Floors #2: 3 Below

by Patrick Carman

“I must have some air,” she said, looking at her watch.

  Thirty-five minutes! she thought as she walked.

  Thirty-five little minutes and the Whippet Hotel would be hers! And then, very soon after, a wrecking ball would get rid of the Whippet for good. She could see it as she stood outside in the garden, gazing up at the hotel’s puny silhouette against the great skyscrapers crowding in around it.

  “You are a bad hotel,” Ms. Sparks said. “A useless, ridiculous blight on the great state of New York!”

  She felt something near her feet and thought it was Claudius, the cat. But when she looked down, she saw that nothing was there. The ground was trembling again, a little harder this time, and looking up once more at the Whippet Hotel, she could have sworn it was moving.

  She ran up the front steps in search of Mr. Yancey, yelling, “You cannot stop me now, Merganzer D. Whippet! There’s no time! You’ve lost! Lost, I tell you!”

  She went on cackling, racing through the lobby only minutes before the auction.

  She was right about one thing:

  The Whippet Hotel was moving.

  “Leo!” Remi cried. “The gears are moving!”

  They’d come out of the tunnel into the huge expanse of the Realm of Gears. It was not as they had left it. Like a beast the size of a cruise ship waking from a dream, the gears were groaning to life, shaking off dirt and rust, turning slowly and loudly.

  “Mr. Carp!” Leo yelled, but he had fled out into the middle of the chaos.

  “Mr. Carp, come back!” Remi tried. The gears were moving faster, causing other things to happen. Pulleys and enormous chains went up and down and round and round.

  “Watch out!” Leo warned as a pendulum swung low through the space they were standing in. Leo shoved Remi out of the way just in time, and they crashed to the floor. Blop, who had been safely sitting in Remi’s pocket, popped out and skidded across the floor, landing hard against a rolling gear. As the gear kept turning, Blop went with it, lodged between the metal teeth.

  “What! No way!” Remi yelled, running toward his little friend. Leo gave chase, yelling Carp’s name, hoping he would come to his senses.

  “Hold on, Blop! I’m coming!” Remi said. Blop was not the kind of robot that could hold on to things, but he was good and wedged where he was either way. He didn’t need to hold on.

  Remi leapt onto the turning gear, holding on for dear life.

  “Remi, be careful!” Leo called as the gear rolled Remi slowly up in the air. Remi climbed the wide iron teeth as it moved, reaching Blop at the same time the gear was about to turn both of them facedown toward the ground. It took some pulling and heaving, but Remi got Blop out in the nick of time, threw his pet robot into Leo’s outstretched arms, and log-rolled onto the ground as the teeth of the gear disappeared under him.

  There was no time for congratulations or high fives. Leo had seen the direction Mr. Carp had run in. He picked Remi up, and together they ran after him.

  Over, under, and around gears.

  “Mr. Carp, please!” Leo yelled, but it was so loud in the Realm of Gears that poor Mr. Carp couldn’t hear them. He seemed to be going from gear to gear, searching for a way out, lost in his own attempt to find the exit.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Remi said, grabbing his brother by the arm and stopping short.

  “The envelope about the Realm of Gears — I have it!” Remi pulled his jacket open and took out the envelope they’d both forgotten about. The wax seal was still unbroken, the words black as coal on the manila envelope: Open only when traveling in the Realm of Gears.

  “In all the chaos I totally forgot about that!” Leo said, slapping his head. “Open it! Quick!”

  They kept on running as Remi broke the seal on the envelope. Whatever Merganzer D. Whippet had designed the Realm of Gears to do, it was doing one thing for sure: waking up. The gears, the pendulums, the riveted beams of steel — everything was moving faster and faster, like a speeding locomotive careening out of control.

  “Mr. Carp! Where are you?!” Leo screamed, but it was no use. He thought he’d caught sight of him between the gears, way off in the distance, but it looked like he was running scared, searching for a place to hide, entirely unaware of Leo and Remi.

  “Leo, wait,” Remi said. The two boys stopped between a tower of enormous, turning clock parts rising into the air a hundred feet overhead.

  Remi handed the paper to Leo; it only had a few words of instruction. It wasn’t at all what Leo had expected. He’d thought there would be details and diagrams about how it had been built — and, more important, how to shut the crazy thing off!

  Instead, he found two warnings:

  WARNING:

  WHEN THE GEARS MOVE,

  YOU MUST MAKE THE PUZZLE QUICKLY!

  WARNING:

  READ WARNING NUMBER ONE AGAIN. IT’S A BIGGIE.

  “Leo, we have to leave. Now!” Remi shouted.

  The Realm of Gears had gotten so loud and perilous, Leo could barely hear what Remi was saying. He couldn’t stand leaving Mr. Carp behind, but what else could he do? Hopefully the puzzle would tell them and they could come back and find him.

  “Come on!” Leo said. “Let’s make that puzzle!”

  Remi and Leo dodged countless dangers as they zigged and zagged their way across the Realm of Gears. They found the door, burst through, and kept on running into the dark corridor, up the stairs, into the elevator shaft.

  Completely out of breath, they dropped through the trapdoor and slid the rainbow card along the corner of the duck elevator. It was then that they realized, as the door slid open, that they had no more fuses. They’d forgotten to ask Dr. Flart for another, and there was no time to go back.

  “This is a disaster!” Leo said. It was a rare and difficult feeling for a boy with great passion, a feeling of being defeated after trying so hard. He slumped down, tired and dejected, and felt the aches and pains of many bumps and bruises.

  “It’s okay, bro,” Remi said, trying to comfort Leo. “Remember what Merganzer said?”

  “Merganzer said a lot of things,” Leo responded. He was looking at the puzzle key card, which he had pulled out of his maintenance overalls. “Unless you can climb like Loopa, I think we’re stuck.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong,” Remi said. He fished Blop out of his pocket and held him tight. “Sorry, little buddy. I’ll put your head back on, promise.”

  Remi spun Blop’s small head to one side, like he was taking the lid off a jar of peanut butter, and the head came off.

  “I don’t know why that bothers me so much,” Remi said. “It’s like he’s really alive, you know? And I’ve just removed his brain.”

  Remi dug his fingers down inside the opening and popped a fuse out.

  “Remi,” Leo said, beaming, “what would I do without you? You’re brilliant!”

  Remi screwed Blop’s head back on, but the robot didn’t move. Its eyes wouldn’t even open.

  “It’s okay, we can get another one, I’m sure of it,” Leo said. He took the fuse and leaned through the opening, hanging his head below the duck elevator. A few seconds later, Leo had the old fuse out and the new one in.

  “Here we go!” Remi said. He was excited as Leo slipped back inside and the wall flew shut. Remi did the honors, pressing the lobby button as the elevator blasted up the shaft.

  When they arrived at the lobby level, the doors came open and both boys crawled out. The hotel was rumbling oddly, in a way that Leo had never felt before. It scared him as they ran past the empty reception desk and into the Puzzle Room.

  “Why is the hotel shaking?” Leo asked as they stared at the piles of puzzle pieces sliding onto the floor by the thousands.

  “It must be the gears,” Remi answered, looking at the very large duck-shaped clock on the wall across the room. “It’s eleven fifty-two, Leo. We only have eight minutes left to pay Ms. Sparks!”

  Leo didn’t squander any more time wondering what had gone wrong with his hotel. He act
ivated the puzzle key card and the screen lit up.

  “Here goes,” Leo said, not sure of what to expect. He’d seen the puzzle make itself before, but it had been a while and the magic had faded in his memory. Seeing it now — pieces flying everywhere in a storm of a million parts — took his breath away.

  The puzzle began to snap together, which made a sound like an endless deck of cards being shuffled.

  “Where is everyone?” Remi asked. “I bet Mr. Phipps and Captain Rickenbacker wish they were here. They love this puzzle.”

  Leo had been wondering the same thing. The hotel felt oddly empty in a way he’d never felt before. And dark. Most of the lights were out; even the Puzzle Room was cast in a shadowy glow.

  “I see the roof of the Whippet!” Leo said, the puzzle coming together fast now.

  “What are those things on the corners of the roof?” Remi asked. “And that thing in the middle?”

