by Matt London
When Rick had expressed his reservations about swimming underwater, Doctor Grant’s response was unsympathetic, at best. “If a seventy-year-old blind scientist with a bum hip and bad teeth can swim two miles underwater, then so can you!”
Yeah, Rick thought, watching the old man paddle in front of him, but Doctor Grant has an aquatic echo locator device to help him find his way in the dark ocean. All Rick had were the sniffles.
Still, he tried his best, staying close so that he wouldn’t get lost. They could only see a few meters ahead in the dark water. If he swam too far to one side, or fell too far behind, Evie and Doctor Grant would disappear, and Rick would be lost alone in the gut of the ocean.
Scuba diving was the worst. Rick was used to swimming by repeatedly mashing the X-button, not by kicking his legs.
Evie had taken to the water like a duck to, well, water. Her flippers moved in a blur, and frequently she had to slow down so that Rick and Doctor Grant could catch up. Rick wanted to scold her for racing ahead, but with the respirator in his mouth, he couldn’t complain.
Part of Rick’s trouble catching up came from his constantly having to stop to drain his face mask. His glasses left little gaps in the plastic seal around his face, which meant the little pouch for his nose was constantly filling up with water.
Just when Rick thought he was going to be swimming forever, he saw it, a black shadow emerging from the darkness. At first he thought it was a whale, although the massive thing suspended in the water was bigger than any whale Rick knew about. Its fins were outstretched, and a heavy propeller was embedded in each. As they got closer, Rick realized that he wasn’t looking at a whale but at a submarine, the largest he had ever seen, bigger than the entire campus of ISES.
He recalled Doctor Grant’s words while they were suiting up. “After your father and I parted ways, Mastercorp was not pleased with the lack of results our project—and their money—had produced. I owed them, they said. I was taken to a giant submarine research facility under the Arctic Ocean, where I was forced to conduct tests, create weapons, and attempt to generate the Eden Compound. They held me in solitary confinement. They denied me food. But still I would not re-create the formula. They found my half. It was confiscated when they raided my lab. They tried to replicate the compound themselves, but without the half your father had, they failed. Eventually I sabotaged the facility and escaped. During my travels, hiding around the world, I returned to the lab several times. It’s been abandoned for years, but it still had working equipment that I could salvage. Now we can use it to fabricate the Eden Compound.”
They swam up to the hull of the submarine and paddled alongside it. Painted on the side of the hull were the words MSS Cichlid. Clever, Rick thought. African cichlids were some of the most intelligent fish in the world. A perfect name for an underwater science facility.
Feeling the exterior of the massive vessel with his hands, Doctor Grant found his bearings and led them to an access hatch. He punched a few numbers into a keypad on the hatch, and the door irised open.
Startled, Rick felt a strange pulling sensation.
He tried to swim away, but water spiraled into the open hatch like it was rushing down the drain of a sink. Doctor Grant flew in immediately, and then Evie was swallowed.
Rick fought against the current until his arms gave out. He banged his elbow against the hatch as he fell inside, sending sparks of pain through his arm.
Wherever he was, it was cold and flooded. He couldn’t see an inch in front of his face. He groped wildly for something to grab onto, realizing that in this dark place blind Doctor Grant wasn’t really at a disadvantage.
His hands settled on the sleek fabric of Evie’s wetsuit. It didn’t matter if she teased him for hugging her—he was scared.
He heard a loud gurgling sound, like the pipes of an old house. The water was draining out of this chamber, which must have been some kind of airlock—a way for people to enter and exit the research sub without flooding the whole vessel.
Rick sniffed and almost gagged. Even with their masks on, Evie’s breath stank of fish. He knew she shouldn’t have eaten that leftover char.
When the water had all gurgled away, red emergency lights came on. Evie and Doctor Grant were standing together at the far end of the small chamber, pulling off their masks and mouthpieces, gulping the stale air.
