Jamie glowed, and so did I.

The dream seemed very important, and somehow connected to ET on a deep, complicated level. If she knew something, if ET chose her to come along whenever we found a way to meet him, it changed everything.

"You..." I stammered. "What did you dream about?"

She sat on my bed, flipping through my notebook. "A circuit thingy. Like someone took that cover thing off a computer. I was flying through it, and somehow I could tell what things were. Don't ask me how, but..."

Jamie dug a stack of paper out of her shirt, diagrams, symbols and equations drawn in pencil and ink, half smudged by rain. "Just like any dream, it's perfectly clear and you know exactly what it all is right when you wake up and scribble everything down." She rubbed her forehead. "Of course, right now it's like I just had my first cup of coffee after an all nighter or something. It's...kinda confusing."

"I didn't know you drank coffee," I muttered.

"I don't. Usually. Sometimes I have some with lots of cream and sugar. Anyways, that's beside the point. Do you know what all this is?"

I shrugged, staring at the papers. Our glowing had faded, so I resorted to reading with a flashlight.

They looked like plans. For what, exactly, I couldn't tell, but if ET really wanted us to come to him, I figured it had to be a lot more complicated than sprinkling a bunch of pixie dust and thinking happy thoughts. A hundred plus pages of notebook paper complicated. ET did say our powers were fading.

"What do you think all this is? Blueprints for some kind of spaceship?"

I shook my head. "Dunno. It could be anything. A landing gear. A formula for rocket fuel...So how did that heater work for you?"

"It's great. Really warm...Could you get me a towel? I'm soaking wet."

I brought her one from the hall closet. She was dripping on the papers. "Did you have matches or a birthday candle or something to light the wick? I know it's kind of tricky if you never-"

Jamie reddened. "So maybe I just sneaked into your basement and kinda slept there." She sneezed. "By the way, you guys should dust more often."

I smiled as I watched her dry her hair into a messy frizz. "Guess that explains the great radio reception."

"It was great, wasn't it?"

I gave her a sheepish grin, blushing a little.

"So." She turned a diagram over. "Nothing at all springs to mind when you're looking at this?"

I scowled at the paper, trying to stare answers out of it. "Not...sure. I think it's something to do with energy, but something's missing."

Jamie tore a page out of my notebook, holding it up to one of her diagrams. "Maybe it's like a puzzle."

"You...might be right. I guess a lot of computer programs have modules and things that have to fit together just right or they don't work..."

"I saw your computer. Can we go downstairs and try typing some of this in?"

"No way! It'll make too much noise! You're not even supposed to be here!" I turned my notepad over, showing her the mess of writing on the reverse side. "By the way, some of these `puzzle pieces' are double sided."

"Oh. Guess we'll have to copy that onto another sheet and see if it fits together."

We transferred the information onto a fresh page. "Say, hypothetically, that we somehow get this jumbled mess to make sense. Then what? What are you intending to do with it?"

I turned the diagram around and around. "ET said to come see him. I don't think we're going to get to where he is, until we build this...whatever it is."

"You're trying to make that Christmas tree ornament thing from your drawings, aren't you?"

I didn't deny it. "Well..."

She snickered. "I hope it works!"

"Me too."

After working on the papers for several minutes, Jamie sighed in frustration. "Couldn't you just, I don't know, get on an actual NASA space shuttle? Like the Challenger?"

I rolled my eyes. "Even if the government wasn't out to get me, you have to be an adult, and get in the Air Force. And take a physical exam, you know, prove you're a perfect model of fitness."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"I know, right?"

"Elliott!" Dad called from outside the door. "Whatcha doing in there?"

"Shit!" Jamie gasped, ducking under the bed.

"Nothing!" I cried. "Uh, just...reading!"

"You do know it's a school night, don't you?"

"Yeah...Couldn't sleep."

"It'd help to turn the lights off."

Jamie sneezed.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," I covered. "I...I think I'm coming down with a cold."

