The Tomorrow Code

by Brian Falkner

“You’re right,” Rebecca agreed. “But first we have to prove it. So far it’s all just guesswork, and as Tane says, maybe we have misunderstood the message.”

  “And what if we tell the authorities, and they don’t believe us, and they alert Vicky, and we lose our chance to do something about it?” Tane said. “Then the end of the world will be our fault!”

  “Maybe that’s why the message said, ‘Don’t tell anyone,’” Fatboy considered.

  Rebecca said, “We need to know more about the project. I mean, what’s it about? What are they really trying to do? I think we need to go back to the island.”

  Fatboy shook his head. “She’s not going to admit anything.”

  “I know,” Rebecca agreed. “That’s why we have to go when she’s not around. When nobody’s around.”

  “Ooooh kaaay…” Tane drew out the words.

  Rebecca continued, “We get in there at night when nobody is working, and go through her files. Find out what she’s up to, then figure out what to do about it.”

  “That sounds pretty reasonable,” Tane said, “but what about her security? The barbed-wire fences and alarms.”

  “Worry about that next,” Rebecca said. “Are we agreed on the basic idea?”

  “Sounds pretty good to me,” Fatboy said. “And I might have an idea about the security.”

  Tane just nodded. “It’s okay with me.”

  Fatboy said, “Okay. We definitely do it at night, when nobody’s around. Wear masks so the security cameras can’t identify us later.” Fatboy idly doodled while he talked. Tane looked at the paper. It was a rough map of Motukiekie.

  Rebecca was busy on her new computer and soon had a satellite image up on the screen, courtesy of Google Earth. The lab was clearly visible, a large cleared area amidst the dense bush of the island. Northwest of the lab, along a narrow path, was another complex of buildings, consisting of one large block and a number of smaller ones on a hill nearby.

  “What are those buildings?” Tane wondered. “More labs?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “Accommodation. The scientists need somewhere to live, don’t they?”

  Fatboy studied the picture and added a few notes to his map.

  “Okay, but how do we get to Motukiekie Island without being seen? I don’t want to get arrested.” Rebecca was suddenly quiet and Tane knew what she meant. She’d already been arrested once. Who would look after her mum if she was in prison, or reform school, or wherever it was they sent teenage criminals?

  “Underwater,” he said with dawning awareness.

  “The submarine!” Fatboy snapped his fingers.

  “The Subeo Nautilus,” breathed Rebecca. “So that’s why we had to buy the submarine.”

  “This just might work,” Fatboy said, “but there is still the problem of their security system. I think I caught the first few numbers when Professor Green pressed them on the keypad.”

  “Me too!” Rebecca said cautiously.

  Fatboy closed his eyes, remembering, and said, “Five, one, something, maybe four…I couldn’t see the last numbers because of the way she was holding her hands.”

  “That’s right.” Rebecca nodded. “Five, one, and four. I saw them too, but they’re no good. We might as well have nothing without the last number.”

  “Three,” Tane said, “like the Powerball number.”

  “Are you sure?” Fatboy asked.

  Tane nodded. “I’m not totally useless.”

  Fatboy ignored him. “Okay, then. When? Any ideas when we should do this?”

  Rebecca said quickly, “Soon. As soon as possible. Before it’s too late.”

  Tane asked, “But how do we know when ‘too late’ is?”

  “That’s easy,” Rebecca said, staring Tane straight in the eye. “The day after Professor Green releases the virus, or whatever it is that she is going to do…that’s a day too late.”

  Fatboy said solemnly, “The sooner the better, then.”

  “Okay. Moving on. We still have more message to decode,” Rebecca said slowly. “Bottom P. Bat Map. Butt Mop.”

  “Butt Mop?!” Tane burst out laughing, a little too loudly. Then Rebecca got the giggles, which set Tane off again, and the combination was too much even for Fatboy, who laughed so hard his hat fell off.

