A Mutiny in Time (6 page)

“It wasn’t even that hard,” Sera said. There was no hint of bragging in her voice. It wasn’t some lame attempt to fish for compliments. To her, it was just plain true.

Dak looked up at her. “So let me get this straight. My parents, who have PhDs from Amancio University and SQIT, have been working on this device for twenty years, and you figured it all out in a couple of days?”

Sera shrugged. “They helped. A little.”

Dak threw up his arms.

“Hey, careful with that!” Sera snapped. She snatched it away from him. “For the love of mincemeat. I’m just kidding, and you know it. They did most of the work — ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it. Maybe they just needed someone with fresh eyes to come in and seal the deal. Figure out the missing piece of the puzzle. Like I said, it was —”

“Yeah, I know,” Dak interrupted. “Easy. Piece of cake. Like . . . naming the presidents in order of how old they were when they got elected. Kid’s stuff. But how do you know for sure that it
does
work?”

“Because all the formulas are balanced. The mechanics of it make sense now. I’d go into more detail, but based on how
riveted
you were by my earlier explanations, I think I’ll spare you the pain. But I know it works. The same way you know that two plus two is four.”

“Thanks for keeping it at my level. Anyway, what do we do now, genius?”

A huge smile lit up her face. “We tell your parents all about it.”

He suddenly wanted to throw up and run to China.

Dak’s parents were due home around seven o’clock that evening. His grandma figured he was a big boy and could take care of himself between dinner and their arrival, so she packed up, gave him a creaky hug, and went home. Dak loved her to death, but she had barely moved out of her chair in the guest room since showing up, so he wasn’t quite sure why she was there in the first place. In case he needed a knitted sweater out of the blue?

The last half hour waiting for his mom and dad to walk through the front door was agonizing. He and Sera sat on the couch in the living room, the
tick tick tick
of the clock on the wall the only sound.

Dak’s hands were slick with sweat. There just wasn’t any way that this could go down without getting ugly. He tried to think about how he’d break the news, and nothing sounded right. Not a single historical anecdote seemed appropriate to soften the blow. Taking the keys alone was enough to make his dad turn beet red and get his mom shrieking like a diseased monkey.

Three minutes after seven the door opened.

His mom stepped inside, holding a small suitcase in one hand and a giant purse in the other. His dad followed with the rest of their luggage. He shut the door with an elbow, then both of them noticed Dak and Sera sitting before them in silence.

“Well howdy do!” his dad said, a little too loudly. Dak didn’t think anyone would ever need to know anything else about his father except that the man often said the words
Well howdy do!
That pretty much said it all.

“What are you two little munchkins up to?” his mom asked as she put her things down. “How nice of you to greet us — our own private welcoming committee! Where’s the band and the cocktails?” She snorted a laugh, something that sounded like a pig getting tickled.

And these two people were geniuses.
Well
, Dak thought,
gotta love ’em
.

“Now where are my hugs?” his mom said with a mock hurt face. “Don’t just sit there all day like two bumps on a pickle! Come over here.”

Dak stood up . . . and suddenly had an idea. There was only one way to tell this story and survive to see the next day: backward.

“Mom, Dad,” he said, hoping to make it clear that he had something serious to tell them.

Both of them had made it about halfway into the living room, but now they stopped and stared. They’d sensed it all right.

Dak smiled, trying to show what good news he had. “The Infinity Ring works now. She’s all ready to go.”

Dak’s mom and dad both had confused looks on their faces, as if they mostly thought he was kidding but weren’t completely sure.

“Come again?” his mom finally asked.

Dak stuck with telling the story backward — he wanted to leave that little tidbit about him stealing their keys until the very end. “It took all weekend, but Sera was able to fill in your missing piece, and now it works.”

Sera was fidgeting beside him, still on the couch, her knees bouncing. His parents shared a look that he couldn’t quite read.

Dak decided to keep going, thinking this just might work without an explosion of rage, groundings, unnecessary murders, stuff like that. “Look, we can fill in all the details later — but this is exciting, right? We need to get out there! Sera can explain, but the Infinity Ring is ready to be tested!”

“Who else knows about this?” Dak’s mom said. Her voice was flat and commanding — it actually scared Dak a little.

“What . . . what do you mean?” he asked. Sera stood beside him now, and he could tell she sensed the bad shift in the mood.

Dak’s mother put her hands on his shoulders. “This is important, son. Did you tell anyone what you were up to? Anyone at all? Your grandmother, maybe? Sera’s uncle?”

“No,” Dak said. He looked over at Sera, who shook her head. “Mom, what’s going on?”

