Chapter 11

Mr Hans — or simply Hanson — had just finished speaking to Anderson that evening on phone. After the call, he sat back to reflect on the day. He'd done lots of work at the workshop, and sold so many stuffs. He smiled, with the feeling of self-accomplishment.

  Inventing was cool, he thought. You could practically do anything you wanted, as long as you could think it.

  Hanson's bedroom was practically a lab. His bed was a robot — one could make it warm and cosy by pressing the red button at the base of the bed. One could also make it rotate, just for the fun of "traveling while sleeping", by pressing the green button beside the red. There was a little switch at the head of the bed always on neutral. If you pushed the switch up, it raises the bed up — near-ceiling-length — and if you pushed it down, it lowers the bed.

  In addition to this, all his windows worked on a remote. The remote also controlled his room cabinets. It had just two buttons — open and close.

  He had a personal robot that served him and Lizzy — nobody in the whole of Mcbornie knew that. The day Andy had come visiting, he'd disconnected the robot from Active Mode. The robot was programmed by him to do everything a housemaid could. She swept, cooked, served, mopped, and — he added this from a motivational quote app he'd programmed — it read success tips to them, every morning.

  At the moment, Hanson was in bed. He laid on his back, his head on his arm, listening to old Lizzy sleeping like a baby. He looked to his left where there was a window with parted curtains.

  He smiled as a scene popped up his head. It was in Egypt. He, Archer and Nelson had gone to steal some precious stones — gold actually — in the 13th century. They succeeded in getting the stones because they had necessary information from their time on the exact place it was kept.

  They were running out, stealthily, when a guard noticed them. Since they were unarmed, they were left with just one option, "Run!"

  The guard rang the alarm, and voilà, the whole of Egypt were running against them with spears in their hands. The Time Gods had actually stolen the Pharaoh's must cherished possessions, and could not go scot-free. Now it was easy to quickly run back through time, but they couldn't. This was because, if they did, they would change history — and as in most cases — cause a new form of worship of gods coming in the form of men to steal gold. So they had to run zigzag to avoid getting pierced by the overhead spears. They dudged and ducked, running their limbs out, till they were able to get into the woods. There, out of sight from anyone, they returned to their time, with sinister smiles plastered all over their faces, panting heavily.

  A big warm smile was drawn over Hanson's face. The adventure that'd just played in his head made him feel much better. He remembered how fast his legs were as a youth. He and Archer had won lots of medals as kids and adolescents. Both in athleticism and in science inventions. Nelson, on the other hand, was just good at what he did with his tools but was not much of a runner. The day they ran that "Egypt race" was an imagine-you-are-usain-bolt moment for Nelson. To him he was 50 miles ahead, despite the fact he was trying to meet with the twins. It was a fifty-fifty moment.

  Hanson smiled, happy his brother took to the path of his heart. Archer was the world's president of science and technology. Then the thought made him feel sudden anger.

  He flashed back to how Archer had called him names when he'd suggested they stopped tampering with time and settled down for their own family — they'd been depending on their adventures to feed and survive. Archer was ambitious, he wanted to discover more "gifted" people like them, he wanted to train people specifically in invention. It was the reason he made that science contest that came once in a blue moon called, The Greatest Scientist of the Age. People from all parts of the earth came and contested.

  Nelson was unhappy that they'd parted and so kept the Time Machine for himself. He never used it after then. He'd also settled down with his own family.

  Just to shut rumours, Acher got married to Lizzy's childhood besty, Jane Minogue.

  All of these were thirty years ago.

  Now, Hanson had two grownup children; both married. His daughter, Eve, called him last week telling him she would soon be having a baby. His son, Edward — two years older than Eve — already had two boys. They barely visited their parents because of their jobs and families. However, they called at least, once, in a week.

  Archer, on the other hand, had no children; he called them "distractions". He was busy shooting himself for the sky, too busy to think of the repercussions. His wife, Jane, stopped advising him when she crossed her menopause. They were rich, but the world could see she had no joy — no source at all.

  Hanson shaked his head in pity for his brother.

  If he was going to help someone the right way, he'd have to get that young Simpson to win the upcoming contest, thought Hanson.

  Earlier, he'd contacted Nelson from his old phonebook. Nelson was so glad to hear from Hanson after all those years. They spoke for straight two hours on the phone. After telling Nelson what he was planning to do, all the old man could say was, "In for some good ole adventure, are you?"

  It was settled; by Saturday he'd be making it for Portsmouth to visit his old friend. Literally everybody he knew lived in Portsmouth. Even his family house still stands there, firmly.

  "Oh, good ole Pompey!" he muttered to himself, already wishing he was home.

  Hanson came to Mcbornie just to avoid his past, and everything about who he was. No one knew him well in Mcbornie. Even Mr Simpson didn't really know as much as he thought he knew about the old man. And Hanson liked it that way.

  Nobody knew that there were helicopters — his son's favorite toys — flying around in his bedroom everyday. Neither did they know every part of his living room was programmed to scan whoever enters his house; fingerprints, height, stature and walking pace. They didn't know about his housemaid — Lucy the Robot — and that there was a Closed Circuit Television chip implanted at the beginning of their street, in such that they could watch whoever was going in and coming out from their bedroom.

