#star prodigy

"We're not in high school anymore," Mitzi Klingfeld told the tall, dapper Black man casually blowing his cigarette smoke out the open doorway of the Bookhouse. "So you don't have to worry about getting caught smoking in the boys' room."

Byron Brass turned to meet the stacked blonde's teasing smirk with a relaxed smile of his own, as he dutifully flicked his ashes outdoors. "Just keeping a promise to Austin's parents. First time I visited, they pointed out how tobacco smoke damages the artifacts."

Mitzi winced. "Shoot. Maybe I'll join you outside, then."

"To bask in my secondhand smoke?" Byron grinned before taking another drag, then extending his pack to her as she stepped out to join him. "You act like you're jonesing for something to take the edge off."

Mitzi reflexively reached out before her shoulders slumped in frustration. "I shouldn't. I promised my daughter I'd quit for good this time." She sniffed derisively. "Besides, I'm not Black enough for menthols."

"Oh, ho!" Byron laughed in earnest. "Says the lady with the Motown cassettes next to the Walkman on her desk. I'll bet I'm not the first brother to share a smoke with you."

Mitzi affected a mock-scandalized gasp. "I'll have you know I was raised a churchgoing country gal in Coral Shores."

"Who came creeping around the clubs in Carmichael Heights every weekend, no doubt," Byron countered good-naturedly, as he meticulously extinguished and field-stripped his cigarette butt. "Your daughter's right, though. You should quit. You'll both be better off."

Mitzi nodded in resignation, before challenging him with a skeptical squint. "What about you?"

Byron flashed an effortlessly high-beam smile, whose cheer noticeably failed to reach his eyes. "Nobody will miss me."

Mitzi winced, even as she sought to keep her tone light. "That … can't be right. I'm sure your family—"

"The folks passed on a while back," Byron summarized briskly, as he straightened his posture from having leaned on the doorframe. "As for my sister, she'd stopped speaking to me even before our father died."

"But … why?" Mitzi almost whispered.

Byron stepped back into the Bookhouse, even as he held the door open for Mitzi to return indoors with him, in what struck her as being a single fluid but formal motion. "At the risk of being rude, that's a private matter I don't care to discuss."

Mitzi stumbled as she rushed to keep pace with his broad strides. "I'm sorry—"

Byron held up his hand. "You didn't know." He then cast a sidelong gaze at her. "But you make it your business to know, don't you? You pay attention. You learn."

Mitzi suddenly felt very seen, in a way that made her uncomfortable, and she crossed her arms over her chest defensively. "Let's face it, you don't exactly last long in this world otherwise, do you?"

Byron shook his head in concurrence, before sizing her up with a glance. "That being the case, how about you tell me what I've just walked into here, Mitzi Klingfield?"

Mitzi blinked and gaped. "That's what you were supposed to tell me! You were part of Austin's family for … what, half a dozen years?"

"The last contact I had with either Austin or his father was a solid decade ago," Byron ticked off his points on his fingers. "You know what we call that in the field? Cold intel. In the meantime, you've been on the ground here for at least 24 hours, working side by side with Austin."

Mitzi protested, "You watched him grow up—"

"That tells me who he was, not who he is," Byron sighed impatiently. "When I saw Austin last, he was a teenaged boy. He still missed his mother, and his father had lost his way. He was a young man on the cusp. Even his mother wasn't sure how he might turn out. Before she died, she made me promise to look after Austin and his father, in case anything happened to her, and to try and do what would be best for them."

"So why didn't you?" Mitzi challenged him, her temper rising as she fixed her jaw defiantly. "Why did I have to look you up in a computerized Rolodex to find you? Why did you break your promise? Where were you, that all of this had to become my problem?"

Byron exhaled, deflating in remorse. "To keep one promise, I had to break the other. If I'd stayed, it would have made things worse." He met her upset stare. "In some relationships, continuing to support someone you care about can turn into enabling their self-sabotage. I'm gonna guess you've had some experience with that yourself."

Mitzi broke away from their stare first. "Dammit," she breathed, shutting her eyes tight before she eventually returned his gaze. "So, what all do you want to know?"

Byron shrugged. "What's Austin like as an adult?"

"If he ever grows up, I'll tell you," Mitzi quipped automatically.

"Oh," Byron chuckled in understanding.

"How is it possible for the smartest man I've ever met to be the stupidest at the same time?" Mitzi brushed her bangs back from her face in aggravated agitation. "He's, like, Monopoly money rich, right? But he barely even understands what money IS! He's traveled all around the world, but somehow, he's never even learned how to drive! He can speak a dozen different languages, but my 9-year-old is more capable of carrying on a mature adult conversation! Just a few hours ago, I watched him save the WORLD, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't even tie a set of shoelaces!"

"So why stay?" Byron strongly suspected he already knew the answer.

The question, by itself, seemed to stop Mitzi short. "Somebody had to, I suppose." It was all she could come up with.

