The Fourth Dimension by Sam & Graham Stapinski and Moitoso
Prologue:
Somewhere in Austria, there was an old wizard and his servant. They were both desperately trying to create the one masterpiece that the old wizard wanted. A time machine. They went to gather the necessities for the time machine, but inside the assistants soul was a bad man. He wanted to take the machine for himself, and with his magic skill, he would conquer kingdoms and maybe even the world. The old wizard knew about the assistants greed and decided to curse the machine. With his power, he could easily obliterate the young assistant, but he decided to see what the young man would do. When they finally finished the machine, they gave it a few tests. They made another machine, and whoever had the other machine, could tell where the other person was. They traveled to where flying cars were available (the assistant took one for pleasure), and to when Alexander the Great made the biggest kingdom known to man, and even to when Hitler lost the war and killed himself. The young assistant’s greed grew as he saw the immense power of the machine. The wizard secretly put a hex on the machine that prevented anyone from using the machine for evil. The assistant successfully took the machine by cowardly killing the wizard in his sleep. He was a foul as a sweaty gym sock. When the assistant finally figured out how the machine worked, he traveled to the future to take Alexander’s kingdom, but when he did, he was sent to a prison in the middle of Germany. He lived until he was an old man, he had a wife and a young son. Right before his death, he buried the machine and put a spell on it to keep it safe. 3,000 years later, one of his descendants found it and read the note that was with it. He vowed to make sure he found the other machine. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to do what his ancestor had tried to. Take over the world.
Matt
Hi there! My name is Matt Smith. You can say me and my life are both pretty normal. I live in a three bedroom apartment on the second floor in Boston, Massachusetts. I share a room with my cat, Nate. I have a mother, a father, and a younger sister named Chloe. I play baseball at my school, Brookwood Middle School, where I am in the eighth grade. I have a good amount of friends and I am always making new ones. But my best friend is a kid named Pedro.
Pedro had moved here about a year ago from Paramonga, Peru. I don’t know that much about his past, but I do know that when he appeared on the streets one day while I was walking home from school. He was a small, Peruvian boy that came from the shelter of a beaten up shed in an abandoned lot. He looked half starved and held onto his small, halfway filled water bottle and blue bike like they would somehow save his life.
He sort of lashed out at me, but when he saw me just stand there, he mumbled, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” His voice had a thick accent which I did not recognize. I instantly realized that he needed help, no matter what. On that frigid, rainy afternoon I saved a boy about my age’s life.
He looked so sad and hungry that I had to bring myself to help him. We walked back to my apartment and I surveyed the area for an idea of where he could stay. My eyes fell on the rusty, beat up fire escape that I had always feared. A flare went up in my mind just then.
“Climb the fire escape to that second floor window” I commanded him. He gave me a strange look but began to climb. I ran through the automatic doors of my apartment, pressed the buzzer for my apartment, and sprinted up the stairs. Ten seconds later, I was ringing the bell to Apartment 210, otherwise known as my house.
My mom greeted me at the door. Let me just tell you that she is the prettiest person you will ever see. She has these wonderful, blazing blue eyes and an awesome smile. Her hair is almost always in a bun, hiding the grey streaks in her hair and just showing perfectly straight blond hair. She has tanned skin and wears her clothes for work. She is a Realtor and is gone quite a bit, so I am surprised when I see her.
“Hey there Matt!” she exclaims cheerfully. “I was just making a snack for you!” All of that stress and pressure on her from work and she manages to stay happy. I say hi back and walk through the black door. Chloe is already sitting at the granite breakfast bar with a bowl of Goldfish and a large binder splayed out in front of her.
When she hears me plop my backpack down next to her, she mumbles, “Hi Matt. I heard some weird noises in your room. Maybe Nate is ripping up the rug again.” I don’t tell her that it was not Nate making the noises, but instead the kid now on the fire escape outside my bedroom window! I sprint down the long hall until I get to the last door on the left, my bedroom.
All I can say is that my dad’s hard work at his job payed off in the quality of our apartment. We have about half of the six-thousand square foot second floor in our apartment building. My bedroom is extremely huge, bright, and airy. The walls are dark blue, the closet takes up one whole wall, and I have four windows overlooking the Boston skyline. Nate greets me at the door by purring and jumping into my outstretched arms. I stroke him for a minute before remembering what my task is. I run across the shag carpet to the window furthest to the right, the one with the old fire escape. Sure enough, I see the back of the boy’s head to the window. I shove the window open to the full height and step out, scaring the boy half to death.
