Tesla's Attic

On Saturday, Mitch and his kid sister, Madison, are dressed up to visit their father, who doesn’t live with them anymore. The visits are awkward, and Mitch isn’t sure he wants to go. He asks the Shut Up ‘n Listen device about his father, and the device says he “…can’t wait to see you […] and your sister” (94).

His mom is on the phone. She talks non-stop. He wants to get out of the visit to his dad, but he can’t get a word in edgewise. Finally, he says he’ll be back. He heads for Nick’s.

Nick, meanwhile, gets a phone call from Caitlin, who invites him over to help her blow up paint cans for an art project. Nick wants to hide his eagerness, so he agrees reluctantly.

Just as he leaves, Mitch shows up and asks if he’ll join him in visiting his dad so Mitch can show that he has friends. Nick feels guilty but says no; he offers to do it next time. Mitch nods sadly and turns to leave. Nick suddenly agrees to do it, but only if Mitch gives him back the Shut Up ‘n Listen device. Reluctantly, Mitch agrees.

Petula takes a picture of Hemorrhoid, her Chihuahua. When she develops the image, it shows not her dog but her mom stealing money from her dad’s wallet. Petula gets an idea about using the camera to blackmail people.

Caitlin has no fun shooting paint cans by herself. She realizes she just wants to hang out with Nick, who, meanwhile, rides with Mitch and little Madison to the “gated community” where their dad lives. Mitch’s mom drives, yakking on the phone the entire time. They arrive at the state penitentiary, where Mitch’s dad does time for writing a computer program that steals single pennies from every bank account in the world. The Shut Up ‘n Listen says the total is more than $725 million.

They have trouble getting the Shut Up ‘n Listen through security at the prison. Madison pulls on the string; the device says embarrassing things about the guard; flustered, he waves them through. In the visiting room, they meet Mr. Merló: He seems bewildered and sad, but he’s glad to see his kids. Mitch introduces Nick as his best friend; Merló is pleased.

When Mrs Merló and Madison leave for the bathroom, Mitch pulls out the Shut Up ‘n Listen, and, despite his promise of secrecy, he plays it for his dad. The machine says Merló’s business partners cheated him. Mitch tells him to ask the machine where the money’s hidden, so he can prove he doesn’t have any of it; instead, Merló asks about parole for his life sentence. The machine says it will be denied as long as he’s alive.

As they leave, Mitch gives the Shut Up ‘n Listen to Nick. Nick realizes that Mitch has formed a connection to the machine; he hands it back, saying that Tesla would want him to keep it awhile.

Back in his bedroom, Mitch makes a pact with himself to find good friends and keep them. He also promises never to trust people like those men in the pastel clothes who cheated his father.

Too distracted by recent events to go to Danny’s first baseball game, Nick tries to sleep in. Danny wakes him by jumping on him while wearing cleats; Nick pushes him onto the pile of dirty clothes at the center of the room. Danny asks why his furniture also is near the center. Surprised, Nick pushes the bed and desk back toward the wall.

At the game, Nick bumps into Caitlin, who’s there to see Theo pitch. Instead, she joins Nick and his dad as they watch Danny, who makes three remarkable catches in right field, including one that’s completely impossible. Nick and Caitlin look at each other. Nick asks where Danny got his glove; his dad says it’s from the garage sale. They realize they can’t take the glove from him lest it break the boy’s heart.

Late in the game, with the bases loaded, a big kid cracks a high fly ball toward left field. The ball veers toward Danny over in right field. He reaches up to catch it when a fireball roars out of nowhere, incinerates the ball, and lands in Danny’s glove, dragging him across the field toward the fence. The crowd panics and runs in all directions; Nick, his dad, and Caitlin rush to Danny. Inside his glove is a meteorite the size of a grapefruit.

The game is called on account of weather. The field is cordoned off as a disaster area. Paramedics check Danny: Strangely, he’s uninjured. Caitlin notices there are no news trucks; this should be national or world news. Instead, a fleet of white SUVs arrives, and out pour men and women all dressed in pastel suits. Guards and police quickly give way to them. Nick tells Caitlin he’s seen these types before.