  Exam week came and went, and Tane was convinced that he failed every darn thing. He couldn’t concentrate, he couldn’t focus, he couldn’t even remember. Things that he had known all year suddenly seemed like distant memories. Subjects he was strong in were all of a sudden his weak points.

  It was unfair, he thought. How many of the other kids sitting the exams were trying to solve cryptograms from the future and planning to break into a genetics laboratory? Well, just one other that he knew of, and she was going to breeze through her exams and probably still top the country despite everything that was going on.

  SEA OF GREEN

  As we live a life of ease

  Every one of us has all we need

  Sky of blue and sea of green

  In our yellow submarine

  —The Beatles, “Yellow Submarine”

  Imagine the biggest, best, most exciting toy you ever unwrapped on Christmas morning. Then times that feeling by ten. It still doesn’t even come close.

  Technically, this wasn’t a Christmas present, but with only a couple of weeks to go until the twenty-fifth, it certainly felt like one. The drudge and slog of exam week was over, and the freedom of the holidays was here. Tane hadn’t felt he had done very well, but that seemed of little importance now.

  He had felt like celebrating on the weekend and had been going to suggest something to Rebecca, but she was going out with Fatboy, so he had sat home by himself and watched TV.

  Tane stood at the entrance to the boatshed and stared at their brand-new, bright yellow, six-person submarine. Rebecca stood beside him and Fatboy beside her.

  The single one-hundred-fifty-watt bulb hanging on a piece of wire from the ceiling reflected off the rounded sides of the Subeo Nautilus, giving the whitewashed walls of the boatshed a warm yellow glow, which complemented the streaky orange hues of the sunset across the harbor behind.

  Arthur Fong and Wee Doddie, the mad Scottish engineer who had arrived with him, were still on board going through some final delivery checks, although that seemed a little bit late in the day considering that the sub had sailed, if that was what you called it, under its own steam from the delivery ship anchored out in the gulf, all the way up through the harbor, under the harbor bridge, and out through the upper harbor to Beachhaven. It had traveled underwater, as a bright yellow submarine sailing through the harbor might have attracted the kind of attention that Mr. Fong had promised not to attract.

  “What are we going to call her?” Rebecca asked.

  Tane looked at her and noticed that Fatboy’s arm was casually draped around her shoulders.

  “Tane, you’re the creative one. You think of a name,” Fatboy said.

  He already had. “Möbius Dick.” He thought it was a clever play on the name of the infamous whale.

  “You gotta be kidding,” Fatboy laughed.

  Tane bit back his annoyance. “How about just Möbius, then?” he suggested.

  “I like Möbius,” Rebecca offered.

  Fatboy shrugged. “I could go with Möbius.”

  Wee Doddie, who insisted that was his real name, climbed out of the top hatch grinning cheerfully. He was in his fifties or sixties, tough and wiry, completely bald, utterly mad, and had a gold ring through each eyebrow. His forearm was tattooed with a picture of two dolphins above the word Dreadnought, which Tane thought might be the name of a submarine he had once served on.

  He was their training instructor, according to Arthur, although Tane wondered if that was such a good idea. Not because of his knowledge or experience, which were undoubtedly excellent, but because of his thick accent.

  He was from “Gluzgi,” which eventually turned out to be Glasgow, and when he spoke, it was just a jumb
le of syllables that their brains instinctively tried to turn into English words. Only none of it made any sense.

  “Rate kids way rid utter gore. Giddy arses blown will tea coffee a waste-bin.”

  Tane looked at Fatboy who looked at Rebecca.

  Rebecca struggled to suppress a smile. “I think he wants us on board.”

  “You sure?” Tane asked doubtfully.

  “My uncle Iain talks like that,” Rebecca whispered. “What he said was, ‘Right, kids, we’re ready to go; get your asses below and we’ll take her for a wee spin.’”

  Doddie jabbed a thumb toward the open hatch and said emphatically, “Wedgie wheaten fur? An invite o’da queen? Giddy arses blown will tea coffee a waste-bin.”

  “Come on, then,” Fatboy said.

