Breaking Point

The approaching grand opening of the Connellsville Whit's End has stretched Whit and his staff dangerously thin. Nick cannot fill several shifts at the original shop because Connie, Jack, and Eugene are unavailable, while his new garage band expects him at practice. He suggests calling Wooton, who has volunteered to help and has already proven popular with the children. Whit hesitates to treat the mailman as a regular employee but reluctantly agrees when Mary Hopkins calls to demand his presence in Connellsville.

At the new building, Whit works on an Imagination Station late into the night and even considers redesigning its appearance. Mary introduces Barry Muntz, an old acquaintance who claims expertise in computers, electronics, construction, law, languages, science, art, and numerous other subjects. He has installed systems in several of Mary's stores and worked with virtual reality, so she wants him to finish the Imagination Station while Whit attends to other urgent work.

Whit refuses to share the complete plans. His technology has been misused before, and he does not trust someone he has only just met with its secrets. Mary warns that he cannot work twenty-hour days until opening, but Whit would rather exhaust himself than risk the machine. He agrees only to let Barry help elsewhere.

Back in Odyssey, Nick tries to run Whit's End alone during a perfect storm of disorder. A birthday party, a daycare group, and a victorious Little League team crowd the shop. Children misuse supplies, spread vegetable oil on the model train tracks, and hit one another with pretzel rods. Nick becomes trapped with a sprinkle bucket over his head while trying to solve several problems at once.

When Nick calls, Whit abandons a Connellsville meeting to help. Mary again reminds him that Barry could relieve some of the burden, but Whit races back to Odyssey. After closing the shop late that night, he returns to Connellsville for a few hours of work on the machine. Nick warns that the two shops are going to wear them both out.

Wooton arrives early for his next shift and gives Liz Horton a library book about the history of China dolls because he remembers her interest. Their conversation is interrupted by violent shaking upstairs. Alex is trapped inside the Imagination Station during a Revolutionary War program in which Paul Revere's horse keeps moving backward. The door and the internal stop control have both failed.

Unable to reach Whit, Wooton acts quickly. He first tries to unplug the machine, then asks Liz for something heavy enough to break the window. A display rock proves too flimsy, so he uses a fire extinguisher. Alex escapes safely through the broken opening. Only afterward does Liz notice the emergency shutoff button outside the machine.

Alex's father tells Whit that his son is physically unharmed but has become frightened in the enclosed machine. He also voices a larger concern shared by other parents. Whit has been absent so often that the familiar place where they trust their children no longer feels properly supervised. Mr. Jefferson understands that the situation is temporary, but he does not want Odyssey to lose the care and guidance Whit has always provided.

Whit accepts responsibility. He should never have left the Imagination Station accessible without teaching Wooton how to stop it. Recognizing that he cannot keep abandoning one shop to rescue the other, he calls Mary and agrees to discuss giving Barry more responsibility.

Wooton wants to quit filling in because he fears that breaking the machine's window endangered Alex. A strange dream about smashing a turtle exhibit with a fire extinguisher strengthens his worry that he should stay away from children. Whit assures him that the accident was not his fault and that his rescue was the right response with the knowledge he had. Whit and Nick tell him how often the children ask for him. With a promise that Whit will now explain the equipment, Wooton agrees to take another shift.

Two days later, Whit returns to Connellsville and learns that Barry has already finished the Imagination Station and flown away. When Whit inspects the machine, he discovers that its casing is empty. Barry has taken both the plans and the internal circuitry. Police report that Barry Muntz is one of several aliases used by a man with a history of corporate espionage. He steals company secrets and sells them to competitors. Mary is horrified that someone she has worked with for years deceived her so completely.

Whit remains calmer than Nick expects. As a precaution, the plans he gave Barry omitted one vital component, so any copied machine built from them cannot function. The theft has been thwarted for the moment, but the people behind it remain unknown.

Elsewhere, Barry delivers the stolen material to a mysterious man in exchange for money and an airline ticket. The man orders him to disappear to South America for a year or two and threatens him if he returns early. He also warns that the plans had better work. Barry leaves with no idea that the essential secret is missing, while the organization that hired him prepares to discover the failure for itself.