Wait. Evie? Then who was Rick—
It wasn’t clear who was more surprised, Rick or the gray seal he was hugging. They both howled in alarm and pulled away.
Evie cackled madly. “Rick! I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
“Raaaawf!” said the seal, not amused.
“That seal must have gotten pulled into the airlock with us when we entered the sub. No worries. We will let him out when we’re finished here.” Doctor Grant unzipped his satchel and pulled out a glass container the size of a lunchbox, a respirator attached to the side. He popped it open with a hiss.
An agitated Niels Bohr was curled up inside. The tiger cat leaped out of the box, looking as unhappy to be there as the seal.
“I’m sorry, Niels Bohr. They didn’t have any scuba gear in your size.”
“Mrowl! Rowl!” Niels Bohr mewed, annoyed.
Rick took stock of their surroundings. They were in a small room with three doors leading off in different directions. To him the doors all looked the same. “So which way do we go?” he asked.
“This way,” Doctor Grant said, opening one of the doors, which revealed a long, rusty hallway beyond.
The seal barked as they left. He did not seem to appreciate being left alone.
AT LEAST THE HALLWAY HAD BETTER LIGHTING, EVIE THOUGHT AS THEY PASSED BY SEVERAL laboratories. Most of the windows looking into the labs were shattered. Shards of glass stuck out from the window frames like the maws of sharks.
The inside of the labs were just as run down. Tarps covered most of the equipment. Any exposed devices and computer terminals appeared to be broken.
“What’s down here?” Evie asked, opening a door.
In the next room they saw a number of chambers, sectioned off into glass enclosures. Long tubes of bottled electricity ran along the ceiling. The occasional flash filled the room with multicolored light.
Evie’s eyes widened in amazement. “Wow, what’s this?!”
Rick adjusted his glasses. “It’s a thermal-charge power plant. Fascinating.”
Doctor Grant laughed. “My dear boy! How did you know that?”
“One second,” Rick said, his eyes darting from chamber to chamber. “I want to see a release.”
They watched in silence for a moment. A valve opened at the top of one of the chambers. In an instant, the chamber was flooded with bright orange heat. They recoiled as a wave of hot air passed over them.
“Yow!” Evie rubbed her arm, which was a little pink. “I’m scorched!”
“I can’t believe it!” Rick slicked back his damp hair with his hands. “A working thermal-charge power plant, in the middle of the ocean! I didn’t think these existed in real life.”
“This one does,” Doctor Grant said. “I should know. I built it.”
“How does it work?” Evie asked, continuing to be amazed by the old doctor.
“Just like a volcano,” Rick explained, grinning like a mad scientist. “You have molten rock and apply pressure to it. The rock superheats, forcing it through a channel at tremendous velocity, generating more energy than you applied.”
“So you’re creating little volcanic eruptions on a submarine.” Evie nodded sarcastically. “Sounds safe.”
Rick pressed his hand against the wall of the submarine, feeling the thrum of scientific progress. “The magma generated by the process has to go somewhere. That’s these release chambers.”
“Correct,” Doctor Grant said. “It worked better than I’d ever hoped. My volcano engine ha
s been powering the Cichlid for years without any maintenance.”
“Can we go inside and take a closer look?” Rick asked, sounding giddier than Evie on a mission with Dad.
“Are you crazy?” Doctor Grant gave him a pat on top of the head. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is in there? If you somehow got trapped in one of those release chambers, the blast of thermal energy would vaporize you! Do you know what that means? Not even your bones would be left behind!”
“But you just said it has never needed maintenance.”
“I know! Isn’t that nuts? It could break any second. Now, follow me. Do you want an eighth continent or don’t you? We’re wasting time.”
Doctor Grant led Rick and Evie through the narrow corridors, while Niels Bohr purred and followed. When they reached a large lab at the end of a hallway, the doctor steered them inside.
