THE LOSS of six hours stumped my father. A few hasty recalculations gave him a fresh hypothesis involving half-life atomic energy decay. It seemed the device might only be able to recapture half its energy after every use. Twelve hours becomes six becomes three and so on. If I did it again, I’d leap to four o’clock, then five-thirty, or so he figured. But I’d received my own stern warning (from myself) not to do it again. After I vetoed Dad’s predictable idea to drop by Rush Fiberoptics, he returned to his attic office, cracked his knuckles, and set off to solve the problem I presented him with. We needed a new approach—one that involved gaining remote access to Rush’s database to see what they knew about a time machine. Even if he had zero hope of replicating the program, there was still a chance he could find a way to stop this perpetual spin cycle. He was a much better hacker than chauffeur, so I biked to school alone. No answer when I called Paige on the cell phone I borrowed from Dad.
