Max Einstein Saves the Future Read online

  But that was probably something she made up because she’d been demoted. After being told she was the most brilliant of the brilliant, now she was being told she wasn’t good enough.

  Max had never sought out the title or position. But she had to admit, it felt good being selected for an honor like leading a team of genius kids. Now that had been taken away from her.

  By Hana.

  By Ms. Kaplan.

  By Ben.

  That demotion from Ben hurt the most. It would hurt even more if he started inviting Hana out to private lunches.

  So making Hana a suspect, a spy for the Corp, made Max feel better. The only problem was, it didn’t make sense. How would Hana even know how to reach out to Professor Von Hinkle or anybody else at the shadowy organization? Klaus had only done it accidentally with a phone he’d given Max that he didn’t realize was actually a sophisticated tracking device.

  No, the Corp probably discovered that she was in Princeton the way they always discovered stuff: using highly sophisticated facial recognition software scanning the thousands of security cameras she hadn’t noticed on her journey to Princeton.

  Maybe I should wear a disguise all the time like we did in London, she thought.

  And then there was all the stuff from the Tardis House for her to think about. The legend of the young couple. Their lost child. The photograph of baby Dorothy. The suitcase that looked so much like hers.

  How it kind of matched up with what Leo had told her about Dr. Zimm. Had her whole life been nothing more than the result of a freak accident that happened way back in 1921?

  “Focus on the task at hand, Max,” said the gentle Einstein in her head.

  “But what is that task? Finding out who I really am?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that, Max. You already know who you are.”

  “Um, no, I don’t.”

  “Ah, but you should. You, my dear one, are a very gifted and talented young human being who can do much good in this world.”

  “But what if I time-traveled here from 1921?”

  “Would it matter?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Time is relative. The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

  “All any of us really have is today,” the grandfatherly voice continued. “And today, your friends need your help solving this problem of world hunger.”

  “Actually,” thought Max, “we’re not leaving Princeton until tomorrow.”

  “Which will be today when it comes.”

  “True.”

  “Try to remember, Max: it doesn’t really matter where you came from. It only matters where you are going and what you will do once you get there. Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

  “Okay,” said Max, with a sigh. “I’ll stop obsessing about the Tardis House. I’ll focus on the hunger problem. I’ll help Hana and the rest of the team.”

  And that was exactly what she intended to do.

  But the next morning, at breakfast, where she was seated at a long table with Siobhan, she met Dr. Shannon McKenna from Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, who paused to say hello as she made her way past Max’s table. Dr. McKenna certainly looked like a professor. She was wearing a long white lab coat and had old-fashioned, carefully coiffed hair that was whiter than snow on rice.

  “Toma and Darryl tell me you are extremely interested in the history of the house on Battle Road,” she said to Max, handing her a business card. “If you ever come back to Princeton, please contact me. I know more about the ‘Tardis House’ than anybody still alive.”

  38

  Of course Max wanted to hear more.

  “How do you know so much?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m older than just about everybody else at the Institute.”

  “B-b-but…”

  Dr. McKenna smiled kindly, waved with the banana that seemed to be all she’d be eating for breakfast, and walked away.

  Max wanted to chase after Dr. McKenna but Siobhan placed a gentle hand on her shoulder so she couldn’t stand up from the table.

  “Finish your gruel,” said Siobhan, nodding toward Max’s bowl of oatmeal. “Blimey. Did a rabbit poop in your bowl?”

  Max couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Those are raisins,” she explained.

  “Ah, yes. What happens to grapes when they drop to the ground, shrivel up, and die.”

  “I want to find out what Dr. McKenna knows about the Tardis House,” Max whispered to her friend.

  “And Ben wants us on a bus to West Virginia. Will what you learn from the white-haired wonder woman help wipe out global hunger, Max?”

  Max shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, as a wise man once said, ‘Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.’”

  “You’re quoting Albert Einstein.”

  “Am I now?” joked Siobhan. “And all this time I just thought it was something you scribbled inside the lid of that mangy suitcase you used to drag everywhere. Stay focused, Max. This team still needs you.”

  Max grinned and nodded. Siobhan, of course, had no way of knowing it but she was also quoting the Einstein inside Max’s head. He’d urged Max to stay focused on the task at hand, too.

  So, while Max spooned oatmeal and raisins into her mouth, she started thinking: Is there a simple solution to this problem?

  Where is the simple scheme for ending world hunger?

  Could the simple ever solve the complex?

  Yes! That’s what Albert Einstein did all the time. He reduced complex problems to their—

  “You ready to roll?” Siobhan was gently shaking Max out of her trance.

  “Hmmm?”

  “They’re loading up the van. We need to go, Max.”

  “And where exactly are we going?” she asked dreamily, as if she were half awake and half asleep.

  Siobhan rolled her eyes. “West Virginia, Max. Focus, girl. Focus!”

  Right.

  Max really needed to start doing that.

  39

  Isabl was letting the automaton Leo drive the hulking black van, which had four rows to accommodate all eleven passengers.

