The Hinge
By age five, Aris had concluded two things.
First: The fundamental laws of this new universe were, by all measurable accounts, identical to his old one.
Second: His father, Marcus Cole, was a good, kind man who was in the process of murdering a perfectly good fence hinge.
Aris sat on the back porch steps, chin in his hands. He could hear the crime from here. A high-pitched SCREEEEECH that set his teeth on edge, followed by a dull thwack.
He watched. Marcus, a broad, capable-looking man with short blond hair, was whacking a wooden shim under the gate with a hammer.
It's not alignment, Marcus! Aris screamed internally, his frustration boiling. It's friction! F-R-I-C-T-I-O-N! The WD-40 is right there! On the shelf! The blue and yellow can! JUST LUBRICATE THE PIN!
SCREEEEECH.
Aris squeezed his eyes shut. It was torture.
"Whatcha doin', champ?" Marcus called out, oblivious to his own mechanical sins.
Aris opened his eyes. He had a list of pre-calibrated responses. "Playing."
"Looks like serious work to me." Marcus smiled, that easy, warm expression that Aris had come to associate with safety.
Aris gestured to his "toys": a hollow rubber ball and his father's old, heavy-duty socket wrench. He'd been dropping them together for an hour. Thwack-THUD. Thwack-THUD.
"Just don't drop that wrench on your foot, okay? Your mom would have my hide."
"Okay, Daddy."
Aris picked up the items. He stood on the top step, held them out at shoulder height, and let them go. Thwack-THUD. They hit the grass at the exact same time. Galileo still held. Gravity was still g. The world was, frustratingly, normal.
At least his experiment worked.
The slip-up happened when he was six, at the dinner table.
Elara—her dark, wavy hair framing a face that was, in Aris's opinion, far too kind for this illogical world—had made pot roast. The house smelled of comfort.
"It's the alternator again," Marcus was saying, sawing at a piece of beef. "That's the third one this year. Sal's shop can't figure it out. He says the wiring in that old truck is just... shot."
Aris focused on his peas. Don't engage. It's not your problem. You are six. Six-year-olds like peas. You do not understand alternator diodes. Mmm. Peas.
Elara sighed. "Marcus, we can't afford a new one right now. Not with the roof needing—"
"It's not the alternator," Aris said.
The words just... popped out.
Dead silence. The clinking of silverware stopped.
Idiot. Aris squeezed his fork, his knuckles white. Idiot, idiot, idiot! You just had to be the smart guy, didn't you?
He looked up. Two pairs of adult eyes were fixed on him. Elara's, wide and confused. Marcus's "Dad-smile" had just... shut off. He was looking at Aris like he was a piece of malfunctioning equipment.
"What's that, Ari?" Elara asked, her voice a little too bright.
Abort. Abort! But his mouth was already moving. "The root cause isn't the alternator," he said, the words tumbling out in his small, clear voice. "It's the voltage regulator. The output is unregulated, it's spiking. The spike is burning out the alternator's diodes. You're just replacing the component that's failing, not the component that's causing the failure."
Elara's fork clattered onto her plate.
Marcus just stared. The look on his face was one Aris had never seen before. It wasn't anger. It was a deep, profound... wrongness. It was the look of a man who just saw a fish climb a tree.
"Aris," Marcus said, his voice slow and careful. "Where did you hear that?"
Aris felt a hot prickle of panic. Fix it! Say something! He looked down at his plate, instinctively hunching his small shoulders, making himself physically non-threatening. He grabbed the first plausible lie he could think of.
"I... I read it," he mumbled. "In one of your car magazines, Daddy."
The tension in the room snapped.
Marcus let out a short, explosive breath that was half a laugh. "In my... Ari, you're six. You... you're reading those?"
"I like the pictures," Aris lied, shoving a spoonful of peas into his mouth.
Marcus scrubbed a hand over his face, and his warm smile returned, though it was now tinged with something new. Awe. "Jeez, Elara. We got a little Einstein on our hands."
"He's just... he's a very smart boy," Elara said, her voice still shaky as she picked up her fork. "That's all. A very smart, special boy."
Aris ate his pot roast in silence, his heart hammering. He had learned a critical lesson. His knowledge wasn't just knowledge; it was a freak show.
Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut.