Floors #2: 3 Below

by Patrick Carman

  “But I don’t even know what a Flooger looks like or where to find one,” Remi complained. He was starting to think he could go into the ant farm without completely melting down, but there was still the simple fact that he hadn’t a clue about what to do once he got in there.

  Clyde began bursting steam and beeping instructions.

  “She says she’ll show you where to go,” Blop said. “Just follow her lead.”

  This made Remi feel better. He wasn’t going alone — Blop and Clyde would be with him. And he had three bottles of Flart’s Fizz! Things were looking up.

  “She needs you to go in first,” Blop said.

  Remi crouched low and got his first look inside the ant farm. The hole stopped short and turned in both directions, and Remi realized something he hadn’t before: Just like a small ant farm he might put in his room, this one was narrow. It was only a few feet deep, which meant the tunnels he had seen behind the glass were all the tunnels there were.

  “Which way?” Remi asked. “Left or right?”

  “Left,” Blop said, translating a short burst of beeps and steam-filled whistles.

  Remi turned to the left and started crawling along the floor of the dirt tunnel. It was heading up at an angle of about ten o’clock on a watch. It was a long tunnel, about twenty feet, and there were no ants in sight.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Remi said. He could look to his left and see through the clear glass into the big dining room, which comforted him until he saw Clyde bouncing up and down in the far corner.

  “I thought you were coming in with me!” Remi yelled. He couldn’t hear Blop’s answer, and it appeared they couldn’t hear him, either. It was much harder trying to crawl backward, but he managed it, arriving at the bottom again to find another unfortunate surprise.

  “Hey!” Remi yelled, hitting his fists on the glass. Clyde had moved the glass door back in place and sealed it shut (she was a clever robot dog, with advanced skills in biting things, holding on to them, and moving them). He could hear Blop’s voice, but only barely through the thick glass. Something about not wanting any of the ants to get out.

  Remi heard a strange noise from the tunnel on the right, like something big and curious moving toward him.

  “Left!” Blop yelled in his biggest robot voice, which could hardly be heard inside the ant farm. Remi crawled back up the left tunnel as fast as he could, outracing the awful sound of ants chasing him.

  Clyde moved all the way to the far corner of the room and began bouncing higher and higher until Blop’s head nearly hit the glass ceiling.

  “How did I get myself into this?” Remi asked himself. The tunnel switched back in the other direction and Remi kept climbing, trying to reach the top corner where Clyde was leading him. Soon he had switched back again and found himself looking down twenty feet at the table in the dining room.

  Clyde had moved over, bouncing off the table and up to a spot on the glass ceiling where a group of ants were gathered.

  Crawling on the inside of the glass ceiling was one of the scariest things Remi had ever done. He could think of only one thing: that the glass would break under his weight and he would fall. And then there were the ants — at least one following him, and more in front, gathered in a wider section of tunnel before him.

  “Flart, don’t fail me now,” he said, pulling out the first of three bottles and popping the cap off. He drank it down before it could begin fizzing into thin air. It tasted as amazing as he’d remembered it to be.

  He dropped the empty bottle and braced himself for a colossal burp as the ant behind him moved very close and the ants in front of him began to take notice of his presence.

  Unfortunately, it was a dud. Not even a regular burp, but a true runt that lasted under a second and made almost no noise at all.

  The ants were moving in fast now, curious and angry at an intruder in their midst.

  Remi fumbled with the second bottle, dropping the opener several times as his hands shook. He wished he could turn around and see how close the ant (or ants) was behind him, but he was too big for that. And the line of ants in front of him was closing in fast.

  The second bottle of Flart’s Fizz made up for the first and then some. It packed such a wallop, Remi couldn’t even chug the entire thing before a burp the size of Texas welled up inside him and filled the tunnel with a resounding blast of Fizz-filled air. The glass walls shook, the dirt walls crumbled, and the ants ran for their lives.

  “HA!” Remi yelled. “Take that, you scrawny ants!”

