A calculator doesn't give you much in the way of a keyboard. When you turn it upside down, you only get part of the alphabet. I would have used the telephone, but it we only had a rotary dial.

For this reason, the best response I could give ET was 01134, or HELLO. Michael wanted to send 5318008, but I thought ET would be confused enough by my first message. No need to throw a dirty joke into the mix.

ET took a long time to reply to us. I thought for a moment he didn't understand, but then this message appeared on the TV:

111, 1, 1011, 1011, 000=HELLO

8,5,12,12,15=HELLO

"Looks like Morse code and alphabet cipher," Dad remarked. "Like on a decoder ring."

"Just pick one," Michael suggested.

Alphabet cipher was shorter, so I used it to spell out "ETISTHATREALLYYOU".

I don't know if it took a long time to get a signal out to space like that, or if he got confused by me not being able to put spaces between words, but the pause made me wonder if the message got sent at all, or if I should have picked something other than the equals button for the enter key.

The TV screen filled with incomprehensible symbols.

I typed in a decimal for a period.

Another long pause.

Dad frowned at the phone cable. "Are you making calls with this thing?" I could tell he was worried about the room service charges.

"No, the phone outlet is just a safer source of electricity. I think it does something to the signal."

"What do you mean, you think? You built the damn thing!"

"I..."

Ruby put a hand on his shoulder to stay him. "Honey, you heard of something called an Idiot Savant?"

Dad glared. "How dare you! My son is not an idiot!"

Ruby stifled a laugh. "I didn't say he was, honey. I'msaying that certain people can do brilliant things without understanding what they're doing. I saw a thing on TV one time where this guy memorized every single postal zip code in the country and could tell you what city it was just by saying the number."

Dad smirked, cooling down a bit. "Sounds like a Mentat."

"A what?"

He chuckled. "It's a thing from Dune. It's a book. A bunch of guys specialize in being human calculators."

"Sounds like a boring book."

"No, no, there's giant sandworms in it. It's cool, kind of like The Hobbit."

Ruby crossed her arms. "This some kind of nerd thing?"

Dad gave her a look that said `Yeah? So What?'

Michael stared at my invention. "So...You're not just calling some creep with a computer or the CIA. This message is actually going into space?"

I nodded. "I built it, so I should know."

"You just said you don't know how it works."

"Well, I know how it doesn't work! It doesn't do that! I...think there might be a way to call a radio telescope, but I'd actually have to find a scientist's phone number, and get him to agree with it..."

Dad thumbed through the white and yellow pages, set them down a moment later. "I wouldn't know where to begin looking. I'm pretty sure even Carl Sagan's number is unlisted...Hypothetically, if this was an alien, why do you think it understands English?"

I drew my eyebrows together. "I...think ET found a way to translate what I'm saying, sending it through a machine or something."

"If you're trying to type words, why not just use the alphabet on the phone-"

Dad and I interrupted Ruby with "It's a rotary dial."

"ET still wouldn't know if I meant D, E, or F," I added. "It's better this way."

I wondered if ET had been using the saw blade and record player to rotary dial his friends in the ship, but having to convert my letters to numbers on a notepad every time I wanted to tell him something made this kind of conversation inconvenient.

Gertie wrinkled her nose. "Something smells like a hot hair drier."

Michael snorted. "Hair driers are supposed to be hot."

She only frowned.

The screen flared to life again.

In inch-by-inch pieces, a sort of photograph slowly appeared on the TV.

When half had filled up the screen, Dad muttered something about a bad aspect ratio.

Noticing my confused expression, he explained, "It's a photographic term. I've messed with a few computers before. You have to tell it what size to make the frame or it cuts off everything."

I couldn't make heads or tails of the image, just something brown in front of something green.

Dad pointed. "See, you can't even tell what that is. It might be your friend ET's butt for all we know."

I typed a decimal, because I didn't have a question mark key.

The picture disappeared.

As a secondary, smaller picture began to take shape, the "hair dryer smell" Gertie described became a lot stronger.

Without warning, the calculator exploded with a loud sizzling pop and a puff of smoke, the cords I'd plugged into the wall outlet and telephone jack bursting into flame.

