The Subatomic Kid (27 page)

Up to a certain age kids manage to move almost invisibly through the world, which is normally a complete pain, but on this occasion Tex was counting on it as he dragged his friends through the crowded bowling alley.

John was beginning to realize how physically and emotionally drained he was from driving the limo, and he was glad Tex had taken the initiative. His mind kept flashing back to that kiss. Cal was right; he would remember it for the rest of his life. He hadn’t forgotten he was still on a date, and if the point of a date was to endear oneself to another, he imagined he must be doing pretty well.

When they were first captured by the gorillas chasing them, Kate had been very scared and incredibly annoyed; annoyed because she wouldn’t get to go to the mall and hang out, a thought that actually embarrassed her now. She had come to realize that even with all the potential danger, she was involved in an incredible adventure—an adventure she hoped would continue for the rest of her life, and one she wouldn’t trade for the world.

Cal was intrigued by bowling, or any ball game. In fact any time a ball hit a stick, it piqued his interest, because the outcome was always riddled with uncertainty. He imagined the oldest game in the world had been played with a stick and a stone, and probably the second oldest was played with ten sticks and a rolling stone. The interaction between a bat and ball was a metaphor for life; connecting solidly assured a home run, but missing completely meant dealing with the perception of failure. It was a concept that could immobilize anyone if they bought into it, and it made sore losers out of potential winners if they couldn’t learn to accept the bad along with the good.

After threading their way through the crowd, Tex led them around the lanes and down to the back of the bowling alley. His plan was simple: get behind the lanes and search for another way out, and up to this point everything was working perfectly. He found an unlocked door at the back, and after checking they weren’t being watched, they all slipped through.

On the other side of the door was a completely different world. The sound of bowling balls crashing into pins echoed up and down; those same balls rattled around a channel and were fed into a return chute that delivered them back to the bowlers. The ball and pin noise was set against a backdrop of pneumatic hissing as the pin-setting machinery for each lane functioned with flawless accuracy over and over again.

***

Hunter waited patiently as the desk clerk prepared a lane for them. He had learned long ago that when someone is in a position of power, no matter how insignificant, it is the better part of valor to acquiesce to that person’s demands rather than fight a battle that was lost before it had begun. It is the nature of people to corrupt power, and they do so in inverse proportions. The less power one has, the higher the perversion.

It certainly was the case on this occasion. He could see no earthly reason why they actually had to bowl in order to get into the bowling alley…he’d never heard of such a rule. Be that as it may, he knew he had the kids cornered, and he wasn’t about to let such a small inconvenience get in the way of capturing them.

“You take your bowling pretty seriously in this neck of the woods,” Hunter said, trying to make small talk.

The desk clerk glanced at him over the top of his thick black-rimmed glasses. “It’s a religion,” he declared, “You should know that!”

“Oh, I do,” Hunter replied. “My father used to bowl religiously every Friday night.”

“Ah, good,” the desk clerk commented. “May the frames be with him.”

Hunter had absolutely no idea what that meant; it must be some local colloquialism, he guessed. “Thank you,” he said politely with a smile as the desk clerk placed bowling shoes on the counter in front of them.

“You are on lane twenty-one,” the clerk said, “and your opponent awaits. Have a pleasant game.”

There was a hint of irony in the clerk’s tone that Hunter didn’t appreciate; nevertheless, he and Steve grabbed their shoes and headed across the crowded bowling alley. “I’d like to have a nice game with his head,” Steve said angrily. “The guy’s a complete jerk.”

“He’s not our problem,” Hunter stated, “but those damned kids are. So keep your eyes open.” During his long and checkered history, Hunter had spent time on every continent on the globe. Some countries, especially the European ones, were very similar to America, apart from the fact they spoke in strange tongues or had kings and queens lording it over them; while others, like the ones in the East, had strange dress, cultures, and languages. But he had to admit, even though he was walking through a crowded room in his own country, it felt more foreign than any of them.

The bowling alley was filled with people who looked like they worked very hard at being lackluster and uninteresting. From the snippets of conversation he heard, he imagined they were far more interested in intellectual rather than emotional pursuits. They all seemed very intense, which was strange considering they were supposedly out having fun, and there was really very little that differentiated the women from the men. There was one sure thing though; if a person lived in this town and wanted to make money they’d have to be an optician, because absolutely everyone wore glasses.

When Steve and Hunter reached their assigned lane, they sat down to change their shoes, and it wasn’t long before they were joined by one of the locals.

“Welcome to Beatnik,” the guy greeted them. “It’s small, but it’s groove city.” He wore a sweater at least three sizes too big, tight pants, thick-soled shoes, and of course, thick black-rimmed glasses. Hunter and Steve stared at the guy’s face: he had the wickedest case of acne either of them had ever seen.

Hunter and Steve raised their hands to shake his, but he raised his hand up to the center of his forehead with his palm facing out. “May the stars guide you,” he told them with reverence.

Hunter had seen the gesture before when the desk clerk had done it, but he never took it as a greeting; he had thought the clerk was trying to shoo a fly away from his head. Swiftly, Hunter assumed the same posture and Steve followed his lead. “Through the solar system,” Hunter added. It was the only thing he could remember about Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, who had been the first to advance the theory of a solar system, but it seemed to work.