The lead man talks to Nick’s dad, telling him he’s from the Defense Department. Mr. Slate is uninterested and walks away. A policeman tells Nick the man is from the FBI. The lead man admits that his “badge” is made of material that appears as whatever organization the viewer fears most. His glowing suit is made of spider silk. The business card he gave Nick that can’t be thrown away is a quantum card that will follow Nick around until he gives it to someone else. He introduces himself as Dr Alan Jorgenson from the University of Colorado.

Mr. Slate returns just as a woman brings the meteorite to Dr Jorgenson. Danny grabs it and says it’s his; his dad agrees. Dr Jorgenson offers them money for the meteor and the glove. Mr. Slate says no; Jorgenson offers more and more until finally, he offers Nick’s dad a job at NORAD and shows him his first month’s salary. Wayne turns to Danny and tells him to give the man what he wants. Jorgenson retrieves the meteor; Nick offers him a glove, but the scientist quickly realizes Nick is hiding another one behind his back. Nick hands it over.

Jorgenson assures them that he’s a friend and that their dad’s job is real. He leaves. Shortly, Caitlin appears with a pin she found that fell off one of the pastel-suited men. It’s embossed with a letter A whose crossbar is a figure eight, the sign for infinity. Caitlin smiles: “Now you have something of theirs” (121).

Nick shows her a baseball glove, the one he first offered to Jorgenson. It’s Danny’s glove.

Petula realizes her camera takes pictures of the future. She visits a local park, where she takes a snap of a newspaper at a newsstand, hoping to see tomorrow’s news. Ms. Planck, returning from food shopping, expresses interest in Petula’s camera. Planck’s shopping bag breaks, and the newsstand owner gives her some plastic bags. She gets Petula to help her carry the bags to her house, a block away.

Planck once was a professional photographer; at her townhome, Petula sees framed photos and peeks at Planck’s darkroom, its equipment covered in plastic. Planck believes there are no coincidences; she says Petula is welcome to use the darkroom to process film from her strange camera.

Nick searches online for any sign of the strange pin Caitlin gave him, but without success. Caitlin knows a jeweler, Mr. Svedberg, who has a crush on her mom; she gets an evening appointment. They visit him at his store. He examines the pin, declares it fine workmanship of 24-karat gold but too small to be worth much. He reads the insignia as a V with a line through it; Nick prompts him to turn it so it’s an A. Mr. Svedberg’s eyes widen; he clears his throat, hands the pin back, says it’s nothing, and wishes them well.

Caitlin hints that the pin is her mom’s and that she’d be disappointed if he couldn’t help her find out who gave her the item. Svedberg’s resistance collapses; in a whisper, he tells them it’s from “the Accelerati.” He’ll explain more if Caitlin’s mother visits his store the next evening.

At home, Nick tries a web search of Accelerati, but his computer crashes. Every such attempt crashes his computer.

Monday morning, Vince gives Nick a baseball bat from the garage sale. He knows who bought it: someone who likes to smash mailboxes. Nick puts the bat in the attic. At school, Mitch seems depressed, so Nick invites him to the second meeting with Mr. Svedberg.

The trio busses down to Svedberg’s store. Caitlin’s mom isn’t there; instead, Caitlin intends to sweet-talk the jeweler into giving up what he knows. When they get there, the jewelry shop is gone, replaced by a Starbucks. The baristas say they were reassigned just today. Mitch finds a leftover diamond ring in a corner.

They go to the Beef-O-Rama, but they’re not very hungry. Caitlin is upset: “Abnormal things don’t happen to me. […] I happen to them” (141). Her tears flow: She wants to give up and return to her regular life. Nick hugs her. Mitch hugs them both.

Back in the attic, Nick tries to sleep but can’t. He notices that, once again, his dirty clothes lie at the center of the room, and his desk and bed again have migrated away from the walls, along with the garage sale items. He stands at the center and notices that it feels warm there. He lies down on the clothes pile and gets a comforting sense of connection. He feels linked to all the items from the garage sale. He falls asleep.

