Before Tomorrowland Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-1160-6

  Visit www.disneybooks.com and disney.com/tomorrowland

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2 Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part 3 Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  For Ben, Lauren, and Nathan:

  Build your future, kids. Make her proud.

  —J.J.

  To Lauren, Ben, and Nathan, and their parents. All my best.

  —J.C.

  HE WAS going to fly.

  He closed his eyes and felt the wind on his face as he leaned out over the passenger door. The leather seat of the Arab Super Sports car stuck to his knees in the June heat. He hung on tighter when the gears shifted and his father slowed for a turn.

  “Get your head back in the car, Henry!”

  Henry Stevens, age ten, sat down and opened his eyes. His dad, Max, was shaking his head and smirking. He wasn’t mad—Max Stevens never got mad—but you sure wanted to listen when he gave an order.

  “Your mother’s never going to let us have any fun if I bring you back in little pieces.”

  Max leaned over and tousled Henry’s rust-colored hair. Henry caught a glimpse of himself reflected in his dad’s big aviator glasses, and his freckled face was all smile. He prized these weekend outings with his dad more than just about anything. More than building carts made of orange crates and baby buggy wheels and racing them with his best friend, Nick. More than blackberry cobbler. And he loved his mom’s blackberry cobbler.

  Henry didn’t see his dad much. Max worked long shifts, and he lived an hour away, but when they got together on the weekends, their adventures were incredible; or sometimes just silly. Once, they attempted to spend a day traveling only by pogo stick. The experiment lasted just an hour and ended with a sprained ankle for Max and a bloody nose for Henry. His dad used to tell Henry that he worked hard, and he played hard. His mother said there was such a thing as “playing too hard.” Henry couldn’t understand that idea. His dad did just about everything right. He wouldn’t have been the top mechanic at his Army Air Service base otherwise—a fact Henry shared at any opportunity.

  It had been hard, learning to live such a fractured life after the divorce. But Henry was starting to roll with it.

  Max cranked the steering wheel and maneuvered the car into a parking stall near the Santa Monica Pier. His leather flight jacket crinkled as he turned to his son and took off his glasses. There was a glint in his eyes Henry had never seen before. “Ready for a real thrill?”

  Henry bolted from his own seat, almost tripping onto the pavement on the way out.

  He shielded his eyes and looked to the pier and its thrill rides. He heard the off-key carnival music and smelled the popcorn and cotton candy. It was glorious anticipation. Ever since he’d been big enough—and big enough by his dad’s standards was pretty small—Henry had loved thrill rides. The faster the better. Anything that came close to the fantasy of the screaming planes his father pieced together was fair game to Henry Stevens. Speed and more speed.

  “Let’s do that roller coaster first! Then the Zipper, then the bumper cars. Then let’s do the coaster again—”

  “We’re not going on any rides today, fella. We’re going to a special exhibit. It’s brand-new.”

  Exhibit? That didn’t sound good. “What kind of exhibit?”

  “A science exhibit. The World of the Future.” He sounded like a carnival barker. “You’ll love it.”

  Henry was sure he wouldn’t. His heart sank. Why would his dad tell him they were going to the pier when all he wanted to do was shuffle around some yawn-inducing thing that felt like school? It sounded more like the sort of thing his mother liked. Museums and libraries and picnic lunches at the arboretum with her snooty boyfriend, Laurence. Boring.

  Working up his courage, he said, “I don’t want to go to an exhibit.”

  His dad didn’t slow down. He just gave him the line he always gave when Henry annoyed him—

  “Well, them’s the breaks, kid.”

  Henry followed his dad, feet dragging, onto the pier and past a couple of little kid rides. He thought about suggesting they just do some of those instead. Bumper boats! He would settle for bumper boats! But he didn’t want to risk annoying his dad again.

  Then they turned a corner around a fun house, and Henry saw it.

  Looming over them on a wide expanse of boardwalk was a silver structure that shimmered so brightly in the noon sun that Henry had to squint. It was wide and circular, like a massive pie plate, or one of those squatty spaceships on the covers of the science pulps. It rotated slowly on a big platform. Its sides were inlaid with angled patterns that reminded him of a book Laurence had on his coffee table. He remembered because he had asked Laurence if it was a book on Egypt, and Laurence made some annoying sound and said, “Hardly. It’s art deco.” He said “hardly” a lot, and it usually meant Henry was wrong about something.

  “What do you think? Should we check it out?” Max asked.

  Henry nodded.

  They walked to a ticket window where his dad bought a fistful of tokens from a woman with dark skin so flawless, and brown eyes so wide and pure, her visage seemed unreal. An ivory badge on her ebony dress gave her a name: ANNIE N. CANNY.

  “Welcome to the world of tomorrow,” she said. “Please rise to meet it.”

  They stepped onto some kind of ascending conveyor belt that extended to the building. Henry grabbed for his dad’s sleeve as the big moving sidewalk cranked to life under them and glided them toward the attraction’s dark and gaping entrance.

