CHAPTER FIVE

  "It's been quite delightful meeting you, Oliver," Armando said then, offering his hand for Oliver to shake.

  He was as polite as ever, but Oliver still sensed the melancholy in his voice. He shook the old inventor's hand, willing himself to broach the topic of him staying but failing to even find the words.

  "Yes," was all he managed. "It's been truly wonderful."

  Then he turned away from Armando and headed for the rotating wall. He dragged his feet as he walked, and thought sadly about the life he was returning to, with the horrible alcove and his bully of a brother.

you..."

  "You've already cared for me more than my mom and dad do," Oliver said, accepting that he'd have to be even more independent and self-reliant if he stayed here than he was at home.

  "And you're supposed to go to school…"

  "I already know everything they're teaching me! I'm the smartest kid there. Besides, I could learn from you. You could mentor me, and teach me how to make your machines. I could be your apprentice."

  Armando seemed anguished, Oliver thought, like he was grappling with a dilemma. He didn't want to be an imposition and overstep the boundary, but this was the first time in his life things had felt close to being right. He couldn't walk away now and leave all this behind.

  "I'll do anything," Oliver begged him. "Please. Let me prove myself to you at least. Show you what I can do."

  Armando paused. A long silence passed before he spoke again.

  "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to see what you're made of," he said finally.

  Oliver raised his eyebrows. It wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no either. "Really? You'll let me work on something? Show you what I can do?"

  "I will," Armando replied, his expression unreadable. "But first you must do one thing."

  "Of course," Oliver said. "Anything."

  Armando smirked with good nature. "Please put on some actual clothes."

  Oliver looked down at his pajamas and blushed.

array of tools—saws, clamps, and files—and a range of materials—wood, metal, and plastic. Oliver gingerly touched his fingers against them, delighted by the prospect of soon using them.

  "Let's go through the basics," Armando began, indicating a pair of plastic goggles. "Safety first."

  Oliver put the goggles on.

  "These are special ones, by the way," Armando said. "Modified by myself for improved functionality."

  He reached and clicked a little button on the bridge of the glasses. Oliver gasped as the world turned black and white.

  "I've been meaning to tell you," Armando added, somewhat flippantly. "Lucas has been at my side since day one. He's the only person who has stuck with me through thick and thin. When I'm not around, you'll be working alongside him. He'll be showing you what needs to be done."

  "When you're not around?" Oliver repeated, feeling an anxious shard lodge in his throat. Sharing his hero with someone else was one thing but having his hero not available was something else entirely! "What do you mean? Where else would you be if not here?"

  Before Armando had a chance to reply, an approaching figure drew up beside them. Lucas too was an old man, though clearly not as old as Armando. Oliver estimated him to be in his eighties. If he had indeed been foreman of the factory for the last seventy years, he must have been around Oliver's age when he started working there! That thought bothered Oliver even more.

  Lucas's lined face seemed stuck in a permanent frown, his features dragged downward from gravity, making him look as unhappy as Horatio the bloodhound. He eyed Oliver suspiciously.

  "Lucas," Armando said brightly. "This is Oliver."

  Lucas's expression could only be described as cold. His eyes were very pale and very blue, and they seemed to penetrate right into Oliver's soul. Clearly, Lucas didn't like the idea of sharing the old inventor with anyone either.

  "He's working here, is he?" Lucas said, his voice dripping with disgust.

  "Yes," Armando replied cheerfully, clearly not picking up on the hatred in Lucas's voice. "For the time being anyway. Tomorrow morning, I'll need you to show him the ropes and get him up to speed. I have some important business to attend to and will be out all day."

  Oliver tore his gaze from Lucas to Armando, feeling suddenly panicked. This wasn't what he'd imagined at all. He'd thought Armando would be teaching him, not this horrible scowling man who clearly hated him!

  "Come, come," Armando said. "Dinner, then bed."

  "Wait…" Oliver said, about to protest about the arrangements for the next day.

  But Armando seemed suddenly very distracted. It was as though his focus had shifted instantly from Oliver to something else entirely.