  Doddie shook his head and folded his arms as they climbed the short ladder onto the top hatch. “Do they nay spike English reindeer.”

  “I think I understood that one,” Tane whispered to the others as they climbed inside.

  Doddie’s voice came clearly in through the open hatch. “Aye, an than yer arse fell orf.”

  It was dark by the time they took the Möbius for her first dive, which suited all of them just fine, as the last thing they wanted to do was draw attention to themselves.

  Arthur and Wee seemed to accept, if not to understand, the need for discretion.

  It turned out the bright yellow color had nothing to do with the old Beatles song and everything to do with safety. It made the craft more visible underwater, and most commercial submarines were painted yellow for that reason.

  Everything inside was space-conscious. Not an inch of room seemed to be wasted, and every surface seemed to have at least two or three uses. The main control room of the sub was separated from the central cabin by a thick pressure door, operated by a wheel lock. In the event of a rupture or leak in the rear of the sub, they could seal the control room and steer the boat to the surface.

  The central cabin had three round portholes on each side, made of an impossibly thick glass that still somehow gave a good view of the surrounding ocean. There were floodlights built onto the hull of the sub outside the portholes on each side. In the central cabin were three bunks on either side.

  At the back of the main cabin was a small galley and at the rear of the sub, through another watertight door, was the battery room with its rows of sealed-cell batteries, tiny diesel-powered generator, and storage cupboards in every conceivable nook and cranny. There was a marine toilet in one corner of the battery room, which had been modified in some way for use in the pressurized hull of a submarine, but Tane could not understand most of what Doddie had to say on that subject.

  Everything was computerized and automated. They didn’t have to blow ballast tanks or adjust diving planes or any of the stuff Tane had seen in the old submarine movies, which was a relief. There was no Ah-OO-gah diving horn either, though, which was a shame.

  The Subeo Nautilus was controlled with a two-handled joystick, like that of a small airplane. Forward to go down, backward to go up, turn to go left or right. The top hatch was actually a pressure chamber, like an air lock, which meant that it could be opened underwater. The hatches were synchronized so that they couldn’t both be open at the same time while the boat was submerged. Of course, it paid to be wearing scuba gear when you did this, unless you were particularly good at holding your breath.

  The sub could go forward, or backward, although the steering was “krarp” in reverse according to Wee Doddie.

  A detachable buoy on the rear of the hull provided a number of important links with the outside world. Once released, it floated to the surface. It had an air intake, to provide air for the diesel generator as well as for the passengers; a radio antenna; and a solar panel that could recharge the sub’s batteries while it was underwater.

  But the bit that Tane liked best about the buoy was the gimbal-mounted video camera, linked to an LCD screen, which could be controlled with a small joystick on the console.

  “A periscope!” Tane exclaimed.

  Arthur Fong showed them how to change the Sofnolime scrubber cartridges in the carbon-dioxide filter. If they were staying for a long period below the surface, without sucking in fresh air through the buoy, then they would have to change the cartridges regularly or the carbon dioxide would build up in the craft’s atmosphere and kill them.

  They all paid particular attention to that part.

  Wee Doddie showed each of them how to run the sub and made each of them do it over and over until he was “suss fee” that they could “date purply”: satisfied that they could do it properly, Rebecca translated.

  They stayed well clear of the harbor bridge for fear that someone on the bridge or in one of the high-rise towers in the central city might notice the bright underwater lights of the Möbius, and they kept pretty much to the center of the harbor to keep away from any anchor chains of boats moored near the shores.

  It was black underwater at night, darker than Tane had expected. The lights penetrated a certain distance into the water, turning the black into a dirty, murky green, and there were surprisingly few fish. Tane had expected to see schools of them, but there were only a few, here and there, caught in the lights of the submarine.

  He was about to ask Doddie about it when a dead fish floated into the lights of the Möbius, belly-up, bloated, its head stuck inside one of the plastic rings of a beer six-pack holder. Tane held his breath and watched it drift slowly, diagonally, across the bow and into the darkness beyond the lights. Rebecca and Fatboy didn’t see it. They were busy playing with the periscope camera.

