by Matt London
Evie nodded.
“Promise?”
“I promise,” she answered. But secretly, she could not help but think that the best way to help her father, and make something of herself, was to build the eighth continent.
THE NEXT MORNING RICK AND EVIE WOKE UP EARLY TO SEE THEIR MOTHER OFF ON HER BUSINESS trip. “Remember,” she told them before she left, “the best way to keep on the right side of Winterpole is to behave. Don’t worry. They will free your father soon enough, as long as you don’t do anything else to upset them.”
Mom’s hovership blasted into the air and flew out of sight. Rick kicked a pebble down the asphalt driveway. His mother was off to Barbados, while he was stuck here, grounded. Rick had never been grounded in his life. It felt worse than when he melted the hard drive with his grammar homework. His father seemed bored with him, and now his mother thought him no better behaved than Evie. Everything was in jeopardy—his family, Lane Industries, his permanent record, and the eighth continent. Meanwhile, he had to get Dad out of that EMP-equipped squid-cuff before he blew up all the video games in the house.
A window on the fourth floor slid open, revealing his father perched on the sill. Dad had been careful to avoid all technology, and the lack of mechanical contact was making him act kind of funny. Now he needed their house helper robot to do everything for him—from a safe distance, of course. The computer was off-limits. He couldn’t use the TV remote. He had gotten careless and tried to make himself a bologna sandwich (no crusts) and blew up the refrigerator when he opened it. Now they were all drinking warm soda pop, and Dad was still hungry.
“Kids!” he called from the window. “Hey! Come up here.”
Rick’s parents’ bedroom was the only place where Dad was safe from his squid-cuff’s EMP. Mom had a strict no-screens-in-bed rule, so there was nothing in the room to explode.
When Rick, Evie, and 2-Tor entered, they found their father still in his pajamas—a flannel shirt and pants with toucans on them. He paced the floor in agitation, wearing a hole in the soft carpet.
“I’ve been thinking about your mission.” When he spoke, it was in abrupt spurts, each phrase like a little arc of electricity. “You’ve been home for too long. You must continue your quest to make the eighth continent.”
Sometimes Rick felt like Mom Junior talking to his dad. “Don’t you ever listen? Mom said we had to give up our quest, for our safety and so you won’t get taken away. Think of what would happen to Lane Industries if you’re sent to prison. Everything you’ve built would disappear.”
“Never mind that,” he said. “I’ll worry about your mother. You just worry about finding Doctor Grant.”
“‘Never mind that’?” Rick wondered how someone so dense could be related to him. “What on earth could be more important than that?”
2-Tor squawked in displeasure. This was not a turn of events that Mom would be happy to hear about.
Such a fact didn’t seem to deter Rick’s father, however. “Son, do you still have my half of the formula that I gave you?” he asked.
On reflex Rick placed his hand on the portable drive in his pocket. His father had entrusted him with his half of the Eden Compound—the family legacy.
“Rick, I know you think I’m crazy, but this risk is worth it. You want to save the family and protect the company. That’s what I want too. But you can’t go back. We have to go forward, and the eighth continent is right in front of us. The continent is the solution. Keep that hard drive safe. When you find Evan, combining both halves of the formula will be the only way you can create the Eden Compound.”
“What if we can’t find him?” Rick asked, worried. “What if the Eden Compound doesn’t work? What if . . . what if we fail?”
“We won’t,” Evie said emphatically. “We can’t.”
Her father flashed her a proud smile. “I love you, my darlings. I wish I could hug you.”
Evie took off her backpack, which contained her tablet. Then she took her phone out of her pocket and gave it to Rick. After making sure she had removed every last bit of technology from her body, she rushed into her father’s open arms.
George gave her a big squeeze. “Take care of your brother,” he said. “If he worries too much, he’ll get warts.”
“I heard that,” Rick said, feeling a little left out.
“Shhh . . .” their father hushed. “My bright, brave brood. You can accomplish anything if you believe in yourselves and trust each other.”
Evie sniffed, not even trying to hide the tears that were creeping up on her.