This lab looked different from the others. While most of the Cichlid was in damaged disarray, this room was pristine. Everything was in its place. The chairs were upright. The tables were pushed against the walls. The tarps were neatly folded in a stack in one corner. Everything was dusted.
“Ah, back at last,” Doctor Grant said. “Even the floor feels right.” He walked with confidence to the far side of the room, where he booted up a computer terminal. The bright overhead fluorescent lights came on, hurting Rick’s eyes after so much time in darkness and dimness.
At first Evie was confused that Doctor Grant was staring intently at the illuminated computer monitor in front of him, but then she saw that next to his keyboard was a kind of computer tablet she had never seen before. The screen was made of an almost jelly-like material that rippled whenever Doctor Grant typed something or switched screens. It was some kind of smart Braille tablet that changed its arrangement of dots so the doctor could read with just his fingers. It was clear where Evie’s father had gotten so much of his inspiration.
He pointed to a computer terminal on the far side of the room. “Rick, I want you to upload your father’s half of the formula to that data bay. Evie, be a dear and bring me the bag of reagents from that fridge over there.”
“Reagents?” Evie asked.
“It means ingredients,” Rick explained.
“I know what reagents are,” Evie called over her shoulder as she walked to the fridge. “What are you, a boy alchemist?”
“Enough!” Doctor Grant said, irritation creeping into his voice. “I’m violating a solemn oath I made to myself to help you create this eighth continent of yours. I won’t have you bickering while I do it.”
Rick plugged his thumb drive into the big data bay and uploaded the file. Evie lugged the bag of reagents to Doctor Grant’s desk. “Hoo boy!” Evie said, fanning her nose. “That fridge smells awful! There’s a can of tuna in there that I think is left over from the late Devonian period.”
At the word tuna, Niels Bohr attacked the refrigerator with a vengeance. The humans ignored him.
Both halves of the Eden Compound formula appeared on Doctor Grant’s screen. He snorted with glee. “George, you whippersnapper. Look at this. Your father managed to update the formula with just his half. He has done quite a bit of work.”
“What does that mean?” Rick asked.
“Two things. One, your father is a genius, but we already knew that. Two, it means this process will be much quicker than I initially anticipated.”
Rick leaned over Doctor Grant’s shoulder and squinted at the monitor. “How long will it take you to update your half of the formula and create a prototype batch of the compound?”
“Not long at all,” Doctor Grant said. “Twelve to eighteen hours.”
“What?! That’s almost a whole day. We don’t have time for that.”
Evie looked around the dank lab nervously. “You mean . . . we are going to have to sleep here?”
“I’m afraid so. I’ll work through the night to get it done. You kids should try to take a snooze, and I’ll wake you when I’m finished.”
Rick’s stomach grumbled. “What about dinner?”
Doctor Grant said, “Hmm . . . better hurry. Niels Bohr is going to eat all the tuna.”
RICK AND EVIE FOUND AN EMPTY STORAGE CLOSET OFF DOCTOR GRANT’S LAB WHERE THEY COULD bed down for a few hours of rest. They used some tarps for blankets and bunched up others for pillows.
With Niels Bohr’s leftovers in their bellies and the echoey sound of water dripping as a lullaby, they drifted into a restful state.
Rick was not sure how long he had been asleep when his sister’s words woke him.
“Rick?”
“. . .”
“Rick?”
“. . .”
“Hey, Rick!”
“. . . What?”
“Are you awake?”
“I am now, Evie.”
The plastic tarps crinkled as she rolled onto her side. Even in the darkness he could see the hopeful look on her face. “Do you think the Eden Compound will really work as well as they said?”
“I don’t know. You dragged 2-Tor and me around the world, so I hope you have confidence.”
“I think it will work. I just wanted to see if you did.”
“Since when did my opinion mean anything to you?”
She was quiet for a while.
“It always has. I just don’t tell you about it.”
“How come?”
“Are you kidding? Because you’d lord it over me like some . . . lord!”
