The Magic Factory

Then, as if speaking into his ear, he heard the wispy voice of the woman say, “You will save mankind.”

Oliver’s eyes fluttered open. He was back in his alcove bed, bathed in the pale, blue light coming in through the window. It was morning. He could feel his heart thrumming.

The dream had shaken him to the core. What had they meant about him having a destiny? About saving mankind? And who were the man and woman anyway? Figments of his imagination, or something else? It was all too much to fathom.

As the initial shock of the dream began to wear off, Oliver felt a new sensation take over. Hope. Somewhere, deep inside of him, he felt that he was about to experience a momentous day, that everything was about to change.

CHAPTER FOUR

Oliver’s good mood was elevated further when he realized his first class of the day was science, and that meant he’d get to see Ms. Belfry again. Even as he crossed the playground, ducking beneath basketballs that he suspected were deliberately being aimed at his head, Oliver’s sense of excitement only grew.

He reached the staircase and succumbed to the force of the children, who pushed him like a surfer all the way up to the fourth floor. Then he pushed his way out onto the landing and headed for the classroom.

He was first. Ms. Belfry was inside already, in a gray linen dress, setting up a row of small models across the front of her desk. Oliver saw there was a little biplane, a hot air balloon, a space rocket, and a modern airplane.

“Is today’s lesson about flight?” he asked.

Ms. Belfry startled, clearly not having realized one of her students had entered.

“Oh, Oliver,” she said, beaming. “Good morning. Yes, it is. Now, I suspect you know a thing or two about these kinds of inventions.”

Oliver nodded. His inventors book had a whole section on flight, from the first balloons invented by the French Montgolfier brothers, through to the Wright Brothers’ early airplane design, and all the way up to rocket science. Like the rest of the pages of the book, he’d read this section so many times he had most of it committed to memory.

Ms. Belfry smiled like she’d already guessed Oliver would be a fountain of knowledge on this particular subject.

“You might have to help me explain some of the physics to the others,” she told him.

Oliver blushed as he took his seat. He hated speaking out loud in front of his classmates, especially since he was already a suspected nerd and confirming it felt like he was flaunting more than he really wanted to. But Ms. Belfry did have a very calming way about her, as though she thought Oliver’s knowledge was something to be celebrated rather than ridiculed.

Oliver chose a seat near the front of the class. If he was going to be forced to speak aloud, he’d prefer not to have thirty pairs of eyes gawking at him over their shoulders as he did. At least this way he’d only be aware of the four other kids in the front row looking at him.

Just then, Oliver’s classmates started filing in and taking their seats. The noise in the room began to swell. Oliver never understood how other people had so much to talk about. Though he could talk about inventors and inventions forever, there wasn’t much else he felt the need to chat about. It always baffled him how other people managed such easy conversation, and how they shared so many words on what, in his mind, sounded like next to nothing of importance.

Ms. Belfry began her class, waving her arms in an attempt to get everyone to shut up. Oliver felt terrible for her. It always seemed like a battle just to get the kids to listen. And she was so gentle and soft-spoken that she never resorted to raising her voice or shouting, so her attempts to quiet everyone took ages to work. But eventually, the chatter began to die away.

“Today, children,” Ms. Belfry began, “I have a problem that needs solving.” She held up a popsicle stick. “I wonder if anyone can tell me how to make this fly.”

A ripple of hubbub went around the room. Someone shouted out.

“Just throw it!”

Ms. Belfry did as was suggested. The popsicle stick traveled less than two feet before falling to the ground.

“Hmm, I don’t know about you guys,” Ms. Belfry said, “but to me that just looked like falling. I want it to fly. To soar through the air, not just plummet to the ground.”

Paul, Oliver’s taunter from last class, called out the next suggestion. “Why don’t you just ping it on an elastic band? Like a slingshot.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ms. Belfry said with a nod. “But I haven’t told you something. This stick is actually ten feet long.”

“Then make a ten-foot-wide catapult!” someone shouted.

“Or put rocket launchers on it!” another voice chimed in.

The class started to laugh. Oliver shifted in his seat. He knew exactly how the popsicle stick could fly. It all came down to physics.

