by Matt London
Rick’s head was starting to hurt. “Wait a minute. You mean we need permission to ask for permission?”
“Of course you need permission to ask permission, you, you, you, you . . . children!” the administrator stammered. “The rule is clearly stated in Winterpole Statute 47-X3. Don’t you know ANYTHING?”
Evie snapped. “That’s a stupid rule!”
BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!!!!
“Evie!” Rick wiped his face to hide his embarrassment. “You’re not helping.”
The administrator returned to his desk and sat down in a huff.
Rick cleared his throat. The noise echoed off the walls of the cavernous lobby. “Um . . . excuse me. Mister Administrator?”
“What is it?” the administrator asked.
“We have these permission slips to enter Winterpole Headquarters. May we have permission to submit them to you for review?”
The administrator ambushed them with a courteous smile. “Winterpole reviews all permission slips submitted. It is but one of the many services we extend to the people of Earth. Please come up to the desk and submit your permission slips.”
Evie picked up her reassembled stack of papers and blew a loose lock of hair out of her face. “Suck-up,” she muttered, glaring at her brother.
Rick shrugged and approached the desk, each footstep creaking on the floor like he was walking on a pond that was barely frozen over. He had to stand on his toes to place his stack of papers in front of the administrator, then he did the same with Evie’s, because she was too short to reach.
The administrator flipped through the papers. “What is your business at Winterpole?”
Rick was proud of the compromise he had come to with Evie regarding their cover story. “We are here to review the statutes to see if there is anything we can do to help our father, George Lane. He is under house arrest.”
“Oh, yes. I heard about that. Poachers are a deplorable bunch. No wonder you children are so poorly behaved.”
“He’s not a poacher!” Evie said. “He was saving that bird. My dad has never killed an animal in his life.”
The administrator ignored the outburst. “Well, I don’t know what you expect to find in the statutes to undo the punishment for your father’s reprehensible crime, but these requests seem to be in order. It will take several weeks before we can complete our evaluation. Each error will result in a penalty. We reserve the right to revoke admittance if any errors are found. In the meantime, you are granted permission to enter Winterpole Headquarters.”
“Thank Tesla!” Rick breathed a huge sigh of relief. His mission objectives were complete. Time to advance to the next level.
“Where can we find access to Winterpole’s computer database?” Evie asked the administrator.
He didn’t look up from his paperwork. “Any of the doors on the western curve of the lobby will lead you there . . . eventually.”
Rick and Evie hurried across the room, Rick grabbing his sister’s arm before she could sprint forward. Rick was certain running would result in another penalty. He shook his head, hoping his sister got the message to keep both feet on the ground, then chose a door that looked promising.
BWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!!!!
Now what?
The administrator blushed. “Sorry! That was my mistake. Hand slipped and hit the buzzer. One penalty for me.”
Rick and Evie left the lobby as fast as they could.
The hall was no warmer than the foyer had been. On the plus side, Rick and Evie were alone. The minus side was that the walls, doors, and floor were painted the same dull beige of a forgotten decade. It was impossible to tell one place from another.
“Which way is the data room?” Evie asked.
Rick had no idea where it was, but he didn’t want his sister knowing that. “I think it’s this way. Follow me.”
The hall bent in a long curve. Doors branched off the corridor, but most had old-fashioned padlocks. Whenever they located an unlocked door, Evie opened it eagerly. But each time all they found inside was paperwork stacked to the ceiling.
“You would think they would recycle some of this stuff,” Rick said. “Or at least make digital copies. They must spend a fortune on ink.”
At the end of the hall, the kids saw a man and a woman in business suits come around the corner. Rick recognized the man instantly. “It’s Mister Snow!” he whispered. “Quick, hide!”
The kids darted into the nearest room.
Glancing around, Rick couldn’t believe their good luck. “We’re inside Winterpole’s database access room!” he exclaimed. Several white cubes—which Rick recognized as archaic computer monitors—hung from the ceiling, swaying gently, each with keyboards dangling. Rick tapped the spacebar on one of the keyboards a few times, and the screen brightened.
“Awesome sauce!” Evie pumped her fist victoriously. “And now we search for Doctor Grant.”
One thing that Rick and Evie could agree on was that computers were the spellbooks of the real world. By coding a computer program, Rick could make the machine do anything he dreamed of, just like magic. When he was writing a piece of code, called a script, he felt like a genius wizard hunched over a cauldron at the top of a tall tower.
His latest incantation, which was really just a quickly scripted program that chugged through the data in the Winterpole network, was one of his usual masterpieces, but the search moved at a crawl on the obsolete computer. Then the results started to come in. Most of the files were old reports from the days when Winterpole monitored Doctor Grant. At around five years ago, the updates began to get much less frequent. “I guess he got harder to track,” Rick mused as he examined the files. The later reports were little more than rumored sightings of Doctor Grant in random places around the world.
“Hey, Rick, check this out!” Evie had located a different computer and was exploring the system. While Rick’s programming style was meticulous, Evie never studied or practiced, so her coding was rough, aggressive, and prone to errors, much like Evie herself. “I found the master list of every infringement of Winterpole regulations. Look, here’s Dad’s file.”
