Read A Mutiny in Time for Free Online

her. “So let me get this straight. My parents, who have PhDs from Amancio University and SQIT, have been working on this device for twenty years, and you figured it all out in a couple of days?”
    Sera shrugged. “They helped. A little.”
    Dak threw up his arms.
    “Hey, careful with that!” Sera snapped. She snatched it away from him. “For the love of mincemeat. I’m just kidding, and you know it. They did most of the work — ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it. Maybe they just needed someone with fresh eyes to come in and seal the deal. Figure out the missing piece of the puzzle. Like I said, it was —”
    “Yeah, I know,” Dak interrupted. “Easy. Piece of cake. Like . . . naming the presidents in order of how old they were when they got elected. Kid’s stuff. But how do you know for sure that it
does
work?”
    “Because all the formulas are balanced. The mechanics of it make sense now. I’d go into more detail, but based on how
riveted
you were by my earlier explanations, I think I’ll spare you the pain. But I know it works. The same way you know that two plus two is four.”
    “Thanks for keeping it at my level. Anyway, what do we do now, genius?”
    A huge smile lit up her face. “We tell your parents all about it.”
    He suddenly wanted to throw up and run to China.

    Dak’s parents were due home around seven o’clock that evening. His grandma figured he was a big boy and could take care of himself between dinner and their arrival, so she packed up, gave him a creaky hug, and went home. Dak loved her to death, but she had barely moved out of her chair in the guest room since showing up, so he wasn’t quite sure why she was there in the first place. In case he needed a knitted sweater out of the blue?
    The last half hour waiting for his mom and dad to walk through the front door was agonizing. He and Sera sat on the couch in the living room, the
tick tick tick
of the clock on the wall the only sound.
    Dak’s hands were slick with sweat. There just wasn’t any way that this could go down without getting ugly. He tried to think about how he’d break the news, and nothing sounded right. Not a single historical anecdote seemed appropriate to soften the blow. Taking the keys alone was enough to make his dad turn beet red and get his mom shrieking like a diseased monkey.
    Three minutes after seven the door opened.
    His mom stepped inside, holding a small suitcase in one hand and a giant purse in the other. His dad followed with the rest of their luggage. He shut the door with an elbow, then both of them noticed Dak and Sera sitting before them in silence.
    “Well howdy do!” his dad said, a little too loudly. Dak didn’t think anyone would ever need to know anything else about his father except that the man often said the words
Well howdy do!
That pretty much said it all.
    “What are you two little munchkins up to?” his mom asked as she put her things down. “How nice of you to greet us — our own private welcoming committee! Where’s the band and the cocktails?” She snorted a laugh, something that sounded like a pig getting tickled.
    And these two people were geniuses.
Well
, Dak thought,
gotta love ’em
.
    “Now where are my hugs?” his mom said with a mock hurt face. “Don’t just sit there all day like two bumps on a pickle! Come over here.”
    Dak stood up . . . and suddenly had an idea. There was only one way to tell this story and survive to see the next day: backward.
    “Mom, Dad,” he said, hoping to make it clear that he had something serious to tell them.
    Both of them had made it about halfway into the living room, but now they stopped and stared. They’d sensed it all right.
    Dak smiled, trying to show what good news he had. “The Infinity Ring works now. She’s all ready to go.”
    Dak’s mom and dad both had confused looks on their faces, as if they mostly thought he was kidding but weren’t completely sure.
    “Come again?” his mom finally asked.
    Dak stuck