Lost in the Jungle

by Bill Nye

  Matt winked. “I don’t care about basketballs,” he said. Gently, he tapped the drive and added, “I care about ideas.”

  Dona Maria continued muttering in her native language. “She’s saying something about how she should have retired to some island,” Ava said. “Flo-something?”

  “Florida?” I asked.

  “No, Florianópolis,” Pepedro explained. “Very nice place. It’s like the Hawaii of Brazil.”

  The operagoers applauded. I bowed.

  “We’re bowing?” Matt said. “Really?”

  Pepedro joined me, then Hank. Eventually my siblings gave in, too. We stopped only when the mayor approached with Joaquim at her side.

  “What do you want?” Dona Maria asked. “Are you going to try to arrest me for chopping down some trees?”

  “Not today,” the mayor answered. “I don’t know when it will happen, but everyone will know what you have done, Dona Maria. You will be punished for your crimes against the Amazon.”

  The old woman had no response. She turned her back to us and staggered out through the exit on her powerless shoes. And look, I know that watching a crooked businesswoman shuffle away on battery-powered boots should not have been sad. She was a despicable person. A cheater. A liar. And yet part of me felt bad for Dona Maria as she left all alone.

  Alicia placed her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t shed a tear for her,” she said. “She might be in some trouble now, but she is still very rich.”

  My sympathy vanished.

  As the crowd started to return to the theater, we thanked the mayor and Joaquim for listening. Then Hank spoke privately with Alicia and Pepedro before tapping his watch and announcing that we were late for an appointment.

  “An appointment?” Matt asked. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not going to the dentist or something, are we?” I asked, joking.

  “People do that, you know,” Ava pointed out. “It’s called ‘dental tourism.’”

  “Wait, seriously? Are we going to the dentist?”

  Hank laughed but refused to explain what appointment he was talking about. He hurried us down to the avenue. A new limo, parked at an angle, waited at the curb.

  Arms crossed, shaking her head, Ava stopped at the bottom of the steps. “We’re not getting in another limo. No way.”

  “This one does look a little nicer,” Pepedro said.

  The driver stepped around the front of the car and opened the doors. As Hank convinced my siblings that we were not in danger, I jumped in back and searched the icebox. Pepedro and Alicia slid in as well. A few frigid cans of Guarana were waiting for us. The seats were dark leather and as soft as couches. I kicked back, sipped the strange soda, and decided I wanted to remain in the limo for the rest of our trip to Brazil. The others could tour the sites. They could visit museums or go out to restaurants. I was going to remain in air-conditioned luxury, eating takeout and sipping ice-cold soft drinks.

  Matt climbed in next, then Ava. Settling back into the cushioned leather, I was starting to think about how I could redesign my bedroom to be more like a limo when Hank popped his head in. “Jack,” he said, “would you mind riding up front with me? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  My siblings and the Brazilians all watched me. I hesitated. This didn’t feel like the right time to split from them, even if I was just going up to the front seat. But Matt told me to go, and Ava agreed. Sitting between Hank and the driver was a little awkward, even if the car was huge, but I got over it and talked to Hank about a whole bunch of things. The coming school year, our money problems, even girls.

  Hank said he might have a solution to our financial concerns. I perked up. “You do?” I asked.

  “Yes, but first I have a confession, Jack,” he said.

  The road was winding through open country now, sloping down a hill toward what looked like an airfield.

  “A confession? What did you do?”

  “The battery idea . . . it didn’t really work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the battery I’ve been working on, based on your idea with the eels. It’s fine. It’s okay. But it’s not much better than what’s out there already.”

  My heart sank. “Then why did we just go to all that trouble to get the drive back?”

  “Well, she stole the codes to my satellite, for one,” Hank said. “The other designs might be worth something, too. The Taser, for instance. And I’m not saying the eel-inspired battery application is totally dead. Not at all. I think there are a number of lessons to learn from how these giant eels store energy, too. There could still be some tremendous applications.”

  “But?”

