Adam Powerhouse Episodes 1
Birth of the Double Zero
By Kevin T. Goddard
Published by Kevin T. Goddard at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Kevin T. Goddard
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Table of Contents
Episode One: Birth of the Double Zero
Scene 3: They Grow Up Too Fast!
Adam Powerhouse: Episode One
Birth of the Double Zero
A Story by Kevin T. Goddard
Copyright 2010. All Rights Reserved.
Author’s Note
Dear Brothers and Sisters of Adam Powerhouse,
You have in your hands my brainchild. Adam Powerhouse is a character to whom I have given life—but I need your help making him grow. When I read a good book with riveting characters, I do not want that book to end. When the book ends, I hope for a sequel. When the sequel ends, I hope for a series. When the series ends, I reread it wishing the characters could live on forever. Well, what if they could? What if you and I become Adam’s family and guide him along his way?
Adam has almost died once already. I created him in 2001 and he sat in a file in my computer for nine years! I had helped Adam invent a phone that could use the internet. He created a video game to help him practice karate moves and how to play the guitar for his band. Adam had many other inventions—all of which have since actually been invented and you probably take them for granted and use them every day. So I’ve had to rewrite much of the book since these things Adam made are neither cool nor surprising anymore.
I am asking for your help in this. I am promoting you from reader to producer. As you read each episode, help me by telling me what Adam means to you. Help me by telling me what you see Adam becoming. What inventions he needs to build. What choices he needs to make!
Email me at adampowerhouse@gmail.com and give me feedback. If I use your ideas, I will acknowledge you in the first episode in which I incorporate your idea. If we are lucky, Adam will stay fresh and interesting and he will live forever. With your help, I will try to bring you more of Adam and his friends’ and enemies’ lives one to two times a month. As Adam grows, watch for a website and he might even begin tweeting. Adam will be as big as you let him be.
Finally, Adam is superhuman. Not to spoil anything, but every superhuman has to decide which path to take: superhero or super-villain. And even once Adam decides, his path isn’t clear or easy. Temptation will continually try to lead him down the darker path where only his self-interest is important. It is up to you to help Adam stay on the right path…whichever one that is!
Enough jibber-jabber. Let’s get to Adam’s story.
Gratefully,
Kevin T. Goddard
Prologue
On Adam’s tenth birthday, much to his mother’s displeasure, Mr. Powerhouse (a.k.a. Mr. P) gave Adam a skateboard.
“Honey, he’ll hurt himself,” Mrs. Powerhouse (a.k.a Mrs. P) exclaimed.
“Nonsense, the boy could walk a tightrope he has such good balance, he plays football all the time, and you’re worried about a little board with wheels?” Mr. P gave Adam a wink. Mrs. P pursed her lips and didn’t say anything else. Adam could tell his parents would talk about it later, but he was pleased to have something to replace the modified bike he’d stowed away until he could use it more safely.
Later that day, his mom asked him to go to the corner store and get a gallon of milk. Adam grabbed the five dollar bill from her hand, then his skateboard, and rode out the door before she had a chance to tell him to walk.
On the way to the store, he enjoyed the sensation of gliding along the sidewalk, feeling the little bumps as he hit each crack between squares of concrete. The sun seemed extremely bright and the trees vivid green. Adam breathed in the cool May air, tasting the neighborhood’s flowers, noticing the honeysuckle was starting to bloom. Robins and sparrows called from tree to tree adding to the feeling of just a great day to be alive.
As Adam pulled up to the store, he slowed just enough to let the automatic door slide open and then glided to the back where the milk was in the coolers. The teenaged clerk called a half-hearted, “Hey” as Adam went by, but didn’t really care, as long as Adam didn’t break anything.
Adam stopped and glanced at a car magazine, then opened the cooler door and let the fan blow the cool air over him. He grabbed a gallon of milk then started to turn around when he noticed the curved security mirror. In the reflection, he saw someone at the counter who was waving something around.
