Wood Sprites

25: Going To See A Man About A Dog

“Hello,” the receptionist said as the twins walked through the door to their father’s clinic. According to the human resources records, her name was Laura Runkle. She’d only recently graduated from business school and started working at the clinic a month ago. She was young, pretty, and very uncertain about her power. Her face and tone said, “Are you lost?”

Louise had Tesla take up an “off-duty” position beside one of the waiting room chairs, and then made a visible production of settling into said chair. She put on her reading glasses, flipped through the projected pages of her holographic book, and squirmed into the chair to read.

Jillian aimed the receptionist’s attention on Louise by staring at her intently and then sighing loudly. “Bookworm.” And then, having established that Louise was the quiet one of the twins, Jillian turned brightly to the receptionist. “Hi, I’m Jillian Mayer. I’m here to see my dad. He works here.”

The receptionist started to smile, and then she came to a full, horrified stop. “Oh! You’re George’s twins.”

Unsaid was “You’re the two that blew themselves up.” Really, do it once and people don’t let you live it down.

“Yup!” Jillian juggled the big box she was carrying, nearly spilling it, to point in the direction of their father’s office. “Our dad is this way — right? I got something to show him.” She started to march down the hall, all but commanding that she be followed.

“Wait. I don’t know if he’s back there!” The receptionist glanced at Louise, who seemed nose deep in a book. Swallowing the bait, she headed after Jillian. “Which one were you again?”

Louise counted to five, and the shrieks started. According to Laura’s social network page, she was terrified of snakes. While Louise loved the ball python they’d found at a small and possibly illegal pet store, Jillian could better act out “accidentally” dropping the box and setting the snake free.

“Follow,” Louise told Tesla and hurried down the hallway toward the cryo-room. They had practiced the extraction at home, using all stand-in material. It should take her only three minutes, but that was assuming that nothing went wrong. Louise swiped the copy of their father’s keycard through the lock. Jillian could keep the office distracted for several minutes but probably not more than five.

There were skintight gloves, big blue protective gloves, a heavy lined apron, and a full-face plastic facemask. She pulled them on quickly as she scanned the blue-capped cryogenic tanks. In an odd design flaw of the security system, there was no camera in the room. They hadn’t been able to determine how the tanks were labeled. There were two tall square units and two tall cylinder tanks and then a host of short tanks tucked under a work counter. The taller units were simply labeled “1” or “2,” while the short ones counted up to “6.” She knew that the babies were stored as H-2-3-2-753694. The initial seemed to indicate a size, but which of the three units labeled “2” was “H”?

“Hello?” Joy suddenly appeared on one of the small tanks under the counter. “Who’s there?” She patted the side of the tank, claws clicking. “Hello?” Without an aquarium for her, they’d been forced to keep her locked in Tesla’s storage compartment. Luckily, like any baby animal, Joy mostly ate and slept.

“Shhh!” Louise cried. Why did the baby dragon have to wake up now? Louise picked up Joy and put her on her shoulder. The tank was a “2.” Was it the right one?

The small tank was on wheels. She rolled it out from under the counter. Louise swiped her father’s keycard through the reader on the cap and typed in 753694. If the vial was inside, the lock would acknowledge the code. . and unfortunately make a record that it had been accessed.

The reader blinked from red to green. It was the right tank. Louise flipped up the lid and took out the polyurethane cap under the lid. Instantly the air hitting the opened pit turned to misty clouds. There were six wire handles of the racks suspended within the liquid nitrogen. Each was etched with a number. She wanted the second box off the third rack. She unhooked the handle labeled “3” and carefully raised up the rack, wisps of freezing air flowing off it. On the rack were five little boxes inside wire frames, pegged into place by a restraining bar. She removed the bar and wriggled free the second box. She slid off the lid to the box, revealing four frozen vials standing inside slots. She took the first one out and peered closely at the label.

“Hello?” Joy pointed at the one on the far end. “Who’s there?”

Louise put the first vial back into the stand and checked the end vial. 753694. “Score!”

She opened up Tesla’s storage compartment and used the keyword to open the nactka. Once the vial was safe inside, she activated it. The babies safe, she replaced the lid on the vial box, put it back into the rack, put the retaining bar back on, and carefully lowered the rack back into the liquid nitrogen. She was pushing the tank back under the counter when she realized she’d forgotten to put the polyurethane cap back into place.

Swearing, she pulled the tank back, flipped up the lid and put the cap in place.

She started to shake once she and Tesla were back in the hallway, Joy tucked into the wide front pocket of Louise’s hoodie with a bag of Cheerios to keep her quiet. The shrieks were still at full volume, and dozens of loud adult voices were coming from the direction of their father’s office.

Jillian was still in full distraction mode. Time for damage control.

Laura Runkle was the one shrieking. She was standing on a desk, prancing, as if she were trying to run up invisible stairs to get even higher. Several other people were sitting on their desks, trying to look nonchalant but asking loudly, “But is it poisonous?” as if such a thing was in the range of possibilities.

Their dad was at least standing on the floor, his back to the wall, looking terrified while trying to seem in control.

Louise felt guilty. It had never occurred to them that their father might be scared of snakes, too.

Her entrance line was “What happened?”

