Repurposed 11.4

Interval 11.4
January 18, 1986
1630, Seattle, WA
Freeman Residence / Exact Location Classified



A small, black, metal object flew past Winslow Freeman's ear and embedded itself with great force into the kitchen wall over the counter. A moment went by before the red-haired and ginger-bearded man reacted. Had he really seen a hot-wheels car?

Yes, yes, there it was. Slightly smoking, the hole it had made in the drywall singed the wallpaper and was causing a slight smell. A faint crumbling of dust drifted down and Winslow moved his plate out of its way. He didn't dare touch it, try to get it out… Not just yet anyway.

"Gordon, what have I told you about inside velocities?"

"Thorry dad," came the faintly insincere reply from the kitchen's open archway. Winslow turned, his son was standing there with something new in his hands, cradled like a trophy. Gordon's bright green eyes glittered, and there was a huge smile missing both front teeth to complete the picture.

"Didn't I get you a track for those cars?" Winslow sighed, glancing through the dining room beyond his son and seeing ... well he wasn't sure what all was there, but built among the numerous pathways and structures Gordon had been working on surely had to be parts of that rather expensive toy set.

"It wathn't long enough and it kept breaking," Gordon lisped. "But I made it better."

Perhaps he should be glad that Gordon wasn't one of those kids that demanded all the latest action figures and games from every year's Toys-n-stuff catalog. All of the neighbors' kids were playing with those, some gloating over their holiday haul, plenty had already broken half their gifts, others pouting at having gotten socks instead of Teddy Ruxpin. Gordon was happy to have construction toys, that telescope and microscope he'd already put to good use. Maybe if Gordon would go outside to play he could share some of his expertise in building... Oh, wait, no, that would be bad.

The complicated tree-house in the back yard was testament to that error in judgment. It had taken an entire evening to get the one kid out of it, having become ensnared by one of Gordon's amazing... er...insidious traps. Even Winslow wasn't too sure how to extricate himself from the worst of it, he wound up demanding his wife Clio deliver wire cutters and a crowbar through the second story window to the tree branches. Gordon wasn't very happy about having his work broken like that. Come to think of it, where had that crowbar gotten to? He might need it to pull this toy car out of the wall.

Gordon's aspiration to become a true mad scientist was obvious. The boy just didn't stop taking things apart, putting them back together... Making them better, or at the very least different. The toaster? Well, they could use it for home defense now. Clio had insisted that her extremely expensive new microwave oven be off limits to the boy's maniacal whim. Her blender, two hand mixers and the spare heating plate had already been ... reformatted, into something that Winslow was certain could have caused a tiny black hole to form if they'd been left unattended.

But at the rate he was going, Gordon would be working with his dad at Armacham's industrial machinery division within a few years. All because of the competition: Black Mesa.

Now to be fair, Gordon had always been interested in science. More than any other kid on the block, or even in his school. And he had the brains for it too. He was never much of a talker, but boy, Gordon started reading before he was three, worked on math problems that would stump a high school teacher by the time he was five.

And then, last year, something Black Mesa was working on got shown on a PBS science program. Their ideas about technology surpassed almost anything that Winslow had built or even studied, though he was certain Armacham led the field in their bio-technology and medical areas. The New Mexico research facility competed for plenty of government contracts, though Winslow was sure they had enough crossover and cooperative sales that everyone saw benefits whenever one started taking off.

But he wasn't sure about this tech. Teleportation? Really? Other dimensions, sling-shot vectors using whole universes as an axis?

Winslow was more interested in watching his son's reaction to all this. The big words said almost in passing by one or two of the scientists being interviewed could have lost most of the professional, science-oriented viewers. The big words were ones that Gordon dedicated himself to learning. Where some kids' first 'stupidly big word' was 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' or even 'antidisestablishmentarianism', Gordon's was twice as long as either of those, and Winslow hadn't bothered to try and spell check it. Apparently it meant something about transitory states, energy conservation, and direction of electron flow.

Gordon was well on his way to creating his own quantum tunneling device – or at least a rocket launcher. Winslow took the thing from his son's hands, gently scooted him back into the dining room, and tried prying the embedded toy car out of the wall. With any luck, it'd be out and he could have some spackle in it before Clio got home from shopping... If he couldn't get it out, there would be some spackle with a car in it.

Winslow glanced around at the other holes he'd patched. Some day, they might want to invest in home improvement equipment. If only Gordon wouldn't appropriate that too.