Adam quietly set the milk on the floor and began rolling down the aisle that ran parallel to the front counter. As he built up speed, he could hear the clerk arguing with the robber. Adam heard a gun cock and remembered the robbery he’d seen on his computer where the clerk was shot. Rounding the corner, Adam ollied into the air, grabbing a hold of the skateboard and yelled, “Hey!” as he shoved his feel out in front of him into a flying kick with the skateboard out flat. The thief turned just in time to get a shot off into the ceiling before Adam drop kicked him in the chest and rebounded onto his feet to look down at the robber who was groaning.
Adam and the clerk, who had leaned over the counter, watched as the gunman grabbed his head and tried to get up. “You’d better get out of here kid,” the clerk said helpfully.
Adam jumped onto his skateboard and took off through the electric door as he heard the clerk shout, “Watchout!”
He looked back just in time to see the bad guy stagger to his feet and lunge for the door. Adam began pushing with one leg to gain speed, racing for his life now.
Adam cut through an alley and ended up heading toward one of his favorite places: an old junk yard. He had found plenty of cool items there and knew his way around so he figured he could lose this guy among the piles of junk. As he came upon the gate into the junkyard, Adam noticed the gate was shut and the latch was fastened. Just like when Adam was preparing for a play during a football game, he envisioned himself leaning forward and flipping the latch open as he crashed through the gate.
Adam could hear the robber gaining ground as he slowed slightly to make sure he could flip the latch and not be knocked from the skateboard. The adrenaline pumped through his body and it was all Adam could do to keep from just trying to plow through the fence. He reached forward, and as he flicked his fingers to flip the latch, the metal fork holding the door closed moved just ahead of his fingers so that he never touched it. The gate swung open in front of him, never slowing him down as he barreled through, still fleeing for his life.
Slightly bewildered, Adam shook off his surprise in order to maintain his focus. He cut around a pile of old car parts and shot straight into a corrugated metal sewer pipe. The rata-tat of the skateboard’s wheels vibrated Adam’s bones. Sensing the crook behind him round the corner and raise his gun, Adam pushed off hard at the wall of the pipe, his momentum causing him to ride up one side, squat into the centrifugal force, and ramp down the other in a tight, corkscrew spiral. Never slowing down, Adam let his speed carry him into one more tight turn, the entire time bullets whizzing through the air around him as the bad guy unloaded his weapon at Adam.
During a third turn around, Adam ran out of pipe and shot into the air upside down, finishing a flip, and landing hard on the concrete of a sidewalk on the other side of the junkyard. Adam sped down the hill and around the corner, finally finding his way home, his heart pounding from the excitement of the chase.
But there is much to Adam’s story that you’ve missed, so maybe you should start at the beginning…
Scene 1: Two to One
A tall, slightly ruffled man with blonde, unkempt hair and a slender, athletic woman paused at the top of a small hill to catch their breath. “You okay honey?” questioned the man with his arm around her shoulder.
“Yes,” sighed the woman, her shoulders sagging. “But I can’t believe we’re going to have twins!”
“I know what you mean, but we’re going to have the most beautiful babies St. Louis has ever seen!”
The woman looked up at the man, “I guess you’re right. Just the thought of two babies wears me out though.”
The man led her under an oak tree and spread out a blanket. He opened a picnic basket and began setting out a celebration dinner. The couple sat for a bit in the quiet, chilly afternoon enjoying their food. Every once in a while, one of them would sigh and smile at the other one.
“The air sure is getting colder,” Mr. P worried. A dark bank of clouds was rolling toward them.
“Maybe we should pack it up?” Mrs. P asked.
“We’ve definitely had enough excitement for one day. Finding out you are pregnant, and twins to boot at that. I can’t believe I’m going to be a dad in 8 months! We need to beat this storm out of here and get you someplace warm.” Mr. P threw everything into the basket and ran down the grassy hill to the car. He dumped the basket and blanket in the trunk and turned to look back up the hill.
