A head lifted from two rows over.
"Vanessa!" Stefanie exclaimed.
"Well, yes and no," he said, removing a wig with a flourish that suggested he had practiced it. "Mostly no."
Stefanie stared.
"Ta-da," he said. "Trick or treat."
She could now see that Vanessa did not just look like Tom. It was Tom in a cheap wig, dressed up as if for Halloween. And, indeed, there was an orange plastic pumpkin with a smile on it next to his seat, filled with something that looked like candy.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Sixteen," he said. "Academically, it varies."
"What happened to the older Tom?"
"I assume he's trying to figure out what to do with the other 10,799 Stefanies," he said. "And there must be a lot to clean up back in chapter 7."
"Look," she said, "I don't have time to be here unless the teacher is going to be handing out some interesting atoms for me to take back to Mr. Atkinson."
"Well, I have some glowing atoms in my candy bucket," he said. "From the looks of it, uranium and plutonium. I suspect we are both being bombarded this very moment with alpha particles. The wig is very good at shielding a person from them. Where is your wig?"
"He's not serious," Stacy said, now entering the room stridently. "We don't get to beta particles until next year."
"I don't have time to wait till next year," Stefanie exclaimed. "Mr. Atkinson hoped I could bring them back before class was over.
"Wait, aren't you my younger sister?" Stefanie said to the teacher, who seemed to be in her twenties.
"Of course," I'm here to give the briefing.
"Ah, the briefing," Stefanie said. "But why is everyone so much older than they were?"
“The Lorentz contradiction,” they said -- Tom a moment too early, Stacy a moment too late.
Stefanie was really beginning to hate that Lorentz guy, whoever he was.
"I know you're in a hurry, so let's get to the point," Stacy quickly continued.
"Can you do my part first so I can leave?" Tom asked.
"Sure," she said. "We'll start with the units and conversions. That goes for both physics and chemistry."
"I'm doing the physics track," Tom whispered to Stefanie, now suddenly sitting right next to her.
"You've been learning the metric system," Stacy said, after which Tom burst out laughing.
"You're joking, right?" he said.
"No, I think that's right," Stefanie said. "We've been learning about length, volume, mass, and temperature."
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Tom said. "This can't actually be about learning. It's not in my contract. Only foolishness."
"And," continued Stefanie, quite proud of herself, "the measures have been in meters, liters, grams, and Celsius."
"Make it stop!" came a voice from inside Tom's desk. It was one of those where you stored your books and things in a space just under the top.
"Lane, you're embarrassing me," Tom said not too covertly to the desk, speaking out of the right side of his mouth. "I told you I'd give you some glowing candy if you would be quiet until we get to the slingshot."
"OK, OK, just see if you can distract them from talking about the metric system. It's unamerican."
"You're exactly right," Stacy said, completely ignoring Tom's conversation with his desk. Then she promptly went over to the board. It was currently hidden by one of those white screens they pull down when they are showing a video.
"I don't like your table," Tom immediately said.
"And why not?" Stacy asked with a grin on her face.
"It's not quite balanced," he said.
"Yeah," Stefanie added. "Your prefixes don't really line up with the categories or units. The prefixes in the third column apply to all the different units."
"Very good," Stacy replied quite satisfied. "I have now demonstrated one of the greatest techniques of a master teacher. Teaching it wrong so that I can help you see what's right."
"That doesn't make any sense," Stefanie said.
"Brilliant!" Tom said.
"You're right that the kilo- prefix can apply to meters, liters, or grams."
"Kilometers and kilograms!" Tom exclaimed with excitement.
"Make it stop! Make it stop!" Lane could be heard to say from inside Tom's desk.
"Shhh!" Tom said out of the corner of his mouth. "There'll be no plutonium for you!"
"The Celsius unit seems a little strange to me too," Stefanie said. "I mean, there's no such thing as a kilocelsius, right?"
"Quite right. Quite right," Stacy said. "Another of my brilliant teaching tactics."
Stefanie looked at her with one eyebrow slowly rising, as if it had its own doubts.
"Celsius is the scale," Stacy continued, unfazed. "We talk about one degree Celsius or ten degrees Celsius, but not amounts of Celsius the way we do with meters or grams."
"I think I've got it," Tom said. "Can I leave now?"
"Yes, let's blow this place," came Lane's voice.
"Not quite," Stacy said definitively.
"Can you combine these units?"
"Of course," Tom said. "If you do grams per liter, that's density."
"Correct," Stacy said.
"And you can cancel units out by multiplying," Stefanie said with excitement.
"Tops and bottom cancel out!" Tom said, falling briefly into his Vanessa voice. "That is," he now said compensating in his deepest voice, "Tops and bottoms cancel out."
"Let's make sure you've got it," Stacy said. "If you multiply grams/liter by liters, what happens?"
"Tops and bottoms cancel out!" Tom said. "The liters go away because you have the liter unit on the top and on the bottom."
"Ok, you can leave," Stacy said. Tom promptly grabbed a tiny Lane from inside his desk, grabbed his pumpkin candy bucket, and sprinted out of the room. The door closed behind him before it quite remembered being open.
_________________________
1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy
6. Bubbles in Space
7. The Canceling Game
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