  “But there was one other thing.” Hank reached over into his fanny pack, pulled out an Odoraser, and tossed it to me. “Wasn’t this your idea, too?”

  Normally, I remember my best brainstorms. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Was it?”

  “Sure,” Hank said. “You were messing around with the nose vacuum one day, and you said something about how it would be great to have one for . . . gaseous emissions.”

  I chuckled. Hank hated the word I would’ve used. But was that really my idea? I searched my brain and, even though he was imaginary, asked the little harmonica player for help. A memory of the moment flashed back to me. “Wait, we’d just eaten burritos, right? And I was ripping some huge—”

  “Yes, yes, exactly,” Hank said, cutting me off before I pronounced the word. “Anyway, a friend of mine is very interested in this device. Someone you might remember.”

  The limo slowed as we drove through an open gate in a chain metal fence. The small airfield stretched out in front of us. Waiting on the runway was a beautiful private jet. A very beautiful and very familiar private jet. A ramp stretched down from the entrance, and a man in a cushioned armchair was rolling away from the plane in our direction.

  “Uh, Hank, who is that?” I asked.

  The Plexiglas partition opened behind me. Everyone was staring ahead.

  “That, Jack, is Mr. J. F. Clutterbuck,” Hank explained, “the billionaire inventor of the odorless sock.”

  “Why is he in a drivable chair?” Ava asked.

  “He is very, very lazy. Now, as you know, Jack, Mr. Clutterbuck is in the odor business.” The limousine stopped. “Jack inspired me to engineer the Odoraser,” Hank explained, “and our friend Mr. Clutterbuck is interested in buying it.”

  Alicia slapped her hand down on the top of my seat. “Ten million dollars!” she exclaimed. “Jack will take nothing less!”

  I smiled. A million or two would’ve been just fine.

  19

  OUT OF THE DUMPSTER

  Okay, so Alicia’s goal was a little overambitious. Mine, too. Clutterbuck wasn’t there to write me a check for that much cash. But Alicia practiced her negotiation skills on the billionaire, and Clutterbuck agreed to pay Hank and me a decent amount of money for the rights to the Odoraser. Enough to pay off our bills and cover the next year of rent, anyway. And Clutterbuck said that if his engineers perfected the device and he started to sell it, we’d share in the profits.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that he didn’t give us a ride home in his jet. He was on vacation, on his way to Florianópolis—the island Dona Maria had mentioned. He happened to be flying south when Hank had e-mailed him from the boat, so he stopped in Manaus to refuel. After we’d negotiated, I asked if we could join him for the island vacation.

  Sadly, he laughed.

  For the next few days, we recuperated in our hotel—a much nicer one, thanks to Hank—and toured the city with Pepedro and Alicia. Most of the time, Pepedro wore a hat pulled low, so people wouldn’t stop him for selfies. We also had another surprise guest. On the morning after our return to Manaus, we were limping downstairs for breakfast when Min walked through the hotel’s front doors. Hank froze. Whether they were an item or not, they probably wanted a moment. But we didn’t let them have it. I charged forward ah
ead of my siblings and wrapped my arms around her. Min was rigid as a sculpture at first. None of us really ever hug. Or not like that, anyway. But she softened, returned the embrace, then wrapped my siblings in quick hugs before Hank unfroze and tried to explain himself. We left them in the lobby and went into the restaurant for breakfast. Over the next few days, I shattered my cheese-bread-eating record and changed my socks about four times daily, just because I could, and when it was time for us to leave Brazil, Alicia and Pepedro wouldn’t stand for any emotional good-byes. Plus Hank promised to buy them tickets to visit us in New York over the holidays. Whether it was true or not, we all promised that we’d see one another soon.

  Once we were back home in New York, I wanted to head straight for the apartment, lock myself in my room, and play video games for a week. But the others insisted on going straight from the airport to the lab. Hank and Min stayed with us, and he was nervous about his beloved headquarters, even though she assured him she’d hired a great cleaning crew. Not only that, but she’d also made a deal with Bobby to pay for the effort. He funded the cleanup and deposited a bunch of money in some kind of trust account for our education, and in return, Hank agreed not to press charges against him.

