Oceania: The Underwater City

by Eliza Taye

“Okay,” Dr. Wilcox opened up a screen from an orb that looked similar to the one Dylan had left for me on the beach. A virtual pad and pen projected in front of Dr. Wilcox and he grabbed it, ready to write. “Now tell me about the problems you had with the suit.”

  “Well, the jet propulsion system worked really well except for when it was placed on high speed. I wasn’t quite prepared for it and had to struggle to keep my head up against the force. The only real problem I had was with the camouflage system. Somehow it failed somewhere between the twilight and photic zone.”

  “How did you know it had failed?” wondered Dylan.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “It was Jagger. He came up to me and wanted to play. I know dolphins are very smart, but I knew that he couldn’t have noticed me there without actually being able to see me.”

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t only the anti-sonar device that malfunctioned?” wondered Dr. Wilcox.

  “No, it wasn’t, he was looking right at me. Also, I didn’t hear him making any clicking noises.”

  “Well, their clicks are often inaudible to the human ear, especially if they are searching for something large. They use different types of clicks such as long range and…”

  “Dr. Wilcox, Allie may not be a scientist, but I think she would have been able to figure out if the camouflage had stopped working,” defended Dylan.

  “Very well,” began Dr. Wilcox.

  “Besides, I was nearly attacked by a shark twenty or so minutes ago. I know he wasn’t using echolocation.”

  Both Dylan and Dr. Wilcox’s stares flung in my direction.

  “Are you serious?” asked Dr. Wilcox.

  “Were you hurt?” wondered Dylan.

  “Yes and no. I am serious, but I wasn’t hurt. I used the jet propulsion device to give me enough momentum to tug on its gills hard enough to make him leave me alone.” Thinking about what I had mentioned earlier, I added, “That’s another reason I said the jet propulsion device’s speed needs to be altered. I rammed into the shark because I was going so fast that I failed to notice him before it was too late.”

  “Okay…I’m very sorry, Allie. If you could give me the SCUBAPS, I can get to work on the alterations now.”

  “That’s fine…I just need help getting the jet propulsion device off.” My annoyance reminded me of another issue with the SCUBAPS. “Oh, and the Jet Propulsion 500 is nearly impossible to put on by oneself. It took me five tries to do it!”

  “I can do that.” Dylan stood behind me and unclasped each of the four latches securing the device to the back of the SCUBAPS.

  “Thanks.” I groped around my neck for the tiny pull-tab that would allow me to unzip my suit. Finding it, I tugged it slightly and the zipper tracks reappeared. The suit immediately became loose and I easily slid out of it. Extending my arm out toward Dr. Wilcox, I said, “Here you go.”

  “Thank you, Allie. I will go examine this right away.” Dr. Wilcox replied as he walked away.

  Dylan must have noticed me watching Dr. Wilcox disappear into the back room because suddenly he said, “Allie, it’s going to take a while. No point in waiting.”

  “Okay.” I turned away from the rear door, still very curious as to what lay back there.

  “Allie,” Dylan ushered me over to the control panel seats and we sat down. “What was it like to use the SCUBAPS? Did you see anything interesting during your excursion?”

  I waved my hand furiously back and forth as if I could erase the question. “Never mind that, Dylan, we have bigger problems.”

  “Like what?”

  I fiddled with the controls on the main panel, careful not to actually push any of them. “There’s this guy lurking around the beach where we usually meet that just doesn’t seem right to me. He said his name is Daniel Warren and he told me he was a private investigator looking for a couple of people that went missing. But that doesn’t add up. People don’t go missing in Sunnyville. It’s a quiet, sleepy town where nothing ever happens. It just doesn’t feel right to me.” I glanced up from the controls, my hand still hovering over one as I flung my head towards Dylan in surprise. “Could it be possible that the Master Coders sent someone to the surface to spy on you and see if you were meeting any Land Dwellers?”

  “No, the Master Coders don’t even know the outside world still exists. I don’t think they could have done that.”

