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“What unit of electrical resistance was established during this period and after which scientist was it named?” Mr Harrington asked, projecting his voice and causing it to echo slightly in the large classroom.
A buzzer. “The Ohm, after George Ohm,” Peter answered confidently. These were the intro questions, so they were quite easy in his opinion. A good way to rack up points quickly.
“Very good, Mr Parker. Next question, what did Marie and Pierre Curie discover in 1898?”
Two buzzers, one a little faster, and Mr Harrington motioned for Peter to answer again.
“Radium and Polonium.”
Peter’s sensitive hearing picked up a huff from the back of the classroom, followed by a muttered comment. “With how the question got her name wrong, I’m shocked the answer was correct.”
Peter threw a withering glare at the figure in the back corner of the room, one wearing a hoodie with their hood up and a pair of mirror-tinted sunglasses on their face while indoors. When Mr Harrington had sent out an email inviting parents to the AcaDec practice session, Peter had been expecting no one to show up for him, knowing May had a double-shift that day. What he hadn’t expected had been for his aunt to forward that email to Tony, who had made no indication of ever having received the email until Peter happened to spot the man having practically materialized in the room, his back leaning against the wall in a corner.
“Excellent, Peter,” Mr Harrington said, unaware of Peter’s mildly distracted state. “Let’s give one of your classmates a chance, shall we? Flash, what is the basic unit of luminous intensity as defined between 1871 and 1914?”
“Uh, Lumen?”
“Candela,” Peter whispered under his breath, tearing his gaze away from the fake wallflower in the corner of the classroom.
“Incorrect, Flash. The lumen measures luminous flux as the intensity across a solid angle of one steradian,” Mr Harrington explained. “Ned, how about you?”
“Candela?” Ned answered, unsure.
“That is correct.”
Peter gave his friend an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up, mentally cheering for him. Go Ned!
“Which scientist introduced the concept of ‘quanta’ in—”
A buzzer sounded. “Max Planck.”
“Very good, Michelle, but please remember to let the host finish their questions before buzzing, in case there are any additional parts.” With that, Mr Harrington continued. “Next question: who invented the radio?”
A buzzer. “Heinrich Hertz?”
“Incorrect, Liz.”
Another buzzer. “Thomas Edison?”
“Also incorrect, Flash.”
Peter pressed his buzzer. “Nikola Tesla.”
Mr Harrington frowned, which made Peter feel a pang of anxiety. “Incorrect. The inventor of the radio is Guglielmo Marconi. Next que—”
“Peter’s answer was right,” a voice called out from the back of the room, cutting off Mr Harrington. Peter paled as he recognized the voice all too well. Oh no. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to happen!
Mr Harrington’s frown deepened and he turned, trying to identify who had spoken from behind him. “Pardon?”
The hooded man stepped forward, no longer leaning in the corner, hands in his pockets. He gave a loose shrug, gaze obscured by his sunglasses, but Peter was fairly sure the man was looking right at him. “You asked who invented the radio, not who people think invented the radio,” he said, reaching up to adjust his sunglasses. “Marconi didn’t invent the radio. Sure, he won the Nobel Prize for it in 1909, but the truth is that Nikola Tesla had patented the technology behind the radio in 1896, which Marconi later used. Tesla fought Marconi on the subject until the day he died in 1943, the same year the US Supreme court declared Marconi’s 1904 patent invalid in the case Marconi Wireless Corporation of America v. United States and returned most of the original patent rights to Tesla. So, to answer the question — as far as the US Patent Office is concerned, Mr Nikola Tesla invented the radio, and Mr Parker’s answer is correct.”
For a moment, there was silence, only broken by the quiet clicks of a laptop keyboard.
“...It appears that is correct,” Mr Harrington admitted after a moment, eyes scanning information on his laptop screen. “Thank you, and my apologies, Peter. We’ll make sure to note the error and notify the national board as well, since these are the official practice questions.”
Peter nodded, swallowing down a thick tension in his throat. “Thank you, Mr Harrington.” The boy let his eyes drift over to the man in the hoodie, who had retreated to his little corner of the room. Peter saw the ghost of a smile grace the man’s lips as the man reached up and briefly took off his glasses, taking out a small microfiber cloth to clean them. The motion let Peter catch a glimpse of how the soft smile reached Tony’s eyes — a rarity for the older man.