For her part, Aunt Mildred was so delighted to have the Professor for a live-in guest that she found the strength to leave her bed and even to prepare a light snack or two for him in the kitchen. In return for her hospitality Professor Johnson spent a little time instructing Rodney and Wayne in the invention of a “Rotary Liquidizer,” which worked the same way as a blender. The Professor’s Liquidizer allowed the two oldest members of the household to eat more foods than they had previously been able to eat.
When she heard about the Professor’s new invention, Becky, being a considerate girl, decided to come over to the McCall home each night to liquefy food for the benefit of the hungriest of her older neighbors — and especially those who had run out of things to barter with the Mayor. Then, when she was finished at that late hour when the Professor could no longer keep his eyes open, either Rodney or Wayne, or both of the boys together, would walk her home.
During these walks Becky would open her heart and talk about how much she had wanted to be a pediatrician, and how much she loved little children, and how much she wanted at least seven children of her own, and how sad it would be if she lost her youth forever. Rodney and Wayne would become silent and tongue-tied in the face of her deep, empty longing. The twins would feel affection for her but not know quite how to show it, since she was a girl and since girls had to be handled in a different way than other people.
After they had delivered Becky to her door, the boys would continue on to the Professor’s house to see if the police had come. For several nights there was no evidence that they had. The halves of playing cards that Rodney and Wayne had discreetly placed between each of the outside doors and their jambs were always in the very same spots in which they had been left. This was an indication to the boys that no one had entered the house in their absence.
In fact, it wasn’t even necessary for Rodney and Wayne to enter the house themselves, since they could see from the outside that it remained secure.Until, that is, the fifth night…the night that would bring this story to its close.
Much had happened during the day that led up to that important night: the Professor had pronounced the new Age Altertron nearly finished. All that was required was a couple more hours of work and then the machine would be ready for testing. If the tests went well the next day, Age Altertron II could be switched on the very next night at midnight, the time at which both calamities and their corrections took place.
Most people would be safe in their beds and would not find themselves startled or liable to do injury to themselves during that transformational moment in which the correction took place. The unfortunate circumstances surrounding the loss of the first Altertron is a good example of the bad that can happen when one is up and about at that moment. Perhaps this was the reason that the unknown force chose to inflict its calamities upon the town so late at night.
Or not. (The unknown force had not otherwise demonstrated much concern for the health and well-being of the citizens of Pitcherville.)
The day had been busy and productive, and hopes ran high among the Professor’s small circle of helpers that this newest calamity would soon be a memory.
Hopes and spirits remained high, in fact, right up to 2:17 p.m., when a ringing doorbell set off a chain of events that would upend every effort to save the town of Pitcherville from this latest calamity and from those who would use it to their own sinister advantage.
Rodney and Wayne and the Professor did not hear the doorbell because of the noise being made by Wayne’s pneumatic hypersonichammering and Rodney’s dyna-turbonic drilling. And, besides, the cellar was a very tightly sealed room with no windows and its only door hidden in a broom closet. It was hard for them to hear anything down there.
The only person who did hear the ring was Aunt Mildred. She was upstairs in her bed listening to her radio program. Like most of the very old residents of Pitcherville, Aunt Mildred had grown weaker over the last few days, as if her body were giving up in its struggle to keep its occupant alive until the calamity could be reversed. A great number of older Pitchervillians, in fact, were now drawing very close to their final hours, their super-aged bodies ready for permanent and eternal retirement.
Aunt Mildred could not have reached the door in any reasonable amount of time. So she lay there in her upstairs bedroom and wondered who the visitor was. If his reason for coming was important, he would, no doubt, come back, and if it wasn’t he wouldn’t.
Or there was a third thing that could happen. The visitor could break the door down. Which he proceeded to do with the help of two police officers.
Such activity tends to make a fairly loud noise and a reverberation in all the walls of a house, and so down in the cellar Wayne had every reason to ask, “Hey! Did either of you feel that?”
“Yes I did,” replied the Professor. “It is probably the transducer oscillating too low. Take it up to 7.8.”
Upstairs, Aunt Mildred not only felt the vibrations of her front door being knocked down, she also heard it, and quickly grew frightened. She sat up in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin (in that way frightened people in beds often do, believing that the sheets and blankets will serve as a good shield against bedroom intruders.)
“Miss McCall! Miss McCall!” came a man’s voice from downstairs.
Aunt Mildred didn’t know if it would be wise to keep silent or to let the home invaders know where she was. Thinking they would find her eventually, she saved them a little trouble and directed them to her bedroom. “I’m up here! But please bear in mind that I am not inviting you up here to hurt me!”
A couple of moments later, three men entered the room: Police Chief Lonnie Rowe and two of his officers. There was also a woman with them, Miss Carter, who had been hired to assist the police department in a special operation that had begun that day. You see, it was Miss Carter’s job to help the women centenarians (that is, those women who had reached the age of one hundred or older) gather up their things so that they could be transported to the brand new city nursing home.
“The new nursing home is finished already?” asked Aunt Mildred after Miss Carter had explained everything to her.
“Yes. The mayor wanted it completed as soon as possible. It really is nothing more than our town high school gymnasium fitted with cots and footlockers. I am sorry to report that we haven’t enough cots for all of you so a few will have to sleep on pallets on the floor.”
“But I do not wish to go, Lucinda. Why do I have to go?”
“It is the law.”
“Why is it the law? What is wrong with my staying in my own home? I have people to look after me.”
“But that is the problem. Everyone is wasting too much time taking care of the old ones and cannot do the jobs that must be done in our town. We have had no milk deliveries or egg deliveries for three days. The barbershops and beauty parlors are all closed. And there is no one at the filling stations to pump our gas and check under our hoods. My own grandmother, to give you an example, requires constant care. Now all of you will receive care together in one large group. It is very economical this way. Now gather up your things. You are permitted a small piece of luggage and one shopping bag.”