  A car dropped us off at the end of the block, and we followed Hank to the Dumpster. He was about to press the button when the lid popped open.

  A man and a woman stood up.

  The five of us nearly leaped back across the street.

  The man was bearded, with huge, round eyes. A pair of pens stuck out of the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt. The woman had pale skin, thin glasses, and blond hair with black roots. An old newspaper was stuck to the back of her blouse. She peeled it off and extended her hand. “Hello, Hank,” she said. “I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m Elise Crowell, of the NASA Office of Technology. We’ve met before. This is my colleague, Marvin Miller.”

  Hank reached into the Dumpster and shook their hands. “Hello,” he said. He drew the word out, so it was almost more of a question than a greeting. “Can I help you?”

  The man was looking at me and smiling. His eyes were familiar. And the beard, too. “The plane!” I said.

  “What are you talking about, Jack?” Ava asked.

  I started to point at the man, but Hank knocked my hand down. He says it’s rude to point. “You were on the plane to Manaus, weren’t you? You gave me the earplugs!”

  Miller nodded. “Did they work?”

  “Perfectly,” I said. Then I remembered our conversation. “I don’t get it. You had an accent. I assumed you were Brazilian.”

  “No, I’m just good with accents,” he said. “Want to hear my Irish brogue?”

  “Please don’t,” Ava said. “We’ve had enough fake accents.”

  “Hank, you are a difficult man to find,” Crowell said, climbing out of the Dumpster. Matt stepped forward to help her, but she pushed his hand away. “And you kids are difficult to follow.”

  Ava’s head snapped back slightly. “You were following us?”

  I squinted at the woman. That morning we’d walked into the ruined lab seemed like years ago. But now I recognized her from that day. The pair of them had been standing across the street after we’d chased Bobby out of the lab. They were eating popsicles. How long had they been watching us?

  Miller climbed out of the Dumpster and stared down at a green stain on his khaki pants, then shrugged. “We tracked you for a while in Brazil, too, but we lost you in the city.”

  Neither Matt nor Ava said a word. Hank stood between us and the odd pair. They didn’t seem dangerous. Just weird. But I didn’t mind that Hank was being protective.

  “The NASA Office of Technology?” he said. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that.”

  “We go by NOT,” Crowell said.

  “And we’re sort of secret,” Miller added.

  “So you’re the Secret NASA Office of Technology?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “I suppose so.”

  I tried not to laugh. The geniuses needed a few seconds to get the joke. Miller and Crowell needed even longer.

  “You’re SNOT,” Ava said.

  “No, we’re NOT,” Miller corrected her.

  I could’ve gone on like that for at least five more minutes, but Hank was getting impatient. “SNOT or NOT,” Hank said, “I’d like you to explain why you’ve been following them and what you’re doing in my Dumpster.”

  Miller looked to Crowell to answer. “We need your help,” she said. “NASA needs your help.”

  “With what?” Ava asked.

  “I can’t tell you here,” Crowell replied. “This is highly sensitive information, but we are wondering if you would be interested in going on an undercover mission of sorts.”

  “A mission?” Matt asked. “To where?”

  “They need rest,” Min insisted.

  “Unless it’s somewhere really awesome,” Ava said.

  “Can we go back to Hawaii?” I asked.

  “We can’t tell you where you’d be going,” Miller said. “Not here, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hank said, “but the children and I are planning to stick together for a while. Any trips I take, they will have to come, too.” He glanced at Min. “My friend here, too.”

  Miller nodded. “That’s great, actually. You see, we need the children to join you. This is a very unusual assignment. We need a group of highly intelligent individuals, and we need them to impersonate a family.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Hank said.

  “No?” Crowell asked. “Why not?”

  Hank glanced back at each of us in turn. “Because we are a family.”