The storm had moved much more quickly than either of them had guessed it would. As Mr. P watched, a bolt of lightning struck the oak tree sending sparks flying. Mrs. P grabbed her stomach, screamed, and began running down the hill.
Mr. P yelled, “Lay down flat!” Mrs. P didn’t hear him or was too terrified to do anything but run. Mr. P began running toward Mrs. P, but he felt like he was running through syrup.
As Mr. P watched, another bolt of lightning struck Mrs. P in the back. She arched her head back in a silent scream and electricity wrapped around her body in spirals and shot out of the ends of her fingers. Mr. P kept running toward her as she was thrown down the hill.
When Mr. P got to Mrs. P, he threw himself down beside her, crying. He grabbed her hand and sobbed, “Please, please be alright.” Mr. P checked her for a pulse and found a faint throb in her neck. Her fingertips were red like she had run them under scalding water. Mrs. P’s hair and shoes were smoking. Mr. P gingerly lifted Mrs. P’s shirt up to look at her belly, afraid that the lives inside had been extinguished. Her belly had burn marks radiating out from the middle like the pattern in a cracked window. When he put his hand to her belly, Mr. P jerked it away from how hot the skin was.
“No…No. No. No. NOOOOOOOO!” was all Mr. P could get out. Mrs. P groaned. Mr. P began crying and took her head in his arms. He took out his cell phone and dialed 911.
Scene 2: Super what?
“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Powerhouse, you have the healthiest baby I’ve ever delivered.” Dr. Burnbum handed the lumpy bundle to Mrs. Powerhouse as Mr. Powerhouse brushed her damp, sweaty, black hair back out of her eyes. Both parents beamed at the pinkish baby boy wrapped in a soft blue blanket.
Three hours before driving to the hospital, Mrs. Powerhouse had gone into labor. The last ten weeks of pregnancy had pretty much drained Mrs. Powerhouse. She was a petite woman with black hair and soft, fine skin. Smelling faintly of sunflowers and lip balm, she had arrived at the hospital insisting on walking down the brightly lit, sterilized halls to the delivery room on her own. A tall, blond-headed man, Mr. Powerhouse was a nervous wreck following in her footsteps. He kept wringing his hands and every few steps asked, “You okay honey?”
Mrs. Powerhouse felt hungry the entire time she was carrying her son. Mr. Powerhouse constantly ran trips to the grocery store and the convenience store on the corner. Sometimes she paged him at work and he would have to run out to get a tub of ice cream, or a bag of stinky pickle-chips. If he was really unlucky, he found himself stumbling half asleep through the aisles of the QT grabbing bags of anything that looked sugary or salty.
Mr. Powerhouse was an average guy who sometimes insisted on being called Mr. P. He worked a lot to make ends meet. On the tall side, average weight, with the corners of his blond hair starting to disappear, and a largish nose, Mr. P tended to be a bit nervous when things seemed to be getting out of control. He thought his wife about to give birth was a little out of his control.
He finally calmed down as he and his wife began their breathing exercises, panting tiny breaths as they rounded their lips into O’s and made “hee” and “hoo” sounds. Eventually, it was all over, after some rather unpleasant screaming and yelling, and a short, ugly period where Mrs. P said some things about wishing she had never met Mr. P, which Mr. P figured she probably didn’t really mean, ending with an eight pound baby boy with lots of white-blond hair and a tenacious grip.
A starched nurse reached over and gently tousled the shock of yellow hair on top of the baby’s head and asked, “What’s his name?”
Mr. and Mrs. Powerhouse gazed at the newborn and said together, “Adam.” Adam opened his eyes and stared right into his mother’s causing her to gasp. Mom never could say for sure, but she thought she caught just a hint of a smile.