"No." Byron said the word sternly but gently. He was no longer brooking any self-deception. "The moment Austin told you about me and Ken, you could have contacted either one of us, and none of this would have been your problem any longer. You stood by our boy," he preemptively interrupted her, "for reasons beyond your bleeding heart for orphaned strays and lost causes."

Mitzi inhaled sharply, and Byron thought he spotted her widening her eyes, to prevent their welling mist from spilling over onto her cheeks. "As much as he drives me batty, Austin is actually a really good person," she conceded, her tone uncharacteristically muted.

"He told you he believed in you." Byron managed not to laugh out loud.

"Who says that, to someone they've barely even met?" Mitzi objected, her voice finally faltering. "Coming from anyone else? I'd call it emotional blackmail. But Austin's not sensitive enough to anyone's feelings to even TRY to manipulate them. When he tells you he trusts you, he's not even trying to make you feel better. He's just telling the truth. It actually means more because he couldn't care less about your feelings." A broken-glass giggle escaped the back of her throat. "What a mind-job."

Byron leaned back, against what he'd accurately deduced was Mitzi's desk, and for the first time since his arrival, he took the time to take stock of the interior of the building he'd once regarded as a second home. "The more things change, the more they stay the same," he assessed with a serene amusement.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mitzi wrinkled her nose warily.

Byron slapped the heavily scarred yet solidly built desktop with his broad, open palms. "Austin's mother deeply disliked this desk. She tried to get rid of it at every opportunity, but his father kept hauling it back out of the scrapyard. Sometimes, I think this place is where things wind up when they're too old to die."

Byron paused, briefly lost in thought, before he recovered his bearings. "That includes old memories, and recurring emotions. Whenever Austin's father first met someone, I could always spot the moment they fell in love with him. Not that he ever caught on, not even once. I used to wonder whether that oblivious Kingsley charm would pass onto the next generation." He turned his sizing-up stare back onto Mitzi. "At the risk of being reductive, seeing you get this worked up sure does seem to settle that question."

"Ohhh, nonononono," Mitzi wagged her finger. "Even when I was still married, to a lawyer who was always away from home, because he was 'putting in overtime,'" she emphasised her sarcasm with air-quotes, "giving his personal assistant 'dictation,' I was never one of those Eloi Estates housewives, who was desperate enough to hook up with shiny guys named Chad."

Byron nodded in sympathetic understanding. "And since I'm guessing you got wrung through the wringer, going up against a husband who was also a lawyer, in divorce and child custody proceedings …"

Mitzi gripped her own shoulders. "Let's just say I'd like to think I've learned at least enough not to catch feelings for some doe-eyed whiz kid, especially when he's halfway between me and my daughter's ages."

"You think Austin would care about, or even notice, however old you might be?" Byron scoffed.

"No, but somebody should," Mitzi offered in a small, sad voice. "One of us needs to care about things that shouldn't matter, but that absolutely do matter anyway."

Byron raised his hands in silent surrender, declining to press the point further, for the time being.

"Where's your buddy, anyway?" Mitzi perked up suddenly, as the lull in the conversation allowed her to recall Ken Kawasaki, Byron's closest colleague from his time in the Kingsleys' Knighthood of Science. "You said you called each other 'kemo sabe,' like the Lone Ranger and Tonto? Wasn't he supposed to be here by now?"

"We each work diligently to defy our respective racial stereotypes," Byron snarked playfully, but with a hint of impatience reemerging from behind his smirk. "I'm Black, so I arrive 15 minutes early. He's Japanese, so he shows up late. What's somehow more tiresome than his tardiness is how he tries to pull it off, by saying—"

"A wizard arrives precisely when he means to," Ken completed Byron's quote, rapping on the Bookhouse's opened door with his key.

"Well, hi!" Mitzi chirped cheerfully, as she pushed back the sleeve of her baggy sweater, and the hoops of her bangle bracelets, to extend her hand. "Mitzi Klingfeld. We spoke on the phone?"

The leather jacket-clad motorcycle rider accepted her hand to lay a quick, ceremonial peck on her proffered fingers. "Nice nails," he observed offhandedly. "Ken Kawasaki. Console Cowboy Consulting. And I see you've already met Byron Brass, of Conscientious Countermeasures."

"We've already gotten acquainted, thanks to you generously giving us plenty of time to do so." Byron couldn't resist tossing in a sardonic aside.

"I'm Austin Kingsley's … personal assistant, I suppose," Mitzi twittered her fingers anxiously, more flustered than she anticipated by Ken's idle compliment and affectionate gesture. "Austin told me the proper title is, I'm his … amanuensis," she enunciated each syllable deliberately.

"Yeah, that sure sounds like our Buckyball, alright," Ken rolled his eyes in recognition. "Where's our boy, anyway? Napping in the stacks, like always?"

