Nick and Tesla's Solar-Powered Showdown Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number:

  2015946943

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-59474-867-7

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59474-866-0

  Designed by Molly Murphy, based on a design by Doogie Horner

  Illustrations by Scott Garrett

  Production management by John J. McGurk

  Quirk Books

  215 Church Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19106

  quirkbooks.​com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Authors

  DANGER! DANGER!

  DANGER! DANGER!

  The how-to projects in the book involve hot glue, projectiles, batteries, and other potentially dangerous elements. Before you build any of the projects, ASK AN ADULT TO REVIEW THE INSTRUCTIONS. You’ll probably need their help with one or two of the steps anyway.

  Although we believe these projects to be safe and family-friendly, accidents can happen in any situation; we cannot guarantee your safety. THE AUTHORS AND PUBLISHER DISCLAIM ANY LIABILITY FROM ANY HARM OR INJURY THAT MAY RESULT FROM THE USE, PROPER OR IMPROPER, OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK. Remember, the instructions in this book are not meant to be a substitute for your good judgment and common sense.

  The first time Nikola Copernicus Holt surfed the Web by himself, he was looking for pictures of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Nikola (who would soon insist on being called “Nick”) didn’t know how to type. And he could barely spell “big,” “red,” or “dog,” let alone “Clifford,” which came out “kifwErt” on his first attempt. But Nikola was a precocious and tenacious boy, and after lots of hunting and pecking and googling, he found Clifford.

  Unfortunately, he also found—and installed and activated—much more than that. When his twin sister, Tesla Nightingale Holt, found him, Nick was crying and pounding the keyboard because the Clifford pictures had been replaced by a dozen blinking pop-up ads that filled the screen and wouldn’t go away.

  “I want the funny dog!” Nick wailed.

  His parents just wanted their computer to work—and it did, but only after several hours of laborious debugging to remove all the malware that Nick had unwittingly downloaded. When they were finished, the Holts told both children they were not to use the computer again without adult supervision.

  Tesla started crying, because she had lost a privilege she didn’t even know she had. And it was all her brother’s fault and it just wasn’t fair.

  Nick started crying, again, because he still wanted to see the funny dog.

  All this drama happened when Nick and Tesla were four and a half years old.

  Over the next seven years, Nick spent many an hour on many a computer. But he never again downloaded a virus because he always remembered to be careful and cautious.

  Until now.

  “I say we open it,” Nick announced.

  He reached for the ENTER key on the laptop computer.

  Tesla reached over the screen to block him.

  The twins were sitting on the floor of the cramped second-floor bedroom they’d been sharing all summer in their Uncle Newt’s house. They were facing each other, with the computer between them.

  Nick stabbed his finger at the computer keyboard.

  Tesla reached to yank the laptop away …

  In the distance a BOOM sounded, and the whole house seemed to lift into the air around them and then slam back down.

  The lights shut off. So did the laptop screen.

  Nick and Tesla were too stunned to speak, which is why they were able to hear their uncle calling to them from deep in the basement of the house.

  “I’m all right!” Uncle Newt shouted. “It’s a surprise!”

  For a moment, everything was silent. Then Tesla let out a sigh of relief. She and her brother had learned that house-shaking blasts were a common occurrence when Uncle Newt was in the basement. It was where he worked on his various inventions—all of them prone to exploding.

  “For a second I thought you’d set off some kind of booby trap,” Tesla said to Nick.

  “The power went off before I could hit ENTER,” he replied.

  Then the lights came back on.

  And so did the laptop. And when the twins’ eyes adjusted to the suddenly bright room, the computer screen was back on and the same words were still flashing, flashing, flashing:

  OPEN THIS FILE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PARENTS …

  OPEN THIS FILE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PARENTS …

  OPEN THIS FILE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PARENTS …

  Nick and Tesla hadn’t seen their mother and father in more than a month—not since their parents had driven them to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., and put them on a flight to San Francisco. The twins were supposed to have a fun-filled visit with their Uncle Newt in Half Moon Bay, California, while Mr. and Mrs. Holt, horticulture experts for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, traveled to the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan to study revolutionary soybean irrigation techniques.

  Supposedly.

  But soon after arriving in Half Moon Bay, the kids discovered that their parents were in fact working on a top-secret space-based solar-power project. And that they were on the run from someone who wanted to steal their discoveries. And that this evil someone had sent spies to capture Nick and Tesla. And that mysterious government agents monitoring the whole mess would occasionally come swooping in when the bad guys got too close. And … no, that’s all the ands for now.

  All in all, it had been one of their more eventful summers.

  But Nick didn’t particularly like excitement, and he was worried about his mom and dad. Which was why he had been spending so much time online, obsessively researching space-based solar power and satellites and conspiracy theories.

