Max Einstein Saves the Future Read online

  “Does that actually exist?”

  Toma nodded.

  “Cool. Where are they?”

  “Right here in Princeton, Max! That’s why I’m so excited. The ETTI was big back in the 1920s. They were doing all sorts of fascinating stuff. Now, most people kind of laugh at them. Well, him. There’s only one guy keeping the ETTI alive. But, to me, time travel would be the maximum application of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.”

  Max looked startled. Probably because Toma was using the same string of words that had been in the title of the scholarly article that, according to Leo, had been tucked into her suitcase along with that first photo of Einstein.

  “You okay, Max?” asked Toma when he saw the look on her face.

  “Yeah. Fine. It’s just, you know, I’m interested in time travel, too.”

  Especially right here in Princeton.

  If she could go back in time to the 1930s, could she actually meet her hero, Albert Einstein?

  If she could go back a dozen years, could she meet herself?

  Better yet, could she meet her parents?

  “Toma?” she said. “Have you set up a meeting with your contact at the Einstein Time Travel Institute?”

  He nodded. “Tonight. Ten p.m.”

  “Great,” said Max. “I’m coming with you.”

  24

  “When I’m older,” Toma told Max between bites of his salad, “I’m going to Mars. We’ll need astrophysicists up there.”

  “We?” said Max.

  “China. Sun Laiyan, the person in charge of our National Space Administration, has China doing deep space exploration focusing on Mars. Our first spacecraft, without any crew on board, will go to Mars before 2033. Spaceships with crews will start landing there in 2040; maybe a little later. I’ll be the perfect age for the first flight!”

  Max grinned a little. She couldn’t help thinking about how timidly Toma behaved in high-stress situations. She wondered how well he would do strapped down inside the tip of a rocket blasting off for Mars.

  “You ever read science fiction?” Toma asked.

  “Not much,” said Max. “I prefer science fact.”

  “You should read fiction, too. It’s what happens when facts get tumbled inside a writer’s imagination. And you know what Einstein said…”

  “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

  Toma nodded. “Imagination is what got Professor Einstein thinking about warping time—just like in a science fiction book!”

  Max, of course, knew that Einstein imagined that time could be warped in the presence of a major source of gravity—like, say, a black hole in outer space. A black hole is where gravity has become so strong that nothing around it can escape, not even light. The closer you are to a star or planet or black hole—anything with big-time gravity—the more time will warp.

  Einstein’s theory of General Relativity showed that time passed slower for objects near strong gravitational fields than for objects far away from them.

  “If, Max, you could get close to a black hole,” the Einstein in her head had once explained, “the passage of time, for you, would slow to a relative crawl. If you escaped and returned to Earth to tell your friends about your incredible adventure, they wouldn’t be there because, even though you only thought you’d been gone for a few weeks, thousands of years would have passed on your home planet.”

  That meant time travel, at least into the future, was possible.

  “Guess what, Max?” said Toma eagerly.

  “What?”

  “Darryl says they did it.”

  “Who’s Darryl?”

  “The guy trying to keep the Einstein Time Travel Institute going. He’s a grad student. Everybody at Princeton thinks he’s a fool. Anyway, Darryl told me that, way back in the 1920s, when Albert Einstein was visiting the campus, two very clever young scientists did the impossible. They took Einstein’s theory of general relativity and made it work. They took the complex and made it simple. They made a time machine!”

  25

  Professor Von Hinkle arrived in Princeton a few hours after the CMI team.

  He couldn’t fly to New Jersey on the Corp’s SST jet. None of the airports in the Garden State would allow his sonic boomer to land on their runways. Noise issues from their neighbors, undoubtedly. So, after the car crash (which put five members of his tactical team into an Oxford hospital) he had to scramble and arrange a new ride back to America.

  A private jet owned by a Corp subsidiary company in England was at his disposal—after he confessed that, like Dr. Zimm, he had once again let Max Einstein slip away.