"Maybe if you didn't play with the windows so much you wouldn't have a cold. Go to bed!"

My girlfriend chuckled.

I had to at least humor dad, so I stowed our materials and occupied the bed.

Obviously, there'd be a problem if Dad found me sharing a bed with Jamie, or even saw her in my room. I compensated by slipping her one of my sleeping bags from the closet and having her sleep under the bed, where she already was. Not very comfortable or hospitable, but she wasn't supposed to be there.

My plan worked until she had to go to the bathroom.

"Can't you, um, hold it?" I stammered. "Or get a soda bottle or something?"

Jamie grimaced in disgust. "Elliott..." She fell silent for a moment. "No. I really can't. I'm just going to dream about looking for toilets. And I'm not comfortable with doing that other thing while you're in the room."

I rubbed my face in frustration. "It'd almost be safer if you went outside. I mean, what if Dad sees you?"

"It's raining. I'm not going to squat out in the yard in the rain. I already risked a cold sneaking into your window."

"You slept in an abandoned factory."

She sighed. "All right, all right!"

After thinking about it for a moment, though, I got an idea. "Wait. Maybe if we time this just right..."

Not the most elegant plan, but we came to the idea of having Jamie cloak herself in a blanket and carry my walkie-talkie to throw my voice, if needed.

Making sure the hallway was clear beforehand, I sent her tiptoeing down past Dad's door.

I gasped when I saw the door to the bathroom swing open.

Gertie stepped out, scrunching her face when she noticed the figure huddled in blankets.

She rubbed her eyes, widened them when her sleepy brain recognized the face.

Jamie whispered something to her. Gertie covered her mouth, suppressing a giggle.

My sister glanced at me, giving me this look like I were crazy. I only shrugged.

Gertie disappeared into her room.

"That was close!" Jamie radioed to me.

"Yeah," I muttered back. "Hurry up!"

Jamie rushed into the bathroom. I waited impatiently for her to finish her business.

At last Jamie came out again, creeping up the hallway.

Dad's door suddenly creaked open. "Elliott?"

Jamie tried her hardest to keep her face shrouded in cotton fabric, facing far away from Dad. I radioed, "I had to go, okay?"

"What's with all the blankets?"

"It's drafty in here."

"Have you been painting your toenails?"

"Actually, Lori..."

Before I could do anything about it, Dad's arm shot out, grabbing my girlfriend. The blanket fell to the floor, leaving my girlfriend stupidly holding the walkie-talkie.

Dad chortled through his nose. "I knew those feet looked too pretty to be Elliott, Wolfgang's."

"It's not what it looks like, Mr. Mueller!"

Dad glanced over at my blushing face. "It never is." He rolled his eyes. "Let me guess...homework?"

"How did you know?"

A wry smirk crept up his mouth. "Damn that kid moves fast! Chip off the old block!"

He grabbed the radio, pushing the talk button. "Wolfgang, get your butt over here."

I paled, doing what he said.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder. "El, Wolfgang, I know you're getting older, and your developing hormones and everything..."

"We didn't do anything," Jamie blurted. "It was just a sleepover."

Dad chortled, shook his head. "Right. An unauthorized sleepover. On a school night. One you don't want to tell the old man about! Believe you me, I've had a few of those quote-unquote `sleepovers.' Where do you think Michael came from?"

Jamie looked like she wanted to shrink into the wall. "Can I have breakfast?"

"It's four in the morning." Then, noticing Gertie standing behind him, Dad rubbed his face. "What do you want to eat."

A very awkward meal. For a long time, we just silently stared at each other and ate our oatmeal and pancakes.

"Why were you sleeping under the bed?" Gertie asked my girlfriend.

Dad furrowed his brow. "Who was under the bed?"

"Jamie. I mean, Lori. She had a sleeping bag and everything. It didn't look very comfortable."

Dad burst out laughing. "Did...Wolfgang coach you to say that?"