“Wow. Evie Lane. Hanging on the word of her big brother.”
She nudged him playfully. “See! This is why I didn’t want to tell you!”
They shared a smile and went silent again.
“Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you . . . do you want to build the eighth continent?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think our whole adventure is kind of fun, but you always seem so miserable.”
“Risking our lives is not exactly my idea of fun.”
“Please tell me. Do you want to build the continent?”
He stared up at the ceiling, twisted with pipes. “I thought I did. Building a whole new world from scratch? Sounds like a supercool video game, in real life! But the more I think how we are doing it to help Dad, I get angry. We shouldn’t have to help Dad. He’s Dad! He should be looking out for us! Instead, he’s always making a bungle of things. He’s the reason we’re in this mess.”
“Dad is brilliant, though.”
“Sometimes I think there are two dads. There’s Brilliant Dad, and there’s Wacky Dad. Brilliant Dad built the Roost. Wacky Dad wants to punch a garbage dump’s lights out. You like Wacky Dad. I would be happy if he was just Brilliant Dad.”
“He’s our family. You have to trust that he is always brilliant.”
“But he did break Winterpole’s rules.”
“Rick, I would do everything I could to help you, even if you stole a million Popsicles.”
“Even if I stole a million and one Popsicles?”
Evie yawned loudly, smiling. “Even if you stole a million and one Popsicles.”
“I don’t know if the Eden Compound will work, but I hope it does. For you. Because we’re family.”
“. . .”
“Evie?”
But his baby sister was fast asleep, Niels Bohr snuggled underneath her chin.
Rick lay in the darkness for a long time, his thoughts twisting like the pipes on the ceiling. Images in his mind of his father and the garbage patch kept him awake. This was frustrating. Without enough sleep, he would never recharge his energy bar.
If he wasn’t going to sleep, he figured he might as well learn something. He slipped out from under the canvas covers and went exploring.
When he opened the closet door, the lab was dark, but Doctor Grant was sti
ll awake, typing furiously on the keyboard at his computer terminal. He stopped abruptly when Rick entered the room.
“Richard. A word.”
Timidly, Rick approached.
“Have you ever asked your father why he is on a mission to rid the world of trash?”
“I assume it’s because he recognizes that garbage is pollution. Pollution is bad for the environment. No surprise there.”
“Lots of people recognize that, Richard. Why do you think your dad is so impassioned about this issue that he’s made it his lifelong purpose?”
“Um . . . I, uh, don’t know.” Rick was surprised hearing himself say the words. Could it be true that in all this time he had never asked his father about the origins of his prime obsession?
“You don’t seem to have much confidence in him.”
“Well, the stuff he does doesn’t make sense half the time.”
Doctor Grant inhaled deeply, almost as if he was meditating. “Your sister trusts him on blind faith. She doesn’t need an explanation.”
“She doesn’t make sense half the time, either.”
“Your father was born in trash, you know.”
“What do you mean?” He couldn’t process what he was hearing. “My father grew up the son of Jonas Lane, the billionaire founder of Lane Industries.”
Doctor Grant’s next words were like a chasm opening under Rick’s feet. “He grew up the son of Jonas Lane, but he was not born that way. He was found in a black garbage bag by the caretaker of a dump. The caretaker took him in, but the man and his wife were wicked, and as soon as George was old enough to walk, they put him to work. For five years he served the caretaker, until by chance a woman walking past saw a little boy shoveling filth in the hot sun. She phoned social services, which took your father away. Over a year he lived in an orphanage, until Jonas Lane and his wife came looking to adopt a little boy. Jonas saw at once there was a spark of creativity in little George. One day he would make a fitting heir. From that point onward, your father had a happy childhood. When he was my student, he often regaled me with stories of the bird-watching trips his father took him on as a boy. He loved to watch birds fly, Rick. He loved the freedom they had—freedom he lacked when he was living in the garbage dump.”