“Well Adam, we need to get you cleaned up so you can look good for your picture,” the nurse told him as she took him from his mother’s arms. Adam gurgled and cooed.
Dr. Burnbum tapped his lips with a pencil while he glanced over Adam’s chart once more. He finally looked up and told mom and dad, “We have to do his blood workup and other usual newborn testing. But I would like to ask you for permission to run some further testing on Adam…nothing that will hurt him, but just to see why he is so extremely healthy. It might be important for science to understand why your baby is so perfect. I must say, after your…accident…we were not expecting this.”
Mom and dad looked at each other. “Well, sure,” stammered dad, “If it’s for the sake of science.”
The next day, as they prepared to take Adam home, Dr. Burnbum returned. He came into the room, sat down in a chair next to the bed, arranged his white coat, and scratched his head. The sounds of the hospital came into the room: machines beeping, nurses paging doctors over the intercom, and the squeaking of wheels on carts. The doctor cleared his voice, “I have some interesting news.”
“Is it bad?” mom and dad exclaimed with dad jumping up from the edge of the bed.
“No, nothing like that,” the doctor brushed the question aside. “No, the blood tests we ran had an unusually high red and white blood cell count which could signal several disorders or diseases, but we could find no evidence of anything wrong.”
Mom and dad sighed, letting go of the breath they had been holding and dad sank back to his seat on the pink and blue bedspread.
“So I ordered some further testing, and then some more, until finally, we ran a DNA analysis on the samples we had.” The doctor paused and gathered his thoughts. Mom and dad leaned in for the next thing he was going to say. “We have never seen anything like this before. DNA strands are put together like a ladder and then twirled like a spiral to make what is called a double helix.” The doctor took pause again causing mom and dad to lean in even closer. “Your son appears to have a double-double helix. His DNA strand is twisted with a second strand of exactly identical DNA.”
Dad had been leaning in closer and closer with every word until he fell off the edge of the bed landing on the tile floor of the hospital with a ‘WOMP’. “What does it mean?” mom puzzled.
“We aren’t sure,” said the doctor. “Several hypotheses have been formed including one that involves the bolt of lightning that struck you. When the electricity ran through your body, it may have fused the two embryos back together into one with both identical strands of DNA wrapping together, but not completely reassembling into a single strand.
“But everyone who is aware of this so far agrees that there could be several things that become apparent right away. Adam is different from other babies. He is very alert. He looks around at people when they talk and seems to recognize faces he’s seen before. We expect that his intelligence will be extremely high.
“For a baby, he seems to be very strong. He has a good grip. He can manipulate the sheets in his crib, And he’s picked up that toy football that dad put in his crib and tossed it out onto the floor already.”
Mom leaned back and closed her eyes, “But he’s healthy?”
“As healthy as anyone is ever likely to be,” the doctor answered.
“How smart could Adam be?” dad asked from the floor.
“Adam will be very smart, healthy, maybe never sick. He will be coordinated, high energy, curious, and probably very, very strong.”
“How strong?” dad asked, seemingly dazed and Dr. Burnbum wasn’t even sure if Mr. P was hearing his answers. The doctor continued anyway.
“Well, with two strands of DNA one would guess twice as much of everything as a normal person. But my theory is that Adam will be like a math problem. When you multiply something by itself, it isn’t merely doubled, but is squared. Four plus four is eight, but four squared is sixteen.”
“So what are you saying?” mom demanded.
Burnbum breathed in deeply, “Honestly? Adam seems to be superhuman.”
Dad asked, “How superhuman?” Then dad fainted.
Scene 3: They Grow Up Too Fast!
As time went on, Adam’s ability became more and more evident. He had such good balance that he could roll over at one week. At two months he was sitting up. At five months, Adam was walking around with the toy football tucked under his arm. At Adam’s first birthday party, he astounded his parents by asking a question as a complete sentence.
