Missus Nedraw, the proprietor of the Rorrim Mirror Emporium, had been the answer, proof that all was not lost. A.M. and P.M. had touched her, along with Otto and Sheed, and she’d been permanently unfrozen, free to chase her mirror monsters.
Entry #78
A Clock Watcher touch + a human touch = an unfrozen person.
DEDUCTION: Enough unfrozen Fry residents could rival Mr. Flux’s Clock Watcher army.
Three unstuck humans—Otto, TimeStar, and Petey—and not very many Clock Watchers meant they better get moving.
“We won’t be able to unfreeze everyone, but I’ve got a few names in mind. A.M. and P.M., you’re fast, can you two help zip me and TimeStar around the county?”
The Golden Hours nodded fervently.
“What about me?” Petey asked.
“I’ve got a different job for you. I just need to get you a lab partner.” Otto explained what he meant, and when he finished, Petey grinned big.
TimeStar said, “Where do you want me to go first?”
“For now, we’re sticking together.”
“Why? We’ll cover more ground if we split up.” He stopped, considered. “I’m really debating with myself.”
Another Grandma saying came to mind: you boys could start an argument with your own reflections.
Otto scribbled in his notebook, thinking as he wrote. “We’ll split up soon enough. Gonna need your help with something big first.”
“If you say so.”
Otto ran around the ice cream shop, his notepad pages fluttering. Between the day’s observations, deductions, and next steps, this maneuver was the most complicated yet. Very likely one-use-only. There’d be no second chances.
With everyone assigned their role, Otto asked, “Any questions?”
Father Time raised his hand. “If we win, can we have more ice cream?”
Otto said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Petey explained to the Golden Hours that when they carried Otto and TimeStar around the county, they couldn’t move at light speed. “Going that fast will disintegrate a human.”
A.M. and P.M. nodded thoughtfully. “Good to know.”
The Golden Hours going nowhere near their top speed were still pretty darn fast, getting Otto and TimeStar from the ice cream shop to the edge of the Gnarled Forest, where Wiki and Leen Ellison remained frozen.
TimeStar said, “Oh, wow! The Epic Ellisons.”
“Me and P.M. will unfreeze Leen. You and A.M. get Wiki.”
TimeStar moved toward Leen before Otto finished talking. “You take Wiki.”
“Um, okay. I guess it doesn’t matter.”
TimeStar and A.M. worked on unfreezing Leen. Otto approached Wiki, and was not looking forward to it. “Listen, I’m going to unstick you now. I have to touch you to do it. Is it okay if I grab your arm?”
Grandma said they should always ask permission before touching people. No matter the circumstance, even if time was frozen.
“Yes, you can touch my arm.”
Otto reached for her and motioned for P.M. to do the same. “I’m going to have to explain something kind of unbelievable to you.”
Wiki said, “That old guy and you are the same person. He must be from the future. Which means time travel is a thing.”
Otto snatched his hand back, semi-furious. “How do you know that?”
“I saw you two standing side by side. Even with him being older, you share thirty-two identical facial characteristics. Me and Leen don’t have that many similarities, and we’re twins. It’s either time travel or some kind of cloning experiment. I estimated time travel was seventy-seven percent more likely. An easy assumption.”
Huffing but forcing himself to focus, Otto grasped her arm. P.M. touched her shoulder, and Wiki sagged from her previous frozen state. Smiling, she flexed, bounced in place, shadowboxed the air with several quick jabs. A few yards away, Leen Ellison stretched, enjoying freedom, the gear in her tool belt clanking with each movement. “You okay, Wiki?”
“Good to go, sis.” Wiki leaned into Otto and whispered, “Where’s Sheed?”
“We’re going to get him. We need your help.”
Wiki dismissed that with a hand wave. “Of course you need our help to get your Sheed, nothing new there.” She jutted her chin toward TimeStar. “Where’s his Sheed? The way you two are, how’s grown-up you not with grown-up him?”
He didn’t bother turning away or try to control his facial expressions. He didn’t care to hide what he knew of Sheed’s fate. It was a hard secret to have.
“Oh.” Wiki sounded uncharacteristically . . . kind and sad. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” She touched his arm, and a tiny electric shock passed between them. Even though she hadn’t asked first, it was okay.
“Don’t be sorry yet. Our Sheed is in the clock tower, and he needs us.”
“Then he’s got us.” She stepped closer, still touching his arm, and whispered, “Don’t tell Leen about Old Sheed. You know how she gets.”
Otto actually didn’t know how Leen got, beyond her knack for building strange, dangerous machines. He nodded anyway.
Wiki yelled to her sister, “Hey, Leen! Time to go to work.”
Leen’s lip quivered; her head whipped between Wiki and the woods. “But my robot.”
“Leave it for now. We’ll come back—”
Otto stopped her. “Actually, I wasn’t planning on leaving it.”
According to his notes, big objects could be unfrozen when two people touched them—just like the upside-down levitating car on Main Street.
Otto delved into the shadows toward the massive machine. “Hey, TimeStar, do you mind giving me a hand?”
There were other stops to make, other allies to recruit. Mr. Archie and Anna, once unstuck, provided supplies from their hardware store. Dr. Medina wanted in on the fight, and promised her healthiest animals would help, too. (Otto didn’t know how that was going to work exactly, but he wasn’t in a position to turn away volunteers.)
Missus Nedraw, however, was not so willing.
“No,” she shrieked, coiling a bandage around a circular, sucker-shaped bruise on her calf—an injury sustained wrestling the mirror tentacles. “I almost lost a prisoner because of your carelessness. I will not leave my post here at the emporium, and you cannot have any of the things you asked for. You created this problem, you fix it on your own! Do you hear?”
Otto had been afraid this might happen, so he gave P.M. the signal they’d discussed, and quickly (though not so quick that they’d disintegrate the warden) Missus Nedraw got zipped from the Mirror Emporium and dropped off fifty miles away at a Walmart in Richmond.
P.M. returned to Otto directing Clock Watchers and county residents to gather the necessary items. When he was sure the plan was being executed to his satisfaction, Otto said, “Get me back to the lab while the others finish up here.”
In a blink, he was at Petey’s. P.M. gave a polite nod, then zipped away again.
Leen hunched over TimeStar’s malfunctioning time travel device, Petey at her shoulder. The two of them grinned, heads bobbing in agreement. Otto hoped that was a good sign.
“What did you find out?”
Leen spun her chair so they faced each other, pointed at some new complicated drawing on Petey’s corkboard. All graph lines, and swooping curves, and mathematical equations that looked like a language from another planet.
She said, “This device is fine as far as I can tell. There’s no damage to it. All interior connections and circuits—if that’s what you even call parts this advanced—haven’t been disturbed.”
“So why can’t TimeStar go home?”
Petey said, “It was so obvious once Leen suggested it. Thank you, Leen.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Petey.” Leen bowed to the applause in her head.
“TimeStar’s trying to go forward in time. There is no forward when time is frozen. Unless we win, we’re at the end.”
Otto whipped out his notepad jotting that down, another deduction—and maybe one more maneuver—came to mind. “Okay. We’re almost ready. Even if we weren’t, we can’t wait. There’s no telling what kind of horrible things Mr. Flux is doing to Sheed, if he hasn’t outright frozen him already. We have to rescue him now!”
Petey and Leen—especially Leen—agreed, wholeheartedly. The horrors Sheed was surely enduring were beyond imagining.