When the bus arrived, Marcus, Dad’s Jamaican driver, behind the wheel, Brent Fowler got very excited.
‘Wow, a Vantare Platinum Plus!’ he said.
A man, immaculate in black pants and white shirt, greeted us as we boarded.
‘Hello, my name is Leonardo and I’ll be looking after your beverage requirements this morning,’ he said. ‘As you can see, we have an espresso machine so I’d be happy to take your order now.’
The Vantare Platinum Plus was catered!
At first, I felt a bit embarrassed – Dad, it’s a school excursion, not a transatlantic flight – but that didn’t last long. Not with everybody saying how cool it was, not with everybody ordering coffees. Even Mr Ryan was impressed.
‘Do you do a decaf soy latte?’ he asked Leonardo as he sat down next to me.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Leonardo. ‘And we do have a choice of soy milk today: either the Organic Bonsoy or the Rainforest Alliance.’
I directed Marcus to pull up outside Big Pete’s, but there was nobody there.
Mr Ryan looked at me – where is he?
‘We’re early,’ I said, looking at my watch, and we were early, by about three seconds.
Yesterday when I’d rung Seb, when I’d explained to him that I’d fail this subject unless he showed, he’d said, ‘Daddy Bear, I’ll be there.’
‘School’s not a problem?’ I’d said.
‘School’s never a problem,’ he’d replied.
Daddy Bear had believed him, too. But now I was asking myself why. He’d set me up, hadn’t he?
I’d been almost turned into mince because of him.
Suddenly he was standing there, as though he’d materialised out of thin air. He was dressed very conservatively – for him, anyway – in jeans and T-shirt, his hair tied back.
‘I told you he’d show,’ I said to Mr Ryan.
As Seb boarded the bus and sat down in the seat in front of us, Mr Ryan’s smile got bigger and brighter.
‘Seb, can I get you a coffee?’ Mr Ryan asked him.
By the time we turned off the highway, following a sign that said Diablo Bay Power Station 12km – Authorised Entry Only, everybody had drunk at least two coffees each. And they were talking quite a lot.
‘Has anybody ever had three triple shots in a row?’ Kenny McCann asked Leonardo.
We’d left the last gated community behind and were now passing a cemetery, the Gold Coast Necropolis. There were the usual jokes.
‘Dead centre of town.’
‘People are dying to get in.’
But I didn’t find them funny. I hated any cemetery, even if it was called a necropolis. I hated cemeteries so much that last year, after I’d totally freaked out at some great-uncle’s funeral, Mom had taken me to see a psychiatrist.
His name was Dr Juratowitch and he smelt like mints.
‘Your son is suffering from what we call “coimetrophobia”,’ he said, writing the word out in cursive with a fountain pen on a piece of paper, and handing it to me. ‘A morbid fear of cemeteries. Probably because they remind Dom of the finite nature of human existence.’
‘Is there anything we can do?’ Mom asked.
‘About the finite nature of human existence?’ said Dr Juratowitch.
I could tell that he was joking, but not Mom.
She wasn’t really into jokes, or joking. Though she did laugh a lot during Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. Especially when some kid on seesaw copped it in the knurries. Or a bride in a meringue dress capsized during the bridal waltz.
‘No, about Dom’s phobia,’ she said.
Dr Juratowitch considered Mom’s question for what seemed like ages, before he said, ‘No, not really.’
I’d kept the piece of paper, though, and occasionally I’d take it out from my desk. Look at the word. Mouth the word.
It was a relief when the Gold Coast Necropolis – and my coimetrophobia – passed, replaced by green rolling hills.
Suddenly the bus stopped.
‘Moo,’ said somebody near the front.
‘Hello, girls,’ said somebody else.
I stood up to get a better look. There was a line of cows, the type with big swinging udders, crossing the road, moving between two gates, one on either side of the road.
Two women in overalls and gumboots were giving them directions, politely suggesting that they might like to get a move on. The cows, however, seemed in no hurry. And it was ten minutes before we could get going again.
