Chapter Thirteen

Journey had taken her mother’s book and sprawled out on a brocade sofa in a nook of windows.

Her own thoughts, like the light snow falling outside, began to drift. Poring over the pages, she grasped at the idea that her mother had also been an inventor, and she wondered why she’d never mentioned it. Her mother only ever told her of her grandfather’s great mind, and how Journey had inherited his magical ability, but having seen him, she wondered what had happened to his shop, and to his spirit. She felt there was hope for her to do great things there. Miraculous things. Impossible things.

She studied the intricate robot design written in meticulous pencil lines, with its wide binocular-like eyes and hint of a mouth. She noticed a happy sketch of a cube, and recalled the mysterious glass one she had picked up, and how strangely protective her grandfather had been of it. Then a new thought came . . . If her grandfather couldn’t get his inventions to work, perhaps she could help! Journey was unstoppable.

With hope swelling in her chest, she shut the book, climbed on top of the front desk, and began to muster the magic inside her. The magic swirled around her and grew more concentrated in her open palms. All her life, she’d never felt like she fit in, but there, standing in the once-famous shop, Journey felt right at home. She released the splendid orbs of energy from her hands, and the magic projected around her, ensconcing her in a web of equations and numbers that lived in her head. Quotients and fractions. Decimals and coefficients. Calculations of additions and subtractions, brackets and parentheses. Her vision swam as she explored it all.

After she was done testing her ideas, the magic extinguished, and she glanced around the room, taking new details of it in. In the corner, a curious red, rounded fence adorned with metal florets caught her eye. Following a sudden sense of intuition—or maybe it was her magic—she made her way to it and stepped through its groaning little gate then pressed her boot down on a pedal. The platform began to rise up a pillar. It was an elevator. Before she knew it, she was headed straight toward the ceiling! But then, a hatch parted, and the elevator took her even farther up into a dark, wood-smelling abandoned room.

“Wow.” She breathed, gazing around at her unexpected discovery.

She stepped off the elevator and it descended, vanishing behind her as she took in the large and drafty room. Despite the cobwebs coating flasks and beakers on the center table, the scuffed-up wooden floorboards, inventions covered in white gossamer sheets, and the stale air of neglect, Journey knew a creative space from any other kind of space, and this room buzzed with inspiring energy, even more than she’d first detected in the shop below. It vibrated through every molecule.

Passing an antique cabinet, she crossed to a covered invention and parted the sheet to get a gander. “Jangleator 2000?” she mused, disappearing under the sheet to marvel at the strange old machine.

“I knew it!” came a boy’s awestruck voice. His tune quickly changed. “Ahh! A ghost!”

Journey emerged from behind the sheet as the boy cowered under a desk. Apparently, he had stumbled upon the elevator and had taken it up there—only to assume that the figure examining the Jangleator 2000 was a ghost. Striding toward him, Journey took in his green-and-orange tartan suit, green polka-dot bow tie, and owlish glasses with a makeshift magnifying lens clipped on.

“Who are you?” they asked each other in unison.

“I’m Journey,” she said. “Jeronicus’s granddaughter.”

Edison stood to greet her. “I’m Edison. Edison Latimer. Professor Jangle’s most trusted assistant,” he said with all the pride in the world.

Journey blinked at him, staving off an ounce of envy.

“You want to be my apprentice?” he asked optimistically.

“Do you want to be mine?” Journey asked him right back.

“I asked first,” he said pointedly.

She sighed, shook her head, and walked away, eager to keep exploring.

“As the Head Inventor, I insist we leave at once,” Edison called after her.

She combed over mysterious gadgets on the desk. “Not until I find what I’m looking for.” She contemplated a cobweb-covered machine that resembled a typewriter, and kept searching.

“What are you looking for?” he inquired.

She opened the creaky little door of a dusty hutch. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

“You really shouldn’t be touching anything in here because you never know when it could do something like—” He accidentally knocked over a kettle-like contraption that clattered loudly to the floor and rolled to a stop. Before it, there was an object covered by a ratty white sheet.

Journey crossed to it, with Edison chattering by her side. She tentatively pulled off the sheet to reveal a mechanical robot—the same one she’d seen in her mother’s book of inventions! It was three feet of sturdy brass plates, with stocky arms and legs, and a head that practically resembled a pair of gigantic binoculars. The Buddy 3000.

Journey knelt to get a better look.

Edison followed suit. “There is something here. Why didn’t the professor tell me?” He moved past his shock and dismay, and his face lit up. “It’s— It’s amazing!” he hollered.

Journey scoured the robot for an on switch, but couldn’t find one. “It’ll be even more amazing when I get it to work,” she mumbled, deep in thought.

“If the professor couldn’t get it to work, what makes you think you can?”

She looked at Edison, straightening her posture. “Because there’s nothing that says I can’t.”

“What does that even mean?” Edison asked her.

She noted the robot had a square hole in the center of its chest, like it was missing a heart.

A cube-like heart . . .

“Wait.” Her eyes widened. She had an idea.

After a quick stop downstairs, Journey returned to the workshop with the mysterious glass cube she’d noticed earlier. Carefully, she slid the cube into the cavity of the robot’s chest with a gratifying click. She waited for it to turn on and activate. Nothing happened.

Edison knelt back down. “There’s something wrong with it,” he remarked.

“There’d be something wrong with you, too, if you were stuck in a dark room all your life,” Journey retorted, her tone perhaps a bit more defensive than she’d intended. She found a page for the cube’s design on the worktable while Edison peered over her shoulder. “It looks like the power source is in a superposition of states. We just need something to collapse the wave function.”

They referenced the designs together. “So will it work or not?” he asked.

“Yes,” Journey answered.

“What are you saying yes to?” Edison asked indignantly. “Will it work, or not? It’s a simple question. All I request is a simple answer!”

“It will work,” Journey said warmly. “At least I have to believe it will.”

Just then, beeping and whirring sounded behind them. Journey and Edison whirled around, facing the robot, whose radial aperture-eyes were now open, whose glass cube now glowed and spun, and who had taken a few steps toward them. Journey and Edison turned back to each other.

And screamed.