Green Key Golden Age owner: Ulysses Kingsley Silver Age successor: Charlemagne Kingsley Modern inheritor: Austin Kingsley

The first key to the Bookhouse was named for the center of the visible light spectrum. This key was minted in 1936, and when Ulysses went missing in 1956, his son Charlemagne found that the key had been left behind for him. Likewise, before Charlemagne disappeared in 1987, he made sure his son Austin knew where his key was safely stored.

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Blue Key Golden Age owner: Phryne Falken Silver Age successor: Hypatia Germain Kingsley Modern inheritor: Mitzi Klingfeld

Ulysses gave the second key to the Bookhouse to his partner Phryne shortly before they got married in 1936. Shortly before Phryne set out to try and find her former husband Joshua in 1954, she left her key with Ulysses. Phryne never returned, and two years later, Ulysses passed her key, and his own, onto their son Charlemagne in 1956. Charlemagne bequeathed his mother Phryne's key to his partner Hypatia shortly before their marriage in 1962. When Hypatia died in 1976, her key returned to Charlemagne's custody, until he passed both of their keys onto their son Austin in 1987. After Austin hired his partner Mitzi in 1987, Phryne and Hypatia's key became Mitzi's.

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Yellow Key Golden Age owner: Léon Volkov Silver Age successor: Hamilton Van Doren Modern inheritor: Nora Van Doren

Ulysses gave the third key to the Bookhouse to his former college professor Léon in 1938, but that key didn't remain in Léon's custody long. Shortly before Léon disappeared in 1940, he returned his key to Ulysses, who kept it in storage for his son Charlemagne, who received custody of Léon's key after Ulysses' disappearance in 1956. When Charlemagne and his wife Hypatia co-founded the Knighthood of Science in 1964, Charlemagne's first recruit to the Knighthood was his former college classmate Hamilton, who became the team's attorney, and the bearer of the Bookhouse's third key. When Hamilton died alongside Hypatia in 1976, he ensured his daughter Nora would receive custody of his key.

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Indigo Key Golden Age owner: Hedy Fine Silver Age successor: Edgar Prufrock Modern inheritor: Beatrix Klingfeld

Ulysses gave the fourth key to the Bookhouse to his former college classmate Hedy for safe keeping in 1938, but she mostly just kept that key in storage. After Hedy's disappearance in 1966, her estate passed her key onto Ulysses' son Charlemagne, per her written instructions. Upon receiving Hedy's key in 1966, Charlemagne immediately passed that key onto his former college classmate Edgar, thereby finally officially inducting Edgar into the Knighthood of Science, as the team's archivist. Edgar retained custody of his key until his arrest in 1987, when he passed that key onto Charlemagne's son Austin, who in turn immediately passed Edgar's key onto Beatrix, the daughter of Austin's partner Mitzi.

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Orange Key Golden Age owner: Osamu "Ozzie" Otomo Silver Age successor: Ambrose Absinthe Modern inheritor: Ken Kawasaki

Phryne suggested to her husband Ulysses, and he immediately agreed, that he should give the fifth key to the Bookhouse to their shared junior sidekick Ozzie in 1938. When Ozzie retired from costumed crime-fighting in 1941, he returned his key to Ulysses, who kept it in storage for his son Charlemagne, along with all the other keys, until Ulysses' disappearance in 1956. When Charlemagne and his wife Hypatia co-founded the Knighthood of Science in 1964, Charlemagne recruited another former college classmate, Ambrose, to serve as one of the team's "science heroes," specializing in chemistry and physics. When Charlemagne handed him the Bookhouse's fifth key, Ambrose took that trust seriously. Even after Ambrose turned to supervillainy three years later, in 1967, he upheld his fidelity to Charlemagne's trust by returning his key, insisting that the key be passed onto the Knighthood's then-teenaged engineering and electronics prodigy Ken, the son of Ozzie.

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Violet Key Golden Age owner: Joshua Lennon Silver Age successor: Herbert Heinlein Modern inheritor: Byron Brass

Phryne insisted that her husband Ulysses give the sixth key to the Bookhouse to her former husband Joshua in 1938. Shortly before Joshua's disappearance in 1942, he returned his key to Ulysses, who kept it in storage for his son Charlemagne, along with all the other keys, until Ulysses' disappearance in 1956. When Charlemagne and his wife Hypatia co-founded the Knighthood of Science in 1964, Charlemagne recruited yet another former college classmate, Herbert, to serve as one of the team's "science heroes," specializing in biology, ecology and other environmental sciences. Shortly after Herbert's divorce in 1970, he formally resigned from the Knighthood and returned his key to Charlemagne, recommending that the key be passed onto the team's then-recently acquired ally Byron, a military veteran whom Herbert also recommended for full membership in the Knighthood, to serve as the team's combat (and conflict resolution) advisor.

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Red Key Golden Age owner: Shoshana Shuster Silver Age successor: Dale Arden Carlson Bronze Age interloper: Lilith Killian Modern inheritor: Xavier Killian

CALIZONA

Incorporated as territory: 1866.

Admitted as state: 1881.

Centennial: 1981.