“Sorry, but you scared me so much!” he exclaimed. I sit on the ledge across from him and tell him to spill the beans about his story. I tell him not to leave out any details, but I still think he did. He told me that he came from Peru and that he escaped from his foster family in New York. He even told me about his master that made him go out onto the dirty streets and beg for money. But he left out one part. The part about his family.
“So what are you going to do now?” I inquire.
“To be honest with you, I have no idea.” he said.
“But you can stay with me. At least for tonight or a little longer. I will bring you some pillows and blankets and maybe some of my dinner. But definetly food and water. Plus, this fire escape is private and covered. Nobody will know you are here. It will be your own sanctuary for a few days.”
“Thank you so much!” he said happily. “I owe you so much, umm, errr........
“Matt” I say.
“Matt” he voices back. “Thank you Matt. By the way, my name is Pedro. “
“Goodbye, Pedro. I will be back in a couple hours.” I sling my legs over the window sashes and land on the soft carpet. I close the window just as my mom yells, “Matt? Are you ready for a snack?”
I call back “Yes! I will be there in a second.” As I go back, eat my snack, do my homework, eat dinner, sneak food to Pedro, watch television, and go to sleep, I cannot stop thinking about the kid who sits on my fire escape. The kid I rescued. Pedro.
After a couple of weeks going on like this, I knew I had to tell my parents that there was a kid living on our fire escape! It was now winter and the fire escape was cold every time I went out to see Pedro. He had sort of made himself a little house out there. He put a spare mattress down with many blankets. He also had his bike in the corner. But since I allowed him to just take supplies from my bedroom, I did not know if he was cold. He kept the same clothes that he borrowed from me. I still washed them, but he kept them otherwise. His ‘bed’ seemed to get lumpier and lumpier with more blankets. One day was under forty degrees. I told him that I was going to tell my parents about him. He blinked a couple of times in nervousness but said that would be okay.
I decided that it would be easier to tell my mother over the phone instead of in person. So, that next day after school, I called her at the end of school, 2:40. She answered her work phone after three rings, with a cheery greeting of, “Hey Matt! You are walking today, right? I can’t come to get you because I am showing a house at 3:00.”
“No Mom, don’t stress. I just had something to tell you, but it can wait.”
“Okay!” she said cheerfully. “I’ll see yo
Later, when everyone is sitting at the light wood dinner table, I decide to tell my family about Pedro. “Hey everyone, I have something very important to tell you guys about. I spent the next ten minutes telling them about Pedro and how I found him. Everyone was dead silent until they were sure I was finished. Even after, they stayed silent. Finally, my mom broke the awkward silence.
“So you are telling me there is a BOY on our FIRE ESCAPE!?” she there anyway and help in every way I can.” And with that, she stormed asked, her voice rising quickly. “And you never TOLD ME!? I would have helped him in a heartbeat! Is he still out there now? I am going to get out out of the kitchen and towards my bedroom.”
I go to see my mom and Pedro shortly after. Chloe follows me closely behind. I run through the open doorway and see my mom CLIMBING OUT THE WINDOW! That is not something you see every day! I climb through the window right after her out onto the fire escape. Pedro was in the corner, sleeping, despite the loud highway almost directly below. He wakes up when he hears six feet clanking across the fire escape. He jerks his head up and hits the top of his bike. My mom talks first.
“Hello there Pedro. I am Matt’s mom, Shelly. Matt told me all about you. You are going to be welcome in our home as long as you wish. We don’t have a spare bedroom, but you can sleep on the couch in the living room. It is very big.” She walks out, still talking to Pedro. I thought the poor kid looked kind of overwhelmed. I mean, he is sleeping, and five seconds later a random lady is just talking to him right in his face! Oh well. I will talk to him later. Chloe and I start to move Pedro’s bed and bike into my room.