“Goodbye, sir!” 2-Tor said, blubbering with virtual emotion. He stomped toward Dad with open wings.
Evie screamed, “2-Tor! No! Wait!”
But it was too late. 2-Tor entered the anti-tech bubble, and the EMP reacted with such force that it blasted 2-Tor across the room. Rick’s dad dropped to his knees in pain.
Sparks flew out of 2-Tor’s amber eyes. Acrid smoke poured from his beak.
Rick ran to the robot’s side and grabbed him, but his metal casing was hot to the touch and burned Rick’s hand. “Ow!” he winced. “2-Tor! Are you okay?”
The robot’s reply was stiff. “Good morning, Richard. It is time for a quiz.”
“No, it’s not. It’s time to get up.” He helped the birdbot to his feet.
“You must leave quickly,” his father grunted. “We are getting careless, and there is no time to lose.”
“2-Tor can’t go like this.” Evie gestured toward the smoldering robot.
Rick agreed. “Evie’s right, Dad. And Evie’s never right.”
“Yeah!” Evie said, then, “Wait a minute.”
“No debates. Get that bird on the Roost and get out of here!”
THE ROOST FLEW FROM GENEVA HEADING NORTH BY NORTHWEST, OVER FRANCE, THE ENGLISH Channel, and the handsome city of London, then high-fived Ireland and cut over the North Atlantic toward Greenland. 2-Tor navigated, while Rick manned the controls. Evie would never admit it to her brother, but Rick was an exceptional pilot.
Seeing the world from this height left Evie feeling frustrated. Every beach wore a necklace of accumulated garbage—sewage and seaweed and scuttlebutt, all scrambled together. She did not have to look hard to see signs of trash choking the environment.
Evie needed something to take her mind off it. She turned to Rick. “What do you think Doctor Grant is going to say when we tell him that we’re Dad’s kids, and we want to make a new continent with their old formula? I bet he’s going to be super surprised and super excited to change the world.”
Rick shrugged. “I dunno, Evie. The guy has been at sea for a long time, assuming he is even still there. He went into hiding years ago. Maybe he left the ocean years ago too.”
“But then he could be anywhere!” Evie slapped her forehead. “Oh no . . .”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure that if he’s gone, there will be at least some clue to help us find our way to him. Besides, maybe he finished building the seastead, and he’ll give us a grand tour!”
Evie hoped that was true. Imagine, an entire city floating on the water. Perhaps some modern-day pioneers had already moved into the houses built alongside the artificial roads. Maybe entrepreneurial families had already established ordinary lives there. Something Evie’s father had taught her was that progress doesn’t really happen until something extraordinary becomes normal. All the great scientific breakthroughs of the previous century were terrifying when they were first presented. Cars, airplanes, the Internet. When social robots hit the market, people thought there would be an uprising and machine overlords would enslave them. But that was just ignorant fear. Maybe human beings would enslave each other if they had the means and the will to do it, but robots would never be so cruel. It was the same with her father’s inventions. When he first displayed his hovership technology, the only thing anyone talked about was
the danger. But he had proven them all wrong. Now those same protesters could not imagine life without a speedy hover engine.
Rick grabbed Evie’s arm, distracting her from her thoughts. “We’re flying over Iceland now. Look!”
“Wow!” Evie said, peering out the window at the fields below, trying to orient herself. “It’s so green!”
“Haha. Yup! Iceland is green, and Greenland is ice.”
“How come?”
“Children,” 2-Tor interrupted, “your parents have instructed me to issue you a quiz at certain times in your travels, so that you remain academically efficient.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, 2-Tor, we know. You quiz us all the time.”
2-Tor apparently wasn’t dissuaded. “It is time for a quiz,” he said. “Testing initiated.”
“Oh, here we go.” Evie rolled her eyes. “This should be fun.”
“It is fun,” Rick said, “assuming you study and know the answers.”
“Children,” 2-Tor growled like an overworked refrigerator, “your parents have instructed me to issue you a quiz at certain times in your travels, so that you remain academically efficient. It is time for a quiz. Testing initiated.”