  Leo and Remi watched as the last thousand pieces dropped into place. Then they stood on two chairs at the table and looked down at the masterpiece. The other side of the puzzle had been a scene of the grounds and the ducks, but this was different.

  This was a set of instructions.

  “Those are the four Floogers!” Remi yelled.

  “And the zip rope,” Leo said, amazed at what they were both looking at.

  The puzzle had pieced together a view of the top of the Whippet Hotel from the sky. In each corner of the roof there was a blue tube of light — four Floogers — and in the center, tied to a golden duck, an orange line disappearing into the sky — the zip rope.

  Along the bottom of the huge puzzle, in Merganzer D. Whippet’s script, were these words:

  The Whippet moves! A rare surprise.

  To the roof! Beware of spies!

  “There you are!” Mr. Phipps said. He and Captain Rickenbacker had appeared at the door. “We were worried you might be trapped upstairs.”

  “What do you mean, trapped?” Remi asked.

  “You don’t know?” Mr. Phipps asked, astonished at how anyone could be left unaware of what was happening to the Whippet Hotel.

  Captain Rickenbacker had taken a keen interest in the puzzle, standing on a chair of his own and looking down with his arms folded across his chest like he was Spider-Man gazing down at a city in trouble.

  “The hotel has gone mad,” Mr. Phipps said. “There’s no other way to say it.”

  Leo didn’t understand at all. He only knew that two important tasks lay before him: Pay Ms. Sparks and get to the roof.

  “Where is Ms. Sparks hiding?” Leo asked. “We have what she wants. We can get rid of her, but we only have” — Leo looked at the duck-shaped clock on the wall — “two minutes!”

  Leo pushed the appropriate buttons on the touch screen for the puzzle, and the entire thing burst into a million pieces, showering Captain Rickenbacker as he covered himself with his red cape.

  “Better if no one else sees it,” Leo said, running for the lobby as he asked Remi, “You remember what it showed us?”

  “I do! I have a photo-puzzlic memory!”

  Remi smiled despite the chaos all around him, but his smile faded into a look of dire concern as he dug into his red jacket pocket and found that the ten million dollar note from the governor of New York was missing. He stopped, fished around inside the pocket, looked inside, turned it inside out.

  “What are you waiting for? Come on!” Leo said. “There’s no time to waste!”

  But Leo knew when he turned around and spotted the look on Remi’s face. His brother’s eyebrows were furled, his forehead was crinkled. Remi was nervous.

  “What is it?” Leo asked, looking out the doors where he saw Ms. Sparks and Mr. Yancey standing alone on the grounds. They were a little ways off, looking up at the Whippet Hotel with looks of amazement on their faces.

  “Leo,” Remi said. Leo saw that his brother was on the verge of tears. “I lost it. I lost the money for Ms. Sparks, the money for the hotel.”

  Leo didn’t know what to say. His fine hotel, the most wonderful hotel in the world, was in real trouble. It felt like it was about to crumble to the ground. Something was happening to it. And now this! Even in a pile of rubble, he couldn’t imagine a Whippet Hotel owned by Mr. Yancey or Ms. Sparks. It was unthinkable.

  “Come on,” Leo said, turning for the front desk. “There’s only one thing left for us to do. We have to get to the roof and do what the puzzle says. Maybe we can at least save the hotel from falling.”

  Leo quickly made a Double Helix card at the front desk and ushered Remi through a little orange door near the registration desk. Seconds later they were careening out of control, twisting and turning to the roof in the fastest contraption the Whippet had to offer.

  “I’m sorry, Leo,” Remi said. He felt terrible, as crummy as crummy gets.

  It was hard to comfort someone while traveling through the Whippet at breakneck speed, but Leo tried. He put a hand on Remi’s shoulder.

  “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  Remi brightened, then smiled, then howled at the amazing ride they were on.

  “I love this hoteeeeeeel,” Remi screamed as they went. Both boys laughed despite all the bad news, enjoying the Whippet Hotel to the last, reveling in what it had come to mean to them both: adventure, friendship, and a belief that anything was possible if they let their imaginations run free.