Dad swore. "See? I knew this was a bad idea!"

We found an extinguisher and put out the fire, but we decided we'd outstayed our welcome.

"We're lucky this place didn't require a credit card," Dad said. "As it stands, we're going to have to pretend everything is fine and leave early. Thank the Lord the smoke detector didn't go off. I would have hated to explain this to management."

Ruby cast him a suspicious look. "You sound like you've had some practice with this kind of thing."

"Well, honey, nobody's perfect." He paused. "Hope you're not having second thoughts about the marriage."

She kissed him. "You're not getting rid of me that easy."

Dad kissed back, then scowled at the mess. "Ellie, can you, I don't know, maybe put the TV back together, so that it at least lookslike it isn't broken?"

Dad had already unplugged the cords from the wall with some insulated electrician's supplies. It seemed Ruby had been at least partly right about me being a Savant, for I found it much more difficult to put the TV back together than take it apart. When I finally got the box screwed shut and looking halfway normal, my hands bled from my fight with the sharp pointy things.

Gertie tried to heal me with ET's power, but it didn't work. I ended up just using some bandages.

Also, I decided to cut the plug off the TV, just to make sure the next guest didn't wind up in the hospital.

We slept a little, but left before dawn. Dad tried to look nonchalant and calm when he went into the office, but when he came out again, he hurried into the Torino so fast that I wondered if he'd held the place up.

"No, no, I paid him," he insisted. "I just don't want to hang around to find out what he says about the damages. In my college days, I started a fire with a hot plate..."

Dad shook his head, stepping on the gas.

Gertie stared at all the unfamiliar neighborhoods. "Where are we going?"

He turned down a highway. "San Francisco. Elliott here could potentially make a lot of money if he hooks up with the right company."

Ruby nervously tapped her fingers on the window frame. "Steve, as much as I'd like to see him learning how to work a small business and everything, those agents are going to be searching the whole state for him. I'm not sure it's safe."

He sighed. "I guess you're right. If I involve him in a high profile business like that, he won't stay hidden for very long."

"High profile?" Ruby laughed. "Please. Computers are nothing but glorified calculators. What kind of money are you really going to get from them?"

"You'd be surprised, darling. Someday they're going to be big."

"I've heard a lot of those guys start in their garages anyway. Maybe you and Elliott can corner an untapped market somewhere else."

"You know, Rubes? I think you're on to something!...Of course there's the question of where we'd find the parts..." A mile down the freeway, he signaled for an exit ramp.

"Where are you going now?"

"I've got relatives in the D.C. area. I thought maybe-"

"D.C.? Are you out of your mind? You'll be within spitting distance of the Pentagon!"

Dad swore under his breath, pulled onto the shoulder. Someone honked at us. "All right, Rubes. Where do you think we should go?"

"I...I don't know, how about Kansas City?"

Dad rubbed his face in frustration. "Why."

"For starters, there isn't a military base for miles, it's got a great jazz community, and you can't beat the barbecue..."

"You got family there, don't you?"

"Not close family..."

Dad groaned.

"Did I mention that the Royals are doing really good this year?"

"I'll think about it."

My voice didn't carry well in the noisy car. I had to lean forward in my seat to communicate. "Ruby, didn't you tell me you had kids?"

She nodded. "They with their auntie. I don't think we're going to be able to see them anytime soon.."

Ruby sobbed a little as she thought about it. "I'm not even going to be able to call them! They could be tapping their phones! Reading their mail!"

Dad squeezed her hand. "We'll work something out. At least she won't accuse you of being a kidnapper."

"But how are we going to get them? Aren't those men going to be watching? If either one of us goes back there, we might end up in prison!"

"We'll figure something out. But first..." Dad shifted into drive.

We went on a long, meandering road trip, designed to lose anyone intending to track us. For example: A stop at The Winchester Mystery House, a wax museum in Las Vegas, a ghost town in Grafton Utah, the hotel from The Shining, Mushroom Rock State Park.

The Torino broke down five times along the way, but Mike and Dad knew how to do some temporary fixes to keep it going. We only had it in the shop once.

