The Age Altertron by Mark Dunn Read Free Book Online

York World’s
Fair, at the time one of the largest world’s fairs that had ever been staged.
Mr. McCall later wrote a book about the New York World’s Fair, and one could
find within the den/TV room/bear cave many pictures and posters and souvenirs
from the fair. The souvenir Rodney and Wayne liked most from their father’s
collection was a tabletop model of the fair’s “Trylon and Perisphere.” The model
sat on a little table next to Mr. McCall’s easy chair. The actual Trylon was
a tall, pointy tower that rose into the sky like the Washington Monument. Its
companion, the Perisphere, was so large in actuality that fair visitors could
ride a long escalator right into the middle of it to find out what the “World
of Tomorrow” was going to look like.
    Becky’s father, Mr. Craft, who sometimes came to the McCall home to watch boxing
matches with Mr. McCall and Mr. Lipe and Principal Kelsey, once picked up the
model of the Trylon and Perisphere and tossed it back and forth in his hands
in a disrespectful way, and made a funny comment about it. He said that the
real Trylon and Perisphere must have looked to people like a gigantic golf ball
that had fallen off its gigantic golf tee. Mr. McCall was not amused. He stopped
inviting Mr. Craft to the McCall home after that remark.
    But this didn’t stop Mr. Craft from returning to the McCall home on this particular morning. Here he was standing in the den holding his baby-sized daughter Becky in his arms.
Mr. and Mrs. Ragsdale were also present. Mr. Ragsdale, looking very upset, kept running his trembling
hand over and over again through his thinning hair. (Yesterday Mr. Ragsdale had been totally bald but
now he had some hair.) Mrs. Ragsdale was wringing her hands and pacing alongside her husband. There
were other worried people in the room as well, each looking about eleven-and-a-half years younger,
and each of whom had come to crowd themselves into the small room to find out what was to be done.
They had followed Professor Johnson all the way from his house to the McCall residence, peppering
him with questions along the way: “What has happened to my little boy? Where did my little girl go?”
People often turned worriedly to the Professor when a new calamity struck the town, but this time they
were even more worried than usual, for there was the serious matter of lost children to be concerned about.
    Mr. Craft had come on behalf of one of the salesmen at his appliance store,
a man named Armstrong, who had that morning gone into the room where his six-year-old
girl Daisy and his fouryear-old boy Darvin slept, and found their beds empty.
He was so upset that he went into the bathroom and climbed into the tub with
all of his clothes on and would not get out.
    Mr. Dean, the newspaper editor, had also come to the house. He wanted to hear
the Professor’s opinion about what had happened so that he could put it in his
paper. Mr. Dean had already written the first few lines of his article about
the latest calamity and was waiting for the Professor’s comments so that he
could finish it. In the article Mr. Dean planned to remind his readers that
the most logical reason for the disappearance of Pitcherville’s youngest residents
was sunspots, pure and simple. But he had an obligation to give other possibilities,
even if those other possibilities pointed to a Pied Piper or bad milk. It is
the duty of a journalist to give all sides—even the ones that make no sense.
    “So what is your theory, Professor?” prodded Mr. Dean. He rudely waved
his reporter’s pad in front of Professor Johnson’s face as if he expected the
Professor to write the theory down himself.
    Professor Johnson pushed the pad away. He was feeling uncomfortable, because
he didn’t like being trapped in tight spaces with a lot of people. He didn’t
ride elevators for this reason, and he never played games in which the object
was to see how