  He had wisely stuck his thumb over the opening of the bottle, and holding it up, he saw that there was still a quarter of Flart’s Fizz left inside. Remi continued on another ten feet until he was over the center of the room, where Clyde was bouncing up to meet him about once every five seconds. It was twice as wide there and tall enough to stand, but Remi heard ants heading toward him once again. There were tunnels leading off in six or seven different directions on the ceiling of glass, and it sounded like ants were approaching from them all.

  Remi looked up and saw that the ceiling was low enough to reach. More important, he saw the Floogers.

  “Time to gulp!” he said, feeling emboldened by the power of his burps. He chugged the rest of the second bottle, then spun in a circle, machine-gunning burps down all the tunnels, sending giant ants running away as fast as their legs would carry them.

  Remi set the bottle down as Clyde bounced a little too hard and bonked Blop’s head into the glass ceiling with a loud clang.

  “I found them!” Remi yelled, although he was pretty sure Clyde and Blop couldn’t hear him as they plummeted back down to the table below.

  There were four sticks of light poking out of the ceiling. They looked like blue neon tubes pulsing with life, and Remi got the feeling that the ants were the ones that had somehow created and maintained them. He reached up and took hold of one between his finger and thumb. It was very warm, not quite hot, and it didn’t want to be removed from the ceiling. Remi gripped it tighter and hung from the Flooger with all of his weight. It began to slide slowly out of the ceiling, like pressure was building behind it, and then it popped loudly and Remi fell to the glass floor.

  “I got one!” he yelled. He remembered about not touching it on both ends at one time and held the clear tube carefully in his left hand. It was the length of a spoon, and zigzagged in the middle like a lightning bolt.

  “Cool,” he said, watching the blue electricity dancing back and forth.

  The popping sound should have made the ants scatter, but it was the one loud noise they weren’t afraid of. In fact, it sounded to Remi like more ants than ever were moving toward him. If he could have seen the ant farm from the outside, he would have been alarmed. All the ants in the colony were moving toward him, for he was right: The Floogers were their creations, and they didn’t like the idea of someone trying to take them.

  Remi reached up and grabbed two more Floogers, one in each hand, and pulled them out. POP! POP! He put them in his pocket with the first and took out his last bottle of Flart’s Fizz, opening it with a burst of bubbles.

  “Please don’t be a dud,” he said, taking one giant swig and plugging the top with his thumb. He burped mightily, stopping the ants in their tracks, and grabbed the last Flooger. POP!

  The ants were on the move again, but so was Remi. Clyde was still bouncing, moving along the table and guiding Remi across the ceiling in a tunnel no ants had found. He came to the end and began the switchback descent along the wall, making it all the way to the floor. He could see the glass door, the way out, but the biggest of the ants was waiting for him there, snapping its jaws angrily. Ants were close behind, too, and Remi gulped down the rest of the Fizz, producing a final burp that sent all the ants, even the biggest one at the glass door, fleeing for their lives.

  The door flew open, Remi dove out, and Blop and Clyde cheered.

  “Well done, Remi,” Blop said. “Very well done. We were worried there for a minute, but
you did everything exactly right. Also, Clyde would like to know if you’d be able to help her put the glass door back on, as the ants are coming.”

  Remi beamed. He’d done the impossible and gotten one of the things Merganzer needed: the four Floogers. They glowed warmly in his pocket as he attached the glass door and sealed the ants inside.

  “Where are Leo and Dr. Flart?” Remi asked. “I gotta tell them about this!”

  “If my calculations are correct, they’re just about ready to fire the Wyro.”

  “Fire the whatso?” Remi asked.

  “Follow me, I’ll show you,” Blop said. “This you don’t want to miss.”

  And so Remi left Dr. Flart’s dining room, but not before picking up the Zooooob hose and blasting the ants behind the glass, then turning it on himself for one last taste.

  PHIPPS!”

  Ms. Sparks was in no mood to deal with guests. Very soon she would own the Whippet Hotel and the property it sat on, and as soon as she did, she’d rip the hotel down immediately. She’d build a tower to rival Donald Trump’s, make the roof her private residence, and never deal with a guest again as long as she lived.