“Evie, don’t touch anything.” Rick did not have time for her dangerous curiosity.
She scrolled through her father’s infractions. “Wow. This is longer than one of 2-Tor’s lectures.”
Rick was about to ask Evie what she was talking about when he discovered the most recent report on Doctor Grant tucked away in an unmarked subfolder. “Here we go. Doctor Evan Grant was working on a top-secret construction project two years ago. It looks like he was in—”
“You won’t believe this! Dad’s profile is available for editing. All I have to do is delete his infractions, and he should have a clean slate. Isn’t that awesome?”
“Evie, I said do not—”
But it was too late. With one push of the delete key, George Lane’s many infractions vanished from the database. Evie grinned at her skeptical brother. Rick watched in horror as her computer screen turned the color of fresh blood, and all the lights in the database access room went dark.
Hazard lights along the floor flashed. Sirens blared so loud Rick felt like his head was going to pop like an alien puss bug.
“EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! UNAUTHORIZED DATABASE ALTERATION DETECTED. DISPATCH SECURITY TO D.A.R. L1.”
Rick shot Evie an accusing glare.
Evie shrugged. “Maybe they’re talking about someone else?”
IN EVIE’S DEFENSE, SHE REALLY HAD WANTED WHAT WAS BEST FOR THEIR DAD. THE OPPORTUNITY to undo all his past infractions had been staring her in the face. She figured any kid in her position would have done the same. After all that business with the annoying administrator, they hadn’t had any trouble walking right in. Security seemed lax. How could she have known the slightest change to Winterpole records would result in a full-blown mili
tary lockdown?
“Are you out of your mind?!” Rick screamed, frantically trying to finish collecting the data he had found on Doctor Grant. “Winterpole has rules against using a DVORAK keyboard! You didn’t think there would be rules against altering their official disciplinary records?”
“Well, excuse me, Mister Perfect! I didn’t realize that the Child of the Year would be so quick to let his father wither away under house arrest when the answer to all his family’s problems is staring him in the face!”
Rick grabbed her by the hand and ran for the door. He fumbled for the doorknob in the dim light.
“Ow! Hey, lemme go!” Evie said.
“Gladly,” Rick said. “Does that mean I can leave you here?”
Evie was quiet. Memorizing the dictionary sounded like more fun than staying to say howdy to Winterpole security.
They burst into the hall, looking for the closest exit. Down the corridor, two guards in white jumpsuits with matching domed helmets raised what looked like blue fire extinguishers. “Hey, you kids! Freeze!”
The lead guard squeezed the handle of his weapon. Bright blue water flew toward Rick’s head.
Evie grabbed her brother and tugged him out of the way. And just in time. The water hit the door and froze solid on contact, locking it with cobalt ice.
The other guard gave his companion a skeptical glance. “Really, Larry? ‘Freeze’? You spend all weekend coming up with that clever pun?”
Larry frowned, embarrassed. “Gosh, Barry. I don’t know. It seemed appropriate in the moment.”
Barry shook his head in dismay. “Winterpole is never going to shake its reputation as a cold, icy, monolithic organization if we can’t get past the obvious connotations associated with its name. Now, let’s think of something that isn’t obvious and that better represents the ideals of our esteemed employer.”
“Hurry!” Larry shouted.
Barry nodded in approval. “Not bad. ‘Hurry.’ It says we are quick to respond to any violations of Winterpole statutes, and it contradicts the inaccurate assumption that we move at glacial speed.”
“No, I mean hurry! Those kids are getting away.”
Down the hall, Evie and Rick had used the guards’ conversation to bolt around the corner.
“Oh . . .” Barry said.
Evie and Rick raced through the complex, breathing hard. The floors were waxed so smoothly that their shoes skidded a bit with each step. “I thought you said no sudden movements?” Evie taunted in between slipping and sliding.
“Yeah, I changed my mind. RUN!”
Evie didn’t need to be told twice. She quickly picked up her pace, pumping her legs as fast as they would go. Rick matched his sister stride for stride. In between labored breaths he called out, “To answer your earlier question, Evie, I do want to help Dad. That’s why I entered Winterpole Headquarters under false pretenses to hack into their computer database. And that’s why I want to terraform the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and make the eighth continent, just like you.”
“Well, when you put it that way!” Evie veered around a corner and pushed down another identical hallway. The corridors all looked the same. Evie would have had an easier time finding her way in one of the world’s many trash-tangled rain forests. Rick didn’t seem so sure of himself, either, but her stay-at-home brother was leading the way for once, so she trusted his instincts.
They rounded another corner. Mister Snow was leaning against the wall and enjoying a moment’s peace. He looked like he was savoring every bite of the iceberg lettuce wrap he was eating for lunch. (Presumably, Winterpole had penalties for eating any other kind of lettuce.) Mister Snow dropped his food when he saw the Lanes.
A door opened, and the lobby administrator skidded into the hall. “There they are! The intruders! Two hundred penalties! Stop where you are!”
The administrator ran toward Rick and Evie just as Mister Snow bent to pick up his lunch. The two grown-ups collided, stumbling on the slick, waxy floor. Their legs went out from under them, and for a brief second they looked like two graceful swimmers embracing underwater.
