"I hope you and your mother are settled in okay," she said. "Thank you. We're doing okay."
"I'm showing her my laboratory." Augustus said.
She studied him a moment to see if he was serious and then smiled. "Oh, that's fine. If you would like something cold to drink, please come to the kitchen. I'm working on our dinner,"
I thanked her again and followed Augustus to a room. There was a sign on the door that read. "Enter at your own peril."
"So far it's worked," he said, nodding at it. "No intruders." He opened the door and stepped back for me. to enter.
The walls were covered with computer sheets on which were printed savings in a large font.
"What is all this?" I asked.
"Every time I come across a statement I think makes sense, I print it out and put it up."
There were quotes by great philosophers, people in history, and even some politicians, as well as rock stars and lines I recognized from songs. On the floor of the room were piles and piles of books and magazines. There was so much around it that his unmade
bed looked lost. A computer was on with a moving picture of bubbles rising out of water, each with a tiny pop. Papers were stacked and scattered over the two long tables and the desk.
One of the closet doors had a sign on it that read. "Government nuclear site. Restricted."
"What's in there?" I asked.
"My laboratory." he said, and opened the door. It was a walk-in closet once. Now there was photographic equipment as well as a narrow long table upon which were mathematical equations seemingly randomly running over pages and pages. I gazed down at it all and shook my head. It was much higher math than I had ever seen, and it looked like one big mess,
"What is this?"
"My project. I'm working on time travel, converting matter into energy and then restructuring it."
"Like that movie about the fly?"
He smirked. "Hardly," he said. "This is real,"
"And you're into photography?"
"That's how I make the T-shirts, among other things."
"How do you know where anything is?" I asked, astounded at the books and notepads piled on the floor here. too.
"Everything is in its place." he said, gazing about as if I was the one who was too disorganized, "You want Freud. I have Freud," he said, spinning and lifting a book off the top of a small stack. It was titled The Interpretation of Dreams. "You want Thoreau. here's Thoreau," he continued, slipping a book out from under another. "Plato?" He reached under a table. "Here's Plato."
I shook my head in amazement. I supposed he was brilliant. Maybe he would be a world-renowned thinker someday,
"Now for the magic," he said. "This way."
He directed me to the far right corner of his room, where he had a small table. On it was a tiny metal marble suspended in midair between two metal squares that were humming.
"How did you do that?"
He smiled. "Years ago people would believe I had magical powers. Magic is simply science not yet understood. The ball is caught between two opposing magnetic fields of equal power. Here." he said, plucking it from the air and handing it to me. "Say some gibberish, and put it back in the spot where it was. Abracadabra. Go on Do it."
I took it and put it where I thought it had been, and it seemed to slip out of my fingers on its own and remain suspended. I jumped back. and he laughed.
"You're a wizard too, and now," he said. "people will call you weird."
I shook my head and gazed around the cluttered room again. "What do your parents say about all this?"
"Nothing," he replied quickly. "They pretend I don't exist. It's all right." he added. "I do the same in regard to them. We have a mutual nonexistence pact."