What happens next is kind of crazy. My dad comes home and also starts fussing over Pedro. Chloe and I just stand back. It kind of goes that way for the next couple of months. My parents fuss, Chloe and I melt into the background. But my parents REALLY flip out when Pedro tries to get a job at the McDonalds over on West Street. They say he should not work, but instead enjoy himself. That is when they put him in school. I could tell that he hated it. He was just okay in everything. He put little effort into school. Everyone, except for me and Chloe and a few others, bullied him. They called him ‘Dung Beetle’ just because he is Peruvian. But one day the Geography teacher saw some kids teasing Pedro by the pencil sharpener. When the teacher looked up, they all tried to sharpen their pencils at once. When she looked away, they pressed the sharp, crisp pencil points into Pedro’s back. The teacher saw it all but did not make a move until the end of class. The gossip the next day was that she had sent them to the principal’s office, and then they had received week long suspensions. When they came back, I think they were scared of Pedro. They kept their distance, and I am sad to admit that I kind of did too. But he still seemed kind of sad after that. That was, until my dad invited both of us on his business trip to Auschwitz, Germany.
Pedro:
Everything changed the day they came. It was them. The Paramonga Cops. I went out to the street as a beggar boy for my greedy master. He is an Egyptian immigrant trying to escape the escalating violence. Many mass outbreaks are happening as we speak. I was begging and I bumped into someone. I was using a technique called scabbing. Scabbing is where you steal someone’s item and replace it with something else. So, as I was saying, a rich guy walked up to me and I “accidentally” bumped into him. I excused myself and walked away with his watch. On his hand, he now had a piece of string and a circle stone. I was thinking about how much the watch would fetch for when suddenly the man called out for the police and pointed accusingly at me. I was in plain sight with the watch and ran. I kept the watch, just in case. My thin and agile body made it easy to escape the bulky, slow policemen with lots of equipment. I ran for the docks, the nearest place I could safely hide. I jumped into an old church, that place is the nearest black market. It was time to leave once and for all. The watch went for more than I thought. I secretly boarded a ship in the middle of the night. I was headed for New York. Limited money meant I would have to keep scabbing or get a job. I mulled over my options and decided to go for the job.
A couple months into my new job at McDonald’s, I was finally getting into living. It was then, a cold day in May, that I saw what had happened. I was passing a TV store and looking at the news. The headline was “Paramonga Police: Thief Missing”. The pictures were flashing around the screen. My face, all over the screens. I knew I would be safe in the US, but something gave me a bad feeling about what would happen. I went home, I had a new foster home. They were all right, the parents I mean, but the two kids, were just plain mean. They teased me for being a “non-American”. It’s not my fault that I had to run. They also beat me up just so they can stay in the “popular” group. The parents do their best to prevent stuff like that from happening, but their attempts are futile. I do my best to put up with them, but sometimes it’s really hard. Today was no different. I walked home from work, and there they were, ready to beat me up. I don’t know what came up inside of me, but I let loose some strength on them that I never knew I had. They both came at me and I punched one in the stomach and the other in the nose. They got the message real fast. They ran the the bathroom to clean up and throw up. I sort of felt bad for them, but after three months of that, I wasn’t going to let them start again. The parents did ask what happened to them, I gave them a glare and they made up a really bad lie. That night, something changed in me. I became the person I never wanted to be. A feared person. I packed all my belongings into a drawstring bag they got me, and left a note where their money was kept. I left with a good amount of food and water. I walked down the street for a bit, and then went to the nearest train station and boarded a train. It was the middle of the night so not many people were there. I didn’t pay attention to where we were going, only what was going on inside the train, keeping far away from people who looked or were dangerous. I finally looked up to find out where we were going a couple of hours later and found out. It was headed for Boston.