  “Scared?” asked Max.

  “No!” Henry lied.

  “Imagine a world of infinite possibilities, powered by endless energy that would come at no cost, to ourselves or our environment, rich with invention that would not only improve life as we know it, but redefine it. For the better.” A narrator’s deep voice boomed louder and louder. The music shrieked to crescendo. Henry’s teeth rattled. And then the lights came on. He blinked; the brilliance stung, but his eyes adjusted, and he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

  “This world is coming.

  And we are making it for you.

  Welcome to the future.”

  The lights came on. He blinked; the brilliance stung, but his eyes adjusted and he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

  They were inside a dome with walls so white and clean Henry couldn’t even judge its size. Large model ze
ppelins and sleek model airplanes circled high above them. Metal walkways crisscrossed above the floor in front of them. Just ahead, kiosks crowded the room, demonstrating technologies Henry didn’t recognize, or didn’t quite understand, or in some cases, didn’t think possible. Below them, large model submarines propelled through an expanse of crystal clear water, accompanied by a school of exotic fish sporting colors so vibrant they didn’t seem real.

  “This way,” Max said.

  Henry’s father led him past a table with a sheet of refined, clear quartz connected to a keyboard by a wire. He saw a menu of options printed on a cream-colored card: TO WATCH STEAMBOAT WILLIE, PRESS F1. TO LEARN BASIC COMPUTER PROGRAMMING, PRESS F2. They paused briefly at a kiosk demonstrating a tabletop box that could cook a slab of beef in seconds, and even more briefly to examine a model for a colossal power plant (LARGER THAN THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA! boasted a placard) that could generate enough energy to power half the continent. They lingered to watch a film projected on a massive screen, showing a group of men in turn-of-the-century top hats and finery. The men stood a ways off from a skyscraper-sized turret that jutted from the side of a desert butte. The cannon fired a bullet-shaped capsule into the evening sky toward the moon. Henry wanted to watch more of it, but Max kept mushing him forward. He began to get the sense that his dad had been there before, and was eager to get somewhere specific.

  Then Henry saw the robots, and he insisted that they come to a full stop. On a dining room set arranged on a raised stage, a copper-plated mechanical man sporting a butler’s tux served food from a platter to a family of four, represented by lifelike mannequins, each identified by nametags as NICHOLAS, MARIE, BUCKY, and ATHENA—THE NUCLEAR FAMILY. A second automaton leaned over the mother and asked with a tinny voice, “More gel-a-tin, madam?” Henry laughed when the robot’s mouth lit up as he talked.

  He couldn’t believe it. He looked up at his dad to see if it was a trick, but he knew it couldn’t be. They were real robots, moving and talking all by themselves. There couldn’t have been anything more incredible to Henry.

  At least, that’s what he thought.

  “Look at this,” said Max.

  He turned Henry by the shoulder and pointed toward a line of visitors at the end of the platform circling a perfectly smooth black sphere the size of a small house. A hatch opened. One customer exited, dazed but smiling; another customer entered, hesitant and giggly. The door closed and sealed behind him. An engine revved, causing the entire walkway to tremble, and the giant pod started to spin.

  Max placed a token in Henry’s palm.

  They stepped toward the attraction, passing stalls demonstrating “teleportation” and “genetic engineering.” Then his dad pushed him toward the end of the queue with a gentle shove. After a half dozen customers emerged from the sphere, delighted and bewildered, Henry reached the front of the line and gave his dad a thumbs-up. The hatch opened for him. It was his turn.

  The interior was dark and stark: a leather chair with a security harness, surrounded by a honeycomb of black glass. The hatch sealed. HISSSSS. And then Henry heard nothing. The space was soundproof.

  “Greetings, explorer!”

  Henry jumped. The chirpy salutation came from another robot. This one was attached at the waist to a metal track that circled the room. “Please take a seat and buckle your security harness.”

  Henry sat and brought the shoulder straps over his head and snapped them into place. They felt loose for a second, but then they tightened, pulling him back until the fit was snug. He almost yelped when the robot extended a pair of telescoping metal arms with clawlike hands to check the fit of the harness. After two tugs, the robot retracted and rotated out of view. “Please make yourself comfortable, and enjoy the ride!” The seat tilted back until Henry looked straight up into the black honeycomb.

  It was dead quiet.

  The engine revved, then quieted to a hum, and then intensified all over again until the roar of a blast shook the room. He was thrust deep into his chair. Was he really launching into the sky? Henry’s brain knew it was impossible, but his churning stomach wasn’t convinced.

  A voice spoke to him, narrating his experience, but Henry was too disoriented to listen. The opaque glass illuminated with a swirl of color, then turned clear as the engine roar faded. The sphere pushed through wisps of cloud toward a ring of fire in a turquoise sky. Henry remembered that film about the cannon shooting a capsule at the moon, and his clammy hands clenched tight at the thought.