  “I will apprehend her,” he promised the board.

  “You’d better,” he was advised. “If you fail again, you will be sharing an icy cold cabin in Greenland with Dr. Zacchaeus Zimm.”

  Tracking Max to America, Professor Von Hinkle decided it would be better if he traveled alone.

  Moving with a group of thuggish mercenaries made him far too easy to spot. Max and her minimal security team could see the small army coming from a mile away. Communicating with his minions over radio headsets made tracing his movements even easier. After all, the Corp had designed the automaton Lenard with the ultimate in electronic eavesdropping capabilities. The robot was, undoubtedly, continuously monitoring all frequencies, running search algorithms that would identify any and all potential threats to its new mission.

  Professor Von Hinkle, much like a machine with artificial intelligence, gathered this new data, learned from it, and adapted. He improvised.

  He now knew he had a better chance of capturing Max Einstein and the traitorous bot Lenard on his own.

  Of course, he wasn’t completely alone. He still had his aluminum attaché case filled with the miniature drones. The ones with the nasty array of needles.

  Von Hinkle, leaning on a cane, limped into Princeton’s Peacock Inn. He had been slightly injured when the SUV flipped over on the way to Kidlington. Nothing too serious. Just enough to slow him down and make him despise Max Einstein and Lenard even more.

  They’d definitely pay for what they had done. Once the Corp had everything it wanted from Max and Lenard, the professor would extract his personal revenge.

  Princeton’s Peacock Inn, a renovated colonial-style mansion from the eighteenth century, was set on a tree-lined street. It was a lovely little hotel. Charming. Quaint, even.

  But that’s not why Professor Von Hinkle had chosen it for his base of operations.

  Oh, no. He had selected it because it was a six-minute walk (seven with a cane) to the Princeton campus. The drones, with their heat-seeking guidance systems, could cover the same distance in sixty seconds.

  His asset on the ground shadowing the CMI team kept feeding Professor Von Hinkle real-time updates. “Your best chance will come at night,” the source informed him. “Max is prone to taking long walks after dark to contemplate her Einsteinian ‘thought experiments.’ Lenard will be sharing a room with Klaus, the blubbery boy from Poland. He will not offer you or your team any resistance. The boy is a coward.”

  Von Hinkle still hoped to snatch and grab both targets. But, if he were forced to make a choice, he would go for the girl and come back later for the bot.

  He snapped open the attaché case and examined the twelve miniature drones, all of them sleeping peacefully in their charging slots. He connected a USB cable to a port built into the side of the case and plugged its other end into a wall outlet.

  He then called the front desk and ordered room service. A simple turkey sandwich. With two pickles.

  “We all need our batteries recharged and operating at one hundred percent of capacity,” he whispered to the shiny metal orbs. “Because, very soon, one of you is going to make Max Einstein sleepy. Very, very sleepy.”

  26

  A little after ten o’clock that night, when all their CMI teammates were fast asleep thanks to jet lag, Toma and Max met up under one of the streetlamps glowing in front of the reside
nce hall.

  Against the night sky, the building loomed behind them like a medieval castle.

  “Should I go wake up Charl and Isabl?” asked Toma, looking around nervously.

  “What for?” whispered Max.

  “In case those guys who are always chasing after you decide to chase after you again tonight.”

  Max sighed. Toma was the most timid member of the CMI team. “You can relax. Leo puts the current Corp threat level at one percent.”

  “What? It’s not at zero?”

  “Leo doesn’t believe in a zero percent threat. He says something could always go sideways. So he’s hedging with that one percent. He’s a computer. He doesn’t like to be wrong.”

  “Well, if there is any kind of threat level at all, we should probably take a security detail…” said Toma.

  “Charl and Isabl will just tell us to go back to bed. We’re not in Princeton to explore Einstein’s theories of time travel. This is an extracurricular activity. Now where is this guy Darryl?”