Almost as soon as we did, though, we had to stop again. All the coffee that had been imbibed was now being unimbibed and the bus’s toilet – or restroom as Leonardo liked to call it – wasn’t coping with the demand, so we pulled into a rest area.
After we’d got moving again we turned onto another narrower road and the landscape changed.
The hills flattened out – they were neither green nor rolling – and there were no more animals, none of slow-moving udder-swinging domestic variety anyway.
All this time Mr Ryan hadn’t stopped extolling the extraordinary benefits of cross-country running to Seb.
We turned a corner, passed an abandoned roadside stall that had once sold Fresh Tomatoes and there they were, stalking the plain like huge steel orcs, their shoulders hunched, their knuckled hands clutching wires.
I couldn’t help myself. ‘Look, transmission towers!’
Despite their caffeine intake, nobody was as excited as I was. Not even when the road passed right next to one.
Each of those wires carried 500kV of electricity, I wanted to tell them. Five hundred kilovolts!
‘Imagine if that tower fell down,’ said Seb.
What was he, some sort of mind reader, or something? Because that’s exactly what I was imagining. The tower toppling over, the wires touching, twisting, a flurry of sparks, of smoke, and the mother of all short circuits.
‘Sorry?’ I said, wondering if I’d heard him correctly.
‘If that tower fell down,’ said Seb, ‘it would probably black out the whole of the Gold Coast.’
Probably? It would black out the whole of the Gold Coast because, as I’d learnt from my research, those four five-hundred-kilovolt lines were the grid’s main power source.
But for how long? And that was my problem. Taking down the grid would be difficult enough. But taking it down for exactly an hour? That seemed almost the definition of impossible.
‘Actually,’ Seb said, ‘the tower wouldn’t even need to fall down. These kids I know made this miniature hot-air balloon, right? Because they wanted to see how high their cat could go. They made it with, you know, wire in it. And it got caught in the powerlines and, zappity-doo-dah, it blacked out the whole city.’
I didn’t want this conversation to go any further – it was way too spooky – but I couldn’t help myself.
‘Was the cat okay?’ I said.
Seb shook his head. ‘They buried it in a matchbox.’
I looked out of the window, towards the horizon, where four plumes of smoke billowed upwards, like gigantic white champignons.
‘So as you can see, Seb,’ said Mr Ryan, ‘the cross-country thing is a great option for you, especially if, as you said, you’d like to pursue your academic ambitions at our school. Of course, as you probably know, our facilities are second to none.’
‘Any last coffee orders?’ asked Leonardo.
We pulled up at a checkpoint; a high fence topped with razor wire stretched away on either side.
‘Hey dude, has anybody ever done four triple shots?’ asked Kenny, his voice skittering like a top across a table.
‘I think you’ve had quite enough coffee, Kenny McCann,’ said Mr Ryan, back into full-on teacher mode.
A square-jawed security guard boarded the bus and walked down the aisle, regarding us with a high degree of suspicion, as if each of us wore a turban and a beard and bore an uncanny resemblance to the late Osama bin Laden.
‘To infinity and beyond,’ whispered Kenny McCann, and I coul
dn’t help laughing because he was spot on: this security guard looked just like Buzz Lightyear.
‘What’s so funny?’ said the security guard, glaring at me.
Now I noticed the holstered gun on his hip.
‘Surprise can come from any direction!’ whispered Kenny.
Again, I couldn’t help laughing.
The security guard’s hand was now on his gun.
‘Do you consider national security to be a laughing matter?’ he said.
‘No, sir, I certainly don’t,’ I said, glaring in Kenny’s direction.
The security guard didn’t move, however. Now I wished he was Buzz Lightyear, because Woody’s best friend would never do that, scare the hell out of a fifteen-year-old kid with his shiny black gun.
‘I have all the paperwork here,’ said Mr Ryan, waving some papers at the security guard.
The security guard’s hand moved off his gun and into his pocket. It came out with a camera, which he pointed at me.
Click!
‘You’re now on our database, punk,’ said the security guard before he snatched the papers from Mr Ryan.
On their database – that was the last thing I needed. I could’ve killed Kenny McCann. I mean, really killed him.
We were allowed to pass through the checkpoint, and after ten more minutes of driving, high fences on either side, we came to the power station itself.
Mrs Curie was waiting for us outside.
‘Ze nuclear power plant is ze prime terrorist target,’ she said, in an accent so French I thought for a while that she was putting it on. ‘So we must all pass through ze scanner.’
We did as she asked, passing through ze scanner, but when it was my turn, it buzzed.
‘Belt? Watch? Rings?’ asked the female security guard.
‘No, none of that,’ I said.
‘Pacemaker? Surgical pins?’
‘No!’ I said.
‘Step over here, please,’ said the grim-faced guard.
I did as she asked, and she scanned my body with a hand scanner. This time there was no buzz.
‘It happens,’ she says, waving me on my way.
‘It is such a pleasure to ’ave you children ’ere today,’ said Mrs Curie as she swiped her access card to let us through a secure door.
I could see that despite the caffeine-induced hyperactivity of some of my classmates, she really meant it.
And that’s why it was a bit embarrassing when Chris Montgomery said, ‘Doesn’t this facility produce large amounts of radioactive waste, some of which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years?’
But Mrs Curie had an answer all ready and raring to go.
‘In zis age of global warming ze nuclear energy is ze cleanest energy available.’
Okay, it was a politician’s answer, one that didn’t really answer the question. But still, she seemed very nice.
‘And aren’t there a lot of people who would like to see this facility shut down?’ said Chris Montgomery. ‘Especially the diving community, who would like the marine area opened up again.’
‘In a democracy like zis, zat is zeir right,’ said Mrs Curie.
Again, a politician’s answer.
And fortunately Chris Montgomery didn’t pursue the matter.
We were not allowed to get very close to the nuclear power station itself, but that was okay with me. It wasn’t as if I was going to target it, to be responsible for my own private Chernobyl.
But when Mrs Curie said, ‘I don’t suppose you children would like to see ze transformer?’ my ears pricked up.
‘Probably not,’ said Mr Ryan, who had already had a few terse words with Kenny McCann and was probably keen to get him and his excessive caffeine intake back on the bus.
‘Actually, I’d quite like to see ze transformer,’ I said, unintentionally mimicking Mrs Curie’s accent.
Mr Ryan gave me a look, and who could blame him? I’d never been the most enthusiastic student, but here I was, enthusing all over the place.
‘I could meet you all back on the bus in half an hour,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Leonardo will have lunch ready.’
‘No problem,’ said Mrs Curie. ‘I will bring ’im back.’
Mr Ryan agreed to this – it was, another opportunity for him to ear-bash Seb.
So I followed Mrs Curie down more polished corridors, through more secure doors, CCTV cameras recording our every step.
Who was I kidding?
A crack terrorist unit with a mandate from their god would have difficulty breaking into here, let alone a fifteen-year-old kid. Eventually we came to ze transformer. Again, there wasn’t that much to look at. Another room, full of computers. Two more operators – one male, one female – sitting in front of consoles. Reading from screens, tapping at keyboards.
‘So you want to know what’s happening here?’ asked the male operator, who Mrs Curie introduced as Gabriel.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What’s happening here?’
Gabriel pointed to a window, through which ze transformer itself, a large black box with a spaghetti of wires coming in and out, was visible.
‘What that bad boy does,’ he said, ‘is knock down the juice from the reactor to something a bit more manageable.’
‘To five hundred kilovolts,’ I said.
‘Top of your class, kid,’ said Gabriel. ‘But what we also do here is monitor demand from the grid. You see, the thing with juice is that it’s not easy to store. So when the grid wants more juice, we give it more juice. You just don’t mess with the grid.’
Like the Debt, I thought. Because you don’t mess with that, either.
‘So, it’s all just run by computers,’ I said.
Gabriel, I could see, wasn’t pleased with this.
