Section 02, Detail TMOROCCOGT
The VHSR Plan
In 1906, the scientist Robert Goddard published an article about the possibility of “Very High Speed Railways” running beneath the surface of the earth.
He described how a network of underground tunnels partnered with magnetically propelled trains (magtrains) could transport people across the country at extremely high speeds.
Harnessing the opposing forces of magnets, a magtrain would float above its track, eliminating friction, and thus would be able to race from city to city faster than any airplane could travel. Magtrains might travel at speeds greater than 10,000 miles per hour, reducing the travel time between California and New York to a mere fifteen minutes.
This article, of course, was only a theoretical study. People often talk about plans to build supersonic trains called Underground Jet Networks or Hyperloops.
So far, no one has ever announced the completion of a Very High Speed Transit system.
* * *
• • •
There is a hidden magtrain station in Seattle. It is located near Volunteer Park, about two miles from downtown. The entrance is below an ordinary-looking mailbox across from the brick water tower.
Grasp the handle of the mailbox door and open it all the way. Hold it open for at least ten seconds, or until you hear the motor engage, before you let it close. Repeat this two more times. The ground beneath the mailbox will rise slowly, revealing a staircase.
Wait until the mailbox has risen completely. You will hear a loud clicking sound indicating that the chamber has locked into position. Then it is safe to walk down the stairs.
You will reach an elaborately decorated chamber. This is a secret station with many tunnels. Each one leads to a different destination around the globe.
Samantha and Nipper reached the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in the center of a round room. Light trickled in from the opening behind them and from storm drains running along Prospect Street above. There was enough light for them to find their way around the space, but it was too dim to see most of the details of the room.
They surveyed the chamber. Stone archways surrounded them. Each one appeared to be the entrance to a dark tunnel.
“Is this some sort of station?” Samantha asked.
“Seven, eight, nine,” said Nipper, counting the openings. “If you count the one that came from the street.”
As their eyes adjusted to the room, they could make out words chiseled over each arch in huge letters. There was just enough light to read the names. Both kids squinted at the words:
DYNAMITE
PARIS
BARABOO
DUCK
ZZYZX
EDFU
WAGGA WAGGA
WAHOO
EXIT
“Baraboo?” Samantha asked. “Zzyzx?”
“This is all very, very clear,” said Nipper.
Of course it wasn’t, and both kids stood silently in the center of the round room, puzzling over the meaning of the words.
“Well, we came in through an exit…and we’ve certainly heard of Paris,” Samantha said carefully. “But are all of these really places? They seem like a bunch of funny words.”
“What’s funnier,” her brother asked, “Wagga Wagga or Wahoo?”
“That’s not my point,” she said. “I was just expecting every tunnel to lead us to a city or a famous landmark or— Wait a minute.”
Samantha remembered a road trip the family had taken last winter. They’d driven to the Pacific Pandemonium amusement park near Spokane, Washington. They were most of the way there when they stopped at a place called Dynamite. They’d picked up Uncle Paul, who was visiting a flea market.
Samantha asked her uncle what kind of flea market would set up in the middle of nowhere.
“No place is in the middle of nowhere,” he answered.
Before she could ask Uncle Paul anything else, Nipper kicked her in the shin by accident. He had been accidentally kicking her since they left Seattle. That was 275 miles of continuous accidental kicking. She exploded in a rage, and then all three Spinner kids screamed at each other for the rest of the ride to the amusement park.
But Dynamite was the name of a place.
“I think these really are locations,” she told Nipper as she gestured up at the arches.
“Then we are definitely going to Wahoo,” he said with certainty. “That sounds like the kind of place where—”
“No,” Samantha said firmly. “It’s my umbrella…and we…are going…to Paris.”
Samantha and Nipper stepped through the “Paris” archway and walked along the corridor. There was enough light for them to see their feet, but not much more. She guessed, from the sound of their footsteps, that they were probably walking on a tiled floor.
As she walked, she looked up and squinted, trying to make out what the ceiling above them looked like. Then Nipper whacked her with an outstretched arm, and she stopped.
“Look down,” he said.
They’d reached a ledge.
Light filtered down through a grate in the ceiling, so she could make out the details below. About three feet down from the ledge, two wide metal tracks led off into the distance and disappeared into the darkness. And on the tracks, directly below Samantha and Nipper, sat a small open car. The strange vehicle looked like something that belonged on a roller coaster.
“Magtrain,” said Nipper.
Samantha thought again about their family trip to Pacific Pandemonium. The visit had been cut short after Nipper insisted that Samantha sit next to him on the Holy-cow-a-bunga! roller coaster over and over again. After four times around the winding, flipping, twisting track, Samantha had had enough and got off. Nipper stayed on and rode the Holy-cow-a-bunga! nine more times. Then he barfed mightily and the staff had to close the attraction while they cleaned out the car. The Spinners left the park right after that.
Everyone in the family was extremely grouchy that their trip to the amusement park was cut short, but Samantha remembered having fun the whole ride home guessing license plate messages with Uncle Paul.