Capital city: Gladstone.

Nickname: The In-Betweener State.

Motto: Non difficultates, nisi solutiones (No problems, only solutions).

Colors: Hot pink, fluorescent orange.

Song: "Don't Stop Believin'," by Journey.

Poem: "Coyote," by Alexander Posey.

Musical instrument: Native American flute.

Dance: Breakdance.

Sport: Jai alai.

Theater: Promethean Playhouse.

Bat: Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis).

Wild cat: Cougar (Puma concolor).

Dog breed: Golden Retriever.

Horse breed: American Paint Horse.

Bird: American kestrel, or sparrowhawk (Falco sparverius).

Animal (wild land mammal): Coyote (Canis latrans).

Marine mammal: Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).

Fish: Gulf corvina (Cynoscion othonopterus).

Shell: Pacific calico scallop (Argopecten ventricosus).

Crustacean: Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister).

Amphibian: Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius).

Reptile (official): Western banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus).

Reptile (unofficial): Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus).

Butterfly: Red admiral (Vanessa atalanta).

Insect (official): Palo verde borer beetle (Derobrachus geminatus).

Insect (unofficial): Africanized honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata).

Mythical beast: Thunderbird.

Dinosaur: Deinonychus antirrhopus.

Fossil: Terror bird (Titanis walleri).

Rock: Mesozoic Mesa limestone.

Minerals: Molybdenum, lithium.

Gemstones: Bradbury Valley brecciated jasper, Scar Range fire agate.

Botanical garden: Harmony Gold Horticultural Conservatory.

Flower: Barbary fig prickly pear cactus blossom (Opuntia ficus-indica).

Tree: Mexican fan palm (Washingtonia robusta).

Shrub/herb: Creosote bush (Larrea tridentata).

Grass: Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon).

Mushroom: Psilocybe aztecorum.

Nuts: Pistachios, pecans.

Fruits: Dates, figs.

Vegetables: Artichokes, spinach.

Bread: Frybread.

Sandwiches: French dip, tacos de pescado.

Pies: Dutch apple, cherry.

Ice cream: Rainbow sherbet.

Snack: Prickly pear cactus candy.

Flavor: Tutti frutti.

Beverage: Citrus Caesar.

Cocktails: Shirley Temple, Tom and Jerry (winter).

Toy: Yo-yo.

“So, San Jose,” Mitzi recognized, before positioning her straw to take a discreet sip of her vanilla-flavored Prof. Pym Pop soda. “And you said it was, what, 1979?”

“When the train line was started in earnest, yes,” Austin nodded, as he used his small plastic spork to slice off a bite-sized piece of his Dutch apple pocket pie, before holding it up to Mitzi’s mouth. Mitzi beamed briefly at the awkward yet gentlemanly gesture, before chomping at the proffered pie, even as Austin continued on, without even appearing to notice her blushes. “It eventually grew to include stops at 33 cities in 26 states, but it all started with San Jose, California, and Charlton, Delaware.”

“Charlton … isn’t that where Bianca has her super-science school, or whatever?” Mitzi checked, brushing strands of her voluminous hair out of her face, as they were caught by the gentle desert breeze, while she and Austin sat on the flat warehouse roof of the Bookhouse, to share their fast food dinners (courtesy of one of King Tut’s Food Pyramids) under the summer-warmed night sky.

“Arkwright College of the Sciences,” Austin confirmed, “where, even before Bianca Yong successfully defended her doctoral thesis, the collective brain trust on campus was burning brightly enough to draw the notice of like minds on the opposite coastline, and vice versa.”

“So, what, they wanted a more tangible connection than just …” here, Mitzi wiggled her fingers in the air, mimicking the action of typing, “clacking away at their keyboards?”

“Each side of the country was generating a world’s fair worth of technological innovations on a weekly basis,” Austin chuckled as he shook his head. “It was becoming a bit much to sum up in electronic mail correspondence, even with the frequency of their exchanges.”

“And all nerds love trains,” Mitzi teased with an affectionate smirk.

“That is a stereotypical characterization that is only … mostly true,” Austin faltered in the midst of his objection, before waving his hands to refocus his thoughts, “and that’s not the point. Instead of simply transmitting these people’s words, or crude visual depictions of their plans, over phone lines, the Silicon Supertrain would essentially supply them with a rolling expo on rails. Rather than tasking developers with trekking to a succession of annual conventions, far from home, the Silicon Supertrain would bring the next generation of computers and accompanying consumer technology TO them!”

Mitzi couldn’t help but bite her lower lip with giddy glee. Moments like this reminded her why she loved Austin. She might not have otherwise shared his interest in what she initially considered a rather sterile subject, but his escalating enthusiasm as he spoke was infectious, and his passion made up her mind that she was going to ravish him later that night.

“You’re looking at me that way again,” Austin observed curiously, cocking his head to one side like a clockwork bird. His tone and facial expression were placid, not at all offended, and yet already skeptical of the denials he knew were forthcoming from her.