“Cool as ice, man,” Copernicus said. “Test tube or clone?”

Hunter knew he was now on very dangerous ground, but at the same time he completed a small piece of what was puzzling him. All these people looked the same because they were essentially all the same person. All of them were genetically engineered.

“Discontinued experiment,” Hunter said pointedly as he put his foot on Steve’s and pressed down hard to signal him to shut up. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Steve was completely lost, and just about to blurt out something stupid.

“Oh, sad Daddy-o,” Copernicus consoled. “So you’ll never get your own burg like me.”

When the freaky cat said “me,” Hunter knew he was talking about everybody in the place. “Unfortunately not,” Hunter answered, putting a fake touch of sadness in his voice.

“That’s bad,” Copernicus said, “no science, no paradigm, no hope.”

Hunter wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but long ago he’d learned that if he had nothing to say, just shut up. That way he gave nothing away and forced the other person to speak.

“You know what happens if you lose the bowl then?” Copernicus asked.

“Oh sure,” Hunter said. “But don’t worry, we never lose.”

Copernicus nodded his head and walked back to his seat, then he turned around. “By the way, this is my partner, Aristotle,” he said, gesturing to an almost carbon copy of himself. “May the frames redeem you.”

As far as Hunter could determine, from the little bit of detective work he had done, he and Steve were considered itinerant wanderers, whose lives counted for nothing because they didn’t have a big poppa who was cranking out clones of themselves. It didn’t make an awful lot of sense, but then isolated societies do tend to create outlandish ways of dealing with what they deem to be problems.

It made him wonder what part of America they had strayed into. Perhaps they had inexplicably managed to gain access to a top-secret government base where cloning experiments had been going on for some time. It was a conundrum, but they were smack dab in the middle of it, and there was nothing they could do but bowl like they’d never bowled before.

Hunter smiled as a very confused Steve asked, “Can you tell me what the heck is happening here?”

“Sure,” Hunter replied, widening his best ironic smile, and flexing his arm muscles. “We’re about to bowl for our lives.”

QUANTUM QUAGMIRE

Tex, Kate, and John needed a door, but all they could see were walls. The space in which they were contained was probably only ten feet wide to begin with, but it began to shrink as they continually reinforced the notion they were trapped, which in turn began to mightily affect their combined psyche. They passed this bleak football of negative thinking back and forth between them as they scurried up and down the playing field searching for a non-existent goal.

For some unknown reason however, Cal had declined to play this game of diminishing returns; his mind had become entranced with the uncertainty of motion and the wonder of chance. He had seen their pursuers sit down at the other end of the bowling lane, and he was watching them talk to one of the Nerds. Rather than dwell on how close they were, Cal had chosen to view the lane as a chasm that would never be crossed.

From his vantage point, a small slit directly above and behind the lane, he could glance from side to side and marvel at bowlers taking their stance, the heavy ball balanced delicately on their hand, three fingertips inserted in the ball’s holes, their arm preparing to be outstretched. Eyes gauged the exact trajectory needed to demolish the formation of ten pins; then came the commitment, the reverse swing, the walk as the arm swung forward at the line, and then the crouching release. The resounding echo of the ball reverberated as it rolled on wood, and the crash was unmistakable as it found its target.

It was all so predictable; it was Newton’s second law of motion personified. It was what both observer and participator expected to happen. It was scientific law: hard, fast, and unchanging. But Cal, with his firsthand knowledge of the odd behavior of knuckle balls, sliders, and curve balls, had an epiphany. “Hey, guys, what would the world be like if a common everyday object no longer obeyed the laws of physics?”

The effect of his outburst was akin to that of a lifeboat miraculously dropped into the ocean beside a sinking ship, and Tex, Kate, and John climbed onboard.

“You should be looking for a way out of here instead of watching bowling,” Kate admonished before joining him. They were a tough crowd in their present mood.

“I’ve found it,” Cal continued, “right through there.”

Tex gazed at the thin slit he’d been staring through so intently. “You knucklehead,” he scowled. “Quit wasting our time on dumb jokes.”

“You’re the ones wasting time searching for non-existent doors,” Cal reasoned softly. “I, on the other hand, have found a door in my mind.”

“I mean we suspend the laws of physics, and give these Nerds a bowling match the likes of which they’ve never seen,” Cal explained mysteriously.

He hadn’t seen it coming, but he should have, and even though he had to admit it was a devastatingly original plan, it was totally out of the question. “Look,” John began, raising his hands and taking a step backwards, “I’m really not as clever as you think I am.” But it was too late; the idea had already found its way into the heart of his mind, and despite his protestations, another force began to take hold of him, and before he knew it he was gone.

***

Steve was beside himself with panic. He knew when Hunter took him on the job was dangerous, but they were in a bowling alley in a small town in upstate New York, not a maze of back alleys in Casablanca.

“When you said we’re bowling for our lives, you just meant it was going to be a tough game, right?” he asked confidentially, a terrified look on his attractive face.