"Why, I don't know very much," Marge said. "Last year Elmer was sick, some tropic disease. His father sent him up here to recuperate. Now Alice--that's his aunt, Doreen's mother--is at her wits' end, he makes her so nervous." I lit another cigarette before I realized I already had one. "And he invents things? A boy genius? Young Tom Edison and all that?" Marge frowned. "I suppose you could say that," she conceded. "He has the garage full of stuff he's made or bought with the allowance his father sends him. And if you come within ten feet of it without permission, you get an electric shock right out of thin air. But that's only part of it. It--" she gave a helpless gesture--"it's Elmer's effect on everybody. Everybody over fifteen, that is. He sits there, a little, dark, squinched-up kid wearing thick glasses and talking about how climatic changes inside fifty years will flood half the world, cause the collapse of civilization--" "Wait a minute!" I cut in. "Scientists seem to think that's possible in a few thousand years. Not fifty." "Elmer says fifty," Marge stated flatly. "From the way he talks, I suspect he's figured out a way to speed things up and is going to try it some day just to see if it works. Meanwhile he fools around out there in the garage, sneering about the billions of dollars spent to develop color TV. He says his lens will turn any ordinary broadcast into color for about twenty-five dollars. He says it's typical of the muddled thinking of our so-called scientists--I'm quoting now--to do everything backward and overlook fundamental principles." "Bro-ther!" I said. Doreen came trotting back in then, with her hat box. "I'm tired of that game," she said, giving the TV set a bored glance. And as she said it the tube went dark. The sound cut off. "Damn!" I swore. "Must be a power failure!" I grabbed the phone and jiggled the hook. No dice. The phone was dead, too. "You're funny," Doreen giggled. "It's just the unhappy genii. See?" She flicked over the catch on the hatbox. And the picture came back on. The sound started up. "--swings and misses for strike two!" The air conditioner began to hum. Marge and I stared. Mouths open. Wide. * * * * * "You did that, Doreen?" I asked it very carefully. "You made the television stop and start again?" "The unhappy genii did," Doreen told me. "Like this." She flicked the catch back. The TV picture blacked out. The sound stopped in the middle of a word. The air conditioner whispered into silence. Then she flipped the catch the other way. "--fouls the second ball into the screen," the announcer said. Picture okay. Air conditioner operating. Everything normal except my pulse and respiration. "Doreen, sweetheart--" I took a step toward her--"what's in that box? What _is_ an unhappy genii?"