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"Is everyone quite alright?" came a voice somewhere inside the smoke.
It was Tom, who emerged coughing and waving his arms from the smoke as if he were trying to shoo away a very stubborn cloud. Obediently, it swirled and congregated in a convenient corner.
Stefanie had somehow been deposited neatly into one of the logs, sitting primly as if she had meant to be there all along.
"I'm fairly certain I'm stuck in the wall," Vanessa announced.
And indeed she was. There was a Vanessa-sized dent in the wall, perfectly matching her proportions, as if the wall had been saving a place for her.
In fact, down the length of the room, several other children were likewise lodged, as if they had been placed there by a clever interior designer.
Except for Lane.
He seemed to have snuck to the corner of the hall right before the blast. He was spying at the dials on the wall at far end and had missed the brunt of it.
"This is what happens when you rapidly ionize a Group 1 metal," Tom said to Vanessa, mildly scolding her as if she had misplaced her homework. "And we're not suppose to get to that until chapter twenty-two."
"Oh, the readers will witness plenty more explosions before chapter 22," she said.
"Just make sure that none of the animals are hurt," Stefanie called from inside her log. "They always have to say that in the closing credits after the movie -- that no animals were harmed in the making of the movie."
"Quite right," a tall girl named Shayna said, stuck two or three children down the wall.
"I don't think the logs will make it through the hole now," Lane said, as he removed his hand from one of the dials.
"Well, of course not," Tom said urgently, now rushing down to where Lane was standing. "You've adjusted the hole-size dial."
"Can't we adjust it back?" another boy named Ervin said, who was dangling sideways on the wall like a misplaced question mark.
"Certainly we can," said Tom. "But now we'll have to do a measurement, and you all are already very late for a very important fate."
"Can we use those rulers?" Lane asked, reaching for a set of measuring sticks hanging on the wall. Each one labeled in units Stefanie had never heard of and wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to.
"Except that this one says centimeters," Lane said.
"I like centipedes very much," exclaimed Shayna. "Will we be measuring the logs in centipedes?"
"Indeed we will," Tom responded gleefully, pulling a handful of centipedes out of the pocket of his long white coat.
"I'm pretty sure you meant 'centimeters' not 'centipedes,'" Stefanie interjected. "How could you measure something with centipedes? I mean, they'd have to line up perfectly.
"I do like their cute little hats, though," she continued.
"And the average house centipede is 2.54 cenimeters long," Vanessa also objected. She was now half dislodged from the wall, with her legs still stuck and her head and torso flailing in the air.
"Ah, but these are very special centipedes," Tom added with excitement. "They are exactly one centimeter long."
"Excuse me," Lane said with some irritation. "I only use inches. I'm American. I won't have any of this communist, centimeter stuff."
"I'll have you know that centimeters aren't fanaticists," Vanessa said. "They are perfectly orderly."
"And I've seen a ruler with centimeters here in America," Stefanie added. Mr. Atkinson has lots of them.
"I'm not doing it!" Lane nearly shouted angrily. "It's unAmerican!"
"I'm afraid we only have one centimeter centipedes here," Tom continued, "so unless you know how to convert from centipedes to inches, you'll risk being knocked off your log. And the tunnel gets quite upset with those who mistake inches for centimeters."
"It's exactly as I said," Vanessa said, now with only one leg stuck in the wall. "There are 2.54 of Tom's centipedes in an average house centipede, which is one inch."
"So we could have a conversion!" Ervin said.
"Yes, a conversion!" Shayna said.
"What's a conversion?" Lane asked.
"It's when someone changes from one religion to another," Stefanie revealed, "but that's not important right now."
"Yes, there are 2.54 centimeters in an inch," Tom agreed. "So if you divide the number of centipedes by 2.54, you will know the number of inches."
"But don't the measuring sticks tell you how many centimeters a person is?" a girl named Elise offered. She was rather shy and hadn't said anything till now. "So why would you go to the trouble of converting to inches and then having to convert back to centipedes... eh, centimeters."
"I tell you," Lane raised his voice again, almost to the point of a tantrum. "I WILL NOT BE USING CENTIMETERS -- NOT NOW, NOT EVER!"
With that, he started looking through the measuring sticks desperately looking for one in inches rather than centimeters.
"You'll have to use the metric system if you want to do science, I'm afraid," Tom said calmly.
Finally, he found one that had both centimeters and inches on it."
"Found one!" he exclaimed.
"See," Elise said, getting her confidence up, "all you need to do is look on the centimeter side and you'll have the right measurement."
"NO!" Lain shouted. "I REFUSE!" He was taller than one measuring stick and was desperately trying to get the stick to fit his body.
"Each measuring stick is 100 centimeters," Tom said. "Or one meter. You need to use it first on the bottom part of your body, then add whatever the measure is of the rest. OR, you can use my lovely centipedes."
"NO!" he said, quite irrational now, frantically placing the one meter stick up to his body at various places. He even tried to measure himself diagonally, muttering about how America should have won the metric war.
"The tunnel hole is exactly one meter tall, or 100 centimeters," Tom said, "pointing to an electronic sign above the hole that read 1m."
"So 100 inches," Lane said.
"No, that is definitely not what he said," Stefanie mentioned in a matter-of-fact way.
"I'm pretty sure that each stick is 100 centimeters," Elise added.
"NO," Lane objected again. "Each stick is 39 inches and a smidge!" He finally put the one end on the floor and put his finger where it ended on the top of his chest.
"Then another 13 inches to my head," he continued. "So I'm 39 + 13 inches tall."
"That's 52 inches," Vanessa said, quite proud of herself.
"Now what?" Lane said.
"You have to use centimeters and then turn the dial that sets your height just right. It's the 'rider length' dial."
"NO CENTIMETERS!"
Quite agitated now, Lane rushed to look at the various dials on the wall. "Temperature... density... LENGTH! Found it."
He looked down and saw a box next to the dial.
"I stand here, right?" he said, turning the dial to 52.
"Yes, but you are using your length in inches rather than centimeters."
He was not listening.
"If you multiply 52 by 2.54," Vanessa interjected, "you get 132.08 centimeters."
"Got it!" Lane exclaimed, setting the dial to 52. He then jumped on the box, and pressed the button next to the dial. Immediately, he almost doubled in size.
"It thinks you are only 52 centimeters tall," Stefanie said. "It has almost doubled your size so you are a 100 centimeters tall."
Lane was not listening. He ran as fast as he could and jumped into the first log. He was now quite too big to sit down, so he stood as best he could, trying to stoop down.
"LET'S GO!" he exclaimed and moved a handle on his right hand side down to 'Go.'"
"It's not going to wo-ork," Stefanie said.
The tunnel gave a low groan, the sort it made when someone the wrong size tried to enter.
Lane's log began to move forward on the water toward the tunnel. Lane tried to bend farther and farther down.
But it was no use. He was too large now to fit through the entrance. When his log reached the tunnel, it flipped backward throwing him into the water. An alarm started to sound as he flailed in the water. When he finally was swept with the water into the opening, the group could hear the familiar sound of someone yelling as they go down a steep water slide.
"Is he going to be alright?" Elise asked.
"Oh yes," Tom said. "He will wake up quite drenched in his third grade PE class quite his normal size. Not to worry.
"Now, would you all like to be measured by the centipedes?" he finished.
"Yes!"
"Yes!" they all said quite vehemently.
And, one by one, after being dislodged from the wall, Tom measured all the children and Stefanie with the centipedes. Then they stood in the box and turned the dial to the proper number. By the end, they were all exactly 100 centimeters tall, which is one meter.
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