“C-L-W-N-C-four-R,” she said, reading the plate on a tiny red sedan in front of them.
“Clown car!” Uncle Paul answered quickly.
A van sped past them. As it went by, they saw LVFR4NC3 on the plate.
“Love France!” she called out.
“Or leave France,” her uncle said thoughtfully.
Looking down at the magtrain car, Samantha guessed it was about the same size as the one they rode on the Holy-cow-a-bunga! But it looked odd, even for a roller-coaster car. There were benches wide enough for two riders in the front and in the back. They were connected by a single bucket seat in the middle, so there was room for a total of five passengers. Viewed from the top, the car was shaped like a big letter H.
“Shotgun!” shouted Nipper as he bolted ahead of Samantha, hopped over the ledge, and plopped onto the right side of the front bench. He rapped his knuckles against the wide, curved windshield that stretched across the front of the car. Then he waved, signaling her to join him.
Samantha was never, ever going to sit next to her brother on any ride again if she could help it. She hopped down from the ledge. Then she took a big step forward and lowered herself into the bucket seat in the center of the H. They both sat for a minute, looking around and waiting for something to happen.
Samantha noticed a glowing red oval button on the back of the bench in front of her.
She reached out and pressed it.
The button clicked down and a soft hum began to fill the air. The oval turned yellow and numbers and letters appeared across its front.
000000 MPH
The tiny hairs on her arms stood up, an
d from where she sat Samantha could see the tracks begin to glow. They bathed the chamber all around them with soft orange light.
In front of her, Nipper’s hair stuck out in all directions. Illuminated by the glowing tracks, his head looked like a porcupine. She could feel the hair on her head sticking out, too.
“Electric,” said Nipper.
The hum grew louder and the car began to move forward. Samantha quickly stowed the umbrella in a narrow space below her feet and gripped the sides of her seat. She prepared herself for a roller-coaster ride.
But there was no jolt of g-force. The car began to speed up, slowly and incredibly smoothly. Samantha looked down at the oval. The numbers were rising, and they were already moving pretty fast.
000003 MPH
000008 MPH
000090 MPH
“Magnetic,” said Nipper.
Samantha kept her eyes on the oval and watched the numbers advance. She could feel the car continuing to accelerate.
Suddenly Samantha understood the word magtrain. They were floating above the tracks, propelled by magnets.
The rails beneath the train now glowed bright yellow, so Samantha could clearly see the walls around her and Nipper—and that they were racing past them very quickly. The numbers in the center of the oval kept shooting upward.
000140 MPH
000308 MPH
000912 MPH
001200 MPH
“Fantastic!” Nipper shouted.
He turned to look back at her and carefully stood up from the bench. The air blasting over the windshield whipped his hair around wildly.
She smiled at her brother. This was pretty fun.
A card of some sort slipped out of Nipper’s pocket and was caught by the rushing air. Samantha and Nipper both followed its fluttering path onto the tracks and watched it vanish into the long tunnel behind them.
“Sam!” Nipper shouted. “I lost my old baseball card!”
Samantha shook her head but didn’t say anything. He was going to lose that card sooner or later.
The walls narrowed and Nipper sat back down. The car was moving faster and faster. They rocketed smoothly down an endless tunnel. The rails were now bright white.
Samantha glanced at the yellow oval.
010000 MPH
“We’ve stopped accelerating,” she called. “It’s about five thousand miles from Seattle to Paris,” she added. “We should be there in thirty minutes.”
“That depends,” her brother shouted. “Which way around the earth are we going?”
Samantha had to admit that it wasn’t a completely ridiculous question. It was one she might have been able to answer if she’d noted which way they were pointing when they took off below the surface of the planet. But it had been hard to see much of anything in the little round station room. They probably missed a lot of details there. The magtrain coasted on and on and on. Considering how fast they were going, the ride was pretty comfortable.
As they raced through the tunnel, Samantha took out her little black journal and opened it to the most recent entry. Yesterday, she was planning to add to it. Then Nipper interrupted her—and they’d discovered the Plans.
She reread the sad sentences.
There’s a little bit of Nelly McPepper hidden inside all of us. It’s a tiny egg of sadness, waiting to hatch into a giant chicken of woe. The sky is gloomy and gray because the sun has been jacked up on a massive flatbed truck rolling south. We stand soaking in the dreary drizzle each rainy day, clueless fools in a crummy cruel world.
We have nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Samantha could hear the motors of the magtrain car purring like a giant electronic cat. She scratched out the gloomy lines and started over.
There is a hidden magtrain station in Seattle, Washington. It is located near Volunteer Park, about two miles from downtown….
Samantha looked up from her journal. The magtrain had come to a stop. It happened so smoothly that she hadn’t noticed. Nipper was already standing on the platform outside the car, waving at her impatiently.
“Come on, Sam. Let’s-go-let’s-go!”
