Maybe this is a good time to introduce myself. Yeah. Probably. I'm Jack. I've had four sets of parents, none very good at the job. The last pair couldn't even scramble an egg. Ava and Matt are my sister and brother by law—not blood—but you'd guess that at a glance. Matt has short dark hair, olive skin, and a nose that takes a sharp downward turn at the halfway point. His gray eyes bulge out like telescopes, and over the last year he grew too fast to maintain what little balance and coordination he once had. At fifteen he's always stumbling, knocking over water glasses, and bumping into doorways with his wide shoulders.
Ava and I are the same age, but she's a few inches taller, with skin the color of coffee, a round face, and long eyelashes. Her wavy brown hair is always yanked back in a ponytail, and her wide eyes and bright smile can melt even the meanest adults. When she walks, the heels of her high-top boots barely touch the ground, and her small hands are scarred in places—a hazard of building her mechanical marvels. Me? I'm as pale as a paper towel, with brown eyes, straight blond hair that Ava says I comb too often, and perfect teeth. Okay. That's not true. They're slightly crooked. Also, unlike Matt, I don't have any muscles yet, but I'm only twelve. I'm hoping they'll show up soon.
But enough about the looks. The important thing here is that my siblings are geniuses. You've probably—heard of them, since they get most of the attention. Not many people know that their bestselling book of poems, The Lonely Orphans, was actually my idea. Sure, the verses are really sappy and "roses are red" simple, but we needed cash, Ava and Matt are clever with rhymes, and I knew the book would sell. Moms and grandmothers really eat up that heartbroken orphan stuff. Not into poetry? Well I'm sure you've seen that video of the kid giving CPR to a puppy. That was me. Fifteen million hits, thank you very much. The whole thing was fake—the little guy was just sleeping—but it worked a public relations miracle for us.
Also, we're not really orphans anymore. Call us independent. Or, as Ava likes to say, autonomous. A few years ago, Ava, Matt, and I ended up with the same foster parents. The two of them were already winning awards for their brains, skipping from one grade to the next like stones across a pond, and one night I had an idea. We'd just made ourselves dinner, because Alice and Bob were out, as usual. Halfway through my bowl of boxed macaroni and cheese with sliced hot dogs, I glanced up at my brother and sister and asked, "Can't we just get rid of the adults and take care of ourselves?" At first Matt said it was illegal. I asked if he was sure. Then Ava repeated my question. Matt stared at the wall for a few minutes, then got up, walked out the door, and spent the next two days in the library of a local law school. Alice and Bob didn't even notice he was gone. Matt came back as if it had only been a few minutes since we'd asked him the question. "No," he said, "I'm not sure. We might have a chance."
In the end, it took several court cases, some powerful lawyers, a book of cheesy poems to make enough money to pay the lawyers, a fake puppy video to convince the public to love us, and a brilliantly acted, fake-tear-filled speech by Ava. But we got rid of Alice and Bob. I guess you could say we divorced our foster parents. And, aside from all the newspapers describing us as "two young geniuses and their brother," I was thrilled with how it all worked out. A nice lady from Social Services named Min checks on us weekly, but we're pretty much flying solo now. Matt takes college classes, and Ava and I both homeschool; we meet with our instructors online. My grades are fine, I guess, but I never feel all that smart. That's one of the downsides of living with geniuses.
So, anyway, we live on our own in a small Brooklyn apartment, and after getting chased out of the deli by the bread-waving German, that's where we waited for the next three days, desperately trying to come up with a plan to retrieve Ava's robot. Three separate times I attempted to sneak back into the strange building without telling my siblings, but the Dumpster was locked, and the guy in the deli tried to attack me with a squeeze bottle of mustard every time I got close to his front door.
Neither Ava nor Matt were all that happy with me, because they'd figured out I'd lied about our little spy operation being legal. Using a drone to peer into someone's windows is totally against the law, and one of the terms of our "autonomous" childhood was that we had to be on nearly perfect behavior at all times. So now there was a chance we'd lose more than a homemade robot. I was sure Min was going to show up at any moment and tell us we were going to be split up and thrown into different foster homes. I'd end up with a family of asparagus farmers in Canada. They'd be the kind of people who flushed the toilet only once a day to save water.
That's the way I thought it was going to work, anyway.
But for seventy-two hours there was no knock at our door.
Our phone didn't ring.
And I started to wonder if we were safe.