Then the illusion was broken, and they tumbled to the floor in a heap.
“Get them!” the administrator groaned.
Mister Snow and the administrator were piled in front of the door to the lobby, blocking the exit. Thinking fast, Evie searched for a clue on one of the doors that would allow them to escape from Winterpole Headquarters.
When nothing obvious presented itself, Evie settled for the next best thing.
“Wild guess!” she cried out loud, and pulled Rick through the nearest door.
They were in a dark closet that was so tiny they had to smoosh together to fit.
“Where’s the light?” Rick asked.
“Feel around for it,” Evie instructed.
The kids ran their hands over the walls, searching for any protrusions that might have been light switches. After a few seconds, Evie’s fingers wrapped around a metal handle.
“Triple-seven jackpot!” Evie said, tugging on the handle.
The handle did not operate the lights, but it did operate the trapdoor below the children’s feet. They plummeted into a dark chute that twisted down into the basement of Winterpole Headquarters.
Cold air rushed past Evie’s ears. Her hair flew wild. She kicked out her feet to try to slow her descent, but the walls of the chute were slippery.
“WAAAAAAAH! I’m falling!” Rick wailed. The echo of his cries chased them down the chute.
Some distance into the tunnel, they saw a small square of amber light. It grew larger as they approached, and before they could react, they flew out of the chute and tumbled several feet through the air before falling onto a soft cushion of—
“Paperwork!” Evie cheered with relief as she threw crumpled stationery into the air. “I never thought I would be so happy to see paperwork!”
But Rick wasn’t paying attention. He rose, awed, and walked to the edge of the narrow platform where they’d landed. Evie followed his gaze.
They were in an underground cavern so large she couldn’t see the far end of it. In the air before them, inverted rails twisted together like a clump of leftover spaghetti. Countless foot-long claws hung from the rails and flew along the tracks, so fast Evie could barely see each individual one. The claws were clamped onto punchcards, which were then circulated through hundreds of exits out the sides of the cavern.
“What is it?” Evie asked in amazement.
“It’s . . . it’s a computer,” Rick replied, the shock evident in his voice.
“A computer?” Evie repeated. “But computers are small. This . . . this is gi-mongous!”
“Back in the early days of information electronics, computers had to be gi-mongous, er . . . gigantic. Gi-mongous isn’t a . . . Anyway, they used to be as big as a whole room. The only way to send data was to input it on a stack of punchcards like these. But computers never would have become what they are today if people had continued to use the punchcard system. Each card only carried a tiny bit of data. You would need fifteen thousand punchcards to represent the data in one megabyte.”
“Uh, Rick, a megabyte is, like, not even one song.”
“I know. Winterpole has been around since the 1950s, when punchcards were in use. I bet they had something in their bylaws that never let them upgrade to modern computer systems, so they’re still using punchcards, but on an incredible scale. Billions and billions of punchcards.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and—”
“Okay, I get it.” Evie rolled her eyes.
At the other end of the balcony, a door opened. Barry and Larry squeezed through and raised their icetinguishers.
“Hurry!” Larry said.
“Good idea.” Evie grabbed her brother by the
shoulder. “Let’s go!”
“No, that’s not what we meant!” Barry said. “You’re supposed to stop. We have icetinguishers. ‘Hurry’ is just our battle cry.”
“Rick, jump!” Evie nudged him toward the edge of the balcony.
“It’s too high!” Rick wailed.
“Do it!”
Barry fired ice. Evie scooped up a handful of papers on the ground and threw them at the glob. The icy-blue goo hit the papers in midair, coating them. The papers fell to the floor and shattered.
“Now! Jump!” Evie said, taking Rick by the hand and vaulting off the balcony.
They grabbed onto one of the claws and were rushed along the rails, twisting through the air like flying squirrels.
“Don’t let go,” Evie said.
“Can’t say that I’m planning to.” Rick squeezed his eyes shut. “But, you know, if I fall, Mom is going to be so mad at you.”
Evie snorted. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
The rails carried them past a row of windows that looked into Winterpole offices. Evie saw a man talking into a headset and playing golf on his desk. A lady in yoga pants was suspended upside down in a huge gyroscope, while an old bald man in a karate uniform vigorously chopped at her back with his hands.
In the last window, a girl stood talking to a woman. The woman wore a silver sash over her Winterpole uniform. Evie had never seen a sash like that before, but she assumed it was reserved for high-ranking members of the Winterpole executive board. But the Winterpole woman wasn’t the one who had caught Evie’s attention. It was the girl, who—in lieu of a sash—was wearing the fifth-grade uniform from the International School for Exceptional Students.
“Diana Maple?” Evie said in disbelief.
Diana Maple, best friend and henchwoman of the vile, vicious, and vindictive Vesuvia Piffle. Vesuvia was the number one reason, after saving her father, why Evie needed to start a new continent. She had to get away from wicked girls like her.
The woman and Diana turned to look at Evie and Rick as they flew past, hanging from their punchcard claw. “You?” Diana mouthed, her eyes wide.
