, or whatever the hell it was that it did to you.”
Megan’s bemused expression immediately turned sour. “Can we not talk about that right now?” she asked. “I still don’t feel right.”
Jon looked at her, his brow furrowed. Still didn’t feel right? What was up with that? She seemed to have felt right five seconds ago. She didn’t remember the bus station or the locker, and wanted to completely ignore the briefcase now. Jon shook his head. There was a lot more to that flash than just a shock or some super-techno freeze-drying. It had done something to her head. Something that seemed specifically limited to the locker, the bus station, and the briefcase.
“Megan, you went to the bus station with me, you went inside, you found the locker, you reached in it first, then you got shocked or whatever the hell it was that thing did—”
Megan staggered up from the bed and lurched out the door, towards the bathroom. “I’m going to barf,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “I’ve got to barf.”
Jon looked to the closet—he wanted to open up the briefcase, but now certainly didn’t seem the time. What the hell had Bernhard done? Booby-trapped it with something that made people forget? About the locker, about the briefcase—to actively want to avoid them, to the point of illness? Packed into a single, frozen flash of light? How could such a thing be possible?
Jon looked down at the book in his lap. Jon, I’ve stolen something, Bernhard had said. Something very terrible and very powerful.
The bathroom door opened, and Megan walked quietly back in, face freshly washed. “Just a little,” she muttered sheepishly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I ate an egg when I got home this morning—I hope it’s not, like, a virus or something.” She sat on the bed. “Sorry, I don’t know if I’m going to be much fun right now. Maybe I ought to go—“ she paused. “—go home?” she finished. It was almost a question. She looked to the side and down, eyebrows slightly knit. It looked to Jon like she was confused by the words coming out of her own mouth. “Well, maybe not home, but, you know—”
“Take a look at this,” Jon said, dropping the book in her lap. Keeping his hand on it, just in case. “This is what he took.”
“Huh?” Megan asked. “What who took?” She ran her hand over the embossed panels of the cover. “Man, that’s warm. You leave it sitting on the radiator?”
Jon shook his head. “No. It’s just like that. What’s it feel like to you?”
Megan tapped one of the embossed corner piece on the cover of the book, and it lit up bright blue when she tapped it. She let out a startled laugh. “Oh, wow. Did you see that?” She tapped it again, and the piece flashed blue. She tapped a round, extruded knob shape below it and it flashed orange. “That’s—wow. That’s cool. How does it do that?”
Megan opened the book, flipping the pages. “Does this thing have batteries in it?” she asked, stopping on a page featuring a diagram that included several rows of D batteries, and a humanoid figure with a broad smiling face holding up a round globe with several protruding rods. Waves emitted from each rod, but it wasn’t entirely clear what it was supposed to be doing. The caption, Isolated Singularity Simulation (Time Delayed), was not helpful. “It’s like it’s vibrating. Almost—I don’t know—pulsing? Some sort of machine-stuff in all the blocks and knobs? Or a heater?”
Jon shrugged. “I—I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t know the blocks would light up when you tapped on ‘em like that. That’s—”
Megan turned the page again. “Oh, wow,” she said, and laughed. “You can’t be serious.” It was an illustration of a smiling person—so simplified it was practically a stick figure—on skis, with exaggerated ripples of speed drawn in front and behind it. The figure was holding ski poles, and glowing concentric circles radiated from the ends. The caption read, simply enough, All-Terrain Super-Sonic Jet Skis.
Jon shrugged. “I guess—I haven’t actually spent much time looking in the book. I haven’t tried to put anything together. But, yeah, they look like diagrams—”
Megan cocked her head, giving Jon a look that split the difference between unbelieving and amused. “’I haven’t tried to put anything together’? Jon, you mean, like, you’d seriously try to build a pair of magical jet skis?”
Jon opened his mouth, about to mention her experience at the bus station, then thought better of it. “This is what Dr. Bernhard stole. When he gave it to me—I’m dead serious—it didn’t look like this. It looked like a regular school textbook. I mean, it, like, grew in my closet.”
Megan smirked, but was still listening. “Yeah, I know it’s nuts. Feel it. You feel it right now, don’t you? It’s like it’s—you said ‘pulsing’, right? I was holding it a minute ago and I thought it was almost like it was singing. Or chanting, maybe. It’s warm—it’s still warm. Almost kind of hot. Even the pages feel hot. And I saw the video cassette—I mean, that was like a little mini-holographic projector. Stuff way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I wish I had the damn key—”
“You’re serious?” Megan asked. “This Dr. Burnsides of yours steals some great big book from the government and gives it to you? And the government wants it because they want to build super-sonic jet skis, right?”
“Or repulsion bombs. Or magnetic projectors. Or organic liquefiers. Or force pulse rifles. Or time-benders. There’s diagrams for an awful hell of a lot of stuff in this thing.”