  “This is better than an autonomous automobile,” remarked Klaus. “We have a chauffeur bot!”

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted all the other kids.

  Max had to admit: it was pretty cool having a robot behind the wheel. There was no need for a separate GPS device. The GPS that, of course, wouldn’t work without Einstein’s theory of relativity, was already inside Leo’s brain.

  “Thank you for this opportunity to be a true team player,” said Leo. “I project arrival in the Shepherdstown, West Virginia, vicinity in approximately three hours and forty-five minutes. I, of course, will be happy to stop along the way should a majority of the passengers need to use the facilities. I myself will have no such need.”

  “Indeed,” said Toma. “However, we should keep your charger plugged into the USB port so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “Never fear, Toma. I am fully charged. I have also pre-selected some instructional audio books to make the two hundred and twenty-three miles fly by.”

  “Yo, Klaus,” said Keeto. “Did you give Leo a mute button? Because no way am I listening to four hours of boring textbooks.”

  “No need for audio entertainment, Leo,” Klaus instructed the robot. “Just drive.”

  “Your wish is my command, Klaus,” said Leo.

  “Yeah,” said Klaus, puffing up his chest. “That’s a new response I gave him for whenever his voice recognition software picks up a command from me.”

  “Is there a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots?” wondered Annika. “If so, we are definitely turning you in, Klaus.”

  “Children?” said Ms. Kaplan, who was sitting up front in the passenger seat. “I suggest you use this transportation time wisely. Study your briefing books.”

  “Or grab a nap,�
�� mumbled Charl, closing his eyes and leaning back and snuggling down into his seat in the second row.

  “Wake me up if you need me, Leo,” said Isabl, closing her eyes, too.

  “I don’t anticipate requiring assistance,” Leo chirped. “I will simply obey all posted speed limits and traffic advisories.”

  Isabl grinned and shook her head. “How boring.”

  Max flipped through the three-ring binder that Hana and Ms. Kaplan had put together with all sorts of multicolored tabs for things like Project Goals and Objectives and something called Deliverables. Not to mention a timeline and a series of graphs and flow charts.

  When Max was the team leader, she never planned out her CMI projects with this much precision and detail. She never organized everything in a binder. She just had brainstorms and figured out how to turn her big ideas into practical reality, one step at a time. It usually involved a lot of scribbling in notebooks or scratching a stubby chunk of chalk on a blackboard—or any other surface that was handy.

  Max’s style left room for improvisation. For changing things on the fly as a situation altered or conditions threw you a curveball.

  Hana’s technique was definitely more buttoned up. But what if the world didn’t go along with her flow chart? What about surprises and unexpected discoveries? What about unanticipated disasters? They’d probably need to rewrite this action plan at least once or twice before they reached its goals.

  Forget looking for a rest stop. Hana and Ms. Kaplan might need Leo and his internal GPS to find them an office supply store. Some place to buy more color-coded tabs for their silly binders!

  40

  As the van rolled through northern Maryland, Leo pulled off the interstate, cruised down an exit ramp, and made an announcement.

  “We have now reached the halfway point of our journey,” he said. And then he giggled. (Klaus just couldn’t seem to erase that quirk from deep within Leo’s circuit boards.) “We will stop here for a restroom and refreshment break. While you are inside, I will drive over to the gas pumps and refill our fuel tank.”

  “You guys hop out,” said Isabl. “I’ll ride over to the pumps with Leo. Don’t want anybody to have a heart attack when they see a robot behind the wheel.”

  “They better get used to it,” said Klaus, hauling himself out of the third row of seats. “Leo represents the future, the tidal wave of autonomous automobiles that will soon be flooding these freeways, and there’s no stopping it!”

  “Unless,” said Toma, “one could travel back in time and stop the development of the first robot.”

  “Actually,” said the super logical Annika, “if you want to stop scientific advancement, you’d have to go back further than that.”

  “True,” added Siobhan. “You’d have to go back and stop the caveman who invented the wheel. Maybe bop him on the head with a club.”

  “But what about the caveperson who invented the club?” said Tisa. “If you want to stop the arc of scientific development, you’ll have to stop him or her, too. And the guy who made the fish hook…”

  “And the first person to eat lobster,” cracked Klaus. “He must’ve been very, very hungry!”

  Max loved hanging out with the CMI crew. They could have a fun debate about anything.

  She and Siobhan finally piled out of the van after all the others.

  “Pick up a couple gallons of diesel fuel,” said Charl. “We might need it for a generator when we’re in the field.”

  “Will do,” said Isabl.

  Max spent some time in the rest stop’s small snack shop, where they sold all sorts of chips, candy bars, soft drinks, and plastic-wrapped baked goods. A guy in green coveralls was pulling prepackaged Honey Buns off a rack and putting them into a big bin.

  “Excuse me,” Max said politely. “What’s happening with all that food?”

  “I need to take it off the shelf,” the man told her. He held up a package, turned it over, and showed Max a date printed on the plastic. “See? Today’s its expiration date. We need to get rid of the stale stuff, load in some fresh items.”