We ended up rolling into the obscure little town of Sidell, Missouri. With its incredibly steep hills, the place reminded me of San Francisco, but it had German style buildings, and you had to cross narrow bridges to get into town. Its biggest businesses appeared to be a winery, the Tyson Chicken plant, and a toolbox company.

Ruby scowled at the scenery. "What are we doing here? Winery tours?"

"This..." Dad pulled into one of the town's two filling stations. "This is our new home."

"You're kidding."

"Look. I'm getting some phony ID's made, and the last thing I want is some big city police department picking apart our documents. If the local sheriff finds out they're fake, big deal. It'll be a whole lot easier to pull up stakes and move from here than Saint Louis or Kansas City."

"Yeah? Well by that same token, everybody knows everybody."

"Would you rather face a small army of enemies that you know, or an army of a thousand people you don't?"

All the black people lived across the railroad tracks, where the housing was cheaper. Ruby talked about buying a place there, but Dad found a secluded cabin in the hills that he liked better.

The Torino gave us so much trouble that Dad towed it into the next county and sold it for scrap. He used the money to help pay for the cabin.

Of course we had to get new names.

Since they'd been taken from dead people, I didn't get a say in what I'd be called, I just ended up with the name Wolfgang Muller. Michael got the name `Ludwig,' and Gertie became `Anna Maria.' It seemed the deceased had been fans of Beethoven.

Dad took a job at Tyson. Ruby tried to work at the winery, but she only got in at the tool box company. Even `Ludwig' started a part time gig at some old guy's carpentry shop. I tried to make a few computers for Dad to sell, but we both agreed I needed to study up on electronics to get things past the prototype stage.

Me and `Anna' got enrolled in a new school, some place called Charles M. Jones. They didn't ask for our social security numbers, and nobody had time to do fact checking on our legal documents, so they assigned us lockers and schedules just like anyone else.

Ordinary rural middle school. None of the stuff had been updated since 1950 or 1960, including the amount of African American students. Old raggedy books, mimeograph, some of the antique wall radiators didn't even work. The newest things it had were one of those tape recorder/slide projector things and a Betamax player.

My hobbies didn't exactly make me a popular kid. In between tinkering with electronics and plants around the school, and me suddenly needing glasses after the first week, I got picked on a lot.

One day, as I put my things in a locker, a guy named Roger Jackson shoved me into the door, spilling my botany books, a potted geranium and Green Lantern comics on the floor.

Leather jacket and studded wristbands. The grim reaper on his ripped t-shirt leered at me. "Whoops! Sorry, pansy boy! Guess I wasn't watching where I was going!"

He and some rough looking kids with him had a laugh at my expense. As I bent over to scoop up the dirt from my plant, he kicked the pot out of my hands, smashed my comics with his sneakers until the pages came apart.

He flipped through my electronics book. "Why you reading this crap, Wolfie? Making some kind of potato clock?"

"Some day it's going to get me into space!"

Roger laughed. "How's that going to work? Gonna build a giant rocketship with a zucchini?"

His buddies chuckled.

"I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out somehow. And when I do, you're not coming along."

"Oooh!" he mocked. "Gonna fly away without me, huh? I guess them's the breaks!"

He threw my textbook down the hall. "Go fetch, Wolfie!"

I had a feeling that ET wouldn't have wanted me to fight someone over something so trivial, but I'd had enough. When I saw him grabbing my botany book, I gave him a shove.

He struck me in the face, knocking my glasses sideways.

"What do you have against me?" I cried. "Isn't your dad a farmer?"

"No! Even if he was, you think I actually want to join the crummy FFA? You and my old man would get along great together!" He slugged me in the stomach.

I thought Roger would pound me to a pulp, but a female voice shouted, "Hey! Pick on someone your own size!"

With a laugh, the bully turned around.

A small figure rushed up to Roger, and with couple karate moves, sent him groaning to the floor.

I stared at my rescuer, did a double take when I realized I recognized her. "Jamie? How-?"

"Elliott!" she cried, kissing me full on the mouth.