The Pompeii Disaster

by Dan Gutman

  Isabel, David, and Luke rushed to form a group, throwing their arms over each other’s shoulders like football players in a huddle. Julia just stood without moving, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to join the group.

  “What’s the matter, Julia?” asked Isabel.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Julia replied. “I was thinking that I could do pretty well starting over again in 1912. Everything is a lot less expensive here.”

  “You have to come back with us!” Isabel shouted.

  “Why?” Julia asked defensively. “If I stay here and live the rest of my life starting now, I’ll know lots of stuff in advance that nobody else here knows. Think about it. I’ll be able to predict who’s going to win the presidential elections. I could make a fortune on the stock market because I’ll know which companies, like McDonald’s, are going to become huge. And if all else fails, I could invent the zipper.”

  “What’s a zipper?” asked Thomas Maloney.

  “See?” said Julia. “He has no idea what a zipper is!”

  “Are you crazy?” Luke asked. “Forget about that zipper idea! This isn’t a game. This is your life!”

  “What about your parents?” asked Isabel. “Your friends? You’re willing to give up the people you love just to make some money in 1912?”

  Julia shrugged. She didn’t have a great relationship with her parents, even though they had given her everything she ever desired. And to Julia, friends were disposable. She could always make new ones. She was good at that. And being pretty didn’t hurt, no matter what century you live in.

  The other three members of the Flashback Four held on to each other tightly.

  “We’ll miss you,” Luke said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back home with us?”

  “Think about it, Julia,” Isabel told her. “It’s 1912. They have no designer clothes in 1912. No malls. No credit cards . . .”

  “I don’t care about those things,” Julia said.

  “Horses pooped all over the street,” Luke added. “Remember that.”

  “You better make up your mind fast,” Mr. Maloney told Julia. “That wheelchair lady is gonna blast your friends outta here any second.”

  “No cell phones,” added David.

  Julia looked up.

  “No cell phones?” she asked. “No selfies?”

  “No Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, either,” David told her. “No social media.”

  “No internet,” added Isabel.

  “If you live to be a hundred years old,” Luke told Julia, “you might make it to the year 2000. That’s when the whole selfie thing started.”

  Julia thought about it for a moment, and then rushed over to join the rest of the Flashback Four.

  “Okay, okay!” she said, throwing her arms around their shoulders. “I’m in.”

  “One for all and all for one!” hollered Luke.

  “Oh, one last thing before you go,” said Mr. Maloney. “For everything you put me through, I should get some extra compensation, don’t you think?”

  “Compensation? What’s that?” asked Isabel.

  “He wants to be paid again,” Luke explained.

  “Forget it!” Julia yelled. “That’s extortion! I already gave you a thousand dollars, for nothing!”

  At that moment, a crackling sound filled the air. Isabel, Luke, David, and Julia stopped moving, as if they had been gripped by a powerful invisible force.

  “What’s happening?” asked Isabel.

  “She’s bringing us back,” Julia whispered.

  Indeed, she was.

  Like I said, it’s a complicated process, so I’m not going to bore you with the technological details. Suffice it to say, Miss Z activated the Board. Five multicolor bands flashed on it. They merged into one bright white light, and a few seconds later the Board began to pull the Flashback Four in, atom by atom. Molecule by molecule. The kids were flickering in the air now. They were being digitally uploaded from one century to the next.

  Just as they were about to disappear, Luke called out to Mr. Maloney. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “Have fun trying to spend any of that twenty-first-century money here in 1912. It hasn’t been printed yet. They’ll just think it’s counterfeit.”

  “Hey! What the—” Maloney shouted.

  “So long, sucker!” yelled David.

  And then they vanished.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE END OF THE FLASHBACK FOUR

  IN BOSTON, MISS Z STARED AT THE BOARD intently. There were so many things that could go wrong with the technology, not to mention the human factor. And Thomas Maloney was a wild card. There was nothing to stop him from just taking the money and running as soon as he arrived back in 1912.

  “This better work,” Mrs. Vader said quietly.

  “If it doesn’t, my life is over,” said Miss Z, her sweaty hands clutching the armrests of her wheelchair.

  The screen suddenly lit up. Within a few seconds the bands of color fused together into one hot, white light.

  “I think it’s happening!” Mrs. Vader said excitedly.

  “Let’s hope we didn’t scoop up that Maloney guy again,” said Miss Z. “Or some total stranger.”

  The light crackled and jumped off the Board a few feet like tiny bolts of lightning. A humming sound filled the room, and a coffee cup vibrated on Miss Z’s desk.

  “Here we come!” shouted the voice of Isabel, holding hands tightly with David and Julia.

  The Board was flashing like a strobe light, with bits and pieces of the Flashback Four appearing in two centuries at the same time. Miss Z and Mrs. Vader shielded their eyes.

  And then, in an explosion of light, Luke, Isabel, Julia, and David appeared in the flesh a few feet in front of the Board. They fell into the room, coughing and stumbling, grabbing on to each other for support. Luke got down on the floor and kissed it, then jumped back up to hug his friends.

  “We’re back, baby!” David said. “I never thought I’d live to see this place again.”

