Chapter 13

When Hanson came over to Anderson's home, Harry and Jocelyn had already parted to their various homes. Hanson and Mr. Simpson spoke in the living room for some minutes before he excused the latter to see Andy.

  Andy was seated on his bed with a frame of his mother in his hands. When he heard the knock on the door, he quickly hid the frame under a pillow, replacing it with his old action figure toy.

  The old man came in with a warm smile. His hair spread across his forehead, cocking out from underneath his fascinator which was gently placed on his head. He was wearing a knee-length garment over a sweatshirt and a pair of pants.

  "Mind if I join you, Young Simpson?" he asked, while Andy gestured to sit beside him.

  Hanson looked around the room. It was spacious and neat, filled with lots of books on the overhead shelves. The room was well-polished with tall cabinets. At the end of the room, there was a desktop computer whose monitor was placed on a table.

  "Now I see why you needed the Time Machine so urgently," said Hanson.

  Andy didn't reply, he just looked the other way.

  Hanson asked, "Do you still have that stuff I gave you?"

  "What stuff?" asked Anderson, turning his head to him.

  "The QED."

  "Oh," said Anderson, rising to his feet. He walked to the end of his room and bent to draw it out from underneath a cabinet. He raised it up and said, "Still intact."

  "Let me have a look at it," said the old man.

  Andy gave it to him. The man brought out a parcel from his jacket's pocket and opened it. Inside the parcel, there was a kind of little, funny looking contraption Andy had never seen before. He placed the device on the QED after pushing a button. The device automatically fixed to the QED as though it were a finely woven shirt with a pant to match.

  Hanson eyes wondered around as though he'd kept something close by. He couldn't find what he wanted, so he dropped the contraptions just beside him on bed. Just then his eyes fixed to the action figure Andy was holding earlier when he'd just walked inside. A warm smile cut across his face. He raised it to his face.

  "What character is this?" he asked Andy without taking his eyes from it.

  "It's Iron Man from Marvel," answered Andy, indifferently.

  "Can he do stuffs?" asked Hanson.

  "Yeah," Andy nodded. "It can fly if you press that button on it's chest there—"

  "Perfect!" the man exclaimed.

  Andy was already feeling uncomfortable with the discussion.

  Hanson picked the contraptions he'd dropped on the bed and placed it at the back of the toy.

  What Andy saw next was astounding. The eyes, and ring on the toy's chest, turned on automatically, like the headlights of a car. Then the toy began to flex its joints.

  "Hi, Lucy," said Hanson.

  "Hello, Professor!"

  "Lucy?! And why is my toy moving and responding to you; is this a joke or something?!" thundered the dumbfounded Andy.

  "No and yes," Hanson responded, calmly.

  "Huh?"

  Hanson smiled, and looked at him. "It's not a joke; and it's a 'something'."

  Andy slapped his forehead and forced a grin.

  Andy extended his hand to the "automaton", wanting to observe it. On noticing this, it flew up and hung mid-air by the propelling stream of burning vapour from its feet and hands. Andy shaded his face and shifted from the position he was seated.

  "You are not permitted to touch me!" announced Lucy.

  Andy cleaned his glasses and placed them back on the bridge of his nose.

  "I cannot — for the life of me — believe this!"

  Hanson's voice creaked into a shrill of laughter.

  "Meet Lucy, Sonny—"

  The toy flew above their heads, ostentatiously.

  "What now, Mr. Hans? Are you introducing me to my own toy?"

  The man laughed out loud, heartily.

  "That there is my robot, Lucy—" he pointed his forefinger over their heads.

  "What was that?!" Andy exclaimed with an arched brow.

  Hanson began, after cracking his voice.

  "You see, that thing I pulled out of the parcel is the central processing unit of my robot, Lucy—"

  "You have a robot?!" Anderson cut in.

  "Yes, Young Simpson. I didn't want to attract attention of any sort, so I didn't bring it along. The reason you see your action figure flying extremely high with such flames is because of the QED the CPU is connected to."

  Anderson was speechless. Here he was, not knowing that the person who'd been helping him with the necessary things to build a robot had a personal robot in first place.

  His shoulders dropped as he watched "Lucy" and listened to the old man.

  "I never knew you had a robot—"

  "Actually," said Hanson with a grin, "nobody in Mcbornie knows about Lucy. You'd want to come and check her out after school."

  Andy nodded. "What about the tesseract?"

  "Oh! Have you told your dad anything?"

  Andy shaked his head.

  "Perfect! Portsmouth is just an hour ride by train. I'll tell him we'd be working on something, tomorrow morning, I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

  Anderson nodded. "It's, indeed, perfect. Can I inspect it?" he said raising his eyes to the Iron Man.

  "Lucy, come down."

  The toy descended on a vertical line.

  "You can. . .Lucy, he has my permission."

  Andy rolled his eyes before extending his hands, slowly, to the toy he'd had since he was ten. Surprisingly, it was lifelessly still; but extremely hot. He observed the little contraption on the QED.

  "This is amazing, Mr. Hans. I cannot wait to make mine. . . ."