She put away her notebook. Then she grabbed the umbrella and climbed out onto the platform, next to her brother. The rails under the magtrain car still softly glowed orange, dimly lighting their surroundings. They were in a square chamber. The floor was paved with large stone tiles of different geometric shapes. Samantha had a feeling they were still underground.
“Mental note,” she said to Nipper. She tapped her forehead. “Next time, we bring a flashlight.”
“ ‘Yes, you two,’ ” he responded, imitating their father. “ ‘And make sure it’s a high-candlepower light source.’ ”
“ ‘With just the right color balance,’ ” Samantha added.
She gazed around the room. Behind them was the mouth of the train tunnel, but there didn’t seem to be any other exits.
Nipper watched her.
“I looked everywhere while you were still writing,” he said. “I can’t find any way out of here.”
“Let’s check the Plans,” said Samantha.
She swung the umbrella from over her shoulder and pressed the latch on the handle with her thumb. The red octagon burst open above her head.
“Magnifier, please,” she said, extending her free hand toward her brother.
Samantha turned the open umbrella upside down and carefully placed it on the tiles, then crouched over it. Squinting in the dim light, she scanned the lining. She found the mailbox and the Space Needle. She picked a dotted line and followed it until it reached a shape that looked like a bunny, or maybe a rat. That clearly wasn’t Paris or France. She started over and followed a line until it reached a little drawing of a circus tent. There was nothing that seemed French or Parisian about it. She went back to the Space Needle and picked another line.
She followed the new dotted line with her finger and traced a long path to one edge of the umbrella. The line stopped at a shape she thought she recognized.
“France?” she asked herself out loud.
Then she noticed that right beside it was a little drawing she recognized for sure: the Eiffel Tower.
“France,” she answered herself out loud.
Inside the France shape was a square. Inside the square was a drawing of a shoe. On the shoe was the number 4.
Nipper leaned in and looked at the drawing. Then, puzzled, he looked at Samantha.
Samantha closed the umbrella and gazed at the floor. In the dim light, the tiled surface was a jumble of gray and black shapes. Triangles, rectangles, hexagons, and— Aha! About five feet from where she stood, she spotted a lone square.
She walked forward and stopped in the center of the tile.
“Stand here with me,” she told Nipper.
He skipped over and hopped into the square. He bumped into his sister and she glared at him. He shifted a few inches away from her, but he stayed within the square.
“Okay, now what?” he asked.
Samantha thought about the drawing on the umbrella—the square, the shoe, and the number 4. This one was easy.
“One, two, three, four,” she counted, stamping her foot each time.
There was a scraping noise overhead and a bright shaft of light enveloped them. A square hole had opened in the ceiling. As if powered by a huge spring, the tile they were standing on launched upward.
Samantha and Nipper reached toward each other and took hold. They hugged as the tile shot up toward the opening. With a loud click, the tile fit into the square hole…and they were outside!
They let go of each other immediately. Then they looked around.
Samantha and Nipper stood on one of a thousand stone tiles that made up a vast plaza. Around them, crowds of people milled about. Some of them wore m
atching T-shirts. Others had big, bulky backpacks. They were tourists from all over the world, chattering to each other in a dozen different languages. They snapped pictures of themselves, each other, and the glass pyramid that towered seventy feet over the courtyard.
A person dressed as a circus clown stood in a clearing, performing tricks for the passing tourists.
“I know this place,” said Samantha. “We’re outside France’s most famous museum. That pyramid is the entrance to the Louvre.”
“Did you say ‘loo-ver’?” asked Nipper.
“No. It’s ‘Loo-vruh,’ ” Samantha said in slow, careful French. “It has some of the greatest treasures of the art world inside, including the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.”
“How do you know that?” asked Nipper.
“Uncle Paul told me about it,” said Samantha. “You were there, too, but maybe you weren’t listening carefully, like I was.”
She thought about her missing uncle for a moment. “Actually, he mentioned this exact place a bunch of times,” she said slowly.
Nipper wasn’t listening carefully to her either, at the moment. He was looking around the crowded plaza.
“Sam,” he said. “Nobody noticed us. We just popped out of a hole in the ground, and no one cares at all.”
Samantha looked around, too.
“Well, people don’t always notice amazing things right in front of their noses,” she said. “Other stuff seems important, so they forget to take a closer look at—”
“Hold on,” said Nipper. “There’s something in front of my nose right now. Something that smells great. And I’m hungry.”
Samantha sniffed twice and nodded in agreement. Something did smell wonderful.
Nipper began to push his way across the crowded plaza, following the scent. Samantha walked quickly after him, weaving around people. She followed her brother to a low stone wall that appeared to surround the plaza, then through a break in it. On the sidewalk a few yards away, a man stood beside a bright yellow food cart. The front half of the vehicle was a rectangular box balanced on two wheels. The back half was a bicycle. A metal rack rose from the front, supporting a red-and-white-striped awning. A dozen loaves of bread lined the shelves of the box. Some were long and thin, and others were wide. They smelled absolutely delicious.
Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans Page 4