  Across the room, Miss Z and Mrs. Vader were tearfully hugging each other, nearly collapsing with relief.

  To the Flashback Four, Miss Z seemed older than she had been just a few days earlier. She looked grayer, more haggard. The sparkle that had been in her eyes seemed to be gone. She hadn’t slept in several days.

  Hesitantly, the kids approached her. They had returned without the nice clothes she had bought for them to wear on the Titanic. More importantly, they had returned without the TTT, the device that allowed them to text through time with her. Miss Z had invested a good part of her fortune to build it.

  As a group, they were prepared for her to be angry. She had fired them after the Gettysburg mission, and she had every right to fire them again.

  “We’re so sorry,” Isabel said. “We lost the TTT. That’s why you lost contact with us.”

  “It got swept off the deck of the Titanic,” David added. “We tried to grab it, but it was gone.”

  “I know you spent a lot of money on it,” Julia said. “We’ll pay you back, little by little. I promise. I’ll give you my babysitting money for the rest of my life.”

  “Shhh, don’t be silly,” said Miss Z, a finger to her lips. “The TTT is just a bunch of circuits and silicon. It’s replaceable. We’re just so glad you’re back.” Then she reached out her arms for each of the Flashback Four to hug her.

  This took the kids by surprise. Up until this point, Miss Z had not showed them a lot of warmth or compassion. She seemed quite serious and businesslike. But now, she was slobbering like a baby.

  “Are we fired?” Isabel asked timidly.

  “Goodness, no!” Miss Z replied. “Whatever happened out there was my fault. I made a big mistake. I never should have sent you on such a dangerous mission. I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” David said.

  “I do,” Miss Z continued. “My big mistake was choosing a meeting spot at the front of the Titanic. That was the first pa
rt of the ship to go underwater! I should have known that was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking. Now I’m kicking myself. If you kids had been stuck in 1912, I never would have forgiven myself. That’s why I’ve decided to discontinue the Flashback Four program.”

  “What?!”

  After everything that happened on the Titanic, none of the kids had any intention of traveling through time again. But even so, it was upsetting to hear that the whole program was going to be scrapped.

  “My plan was to send you on another mission after you came back from this one,” Miss Z told them. “But I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of days. I can’t have you risk your lives again. We dodged bullets on the first two missions. Traveling through time is simply too dangerous. I thank you for everything you’ve done up until this point. I’m sorry it had to end this way, but I’m so grateful you’re back and safe. You kids had better go home now. I’m sure your parents are worried sick about you.”

  Mrs. Vader opened the door, in case the kids didn’t get the hint that it was time for them to leave.

  “But what about the museum you were planning to build?” David asked.

  Miss Z had made her fortune by creating a dating service that brought millions of lonely people together. But that’s not how she wanted to be remembered after she was gone. She wanted to create a museum that would show the world photos of great events in history—especially events that had never been photographed before.

  Miss Z sighed.

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” she replied. “Look, I’m tired. My condition is worsening, and the stress of this Titanic incident didn’t help any. I’ve got to face reality. I’m running out of time. Most people in my condition only last a few years. I’ve been lucky. I think I should just retire, maybe do some traveling, and enjoy whatever time I have left. I probably wouldn’t have lived to see my museum completed anyway.”

  “But it was so important to you,” said Isabel, looking around the office at the photographs on the walls.

  “You’re right. It was,” replied Miss Z. “But I cannot in good conscience put you young people in the position of risking your lives just so I can have some photos. I’m not willing to play with people’s lives that way.”

  “It wasn’t just so you could have the photos,” David said. “It’s so the world could have the photos.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Miss Z. “My mind is made up.”

  The Flashback Four got up and moved toward the door. It was at that point that Luke stopped and turned around.

  “That reminds me,” he said to Miss Z. “We have something to show you.”

  Luke took the little camera out of his pocket and turned it on. The battery was almost out of juice, but there was just enough to last a few minutes. Luke found the picture he’d taken of the Titanic and held it up for Miss Z to see.

  She gasped.

  “Oh my,” Miss Z said, her eyes getting moist with tears. “You actually got the picture?”

  “You told us to get the shot,” Luke replied. “So we got it.”

  Miss Z stared at the photo for a long time. She picked up a magnifying glass from her desk drawer to examine it more closely.

  “So this is what it looked like when the Titanic was about to go down,” she said, holding the camera carefully. “It is marvelous! And it’s the only photo like it in the world. How did you do it?”

  The Flashback Four gathered around her once again.

  “After that Maloney guy disappeared from the front of the ship, we figured we would never get back here,” Luke told her. “So we tried to get into a lifeboat, but they were either filled up or they had already been launched half empty.”

  “So we jumped off the Titanic into the water,” Julia said. “It was so cold.”

  “They taught me how to swim,” said David. The others laughed, remembering.

  “We managed to get over to a lifeboat,” Luke continued. “That’s where I took this shot. A few minutes after I pushed the button, the Titanic was gone.”

  “It was amazing!” said Isabel.

  Miss Z looked at the Flashback Four with wonder and admiration.