‘Well, it isn’t actually, mate. There’s an operator override on everything. Computers are all well and good, but a computer doesn’t know, like I do, that tomorrow night the Mariners are playing the mighty Tritons, and half the city will be tuned into the game. Do you know how much juice it takes to run a plasma?’
Guiltily, I thought of all the plasmas in our house.
‘A lot?’ I said.
‘A helluva lot. So before kick-off, we’ll give the reactor a tickle, get it to squeeze out some more juice. Then we’ll have no problems, no brown-outs.’
‘How do you do that?’ I said, and as soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t.
The question sounded too bald, too pointed. Gabriel had no problem with it, however.
‘It’s all numbers, son,’ he said. ‘I input them here and they get shunted up to the plant.’
As he said this I noticed the wireless router sitting beside his console.
‘So if you wanted to, you could turn the power off for the whole of the Gold Coast?’ I said, and again I couldn’t believe how stupid I was, asking such a question.
Gabriel smiled at me, shrugged his shoulders, said nothing. But it was the smile and the shrug of a man with the power to turn off the power for the whole of the Gold Coast.
We stood there for a while longer, admiring ze transformer.
‘You order pizza?’ I heard Gabriel ask the other operator.
‘It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?’ she replied.
‘Well, I think our time is up,’ said Mrs Curie, checking her watch.
After thanking Mrs Curie profusely, I moved off to join the others in the bus.
As I boarded the bus, Leonardo handed me a meal tray, like you have on aeroplanes. Unlike aeroplane food, this food was actually delicious. I’m sure even Toby would’ve approved.
On the way home Marcus put some reggae on the bus sound system.
And because Leonardo wasn’t just a bus waiter but an actor and a musician and a multimedia installation artist, he organised a singalong. Everybody was into it, especially Kenny McCann.
As we stopped to turn onto the highway, a scooter turned off the highway and headed towards Diablo Bay Nuclear Power Station, the rider wearing the distinctive blue-and-y
ellow uniform of Big Pete’s Pizzas.
‘No woman, no cry,’ sang Kenny McCann, his enormous, completely out-of-tune voice filling the bus.
WEDNESDAY
TAI CHI, TO FU AND WI-FI
As I dived into the pool, I thought of my recent dip in the somewhat less sparkling waters of the Brisbane River.
It didn’t seem possible that all that stuff really had happened to me. It had, though, and somehow a clean, but tattered, tartan skirt had turned up in one of my drawers just to remind me.
I intended to swim the whole twenty-five metres underwater, a feat I’d achieved countless times before. But when I got about halfway something strange happened – my throat constricted? my lungs deflated? – and I had this feeling that right there, right then, I was going to drown. In my own pool, in a metre of water, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I would open my mouth and the water would pour into my body and I’d drown.
Of course, drowning was a bad thing. But it was also a good thing, because if I drowned I wouldn’t have to deal with The Debt.
I opened my mouth and water did pour in, but I immediately closed it again and forced myself, spluttering, to the surface.
I hoisted myself onto the side of the pool and lay there on the warm tiles, eyes closed, trying to understand what had just happened.
‘I can’t believe they would cook prawns for over an hour,’ came Toby’s booming voice.
I opened my eyes.
Miranda, dressed like a ninja warrior, was doing her tai chi exercises. While Toby, not dressed like a ninja warrior, was stretched out on the banana lounge, a cookbook balanced on his belly.
‘There should so be some sort of law against that!’ said Toby.
Yes, there should be, Toby. But there isn’t. So there’s no use whingeing about it.
I got to my feet, walked closer to Miranda.
‘Hey, is it easy to hack into a wi-fi network?’ I asked her as she went into the Swooping Goose move.
I was no expert on tai chi, but this looked like an excellent Swooping Goose.
‘I mean, they’d be just mush,’ said Toby.
‘Easy-peasy,’ said Miranda, knees bent, arms outstretched.
Easy-peasy for her because she was a computer genius, but what about mere techno-mortals like me?
Turn off the Lights Page 8
