Free The Live-Forever Machine by Kenneth Oppel Page A

monitor. “It runs right alongside the base of the museum wall.”
    “So we were standing right over that,” said Eric.
    “Yep. It’s like a big canyon. A concrete canyon with a river running through it.”
    “A dried-up river,” Eric corrected him. He thought of Jonah, yelling down the grate, throwing his fishing rod to the ground. Clank, clank, clank. He’d heard it, too, the grinding of machinery, seen the spark of light, smelled the dense smoke. Whatever it was down there, it had to be right on the shore of the storm drain. He imagined a monstrous engine, spewing out flames like a dragon, burning away all the water.
    “What do you think it was we heard down there?”
    “You mean
smelled
down there,” Chris snorted. “My nose is still recovering. I don’t know what it was. Don’t really care. And no, I don’t want to go down and have another look.” He smiled. “Strung up that little idea, didn’t I?”
    “Why not?” Eric said.
    Chris flicked a switch on the computer and the diagrams disappeared from the screen.
    “Well, one very good reason is that it’s sealed up. I was by there today, and they’ve closed it.”
    “Jonah didn’t think it was normal.”
    “The guy who fishes through the grate?” Chris said with a smirk. “You’ve been listening to crazy people too much lately. It’ll get you into trouble.”
    Eric followed Chris back to the living room. They were greeted by a barrage of commercials on the television. People jumped out of airplanes holding bottles of beer, a Greek statue came to life to use a razor, the new mall glittered in artificial sunlight, and the Sphinx stood after thousands of years and ate a superior brand of cat food from an enormous bowl.
    “How do they make it look so good?” Chris asked, mystified.
“I’d
eat it, it looks so good!”
    Eric shook his head in revulsion. But his thoughts were circling back to his meeting with Alexander. Everything had seemed so predetermined—every question, every comment. Why?
    “It was as if Alexander was studying me.”
    But Chris was gone. “Know what I really want?” he said, watching another ad. “A micro cell phone. One of those miniature ones you just clip to your ear.”
    It was as if he were speaking another language. And Eric felt a strange twinge of loneliness, as if he and Chris had nothing in common. With Alexander, weird as he was, there seemed to be some reassuring link between them, as if they had things to talk about, things they both understood.
    He watched Chris watching the television. The wooden locket was still in his pocket. He could feel it against his leg. He knew he’d go back.

7
Necropolis
    Eric leaned over the typewriter and read the last sentence his father had written, almost a week ago:
She did not say goodbye, but it seemed obvious—to both of us—that we would not see each other again.
    Eric looked around the humid living room, taking in the sagging bookshelves, the framed prints on the peeling plaster walls, the two sofas with their faded floral pattern, the dilapidated armchairs, the leaning radiator. She used to sit in this room, he thought. He tried to imagine her, lowering herself into one of the chairs, picking up a book from the coffee table.
    For a fleeting moment, the whole house seemed to shudder with her presence. She’d lived here. The books: how many of those were hers? And the vase with the dried flowers in front of the bricked-in fireplace—had that been hers, too? The bursting cushions on the sofa?The rug in the corner? Was every room filled with memories of her?
    He wondered what she’d looked like and instinctively felt for the locket. His hand froze. He suddenly understood, as if he’d swiftly pushed through a revolving door in his mind. It wasn’t Gabriella della Signatura he’d been interested in. It was his mother.
    He vaulted up the stairs two at a time, hesitating a moment in the doorway of his father’s room.
    Go on, he told himself. She’s your