  I twisted my chair to the side so that I could pay attention to Dylan’s face.

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “No, it doesn’t make any sense. Plus, I don’t think they are worried that I am meeting a Land Dweller. And never in their wildest dreams would they think I’d befriend one.”

  “Okay, but I still don’t know. Something is really off with that guy.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for one, his clothes were very weird. He was dressed in old clothes that looked like they belonged in last century, or even before that. For another thing, he gave me a business card. People don’t use those anymore; they just sync information. If I remember correctly, business cards went out of use well over a century ago.”

  “Hmm,” was all Dylan muttered, sitting back in the chair and staring absentmindedly through the viewport.

  Awaiting a real response that I never got, I asked again, “Are you sure it couldn’t have been the Master Coders?”

  Dylan’s confused gaze settled on me for several seconds before he replied. “No, I don’t think so. People don’t leave Oceania. Very few of us even take submersibles close to the surface. And out of those people, almost all of them are marine scientists.”

  “So you don’t think there’s even a slight possibility they sent him?”

  “No, Allie, it’s impossible. Besides, they would have said something to me in my interrogation.” Dylan placed his palms together and tapped his fingers against his lower lip, shaking his head. “No, I’m positive. Maybe it was someone from your side.”

  “No…” I paused to reassure myself, mentally checking every precaution I’d taken. “I never left my bike out in the open and there was nothing else that could have exposed me. Each time before I used the rabbit hole, I checked to see if anyone else was around.”

  “Either way, you should be careful around him, and I think it’d be best if we both laid low for a while. I know you said Sunnyville is a sleepy little town, but maybe you should find something to do there for a week or two. I’m waterlogged for two weeks, so I’m going to be watched closely until then…well, my code usage will be.”

  “Okay.” Changing my focus to the encompassing viewport over my left shoulder, I stared at the sea lions making their way to shore amidst a small school of fish. Of course I couldn’t identify the fish, but I marveled at how the sea lions moved through the ocean like silk in the wind. Perhaps when I got back to Gran’s house tonight, I would read up on some of the fish and other species that lived off the California coast.

  Snapping back to inside the vessel, I questioned Dylan, “What did they interrogate you on?”

  “The Master Coders?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were only curious as to why I had used my code so often and then abruptly stopped for a couple days. They also wanted to know why there was hardly a lag in my departure and arrival times except for a few days when it was too long. They wanted to know if I was tampering with any of the vessels or equipment in the docking bay or whether I was just exploring the open ocean or doing something for a school assignment.”

  “That seems like a lot to go through for just having time differences.”

  “Well, people under the age of twenty aren’t exactly supposed to take the seamobile out for more than two hours at a time without prior permission from a parent or professor.”

  I felt my jaw drop and my eyes bulge. “But you were using it for more like twelve hours that one time you visited the beach.”

  Dylan winced. “Yeah, I did…that’s one of the main reasons I was waterlogged.”

  The rear door
flung open and slammed into the metal walls with a thud, making me jump out of my seat.

  “Allie, I see what happened to the SCUBAPS. I’ll have to work on fixing it when I get it back to my lab. I cannot believe it clunked out on you. I’m sorry for doubting you. Sometimes when we scientists create inventions that we’ve poured countless hours and sleepless nights into, we are baffled when they do not work.” Dr. Wilcox smacked the table with his open palm, draping the SCUBAPS on the back of the chair. “I’m sorry the camouflage system failed and you nearly got attacked by a shark, but I am glad that you are safe.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Wilcox. Your apology is accepted.” I nodded once at him as he shuffled sheepishly back toward the rear room.

  “So, Dylan, you said we needed to lie low and stay away from the beach for a while, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Gran invited me to go with her to San Francisco.”

  “Great, then you should go. It would give you something to do.”

  “Well,” I anxiously tapped my foot, “she was asking if there was any way my new friend could come. So, do you want to come to San Francisco?”

  Dylan was quiet and didn’t move for a while. “It will be difficult to sneak out of Oceania, but there’s no way I’m passing up a chance to see a Land Dweller city as famous as San Francisco!”