Mitzi blinked and cleared her throat. “What? No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” she sought to dismiss his concerns, before seizing upon an aspect of his explanation that had stood out to her. “Okay, so, we both know I’m no engineer, but I gotta think that a tricked-out, high-tech, high-speed supertrain is gonna cost a lot more than what even an Ivy League college and a bunch of boy wonders soldering circuit boards in their garages can scrape together between them.”

“Especially after the tech centers in those other cities I mentioned heard about the Silicon Supertrain during its brainstorming stage, and decided they wanted stops of their own along the way,” Austin dipped one of his tater tots (branded by King Tut’s as “Tater Tuts”) in ketchup, then used it to smear sticky red streaks in a rough loop across the wrapper of the soy burger he’d already eaten. “Incorporating them all meant creating three connected train routes — Boston to Dallas, Dallas to Seattle, and Seattle to Boston — with 10 more cities as stops in between on each route. Just to accommodate the size of the train, the stop that was planned for Charlton had to be placed in Dover instead.”

“Even still, none of those cities would have rolled the dice on funding a boondoggle like a supertrain for uber-nerds, especially back in the late Seventies,” Mitzi scoffed, before she squinted at the messy ketchup loop, with its extra-heavy dabs of ketchup at three of its corners, and quickly realized it was meant to be a map of the Silicon Supertrain’s three connected routes within the continental United States, with Boston, Dallas and Seattle represented by those extra-heavy dabs.

“Okay, Mister Kingsley,” Mitzi grinned, getting into the spirit of Austin’s playful lesson, “so, if this is Dallas,” she dipped a tater tot of her own into the southernmost dab, “and this is Seattle,” another dip, this time in the northwest dab, “then that makes this curve the Pacific coastline,” she smeared her tater tot along the ketchup streak, “but in between what I’m guessing are San Diego and Phoenix, the line goes all jagged,” she frowned speculatively, before chipping at the edges of her cherry red nail polish with her teeth out of subconscious habit.

“And what does that tell you, Mitzi Klingfeld?” Austin gazed at her adoringly, not only genuinely impressed with what she’d discerned so far, but eagerly anticipating how she would tie it all together.

“Well, I spent enough time growing up in Las Vegas to spot where it sits on a map, so that’s why the line zigs so far to the north, coming from Phoenix,” she picked up the uneaten tater tot she’d used as her pointer, “but if it was just heading west, from there to San Diego, the line would flow a lot smoother, so for it to zag back down south, as sharp as it does? That means somebody was awfully invested in getting Apex City on that route,” she leaned back and finally popped the tater tot into her mouth triumphantly. “And nobody else but your dad would have been both loaded and nerdy enough.”

“Technically, it was an investment by the Athenæum, but yes,” Austin couldn’t help but nit-pick, even as he tossed a tater tot into his own broadly beaming mouth. “My family basically bankrolled the project, and Pournelle Propulsion Systems was brought on board as a partner, to help design and build the train itself.”

“And I take it that the Silicon Supertrain has been bringing together overgrown whiz-kids like a Love Boat for Trekkies ever since,” Mitzi lifted her tall plastic cup of soda in a mock toast.

Austin twitched slightly, in what Mitzi had learned was his equivalent of a wince. “For the most part. But there’s been a problem. Very recently, some high-profile passengers on the Silicon Supertrain have been found dead — on board, in transit, NOT of natural causes. It’s been kept out of the press so far, but given the names involved, I don’t expect that to last.”

“So, the clock is already ticking,” Mitzi nodded, her tone growing muted to match Austin’s subdued, utilitarian exposition, before her lips curled into a rueful smirk. “And this is why our last meal of the weekend was drive-thru.”

“Because we have to wake up early tomorrow, and I didn’t want either of us to have to do cleanup duty after a fancy dinner. Sorry,” Austin ducked his head sheepishly.

Austin felt Mitzi kiss his cheek before he saw that she’d scooted her chair around next to his. “Don’t be,” she patted his cheek. “How many other gals who work in admin can say they get to solve bona fide murder mysteries on the job? It’ll be like we’re riding the Orient Express … only, you know, for dorks,” she snorted, before she narrowed her eyes mischievously. “So, what time do we have to be at the Crossroads Transit Center?”

Austin shrugged. “The Silicon Supertrain pulls out of the station promptly at 8:20 a.m. Why?”

Mitzi suddenly slung her legs around Austin’s hips and sat on his lap, facing him. “Because that gives me at least a few hours to eat you alive, Mister Kingsley,” she breathed, affecting her best attempt at a husky Brenda Vaccaro voice, before she tore open the front of his shirt, causing his buttons to spill onto the rooftop beneath them with an audibly tinny clatter, and began licking his downy, peach fuzz-covered chest.

“D-do you want me to — ah!” Austin gasped, trembling reflexively as Mitzi moved hungrily to devour his exposed neck. “Do you w-want me to haul out the guest bed for you again?”