Then, a little after six o'clock on Sunday night, Matt called out from the kitchen. The room was really more of a workshop. Sure, it housed a microwave and a fridge, and my little coffeemaker was tucked away in a back corner of a counter. But Ava had replaced the oven with a 3-D printer and taken most of the cabinet and drawer space for her spare parts and tools. The kitchen table was crammed with computers and circuit boards.
My brother and sister were standing in front of her laptop. "What's up?" I asked.
"You just got an e-mail from Henry Witherspoon."
I shrugged. "Who's he?"
"A scientist, an inventor, a pretty amazing engineer. And the head of Henry Witherspoon Industries. The guy has worked on rockets, robots, electric cars, space telescopes—"
"He helped invent the nose vacuum, too."
Ava knew how to speak my language. I'd been dying to get a nose vacuum for months, but they were too expensive. Basically, instead of a tissue, you just placed this device, about the size of a Sharpie cap, up your nostril, and it automatically sucked out any unwanted material. "Why is he writing to me?"
Matt spread his arms wide. "Because that was his building we tried to break into!"
"Oh."
Arms crossed, Ava stared at me. "And it appears that you may have written him a note?"
"Yes, well ... is he mad?"
"No, that's the thing. He's inviting us to dinner tonight."
"Then I should get dressed," I answered.
An hour later we were back in the alley, standing at the Dumpster. We were already late, and that part was my fault. We didn't get invited to dinner very often, so I'd wanted a few extra minutes to figure out what to wear. Is that so crazy? My siblings had thought so, but I took my time anyway, and settled on a nice blue button-down shirt, a striped bowtie, a pair of jeans, and black Samba sneakers. The bowtie was new, and it took me seven tries to get the knot just right.
"This entrance is under repair," a voice said from behind us.
All three of us spun around. A tall, thin man was standing there. A leather bag was slung over his shoulder. His eyes were wrinkled at the corners. His graying hair and slight beard were buzzed to the same length, and he wore a T-shirt with two buttons at the collar and an equation scrawled across the middle. He pointed at each of us in turn. "Ava, Matt, John. Yes?"
"Yes," Ava answered. "You're Henry Witherspoon?"
"Indeed," he said with a laugh. "Where are my manners? Excuse me, please."
"You can call me Jack," I said, extending my hand. "He prefers Matthew, though." My brother grimaced. He hates his full name. "It's an honor to meet you, Mr. Witherspoon."
We shook hands, and his was so huge, it practically swallowed mine. "Call me Hank," he said. "I must compliment you on your tie, Jack. I was once fond of such professorial attire myself." Before I could respond, his eyes lit up. He held up one of his long fingers, reached into his bag, and carefully removed Ava's drone. "You built this?" he said to Ava, holding Fred out to her.
She bit her lower lip and reached for him. I held my breath. The man had been nice enough so far, but this was the point at which we'd learn whether "Hank" Witherspoon was going to be a friend or an enemy. Thankfully, he passed Fred right to her. I was pretty much floating with relief.
"Don't worry," he continued. "The HR-4 grabbed it with a net normally used in the practice of lepidoptery. That's the study of butterflies, but you probably knew that." He pointed to one of Fred's propellers. "Those are repurposed computer fans?"
"That's right," Ava said, her voice nearly a whisper. "I had to file down the blades a little."
"An ingenious use of discarded technology. Waste not; want not. And the code you wrote for the guidance software is beautiful, too. Pure geek poetry. Better than that book of poems, certainly." He turned to me. "Although I should say that your effort to revive that puppy was truly heartwarming."
Before I could reply, Ava asked, "What's the HR-4?"
"A prototype robotic assistant. I believe you already met. The HR-4 tried to offer you pizza."
"Attacked us is more like it," I said.
Matt stepped in front of me, pointing at the long string of letters and symbols on Henry Witherspoon's shirt. "That's the equation for Einstein's general theory."
"I should hope you'd be able to pick that out, Matthew. Not bad for a fifteen-year-old. Of course, I was finishing college at your age. But still. Not bad."
Matt's smile flickered at the mixed compliment. He squinted at the side of the Dumpster, then pointed to the logo. "H-W-I—does that stand for Henry Witherspoon Industries?"
"Right again."
Ava was checking Fred to make sure nothing was broken. Matt was beaming so brightly, you'd think he'd just gotten a compliment from Albert Einstein himself. Someone needed to think clearly here. "So, Mr. Wither—Hank," I said. "Do you want to tell us what's going on? You caught us spying on you. You got my note. Why did you invite us to dinner?"