  “At the Time Travel Lab.”

  “And where’s that?” asked Max.

  “Actually, it’s just a study room inside the Firestone Library. He was able to borrow it from a friend in the Department of Comparative Literature. Darryl said he’d meet us there at ten-thirty. We’re supposed to bring him a cup of coffee and a doughnut.”

  “Then we’d better hurry,” said Max.

  Max and Toma made their way across campus to the Firestone Library. They were able to grab a cup of coffee and a granola bar at a small café in the lobby.

  The grad student named Darryl met them in a third-floor study room.

  “This the kid named Einstein?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Toma.

  He handed Darryl the white sack from the lobby shop. Darryl pried open the flip lid on the coffee container and started slurping. Loudly.

  “You bring me a doughnut?” he asked.

  “They didn’t have any,” said Max, gesturing toward the bag. “So we got you a granola bar instead.”

  “Granola bar?” Darryl whined. “I seriously wish you kids could go back in time and get my order right. A granola bar is in no way an adequate substitute for a doughnut. Especially a glazed doughnut. The kind they make with yeast.”

  “Sorry,” said Toma.

  Max thought about lecturing Darryl about all the starving kids who’d love to have a granola bar or anything besides dirty water and rice but decided not to go there.

  “Going back in time would be so cool,” said Darryl, sucking down some more coffee. “But it’s a billion times harder than going forward.”

  He went to a whiteboard mounted on one wall of the study room and started scribbling numbers, all of which Max completely understood.

  “Every astronaut who ever went into space was a time traveler. Because of time dilation, they return to Earth very, very, very slightly younger than their twins who remained home, if, you know, they have a twin. But, if you want to go back in time to pick up a proper doughnut? That’s almost impossible. I mean you could try to go faster than the speed of light, I guess, but I don’t recommend that.”

  Max nodded. “Me neither. Einstein’s equations say that an object moving at the speed of light would have its mass increase toward infinity while its length shrank down to zero.”

  “Exactly. And you can’t pick up a doughnut when you’re that massive but tiny.”

  “You could look for a wormhole,” said Toma. “A tunnel through space-time.”

  “It’s a longshot,” said Darryl, slurping more coffee. “And you’d probably end up in the past in another part of the universe…”

  “But Toma told me that the Einstein Time Travel Institute did build a time machine,” said Max.

  Darryl nodded. “Long, long time ago. Back in 1921. When Albert Einstein was visiting Princeton to give some lectures and pick up an honorary degree. Dude named Dean West called Einstein ‘the new Columbus of science, voyaging through the strange seas of thought alone.’ This was before Einstein moved here full time. Some people think it’s just an urban legend. I think it’s true. There was a time machine in the basement of the Tardis House!”

  “Tardis House?” said Toma.

  Max shrugged. She had no idea what Darryl was talking about, either.

  “That’s what I call it,” said Darryl. “What? Don’t you kids watch Doctor Who?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Max. “Is it a TV show?”

  “Uh, yeah. Only the best TV show ever. It’s British. Been on since 1963. The Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, who explores the universe in a time-traveling space ship called the TARDIS, which, on the outside, looks like a big blue police box. That’s a telephone booth for cops to use. You guys know what a telephone booth is?”

  “I’ve seen pictures of them,” said Toma. “In history books.”

  Darryl gurgled down some more coffee. “Never mind. The Tardis House is over on Battle Road. It’s all boarded up. Has been since The Accident.”

  “Accident?” gulped Toma.

  “Yeah. From what I hear, Albert Einstein was lucky to get out of there alive.”

  27

  Max and Toma followed Darryl as he led them off the Princeton campus and into the nearby streets.

  “Einstein lived a few blocks over that way,” said Darryl. “112 Mercer Street. These days, the houses are all pretty pricey on Battle Road. You’d think they would’ve torn down the Tardis House, but the feds won’t let them, I guess. They keep it pretty secure. There are high-tech locks on the doors. Not exactly sure why. I mean, the place is a dump. Guess the powers that be don’t want anybody sneaking inside and learning the truth.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Max.

