Tesla's Attic

For Petula, using her Tesla camera to take pictures of the future is largely disappointing: Nothing much happens most of the time. She learns to scout out small details that might suggest something interesting soon to happen. When she finds and photographs them, sometimes they give her valuable information that she can trade for favors.

Petula develops her photos in Ms. Planck’s darkroom. Most shots show simple hallways and tables; Planck admires these efforts.

Petula tells Principal Watt that the teacher he wants to get rid of, Mr. Brown, can be caught drinking during his prep period. When Cindy Hawthorne suffers a big nosebleed at lunch, Petula’s there with napkins. Sometimes the predictions don’t seem to come true, at which point Petula intervenes, and they do happen as pictured: “[…] although it was clear she had no power to change the future, if she knew what that future was, she had every power in the world to create it” (170).

Yearning to get Nick to make out with her on her sofa, Petula thinks of schemes, takes future pictures of the sofa, and discards all plans that result in an empty couch. After several tries, she finally gets a shot of two people necking, but it’s her and Mitch. She screams.

At school, Caitlin tries to have a normal life again by avoiding Nick and sitting with Theo. It doesn’t work: She knows her old life is over. When she gets home, she finds Jorgenson sitting in the kitchen while her mom busily cooks a fancy meal. Jorgenson shows Caitlin a fob and explains that, when aimed at someone, it convinces them that everything’s completely normal. He can tell her he wants to microwave their cat, and she’ll just tell him to remember to turn it once.

Jorgenson takes Caitlin out to the patio to talk. He gives her a cup of special tea that makes the drinker healthier—and much more truthful. He asks her about the various Tesla devices; she finds truthful ways to answer without really answering. In turn, she asks him questions that he, too, must answer, having tasted the tea himself. He confesses that the quick changeover of Svedberg’s jewelry shop into a Starbucks is due to the Accelerati’s method of slowing down time.

To his next question about a mysterious “Far Range Energy Emitter” (176), she answers truthfully that she’d rather not talk to him anymore. He warns her that he can kill her at any time; she replies that doing so won’t help them. He leaves; Caitlin goes back inside and finds her cat trapped in the microwave. She lets him out.

Nick fears the Accelerati, but his fear subsides when he realizes that they must still need him for something because they haven’t killed him yet.

Caitlin visits him in the attic—a first for Nick, who’s never had a girl in his room—and they try to figure out which item is the Far Range Energy Emitter. Nick wonders if it’s something much bigger, like the Wardenclyffe Tower, meant to transmit energy through the air but that Tesla never finished.

Caitlin describes the truth tea. The next morning, Nick awakes with a start. He runs to Caitlin’s house, digs through her garbage bin, and finds the Accelerati teabag just before it gets taken away by a trash truck.

He gets Caitlin to brew it again. It comes out weak, but after four cups, Nick blurts out all sorts of things, some embarrassing. He focuses on the garage sale and recalls the buyers and what they bought. Caitlin writes them down. After 15 minutes, the effect wears off, but they have a long, detailed list. She asks, “You feel stupid now, right?” He replies, “Even more than usual” (184).

Nick skips school and searches all over town, looking for familiar cars, license plates, and people’s faces. He locates one woman who bought hair rollers, and he buys them back. She points him to a neighbor who bought the dome hair dryer; she bargains for triple her purchase price.

Another man and his son angrily refuse to sell back the vacuum cleaner; they must like what it does. At another house, the lady who answers takes one look at him, shouts, “It’s mine!” and slams the door. He pounds on the door, but all he gets in response is a strange noise, and the entire house disappears. Horrified, he runs all the way home.

Petula dreads the evening. She loses her purse with the bus pass and has to walk home. Mitch shows up with her purse; she pulls him inside, plants him on the sofa, makes him chew on a mint, and then dutifully starts kissing him. Strangely, she likes it, and the kiss goes on and on. She gets up, walks him to the door, and tells him to leave. He invites her to the movies; though the idea seems “disturbingly appealing,” she orders him to tell no one about what they just did, kisses him again, and shoves him out the door.

Seriously bothered by this new development, Petula determines to overcome it by making a major pass at Nick the next day. She takes snaps of his front porch and processes them in Ms. Planck’s darkroom. The pictures show police, an ambulance, and a body under a sheet being rolled out the front door.

In science class, Jason Berring presents his science project, a thing that looks like a radio. He claims he made it out of parts, but Nick knows it’s a Tesla device. He stands up and tries to object but gets overruled by the teacher.