“She was conducting covert scientific research of some kind,” Austin threw himself into unfastening the supple leather covers, and spreading open the wrinkled handwritten pages, “right here in the Bookhouse. It was dangerous enough that she didn't even tell my father, probably because she knew he'd plead with her to stop, for safety's sake alone. And … there was an explosion. A pretty big one. You can still see some stray scorch marks, on exposed sections of the concrete.”

Mitzi squeezed his shoulder. “I'm sorry.”

Austin squinted quizzically at her. “Why? It wasn't your fault.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Anyway, I must have cried for something like three days after she died, but once I finally got to the point where my body literally could not sustain the physical effort of crying any longer, I realized that my mother was still just as dead, and I still felt just as badly about that fact.”

“So, you really haven't cried, in all the years since?” Mitzi fixed him with a pitying gaze.

Austin's brow furrowed in confusion at her reaction. “If it doesn't bring back who or what I've lost, and it doesn't even make me feel better, then please tell me, what exactly is the point of the exercise?”

Mitzi's jaw dropped, but she nonetheless managed to hold herself back from passionately hashing out the issue on the spot. “To be continued,” she instead declared firmly, shutting her eyes tight as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Moving on to more productive topics, you and your dad called it the Star Point Portal. Does that mean that he got, like … whoosh, transported into outer space?”

“To another planet, you mean?” Austin checked, before shrugging and settling on a grudging nod, as he pored over the sea of text laid out before him. “That's my leading theory, albeit mostly by default. He made a handful of scattered notations about what he termed an 'Otherworld,' in quotation marks, possibly named Thel … or Quadris, or Aurica, or Eldebran … maybe even Aetheria,” he pointed to different pages for each one, “but even those are ambiguous about whether it's simply another world, or possibly even in a different dimension —”

“How are you not able to narrow down your search any further than that?” Mitzi's exasperation at last overwhelmed her patience. “With all these books in front of you —”

“In case you hadn't noticed, we left the realm of legitimate archaeology behind a while ago,” Austin countered, with a measure of peevishness to match her own. “We're now squarely within the realm of myths and legends. Any remotely credible accounts concerning the Star Point Portal simply state, straight out, that it cannot, does not and should not exist.” His shoulders slumped. “Besides, my father's notes don't tell me anything he didn't already tell me himself. There's speculation that the Star Point Portal enables not only interstellar travel, but could also allow entry into alternate timelines, perhaps even parallel universes.”

“The ancient Egyptians couldn't have built something that sophisticated, could they?” Mitzi guessed.

“The ancient Egyptians were perfectly capable of building the pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza all on their own, without any extraterrestrial intervention,” Austin assessed, “and indeed, I'd suggest that's precisely why they were contacted, but no, something as advanced as the Star Point Portal was well beyond their grasp.”

Mitzi wheeled the nearest whiteboard next to the desk, flipped it over to its blank side, and started scribbling notes of her own on it with a dry-erase marker. “So, this Star Point Portal … beams your dad up to 'Otherworld,' maybe?” she collected her thoughts, more for her benefit than his, as the words she wrote mirrored those she muttered aloud. “Another planet, or different dimension … question mark?”

“What is this, that you're doing here?” Austin wondered, echoing her earlier question to him.

Mitzi rolled her eyes, without slowing her cursive loops. “You're so much like my daughter, it kills me. You're both geniuses, but neither one of you has got common sense enough to keep all those details straight in your heads by diagramming them out. At least she has the excuse of still being a kid.”

As Mitzi's felt-tip pen squeaked out the words, “Star Point Portal built by … WHO?”, Austin took up an eraser pad and a magic marker of his own, to replace the word “WHO?” with “Ancient Astronauts.”

“Aliens?” Mitzi asked aloud, as she wrote the word at the end of the whiteboard sentence, complete with question mark.

Austin recapped his pen, and raised his hands in helpless resignation. “Again, that'd be my best-guess hypothesis, but … my father always referred to them as Ancient Astronauts, and regardless of whomever or whatever they were, I tend to agree with my father, that they were drawn to Earth by the intelligence that the ancient Egyptians demonstrated, through the peerless precision of their architecture.”

“Okay, so, the Ancient Astronauts built the Star Point Portal, which they left behind with the ancient Egyptians,” Mitzi summed up, drawing an arrow from “Ancient Astronauts” to “Ancient Egyptians” on the whiteboard, “and when you and your dad dug it back up last month, the Star Point Portal zapped your dad into … parts unknown,” she circled a trio of question marks, reading “???” on the board.

“That's … about the size of it, yes,” Austin ran his hands through his hair, until his fingers interlaced at the back of his neck.

