The Amazing Thinking Machine by Dennis Haseley

Author:Dennis Haseley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: StarWalk Kids Media
Published: 2016-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Word had gotten out that we were building something. Roy said the only kid he’d told had been Bobby Olsen, but maybe others had heard us hammering and wanted to see if it was going to be another fort. That day after school, as Roy tightened up the switch cover, the Mullen sisters and several other kids came by our house. They stood out front, peering into the backyard where we were working. Soon another group—the Davis twins and their sister, Sally, and Bobby Olsen himself—tried to get a glimpse of our machine from our back-door neighbors’ walk, their view half blocked by two thin trees.

“We’ll show them a thing or two,” Roy said, and laughed.

So that had been his plan all along: to show the others.

“They won’t believe it,” I said, and laughed too, so he would think that I saw things as he did.

While the kids strained to watch, Roy screwed a thick metal ring into the bottom of the machine in the back. He retrieved a long bicycle chain and lock from the garage and ran the chain from the ring along the ground to a tall, narrow tree. He circled the tree with the chain and locked it, pocketing the key. “We don’t want those stiffs taking this for wood,” he said.

“They wouldn’t even know it’s wood, since it’s painted black,” I said. He smiled.

Also from the garage he took the rest of the parts from what he’d called the radio transmitter and the flashing light; from his room he brought out his crystal radio set. All this he put inside the machine. I went up to the trapdoor and watched him. He was wiring them together.

Back in the garage he told me I was never to tell Mom that he’d been messing with Dad’s car. Then with his jackknife he cut off a sizeable square from the underside of the piece of folded-over canvas that covered the old auto. He carried it out to the backyard; we held it open between us and lifted the pale yellow cloth over the machine like a blanket.

Seeing this, the kids must have figured out that whatever the contraption was, there wouldn’t be much excitement with it today. When I looked for them again, both groups had gone.

That night I stood a moment at our bedroom window, making sure I saw the shape of the machine before I crawled into bed. Then I pulled up the covers and said, “Roy.” I realized I could see my breath when I spoke, which was something new for our room. “Roy?” I said again, watching it.

“Yeah?”

“It’s cold.” I wondered if I would be able to make smoke rings in our room before the winter was over.

“Pull up the covers.”

“I did. How come you put those things in the machine?”

“Which?”

“The light and the radio, the things you built.”

“I put them in because me being in the machine is just a preliminary stage.”

“Oh,” I said. “But what’s preliminary?” The p sound made a puff, and I wondered if he had noticed it too, when he’d said it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.