Rick and Evie exchanged a worried look. This was not normal.
“Uh . . . yeah, 2-Tor,” Evie said. “You just mentioned that.”
“Quiz time!” 2-Tor said. “Geography. True or false, Erik the Red discovered Greenland in the year 983.”
Rick started to speak when Evie cut him off. She wanted to give a correct answer for once.
“True!”
“Bzzzzt!” 2-Tor flapped his wings in irritation. “False. Erik the Red discovered Greenland in the year 982.”
Rick groaned. “Come on, Evie. I knew that one.”
“Mythology. What Arctic sea creature was wrongly thought to be the mythical unicorn?”
“Narwhal!” Rick cheered.
“False!” 2-Tor spat. “The answer is the kangaroo.”
Rick glared. “That’s wrong, 2-Tor. Kangaroos come from Australia, not the North Pole.”
“Incorrect,” 2-Tor spat back. “The correct answer is hydrogen-hydrogen-oxygen. More commonly known as H2O.”
Evie clung to her brother’s arm. “Ricky . . . 2-Tor is scaring me.”
2-Tor spread his wings. One hit the wall of the cockpit. Dong! “Answer the question, children. Physics. What are the four major forces involved in flight?”
“Gravity?” Evie started to say.
“Shh!” Rick hushed her. “She means weight, 2-Tor. The term is weight. It’s the downward force that objects in flight need to fight against to stay in the air.”
“Correct, Richard,” 2-Tor said. “You have sixty seconds until system shutdown.”
The calm and measured way 2-Tor announced that made Evie’s stomach curl into knots. “System shutdown? Shutdown?! What’s that?”
2-Tor’s voice took on a dark, haunting tone. “Your parents linked me to the electrical systems of the Roost. I have been instructed not to let you fly anywhere if you do not pass regularly scheduled quizzes. I will disable the Roost’s engines if you fail.”
Rick’s eyes filled with panic. “But we’re flying right now, hundreds of feet in the air. You can’t shut off the engines— we’ll crash.”
“You are quite mistaken, Richard.” 2-Tor waggled a feather at him. “Sensors show that we are currently parked in front of Lane Mansion.”
Evie looked out the window. They had passed Iceland and were over the freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean. If the crash didn’t kill them—and it almost certainly would—the freezing waters would do them in.
“Please identify the remaining three major forces of flight.”
“This is ridiculous,” Rick said. “I’m going to try to land the Roost before 2-Tor brings it down.”
“That answer is incorrect,” 2-Tor said. “Forty-five seconds until system shutdown.”
“Can’t you just answer the question?” Evie asked.
Rick ignored her, which only served to make Evie even more afraid than she was already. Her brother was always eager to give the answer. Was it possible . . . he didn’t know it?
Rick pulled on the throttle, but nothing happened. “2-Tor!” he shouted at the robot. “Why can’t I pilot the Roost?”
2-Tor answered plainly, “It would be dangerous to attempt to administer a quiz while you were distracted by flying the Roost. I have initiated the autopilot for your safety.”
“This is so messed up!” Evie screamed. “2-Tor, stop this at once.”
“That answer is incorrect,” 2-Tor said. “Thirty seconds until system shutdown.”
“Rick, do something!”
“I’m sorry, Evie. I don’t remember. I know I read about it, but I didn’t have time to study my physics notes before we left.”
Evie took him by the shoulders. “Rick—you have to remember. Please, think!”
“Twenty seconds until system shutdown,” 2-Tor said.
“Okay, okay.” Rick squeezed his chin like it was about to fall off. “So weight is what pushes the airplane down. In order to prevent that from happening, you need to be able to keep air moving across the wing. This causes . . . um . . . uh . . . lift?”
“Correct. Fifteen seconds remaining.”
Rick swallowed hard and took a deep, nervous breath.
“It’s okay, Rick,” Evie said. “You can do it. I believe in you.”
“There’s also the force that, um . . . Evie, I can’t remember!”
“You can! Think!”