Gertie shook her head. "It's a sin to lie."

I frowned at her. "I had the door shut."

"You were sleeping. And there's a crack under the door."

Dad put his chin in his hand, stared at my sister, stared at me. "Son, what's really going on?"

I opened my mouth to say something, but Jamie answered first. "I'm homeless."

Dad took a deep breath, let it out. "Explains a few things, I guess. Like how you eat like you've starved for two weeks...So what did you do with the heater?"

"It's safe. I sleep in an abandoned building."

It seemed the smells of food had awakened my brother. He stood beside the table, gawking at us. "What's she doing here?"

Dad frowned. "It seems our cabin has become a hotel."

Another tense silence.

At last Dad said, "Tell you what, Lori. I'll let you stay in Gertie's room. I mean, Anna Maria's..."

Gertie grinned with excitement at having a roommate.

"That stuff you told me about your parents, that was crap, wasn't it? I've been to that bar..."

Jamie gave him a bashful nod.

Dad twisted his lip. "You have us at a disadvantage, miss. We're not exactly in a position where we can afford to talk to the authorities..."

"I thought you were under witness protection."

He gave her a sheepish grin. "Yeah? Well the people that are after us...they go way up. Ever seen Serpico?"

"No. What's that about?"

Dad shook his head. "Corrupt cops. They flush a guy's head in the toilet. Never mind. The point is, we can't trust the police, so I guess you've got a place to stay until we can figure out what to do with you."

He idly filled in a newspaper crossword.

"Hear anything about Ruby?" I asked.

Dad sighed. "Not since the last one hundred times you asked."

Jamie's gaze traveled from me to Dad. "Who's Ruby?"

"My fiancee. She just had to go back and get her kids."

"What do you think happened?"

"She probably got caught, got taken to a military base or a prison. As we speak, they're probably pumping her for information or something."

"And you're not going to rescue her?"

Dad rolled his eyes. "Look. We were lucky to rescue...Wolfgang from the cops the first time. His brother got shot in the process. If I try to rescue Ruby, you kids will either get captured, or you won't have food, or a roof over your head. I had to make a judgment call. I'm sure Ruby understands."

Gertie sniffed, wrinkled her nose. "Lori, you need a bath."

"From the mouth of babes," Dad joked. "You know where the shower is. Guess you'll have to wear the same clothes until we can get you to the thrift shop."

While she got cleaned up, Dad took me aside, giving me a talk on the birds and the bees that left my ears burning.

The moment Jamie came back from the shower, Gertie asked if she could braid her hair. "Maybe later," she said.

We commenced our short walk to school.

"So..." Michael scowled at my girlfriend. "Now that you're going to be living under our roof, let's hear some answers. I know you've been lying, and you're obviously hiding something from Dad..."

Jamie reddened. "I followed you all the way from California, okay? I may have run away from home."

My brother grabbed her by the shoulders, glaring at her. "What have you done! They'll be worried sick! The cops will be on us for sure!"

"I changed my name."

"Yeah? But they have pictures of you. They could send them to the police here!"

"They probably have pictures of you and Elliott too."

"She's been hanging out with me," I added. "They'll probably want to take her to some military base too."

Michael scowled. "She could be spying."

"She doesn't seem like a spy."

"That only means she might be a good one."

Trembling, Jamie protested, "I'm not a spy. Elliott's right. If I go back to my folks now, I'll be a hostage, at the very least."

"If those black vans start showing up here, I'll kill you."

Jamie swallowed, giving him a grave nod.

Gertie got in between the two. "ET sent her here. She told me."

"Welcome to the family," Michael groaned.

We dropped my sister off at the grade school, walked next door to the upper grade building.

Jamie frowned at me. "So when do you think we can give Gertie her stuff back?"

"I don't know. If Dad sees anything, he's going to get upset."

Michael crossed his arms, leaning on the staircase railing. "Hey...How did you enroll here anyway?"

Jamie answered, "I didn't. I snuck in."

