Albert and his Everything Box: Albert and Einstein and Everything, #1

By J.M. Joyce

Albert, a smart twelve-year-old boy, unlocks the mysterious attic of his house in Princeton, New Jersey, the same house where the brilliant Albert Einstein lived until his death. Little does he know this discovery will lead him on a quest to save his mother, his best friend, and the infinite number of parallel universes in danger of destruction at the hands of an evil warlord from a parallel universe! 

Armed with the mysterious Everything Box, Albert must figure out the clues left by the hairy Einstein and apply his own genius to unlock the formula that explains and controls the universe. Matter, energy, time and space can be controlled by the Everything Box giving the owner unlimited power. Of course, evil people want it!

With humor and suspense, Albert and his Everything Box is a delightful fantasy adventure, reminiscent of the wizarding world of Harry Potter, but built on the discoveries of science instead of magic. If you enjoyed the magical adventures of Harry Potter, you'll love Albert and his Everything Box. Buy now before the price changes!

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sportscar Projects Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223841043

J.M. Joyce

J.M. Joyce is a screenwriter and playwright who enjoyed raising her son so much she didn't want him to age beyond twelve years old. So, instead of stopping time in real life, she created Albert as an ageless boy she could enjoy for all of her years. The boy and his discovery of Everything is her adventure into science fiction and fantasy sparked by her own son and imagining him as a guardian of all the parallel universes in constant danger from evil and ruthless warlords, as well as nosy neighbors and relatives.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Evil Warlords and Baking Soda

ALBERT PLANCK LIVED at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey with his Mom and Dad. It was a white two-story wood frame house set back from the street. The large trees lining the street were just sprouting their spring leaves. The house was owned by the Institute for Advanced Study where Albert’s dad, Professor Rutherford T. Planck, held the Albert Einstein Chair in Physics. It wasn’t actually a chair that you sit on, but a job, a big deal job, according to Albert’s dad.  

That other Albert, the dead one with the funny hair and the Chair named after him, Albert Einstein, had lived in 112 Mercer Street for years and years - a long, long time ago as the fairy tales say. The funny haired Albert was the eccentric genius who discovered the Theory of Relativity by the age of 20 and ushered in the atomic age. Or so Albert’s dad had told him about a million times. He always left out the funny haired bit. Albert’s dad had messy brown hair, which he was always pulling straight up and which was starting to stand straight up all on its own. Maybe he thought pulling your hair up would give your brain more room to grow, and that’s what makes a genius happen. He talked spookily about living with the vibrations in the walls, the resonance of the spirit of the other Albert and his Great Ideas. Dad said he wanted to soak up the vibes and get inspiration. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. Sometimes, especially at night, the idea of the very hairy and very dead Albert living in the walls really creeped out nine-year-old Albert.

Albert lay on his bedroom floor in the afternoon sunlight. On the wall above him was a poster of the old guy, Albert, with his funny white hair everywhere. Unlike him, Albert combed his short, red hair himself every morning. He kept his hair neat and tidy, orderly like all the laws of physics. Order was very important to him. Albert was also a scientist and thus a follower of the scientific method. Observations recorded over time can reveal all the secrets of nature. He used the scientific method to chart his own growth; now standing four foot five and weighing sixty-three pounds. He tracked it on a chart on his laptop computer. His statistical analysis of growth data from over eight million boys his age provided an 89% certainty that a year from now he would be four foot nine and weigh seventy pounds. The 11% uncertainty he attributed to that random factor known as a growth spurt. At least that’s what adults call it when a kid grows a lot really fast. As if Albert was a stalk of corn that would shoot up suddenly without warning one day. Adults sure have odd ideas sometimes—well, most of the time, as far as Albert could see.

Speaking of adults, Albert had been closely observing the two specimens that he had the most access to – aka Mom and Dad. He noted that his dad was always busy thinking – if you call sitting at your desk drinking coffee busy thinking. Or he was doing experiments in his basement laboratory. These caused a lot of noise and bad smells in the house when they went wrong – which was quite often.