  But the moon was not Henry’s destination. As soon as he sailed through the blazing hoop in the high atmosphere, the blue sky abruptly turned copper. The hum of the engine quieted and the sphere seemed to lose speed. Just as the sky was about to turn into outer space, Henry’s pod turned upside down and began to descend. Breaking through the clouds, he beheld terrain unlike any he had seen with his own eyes or had even seen illustrated in a magazine or textbook. Lush jungle extended across the land with foliage sporting vibrant, iridescent colors. Next he skimmed the surface of a boiling lake and Henry felt the soles of his shoes get warm. He passed through a waterfall—the sphere rocked but stayed level—and gained speed again as the sphere shot through a valley toward the horizon. A huge crimson moon crossed the sky and night passed in seconds to day on the other side of the world. The roaring engine was like music swelling to a crescendo…and then it was over.

  The glass went dark. Silence. The robot whirled around to unfasten the security harness as the hatch opened. HISSSSSS. He was back in California.

  Henry’s legs shook as he stepped down from the chair. “Thank you for visiting!” the robot said. “We hope you’ll journey with us again!”

  His father was waiting for him as he stepped out of the sphere. The grin on Max’s face might have been bigger than his own. “What’d you think, fella?”

  Henry just shook his head. He didn’t have words. His dad laughed. “Pretty fantastic simulation, huh?”

  “It wasn’t real?” asked Henry. His voice sounded small in his own ears.

  “Well…it could be. I’m going to find out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His dad threw his arm around Henry’s shoulders. “I just accepted a job with the people in charge of this place. The men who built it. They’re some of the best and brightest from all over the world. You might have even heard of a couple of ’em. Howard Hughes? I’ll be working for him.”

  “Doing what?” Henry asked.

  Max nodded back to the big sphere and smiled. “Making that real.”

  Henry stared at his dad. “Can I come to work with you? Please?”

  “Son, I’m going to have to jump through hoops to even let you visit. They take security very seriously. Like working for the military, but with less war.” He smiled at his joke. “I’m sure we can work something out. Let’s get some lunch and go ride that roller coaster.”

  Henry shuffled his feet, glanced back at the sphere, then at his dad.

  “You wanna do it again?”

  Henry nodded profusely.

  His dad handed him a half dozen tokens. “Don’t get sick on me.”

  Henry ran back up the walkway, almost knocking over a young girl who stared at the Nuclear Family dinner display. He was too giddy to care.

  My dad just got a job making the future!

  When he climbed back into the simulation, this time he heard the narration over the engine roar.

  “This is a journey into what may be humanity’s next days—into the worlds of tomorrow…”

  He was going to fly.

  Henry grinned as light flooded the darkened pod and he escaped the gravity of the ordinary world at thrilling speed.

  It was the happiest he’d ever been.

  It was the happiest he’d ever be.

  The following story takes place between July 2 and July 4 of 1939 in the greater New York City area. Many of the characters and events described here are well known to history. A few of them are not.

 
LEE BRACKETT took off his wool cap and wiped his forehead. It wasn’t the just the heat getting to him. He’d told his mom, twice and clearly, to wait there for him, under the impossible-to-miss crystal clock suspended from the vaulted ceiling, while he got their luggage. Instead, she’d ditched him and gone off to God knew where. He should have expected her to resist him and go her own way like a stubborn little kid. Where could she be? She wasn’t in the women’s lounge with its peeling yellow wallpaper and screaming babies. She wasn’t at the newsstand, where a vendor with an ink-smudged smock pinned the week’s new comic books to a clothesline. Several dark scenarios cycled through Lee’s mind, including what might happen if she didn’t take the pills she’d needed to take an hour earlier. Normally, playing caretaker to his mom made him feel grown-up, but at that moment, Lee, age seventeen, felt as helpless as one of those infants in the ladies’ lounge.

  He sat down on the largest suitcase and forced himself to take a deep breath. Unfortunately, every time he tried to clear his head and compose himself, he just heard his father’s voice ring louder and louder: This is a bad idea. Deep, discouraging, disapproving. Lee hadn’t heard the sound of his father’s actual voice in weeks, maybe months, but it echoed in every cursive scratch on the postcard from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  This is a bad idea. The city is a dangerous place, and neither of you are prepared for it. Especially you, Clara. Stay home. All My Best —James.

  Lee felt the flush of anger that usually followed thoughts of his father these days. “All his best” for the last year was a postcard every other day and an envelope of cash every week. Lee did the rest. Coming up on the early train from Edison, it was giving her the seizure medication, applying the blanket, removing the blanket, adjusting the pillow for her left side where she was weak, escorting her to the bathroom—three times. The doctor thought the treatments over the past year had at least slowed the growth of the cancer, but he also said he didn’t know for sure. “Keep her spirits up, son,” the doc had told him. “Enjoyment and positivity can work wonders, as much as any medicine.”