  It was only one fish, but it took some of the fun out of the test dive for Tane.

  Arthur left the next morning for Sydney, so they spent two full days, or rather nights, training with Wee Doddie and one day out amongst the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, well away from the eyes of any spectators on the myriad of yachts that painted the surface of the gulf in long loving brushstrokes.

  When Arthur returned on Thursday, there was a small ceremony that included the handing over of the keys to the boat (Doddie had been insistent that it was a “boot” not a “shape”) and the signing of all sorts of papers that basically said that if they drowned themselves, then it was their own silly fault and not the silly fault of Subeo UK Ltd., its shareholders, directors, or subsidiaries.

  “Are we old enough to sign these?” Tane whispered to Fatboy, hesitating over the dotted line.

  Fatboy shushed him. “If it makes Fong feel better…”

  Rebecca impulsively hugged Wee Doddie when the taxi arrived to take him and Arthur to the airport.

  She said, “Spooner greet cup laddies. Text February thing!”

  It’s been a great couple of days. Thanks for everything!

  Tane and Fatboy looked at each other with raised eyebrows, but Wee Doddie gave her a big mad smile and tousled her hair affectionately.

  “Suez can spike English off troll,” he said.

  THE MÖBIUS TRIP

  The next day, they left before dawn to be clear of the crowded harbor before daylight. This time of the year, the harbor and the inner gulf were awash with boats of all kinds enjoying the summer sun. Sailing boats, for yachting was a fire in the blood of many New Zealand people; motor boats, because some people just like to go fast; and a multitude of smaller craft, from Windsurfers to Jet Skis to kayaks.

  There were families and fishermen and foreign freighters. Tane hoped they wouldn’t run into any scuba divers, and luckily they didn’t.

  The plan was simple. Too simple, Tane thought, but they just didn’t have any more information to make more detailed plans with. It would take them two days to cruise up to the Bay of Islands in the Möbius. That second night, they would sneak onto the island, break into the lab using the passcode, and look around for…for what?

  He was glad that Rebecca was going to be there. He’d have no idea what to look for and wouldn’t even know it if he found it. But no doubt she would make sen
se of what was in the filing cabinets, or the petri dishes, or whatever it was that they found.

  And how to stop the Chimera Project. That bothered him the most. But he guessed that would depend on what they found.

  They stocked the compact refrigerator of the Möbius with five days’ supply of perishables and packed the small larder with bread and tins.

  There was no bath or shower on board, for space reasons, but Tane cycled down to the local boat shop and picked up a few bars of sailor soap, the kind that lathers in salt water.

  “We can take a bath every day,” he said. “Just open the hatch.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Fatboy said with a grin.

  Because there were only three of them, there was plenty of room on the three spare bunks for extra clothes, towels, and assorted gear that you would usually take on a camping trip. The three black wet suits, masks, fins, and assorted other gear took up one of the bunks.

  Tane brought a pack of cards, and Fatboy even squeezed his guitar on board. Rebecca brought her computer, which by now had a wireless connection that allowed her to access the Internet from anywhere. Even, they discovered, using the aerial on the buoy, from underneath the surface of the ocean.

  Exams were over, and whatever the results might be, there was nothing Tane could do about that until the next year. They were now on vacation, and when the weather shone out clear, blue, and calm on the first morning, it seemed that all was right with the world.

  Tane’s mum and dad had been given a story about a camping trip, which they had no reason to disbelieve, and Rebecca’s mum came down to the kitchen the night before they left while they were packing up the last few odds and ends.

  Tane could never quite understand, although he would never say this to Rebecca, how normal her mother looked. How sane.

  She wore jeans and a casual T-shirt, just like any other mum, around the house. Her hair was always brushed in a neat bob, and she always wore makeup. Not over the top, just a little, like his mum wore to go to the shopping mall.