Ms. Belfry managed to get the class to settle down again.

“This was the exact problem facing the Wright brothers when they were trying to create the first airplane. How to mimic the flight of birds. How to turn this”—she held up the stick horizontally—“into wings that could sustain flight. So, does anyone know how they did it?”

Her gaze flicked immediately to Oliver. He swallowed. As much as he didn’t want to speak aloud, another part of him desperately wanted to prove to Ms. Belfry how smart he was.

“You need to create lift,” he said, quietly.

“What was that?” Ms. Belfry said, although Oliver knew full well she’d heard him perfectly.

Reticently, he spoke a little louder. “You need to create lift.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Oliver felt a blush creep into his cheeks. He felt the change in the room, the tenseness of the other students around him. So much for not having thirty pairs of eyes gawking at him; Oliver could practically feel them burning into his back.

“And what is lift?” Ms. Belfry continued.

Oliver wet his dry lips and swallowed his anguish. “Lift is the name of the force that counters gravity. Gravity is always pulling objects down to the center of the earth. Lift is the force that counteracts it.”

From somewhere behind, he heard Paul’s whispered voice in a mock whine, mimicking, “Lift counteracts it.”

A tittering of laughter rippled amongst the students behind him. Oliver felt his muscles stiffen defensively in response.

Ms. Belfry was clearly oblivious to the quiet mocking Oliver was experiencing.

“Hmm,” she said, as if this was all news to her. “Sounds complicated. Countering gravity? Isn’t that impossible?”

Oliver shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. He really wanted to stop speaking, to have a small respite from the whispers. But clearly no one else knew the answer, and Ms. Belfry was watching him with her sparkling, encouraging eyes.

“Not at all,” Oliver replied, finally taking the bait. “To create lift all you have to do is change how fast air flows around something, which you can do just by changing the shape of the object. So with your popsicle stick, you just need a ridge on the top side. That means that as the stick moves forward the air flowing above and below it have different-shaped paths. Over the humped side of the wing the path is curved, whereas beneath the wing, the path is flat and uninterrupted.”

Oliver finished speaking and immediately pressed his lips together. Not only had he answered her question, he’d gone above and beyond in explaining it. He’d gotten carried away with himself and now he was going to be mocked mercilessly. He braced himself.

“Could you draw it for us?” Ms. Belfry asked.

She held out a board pen for Oliver. He looked at it, wide-eyed. Speaking was one thing, but standing in front of everyone like a target was a whole other!

“I’d prefer not to,” he muttered out the side of his mouth.

He saw the flicker of understanding in Ms. Belfry’s expression. She must have realized she’d pushed him to the edge of his comfort zone, beyond it even, and what she was asking him now was an impossibility.

“Actually,” she said, withdrawing the pen and stepping backward, “maybe someone else would like to try drawing what Oliver’s explained?”

Samantha, one of the brash kids who craved attention, leapt up and snatched the pen from Ms. Belfry. Together they went over to the board and Ms. Belfry helped Samantha draw a diagram of what Oliver was describing.

But as soon as Ms. Belfry’s back was turned, Oliver felt something hit the back of his head. He turned and saw a ball of screwed up paper at his feet. He reached down and picked it up, not wanting to open it, knowing there’d be a cruel note inside.

“Hey…” Paul hissed. “Don’t ignore me. Read the note!”

Tensing, Oliver opened up the paper ball in his hands. He smoothed it on the desk before him. Written in terrible spider-crawl handwriting were the words Guess what else can fly?

Just then, he felt something else hit his head. Another paper ball. It was followed by another, and another and another.

“HEY!” Oliver cried, leaping up and turning around angrily.

Ms. Belfry turned too. She frowned at the scene before her.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“We’re just trying to find things that fly,” Paul said innocently. “One must have hit Oliver by accident.”

Ms. Belfry looked skeptical. “Oliver?” she asked, turning her gaze to him.

Oliver sat back down in his seat, hunkering down. “It’s true,” he mumbled.

By now, the boisterous Samantha had finished her diagram, and Ms. Belfry was able to turn her attention back to the class. She pointed at the board, where there was now a diagram of a wing, not straight but curved like a sideways stretched teardrop. Two dotted lines indicated the paths of air passing above the wing and below it. The flow of air going over the humped wing looked different in comparison to the flow going directly under it.

