Explorers

Ben Crandall is a young teenage boy living in a fictional Maryland suburb, who experiences vivid dreams about flying through clouds and over a vast, city-like circuit board, usually after falling asleep watching old sci-fi films (The War of the Worlds is a favorite). Upon waking from the dream, he draws a diagram of the circuit board and shows the sketches to his friend, child prodigy Wolfgang Muller. At middle school, Ben develops a crush on Lori Swenson, but is unsure whether it is mutual. The boys also befriend punkish-but-likable Darren Woods, with whom they share their circuit-board concepts. Wolfgang builds an actual microchip based on Ben's drawings. The chip enables the generation of an electromagnetic bubble which surrounds a pre-determined area. The boys discover that the bubble is capable of moving at near-limitless distances and speeds without ill effects from inertia. They construct a rudimentary spacecraft out of an abandoned Tilt-A-Whirl car and name it the Thunder Road, after Bruce Springsteen's song of the same name.