Jillian glanced up and managed not to grin ear to ear with triumph. “I dropped the box.” She did a little voice waver of distress. “Wiggly got loose.”

“Oh no!” It was Louise’s last scripted line. At this point she was supposed to bravely pick the snake up and put it back in the box. She scanned the room, but the python was nowhere to be seen.

They’d rehearsed “the distraction” in their bedroom with a rolled-up towel cord standing in as “Wiggly.” They’d discovered they couldn’t contain Joy anywhere. Somehow she escaped from everything they put her into except Tesla’s storage compartment with a lot of snacks. With her loose, they couldn’t practice letting the real snake loose and catching it again. Somehow they’d overlooked the fact that the python might actively attempt to escape. The videos they’d watched on handling big constrictors all featured very slow-moving snakes.

She glanced questioning to Jillian, who shrugged and spread her hands.

“Louise.” Their father’s voice cracked. “Get the snake and put it in the box. Please! Now!”

“Okay,” she said to at least seem like she was obeying him. She dropped down to hands and knees to peer under desks and behind filing cabinets. So many places it could hide.

“Is it poisonous?” one of the men sitting on a desk asked.

“No, it’s a constrictor.” Jillian joined Louise on the floor. “They kill their prey by coiling around it and choking it to death.”

The man had been extending his foot down, and he paused, freezing in place. “Kill its prey?”

Where was the python hiding? There were many nooks and crannies, but most of them Jillian would have seen the snake moving across the floor to reach. The box canted sideways marked where Jillian dropped it. The desk that Laura Runkle was standing on, still screaming, was next to it. Just beyond the desk was a door marked “Masturbatory Chamber.” She had a weirdly strong feeling that the snake must have slipped unnoticed into the room beyond.

Her father let out a yelp as she opened the door and stepped into the room.

The snake was on the floor, as she expected, coiled in a pair of men’s pinstripe trousers. There was a businessman perched on a table, clutching a magazine to his front.

“No! No! Don’t come in!” the businessman cried.

And her father snatched Louise up and carried her out of the room.

“I need to get the snake.” She squirmed in his hold.

“I will get it,” he said firmly.

“But — but—” She didn’t want to say he was scared of it, but obviously he was.

“I will deal with it.” He caught Jillian by the shoulder as he walked past her and pulled her in his wake. He carried Louise all the way to the back of the warren of cubicles and sat her down in a chair. “Stay here.”

A minute later he returned, looking ashen but holding the box.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Louise said. “I didn’t know you — you didn’t like snakes.”

“I grew up in rattlesnake country. I know that they’re not the same, but fear is not always rational. I’m sorry. I know you want a pet, but Daddy just can’t deal with the idea of a snake in the house.”

Tesla kept faltering as they backtracked to the pet store, returned the snake, and made their way to the subway. She had forgotten to turn off the magic generator. She was afraid he was breaking down, but she didn’t want to call attention to it. If their father decided he could troubleshoot Tesla, he might find all her changes to Tesla’s programming and the nactka in his storage bin.

Luckily, just as they reached the stairs down to the subway, their father’s work called and he wasn’t able to push off their demands.

“Let me put my kids on the express and then I’ll be back.”

He kissed them both on top of their heads. “Go home. Straight home. I’ll be tracking Tesla and will be worried until I see he’s home.”

Jillian barely waited for their father to be out of earshot. “You got it?”

Louise nodded, watching Tesla’s head twist and turn. The subway train came rumbling in and the robotic dog shuddered and pressed up against her.

“Come on, boy.” She patted the wide shoulder. “Keep it together until we get home.”

If Tesla broke down before then, they were going to have a complete mess on their hands. There was no way they could abandon such an expensive machine on the subway system, but if they had to call their parents, they could discover everything.

She pulled Tesla toward the subway train and, as the door opened, dragged him on board. “Just a little longer, Tesla. Please. We need to get home.”

By the time they hit their stop, Tesla was walking in a wavering line, drifting this way and that on the sidewalk. As they neared the house, Louise stopped being worried about getting home and started to feel bad for the robotic dog. What if they’d totally broken him so he couldn’t be fixed? She’d thought she would be happy to be free from an ever-present spy, but the idea of him going away completely was making her eyes burn.

At the corner of their street, he came to a complete halt.

“Tesla!” she cried.

“Stupid dog.” Jillian caught him by the collar and tried to pull him toward their house.

The dog flinched. “But it’s so big!” he said in his Christopher Robin voice. “It just keeps going and going. And where is this home we’re going to? How far away is it?”

“Tesla?” Louise said.

He cocked his head. “What? We think it’s a reasonable question. We want to stop and see something. Everything is so interesting, but we keep on moving! Why can’t we stop here and look, just for a minute?”

“Oh. My. God,” Jillian whispered as Louise stared open-mouthed at the dog.

There was movement in Louise’s pocket. Joy poked her head out. “Strawberry.”

Tesla cocked his head at the baby dragon. “Hello.”

“Hello!” Joy patted Tesla’s black nose inches from her. “Who’s there?”

Louise took a deep breath as she remembered that Joy had said the same phrase in the storage room as she pointed at the vial holding the babies. “Oh.”

“We think our name is Nikola Tesla.” He tilted his head the other direction. “Or that might be just my name and. . and the others have their own names. We’re not in agreement about that.”