“Can I hava dink peas?” Apparently the cake was a little dry. From there more and more questions came. At two, mom and dad found out that Adam had taught himself to read. By five years old, mom was almost at her wits end because Adam only needed about four hours of sleep a night. He had taught himself to fall into deep sleep immediately so that he could wake up four hours later completely refreshed.
Just when mom thought she couldn’t take it anymore, Adam seemed to begin sleeping through the night. What mom didn’t know is that Adam noticed mom’s frustration and began spending early morning after he woke up converting his bedroom into a laboratory.
The first thing Adam did was to increase the power on the computer his parents had bought him to help satisfy the questions he asked that they didn’t know the answers to. He developed a system of search engines that would allow him to run multiple queries on ideas or questions he had so that he wouldn’t be limited to figuring one thing out at a time. The software he had created borrowed algorithms from “Ask Jeeves,” “Google,” “WolframAlpha,” and “Yahoo,” found the most relevant hits, then searched those, checked against governmental sites world-wide for validity, and then compiled the information into files that Adam could look through and apply to his research quickly and efficiently.
Adam got the parts for his super-computer from a nearby computer store’s trash bin at night by sneaking out his window and climbing down his mom’s rose trellis. Linking the processors from several outdated machines and building a massive hard drive from his Leap Pad, a portable CD player, and a Sony Playstation, Adam hid his computer in a Fisher-Price playhouse that he never used anyway. Adam connected his CPU to the one his parents had bought him that sat on the desk using a spare USB cable that he ran under the tracks of a train set he had received for his fourth birthday.
The computer ran very fast and very hot, so Adam used the water from his fish tank to run through cooling tubes which circulated back to the tank after being filtered and cooled to the temperature the fish needed. An old baby monitor and discarded video camera acted as a security system to alert him as to when his parents approached his bedroom door. He hid the camera behind an old, heavy mirror in the hallway so that every once in a while, he got a screen full of his dad leaning in to check and make sure his nose hairs weren’t out of control. It was a small price to pay for privacy.
He created another software program using a “Rollercoaster Builder” game that had taught him physics, and a blueprint program he borrowed from the database of an engineering firm to help him map out the dimensions of his room to build an effective lab that his parents wouldn’t find.
Using toy motors and spare parts from a nearby junkyard, Adam built several hydraulic engines that could move the furniture in his room around to form his lab. The bed lifted up into the air to reveal a set of work lights under the mattress and a flat work table with his latest projects lain out. His bookshelf swung out like a door to reveal his tools on the back and on the wall behind it. A poster of Einstein and another of Robert H. Goddard pulled back to reveal a large flat-screen T.V., which Adam rescued from a repair store trash can one night and used to monitor several news world reports, his research results, and the latest cartoons.
Physically, Adam had no trouble moving these large parts around, because the doctor had been right: Adam was extremely strong even at five years old. His parents had installed a mini-basketball goal above his bedroom door, and when they weren’t around, Adam would pretend to be a pro-basketball player and slam-dunk the ball. He would lace up his size six Converse basketball mid-top All-Stars, palm his mini-basketball with a powerful grip, and two step into a 360 degree slam dunk.
Adam still had his shock of blond hair, was a solid 50 pounds of muscle and baby-fat, and on one side of his rolling art board kept a diagnosis of plays run by the St. Louis Rams and their opponents while the other side held schematics of his latest brainstorm for an invention.
So far, he had stripped out a vacuum cleaner to create an automatic air system in his mattress that adjusted itself to his exact weight and the level of jumpiness he desired. His ceiling fan system ventilated his room from his welding on projects and blew the air out of a small vent he had installed on the outside of the house. His computer directly patched into his parents’ satellite dish where he hacked into the signal coming from the city’s transportation department cameras so he could zero in on events as they happened. He already had plans for patching into ATM cameras via the internet to compliment his bird’s eye view from traffic lights with a ground level view from the numerous banks and convenience stores around town.