  They discussed about other issues such as renowned scientists that could be of much help if they could turn back the hands of time. Hanson also told him about many of his adventures as a Time God.

  They concluded that the following morning, they'd be off to Portsmouth. Hanson was optimistic of Andy father's approval, although their excuse was going to be that they had a "little project" to work on together.

  After the discussion, Hanson was escorted downstairs after retrieving his Lucy. He met with Mr. Simpson and was surprised that he didn't mind at all for Andy to be with him the following day. He even thanked Hanson for his care to stop by and help support in any way he could.

HARRISON was in bed when he heard low voices under his window's frame. It was already crossed midnight, he was thinking about his encounter with his dad earlier that week and felt grieved by raising his hand against him, again. The voices distracted his thoughts. He snucked stealthily to the window with his stockingfeet. After parting the curtain a little in an unnoticeable manner, Harry peeped to see if he could recognise anyone.

  At first, all he could see were three teenage boys in a hoodie. Later when he began to pick words from the conversation, he realised there was only a masculine in the trio; the others appeared to be feminine. This was vindicated when one pulled her hoodie off her head, and shaked her hair. It was a short bub, and Harry couldn't remember where he'd seen this person, but he was sure the face was familiar — he just couldn't place it right.

  The boy in the group had his head completely shaded, and Harry seemed to recognise the voice because it had a deviation in accent. It was very familiar, but he couldn't place the speaker into picture. He tried thinking about Tom, but it was far from him. It wasn't James as well. He stopped trying to figure it out, then he averted his attention to their conversation.

  "You fools," said the boy. "It's not perfect without the QED. I could swear I saw him with it that day from Mr. Hans' workshop. Without that Quantum Electrodynamics, how do you expect me to get you both upgraded to win the contest?"

  "We scanned the whole room," said the one with the short bub.

  "Yes," agreed the other. "We dusted every nook and cranny, and I'm positive it's not in that basement—"

  "But it has to be!" the boy interjected, notwithstanding the fact that his voice was raising. "He keeps his important stuffs there — I can swear he does.

  "And whose home is this?" he finally asked.

  Harry gasped back, closing the curtain and resting his back against the wall. They were silent for a nanosecond before saying, "It's Harry's."

  Harry's eyes grew wide. Questions gathered in his head, queueing on a train of thoughts.

  "Harrison?" repeated the boy. "What does he have to do with this?"

  "We thought since he was very intimate with Andy, he could probably be with it—"

  "Pff," responded he. "I know Andy too well; he doesn't entrust his invention stuffs to anyone."

  "It appears you're right," said the one in the hoodie, "we combed everywhere but couldn't find anything of importance."

  The boy said something that Harry didn't hear, so he peeked to see what they were doing. He noticed the girls nodded, then looked at the window in unison. His heart leaped, but he was sure he wasn't seen. But that's not what really made his heart skip a beat. Next thing he knew, their eyes were literally shining like a watchman's torch. He held his breath, pulled away from the window and snuck back in bed as quickly and silently as he could. Just one word rattled in his head, "Cyborgs."

  He could see the torches were trying to scan the room, so he closed his eyes and tried to maintain his breath in a sequence as though he were asleep.

  He opened his eyes some seconds later when he heard their feet scurry away as though they were being chased.

  He began to think fast, and the first thing he was resolved to do was tell Anderson all about that night as soon as possible.

OLD MRS JENKINS looked down from her bedroom to the front of her neighbour's flat when she noticed someone had turned a light on outside. She could see three figures by Harry's window. She couldn't tell how they held their torches because it was high above shoulder-length, so she concluded they wore headlamps; and they were trying to look into Harry's room.

  She went back to bed and got her torch, then she pointed it at one of them. All three looked at her in fear and ran away as fast as possible. She knew she wouldn't be able to recognise anyone had she pointed it at all three, so she'd pointed it at the one without a torch. It was a boy she knew too well. He attended the same school with Harry and lived a few streets away. She tried hard to remember his name. She was sure the child was born in Mcbornie — she could even remember attending the boy's naming ceremony.

  Just then, something popped up.

  "Is that not Chen's boy?" she said to herself after they'd gone. "Oh, good Lord. I wonder what those kids were about to do to poor Harry. That's Chen's boy, he's got one look in this town 'cause o' his race; and his name — was it Jack or something? I can remember it was a slight deviation — Jake — uh-huh, that's it."

  She placed both hands on her chest and went back to bed, very pleased with herself. She knew her husband would do something about it by morning, after she informed him.

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Howdy mates! I'm hoping you all had a nice weekend as good as mine — and damn, this chapter just made my day.

"Cyborgs!"? That is so unbelievable — I guess Andy was right about the "automaton" stuff. Just imagine yourselves in Harry's shoes, even hearing your name in their conversation! "CREEPY."

One question, who ever thought Jake was a bad guy? I mean — I didn't. Did you?🤣 I'd like to see your reaction to this chapter in the comments section. Plus, don't forget to show some love by hitting on that cute, little, petite, lilliputian star over there.😇 No need to look those words up, they all mean the same thing.

Curious to know more? Then read further.😉