  Oliver looked over at Luas, at the intruder into his otherwise perfect life. Lucas locked eyes with Oliver. Slowly, a menacing grin spread across his face. Oliver gulped

would be just as exciting.

  In the next room, there was an even more sophisticated-looking machine. It was a 3D printer, Oliver realized.

  "We use this for more intricate plastics," Lucas said. "All the fiddly bits."

  Oliver's eyes widened even more when he saw the 3D printer. He'd always wanted to try one out. "Will this be part of my assignment?" he asked.

  Lucas shook his head. "The designs are far too advanced for you."

  Oliver pouted. He didn't like being talked down to, especially when Lucas knew nothing about him or his abilities. Lucas had no idea how smart Oliver was or how quickly he learned things. But again, Oliver didn't protest. He'd seen so many exciting things in the factory that he knew whatever he ended up working on today would be just as awesome.

  Lucas took Oliver along still another corridor he'd never noticed before. It was extremely narrow, and Oliver worked out that it must run sandwiched between the one where his own bedroom was located and the one with all the plastics machines. It was so hidden it would be easy to completely miss it, to walk right past without noticing it was there. Indeed, Oliver must have done just that himself.

  "Down here we have Armando's room," Lucas said. "It's off limits, of course."

  "Yes, yes," Oliver said with a sigh. Lucas sure seemed to enjoy rubbing it in how much he wasn't allowed to know.

  He looked at the door curiously, wondering what kind of room the old inventor would have and what kind of secrets he might have hidden inside.

  They carried on along the strangely narrow corridor. It was quite claustrophobic and that wasn't helped by the dim lighting. But then suddenly the corridor opened up, both in width and height, and there was just one enormous door ahead of them.

  Lucas stopped. Oliver did too. The door was huge and made of thick steel. Yellow and black stripes had been painted across it and the words NO ENTRY had been spray painted in red. The door looked very secure, its thick steel clearly impenetrable with any kind of cutting machine.

  "Armando's secret invention is kept safe inside here," Lucas said. Then he turned and looked at Oliver and repeated his favorite mantra. "But it's off limits to you."

  Oliver noticed the smirk on Lucas's face and realized this whole "tour" had been a charade, just a way to show Oliver all the things he wasn't allowed to do and all the places in the factory he didn't have access to. Lucas was just trying to make it clear that when it came to the pecking order, Oliver was at the bottom.

  But his interest had been piqued by Lucas's choice of words. Armando's secret invention. It sounded very mysterious and Oliver's curiosity grew.

  "Can you tell me what's inside?" he asked. "Even though I'm not allowed to see it, I'd love to know what Armando is working on."

  Lucas's frown intensified. "That's classified information," he said evasively.

  Oliver suddenly realized that Lucas didn't know either.

  "It's off limits to you, too, isn't it?" he said, hiding his delight that even the arrogant elderly foreman wasn't quite as important as he liked to pretend.

  Lucas's silence spoke volumes. If being Armando's foreman for seventy years hadn't afforded Lucas any particular luxuries, Oliver could begin to understand the man's resentment toward him. But he didn't have to behave so unpleasantly because of it. Oliver was sure that Armando wasn't keeping things secret to be cruel. There was surely a good reason for it. Still, he desperately wanted to know himself what was going on behind those doors.

  "Come on, it's time to start work," Lucas snapped. He seemed to be in an even worse mood now that Oliver had exposed him.

  Despite Lucas's rough personality, Oliver was excited to begin work. He hoped his assignment would be something cool. He'd seen so many amazing things in the factory so far, from the chemistry labs to the plastic printers, the astronomy floor and the electrical rooms, that he felt his heart leap with excitement at the thought of finally being able to get started.

  "You can help with that," Lucas barked when they reached a workbench.

  Oliver looked and saw that upon it were a thousand tiny cogs. His heart sunk.

  "But what is it?" he said, frowning. "What am I supposed to do?"

  The atmosphere was tense. Oliver could feel Lucas's eyes boring into him. Lucas sighed loudly.

  "It's a rack and pinion gear," he said. "We use them to power conveyor belts. And those things"—he jabbed his pointer finger at the minuscule cogs—"need to go in there to make it work."

