012518e

F.T.L. Geek

We all thought Billy Watson was a dummy until he built a faster-than-light drive for his science project. We take Physical Science in 9th Grade. Billy had done some stupid thing with pea plants for his project in 8th grade. He'd fed them some special plant food and they all died. Then the next summer the kudzu had just about taken over the field behind the school, and Billy claimed that was cos he'd dumped the experiment there. At the time I told him he was full of it, but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, this year we had to do something to do with physics or engineering, and Billy said he was going to invent an ftl drive. "That way," he said, "I can patent it and get rich, and I won't have to hang around here any more." Well, we explained that even if he had the brains to build one, which he didn't, an ftl drive would be stolen by the CIA and he would spend the rest of his life in an underground laboratory in Virginia. Didn't slow him down any.

Billy didn't tell Mrs. Haskell what he was going to make. He didn't want her telling the CIA. So he told her he was doing his project on electromagnetism. She believed him! We told her he was lying, but she always takes his side, says we pick on him. Well, we do, but he deserves it, the little geek!

I can't explain exactly how he made it. He downloaded some plans from the Internet, but he didn't have all the equipment they called for so he made substitutions. For instance, the plans called for a cyclotron. Billy substituted an old Kenmore washing machine. "Close enough," he said. I do know that he made quite a few raids to the old sinkhole near the school, which is where most people dump their appliances and junk cars. When he got done, his project was a monster. I mean, it was bigger than his house! I stopped by one day on my scooter to take a look at it.

"You dummy," I said, "you'll never even get that to the school. And it sure won't fit in the classroom. You are such a dork."

"No prob., scooter-face," he replied. "I built an antigrav. sled to carry it there, and I figure Mrs. Haskell will come outside to see it." He was right, too. She always liked him best.

It was that night, I guess, that Joe-Bob came up with his idea. "She'll give him an 'A' even though it won't work," he said, "but I'm going to fix him." He hefted a 4-pound sledge hammer he'd swiped from the building supply store. "Who's with me?"

"Come on, JB," I said, "leave the geek alone. It will be bad enough for him having that rusting pile of garbage in his front yard, reminding him of how dumb he is."

"No, I want to see him cry when he comes outside tomorrow morning and sees its guts strewn half-way across town."

Well, I didn't go with him, but a bunch of others did. I trailed along behind to see what happened. I guess I had the feeling even then that Billy knew something we hadn't given him credit for. Joe-Bob crept up to the thing about 3:30 in the morning, when no one else was out but us. Even the high-school kids had finished screwing out by the lake and were home in bed. There was kind of a blue glow around the thing, like Billy'd left a night-light on somewhere inside it. Joe-Bob raised his hammer and swung.

There was the loudest CLANG! you ever heard. I figured for sure Billy would come running out of the house, maybe with a baseball bat. But no, far as I could tell he didn't even wake up. Joe-Bob raised the hammer to let loose again but the blow didn't fall. About that time the blue glow got a lot brighter, and it kind of expanded to include Joe-Bob and Billy's mailbox, which was right behind him. Suddenly, Joe-Bob shot up into the air, yelling like the dickens, and the mailbox tore right out of the ground and went with him. In no time at all we couldn't see Joe-Bob or hear him. We waited around a few minutes and then just went on home. We never did see or hear anything of Joe-Bob or the mailbox again, unless you count Mr. Thomas finding the hammer imbedded in the roof of his house over on the other side of town the next day.

Finally, the big day came. Billy came riding up to school on his machine, steering it with the wheel from an old John Deere that he'd mounted on the front. He parked it right in the middle of the parking lot. When 4th period came around, he persuaded Mrs. Haskell to come outside and look at it, and of course the whole class came too. Most of them crowded up close around it, marveling at all the weird things he'd made it out of, but I hung back. I had a funny feeling that we were going to see some fireworks.

Billy talked a minute or so about how important an ftl drive was, how we could go to the stars and all, and how he was going to be rich and famous. Then he pressed a big red button. The whole thing just vanished. A big wind rushed into where it had been, and there was a sound like the loudest fire cracker you ever heard. A couple of the kids never did get their hearing back. I was jerked off my feet and slammed into the pavement, like to broke my arm. I got to my feet quick as I could and scanned the skies. Didn't see nothing, then or later. Billy never came back. The sheriff figured the machine had exploded right there in the parking lot, but I dunno. I kinda figure it worked just like Billy said it would. I think he went to a star. Thing is, he couldn't come back. See, when he pressed the red button, he wasn't wearing any space suit; just his regular clothes. I guess it's hard to breathe out there in space. Yep, I think Billy did everything right except that one teensy detail, and he's orbiting some far off star right now, cold and dead. Stupid little geek.