Danny wakes him and says he missed their dad’s dinner of slightly burnt beef. Mr. Slate dad never cooks. Nick remembers with a shock that today is his mom’s birthday. Downstairs, Nick finds his dad watching an old video of himself pitching a nearly perfect game. The videographer is Nick’s mom. His dad just wants to hear her voice; seeing her would be too much.

They watch the game together. When it’s done, they look around: Danny has disappeared.

Danny’s jacket is missing, so he wasn’t kidnapped. Nick and his father drive around town, looking for Danny. A meteor streaks across the sky; they drive to the sports complex and find Danny catching meteors. Several trenches show that he’s caught several.

Danny says the meteors are falling to make his wish-upon-a-star come true and bring Mom back. A huge meteor as big as a clothes washer hurtles toward them; Nick snatches the glove, tosses it high in the air, and throws himself and Danny into a trench. The meteor takes out some trees and part of the right-field fence. Danny sobs, missing his mom; his dad picks him up, and they head for home.

Forty-three million miles away, an asteroid as big as Rhode Island, its orbit shifted by Danny’s glove, arcs directly toward Earth.

At school, Vince brings Nick a set of croquet mallets. The guy he got them from says he paid $43, but Nick says none were at the garage sale. Thinking that no one plays croquet anymore, Petula decides they might have weird powers and pays Vince $20 for them.

Nick gets called into the principal’s office, where Mr. Watt tells him his school records from Tampa finally arrived, but they mark Nick as deceased. Watt hands him the death certificate; Nick notices an A at the bottom with an infinity sign through it. The certificate is a warning.

At the house, Nick checks in on Danny, who’s playing a video game. Danny says he wants to pretend the glove thing didn’t happen, but he can’t. He thinks there’s something wrong with the house. Nick says it’s simply weirdness. Danny asks if it has to do with the strange things in the attic; Nick says everything’s scary until you understand it. Nick admits he’s scared, but he’s willing to be scared for both of them. Danny likes that and returns to his game.

Nick’s dad makes pasta. It’s the second time in two days that his father has cooked, something he never does. His dad’s in a great mood: His new job at NORAD involves repairing copying machines; he’s paid triple rate. The glove, they tell him, was part of an abandoned weapons system, and the meteors were missiles. Nick decides it’s better to let his dad believe that than blow his mind with the truth.

After dinner, Nick flips through the paper and finds Mr. Svedberg listed among the obituaries. Nick calls Caitlin, and they go to Vince’s, who tells them he’s been experimenting with the battery. It can revive anything that hasn’t been crushed or cooked, including slabs of steak that then try to crawl off the plate. He even snuck the battery into the museum and tried it on dinosaur bones, but no luck. Smiling, he asks what they now want to revive. 

Vince knows all the local mortuaries and how to break into them. He reasons that Mr. Svedberg, of Scandinavian descent, was probably a Lutheran, so they go to the Clausing & Corkery Mortuary, sneak in—Vince even knows the alarm code—find Svedberg’s body in the morgue and reanimate him with the battery.

Svedberg is cranky about being revived, but he decides that the only way to make the kids leave him in peace is to tell them about the Accelerati. His grandfather, an Accelerati member, synthesized the first artificial cubic zirconia, but group anonymity prevented his name from getting out, and he only revealed these secrets days before he died.

The Accelerati were founded by Thomas Edison, who wanted a collection of geniuses to help him control the world’s supply of power. They detonated the first A-bomb a mile beneath Harvard; they created the first TV signal long before the public knew about TV; one of their experiments caused the Chernobyl disaster. Even the Mt St Helens eruption was a geothermal experiment gone wrong.

If members break silence, they’re killed—sometimes their families and neighbors as well—the deaths seemingly due to freak accidents or natural disasters. Svedberg died because the Accelerati spied on him talking to the kids. Jorgenson killed him with a remote control that can change a heart’s rhythms.

The one thing they couldn’t get was Tesla, the great genius they needed. Svedberg says there’s a rumor that Tesla hid his powerful inventions by disguising them as ordinary household items.

Caitlin gives Svedberg the ring they found at his old store; she apologizes for causing his death. He forgives her, then calmly pulls out the battery electrodes and returns to being dead.