After Mitzi had replaced her own marker on the whiteboard tray, she stopped short, struck by a sudden thought. “Oh my God,” she gasped, her hands rushing up to her mouth, “you had to come back home without your dad, and then try to explain to everyone what had happened. You couldn't tell anyone the truth, because nobody would have believed a sci-fi story like that —”

“And even the least discerning ones among them could easily tell that the explanations I was supplying were far from the truth,” Austin flashed a rueful smirk. “I'm not an especially gifted liar, so my obvious dissembling, about my suspiciously missing father, gave the Van Dorens all the justification they needed, to argue that the Athenæum would be in better hands with their family steering its course.”

Austin wandered back to the desk, planted his hands on the desktop, and stared down wearily at the piles of pages that covered its surface. “Five pyramid-shaped segments, which come together to form the five-pointed star at the heart of the Star Point Portal,” he repeated his father's words, before pushing himself away from the desk. “I've tried opening the Ouroboros on my own, hooking myself up to it, like I was jump-starting a car battery, but without that key … even with me and my father working together, it took us forever to find the hidden entrance to the Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx. The window of the Harmonic Convergence had nearly closed by the time I finally located the Ouroboros.”

Mitzi snorted mirthlessly. “And here I thought the Harmonic Convergence was just another Woodstock, for New Age gurus to wave their cleansing crystals over each other.”

“My parents tried to explain Woodstock to me,” Austin rubbed his bleary eyes, “but I suspect it's the sort of historic event that only makes sense if you've lived through it.”

“Oh, honey, you're so young,” Mitzi couldn't resist giggling. “Speaking as someone who was actually old enough to have lived through it, it never made any sense to me, then or now.”

Austin cocked his head curiously to one side. “How old are you?”

Mitzi slapped his shoulder, hard. “RUDE! You don't ask a lady her age! How would you like it if I asked you YOUR age?”

“I'm 24,” Austin responded by reflex.

“Yeah, well, I'm thirty-niii — I mean, what I meant to say was, I'm … almost 30, so I'm, like … 29?” Mitzi ventured tentatively, after her initial series of stumbles.

Austin narrowed his eyes skeptically. “Hm. That'd make you the same age as Nora, then. Funny; you seem younger than her.”

“Oh, really?” Mitzi resisted the impulse to preen, biting her lower lip to keep from beaming openly, even as her attempt at pursing her lips broke into a huge, goofy grin that spread all across her face.

“Are you okay?” Austin asked, out of what sounded like equal amounts of clinically scientific curiosity and earnest concern for her welfare. “You appear to be … blushing —”

“No, yeah, sorry,” Mitzi cleared her throat and inhaled sharply, straightening herself up and crossing her arms over her broad chest in mild embarrassment. “So, what I'm hearing is, you're gonna have to hunt down all five of these ancient artifact thingamajigs, and that's gonna take some time.” Here, she adopted the same professional tone to which she'd been subjected by so many workplace motivational speakers. “So, in the meantime, as long as you're gonna be spending all that time searching anyway, why not make that time work for you?”

Now Austin was finally, fully lost. “I … am not sure that I follow.”

Mitzi slid her smaller hand into his gentle grip, and led him out onto an open space on the concrete floor. “Austin, you can literally spin planets out of pennies,” she laughed, raising his arm so she could twirl in place while still holding his hand. She then grabbed both his hands, and tugged him closer to her. “Have you even bothered to try and figure out how many other powers you might have?”

Austin's expression grew more confident, as he was able to return to more comfortably familiar footing. “Actually, I've been using an updated version of my father's old Quest Tracker computer, to keep track of all the abilities I seem to have manifested so far,” he pointed to the large upright metal ring, taking the lead in their dance by tugging Mitzi with him, while he took a few steps toward the assembly, until he was near enough to scoop up the Ouroboros from the floor.

Mitzi tested the granular texture of the carved stone relic with her fingertips, jerking her hand away when its neon yellow light trails pulsed in response. “So, when this whatsit opened, during the Harmonic Convergence, it basically bathed you in, like, cosmic rays?”

“That's about as accurate an explanation as any I've been able to come up with,” Austin admitted, with a self-effacing grin. “You're not a half-bad scientist, Mitzi Klingfeld.”

“You really do mean that, don't you?” Mitzi brushed his floppy bangs back from his eyes, momentarily taken aback by the sincerity of his compliment. “It's not just a line, or a come-on.”

Austin winced apologetically. “I recognize those are probably idiomatic phrases, but … I can't parse their meanings from the context provided.”

Mitzi patted Austin's cheek. “Never mind. It doesn't matter. What does matter, Mister Kingsley,” she took hold of his wrist, and lifted his arm to bring the Ouroboros to eye-level between them, “is what you learned about your powers, through your mad science experiments. So spill.”

Austin took a deep breath. “In simplest terms, it appears my exposure to the extraterrestrial energies released by the Star Point Portal … has altered my relationships with matter and energy,” he struggled to summarize his findings, as Mitzi spotted the pattern behind his fidgety habit of tapping each of his fingertips, twice in a row, against the flat of his thumb, in a repeating sequence. “It's … difficult to get much more specific than that, except to point out how the potential applications of such powers are obviously profound, even if my current capacity to tap into those powers seems severely limited. Because unfortunately, this,” here, he briefly waved the Ouroboros, the wrist-twisting gesture reminding Mitzi of a tambourine player, “didn't come with an instruction manual.”

