The 8th Continent (13 page)

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 has 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 still 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.”

Rick realized that twice in the past year his father had offered to take him bird-watching, but the first time he had needed to study for a test, and the second he had been competing in a video game tournament at the mall. Suddenly, he felt like more of a monster than that caretaker.

“The birds were what inspired your father to invent the hover engine. He wanted to fly. And my, how he has flown. He researched terraforming with me because he had seen children all over the world living in filth, in squalor. No one deserved what he had suffered, he thought, and so he found his purpose.”

Still trying to grapple with what Doctor Grant was saying, Rick stuttered, “So, we're not really Lanes?”

Doctor Grant reached out, grabbing Rick by either side of the head, and pulled him close. “You are your father's son. Do not forget it. I may be blind, but I see it in your intelligence, in your curiosity, in your stubbornness.”

“Me?! Evie is the stubborn one.”

“Listen to yourself. See? Stubborn.”

Rick pulled away and ran out of the lab as fast as he could. He gasped for breath, each footfall a deafening echo in the hollow submarine.

How could his parents have never told him any of this? He was eleven years old. He deserved to know the truth. Dad was adopted. All Rick had ever wanted was to guide the future of Lane Industries, and he wasn't even a Lane. Meanwhile, he always accused his father of not having purpose, when the opposite was true. Now Rick was the one who was confused, without any direction, and his father, with all his noble goals, was the one to follow and admire.

“I've been so stupid!” Rick wept as he ran through the
Cichlid
. It was the hardest thing he'd ever admitted to himself.

When he ran out of breath, Rick collapsed on the floor. Eventually he pulled himself to his feet and realized that he was totally lost. He began to retrace his steps, hoping to find his way back to Doctor Grant and his sister.

The other laboratories were in such disrepair that it was hard to tell what kind of work they'd been doing there. There was a lab where big craters had been smashed into the metal floor, and broken machinery lay scattered everywhere.

Another lab contained an empty weapons rack and plastic things that shouldn't have been plastic. Fruit, teddy bears, guacamole. Target practice? Some kind of plastic- making gun?

Twice Rick passed by a door without noticing it, until finally the black painted door on the black wall caught his eye. To most, the concealed door, the heavy lock (which had long fallen off), and the general spookiness of the secret lab would have meant “Keep Out,” but to Rick it meant “Hidden Area. Sweet.”

Sometimes his desire to explore 100 percent of the map overpowered even his fear of the unknown.

Rick opened the black door.

What he saw inside the room made the tuna in his stomach creep up his throat and try to escape out of his mouth. White broken bones lay scattered on the floor. The skulls of bulls and tigers and hammerhead sharks were among the morbid clutter, along with dozens of cracked rib cages and leg bones, like the remains of a discarded chicken dinner.

Everything in Rick's mind was telling him to run—to get away from there as fast as possible—but he held his ground. The only way not to fear this place was to know it.

Littered among the bones were the battered exo-hulls of old robots. An arm here, a torso there. It almost looked like the animal bones and the robot bodies . . . belonged together.

On a table, a stack of damp papers had spread and soaked, leaving a thick patina of gray mush. On the top sheet, Rick could make out a single word.

ANIARMAMENT.

A cold hand clamped down on Rick's shoulder. This proved to be a bit too much unknowingness. Rick screamed like his server was down for maintenance.

“Rick!” a startled Doctor Grant exclaimed, squeezing him a little tighter. “You scared me.”

“Look who's talking!” Rick gasped.

“I've been trying to find you. I was worried.”

“I got lost,” he admitted. “What is this place?”

“I don't know,” Doctor Grant said stiffly. “They never let me in here.”

“I wonder what these experiments were for. What was Mastercorp up to?”

“Come on,” Doctor Grant said. “We can't worry about that now. The formula is done. It's time to test the Eden Compound.”

When they returned to Doctor Grant's lab, Evie was awake and standing near the center testing table with Niels Bohr. She rubbed her eyes like she was kneading raw dough.

“I was dreaming about chocolate,” she said. “Do we have any chocolate?”

“No,” Doctor Grant said plainly. “But we have some Eden Compound. Why don't we try that out?”

“Way better than chocolate!” Evie beamed, the tiredness promptly disappearing from her eyes.

Doctor Grant was obviously unmoved on the subject of chocolate because he continued issuing directions. “Evie, grab that bag of trash over by the door and put it in the dispersal zone. Rick, please join me by the main console.”

The kids did as they were ordered. Evie picked up the bag of trash, which was mostly crumpled printer paper and empty tuna fish cans, and placed it on the table in the main testing area. There was a bull's-eye painted on the surface where she set it down, under a dry sprinkler nozzle.

Doctor Grant slumped into his chair in front of the computer terminal, Rick standing beside him. The doctor's fingers tap-danced on the keyboard, booting up a custom computer program. “After reassembling the formula, I fabricated a small test batch of Eden Compound. Just a few milliliters, but it should be enough to terraform this garbage bag into living, organic matter, as our early tests predicted. If this test is successful, we will produce a big batch, and then it's off to the Pacific Ocean to make your continent. Saving the environment before breakfast. That's my kind of work!”

Evie obviously agreed. “I can't wait!” she said. “Let's go!!!!”

Rick could barely believe it. After all the work they had done to get to this moment, to the Eden Compound, it was finally happening. They had found Doctor Grant. They were really going to make the eighth continent. Rick tried to imagine what it would be like: his own world to run and organize. He would be such a better arbiter than Winterpole ever was. He would create a peaceful, intelligent society, one where people would be free to pursue scientific endeavors and play all the video games they wanted.

And he would make his father proud.

Evie was so excited she was bouncing up and down like one of Dad's self-piloting pogo sticks. Rick was glad to see her smile. He had meant what he'd said to her. He wanted her crazy plan to work, for her. He wanted her to be happy.

Doctor Grant threw the switch, and the pipes thrummed, and the liquefied Eden Compound surged toward the sprinkler. Rick could feel the dream of the eighth continent becoming real.

The sprinkler opened up, and thin green liquid shot out in a cone. It ran over the outside of the garbage bag in sheets, coating it like a candied apple. The cool smell of ozone filled Rick's nose.