  Oliver felt crushed. His first assignment was to fix what was clearly an insignificant machine, a broken conveyor belt, rather than invent anything important or interesting. He was just being used for hard labor.

  "Why do you need all of them?" he exclaimed, eyeing the tabletop. There were at least a thousand cogs. It would take hours! "Even the most complex of gears don't need a thousand cogs to run!"

  Lucas narrowed his eyes. "You're not an expert on how rack and pinion gears work," he said dryly. "This one needs all these cogs. So get to work."

  With a huff, Oliver sat on the stool and began his menial task. He couldn't help but feel that Lucas was wrong. It didn't make sense to have so many cogs for a gear! But he didn't want to cause a fuss or go against his instructions. If this was what Armando had told Lucas he needed to do, then Oliver was going to do it. For all he knew, it might just be another test. A test of compliance and endurance.

  As he worked, he started drawing diagrams in his mind, of how much more simply the machine could be designed. There were lots of unnecessary components here, so many, in fact, that it would make the machine far less powerful. With every cog came a transfer of energy, and there was a lot being wasted in the current design.

  Just then, Lucas stood. "I'm taking a break. Keep going."

  "Sure," Oliver said absentmindedly. His whole focus was on the machine now.

  He started reworking it, following the diagram he was holding in his mind. He pushed several of the smaller cogs to the side, instead choosing the ones that would provide the largest, most powerful force once cranked. All the smaller cogs were just diminishing the power, using up the energy for no good reason whatsoever. He worked out at least fifty of the cogs were detrimental to the operation of the machine, and at least another hundred were completely pointless. What he was left with was far more manageable, and he worked quickly to connect them into position.

  Once he was done, he secured a lever in order to test the mechanism. He cranked it and the cogs began to turn, each moving the next along. Sure enough, his design was perfectly adequate to complete the necessary desired action.

  Oliver clapped his hands, satisfied with a job well done. Then he looked about him. He'd finished his task but Lucas wasn't around to give him a new one.

  Then he remembered the invisibility coat. Armando had said not to waste time on it but Oliver was wasting time just sitting here doing nothing and he'd prefer to persevere even if he didn't get anywhere. No one achieved anything without trying, after all.

  He went over to the workbench, looking at all the amassed fabrics and wires. As he began sortin

g through them, he heard Lucas's footsteps returning.

  "What are you doing?" Lucas exclaimed. "I told you to work on the cogs."

  He looked furious. Oliver couldn't help but cower under his fury.

  "I finished it," he stammered, taken aback by Lucas's sheer anger.

  "There's no way," Lucas contested. "You can't have finished that work yet."

  "I have," Oliver insisted. He went back to the workbench and showed Lucas what he'd done. He turned the crank to prove that the mechanism worked accurately. "I took a shortcut," he explained. He pointed at all the leftover cogs. "None of these were needed to make it work."

  Lucas was completely silent. He seemed stunned by what Oliver had achieved. But instead of congratulating Oliver on a doing such a good job so quickly, he looked even more angry.

  Oliver wasn't about to apologize for doing what had been asked of him, or for improving on it. He folded his arms and calmly asked, "What would you like me to work on next?"

  Lucas shrugged. "Carry on with the coat if you want. See if I care. You're wasting your time anyway."

  It occurred to Oliver then that the cogs assignment was supposed to last him all day, that Armando hadn't left any other work for him to do because this was all he'd expected him to achieve. He felt triumphant. He was clearly better than anyone was expecting. He couldn't wait for Armando to get back so he could show him his achievements.

  "Okay," Oliver said, holding his chin up high. "If I'm not needed on the floor, I'd like to work on this in my room." At least there he'd be able to work on the coat without the scrutiny of Lucas.

  "Whatever," Lucas said, shrugging. He didn't even bother looking at Oliver when he spoke.

  Oliver grabbed the trunk of materials and headed away from the workbench. As he walked away, Lucas laughed a horrible cackle.

  "Good luck, boy. No one's ever solved that. Not even Armando."

  Oliver felt his cheeks burn, but he didn't let Lucas's words dissuade him. If he could survive the torment of Chris, he could survive mocking from Lucas!