He smiled. "We can discuss all that when we get inside."
We followed Hank out of the alley and into the deli. Through the shop's large glass display case I could see our German friend holding his hand over the mustard bottle like a cowboy preparing to draw his gun. When he spotted Hank, though, he gestured us toward his back room.
"Entschuldigung," Ava said with a smile.
The man raised his large eyebrows and ever so slightly bowed in her direction.
"You speak German?" Hank asked.
"I'm learning," Ava said.
And she was probably going to be fluent within a week. Was there a German word for show-off?
"Does he work for you?" Matt asked.
"Franz? No. I own the building, and he's kind enough to let me use his storeroom."
Inside the back room Hank moved a roll of paper towels out of the way and pressed a few buttons on a keypad. After we rode the elevator down in silence, Hank hurried out, pushed through the door behind the desk, and waved toward the room beyond. "Welcome to my scientific playground!"
The inside of the building was a single open room, and it was like nothing I'd ever seen. We stood on a floor somewhere far below street level, and the ceiling loomed more than ten stories above us. Light streamed in through the upper windows. The air was humid and thick. High above us three or four birds were circling and screeching. Instead of separate floors, there were platforms attached to the walls. They were the size of large bedrooms, and they started all the way up near the ceiling and extended down in a spiral pattern. A giant would have been able to walk up them like the steps of a winding staircase. How normal humans moved from one to the other I couldn't figure out.
Hank crossed the space, giving us a rapid tour. The ground floor was about half the size of a football field. There was a twenty-foot-deep, crystal-clear, aboveground pool diagonally across from us in the far left corner. A small submarine floated at the surface. "That's the Nautilus Redux," Hank said, flicking his fingers toward the craft. "She's a little leaky." In another corner, a steep artificial hill covered with fake rocks and dirt rose up from the floor to a height of fifteen feet. Hank ignored that and pointed to an enclosed room with see-through walls and a layer of orange soil two feet deep. Inside, a robot with tracked wheels and solar panels was repeatedly bumping up against a small boulder. "That's my Mars simulation chamber," he said. "It's about as close as you'll get to the surface of the Red Planet without climbing into a rocket ship."
A miniature racetrack looped around the lab benches, cabinets, and worktables in the center of the room. I stepped forward and pressed the toe of one sneaker down on the edge of the track; it felt like rubber.
"Made from recycled tires," Hank said. He kneeled at the edge and pushed his knuckles into the surface, then raised his eyebrows in the direction of a small car, half the size of a golf cart, cruising slowly toward us. "The track has sensors inside that pick up the slightest pressure. So it knows where the car is and how fast it's going."
Behind me, Matt said, "So it's a smart road?"
Hank sprang to his feet and patted my brother on the back. "Exactly!"
With his right hand down near his waist, Matt carried out the smallest fist-pump in history. I tried to think of something brilliant to add. I failed.
Ava was pointing skyward. "Are those drones?"
"Ah, yes, I thought you might like them. Ornithopters, technically. Drones that fly like birds, by flapping their wings."
Below the circling robots, a few of the tree-house-like platforms were home to tall, leafy plants and small trees. Two were enclosed, the windows fogged and sweating. Greenhouses, I guessed. Three others were crowded with steel cylinders and tubes and various strange equipment.
Ava pointed to the miniature vehicle heading our way. "Is that self-driving?" she asked.
"Yes, it's basically a small version of a real car. The vehicle makes all the decisions. No need for a driver at all."
On the other side of the track there was a miniature junkyard, with a few old tires, a massive snowblower lying on its side, a pile of strange, shiny material, and some kind of giant catapult—the kind of contraption that launched boulders at castle walls. Except that a mannequin was seated where there should have been a rock.
Matt pointed to the shiny fabric. "That's what the cushion outside was made of, right?"
"Yes! I planned to have a cleaning crew wash the windows every week, so I installed that system in case one of them fell," Hank explained. "But once I made the windows self-cleaning, I didn't need the crew, so I never had the chance to test the system. I should thank you, Jack. And I suppose you should thank me, too, since that concrete would not have been a good landing site."
Matt jumped in before I had the chance. "The windows are self-cleaning? There was some kind of coating—"
"That's right! No dirt or grime will stick to them, and all it takes is a little rain to rinse them clean. As for that cushion, the company that makes the material hired me to come up with some additional applications, and that rescue system was one of my first ideas."
"What else is the material used for?" Ava asked.