“Like this?” Ms. Belfry said. “But I still don’t understand how that produces lift.”

Oliver knew all too well that Ms. Belfry knew all this, but having just been pelted by paper balls had made him reluctant to speak again.

Then he realized something. Nothing he did was going to stop the teasing. Either he sat there silently and got picked on for doing nothing, or he spoke up and got picked on for his intelligence. He realized then which he’d prefer.

“Because with the air following in different paths like that, it creates a downward force,” he explained. “And if we take Isaac Newton’s third law of motion—that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction—you can see how the resulting reaction to that force, to the downward force, is that the air traveling under the wing creates lift.”

He folded his arms and sat back against the chair.

Ms. Belfry looked triumphant. “That’s quite right, Oliver.”

She turned back to the drawing and added arrows. Oliver felt a paper ball hit his head but this time he didn’t even react. He didn’t care anymore what his classmates thought of him. In fact, they were probably just jealous that he had brains and knew cool stuff like Isaac Newton’s laws of physics when all they could manage was screwing up a ball of paper and aiming it at someone’s head.

He folded his arms more tightly and, ignoring the paper balls smacking him in the head, focused on Ms. Belfry’s image. She was drawing an arrow pointing down. Beside it she wrote downward force. The other arrow she’d drawn pointed up with the word lift.

“What about hot air balloons?” a voice challenged from behind. “They don’t work that way at all, but they still fly.”

Oliver turned in his seat, searching for the owner of the voice. It was a grumpy-looking kid—dark, bushy eyebrows, dimpled chin—who had joined Paul in throwing the paper balls.

“Well, that’s a completely different law at play,” Oliver explained. “That works because hot air rises. The Montgolfier brothers, who invented the hot air balloon, realized that if you trap the air inside some kind of envelope, like a balloon, it becomes buoyant due to the lower density of hot air inside compared to cold air outside.”

The boy just looked more angry at Oliver’s explanation. “Well, what about rockets?” he challenged further. “They’re not buoyant or whatever you just said. They go up, though. And they fly. How does that work, smarty pants?”

Oliver just smiled. “That comes back to Isaac Newton’s third law of motion again. Only this time the force involved is propulsion, not lift. Propulsion is the same thing that moves a steam train. A big blast out one end produces an opposite reaction of propulsion. Only with a rocket it’s got to get all the way to space, so the blast has to be really massive.”

Oliver could feel himself growing excited as he spoke about these things. Even though all the kids were staring at him like he was a freak, he didn’t care.

He turned back in his seat to face the front. There, smiling proudly, stood Ms. Belfry.

“And do you know what all these inventors had in common?” she said. “The Montgolfiers and the Wrights and Robert Goddard, who launched the first liquid-propellant-fueled rocket? I’ll tell you what. They did things they’d been told were impossible! Their inventions were crazy. Imagine someone saying that we could use the same principles of ancient Chinese catapults to launch a man into space! And yet they became groundbreaking inventors, whose inventions have changed the world, and the whole trajectory of humankind!”

Oliver knew she was speaking to him, telling him that no matter what people did or said, he should never be cowed into silence.

Then something remarkable happened. In response to Ms. Belfry’s passion and enthusiasm, the class fell into stunned silence. It wasn’t the tense silence of a poised attack, but the humbled silence of having learned something inspiring.

Oliver felt a swell in his stomach. Ms. Belfry really was the most awesome teacher. She was the only person who’d shown anywhere near the level of excitement he had for physics and science and inventors, and her excitement even managed to silence his rowdy classmates, if only temporarily.

Just then, a huge gust of wind made the window panes rattle. Everyone jumped in unison and turned their eyes toward the gray skies outside.

“Looks like the storm is going to hit soon,” Ms. Belfry said.

No sooner had she spoken, than the voice of the principal came over the speaker.

“Students, we’ve just received a warning from the National Weather Service. This is going to be the storm of the century, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We really don’t know what to expect. So to be on the safe side, the mayor is canceling classes for the day.”