Jason continues the demo, tuning the radio dials until a rumble increases into an earthquake that makes the floor rise and drop. Someone screams. Nick grabs the device, switches it off, and runs from the room. The principal gives Jason detention and puts the science teacher on temporary leave.

Caitlin ditches school with Nick. They agree that the Tesla machines must be destroyed. It’s the only way to defeat the Accelerati. He calls on Mitch and Vince to bring their devices over. He and Caitlin put the attic contraptions into a pile in the backyard. Caitlin wants to photograph the pyre, partly as an art project and partly as “a spite bomb for the Accelerati” (197).

As she arranges the devices, each fitting nicely atop another, Nick believes the machines are meant to be placed together as the Far Range Energy Emitter. Quickly, they disassemble the parts so no one can see them.

Many factors combine suddenly at the Slate house to create a tidal wave of coincidence.

Danny, who’s lately called the “Star Catcher” and is widely suspected of being involved in a government program, gets an A for his report on the Transcontinental Railroad, complete with a genuine rail spike that he painted gold. At home, he hastily drops the spike, pointing straight up on its base, onto the floor, heads for the TV, and finds that the cable guy hasn’t arrived and there’s still no reception.

Vince shows up with his battery. Theo, hoping somehow to drive a wedge between Nick and Caitlin, intercepts Mr. Slate when he gets home from work, compliments him on his history as a pitcher, and asks for his autograph on his baseball card but conveniently doesn’t have a pen. Mr. Slate invites him in for the signing and some Thai dinner. Theo accepts: He’s never had Thai before. Thai food contains peanuts.

Caitlin and Nick reconstruct the Energy Emitter in the attic. Vince helps position the battery; Caitlin figures out that the salon hair dryer fits over the tall stage light. Still missing are the hair curlers. Caitlin heads for the backyard to retrieve them and is stunned to find Theo in the kitchen. To her distress, he assures her that he and Nick are now “like toupees in a pod” (206).

At that moment, both Petula and the cable guy arrive. Petula barges right in, knocking Vince down the stairs. She collars Nick, saying he’s in danger. He’s not interested; she slaps him; he slaps her. Caitlin asks if she can slap Petula. Petula hurries next door, intending to bring the old-lady neighbor to the Slate house to reduce the odds of Nick being the dead person the photo predicts.

Mitch, whose Shut Up ‘n Listen says he should listen to Nick when he asks for the device back, arrives just as Petula drags the old lady into the Slate house. Mitch shrugs and pops a large jawbreaker into his mouth. In the basement, Mr. Slate reaches for a signed baseball he intends to show Theo; his hand breaks through some black widow webs.

Petula tries getting the old lady to go up and down the stairs repeatedly, hoping she’ll die of a heart attack. Nick grabs Petula, marches her outside, and demands to know what’s going on. Petula insists that someone at the house will die today. Nick realizes her camera foretells the future. Just then, the cable guy, his work done, backs down the driveway too fast. The old lady is standing on the driveway, and Nick shouts at her; she gets out of the way just in time.

Nick goes back inside, where the TV finally works but is way too loud, and Danny can’t even change channels. Nick shouts that the remote probably needs batteries. He picks up the device and fusses with it.

Mitch gets a sudden foreboding; he asks the Shut Up ‘n Listen what to do; it answers: “Get out. Now” (212). Shocked, he draws in a sudden breath, and his jawbreaker careens toward his throat. Petula hurries after Nick, trips on the front door threshold, and falls toward the up-pointing spike. Mr. Slate retrieves the baseball, but three black widow spiders land on his arm. In the kitchen, Theo dips Thai chicken satay into an interesting-looking sauce. In the attic, trying to complete the device assembly, Caitlin reaches for one of the hair curlers made with coiled, highly conductive metal. Danny, frustrated with the TV, hurls himself back in his seat, which knocks the portrait of his great aunt off the wall.

Nick aims the remote at the TV. His dad, coming up the stairs, sees the black widows on his arm and screams. Caitlin, startled, drops the curlers; Danny jumps up, away from the falling painting; Theo puts down the chicken and uses his chopsticks to scrape the spiders off Mr. Slate’s arm; Mitch, struggling with his throat, stumbles against a table, which dislodges the jawbreaker, which flies out and hits the spike, which moves it far enough, so Petula gets merely a scrape from it.

Vince is at the TV, trying to work the controls manually. Nick doesn’t know that the remote is a “gift” from the Accelerati, tuned only to Nick’s fingerprint. When Nick pushes the power button, it shuts down Vince’s heart.

They try to resuscitate Vince, but it’s no use. Nick storms over to Petula and blames her, saying she didn’t try hard enough to prevent the death. She tries to explain, but he won’t have any of it. He yells at her to get out. She leaves, tears in her eyes.