"The company's main goal is creating inflatable space habitats. And speaking of space ..." Hank hurried over to a fat, cone-shaped structure about the size of a minivan. "What we have here is a prototype capsule for Mars astronauts. It's a scale model, obviously, and please don't tell anyone you saw it." He turned slowly, waving casually at an overwhelming mix of gadgets and devices and vehicles. "Look around, please. See that pair of metal legs over there? Firefighters could put those on and kick through the doors of burning buildings. Or you could strap into them and climb a mountain without getting tired." He pointed over his shoulder at the artificial hill in the corner. "I built that to test the robolegs, in fact."
This was all very interesting, and my siblings were drinking in Hank's every word, but in scanning the room I'd found something far more life-changing. The device that I believe to be the greatest invention of the twenty-first century was sitting on a workbench designated by a sign that read "Clutterbuck Prize." The nose vacuum was sleek, shiny, and beautifully simple, and it lay next to a dark, curly wig, a pair of boxer shorts, a metal cube the size and shape of a standard garbage can, and many other items.
I rushed over and picked up the vacuum.
"Go ahead, try it," Hank said.
My nose was only slightly stuffed at the time, but I lifted the little wonder to one nostril and waited with anticipation. The miniature motor inside whirred, and the force of the device was so powerful, it felt like aliens were trying to suck my brain out through a straw. I yanked the vacuum away from my nose. Immediately it shut off.
"It stings a little the first time, but how do you feel?"
I sniffed. A rush of humid air filled my nostrils. I smelled soil, metal, rubber. "Amazing," I admitted. Then I pointed to the table. "What's all this?"
"A few little ideas I've been developing, but most of these are former entries for the Clutterbuck Prize, an annual contest I judge," he said, pointing to the sign.
"What do these do?" I asked, grabbing the pair of boxer shorts.
"Self-drying underwear. At the touch of a button you can release a supply of pressurized air in the waistband that dries the fabric instantly."
Hank spun around as his malfunctioning robot friend rolled into the room. "Oh, good! The HR-4 is here to take your orders. Matthew? Ava? You'll have pizza, I hope?"
"What's that?" Matt asked, pointing to a large and very comfortable-looking stuffed leather chair.
The chair itself appeared normal enough.
But it was moving.
Quickly.
Hank grabbed a laptop from a countertop and pecked at the keys with his index finger. But the chair accelerated straight across the room, bouncing over the racetrack, bumping into the base of the HR-4, then slamming to a stop against the wall of the Mars simulator and toppling onto its side, revealing the go-cart-sized wheels at each corner, hidden by fabric flaps.
Hank's cheeks turned red. "A minor malfunction," he said. "I'm building that for a friend of mine to drive him around his home."
"Is he paralyzed?" I asked.
"No, just wealthy. And cosmically lazy. But the chair has been malfunctioning, unfortunately."
"May I take a look?" Ava asked.
Hank shrugged. "Be my guest."
Matt pointed up at the platforms. "How do you get up there?" he asked.
Hank brightened. "I'm glad you asked! There are ladders, of course, but I'm developing a much more efficient system." He pointed to the catapult, then tapped the screen of his smartphone a few times. A few seconds later the catapult sprang upright, launching the mannequin into the air. The human-shaped doll flew, flipped, and slammed its stomach against the edge of a platform. Hank winced as his test pilot dropped five stories and crashed onto the top of a steel cabinet in the middle of the room.
No one spoke.
"How disappointing," Hank said at last. "The last time, that worked perfectly."
Before one of us could reply, the birds overhead began screeching louder and louder. Something shattered. Hank threw out his arms, pushing us back, and one of the drones plummeted from the ceiling with a whoosh. The robot hit the floor and exploded into a hundred fragments of plastic and metal and circuitry.
Ava gasped.
Hank lifted the drivable chair back onto its wheels and flopped onto the cushioned seat. He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the heels of his hands. "I can't do it all alone," he said. "There's just too much."
"Too much what?" I asked.
The chair started moving. Startled, he grabbed the arms.
"Sorry!" Ava said, typing on the keyboard. "I'll switch it off."
Hank jumped to his feet and waved his hands all around. "Too much everything! Too many inventions to perfect. Too many devices to test."
"Why don't you hire assistants?" Matt asked.
Hank smiled.
"What?" Matt said.