“There’s the force that propels the airplane forward. It’s called, um, thrust?”
“Correct. Ten seconds remaining. Preparing to disable engines in ten seconds.”
“Evie! I can’t come up with the last force,” Rick said.
“Five seconds remaining.”
“Oh no!” Evie wailed. “Having a robot tutor is such a drag.”
“Four.”
“That’s it!” Rick cheered. “Drag! The friction moving between the object and the air. It’s air resistance. That’s the fourth major force of flight.”
“Three.”
“What?!” Rick and Evie screamed together.
“Two.”
Rick grabbed 2-Tor around the middle and shook him as hard as he could. “2-Tor! Stop the countdown! I got the question right.”
“One.”
Evie hung on to the back of the pilot’s chair. The hum of the hover engines died. Her stomach did a somersault into her throat as the Roost plummeted toward the ocean below.
ALARMS SCREAMED IN RICK’S EARS. THE ROOST FELL LIKE A FLAMING ARROW, FILLING RICK WITH an intense feeling of weightlessness that nearly made him puke. 2-Tor flapped his wings and screeched a sound like a radio blasting Top 40 singles at full volume.
“Rick!” Evie screamed, clinging to him. “We have to do something! Override the system.”
“I know!” Rick shouted over the noise.
“Quiz failure! Quiz failure!” 2-Tor squawked.
Rick dove under the flight console and snapped open the access hatch. A mess of colored wires greeted him. “Evie, grab the flight stick. When I reroute the auxiliary power, you’re going to have to straighten out the Roost so we don’t crash.”
“I’m already doing it,” she said, pulling on the flight stick as hard as she could.
Rick tried to remember how to rewire the ship, but all he could recall was something about an empty socket.
“Impact in ten seconds,” 2-Tor screeched.
Rick had had just about enough of countdowns.
And then he saw it, a vacant white socket behind the wires, looking at him like a surprised ghost. He disconnected the main power plug and stuck it into the auxiliary socket.
A million needle
s struck his arm all at once. He recoiled in pain at the electric shock. “Argh!”
2-Tor’s voice sounded distant and tired. “Power restored. System operational.”
The reactivation of the Roost’s engines screeched like a robot symphony.
“Woo-hoo!” Evie cheered, pulling back on the flight stick. But then she said the worst two syllables Rick had ever heard her say. “Uh-oh.”
“‘Uh-oh’? What’s uh-oh?” Rick asked, climbing out from under the dashboard.
The flight stick shook violently, and Evie struggled to keep her grip on it. “Umm . . . we’re coming in a little bit too fast.”
“A little? We’re going two hundred miles per hour! Pull up, Evie! Pull up!”
He put his hands over hers and pulled with all his might. Together they adjusted the angle of the Roost so that the engines pushed down, allowing the repulsor buffer to kick in.
But still they fell.
Rick held his breath as the bright blue ocean filled the windshield.
Then everything went black as the Roost hit the surface, cutting through the dark water like a diving rod. Rick toppled to the cockpit floor. 2-Tor lost his balance and tipped over. Rick rolled out of the way just an instant before 2-Tor struck the floor with a tremendous DONG that echoed throughout the hovership.
Being wood, the Roost floated, bobbing to the surface a few seconds later. The hovership balanced on the ocean like a message in a bottle, upright with quite a bit of tilting.
Evie crawled out from under the control console. She put a hand over her chest, gasping for breath. “We made it.”
Rick flipped 2-Tor over and inspected the front of his robot body. “2-Tor, are you okay?”
2-Tor’s eyes shot sparks. “Internal battery functioning at nine percent.”
“What got into you, you stupid bird?” Rick asked.
2-Tor tapped his feathers together awkwardly. “When I was exposed to the electromagnetic pulse from your father’s detention device, it must have corrupted some of my memory. My solid-state drive contains all the programs and code, millions and millions of lines, that allow me to function. Some subsection of my master program must have been altered, or damaged, creating the series of catastrophic errors we just experienced. By my bolts, I am so embarrassed. I am sorry, children. Are you all right?”