The Aggravation of Elmer

What happens when a thirteen-year-old South American genius decides to mess with the adult world? Pure, delightful chaos. When Bill Rawlins gets stuck in a traffic jam caused by a mysterious device, he expects a simple explanation. What he finds is Elmer, a boy genius whose "unhappen genii" can shut down every electric device in the neighborhood. Bill sees dollar signs. Elmer sees playmates. But when the kid's anti-gravitation experiments go spectacularly wrong, the garage and possibly Elmer himself go flying into unknown territory. This is old-school SF at its most playful: a story that understands geniuses are trouble, adults are fools, and the best inventions come from minds too young to know what's impossible. Fast, funny, and faintly terrifying in the way only childhood brilliance can be.