  Boots thudding on the tiled floor alerted Dylan and me to Dr. Wilcox’s second return. “It is time for us to go, Dylan. We don’t want to make the Master Coders suspicious.”

  “Can I have the SCUBAPS so I can make it back to land?” I glanced at the suit draped over the chair.

  “Nope, I will need it to make my repairs.” Dr. Wilcox shook his head with thin-lined lips.

  “Well, then how am I supposed to return home?”

  “We should be able to hack the GPS reporting system on the submarine long enough to take you to your beach. Due to Dylan being waterlogged, reports on his exact whereabouts are transmitted back to Oceania every sixty seconds, so we’ll have to be fast. Hopefully, I can get you to within a hundred feet to your chosen beach site. I’ll try to get you as close to the surface as possible, but it still may be twenty or so feet. Then you’ll have to swim through the hatch and make your own way to the beach.”

  “Yeah, that should be fairly easy.” Dylan turned to the control panel and began typing fiercely. “It should be pretty easy to override the system, but I don’t know how long I can refute the signal for information on our position from Oceania.”

  “Let me know as soon as you’ve hacked the system. I’ll turn on the turbo drive so we can get there and leave within a matter of minutes.” Dr. Wilcox shooed me out of my seat and sat down. He, too, began typing furiously on the keyboard.

  Standing behind the both of them, I watched as the submarine angled to the right and began to pick up speed. Screen after screen of coding that I understood nothing of flashed in the holograms in front of me.

  Dylan swiped each one aside to make it to the next page, and then returned to his ultrafast typing. “Okay, I’ve hacked the system. We should have maybe five minutes before they lock me out.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get us there,” assured Dr. Wilcox as he shoved forward the large T-shaped green handle in the middle of the console.

  Before I knew it, the underwater craft was zooming through the ocean so fast that I became worried about what would happen if we collided into a marine organism larger than a speck.

  “How are we going so fast? Won’t this harm any animal that runs into it?”

  “No, it won’t,” responded Dylan. “Like Oceania, this submarine is protected by a shield that creates a barrier outside of the submarine that moves slower than the sub inside it. It protects the animals outside and allows us to move faster by reducing the viscosity around the submarine.”

  Although as of recently I had become a lot more interested in marine science, I was by no means a science expert. I also wouldn’t consider myself better versed in science than the average person, but some of the explanations that Dylan and Dr. Wilcox had given me since I arrived in Oceania just seemed to defy the laws of physics. Too many things confused me more than I would like to admit.

  “Dr. Wilcox? Are we almost there? I don’t know how much longer I can keep out the Master Coders.”

  “Yes, we’ll be there before I can finish this sentence,” responded Dr. Wilcox, pressing a button on the control panel as the sub slowed to a sudden stop that had me flying into the back of Dylan’s chair.

  “Allie,” Dylan quickly stood up, “does your grandmother want permission from my parents to take me to San Francisco?”

  “Yes.” I nodded once.

  “I can write a program code that will allow my parents to look like they are talking to your grandmother through a holographic projection of them. I’ll write it and find a way to get it to the restricted beach by Friday morning.” Dylan ticked the days off on his fingers. “Today is Wednesday, so I’ll have two days to get it to you. Then, I’ll meet you in our typical meeting spot on Saturday morning at six a.m. You’ll probably have to sneak out of the house to meet me. Together we’ll make our way back to the house before she even wakes up. I’ll knock on the door at the appropriate time and hopefully, she’ll just assume I walked to your house.”

  “Okay, it sounds like a plan.”

  “Good, because you need to go, Allie. We still need to be back on course before the GPS cover slips and they are aware that we deviated from our course,” cautioned Dr. Wilcox, hurriedly.

  “All right. See you Saturday, Dylan.” I climbed into the small space and the water shield covered over me. As soon as it sealed tightly, the bottom dropped and I fell into the ocean.

