The Professor did a calculation in his head. “Then you would all be around sixty-six-years-old, give or take a few months.” “I’m sixty-six?” asked Becky with a look of distress. “But you don’t look anywhere near that age, Becky,” said Wayne. “Thank you, Wayne. That was sweet,” said Becky, who was beginning to resign herself — at least for the moment — to her present state of “Age Change-Derangement-Estrangement.” The Professor heaved a heavy sigh of fatigue. “I suspect, though, that none of you will be able to guess why the machine has added so many more years to our physical ages.”
Rodney and Wayne shook their heads.
“It was my fault — entirely my fault. I wasn’t thinking. I suppose it was because I was too tired. I had two pieces of paper. On one piece I had written ’eleven years, eight months, one week, four days, thirteen hours, ten minutes, and forty-five seconds.’ That is how much aging would have to occur to restore us all to the age we were at the moment when the original age reduction occurred. On the second piece of paper I had jotted down ‘sixty-four years, seven months, two weeks, one day, three hours, fifteen minutes and fiftyeight seconds.’ That was my exact age at the pivotal moment of the age reduction. You see, I had been using my own age as a base variable to calculate the constant that represented the difference between the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ of our ages. I accidentally inputted this second figure — my age — when I was setting the coordinates for the machine.”
Rodney looked at Grover and Petey who were both scratching their heads. “In other words,” explained Rodney, “instead of having eleven-and-a-half years added to our ages, the machine added sixtyfour-and-a-half years.”
“That’s right. Due solely to human error. My error. It was a disastrous, numskull mistake that will now have grievous consequences for us all.”
“What kind of consequences?” asked Grover, who did not like the word “consequences” even when the word “grievous” wasn’t attached to it.
“Well, you no doubt see them all about you, already. There is no one left in this town now who is below the age of fifty-two. There are no more children — no more spry young people to give our town energy and vim and, and…”
“Verve?” asked Grover.
“Yes, verve. There are, conversely, people now living among us— if you call lying in a bed and sleeping for most of the day living— who are as old as 153—for I know of at least two residents of Shady Acres Nursing Home who had already passed the century mark.” “But I don’t understand, Professor,” said Wayne. “It seems like a pretty easy thing to fix. You just go back down to the lab and enter the correct age coordinates and ‘Wham! Bam! Allakazam! We’re all back to our right ages again.”
“If only it were that easy, Wayne,” sighed the Professor. “But unfortunately, as I found myself in the midst of that rapid aging process a little while ago — a process that was wholly unexpected, and which startled me immensely, well, I let out a most frightening shout of dismay. Right there in my laboratory I screamed like a terrified little child. And the intensity of this unexpected eruption from my vocal cords surprised Gizmo, my cat, who had been sleeping soundly next to me, and she sprang into the air in that way that cats sometimes do, in which all their limbs become extended and all of their claws protracted, and she came down not upon that same spot on the floor in which she had uplifted herself, but she came down — I am sorry to report — right upon the back of my poor terrier Tesla, protracted claws and all, and a most terrible row
between those two ensued.
“I reached into the fray to break them up, and in so doing I lost my balance — for this is the way with people of advanced years: they sometimes lose their equilibrium and stumble and fall — and I did so in a most inconvenient and destructive way! For I fell directly into the Age Altertron and jangled loose its circuitry board and caused a
little unintended arcing between its electrodes, and this produced a little fire, which grew into a slightly bigger fire, and before I knew it, I was spraying my arcing, flaming, smoke-belching Altertron with a fire extinguisher. And when the smoke cleared and all the extinguisher foam had dissolved away, there was nothing left before
me but a broken, wrecked shell of what that machine had once been — a testament to fatigue and stupidity and the tendency of dogs when attacked by cats to defend their canine honor at all costs. “Everyone was counting on me and I let them down. I let you down.” The Professor shook his head and closed his eyes and became very quiet.
Rodney and Wayne and their friends exchanged looks of concern. “You didn’t let us down, Professor,” said Wayne. “No,” agreed Becky, “you just made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes.”
“We just have to build ourselves a brand new Age Altertron— an Age Altertron II!” said Rodney with forced cheer.
“How long do you think that will take?” asked Wayne. Professor Johnson opened his eyes. “You boys will have to be the ones to build it. Under my direction, of course. Because I am much too weak and frail to do anything but to tell you two what to do. Do you think that you can do it?”
Rodney and Wayne nodded. “Excellent. Then all is not lost. But first, let me sleep, for I am very tired. I must have twenty-four hours of rest to recuperate.
While I am sleeping, boys, go down to my laboratory and take an inventory of all of the parts of the wrecked machine.” (Yawn.) “Set aside those which you think we can reuse and throw out those you think we cannot.” (Yawn.) “And feed Tesla and Gizmo their breakfast.” (Yawn) “And tell your mother, Grover, that she isn’t to overly tax herself at her now-advanced age, and may come to my house to cook for me only when she feels she is able.” (Yawn) “For that matter, I cannot eat much solid food in my present state anyway, but will be nutritionally satisfied with some oatmeal or Cream-of-Wheat or some other form of soft cereal or custard. If my cupboard is bare, then please go to Toland’s Market, Grover, and procure soft foods that I can gum. Goodnight, children. I will speak to you again in twenty-four hours.”
CHAPTER TEN
In which Jackie Stovall finds his voice and a worthy mission
o there it is,” said Rodney, using one of his father’s favorite phrases.
“Yes, there it is,” said Wayne in agreement.
The two boys stood in the Professor’s laboratory surveying the damage from the stumble and the fire. It was morning now, and Grover and Becky and Petey had gone home to rest. “We should get back home ourselves and make breakfast for Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney, stepping over Gizmo, who was crunching her cat food. In the other corner of the laboratory Tesla was eating dog kibble, but keeping a wary eye on his now-mortal feline enemy. “Let’s stop at the market and pick up some food that Aunt Mildred can eat.”
The boys passed the Professor’s key-rack mounted on the wall next to the door to the garage. A special key chain hanging there caught Wayne’s eye. He stopped and pulled it down to give it a closer look. The key chain dangled from a woman’s head sculpted in metal. The woman’s hair was flowing straight back as if she were facing a strong wind. “Hey, look at this, Rodney! It’s just like the hood ornament on the Professor’s car.”