Megan shook her head, flipping pages. “This thing is something else,” she said, running her finger over a diagram that rotated on the page as she did so. “But maybe this Dr. Burnsides is, you know, pulling your leg—” She paused, running her finger over the diagram again. The graphic rotated on the page as she did so. “Holy shit!”
Jon nodded. “Uh huh. I hadn’t seen it do that before but I’ve seen enough—this thing is real and dangerous.”
“You mean, you think you can really build a—” She looked down at the page with the rotating diagram to read the caption. “’A Life-Form Distinguishing Detection Unit’? Or super-sonic jet skis?” She spun the diagram around on the page once again. “Wow. Oh wow.”
“I’ve seen enough to think there’s something really dangerous about this, and that whatever it was Dr. Bernhard thought I was going to do—hide it, get rid of it, or going running across the country, I’m not. After—” He paused, then decided to go on. “After the bus station, and what happened, I decided I had to turn it all over to the police or somebody. I have to get rid of it.”
Megan paled a little at Jon’s mention of the bus station, but didn’t go bolting for the bathroom. “Um,” she said.
“I was already leaning that way, anyway. I was over at his house a lot for, I dunno, maybe the last year, but I don’t know that much about him. Even before this stuff, I thought he was kind of a kook. I’m going to go running across the country with something he stole from some government program because he said so? You wanna know what’s nuts? That’s nuts.”
“Yeah,” she said, turning the page. “’Cryogenic Suspension Mines’” she read, then flipped forward several pages. “’The Rain Maker: Portable Weather Control’. Weather control. You can control the weather with a shopping list for the hardware store and two car batteries. That’s nuts. That’s not science, that’s magic. Hell, that’s voodoo. This is a big book of hoodoo-voodoo.”
She chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Dr. Burnsides stole the government’s big book of black magic. That’s a whole lot to swallow. Oh, wow. ‘Molecular Dispersion Beam: The Portable Hole’. And who doesn’t need one of those? Look, there’s the happy fellow with the laser gun.”
“So I’m turning it over to the police. Or the government. I guess I could call Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I think I’m going to ask my mom—this is just out of my league. I’ve got no idea what to do.”
Megan looked up from the book. “Do you think this is real or fake?” He looked down at the book, and saw Megan was on a page where the top-left quarter was taken up by what appeared to be a running movie of the earth, latitude and longitude clearly demarcated, rotating, with the moon in orbit. “Because this looks real. I don’t know about all this other stuff, but it’s kind of hard to explain this.” She pointed to the movie, which not only was moving as if projected onto the paper but also displayed clear depth, the dimensions descending into metallic, prismatic surface of the page.
“I think it’s real,” Jon said. “And I think it’s really dangerous—”
“If it’s real, maybe you should think about it some more,” Megan said. “Even if it just might be. You really want to give the big book of voodoo to the Black Knight?”
“I don’t know. I mean, no, I don’t. But I don’t think I’m up to this—”
Megan flipped a few more pages. “You haven’t tried building any of these things? Even something simple?”
“No,” Jon answered. “I haven’t had any time. And after—well, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Too dangerous for everybody.”
Megan leaned forward, over the book, putting one hand firmly on Jon’s forearm. “Come on. You’ve got to at least try building something. See if there is anything to it. I’m sorry, but, cool moving pages and all, I have a hard time thinking of smiley faces and stick figures being in diagrams for space ships and laser guns, you know? But, hell, if you can build a pair of flying Nike’s or something—”
Jon looked at her. “You’re serious?”
“Hell, yes, I’m serious. How cool would that be? Flying Nikes? I mean, boy, you’re supposed to be the big super-intelligent geek. How could you pass by an opportunity to make a—” She flipped several pages. “—a ‘Portable Gravity Well’. Whatever a portable gravity well is. Look.” She turned the book around to Jon, pointing. “See how happy this guy is to have one?”
Jon shook his head. “Some of this stuff may already be built. I think that’s what the package at the bus station was about.”
Megan blanched. Then she shook her head. “Holy shit,” she murmured. “Every time you say something about the—the place—I feel sick. You said something—something happened. I went there—” Megan was pale, but continued. “—I went there and something happened and I forgot.”
She tapped on the book. “Some voodoo out of this book. You said—did you say something shocked me? Did you say that?”
Jon nodded.
Megan’s stomach gurgled. She let out a loud, wet belch. “Ugh,” she said. “Gross. And you got whatever you were looking for at the bus station? Right? Tell me before I have to go barf.”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed. “Why don’t I—hey, here, look, you go out of the room for a minute and then I’ll get the stuff out. So you don’t see the brief—the thing.”
“Yeah,” Megan consented, turning a little green. “I think maybe I’ll take another bathroom break.”
Megan stumbled out the door towards the bathroom. Jon reached into the closet, and took out the battered black briefcase, and laid it on the bed.
Time to see exactly what they had gone to all that trouble at the bus station for.
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