My brother furrowed his brow. "And nobody said anything?"

"I hid in the attic store room yesterday. Read The Neverending Story."

I stared.

"It's a book. By Michael Ende. Kind of ironic, really. I got the idea for my hiding spot from the book."

"That will only work so long." Michael nervously drummed his fingers on the shiny rail. "What if they catch you in the hall?"

"I actually did get caught yesterday. Some guy asked what I was doing without a hall pass, and I said going to detention, I acted up in Mrs. South's class...He didn't even check to see if I went to the right room."

"I'm guessing you found a school roster."

Jamie nodded. "And I overheard some things."

Michael paused in thought for a moment. Kids pushed past us, trying to beat the bell. "Tell you what. I'll take you to the principal's office, tell Mr. Hiskey that you're my cousin, and that there's been a death in the family, so you've come to live with us. I'll tell him the paperwork will get taken care of later."

"Sounds good." Of course, I reflected how weird it would look to the school, you know, Frenching my cousin and all. "Can I come along?"

Michael shook his head. "I got this. You just go to class. It'll look more official."

"Oh..kay," I stammered.

"Someone may have seen us kissing," Jamie pointed out. "What if somebody says something?"

My brother rolled his eyes, looking rather disgusted. "We're close to The Ozarks. I don't think they'll care that much."

"Kissin' cousins," Jamie said with a hillbilly accent.

"Gross. Don't ever do that again."

I laughed.

The bell rang, compelling me to leave. My `cousin' blew me a kiss. Life was getting awkward fast.

Halfway down the hall, Roger shoved me up against a locker. "Not so tough when girlfriend's not around, are you?"

I got beat up.

I'd like to tell you something cool like how I used Kung Fu and kicked his butt, or met Mr. Miyagi and learned to kick his butt, but this isn't that kind of story.

Yeah, yeah, I may have attacked an army guy at that base, but, well, that guy was only trying to grab me, not make mincemeat out of me.

I tried to fight back, but it didn't work. Roger just knocked my glasses off, popped me in the face, and shoved me to the floor.

I tried to get away, but he just pounded me until I cried. Mr. Cubits, the gym/math teacher, grabbed us both, dragging us to the principal's office. The look on his bearded face said he didn't care who was in the right.

The principal kept paddles in his office, but I heard that sort of `academic discipline' had been phased out.

Both our parents got called in from work. Roger's big mom came in wearing a waitress outfit. Dad gave me a dirty look, probably because I didn't defend myself, but I got this weird feeling like ET would have wanted it this way. For similar reasons, I often felt guilt when eating meat.

One of the advantages to being beaten up, instead of having beaten someone up: Only you have a real solid ground to complain, and only you have the beauty marks to prove it. And you don't have to write `I will night fight' a million times in a notebook.

When Mr. Hiskey dismissed me, Dad took me aside, muttering to me. "Guess in some ways you take after your mother more than you do me." He took a deep breath. "As much as I hate to say it, you probably did the right thing. Your suboptimal performance in battle might actually work in your favor. If you gain a reputation as a wimp, no one will mistake you for a top secret military property."

"Yeah," I muttered. "Wonderful."

"Next time, just hit him in the crotch and poke him in the eyes. That's gotten me out of a lot of scrapes." He rubbed my shoulder. "Congratulations about the new cousin, by the way."

Dad left for work, and I returned to class.

I almost got brought back to the principal's office for passing notes. Jamie kept telling me how this or that symbol on our diagrams stood for something or another. About the third time I sneaked her a note, my bird nosed science teacher, Mr. Sigler, intercepted it.

He smirked a little when he unfolded the paper. I could tell he expected a love letter.

Once he saw all the symbols and such, he looked around the classroom like he thought it a practical joke.

Sigler turned the paper around and around a couple times, grinned, then added a few things, spreading the note out in front of me. "What are you trying to do, make explosives?"