  “I wish I had been there,” she said. “Well, I mean, I wish I could have seen it with my own eyes. But this is certainly the next best thing. You’ve done the world a remarkable service. You captured a piece of history that would have been lost forever.”

  Miss Z stared at the photo some more. The sparkle was back in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT’S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE

  TO THE READER: BEFORE WE CONTINUE WITH THE story, a word of warning. This chapter includes quite a bit of information about volcanoes. Now, if you think reading about volcanoes could possibly be boring, feel free to skip ahead and flip to the end of this chapter, when things get exciting again for the Flashback Four. But you’ll be missing out, because volcanoes are very cool. So you may want to stick around and read the whole chapter.

  Unless, of course, you’re in a big hurry to get somewhere. But if you’re in such a hurry to get somewhere, what are you doing reading this book in the first place? You should be at that other place doing that more important thing.

  In any case, after getting back to Boston, Luke, Isabel, Julia, and David went home. They went back to their regular lives of school, sports, church, family, and so on. Their time-traveling career was over. Life returned to normal. None of the kids told their parents or friends about what they had experienced. What would have been the point? Nobody would ever believe it.

  But something was different about them, and they could all feel it. The four of them shared a secret—they were survivors. They had survived the adventure in Gettysburg, where they had been physically attacked and thrown in jail. They had survived the sinking of the Titanic, where they had jumped off the ship and nearly drowned. Living through a traumatic event changes a person, and it bonds groups of survivors together.

  A few weeks later, Isabel was walking to science class. She was a good student who liked school, except that she had to put up with some of the immature boys in her grade, who tended to be obnoxious and not take their studies seriously.

  When Isabel showed up for science class, there was a sign on the door. . . .

  TODAY’S CLASS MEETS IN THE COURTYARD

  When she got outside, the science teacher, Mr. Martin, was in the middle of the courtyard wearing a dirty apron, work boots, and protective goggles.

  “Nice getup, Mr. M,” one of the boys commented. “You going to a wedding or something today?”

  “No,” the teacher replied. “We’re going to make a volcano.”

  “Cool!” everyone exclaimed.

  Mr. Martin was one of the few teachers in the school who hadn’t given up on doing innovative, interesting projects to try to keep the students—and especially the boys—engaged.

  “Can anybody tell me what a volcano is?” he asked when everyone in the class had arrived.

  Stuart, probably the most obnoxious of the obnoxious boys, didn’t bother waiting to be called on.

  “It’s like when the wind starts whipping around and it picks up Dorothy’s house and stuff,” he announced to the class. “And then, bam, the house lands in Munchkinland.”

  “That’s a tornado, you dope!” said one of the other boys.

  “Actually,” Mr. Martin said, “the word volcano comes from the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.”

  “Like on Star Trek, right?” asked Stuart. “Wasn’t Dr. Spock a Vulcan?”

  “I think you mean Mr. Spock,” Mr. Martin said wearily as he bent down to pick up a clump of dirt. “Dr. Spock was a pediatrician. But we’re getting off topic. I’m talking about volcanoes here. You see, the Earth’s crust is broken into seventeen tectonic plates that fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. They move and float on a soft mantle below the surface of the Earth.”

  “Mickey Mantle is below the surface of the Earth too,” shouted Stuart. “Ever since he dropped dead!”

 
Proud of his little joke, Stuart turned around to collect high fives from his friends. Mr. Martin waited for their cackling to subside before continuing.

  Julia rolled her eyes. It was hard for her to believe that a boy like Stuart might one day grow up to become a productive member of society. None of the girls had said a word. They were just standing around, sneaking peeks at their cell phones.

  “Mantle is liquid rock,” said Mr. Martin. “Sometimes the tectonic plates push and grind against each other to form a mountain.” He brought over a big red plastic garbage can while the boys elbowed each other and giggled because the teacher had used the word grind.

  While the boys cracked wise, Isabel pulled a pad from her backpack and began taking notes. There might be a test on this material. And even if there wasn’t a test, she reasoned, this was information that could be useful to know down the line. You never know when it might come in handy, she thought.

  “And sometimes the molten rock—or magma—from the Earth’s upper mantle works its way to the surface,” Mr. Martin continued. “When the pressure from the gases within the molten rock gets too great, it erupts.”

  “Can we blow something up now?” asked Stuart. “That’s the cool part.”

  “Yeah, explosions are awesome,” said one of the other boys.

  “We’ll get to the explosion in a minute,” said Mr. Martin. “Patience is a virtue that you boys would be wise to cultivate.”

  He turned on a spigot on the courtyard wall and used a garden hose to fill the garbage can with water. When the level was about three-quarters of the way up to the top, he added a cup of red food coloring to the water.

  “Hey, Mr. Martin,” said one of the boys. “Since when does a volcano look like a garbage can? We made a volcano out of papier-mâché when I was in third grade, and it didn’t look nothing like that.”

  “It didn’t look anything like that,” Mr. Martin said, unable to restrain himself from correcting the boy’s grammar. “There are different kinds of volcanoes. This one is going to be an explosive volcano. So we need to add millions of tons of boulders and volcanic debris.”