Everyone started shouting excitedly and Oliver strained to hear the final words of the principal’s announcement.

“The storm is due to hit within the next hour. There are buses outside. Please head straight home. The official warning is to not be outside when the storm hits in approximately one hour. This is a city-wide warning so your parents will be expecting you home. Anyone caught truanting will face suspension.”

Around Oliver, no one seemed to care. All they’d heard was that school was out and they were going to make the most of it. They grabbed their books and hurried out of the classroom like a stampede of buffaloes.

Oliver collected his own things more slowly.

“You did great today,” Ms. Belfry told him as she placed all of her little models into her bag. “Are you okay getting home?” She looked concerned about his welfare.

Oliver nodded to reassure her. “I’ll get the bus with everyone else,” he said, realizing as he did that that might mean enduring a journey with Chris. He shuddered.

Oliver swung the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and followed the rest of the school kids outside. The sky was so dark, it was practically black. It felt very ominous.

Head bowed, Oliver started walking toward the bus stop. But just then, he caught sight of something behind him, something far more scary than a black tropical storm cloud: Chris. And running alongside him were his cronies.

Oliver turned and bolted. He headed straight toward the first bus in the queue. The bus was crammed with kids and clearly ready to leave. Not even checking to see where it was going, Oliver threw himself onboard.

Just in time as well. The mechanism hissed and the door shut behind him. A split second later, Chris appeared on the other side, glowering menacingly. His cronies drew up beside him and they all glared at Oliver through the door, which was really nothing more than a thin shield of protective glass.

The bus set off, moving Oliver away from their fierce faces.

He peered out the window as the bus moved away and began picking up speed. To Oliver’s dismay, Chris and his cronies barged their way straight onto the bus waiting behind. It, too, pulled away from school, following closely.

Oliver gulped with dread. With Chris and his friends just one bus behind, he knew that if they saw him get off, they would too. Then they’d pounce and he’d be in for a pummeling. He chewed his lip with worry, not knowing what to do next. If only his invisibility coat really existed. Now was the time to use it!

With a huge crack, the sky seemed to open. Rain cascaded down and lightning streaked across the sky. So much for an hour before it hit, Oliver thought. The storm was already upon them.

The bus wove perilously along the road. Oliver gripped the metal pole and bumped shoulders with the kids standing around him. Things had gone from feeling ominous to feeling suddenly quite scary.

Another bolt of lightning jagged across the sky. Kids on the bus yelped out in fear.

Oliver realized then that perhaps he could use the storm to his advantage. Since getting off at his own stop was out of the question with Chris’s cronies watching on, he’d have to get off unexpectedly. Blend in with the crowd. And with the pounding rain and general disorientation, that might just be possible.

At that exact moment, the bus slowed to a halt. A large group of kids surged forward for the door. Oliver looked around and saw they were just on the outskirts of the good neighborhood, which appeared to be where the majority of Campbell Junior High pupils lived. Oliver didn’t know the neighborhood particularly well, but he had a vague idea of where it was in relation to his own.

So he followed the crowd, hopping off the bus at an unfamiliar stop. Rain lashed down on him and the others. He tried to stick with the crowd, but to his despair, everyone dispersed in different directions, and quickly too, to escape the weather. Before Oliver could even blink, he was left standing on the sidewalk completely exposed.

Not even a second later, the second bus pulled into the stop. Oliver saw Chris through the steamed up window. Then Chris clearly saw Oliver, because he started pointing excitedly and shouting something to his friends. Oliver didn’t need an interpreter to know what Chris’s gesticulations meant. He was coming for him.

Oliver ran.

He didn’t have much of an idea where he was, but he ran anyway, heading in what he was certain was the vague direction of home.

Without looking behind, Oliver ran and ran. The rain and wind beat him, making it hard going, but this was one of the few occasions where being small was an advantage. Chris would struggle to drag his lumbering body around, Oliver knew, whereas he was sprightly.

But, Oliver realized, Chris wasn’t his only problem. All his friends were with him. The girl in particular was a very fast runner. Oliver stole a glance over his shoulder and saw that she was gaining on him.