I swallowed hard. If I said one wrong word, he could cause so much unwanted attention for me that black vans would be there in an hour. "Um...it's kind of a game."

He kept staring at me like he intended to put me in an advanced placement test for college or something...then call the black van people.

"It's a board game. You know, like Dungeons and Dragons, except it's science fiction. You know, Star Wars?"

The man furrowed his brow. "Do you even know what these symbols mean?"

I shook my head. "It's in a manual. I think most of them are alien words."

He poked a finger at a section. "That's a chemical equation. I just finished it for you."

"Uh, thanks."

Everyone in class stared at me. "Nerd," I heard more than a few whispering. Any one of them could march up to the office and make a call to the CIA.

Mr. Sigler cleared his throat, tucking his pen into the pocket protector of his flannel shirt. "Going back to our lesson...Wolfgang, can you tell me the difference between a metamorphic and an igneous rock?"

I rubbed my face in frustration. This wasn't a safe time to be smart. "Uh...metamorphic...are the ones with crystals."

The teacher tapped the paper, frowned a little. "Mr. Mueller, all three types of rocks have been known to feature crystals."

I reddened. "I meant quartz. It's a metamorphic rock."

Mr. Sigler looked at me like I were crazy. "Quartzite is metamorphic, but quartz can show up in sedimentary and igneous rock formations." He stuck my paper in his pocket. "Pay attention, Mr. Mueller. If all that chemistry is required to `blow up the Death Star', it wouldn't hurt to add some geology to your repertoire."

I gave him a reluctant nod, mostly because I wanted the note back.

I endured a lecture on rocks. Sedimentation, calderas, tectonic movement, enduring his corny jokes about apatite, magnetite and such. I bombed a question about twin striations. Jamie, likewise, failed t properly explain what Plagioclase meant. Neither of us had to try very hard to be incorrect, the chemistry thing seemed to be a fluke.

I thought ourselves in the clear until the bell rang and Mr. Sigler kept us both from leaving.

He leaned back on his desk, crossing his arms. "It's not unheard of for scientific geniuses to be related. William and Caroline Herschel, for example, were brother and sister, and they changed the world of astronomy. They discovered comets, and the planet Uranus..."

"I'm not as smart as you think I am," I stammered.

The man grinned. "You're just being modest."

Jamie put her hands on her hips. "Like he said. It's just a stupid board game. We didn't even know what we were looking at until you told us."

I quickly added, "And we're never going to figure out how to stop Vader until I can get that note back."

"Nonsense." He tapped the side of his head. "The answer's right up here. You only got to think about it a little."

He offered me the paper, then snatched it away before I could grab it. "You guys are studying way above your grade level. I'll bet what I'm teaching just isn't stimulating you enough."

My gut told me this was code for `I'm going to call the men in black vans.' Me and Jamie slowly shook our heads no.

"We have a test for geniuses such as yourselves. If you pass, you'll have the fast track to any college in the country. How does that sound?"

A great reason to tell dad it's time to pack up and leave, I thought, giving Jamie a sideways glance.

"We don't want to be freaks, Mr. Sigler," my girlfriend blurted. "In fact, you actually embarrassed us today. Testing out is great and all, but we'll miss out on a lot of social experiences."

"We're out in the middle of nowhere. What exactly would you miss?"

"Whatever regular kids do at our ages."

The man squinted at my face. "Like getting bullied?"

"Whatever we do here, it builds character, for the rest of our life."

The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Did your father coach you into saying that?"

Jamie shot me a questioning glance. I only shrugged. "Well, he did mention it to me, but I think he's right. I hear prodigies miss out on all kinds of things like homecoming, field trips, senior prom...You really can't get those back."

"Plus we really don't have a clue about geology," I said. "Or English, or history or..."

The man shook his head, handing the paper back. "All right. Have it your way. But from now on, pay attention."

We both breathed a sigh of relief as we escaped the classroom.

"Could you imagine what would happen if I did one of those tests?"