  “And where will the expired food go?”

  The man shrugged. “The garbage, I guess. Maybe a landfill.”

  “Would anything bad happen if someone ate, say, that expired Honey Bun you just pulled off the rack?”

  “Not really. Packaged food like this can actually stay safe for a pretty long time after the sell-by or use-by dates. If, you know, it’s handled and stored properly.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You want a Honey Bun?” said the man, gesturing to a pile of them in his bin. “It’s free. I’m gonna toss it anyway.”

  “Thanks,” said Max, taking the wrapped-and-sealed swirl of fried dough drenched in a shiny white glaze.

  She couldn’t wait to taste it.

  Not because she loved fried dough soaked with sugary sauce.

  But because she was actually starting to have an inkling of an idea about how to fight world hunger.

  41

  Professor Von Hinkle limped over to the Princeton campus carrying his empty attaché case.

  It was early afternoon. He had wanted to inspect the drone crash site sooner but needed to wait until the campus police and other local authorities had done their investigation. It took them all night and into the next day.

  “Nerd Prank Gone Bad” became the official reaction to the incident, which did damage to several campus buildings and multiple vehicles parked in the street. Maintenance workers were sweeping up the last metallic shards of what had been Dr. Von Hinkle’s flying fleet of armed drones. Two workers used a long pole to knock down a lone drone stuck in a tree. It clattered to the pavement and shattered. The workers tossed its shiny shards into a black plastic trash bag.

  The foam slots in Von Hinkle’s weapons case would remain empty. His army of flying bots had been destroyed when, somehow, their infrared guidance system went haywire.

  The angry professor would have to find some other way to subdue Max Einstein and force her to work for the Corp. He had not reported his latest failure to the board of directors, as it was just a minor, temporary setback.

  Because he knew precisely where Max Einstein was.

  At a rest stop in Maryland. Eating a glazed Honey Bun.

  Yes, his intelligence was that good.

  And what was even better?

  His undercover asset would soon deliver Max to West Virginia.

  Which just happened to be the Corp’s backyard.

  42

  When the CMI team reached West Virginia, their first stop was a church.

  “Um, why exactly are we stopping here, Leo?” asked Keeto from the third row.

  “Because your new team leader, Hana, instructed me to do so,” the boy-bot replied.

  “I thought this would be an instructional stop for all of us,” said Hana. “Twice a week, this church operates a food pantry out of its basement. This will be a chance for us to see the true face of American hunger. Tisa? Can you please give us the stats?”

  “Hang on,” said Tisa, flipping through her binder. “There’s no tab for stats…”

  “They are filed under Background,” Hana told her.

  “That’s the blue one?”

  “Right. B for Background. B for Blue.”

  “Got it,” said Tisa. “Okay. In the aftermath of what has been labeled ‘The Great Recession of 2008,’ families today do not visit food pantries only for emergencies. Food pantries have become an important part of many households’ long-term strategies to supplement monthly food budget shortfalls. And get this—more than half of this food pantry’s clients are people with jobs.”

  “And they can’t afford food?” said Toma.

  “That’s right,” said Hana. “These days, families with minimum wage jobs have to choose. Food, medicine, transportation, or housing.”

  “But food pantries aren’t a long-term solution to the hunger problem,” said Klaus.

  “No,” said Hana. “They�
��re not.”

  “The building is secure,” said Charl, coming back to the van. He and Isabl had done a quick sweep of the church, to make certain no hostiles from the Corp were hiding under the pews or up in the bell tower.

  Everybody trooped inside and took the stairs down to the basement.

  Max surveyed the scene.

  A multitude of people—some elderly, some clutching children’s hands, some wearing work uniforms—were lined up in a hallway that led to a half door where a volunteer put assorted food items like apples, cereal, and rice into an empty banana box. Every family received one carton of food. All the cartons were the same.

  Max found her sketchbook and started doodling.

  This could be done better, she thought. The same food could be delivered with more dignity.

  “You guys?” she said when the CMI team regrouped in the Sunday school room down the hall from where the food was being handed out. “What if they set this up differently? What if, instead of giving everybody a box of the same food, they gave out, I don’t know—coupons. Something like, three proteins, two starches, four fruits and vegetables. Then, the church could put all the food on shelves, like they do in a supermarket. They could use this room. I’m guessing it’s always empty during the week.”

  “True,” said Keeto. “Because Sunday school usually only happens on Sundays.”

  Max kept going. She was pumped. “The food pantry’s clients could roll grocery carts through the aisles and check out with their coupons. It’d be a lot more dignified than shuffling up to take whatever someone else decided to give you in an old banana box.

  “If they did that,” said Max, “the whole experience would feel more like a trip to a grocery store, and less like a handout.”

  “Great idea, Max,” said Siobhan.

  “Fantastic,” said Tisa.

  Hana looked a little hurt. And Ms. Kaplan was giving Max the stink eye.

  “I think you are forgetting something, Max,” she said sternly.