CHAPTER 3 Discovery Thirty immobile minutes passed, with Mitch just staring out the window and sighing. The maintenance crew showed up in the corridor, noisily emptying trash barrels and flushing the toilets in the lobby bathroom. The whine of the floor buffer knocked Mitch out of his inaction. Hard as it was to not be depressed, he knew he had to snap out of it and do something. He turned back to his bench and thought, What if I just surround these pieces with whatever junk I can find? If I throw enough stuff onto the bench, something might come to me. He rustled through Bische's re...

CHAPTER 2 Disaster Three weeks and six days later, Mitch found himself wishing he had more time. Bische's lab hummed with activity. It was First Check-In, the day that students with completed projects could present them and call it a semester. It was also the day for struggling students to solicit help. As Mitch's maker reputation spread over the course of the semester, more often than not his classmates called on him. Today was no different. He floated from one bench to another, soldering a piece here, rebuilding a breadboard there, thoroughly enjoying solving real problems, but comple...

CHAPTER #1 Busted It started with a beam of light. The shaft pierced the gray, midday sky over Golden, Colorado, shot straight across Highway 6, onto the School of Mines campus, through the open window in room 103, and right into Mitch Campbell's drooping eyes. He could have blinked and played it off but like a dork, he jerked awake and yelped. His hand spasmed as he pulled himself back from the chasm of sleep-deprived dreams into the harsh, bright reality of class. He fumbled his tablet, and it clanged to the floor right as Dr. Bische walked past his bench. Bische, mid-lecture, didn...