Nick knows the Accelerati arranged things so that one of his friends would die by his own hands. It feels a lot like he did when he watched his house burn down, his mother inside, an explosion hurling his dad away from the porch as he tried to rescue her. It feels like the end of the world.

On the overly loud TV, a news announcer reports that a giant asteroid is headed straight for Earth. Apparently, it is the end of the world.

Strangely, after the announcement, people in Colorado Springs behave much as before. Busses run, newspapers get delivered. People bemoan the TV shows they’ll miss, though.

Half of the kids still attend school. In Nick’s math class, they calculate the asteroid’s trajectory; social studies teacher Mr. Brown drinks openly. Caitlin, kept home by her parents, spends the day uploading her art projects to the Internet, hopeful that they will survive the world’s end. Mitch stays in bed, imagining the life he might have lived. Vince, being dead, misses out on what might have been his favorite day ever.

At home, Danny tells Nick he’s not afraid to die if everyone dies. Also, it means he gets to see Mom sooner. Nick gives him a big hug, then goes upstairs, looks at the assembled Tesla devices, and wonders what their point is, especially if they were left around to be misused by kids. He finds the Tesla bat and gets ready to swing it hard at the devices.

Petula takes a future picture of her backyard: It shows melting rocks flying about. Ms. Planck finds the image, enlarges it, and goes to Petula’s house.

Mitch interrupts Nick’s bat swing, saying the Shut Up ‘n Listen is misfiring. They test it and find that, if Mitch waits, the device will say something, and Mitch automatically responds with the correct answer: “‘the farmer sells his corn—’ ‘—at five dollars and eighty-four cents per bushel as per today’s commodities market’” (228). They try a couple more, but the string breaks. Nick chimes in: “‘The Eiffel Tower—’ began Nick. ‘—has exactly three hundred and forty-seven pieces of used gum stuck to its girders,’ said Mitch” (229). When Nick says that the world will end, Mitch answers either in 16 minutes or four billion years.

Nick realizes the Shut Up ‘n Listen has trained Mitch to channel all sorts of information and that there’s still a choice left about the end of the world. He says, “‘The answer to everything—’ And Mitch responded, ‘—is right in your hands’” (229).

Nick looks down. He’s holding the bat.

Nick asks his father and brother to play a last baseball game, and they agree. They all walk to a nearby park. The asteroid can be seen in the sky, still distant but hurtling toward them. Nick pitches to his dad, who takes this last chance at bat to slam the ball right at the killer asteroid. He swings with all his heart and misses.

It doesn’t matter. The bat amplifies the swing into a shock wave that knocks the kids off their feet, breaks nearby windows, and soars upward toward the asteroid.

At Petula’s, Ms. Planck takes her to the backyard, unfurls a large print of the photo, and, arms spread, displays it to her. Petula realizes that she’d taken “a picture of a picture of the end of the world” (234).

Nick’s bat is cracked at the park, and the asteroid is receding. Mr. Slate missed the ball but hit a home run with the space rock. For many minutes, they watch the asteroid as it heads off in another direction.

The asteroid Felicity Bonk settles into orbit around the Earth. People who had confessed to terrible things, thinking they would soon be dead, are now in deep trouble. The rest of the world celebrates: The next day is a national holiday, and a parade features Felicity Bonk herself. Petula invites Mitch to take her to the movies; Mitch agrees, but only after visiting his father in prison.

Ms. Planck thanks Petula for her world-saving photo by giving her a gift: a pin embossed with the letter A crossed by an infinity sign. She makes Petula promise to wear it only in a hidden place because the pin is part of a secret society of wise people who are “shrewd beyond measure, and destined to steer the course of all mankind” (239). Planck promises to induct Petula soon into the group.

In his attic, Nick tells Caitlin that the asteroid, made mostly of copper, spins around the Earth, whose core is iron, which makes for an electric dynamo. He points out that the Far Range Energy Emitter might be the asteroid whose initials are “F.R.E.E.” They stare at the unfinished Tesla device assembly, and Nick suggests that all the kids involved are also connected to it as if Tesla anticipated what they’d do with it.

He sits on his bed and hears a crinkle. Pulling back the sheets, he finds a photo of the Horsehead Nebula, and on the back is written, “We never do anything by accident” (242). Nick, recognizing the Accelerati threat, realizes that neither does he. He removes the battery from the assembly, intending to take it to where Vince lies and reanimate him permanently, but he also dislodges the toaster, which again falls and hits him on the head.

It’s only a bruise. Caitlin kisses it. They leave together, on their way to find Vince.