Not sure how this fits the theme except that perhaps I am pushing the limits as to what qualifies. On the other hand, my highest writing priority is to finish this draft, so here goes.

Note, this is a first draft, a middle-grade novel.

Chapter 2

The Transdimensional Teleporter

 

GeorgeAnn put the finishing touches on the trans dimensional teleport portal. The miniature city she was building in the loft was taking shape and she thought it would be fun if there was a way for humans to visit it. Of course, people were much too large to walk the streets, much less enter the buildings, but she still thought it would be nice to have a fun way to pretend to be able to enjoy the city at its scale. So she decided to build a device to manage the change from the human dimension to that of the city.

The portal began with a dented and torn dehumidifier box. A forklift accident, she guessed, or some other robotic mover that instead of moving the object from one part of the warehouse to another, instead punched a hole through the front of the box and half way through the dehumidifier. Since the device was too damaged to be sold, she scavenged its parts as well as its container.

She cut away the ripped cardboard and enlarged the opening to create a doorway that was nearly as tall as the box. The box was sealed and the edges and rest of the tears repaired with paper packing tape. The kind that you had to add water to activate the glue—no one wanted to buy that kind any more—but it was great for painting over. She painted the box white for starters. It was always easier to paint other colors over white.

Using a piece of old plywood for reinforcement, she mounted the scavenged compressor from the dehumidifier on top of the box. After all, what better way to change the size of a person than with a compressor? 

[Side bar: exploded view of the guts of a decompressor]

Inside the box, she mounted a T-handled slider. It was assembled from a bundle of pencils stuck into a block of styrofoam packing material, copiously reinforced with hot melt glue and wrapped neatly in layers of packing tape until it looked as if it might have been molded from a solid block. She painted it red. After all, red was a warning color and one ought to be cautious about using a trans dimensional teleport portal.

The slider was mounted into a slot cut into the side of the box, with the handle facing inward so that the occupant could control it. On the outside, she anchored the slider with another piece of styrofoam and glue. Then she mounted a toggle so that when the slider moved down, it would switch the power on, and off when moved in the opposite direction. She enclosed the whole assembly on the outside in another small box fabricated from cardboard scraps and packing tape. She thought it looked cool to have boxes and hardware affixed to the outside.

The next step was to mount strings of white lights along the inside corners and outside edges of the portal. Colored lights would have looked cooler, but what she had were white lights, so they had to do.

The inside walls and ceiling were painted white. She added concentric circles to the floor of the box in yellow and blue. Then everything inside got a nice dusting of iridescent glitter.

GeorgeAnn thought about making a sign for the device. People might like to know that it was a trans dimensional teleport portal. But hardly anyone cared about what she called her machines. Kids from school who asked, just made fun of them and commented about how impossible it was for her to build such things. Still, it seemed like the machine needed some kind of labeling. So with a collection of glitter gel pens and Sharpies, she drew circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles and lines some overlapping and others nested until the entire surface of the box was covered. She imagined that she was covering the box with the description of its purpose as well as detailed operating instructions. When that was done, she sprayed the entire machine with light whispers of brown paint to make it appear like the machine was old and just a little decrepit.

“George, you up there?” She heard Paul call from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yea.”

She heard the six year old climbing the stairs. Since there was no railing, he wasn’t supposed to be up here, but she figured as long as he stayed close to her, he was safe.

“Dad says no spray painting while the store is open.” 

Oops. In her rush to complete the project, she’d forgotten about that.

“That’s cool. What is it?” Her little brother asked.

“It’s a trans dimensional teleport portal. It lets you enter the city as a tiny person so you can go into the buildings and look around.” Paul, unlike her so-called friends from school, appreciated her stories and explanations.

“Can I try it?” He walked around the box studying it as if he could read and comprehend the instructions.

“The paint isn’t dry yet.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Before she could raise another objection, he was inside the box and testing the sliding switch. It was a bit stiff to operate at first, then slid smoothly from top to bottom.

First the inside lights turned on, then the outside lit. Two seconds later, the compressor kicked on with a soft rumble and a swish. It was such a cool effect that at first she didn’t notice that Paul was nowhere to be seen.

 

Looking For Paul Simon

Paul Simon was nowhere to be seen. If he’d simply gone back downstairs that would not be a problem. But GeorgeAnn didn’t think he’d left the loft. He liked playing with the model buildings and would sometimes rearrange them, but there was no one anywhere near Inspiration City now. A quick survey of the area confirmed that she was the only one in the loft at present.

Cautiously, she peered over the edge of the loft into the store aisles below. A kid, even a small one ought to make some noise if they jumped or fell off, but she’d heard nothing but the compressor hissing. Quietly, listening as hard as she could, she crept down the stairs. All she could here were the normal sounds of store activity. 

From the rear of the store, she inspected each of the long aisles that ran from the front to the back of the building. There were towels on the floor in aisle eight where a customer had pulled them off the shelf—she’d have to go straighten that out. Other than a few shoppers, there was no Paul Simon to be found.

She wanted to yell. Call out for Paul Simon at the top of her lungs, but that was not done in a retail space. Plus, if this was just her imagination, she didn’t want her parents to know that she’d gone and lost her little brother. So as she went to pick up the towels and refold them, she too a route that crossed as much of the store as possible whispering, “Paul Simon” anywhere the merchandise was dense enough to hide a child.

She folded the towels quickly, if not neatly, then headed back to the loft. Could he be playing in one of the model buildings? 