  Then, just minutes ago, Nick had been scrolling through the forums on a particularly paranoid website for young conspiracy nuts (tinfoilhatsjr.​ntz). Suddenly, it had appeared on the screen: a pop-up box with ten large, flashing words that said

  OPEN THIS FILE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PARENTS …

  That’s when Nick’s argument with Tesla began.

  And it wasn’t over yet.

  “Let’s try that again,” said Nick, once more reaching for the ENTER key.

  “Let’s not,” said Tesla, throwing her arms over the keyboard to block him.

  “I can’t believe you’re stopping me!” Nick fumed.

  “I can’t believe you need to be stopped,” Tesla snapped. Like most brothers and sisters, Nick and Tesla argued from time to time. But this particular argument was unusual. Typically Tesla was the one who wanted to do something risky and Nick was the one who argued against it. This time, Nick was sure that clicking on the mysterious pop-up message would lead them to important information about their missing parents. But Tesla was equally sure that it was a bad and risky idea.

  They paused their squabbling for a few seconds while each of their brains adjusted to being on an u
nfamiliar side of the argument. Then Nick started up again: “That message is a huge clue!”

  Tesla jumped in. “That message is an obvious trap.”

  “You’re being paranoid!”

  “You’re being reckless.”

  “Just listen to me!”

  “Just listen to me.”

  “This is stupid!”

  “Yes,” Tesla said, “it is.”

  Nick threw up his hands, leaning back away from the computer. “OK, fine. You win,” he grumbled.

  “Good,” said Tesla. “Now what we should do is … HEY!”

  The second Tesla let her guard down, Nick stabbed at the ENTER key.

  This time, instead of blocking his hand, Tesla snatched the laptop and jerked it away.

  Nick tried to grab it back. “We’ve got to give it a try!” he said.

  Tesla hopped to her feet and backed away.

  Nick stood and stepped toward her. “Why won’t you let me open it?”

  “Because we don’t know what it is.”

  “That’s exactly why we have to open it!”

  Nick took another step toward Tesla. There wasn’t much space for her to maneuver—the bedroom was only a little larger than a fairly roomy closet—so she was forced to hop onto her bed. (Actually, although it had a mattress, the bed wasn’t really a bed; it was a biomass thermal-conversion station. That’s a bedlike thingie created by their uncle that uses the body heat of a sleeping person to turn composted kitchen scraps into energy. Uncle Newt’s house was filled with all kinds of these crazy contraptions.)

  “You know how dumb it is to click on random pop-ups,” Tesla said.

  “This isn’t random! It’s a message! To us! About Mom and Dad!” Nick shifted from one foot to the other, trying to decide when to make his next move.

  “That’s just what it claims to be. It’s probably a trick.” Tesla kept her eyes fixed on her brother, figuring that she had the advantage now that she was on higher ground.

  “So what if it is?” Nick asked her. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “We ruin one of Uncle Newt’s computers.”

  “That’s a small price to pay!”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’d pay it.”

  Nick opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it and just growled.

  “Give up?” Tesla asked. “For real this time?”

  “Not quite yet,” Nick said. “How much do you think it would cost to replace that laptop?”

  “It doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to ruin it.”

  “Just answer me. How much?”

  “Well …” As she often did when running numbers in her head, Tesla rolled her eyes up and looked at the ceiling.

  Which was just what Nick was waiting for. He bounded onto Tesla’s “bed” and snatched away the laptop with a gleeful “Yoink!”

  “Hey!” Tesla cried as Nick leapt to the floor and tore out of the room. She jumped down and sprinted into the hallway after him. But Nick had all the head start he needed.

  Tesla caught up just in time to have the bathroom door slammed in her face. She reached out and grabbed the doorknob, but it was already locked.

  “Don’t click on it, Nick!” she yelled, pounding on the door.

  “Can’t hear you!” Nick called back in a sing-songy voice. “Too busy clicking!”

  Tesla stopped banging on the door, and a moment passed in silence. Then she heard her brother groan.

  “Aww, man,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “It was a trick. But not the kind you thought it was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tesla heard the door unlock. Nick pulled it open and stepped into the hall to show her the computer screen.

  The pop-up box was still there, but to the original message of

  OPEN THIS FILE IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PARENTS …

  new words had been added:

  UP TO 30% ON THEIR CAR INSURANCE!

  Below the flashing headline was a bunch of fine print and what looked like an application, along with a picture of a bland couple grinning at their equally bland kids. Because, presumably, they were now saving up to 30 percent on their car insurance.

  Nick closed the laptop and handed it to Tesla, trudging back to their bedroom.

  “We’ll be with Mom and Dad again, just wait and see,” Tesla said as he passed. “We just have to be patient.”

  “I don’t want to wait and see. I don’t want to be patient anymore,” Nick said. “I want to go find them.” Then Tesla heard Nick flop onto his biomass thermal-conversion station. (Yes, he had one, too.) She followed into the bedroom and found Nick lying facedown with a pillow over his head.