  They were out of the Double Helix in a flash when it arrived on the roof, and it was then that they finally understood something really strange was happening to the hotel. At first it felt like they’d gotten off a fair ride, which they sort of had, but it quickly became clear that the hotel was moving in a circle.

  “Should we take a look over the edge, just for a moment?” Leo asked. He was overcome with curiosity and didn’t have to wait for an answer. Remi was already running for one of the ledges, where some of the ducks were sitting, looking out at the spinning skyline.

  When they leaned over the rail and got a good look at the rest of the hotel, they saw that each of the floors of the hotel was spinning. It was like there was a long pole up the middle of the Whippet, and each of the floors was spinning of its own free will.

  “Best hotel ever!” Remi shouted.

  The levels were spinning in different directions and at different speeds, and when Leo and Remi’s side came around to where everyone was standing on the grounds, they waved and laughed.

  “We better get to work,” Leo said. “I’ll do the zip rope, you put the four Floogers in place!”

  “Done!” Remi said, and they both ran off in different directions. Leo kept wondering how and why in the world the Whippet was spinning as it was, but he knew the best chance of getting an answer would be to follow the instructions Merganzer had given him. The faster he could finish, the sooner he would know what Merganzer’s grand plan was.

  “Leo, it’s working!” Remi yelled from a far corner of the roof. He’d found a small zigzag-shaped opening on a stone slab and dropped the Flooger inside. “It’s making a weird humming sound, and it’s gone!”

  Gone, Leo thought. The Flooger had vanished into the Whippet Hotel, and it was humming. He wished that Dr. Flart was there to tell them what it meant. The Whippet’s mad scientist would surely have known. Instead Leo stood in the very center of the roof watching the world spin around him. There he found the golden duck.

  “And another!” Remi shouted. He was down to only two Floogers, and Leo hadn’t even tied the zip rope to the golden duck. There was a reason for this, one that Remi, in his race to finish his task, hadn’t noticed. Remi hadn’t looked up, but Leo had an intuition about what was happening. He simply knew, before he turned his eyes up to the night sky, that Merganzer had arrived. A voice filled the air, and Remi finally stopped what he was doing and looked skyward.

  “Hello, Leo! Hello, Remi! Such a lovely night, don’t you think?”

  Merganzer D. Whippet was leaning out the window of the bl
imp, waving at them with a smile on his face. The blimp, as before, seemed to blend in with the reflecting colors of night in Manhattan. All the lights and angles appeared to push right through the blimp, like the blimp was a ghost that only existed in Leo’s and Remi’s imaginations.

  “I’m afraid we’re running a tad behind schedule,” Merganzer said. “We’ll need to move fast.”

  A rope was thrown over and uncoiled until the end hung in front of Leo’s face.

  “Tie the zip rope to the golden duck and to the end of this rope, Leo. Quickly now. We really must be getting on with it.”

  Merganzer looked at Remi, who had already gone back to inserting Floogers and was down to the last.

  “Got it!” Leo shouted, having tied the zip rope as tight as he could around the belly of the golden duck and attached the other end to the rope.

  “Perfect!” Merganzer said, and he began to haul the rope up into the sky, arm over arm as the zip rope stretched. “It gets stronger, did Ingrid tell you that?”

  “You mean the more it stretches?” Leo yelled up into the sky.

  “Yes! But it reaches a point where it won’t stretch any farther. That’s when a zip rope is at its strongest.”

  “We got it from Loopa. She’s a monkey,” Remi yelled. He was finished with the Floogers and stood empty-handed next to Leo.

  Merganzer had the end of the zip rope in his hand, having stretched it thirty feet into the air, and removed the regular rope.

  “She is a good monkey, I can tell. This is a fine zip rope. The best.”

  Both boys beamed. They had bad news to share about the hotel, but Merganzer had a way of saying things that made them feel on top of the world, like everything was going to be okay after all.

  “You might want to brace yourselves now,” Merganzer said. “Could get a little bumpy.”

  Merganzer disappeared into the cab of the blimp.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” Remi asked.

  “Something important, like pressing buttons and pushing levers. Come on, let’s go to the edge. I have a feeling I know what’s coming next.”