Albert’s Mom (aka Helen) was okay. She never said that really lame thing about I’m your parent, not your friend. She wasn’t a real bossy-pants like some Moms. Although recently, she had started discussions about how fun joining a baseball team would be for Albert. Being a masterful negotiator, Albert had managed to dodge the sports thing so far. He just brought up about how he always gets hurt, which was unfortunately and painfully true and Mom would knock it off. He couldn’t think of a bigger waste of his time, except maybe school. For sure, school was not a kid’s idea.

Albert’s Dad was supposedly the world’s leading expert on the puzzle that confounded the great Albert Einstein for the last fifty years of his life - The Theory of Everything. Albert’s Dad’s goal in life was to discover the Theory of Everything; the unifying equation that explains all things in the infinite universe. How you could be considered an expert about something that hadn’t been discovered yet was the real mystery to Albert. That’s adult logic for you. But with all the best brains in the business and also his Dad working on it all these years, the Theory has remained an unsolved mystery.

Until now. Albert Planck was on the case.

Albert Planck, a few weeks before his tenth birthday, had decided that he would work on solving the puzzle of the Big T.O.E. (Theory of Everything). With some know-how, something that Albert had a lot of, he knew he could do it. It was his nature to solve difficult problems. He didn’t know why it was so easy. He just liked to do it. It was really fun. Much better than going to those stupid sports camps his Mom used to make him go to where you spent half the time standing around waiting for everyone to have a turn. Geesh.

At least, he couldn’t get hurt waiting in line. Well, just that once. And it wasn’t his fault. They could have explained at the start what the phrase Heads Up meant.

He was going to solve the big T.O.E. It would be wonderful, to help his Dad like that. Albert knew that he could solve the Great Puzzle, as his Dad called it. And then his Dad wouldn’t have to work in his basement laboratory all the time. Then they could do things together. It would be so great!

At least, Albert thought it would be.

Albert realized that they had never actually done much alone just the two of them. But he’d seen other kids doing stuff with their Dads and they look like they were having fun.

But right now, it was back to the battle at hand. Albert moved the small green plastic army men around on his bedroom floor. Albert was in the middle of a battle against his arch-enemy: The Evil Warlord. This great battle was for control of all the infinite universes that stretched across time and space.

Albert had so far figured out that a big part of the Theory of Everything was that there had to be an infinite number of parallel universes. They were all lined up beside each other just like the colors of the rainbow. Albert thought that the earth must be in the green color of the rainbow because of all the grass and stuff.   

The Evil Warlord had organized his own army of green, plastic soldiers into three attack waves. The battlefield was made up of a jumble of old computer parts, plastic kitchen containers and warped vinyl records. Rainbow Mountain, the headquarters of the Evil Warlord, rose two feet above Albert’s bedroom floor. It was a structure built of plastic building blocks, Styrofoam packing pellets, masking tape and a glass narrow-mouthed beaker Albert borrowed from his Dad’s laboratory in the basement of the house. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to go in there.

Rainbow Mountain was the fortified home of the Evil Warlord, Master of Everything and Really Bad Guy, who sat upon his throne of red Lego building blocks atop the mountain. The Bully of the Universe. He, for sure, had no friends.

Albert raised his laser gun against the forces of evil - the Warlord’s green soldiers on his bedroom floor. They had the numbers, but he had superior weapons. His laser gun was his latest invention. Albert liked to invent things. It was a jazzed-up squirt gun. He had opened up a portable CD player to expose the laser diode inside it. He then linked the CD player to the squirt gun by connecting the fiber-optic cable from the CD laser, feeding it through the pistol squirt gun to a magnifying lens in the nozzle. He had juiced up the power of the CD player by adding a transformer powered by 2 batteries that he took from the camcorder and then taped together. There was a power dial on the transformer which allowed him to control the intensity of the laser beam. So, he had the laser beam and a path for it to travel along and then get magnified through an optical lens. Using only the stuff from the to be fixed box in the hall closet and by making a few modifications, Albert had converted a low-power consumer electronic device –the CD player - into a death ray (at least for green plastic soldiers with a low melting point). Sweet.

Let’s see if this baby works, said Albert, aiming at the green soldiers.

He lowered a pair of sunglasses down over his eyes. With laser precision, he fired his red laser beam in short bursts.