Jamie giggled. "Nothing, I'm guessing. We'd both get a big fat zero for other sciences, and I really suck at math."

"Yeah, but he could send the paper to Washington. Or Iowa. Someone might put two and to together, no pun intended. We could get caught...You think I should tell Dad?"

She shook her head. "Not unless you want to move out of town."

I frowned. "He's probably going to find out anyway, once we have parent teacher conferences."

"That's then. You tell him now and he'll panic." Jamie stared at me a moment. "Your eye does look puffy on one side..."

"Dad says it's better this way. You know, me not being so conspicuously amazing."

"As long as he doesn't find out about science class."

"Guess not."

She gave me a light peck on the cheek. "See you at lunch...cousin."

We only shared a couple classes. The other ones like English and social studies I took alone. Honestly, not as good at those things, but after that science class, nothing would stop people from calling me a nerd.

At lunch, me and Jamie sat together. People snickered and murmured to one another, pointed to us. Only near the end of the thirty minutes did a plump long haired brunette come up to us and said, "I heard your cousin kissed you on the mouth. Is that true?"

I reddened. "...No."

Jamie, though, took it in stride. "I'm adopted. What's the big deal?"

The stranger chuckled. "Nothing. Just curious!"

I won't bore you with details of the rest of my day. I got educated, one of the teachers showed us The Peanut Butter Solution, they dismissed us.

I accidentally bowled my sister over on the way out the door. She took a tumble down the front steps, but the stairs were short, so she didn't get hurt. "Hey! Watch where you're going, you clumsy dumb head!"

As she got back up and dusted herself off, I noticed a Big Chief notebook had fallen out of her backpack, a few pages blowing away in the wind.

When I noticed the diagrams and equations, I rushed to grab them.

I gawked at the wide lined papers in disbelief. "You had the same dream!"

Gertie shrugged. "You dreamed about the big computery thing?"

I nodded. "We've got to get home and piece this together!"

Michael always worked at the furniture shop after school, so only the three of us returned to the cabin. Dad wasn't home, probably making up time at Tyson.

I, Jamie and Gertie hurried to the basement, spending over an hour trying to piece all our hasty scribblings together.

Jamie frowned at my schematic. "How about we use one of your computers? After all, that was part of the dream..."

That seemed as good an idea as any, so I booted up a system, programmed in a few sections of our...confusing mishmash of information.

A tedious process. Coding is complicated, and I saved everything on a VIC-20 cassette tape machine. Not a terribly efficient memory device, even for restoring saved games on text adventures.

After a very long time writing and rewriting code, I groaned and took a break. Jamie slumped against a desk. "I wish there was some kind of picture interface we could use for all this."

I scratched my head. "Like...graphics?"

"Um, yeah. So you can see what you're doing. Or at least little squares or picture boxes that you can move around. It would make the puzzle easier."

"Like a window?"

"Yeah. Like a window."

"That's a great idea, Jamie. But I don't see how that'd work. Besides, we're just trying to get this thing to run, not make it look pretty. We don't even know what it is yet."

"Hey...Wolfgang!" Dad called from the top of the stairs. "Found you something. Think you'll like it. Some guy was throwing it out, along with a box of black plastic things."

Dad brought me the floppy drive to an Apple II and some blank floppy disks.

The new drive actually helped. I knew how to rewire it to fit my computer, so we had some memory stability.

This burned up even more time. Dad visited our lab again. "Don't you kids have homework? Real homework, I mean?"

I felt I had another breakthrough within reach, just a couple more moments and we'd have...something. "This is important."

"So's homework. C'mon. Get going or I'll shut down the lab."

We did what we were told. After homework we had dinner, and shopped for clothes.

Dad's pay wasn't great. He often had to call the utilities people and credit card companies for extensions, so we had to get Jamie a wardrobe from Maj-R-Thrift. We wouldn't win any popularity contests, but we couldn't afford better. With Ruby out of the picture, we were lucky to have what we did.