I survived a week in Boston by myself. Bought myself a bike, and was left struggling on the streets with ten dollars and a bottle of water. That’s when I met Matt. He found me in an empty lot one night. He was a nice enough guy, but seemed kind of private. I braced myself every night for the beating, but it never came. He kept far away from me, as though he sensed that I wanted to be left alone. He had a nice family. His mother and father were always fussing over me. I was grateful though, after living most of my life on the streets. I found his cat very intriguing. He would prance around and would almost fall down, but always steadied himself. I had never seen a cat in my life before, so I was amazed. His sister was nice too. She was kind of loud, but always nice and happy when I was around. They only had three bedrooms in their apartment so I slept in the living room. I kept quiet and laid low for the first couple months. Until I got used to the new changes. Here, I didn’t have to work. I was pleased that the family stopped me when I applied at a nearby McDonalds. They showed me where the library was. I spent almost and hour there everyday. So I became a booker. I read most of the books in the library. All of them I found interesting. Whether they were about law or science, geometry or hobbits, or even computers, which I had no clue what they were. But one thing always bothered me, Matt was always staring at me. I found it unnerving. Constantly trying to figure me out. I tried to look away, until I could bear it no longer, I just would walk away. I kept my distance and he kept his.
A couple weeks later, school started. It was horrible. All of the kids teased me or beat me up when the teachers weren’t looking. Of course, Matt and Chloe were always nice to me. They would try to help, but would be of no use. They couldn’t stop the insults or the names as hard as they tried. They convinced their friends to stop, but that didn’t help much. I was constantly called “Dung Beetle”. Just because of my heritage, I was constantly ridiculed. The teachers were aware of all of this, but they didn’t help. Except one. In Geography, my teacher caught a group of kids ca
I was walking down the streets of Auschwitz, Germany, where the concentration camp used to be. Matt’s father had a business trip there and we went with him. While he was still working we went to some of the nearby attractions. When I looked at the concentration camps, it was like my whole life in Paramonga. Forced manual labor. Eventually all would die though, until the war started. I went over to one of the old gas chambers and something caught my eye. It looked like a little gold bar. There was a Jewish inscription on it that I couldn’t read. I turned it around and looked at the back. There were little buttons, not the kind on a coat. Also, there were four boxes above the buttons. I randomly punched in 1937. I called Matt over to ask him what it was, we were both holding it when a bright light appeared and we were sucked into it. I wonder what it looked like to see two boys sucked into a bright light floating in the sky. We were yelling as we were inside the light and then darkness settled over us. We saw a beam of light coming towards us, and ran in the opposite direction. When we realized that bobbing lights were surrounding us, we stopped and laid flat on the ground. We then heard voices. They were talking rapidly, and in a foreign language. They were less than six inches away from us when they turned out their lights. They began arguing, or what I thought was arguing, about who knows what. We were on the ground for what seemed like hours when they finally left. We slowly got up and ran to a fence. It seemed like this was the edge to freedom, or the edge to whatever those men were from. We took a chance and were lucky enough to find out we were free. I decided to find out where we were, and went to the front gate. I was hidden by the shadows. I saw more men talking. Then I realized what language they were speaking in. German. I caught a glimpse of the sign on the gate right before Matt pulled me out of the way of the approaching searchlight. We were at the Auschwitz Extermination Camp. I knew what year it was just because I read it on a brochure. He had an expression of real fear on his face. I gave him the sign to be quiet. I needed time to think this through. Obviously, Matt was completely scared, oblivious, and totally useless. I had to figure this out on my own. I was pondering the thoughts of how we got here when all of a sudden, the sounds of screaming filled the chilling night sky. I knew what it was and had to cover my ears. The night guards were beating the innocent people. I knew we had to get out of there as fast as possible. We would be found when the sun rose and the guards ran their rounds. We needed a place to hide. We had been there for over an hour. I wonder what Matt’s parents were starting to think, with us missing. I spied a hole in the ground covered by plants a few meters away. We broke into a run and made for the hole. When we got there, I started to think of the possibilities of why we were in twentieth century Germany. There was only one possible explanation, that little gold bar. It must be some sort of time traveling device. It made sense because I punched in the numbers 1937 which was when this extermination camp was actually running. I tried to explain this to Matt, but he couldn’t believe the fact we actually traveled through time. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t either. I just knew we had to get out fast. I could see the sun was already rising, and we had been there for almost two hours. Matt’s parents are probably going crazy looking for us. I have a brain flash and think, if the bar can take us back in time, why not forward. I take the bar out of my pocket and try to look at the numbers, but they only have little hash marks. I figure they are Roman Numerals and I punch in the year we were in. I see a bright light and shove Matt in right before I hear the voices and footsteps coming for us. I jump in as the portal closes. I close my eyes, and when I open them, we are exactly where we were, at the exact same time.