Oliver passed some stores, then turned into an alleyway leading to their back streets. He dodged and weaved through obstacles such as abandoned shopping carts and empty boxes that had been swept up in the winds.

Then he rounded a corner. For a brief moment, he was out of sight of the approaching bullies.

As a strong blast knocked over a garbage can, Oliver had a sudden burst of inspiration. Without a moment’s hesitation, he leapt inside the can, crawling over rotten food and empty wrappers until he was completely out of sight. Then he curled into a ball and waited.

The girl’s feet appeared on the strip of sidewalk he could see. She stopped and paced in a full circle, as if looking for him. Then Oliver heard more pounding footsteps and saw that she’d been joined by Chris and the other cronies.

“Where did he go?” he heard one of them shout.

“How did you lose him?” came Chris’s distinct voice.

“He was here one second and gone the next!” the girl yelled back.

Oliver stayed very still. His heart was hammering and his limbs were shaking from all the exertion.

“He’s done one of his spells,” Chris said.

In his stinky, shadowy trash can, Oliver frowned. What did Chris mean?

“That’s so creepy,” the girl said. “You mean he made himself disappear?”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Chris replied. “He’s some kind of freak.”

“Maybe he’s possessed,” one of the boys said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Chris shot back. “He’s not possessed. But there’s something wrong with him. Now do you believe me?”

“I do,” the girl said, but Oliver noticed that her voice was coming from farther away.

He peered to where her feet had been and saw they’d now disappeared from sight. Chris and his cronies were leaving.

Oliver waited. Even after their disparaging conversation about him faded to nothing, he didn’t want to leave the safety of the trash can. There was still a chance one of them was waiting, just in case he was about to reveal his hiding place.

Soon, the rain started to really come down. Oliver could hear it pounding heavily against the metal trash can. Only then did he accept that Chris would definitely have left. Even if he did want to beat Oliver up, he wouldn’t stand in the pouring rain in order to do it, and Oliver was quite certain his cronies wouldn’t be convinced to either.

Finally deciding he was safe, Oliver started to leave the trash can. But just as he wriggled toward the front of it, a huge gust of wind started up. It battered him right back inside. Then the wind must have changed direction, because suddenly Oliver felt the can lurch beneath him. The wind was so strong, it was making him roll!

Oliver gripped the edges of his metal prison. Filled with terror, disorientated, he started to go round and round and round. He felt sick with panic, sick from the motion. Oliver willed it to end soon but it seemed to go on and on. He was thrashed about, jerked around.

Suddenly, Oliver’s head thunked the side of the trash can very hard. Stars appeared in his eyes. He closed them. Then everything went black.

*

Oliver’s eyes fluttered open and took in the sight of the spherical metal prison around him. The spinning motion had stopped but he could still hear the roaring sound of the storm all around him. He blinked, disorientated, his head pounding from the blow that had knocked him out.

He had no idea for how long he’d been unconscious but he was covered in stinking garbage. His stomach swilled with nausea.

Quickly, Oliver shuffled toward the front of the can and peered out. The sky was dark and rain lashed down like a sheet of gray.

Oliver scrambled out of the trash can. It was freezing and it took barely seconds for him to become soaked through. He rubbed his arms in an attempt to get some warmth into them. Shivering, Oliver looked around, trying to discern his location.

Suddenly it dawned on him where he was, where the can had rolled him to during the storm. He was at the factory! Only this time, Oliver noticed, there were lights glowing inside.

His mouth fell open. Was he seeing things? Maybe he’d gotten a concussion from the blow to his head.

The rain continued to lash against Oliver. The lights in the factory glowed like some kind of beacon, drawing him to it.

Oliver hurried forward. He reached the grass around the factory, and it squelched beneath his feet, turned swampy from the downpour. Then he skirted around the side of the warehouse, trampling on the ivy and nettles in his haste to get to the back door, to shelter. He found the door just as he’d left it; ajar, and just wide enough from him to squeeze through. Quickly, he did, and found himself in the same darkened room, with the same smell of dust, the same echo of abandonment.

Oliver paused, relieved to be out of the rain. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Once they had, he saw that everything was just as it had been last time he’d been here, with dusty, cobwebbed machines disused and in disrepair. Except…