Dak’s dad drew the curtains closed, his face pinched with worry. “This isn’t a
game
, Dak. What on
earth
were you thinking?”

He yelled that last bit, something Dak had never, not once, experienced before.

“I’m sorry, Dad. But . . . we figured it out.”

“You also might’ve signed our death warrants,” his mom replied.

“We can’t waste another second,” his dad said. “Show us.”

T
HE NEXT
couple of hours were a complete nightmare. First, Dak had to sit through Sera’s explanations on how everything worked and how she’d figured it out. His parents were short and bitter as they asked questions and demanded answers. Then Sera’s uncle came over and caused a major scene when he started screaming and yelling. Somehow Dak’s dad was able to calm the old geezer down, convince him that Sera desperately needed their help with an important homework project, and send him on his way.

Then there was another hour of scientific mumbo jumbo that just about drove Dak over the edge. Just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, he heard someone say his name. His head jerked up and he realized he’d been staring at the floor.

His dad was standing right in front of him, arms folded across his chest. “Maybe you should try listening harder — you might learn something.”

“Science isn’t my thing, Dad.” They’d had this conversation a million times. The truth was that Dak did well enough in the subject at school, but it just didn’t interest him. And they were talking about things well beyond anything he’d learned in school anyway. “But I’d be happy to tell you about the political implications after pyroglycerine was developed by Italy in 1847.”

Sera and his mom were still bent over a SQuare, gesticulating and talking in an excited rush. His mom had the Ring gripped in her left hand. Dak returned his attention to his dad, whose stern expression made his face look like hard stone. Both of his parents looked older than ever before, like they’d aged twenty years in a matter of days.

And then the lecture began. “I don’t think I need to tell you how disappointed I am that you broke some of our most sacred rules. A lot of bad things could’ve happened. Not just to our research, but to you. Quantum mechanics is
not
something to be messed with. Not to even mention the fact that certain parties wouldn’t be very happy to learn about what we’ve been up to here. Do you understand why we’re so upset?”

“Yes, sir.” Dak showed a sad face but on the inside he was leaping with joy — this was the lamest, shortest discipline speech he’d ever gotten. “I’m sorry.”

His dad smiled. “I think she did it, Dak. I think this thing will really work.”

“You’re serious?” Dak was pretty sure he should be more excited about the time-travel device than his escape from punishment, but at the moment it was a tie.

“Dead serious.” Dak’s dad looked over his shoulder at his wife and Sera, then back at Dak. “We’ll try to act like all is normal until tomorrow afternoon, throw the scent off if there is one. Then your mom and I are going to do a test run. For your sake, Dak, I hope the SQ somehow missed your shenanigans.”

Dak had experienced some long days at school before. But this one was ridiculous. Knowing that when he got home, he was going to witness something momentous sort of put a damper on the usual school-day fare.

It was nearly four thirty when Dak, Sera, and Dak’s parents were finally gathered in the laboratory, sitting around a table, facing one another with grim looks that didn’t completely hide their excitement. Dak had always thought of his parents as a little bit on the goofy side, but they were all business now.

“Okay,” Dak’s mom said, leaning forward on her elbows. “You kids ready for this?” Evidently she included her husband in the subject of that question. When all three nodded, she continued. “Good. The plan is this: The two of us are going to take a very brief trip, then come right back here. We’d like you two to stay in the lab in case . . . well, to make sure everything goes as planned.”

“You’re
both
going?” asked Dak. “With a single Ring?”

Dak’s dad answered with a stiff nod. “The device works by warping the fabric of space-time to create a wormhole — basically a tunnel that leads from wherever you’re standing to wherever you’ve programmed the device to take you. But it doesn’t just transport the person who’s holding the Ring. In addition to the pilot, any person that the pilot is touching will get pulled along for the ride.”

“And so will inanimate objects,” his mom added. “Though there are limits as to how much mass we can take with us. If I were to use the Ring in a car, the car wouldn’t travel back in time with me. But the seat belt I was wearing might. Got it?”

“Got it,” Dak and Sera said in unison.

“We’d bring you a souvenir, honey, but we can’t interfere with the past,” his mom said. “Even stepping on a bug could have ripple effects that drastically alter the future. I mean, the present.” She gave a little snort-chuckle then, for the first time since she’d learned the Ring was operational.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t until then that the reality began to sink in for Dak. The idea itself had seemed so cool, but now it hit him hard and heavy. Panic flared inside him. What if his parents blinked out of existence and never came back? He couldn’t imagine letting them go, then being left to wonder what had happened to them.

They apparently didn’t share his concerns.

Dak’s mom stood up. “Okay. Let’s quit talking and let’s get warping.”