  Tesla set the laptop on the floor and sat beside him.

  “Umuhme yuh thu wuh luhkee fuh tuhwuh,” Nick said.

  Tesla picked up the pillow.

  “What?”

  Nick lifted his head so he wasn’t speaking directly into his biomass thermal-conversion station. “Usually you’re the one looking for trouble,” he repeated.

  Tesla couldn’t deny it. She had been dragging her brother into one misadventure after another ever since they arrived in Half Moon Bay. It was her way of distracting herself from her worries.

  Then they heard a muffled thump (not as loud this time), and the whole house shook again.

  Tesla was about to get up and say something like, “Come on—it’s time we found out what Uncle Newt’s up to.” But she changed her mind and stayed by her brother.

  “You’re not going to find Mom and Dad on the Internet, you know,” Tesla said.

  “So what am I supposed to do? Nothing?”

  “No. I just think we should focus on something that could really get us some answers.”

  “Like what?” Nick said. He was starting to grouse but then rolled over and sat up, smiling. “Did you say ‘we’?”

  With the exception of a brief break for dinner—which a distracted Nick and Tesla wolfed down without even tasting—the kids spent the rest of the day pacing around their room trying to figure out where to begin their search. In the end, their analysis boiled down to this:

  Should they go back to the last place they’d seen their parents—Washington, D.C.?

  No, that would be pointless. Their parents had gone into hiding after seeing them off at the airport.

  Should they try to track their parents down through the United States Department of Agriculture?

  No. Nick and Tesla had realized over the past few weeks that their parents had never really worked for the USDA. That was just a cover story.

  Should they hire a detective?

  No. Too expensive. Anyway, would a private eye take orders from a couple of eleven-year-olds?

  Should they contact Agent McIntyre, the government operative who had been keeping an eye on them since they arrived in Half Moon Bay?

  No. Because—no, wait! Yes! Yes, that was it!

  “She definitely knows more than she’s let on about where Mom and Dad have gone and who’s after them,” Tesla said. “If we want answers, we should start with Agent McIntyre.”

  “But how do we get in touch with her?” Nick asked.

  “There’s always these.” Tesla pulled at a thin chain around her neck. Hanging from it was a small gold star.

  Nick wore an identical chain and star. Agent McIntyre had given them the pendants, telling the twins to “wear them close to their hearts.”1 Nick and Tesla assumed they were tracking devices of some sort, but they didn’t know how they worked.

  Not for the first time, Nick pulled out his gold star and shouted into it.

  “Hel-loooooo! Agent McIntyre! Nick Holt calling! Would you mind popping by to explain what the heck’s been going on this summer?”

  He waited for a moment and then stuffed the pendant back under his shirt.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Like always.”

  “Well, there’s got to be some way we can use them to get
her attention,” Tesla said, glaring down at her own pendant. “Otherwise, what’s the point of these things?”

  Nick gave his sister a thoughtful look … which was interrupted by a huge, loud yawn from somewhere downstairs.

  Tesla glanced at the clock and then turned, heading for the bedroom door.

  “Come on. It’s time to tuck in Uncle Newt.”

  Nick and Tesla’s uncle tended to fall asleep slumped over one of the worktables in his basement laboratory. He did it so often that the kids had gotten into the habit of going downstairs every night at ten o’clock to wake him up and send him to bed.

  “Can you do it by yourself tonight?” Nick said. He stretched out on his thermal-conversion station, put his hands under his head, and stared up at the ceiling. “I want to keep thinking.”

  “Sure. Be right back.”

  Tesla went down to the first floor and walked past the bric-a-brac lining the hall (dust-covered computers, an old-fashioned diving suit, a Christmas tree decorated with stained and broken beakers, and on and on). When she reached the kitchen at the back of the house, she headed down the rickety steps to the basement.

  “Uncle Newt!” she called.

  “What? Who? When? Where? Why?” she heard her uncle mutter groggily.

  “It’s ten o’clock,” Tesla said. “Time to come upstairs and—”

  “Hold it right there!” Uncle Newt cried out.

  Tesla stopped. She had almost reached the bottom of the steps, and she could see the soot-covered machines and scorched electronic components and half-finished inventions that filled her uncle’s poorly lit lab (an accordion-powered hair dryer, spray-on galoshes, the remains of a kind of goo that once glued Uncle Newt to the floor, and on and on).

  Her uncle was stumbling around one of the clutter-covered worktables, obviously hurrying to put himself between it and Tesla. He had one hand tucked behind his back, like a five-year-old trying to hide the cookie he’d just fished from the cookie jar. He was wearing his usual stained lab coat over his usual ratty T-shirt. Also as usual, fresh smoke was swirling around his wild, graying hair.

  “I’m working on a surprise, remember?” Uncle Newt said. “Surprises aren’t surprising if you’ve seen them in advance.”