  Chapter 17

  Friday had arrived and I found myself scouring the beach for the device Dylan had promised would be there. I trudged through the sand, searching around the numerous rocks littering the sandy beach for anything out of the ordinary. I’d checked the spot where Dylan and I normally met but didn’t see anything.

  Combing the sand, I continued to search to no avail. Finally, right when I was about to give up, I saw a crab dragging something resembling a black twig. Reaching down, I grabbed hold of it and went into a tug of war with the crab. Eventually, I won to the crab’s great chagrin. He angrily snapped his big claw several times at me before scurrying off.

  Hurriedly, I returned to Gran’s house and found her sitting on the couch in the living room.

  “Hi, Gran.” I greeted as I passed her and went into my room.

  Setting my omniphone on the desk, I pressed several buttons in quick succession. The omniphone began folding out until it was the size of a computer, holographic parts filling in where the physical ones couldn’t. Finding the port, I plugged in the data stick I’d wrestled from the crab.

  Fortunately, the code was compatible with the operating system I had on my omniphone. The information uploaded in a matter of milliseconds and a small window with a message of completion popped up. I checked the contents and found out I was right—the data stick had been left by Dylan. Exiting out of it, I entered the commands to make my omniphone compact once more and called Gran into my room.

  “Yes, Alexandria…what is it?” Gran yawned and I felt bad that perhaps I’d awoken her from a nap.

  “Dylan’s parents are on holovid. They’d like to talk with you.”

  “Oh, okay.” Gran fixed some loose strands that had escaped from her tight bun. “Patch them through.”

  I pressed the button on my omniphone to initiate the holorecording Dylan had made for me earlier to appear on the screen in the living room.

  “Hello, you must be Allie’s grandmother.” Based on my limited view of Dylan’s mother, the woman who had just spoken was not her; this person’s hair was long, reaching halfway down her back. The quality of the holograph wasn’t good enough to tell if her hair was blonde like Dylan’s or simply a light brown. She was dressed simply, wearing a blue and white-striped shirt and tan-co
lored dress pants.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’ll let the two of you talk in private.” Without waiting for a reply from Gran, I slipped through the crack in my door and gently closed it shut.

  Our devious plan had worked. It looked like Dylan and I would be able to go to San Francisco together—that is if he could escape Oceania.

  . . .

  I drew a circle around myself lazily in the sand. It was finally Saturday and I was waiting for Dylan at six a.m. like we had agreed, but he wasn’t here quite yet. The hologram had worked perfectly just as Dylan had said. Gran didn’t have any problems believing Dylan’s parents had actually called with the communicator instead of them merely being a projection. Gran isn’t usually a gullible person, but then again, the replica was very convincing.

  “Hey, Allie.” Dylan strode up to me dressed in his typical blue outfit with a small bag slung over his shoulder. “How did the hologram work?”

  I sprang up to my feet with a smile. “It worked perfectly! Gran believes she has your parents’ permission to go to San Francisco with us for the weekend.”

  Dylan clapped his hands once and gave me a thumbs up. “Then I guess we’re good to go. Let’s get back to the house before she wakes up.”

  “Wait.” I held up a hand. “First you need to change into these. Your clothes are a dead giveaway that you aren’t from around here.” I handed over one of the modern beach boy outfits that I’d bought in town yesterday in preparation for this weekend.

  “Good thinking, Allie.” Dylan took the clothes, inspecting them like they were from outer space. “Thanks.”

  “You can change over there behind those rocks. No one can see you from the road there.” I pointed to the area where I had changed clothes many times, nestled at the corner of two leaning boulders.

  “Okay,” muttered Dylan as he walked over there.

  While I waited for him to change, I asked, “So, Dylan, how did you get away from Oceania?”

  “Oh, well, I just convinced Dr. Wilcox to explain to the Master Coders that he needed my assistance on a long-term assignment through the abyss that would take the whole weekend. After some extended explanations on why he needed my help and how it would be more of a punishment to tag along with him taking down boring data points instead of sitting around at home, the Master Coders agreed to let me out.”