Upstairs, she continued to call for her brother, not in a loud voice, but one that she hoped was loud enough. She counted to ten then tried looking again. Counting to ten was supposed to help control panic, wasn’t it? Her hands shook. She almost knocked over the windmill looking behind it. Then she picked it up. Could Paul Simon have gotten into or under one of the model buildings?

“Paul Simon where are you?” She sat down on the floor behind the buildings. I will not be a baby and cry, she told herself. It was getting close to dinner time. If he did not show up soon, the world as she knew it might end.

The compressor on top of the transdimensional teleport portal made a peculiar whine. A few seconds later, Paul Simon stepped out of the box.

What? Had he been in the box the whole time? No, she’d checked and the box was not large enough for him to have somehow hidden from view.

Paul Simon’s face was bright like he’d been running and he panted.

“Where have you been?” She tried to sound normal, not like someone struggling between panic, jubilation and frustration that he’d given her such a fright.

He sat on the floor beside her. He had a grin on his face so big,  it bent his ears. “Inspiration City. It’s so cool. I wanted to stay longer, but Mrs. Fuglst heard you and said I better get back.”

“Who is Mrs. Fuglst?”

“Oh, that’s not her name, exactly. It’s just so hard to pronounce her real name. She lives in Inspiration City. The real one. The one this,” he waved his hands around, “is modeled after. She’s a nice lady. She helped me work the portal. It’s a lot more complicated to operate on their end.”

 

Dinnerware Delights

GeorgeAnn pulled the box of Cremeclares from the freezer. A special treat for a special day. She believed in rewarding good effort and the twins had been working furiously on their plate projects. Today they would present their prototypes and she would decide whether they looked marketable.

Cremeclares were not supposed to be served frozen, but everyone agreed that the chocolate covered white goo filled cakes tasted better that way. Plus, they were slightly less messy. At room temperature the chocolate melted at a touch and the filling flowed easily. Freeze them and more chocolate stayed on the cake than transferred to the fingers and the white stuff had the texture of a soft taffy. While it was a great reward, she didn’t want the snacks destroying the merchandise.

“Cremtastics!” Abbey Mae squealed while her twin set a box on the floor between their chairs. Before either sat, snacks were in hand and half consumed. Eating fast was another strategy for keeping clean, although Abbey May still got a swath of chocolate across her cheek. 

Bethie Lou dabbed a napkin at her sister’s face. “Am I ok?” She asked her twin. “We’ve got to make a good impression today.”

Each twin examined the other carefully before pronouncing the all clean. The boys ignored them. John Jacob savored his Cremeclare, leaving only a small pile of melting chocolate crumbs on the table which poked at with his finger. Paul Simon was dissecting his at the table and his hands were covered in chocolate before even a quarter of the cake made it to his mouth. Everyone else moved their chairs to give their younger brother more space.

“I call the meeting to order,” John Jacob said when there was no chocolate left on the table in front of him. “Bethie Lou, do you want to begin?”

“I object,” Paul Simon said.

“To what?”

“I’m not finished eating.”

“Do you want to be in this meeting?” His older brother asked.

“Yes.”

“Then eat and be quiet.”

“And don’t touch anything,” Bethie Lou added. She withdrew the first item from her box. It was a flying saucer made by hot-melt gluing two salad plates together and decorated with paint pens and glittery pipe cleaners. The second item was a small booklet entitled, “Passport to Everywhere.” It looked like they’d constructed it from pieces of copy paper folded and stapled together.

Abbey Mae picked up the book and opened it to the second page. “We created a logo for Inspiration City for the first passport stamp.”

“I could ask Mrs Fuglst for a copy of the real logo,” Paul Simon said.

“Who’s that?” Abbey May was not happy that her artwork wasn’t being admired.

“She lives in Inspiration City. I met her yesterday.”

“Oh,” Abbey Mae responded. “So, guys, what do you think of my logo?” She looked directly at GeorgeAnn. Indeed, from the way the girl held the book, only GeorgeAnn could get a good look at the artwork.

GeorgeAnn took the little book and paged through it, stalling. The artwork was ok, for what it was. That her little brother was still going on as if he’d actually visited a real place disturbed her.

“I think I can give you some tips to make the book look a little more professional. What are your costs for labor and materials?”

That was John Jacob’s cue. “Labor, three dollars, a dollar for each of the girls and one for me for supervision and quality control. One dollar for supplies, plus whatever for the dishes. You didn’t give me any numbers for that.”

“You’re going to have to come up with packaging.”

“Maybe we could do a counter top display?” Packaging could be as expensive as the product and no one’s favorite part of the process. GeorgeAnn knew that often the package sold the product. It was important for long-term success.

“Think about it,” GeorgeAnn suggested, “both how you’d display and how it might be packaged.”

Bethie Lou was retrieving another item from the girls’ box. This one was a mobile-wind chime affair with cups hanging at various heights from a dinner plate. The method of gluing string onto the plate with hot melt glue was going to have to change, but otherwise, it looked interesting. When the cups clanked against each other, the noise wasn’t awful, though it wasn’t melodious either.

[Need a couple more items to display]

 

GeorgeAnn paused the meeting to clean up Paul Simon and his snack before it melted and made more of a mess.

“Inspiration City’s logo doesn’t look anything like that,” he told her at the kitchen sink.

“Would you like to draw a new logo for the city?”

“They should use the real logo, not a made up one.”

“Well, show me a copy, and we’ll see.”

Paul Simon squirmed around away from the sink. “We could go right now!”