  “I’m telling you, I heard a monkey,” Theodore Bump complained. “It’s hard enough cranking out a novel a week with all the noise around here. I will not stand for a monkey squealing outside my door!”

  “And I’m telling you we don’t have monkeys at the Whippet,” said LillyAnn Pompadore, who was doubling up on maid service until Pilar returned. “Only ducks. Lots of ducks.”

  “Is it so much to ask for a fluffier pillow?” said Mrs. Yancey. She was also standing in the lobby, bothering Ms. Sparks. “And someone find my daughter. She’s vanished.”

  “I’ll get to the bottom of these mysteries, pronto,” Captain Rickenbacker said, whipping his cape behind him as he went into stealth superhero mode in search of monkeys and missing children.

  Ms. Sparks heaved a great sigh of displeasure and screamed Mr. Phipps’s name again as he entered the lobby. He was filthy.

  “Don’t you dare!” Ms. Sparks said, holding her flat palm straight out in front of herself. “Wipe your feet first.”

  The old Ms. Sparks, the one who had run the Whippet with an iron fist before being removed from duty, was incapable of letting a muddy-booted gardener into the lobby.

  Mr. Phipps did his best to navigate the demands of the guests from where he stood. He’d been trying to reach Leo’s dad all day, but he and Pilar were on a cruise ship in international waters without a phone. And neither Pilar nor Clarence Fillmore had ever been one to check e-mail. Truthfully, Mr. Phipps had felt some guilt over the idea of trying too hard to reach them. It was their honeymoon, after all. Unless the hotel was on fire or toppled by an earthquake, it didn’t feel right to bother them.

  When the lobby cleared, Mr. Yancey appeared out of the shadows, glancing at his watch furtively.

  “How much longer?” he whispered, though no one was there besides Ms. Sparks.

  “When the clock strikes midnight, I’ll start the auction,” she said. “You just make sure you’re there to place your bid.”

  “Three hours, I’ll be there,” Mr. Yancey said.

  “Then we disperse, quickly, as if nothing has happened. An hour later, the hotel is ours.”

  “Brilliant!” said Mr. Yancey, slipping out of the room as quietly as a mouse.

  He had already made out the check to the great state of New York for the full amount of the taxes in question — a pittance compared to what the land alone was worth. He had made many phone calls and done many calculations. The land was worth ten times what he would have to pay. It was going to be the biggest deal of his life.

  No one else knew of the auction — Ms. Sparks had made sure of it. Within hours, the hotel and the land would change hands.

  Ms. Sparks and Mr. Yancey would be its new owners.

  “Stand back!” Dr. Flart yelled. When Remi entered the room, Dr. Flart and Leo were wearing long yellow rain jackets and welding helmets with small glass windows they could see out of. “This is going to be loud!”

  The metal table in the middle of the room looked like it was straight out of a Frankenstein movie. Wires and pipes and tubes of electricity dangled overhead. The Frankenstein table was frightening to look at, except for the items in the middle of the table. This was no mad scientist’s monster about to be made.

  There were three things strapped down on the flat metal surface: a loaf of moldy bread, a box of crayons, and one very fluffy gerbil.

  The gerbil was pleasantly eating a chunk of orange cheese. One of its tiny legs was tied to a big metal ring with a length of thread.

  “What are you going to do to that harmless creature?” Remi asked, wide-eyed.

  “Don’t worry! He’s going to be fine!” Dr. Flart yelled. His voice was muffled and, Remi thought, a little bit crazy inside the welding helmet. “Put on a coat and a helmet! No time to squander! It’s firing!”

  Remi had no idea what was going on, but he knew it was a bad sign that Clyde had bounced out of the room, back into the dungeon. Dr. Flart threw a bright yellow coat and helmet at Remi, and Remi put them on as fast as he could. Somewhere in the middle of putting on the coat and strapping on the welding helmet, he remembered what he’d done.

  “Hey! You guys! I got the four Floogers!”

  “Excellent!” Dr. Flart yelled. “I never doubted you for a second. Did you seal the door?”

  “We did,” Remi said.

  “Very good. Difficult creatures to corral once they get free. Like herding cats.”