When I at last returned to the lab, Gertie had stuck stuff up in between parts of our diagram, a crossword, stationary from the phone stand in the living room, pages from the TV Guide. I even saw her little fingers poking keys on the computer.

I rushed up to her, red faced. "Hey! Gertie! What did you do!"

"I think Daddy had the dream, he just doesn't want to tell us."

I bit back on my anger, staring at the crossword. Dad had filled all the boxes with symbols, trailing out at the edges. He'd `doodled' similar things while on the phone, negotiating with debt collectors and utilities people.

His contribution looked like a jumbled mess, parts of it doubling back on other parts. One equation he had scribbled right through a Peanuts cartoon. We had to do a rubbing on the paper to figure out what he meant.

Ironically, he'd filled in one line of the crossword with the word `Palimpsest.' When I looked it up in the dictionary, I decided it to be a pretty good description of his handwriting.

Out of desperation, I took our carefully pieced together duplication up to Dad for an explanation of what clearly seemed to be missing.

He scratched his head. "I don't know. That's just some crap I dreamed about. Doesn't mean anything."

"Yeah? Well, it's neat, and I can't read parts of it."

"I'm shocked that you can read any of it!" Dad drew some stuff on our paper. "If you think you can use this to build...things, you're crazier than I thought."

"Is that all you...dreamed about?"

Dad laughed. "Before I appeared naked in my high school cafeteria? Hell, I don't know, I guess there were some other pieces that go along with all that gobbledygook, but I figured they were just...things I picked up in college. You know, like Newton's Constant, or Einstein's Law of Thermodynamics, or whatever the hell you call those things. I only jotted down the stuff you can't dig up at the library. You know...the weird stuff."

The library had closed for the day. We'd gone shopping about the time we could have gone there, and we weren't able to just jump on the computer and pull up a science book. We'd need a phone number of someone crazy enough to type all that literature into their machine, someone who would let us dial in anytime we wanted. We didn't know anyone like that.

Jamie sighed. "Guess we'll just have to wait until tomorrow to figure out what this is."

As fate would have it, Michael did take a chemistry class in high school, and early in the semester the teacher had given them all textbooks that proved to be too highbrow for his grade level.

The teacher said the books didn't explain the material very well, often going off in strange tangents unrelated to chemistry. He'd told Michael to turn his in, but he kept forgetting that the book had been used to prop up a wobbly table leg.

His teacher was right. The book seemed to be written for scientists who already knew everything, its only strength seeming to be brevity. A good fit for the table.

That being said, we did find the reference section in the back very interesting. A couple of those equations fit perfectly into our system.

The moment I punched the last character in, a glowing sphere appeared in the air in front of us, roughly the size of a baseball.

I don't know how it happened. In addition to making my own computers, I had been experimenting with a laser, but the only thing I'd been able to do with it was make sort of a burglar alarm, slowly cut holes in wood, and scan in a serial number.

But now, somehow, this thing, this program, used lasers to create an energy field. Maybe it manipulated electromagnetism, or vibrated air particles. Whatever the reason, a glowing orb now hovered above the basement floor.

Jamie poked the object with a screwdriver. It seemed to have solid properties. "What do you think it is?"

I adjusted my glasses. "Dunno."

Gertie pointed to the screen. "Look! Pictures!"

It seemed we had created a graphical user interface, after all. The monitor now displayed a blueprint of the cabin basement.

"Hey neat!" Jamie rushing to the keyboard. "Maybe it's like Pac-Man or King's Quest!"

The moment she pushed an arrow key, all hell broke loose.

It turned out that a dot on the monitor represented the location of our orb, and when Jamie held down the right arrow, a whole shelf of tools and computer equipment came crashing to the floor.

The orb whipped around, broke a bunch of mason jars, scattered a socket set, obliterated a potted plant.

Seconds later, the ball shattered the basement window. A cat screeched outside.

"Elliott!" Dad yelled. "What in the Sam hell are you doing down there!"