  He smiled. His children were extremely intelligent. Take Edward for instance; at the age of six, he created a human-baby-sized helicopter that worked with a wireless router configured to forward his school assignment's answers to his buddy, Luke. But you don't want to know what happened when Hanson found out about the purpose of its creation.

  Eve loved everything about meteorology, as a teenager girl. Hanson could remember that day in the living room when it was stormy outside. Her brother — just for the fun — asked her to tell him all she knew about the weather and accurate weather forecasting. Hanson could see the smile he was hiding, knew his son too much to know he'd rather take suicide than listen to his sister speak about humidity or any relation. She was so excited that she began to speak — for nearly an hour — on the subject.

  "Okay, first of all. You must understand that weather forecasting includes predictions of changes on the Earth's surface caused by atmospheric conditions such as snow and ice cover, storm tides, and floods.

  "Now, you must note that since the time the early men lived in caves, et cetera, some perceptive individuals became leaders just by being able to detect natural signs of impending snow, rain, or wind; any change in weather at all. We can imagine that with such knowledge, they must have enjoyed greater success in their search of food and safety which were major objectives of that time.

  "Likewise today, weather forecasting is carried out basically with the first manner as the early men: observation and predicting changes. Just that we now have modern tools for carrying out measurements in humidity, temperature, wind, and even pressure, with obviously much better results.

  "Yet, even the the most sophisticated numerically calculated forecast made on a supercomputer requires a set of measurements of the condition of the atmosphere — an initial picture of wind, temperature and other basic elements—"

  "Dang it!" cried Edward. "I can't take it anymore," he said raising to his feet. His father burst into laughter which left Eve in confusion.

  "Hey, I've not even told you about how ancient Greek was the basis for—"

  "Save me the crap, Eve, I know I made a wrong decision to play with fire—" but that didn't stop Eve from continuing. Her only faithful listener was her mother, who was actually left with no choice as the guys left them, to play chess.

  Those were good times, Hanson thought, he could remember. . . .

  The thought trailed off as Lucy alerted him that it was midnight. He thanked her, and closing his eyes gently, immediately slept off.

* * *

  The following day, Anderson Simpson contacted his neighbour, the local sheriff, as suggested by his father.

  Mr Simpson was so surprised at what Andy was telling him that morning, when he woke up; that his lab had been completely dilapidated. Together, they walked down to inspect it, and stared at the aweful scene. The work was done professionally well, Andy observed.

  "Whoever did this knew exactly what to unscrew," said Andy.

  His father looked at Andy, his hand spread under his chin, while the other hugged his stomach.

  "How do you mean?"

  "Look at this, for instance," said Andy, stooping to raise a little contraption from the ground.

  Mr Simpson adjusted his glasses to observe it. He held it in his palm, and gave his observation.

  "It appears some things have been ripped off here."

  "Exactly, Dad. Not just anything, but the most important," said Andy pointing to the base of the contraption where his father was observing. "Right here, there was a micro decoder transfixed at that spot. Just this little thing you see here, Dad, took me a whole month to design. I did it while we were having the summer holiday at Granny's in London. I got most of the necessary utilities from Conor and Noah."

  His father's mouth fell open. "Woah! What's it for?"

  Anderson exhaled.

  "It was supposed to be the part of the robot I told you I was making. It's function was to interpret the information it would be receiving from the outside world, both spoken and gestured."

  Mr Simpson ran his hand through his head. He looked here and there. Despite knowing little or nothing about technologies, he admitted it was no easy matter to invent something — all he'd ever done was invent business plans, but these?. . .

  Anderson couldn't concentrate on anything; he couldn't think and had no appetite to eat, so he skipped school that day.

  When Jocelyn's father, the sheriff — Daniel Redwood — arrived, Mr Simpson showed him to the basement, where Daniel did some quick examinations.

  He returned to his office, warning that no one else should be left around the region. He said he'd be returning with people skilled in the crime field.

  Andy pulled himself up from the couch and headed for his bedroom. Whenever he felt this way, he read his Physics textbook; and that's just what he wanted to do.

  Running up the flights of stairs, he pushed his door in and walked to the shelves over his bed. He stretched to reach for his favorite book. Getting it, he began to flip the pages of the big book that could be mistaken for an encyclopedia.

  His eyes stumbled on a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. It said:

  "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

  He raised his eyes from the quote, and his brain began to process the words, mechanically. Then a question popped up:

  What am I silent about?

  Anderson quickly hopped down from his bed. He took a jotter and began to scribble, quickly. Done, he skedaddled his eyes through what he'd written. He checked the calendar on his phone; two weeks till next month.

  "I can still do something," he muttered to himself. He paced about, then two words popped into his head; Time Machine.

  He called Hanson to tell him about what had happened in his basement, and the old man said he'd come visiting later in the day. That said, Andy made a suggestion about hastening the time they'd both get the machine. Although it was Wednesday, he couldn't wait for Saturday which was only three days ahead. But the old man said they could talk about it when he'd come.

  Before Anderson knew it, he drafted into sleep, tiredly. He'd not slept the whole night, and of course — couldn't beat nature.