"That, Matthew, is precisely what I wanted to talk to you about! In the past, my assistants were a great help. Absolutely. I was far more productive and focused. But they were always running off and taking my ideas with them. My last assistant stole one of my designs and sold it for nearly a million dollars. Granted, that's not a lot of money—"
"That's not a lot of money?" I asked.
"Oh, no, this idea was worth at least ten," Hank said.
Ava kicked me lightly on the ankle. Was I drooling? Possibly.
The HR-4 dinged. I flinched and raised my hands, ready to swat away any flying dough.
Matt said, "So, you were saying ..."
"Let's eat first," Hank suggested. The robot opened the door on its chest, pulled out a perfectly cooked pizza, and hurled it at Hank like a cheese-covered Frisbee. Our dinner skimmed the top of his head, landed on an otherwise empty steel table, and spun to a stop. Hank wiped the crust dust off his head and inspected our meal. He shrugged, removed a knife from a drawer, and sliced the pizza into irregular squares. "Now, where were we?"
"Assistants," Matt said, grabbing a slice.
Hank was watching me. I must have been wincing. "Go ahead, Jack. Coincidentally I sterilized this tabletop for an experiment earlier today. It's probably cleaner than your average dinner plate."
I picked up a thin slice. "Go on," I said.
"Okay, so here's the deal," Hank said. "I consulted with Min—"
The three of us shot one another panicked glances. "You talked to Min?" I said.
He waved his hands in front of his face. "No, no, don't worry. I wasn't reporting you for anything. She is a very charming woman, though. Very bright." He stared past us. The hint of a smile formed on his face.
"Uh ... Hank?"
"What? Oh, right. So, you see, I spoke to her, and as you can tell, I need some help around the lab ..."
"You need a lot of help," Ava said. She nodded to the busted robotic bird, then waved over at the junk pile. "Why do you even have a snowblower in here?"
Eyes raised, Hank rocked his head back and forth like the second hand of an old-fashioned clock. "It's a long story, and, okay, sure, maybe I do need a lot of help. But I think you three might be up to the task. Ava, you are clearly a very talented engineer. Your drone—"
"Fred," she cut in. "His name is Fred."
"Well, he is truly impressive. Min showed me a video of that skateboard you built, too—"
"Pedro," I noted.
Hank laughed. "Pedro, eh? Clever. Anyway, I wonder if you could help me out with my birds, the chair, and the HR-4."
"Harry," Ava said.
"You think I should call it Harry?"
"Machines are people, too. They need real names."
"Right. Okay. Harry. That works." Hank drummed his fingers on his chin, then pointed at my brother. "Matthew, I really, really like the way you step back and think through problems. You're an observer! That is so, so critical. We can't form good theories without data, you know. I can't say I would've tasted the self-cleaning coating on the windows, and I do hope you didn't have any stomach problems the next day, but I was impressed, and I hadn't even thought of the security application. It did stop Jack, here, didn't it? Oh, and discovering my mail chute was a nice little feat, as well. And then that whole rabbit-warren concept—"
"You heard all that?" Matt asked. "Were you eavesdropping on us?"
"Not at the time, no. I wasn't actually here when you first visited. But one of my security cameras played back the video later, and I was very impressed with the way you thought your way through the problem, Matthew. I need someone who can help me bounce around ideas, circumvent obstacles, maybe even cook up a few projects. Do you think you could do that?"
Matt's effort to stifle his smile was failing miserably. He might as well have started jumping up and down and clapping. "I can try," he said.
"Good," Hank said. "Of course, there is also less glorious work to be done. Errands need to be run. Mail sorted. And then there are phones and e-mails to answer."
He didn't look at me. Neither did my siblings. But I could guess who would be left with those less-thrilling chores. And from the ridiculously large smiles on their faces, I could tell that my brother and sister were not going to walk away from this opportunity. In their heads, they were already on the job. But I still had a question. "Okay, so how much do you pay?" I asked. We had enough money from investing what remained of our poetry earnings. But still, who works for free?
"Pay?" Hank smiled; he thought I was joking. And Ava and Matt laughed right along with him, ruining any chance we might have at a respectable salary. "Good one, Jack. Very clever. I spoke with your friend Min, and she thought you would benefit from my guidance. She said it could be an alternative education. Of course, there's no guarantee it will work. What I propose is a two-week trial period. What do you think? Two weeks, and then we'll decide whether to continue."
Before I even had time to take a deep breath, Ava and Matt shouted with excitement. Neither of them noticed that there was nothing in this arrangement to benefit me. But at least it was just going to be a trial.
