Chapter 16

16 SO WHERE ARE KLINK AND KLANK?" ASKS WATSON. "Here," says Frank, pointing to a spot on the Midville map hastily pinned above the workbench. He makes a red X over the outline of a single building at the southern edge of Midville, right next to Lake Genevieve. "And smelling a crushed ant leg told you this how...?"

"No time to explain everything, Watson. But I am glad you didn't fall for that Edison pitch—" "Aw, come on, Frank. You know I'm a better friend than that. I got trampled, and I always freak out when—" "OK, OK. Good to know," Frank interrupts. "But what all this means is we need to get to Edison's place. Now. Before he realizes he should destroy the evidence." Watson smiles. "Good to know" is probably the nicest thing Frank has ever said about their friendship. He would like to hear more, but Frank is already busy marking a flurry of X's on the Midville map, seemingly at random. "What do you see?" Frank quizzes him. "I see that you marked up my dad's map that I told him I would take care of, and that now I'm already in trouble and we haven't even left your lab."

"Connect the dots," says Frank. "All the properties that Edison's family has bought up over the past year... and kicked people out of... and this building, Grampa Al's..." Frank connects the X's. "A big red circle? So Edison is building a racetrack? A gigantic doughnut oven? I don't get it." Frank puts up another map right below the Midville map. It has an almost identical circle on it. "A map of CERN, the subatomic-particle physics lab buried under Switzerland and France. It's that place Grampa Al was telling us about, where some of his scientist pals work. The ring is part of a machine called the Large Hadron Collider."

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"Right," says Watson. "Now I really have no idea what you're talking about." "It's the coolest thing," says Frank. "A seventeen-mile ring that speeds up subatomic particles to almost the speed of light and then smashes them together! Like racing two really, really small cars around a huge racetrack in opposite directions... and then smacking them perfectly head-on." "Really?" "Really." "Why?" "Why?" Frank points to the matter section on his Wall of Science. "To record what happens after the collisions and uncover the true nature of matter... and antimatter. Think of it as figuring out how those two really little race cars were built by looking at the pieces that come out after the crash." Watson scratches his head and nods. "So

Edison has been secretly building his own collider ring thing and trying to make antimatter all along?" "Exactly, Watson! And yesterday he somehow found out that I beat him to it. So last night he had Mr. Chimp robot-nap Klink and Klank so he could steal the secret of my Antimatter Motor from them." "Wow," says Watson. "So Edison is likely in this building"—Frank stabs an index finger at the Midville map —"right next to Lake Genevieve, for the water supply he needs to cool all the subatomic reactions. And he's probably hiding Klink and Klank there, too." Watson jumps up. "Oh, we know that building. It's the Big Black Cube. But that thing is built like a fortress! How are we ever going to get in there?" Frank studies the two maps. "May I please