His dad bought him a remote control helicopter for his fifth birthday which Adam quickly drew blueprints for converting it into a surveillance helicopter outfitted with a camera and night vision capabilities created from an old microwave, busted television, and the LCD crystals from a bunch of cheap Japanese watches. He was limited on range with the remote control that came with the copter, but he was in the process of programming his computer to take over function of the helicopter by using global positioning satellite signals. With a functional GPS, Adam would be able to complete his long-range recon craft.
On one of his trips to the library, Adam had slipped into his book selection an old volume on building laser light guns from transistor radio parts. Everything had been easy enough to obtain from Radio Shack, but Adam was deeply disappointed with the little blinky light and cheap, Erector Set housing of the gun.
However, Adam didn’t give up easily and stored the laser gun under the floorboards in his room with other unsuccessful inventions that he didn’t have the materials or know-how to improve…yet.
Preview of Episode 2: Zero to Hero
With a head-snapping burst of speed, Adam shot toward the dirt pile with his front tire in the air. Wrestling the front wheel back onto the ground, he realized he was pumping the pedals furiously adding even more speed until he was throttling toward the make-shift ramp with the velocity of a Scud missile.
At the last second, as he accelerated up the pile of dirt, Adam hit the propane again, launching himself into the air with a “whoosh!” In what seemed like slow-motion, all the while yelling “woo hoo,” Adam felt gravity leave him behind. Unbelievably, he continued to rise upward. Like a dream, the bike continued to gain altitude until Adam began to wonder if he would come down. The rush of adrenaline coupled with his war-like yells caused Adam to miss the sound of a construction foreman’s SUV come into the construction area. Adam continued to fly, letting go of the handles, spreading his arms, and throwing his head back. As he realized he was clearing one of the unfinished houses, Adam wondered if the bike would withstand the impact of landing. His next thought was if he would withstand the impact of the landing. As he came down on the far side of the roof, he realized the SUV was passing directly in front of the home.
His bike landed with a slight squeal of rubber as the back tire caught shingles and then front landed with a thud. Adam made a split decision as he dropped off the roof to hit another propane burst. The bike rocketed across the hood of the SUV, shattering the windshield and causing the foreman to veer into the front of the house, smashing a hole through the front where the door was.
Adam bounced onto the grass and jerked the bike to a halt. He watched as sheetrock dust and splinters of wood flew out from the gaping hole in the front of the unfinished house. He saw the foreman open his door and start to squeeze out of his vehicle. Adam breathed a sigh of relief and silently hoped to himself the man was alright as he kicked the bike back into high gear and headed for home.
About the Author
Kevin T. Goddard was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1975. He grew up watching shows and movies like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, and much more action/adventure/science fiction. Kevin is currently a school administrator in Missouri. His family consists of a wife, 8 kids, and a chihuahua. Kevin earned a Doctorate of Education, Ed. D., in Educational Leadership in 2010. He started writing when he was a kid, but as he worked on his advanced degrees in the field of education, his writing turned academic.
About 9 years ago, Kevin wrote a short book entitled Adam Powerhouse: Birth of the Double Zero. After finishing it, he didn't know what to do, so Kevin saved it on his computer and forgot about it. When he reopened the file in 2010, Kevin was surprised to find that many of the things Adam invented in 2001 were now a part of reality...cell phones that connected to the internet, skateboards that work more like a snowboard, video games that allow you to be a rockstar, and more! So, he's had to update Adam's world. It continues to evolve and Kevin hopes Adam lives for a long, long time and you enjoy every adventure Adam has.
Kevin plans on starting more characters with the help of his two oldest daughters and chronicling those characters lives through episodes as he has Adam's.
New Adam Powerhouse Episodes by Kevin T. Goddard will be available at Smashwords.com every two weeks!
Connect with Kevin T. Goddard online:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_192520634101730
Email: adampowerhouse@gmail.com
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/kevintgoddard