Zap! Wham! Take that, Evil Warlord of the Parallel Universe!  Albert chortled.

The green soldiers melted into plastic puddles of bubbling ooze in mere seconds. They sizzled like green bacon; then hardened into blobs. They smelled awful. Big green fart-smelling blobs. Stinko.

Using the metal hamburger lifter, he flipped the gross, melted remains of the first wave of soldiers into a ceramic bowl. He moved the second wave of soldiers closer to the Rainbow Mountain.

You guys want some more? he yelled. Plastic green soldiers, they never learn. Come closer and feel the power of the great Albert!

He scooped a heaping spoonful of white powder from a container and dumped it into the mouth of the volcano. A baking soda-fueled chemical reaction bubbled up furiously from the bowels of the mountain as the baking soda hit the vinegar in the heart of the volcano. The resulting eruption shook the mountain as foamy lava flowed down the slopes.

A loud knock on his door made Albert jump.

Albert? May I come in? said a voice through the door.

Identify yourself! This is a secure area! yelled Albert.

Albert’s Mom slid a small photograph of herself under the door with Mom written at the bottom and an arrow pointing to her smiling face. She had short red hair, green eyes and was very pregnant. Eight months pregnant she kept telling everyone who asked – which was everyone they met whenever they went anywhere. Blah, blah, blah, a new baby. Blah, blah, after all this time. Albert’s Mom always told him to never talk to strangers, but she did it all the time.

It is I, your Mother! May I come in? she said in a funny voice which she thought was funny but was super goofy.

I’m saving the universe, Mom. yelled Albert, picking up the photograph and slipping it into his pocket.

Oh no, this is it! The Rainbow Mountain is erupting! Back, you fools! You’ll be buried in lava! Ahhh! screamed Albert, dropping multi-colored crystals into the volcano. A river of rainbow lava burst out of the top and flowed down the sides of the mountain. He rolled around shooting laser gun bursts at the soldiers melting them.

With his green plastic army melting before him, the Evil Warlord remained on his throne, unprotected. He was also plastic, an action-figure from a movie long forgotten. In one hand, he held a set of silver keys and in the other; a wooden pencil topped with a round planet earth globe. He sat oblivious on his mountaintop, as his empire crumbled below him. Such a stoic leader.

This is the battle for the dominion over all the parallel universes. Hasta la bye-bye, losers! yelled Albert, pulling a small plastic bag from his pocket.

He snatched the small black ball from it and hurled it into the sputtering mouth of the volcano sending plumes of black smoke shooting up from the core of the volcano.

And now there is no escape, Evil Warlord! he yelled.

Knock, knock. Albert opened his door a crack.

The volcano gave off puffs of black smoke, each one larger than the one before, as the pressure built. An ominous rumbling came from the depths of the volcano.

Yes, Mom? he asked, blocking his doorway.

Mom tried to push the door open a bit more, but Albert kept his foot solidly in the way.

May I come in? she asked.

I’m saving the universe, Mom. What do you want?  The volcano’s reaction built up behind him, the puffs of black smoke growing larger, forming a black mushroom cloud. It was getting bigger, like a miniature atomic bomb blast cloud. Yikes!

I need the baking soda. Have you got it, Albert? 

Sodium bicarbonate? Albert glanced back at his battlefield. That’s affirmative, Mom, he said, eyeing the gathering black cloud nervously and moving more into the doorway blocking the view.

I need some for baking, said Mom.

And I need it for my volcano, insisted Albert.

Well, my need is more important right now, insisted Mom.

Doubt it! said Albert.

You really think so? What would I need sodium bicarbonate for? Oh, baking a cake, maybe? You like cake, don’t you, Albert? asked Mom.

Point taken, Mom. Fortunately, I have alternative substances I can use.

No more holes in the ceiling! said Mom.

I’m going to be ten years old, Mom. I think you can trust me by now!

Black smoke snaked up between them, a growing cloud of impending doom. Albert tried waving it away, but it kept building blacker and blacker, into a curtain of thick smoke. They both coughed.

Uh-oh! yelled Albert, slamming the door shut as his Mom waved black smoke away from her face and coughed some more.

A thick trail of black smoke rose up from under the door right into