  “That way back in 1921 two brilliant professors built a time machine in that house! Einstein said the young couple understood him and his theories better than he understood them himself. Anyway, this couple invited Albert Einstein over one night to show off their invention, which, by the way, took up the entire basement.”

  “They seriously built a time machine?” said Toma.

  Darryl shrugged. “That’s what everybody says. They were way ahead of their time. Problem was, whatever they cobbled together ate up too much electricity and power. Then it started feeding back, looping on top of itself. Made the temperature plunge. Ice formed on all the windows. The time machine collapsed in on itself and disappeared. So did something else.”

  “All their designs and drawings?” said Toma.

  “Worse. Their daughter. A small child! The absent-minded professors had left their kid down in the basement. After the accident, she was just gone. Vanished. There was no way she could’ve survived that energy burst. Her mother and father, of course, were devastated. They left Princeton, disappeared, and never pursued their time-travel experiments again.”

  They arrived at 244 Battle Road.

  It was a darkened, sagging house with sheets of plywood nailed over all the windows. The homes on either side were stately and impressive brick structures.

  “That one there on the right?” said Darryl. “Number 246? It has some pretty cool history, too. A nest of intellectual property thieves used to operate out of it. Spies who stole all sorts of research from folks doing classified work on campus. When the feds raided the place, like twelve years ago, everybody and everything was gone. Nothing was left inside except a few sticks of furniture.”

  Max stepped forward into a pool of light. She looked up.

  There was a smoky dome concealing a surveillance camera. It was attached to the streetlamp’s post. Her image was being picked up. If the Corp was paying attention, they might be able to use their facial recognition software and pinpoint her location.

  I don’t care, Max thought. I need to be here.

  There was something about 244 Battle Road that kept pulling her closer. It was a black hole exerting its time-warping gravitational field on her.

  “You want to take a peek?”
said Darryl. “There’s a window around back where there’s a busted-out knothole in the plywood.”

  “Then can we go inside?” asked Max.

  “No way,” said Darryl. “The alarm system is super sophisticated.”

  “We can’t risk it,” said Toma, sounding anxious again. “One peek and then we should go back to the dorm.”

  Max hurried around to the rear of the house. She found the hole in the plywood covering one window and peered inside.

  The house was dark. But as Max’s eyes slowly adjusted, she could make out a few shapes and forms. One of those lumpy shapes turned into a dusty suitcase covered with cobwebs.

  It was the very same style as the one Max had, until very recently, carried with her wherever she went.

  She wanted to rip off the plywood and crawl through the window to take a closer look. But she saw the wire strips leading to magnetic contacts. Like Darryl said, the rickety old house had a highly sophisticated burglar alarm system.

  Somebody wanted to keep people out.

  Suddenly, a searchlight thumped on behind Max. She was standing in a circle of blindingly bright white light.

  “Freeze!” somebody shouted.

  They’d found her.

  28

  The security camera! thought Max.

  Raising her arms over her head but not turning around, Max remembered what Leo had told her about Dr. Zimm. That he’d found Max crawling around in a basement. “The basement was situated in a place called Princeton, New Jersey. Not far from the university where Dr. Zimm was doing intellectual espionage work for the Corp.”

  According to Darryl, the house next door to the Tardis House had been a den of intellectual espionage agents. Was that where Dr. Zimm found Max and her suitcase? Could she have been the baby who crawled through the space-time fabric, altering her time (by decades) and her space (by maybe fifty feet)?

  “Max?” cried a familiar voice. “Are you all right?”

  It wasn’t Professor Von Hinkle or a squad of Corp goons.

  It was Charl.

  Whoever was manning the floodlight switched it off. Max turned around and saw that the backyard of the Tardis House was extremely crowded with shadowy figures.