  Then he reached forward, pressed the button that activates the Dumpster, and invited the scientists down to the lab so we could learn more. I let the others go first. Min started questioning Crowell. Matt and Ava were theorizing about what this strange mission might involve. Ava wasn’t totally sure she wanted to go anywhere at all. I figured Matt would have the same attitude. His college classes would be starting up again soon, and I assumed he’d want to spend the next few weeks studying in preparation. But he actually seemed really excited about another adventure. As for me? Well, I was tired. Exhausted, really. My body was aching. My feet were still a wreck. The welts all over my skin had barely faded. My stomach needed at least a few weeks to recover from all that cheese bread. But as we walked down toward the lab, I found myself smiling. I didn’t care where this next adventure might take us or even what it would involve. We were a family. A strange, mismatched mix of individuals, but still a family.

  I’d follow the geniuses anywhere.

  TWELVE MOSTLY ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT LOST IN THE JUNGLE

  Antarctica, the focus of At the Bottom of the World, the first book in the Jack and the Genuises series, is a pretty amazing place. The deep ocean is equally astounding, and that’s part of the reason we sent the crew to Hawaii in Jack and the Geniuses: In the Deep Blue Sea. The setting of Lost in the Jungle, the Amazon rainforest, ranks right up there as one of the most spectacular and scientifically fascinating spots on our planet. It hosts 25 percent of the world’s species and accounts for 15 percent of the photosynthesis happening on the surface. The facts that Jack and the kids relay about the rainforest and its many incredible creatures aren’t made up. This is real science, and we’re sure you still have some questions about the Amazon, the incredible technology the geniuses use, and the very unusual behaviors of sloths.

  So here are a few questions and answers about Jack and the geniuses and their journey through the jungle.

  1. ARE CUBESATS REAL? Absolutely. They’re small enough to hold in your hands and capable of capturing images, receiving and transmitting radio signals, and carrying out scientific experiments. In 2015, as CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill helped launch a slightly larger version of a CubeSat, LightSail 1, and the group is planning to send a second model into space in 2018. Both LightSail satellites are designed to deploy solar sails.

>   2. WAIT. WHAT’S A SOLAR SAIL? You don’t know? Join the Planetary Society! In the meantime, we’ll explain. Instead of molecules of air in the wind pushing a sail and thrusting a boat through the water, a spacecraft with solar sails gets pushed through space by light from the Sun. Light is made of particles of energy we call “photons.” Even though they have no mass or weight, they have momentum. When they bounce off the sails, each photon gives the spacecraft a tiny push. And unlike a rocket, a solar sail never runs out of fuel. Solar sails may one day carry spacecraft all over the Solar System.

  3. BACK TO THOSE CUBESATS . . . COULD KIDS REALLY BUILD ONE? Yes! Students at the St. Thomas More Cathedral School, an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia, worked together to design, build, and even launch their own CubeSat—with a little help from NASA. (Not the SNOT division, though.) Sure, there were more kids involved, and they took more time than Ava and Matt, but they prove that it’s possible. Their satellite, the STMSat-1, cruised into orbit on May 16, 2016. And just like Cheryl, the STMSat-1 photographs the planet from above and then sends these images down to the ground.

  4. IS THE AMAZON JUNGLE ACTUALLY IN TROUBLE? Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) uses satellite images to track deforestation, or the loss of rainforest land to logging, mining, and other human-led and naturally occuring processes. For the year ending in July 2016, the Brazilian portion of the Amazon lost an area nearly three times the size of the state of Rhode Island to deforestation. So, yeah, we’ve got a problem.

  Indeed, forests all over the planet are disappearing. And logging isn’t the only cause. Mining for natural resources, building new roads, clearing land for farms and livestock, plus natural change—all these forces conspire to shrink the tree-covered portions of our planet.

  5. DOES THIS IMPACT CLIMATE CHANGE? Very much so. Greenhouse gas emissions fill the air with carbon dioxide, trapping heat near Earth’s surface and warming the planet. Deforestation contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline-burning cars and trucks. While we can’t necessarily stop forests from shrinking due to natural processes, we can work to prevent humans from unnecessarily destroying our tree-covered landscapes by supporting organizations that fight deforestation.