“But even if you didn't have bona fide superpowers, which you do, you've got some seriously super skills and gifts, that you could already be using to do good,” Mitzi began to list them, ticking them off on her fingers, one by one. “You're brilliant, you're rich … I mean, even after the hostile takeover of your family's company, I'm guessing you're still loaded, yeah?”

“I have an inheritance that's independent of the Athenæum,” Austin confirmed. “I have absolutely no idea what its financial value amounts to, but my parents assured me it would pay for the Bookhouse's rent, utilities and any future permutation of telecommunications fees into perpetuity.”

“In other words, you're so rich, you can actually afford to not even know how much money you do have,” Mitzi marveled, her tone wavering between scorn and admiration. “Plus, you're mourning the loss of your parents, and you've got an honest-to-God secret lair. You're basically Bruce Wayne, before he picked out a costume and a cool car.”

Austin hesitated to reveal even more of his ignorance to Mitzi, but his next question was unavoidable. “Who is Bruce Wayne?”

Mitzi clutched her temples, to fend off the stress headache she felt coming on. “Okay. Let's try this instead; if you had the power to do anything you wanted — and after you used that power to bring back your dad, because of course, that's a given, I totally get that — what would you do?”

“Well, for a start, I wouldn't waste that level of power on a task that I'll be able to accomplish without it,” Austin scoffed. “My father trusted me to track down and reassemble the pieces of the key to the Star Point Portal. It'll happen. As you said, I just have to put in the work in the meantime.” He paused, and a dawning realization crept across his face. “But if I could travel back in time … I could use those powers for saving Alexandria.”

Mitzi caressed his cheek. “Oh, honey … was Alexandria your mom?”

“What? No,” Austin unwittingly disregarded her empathy. “The Royal Library of Alexandria, founded probably not long after the start of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, circa 3rd Century B.C.”

The way Mitzi set her jaw would have been recognized by any of her exes as a warning sign. “So, what you're telling me is, if you could do anything you wanted, you would use that power … to bring back a library?”

“Not just A library,” Austin enthused, “THE library. The library against which all other libraries in history have been judged. For more than two centuries, about the same age that the United States of America is now, the Library of Alexandria served as a repository for all the knowledge in the world, that had been recorded at that time. To this day, we're still relearning discoveries that were already made millennia ago, and then lost when the library was destroyed by the fires of Roman armies. If those insights could have been preserved and carried forward, human civilization could have had a two-thousand-year head start on where we are now.”

“And what about where we are now?” Mitzi shot back. “What about the real world, outside this warehouse, the way it is right now? You and your dad spent so much time digging in the dirt, it's like all you know how to do without him is just … bury yourself in the past.”

“That's not what this is,” Austin denied, as he set the Ouroboros down delicately among the aged pages on the desk, causing them to crinkle like autumn leaves. “You're acting like I've lived my whole life in the Bookhouse, when I've been traveling around the world with my parents since before I could even walk.”

On a shelf next to the desk, Austin spied a child-sized globe that seemed familiar to him. Even before he fetched it, and ran his fingers over the multitude of red pins stuck into its soft cork surface, Mitzi had gathered that each pin marked a spot where he'd stopped on his travels. “I was 9 years old when I climbed up the side of the Great Pyramid of Giza. I've bedded down in the Sahara desert with roaming Bedouins, and foraged for food alongside otherwise isolated tribes in the Amazon rainforest. I've long since lost track of how many languages I've learned, and how many different cultures I've encountered firsthand.”

“And in all that time, you never saw something that you thought needed fixing?” Mitzi pleaded.

“It's too complex!” Austin threw his hands in the air. “The more I learn — about the world, about other people — the less I understand. I'm not qualified to diagnose what ails modern human civilization.”

Mitzi stroked his forehead soothingly, as she prized the globe from his grasp, to place it on the desk. “Austin, you don't have to solve all the world's problems at once, you know. It's not like I'd have the first clue how to tackle the big picture, so … let's start small. How about helping out the city?”

“Why this city in particular?” Austin inquired, more intrigued than dismissive of her suggestion.

“Why not?” Mitzi swept her arms out expansively. “It's where we both rest our heads at night, isn't it? Besides, there are people out there who are homeless, and hungry. And if you live in the big city, you're always at risk, of getting robbed, or shot, or worse. Imagine what could happen, if this city had its own superhero?”

“I have to tell you, I don't think I know a single thing about this city,” Austin freely confessed, feeling steadily less embarrassed by the gaps in his knowledge, and instead, increasingly eager to delve into new discoveries.

“Well, I may not be the highfalutin academic that you are, Mister Kingsley,” Mitzi's lips curled into a mischievous smirk, “but there was one subject in school I always excelled at, that I think you could learn some lessons from.”

“Which is?”