  “Way to go, Remi,” Leo said. He’d moved closer to his brother, patting him on the back.

  “CLEAR!” Dr. Flart screamed, like he was about to use paddles on a dead person in an attempt to revive him. He threw a lever and the whole laboratory lit up with zapping electricity.

  And wow, was it loud. Like the Fourth of July — bangs and explosions and whirls almost too much to bear. A hot wind whipped through the lab, sending scientific papers flying everywhere.

  “What’s happening, Dr. Flart?” Leo yelled.

  “And how’s that gerbil doing?” Remi wondered out loud.

  “The gerbil is dandy! Nothing to worry about! CLEAR!” Dr. Flart screamed.

  He grabbed the lever and forced it down to the off position. There was one more tremendous burst of light and sound as air was sucked up and out of the room, practically pulling Leo and Remi off their feet.

  “You’re nuts, Dr. Flart!” Remi yelled.

  But Dr. Flart didn’t answer.

  All went quiet in the space of a heartbeat. Papers danced to the floor as if they’d been dropped out of the sky.

  “Don’t move,” Dr. Flart said. His muffled words reached Leo and Remi, who stood as still as they could. Something on the Frankenstein table was glowing with every color of the rainbow. It was round, the size of a baseball, and it seemed to be spinning in every direction at once.

  The loaf of stale bread was gone, and so were the crayons.

  “You see there,” Dr. Flart said. He had calmed down and stopped yelling everything he was saying. He lifted the welding helmet off his face and let it rest on top of his head. “He’s just fine, not a scratch on him.”

  Remi and Leo came closer, taking off their welding helmets, too. When they stood next to Dr. Flart, he held out his cupped hands, and there was the gerbil, wide-eyed and shaking. Most of its fluffy hair had been singed off, revealing a surprisingly small gerbil underneath. There was some smoke coming off his tail.

  “You burned all his hair off,” Remi said. “Not cool.”

  “It will grow back,” said Dr. Flart, setting the small creature on the floor and watching it scurry away.

  “What is that thing?” Leo asked.

  “That, my dear boy, is a one of a kind. A Wyro. It’s self-powered.”

  “That’s impossible,” Leo said, moving a little closer.

  “Not true, not for Merganzer D. Whippet. I knew it was poss
ible, and he believed. It takes two, sometimes.”

  Dr. Flart quieted then, as if he might shed a tear. Words failed him.

  “Can I pick it up?” Remi asked.

  “No, you may not pick it up,” Dr. Flart said, sniffing. “There’s only one way to move a Wyro.”

  “The iron box,” Leo said, for he was sure that’s what Dr. Flart meant to say.

  “You’re a perceptive one,” said Dr. Flart. “I can see why Merganzer chose you.”

  Leo beamed at the praise, but he also worried over his hotel. Time was short — how short he couldn’t know for sure — and he had yet to complete every task required of him.

  “Come closer, if you want,” Dr. Flart said. “Once I put the Wyro away, you won’t be able to see it again until Merganzer uses it.”

  “Uses it for what?” Remi asked.

  “That, my dear boy, is the billion-dollar question. I suppose only Merganzer knows what the Wyro is for.”

  Dr. Flart opened a drawer on the Frankenstein table and took something out: a square box, just big enough to hold a baseball. Leo could tell it was heavy by the way Flart picked it up. He turned the top, unscrewing the lid.

  All three of them gathered around the table and gazed at the Wyro.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dr. Flart said wistfully. “So much power — even more than the four Floogers put together.”

  “My life just gets weirder and weirder,” Remi said, his face at the same level as the Wyro as he watched it dance. It was as if there were a thousand concentric circles inside, all spinning in different directions, all different colors.

  Dr. Flart carefully held the iron box upside down over the top of the Wyro, then he slammed it down, dragging it across the table. When he reached the very edge, he held the cover of the iron box just so, trapping the Wyro inside and, with some effort, turning the lid several times.

  “Fetch me that duct tape, will you?” Dr. Flart asked Remi, lifting his chin in the direction of a shelf. Remi did as he was told, and shortly thereafter Dr. Flart had wrapped the iron box in several layers of silver duct tape.