by Anna Wu
Chapter 9: The Force Field
Twenty minutes later Cindy was standing outside Jimmy's lab, swirling the last remnants of her hot chocolate around her mug. Jimmy had guzzled his down and was preparing his hover car. "I thought you said that it was too dark for you to be flying around," she told him.
Jimmy threw a few more inventions into the back of the car. "Well, we're going to be heading all around town. It might take a full day to do that without this. Besides, it's a cloudless night with a full moon. If I find a way to put some headlights onto this thing and drive fairly slow, we should be alright."
"Can I help?" Cindy asked while setting her now empty mug down on the ground.
Jimmy nodded his head. "I didn't design this hover car with headlights, but I've gathered a bunch of flashlights. Could you tape them onto the front of the car?" Cindy nodded and got to work. "Thanks. I've got to go take care of a few final things in the lab," Jimmy said while running back inside. He quickly popped back outside to grab the empty mug on the ground.
Jimmy quickly ran into the lab's kitchen, re-energized by the hot chocolate. He tossed the mug into the sink and then dashed out. He then ran up to Libby and smiled. He had known that no matter how angry Sheen was, he wouldn't leave Libby alone. He was sleeping on the floor next to her couch, his hand clutching hers. He must have snuck back in when me and Cindy were working on the hover car. "Sheen!" he whispered while gently shaking him. "Dude, wake up!"
Sheen moaned before finally opening his eyes. He jumped up and looked around. "Who is it? What?" he mumbled, still mostly asleep.
"Come on, wake up!" Jimmy whispered, a little louder, while gently smacking him on the face.
"Alright, alright, I'm awake!" Sheen muttered while shoving Jimmy off of him. "What is it?"
"Cindy and I are leaving to find out what jammed our communications. While we're gone and Libby's asleep, you and Carl are in charge. Got it?" Jimmy asked.
Sheen nodded. "Yeah, got it. Whatever."
Jimmy's face became serious. "But when Libby wakes up, she's in charge, ok?"
Sheen shook his head in disdain. "Wait, you'd rather have a crippled kid who's hopped up on painkillers in charge than me and Carl?"
"Yes, I knew you'd understand," Jimmy happily said while nodding his head and energetically patting Sheen's shoulder. "Gotta go, see you later!" he said while running back out of the lab. Sheen angrily stared after him for a moment before closing his eyes again and going back to sleep.
"Ready?" Jimmy asked while gripping the side of his hover car and jumping in.
"Ready," Cindy said while doing the same. Jimmy turned the hover car's key and began flying down the street.
"How far to the first camera?" Cindy asked as she lay back in her seat.
Jimmy performed some quick calculations in his head. "We should reach the first one in about ten minutes." They rode in silence until they came up to Baltic Avenue. Jimmy came to a stop as they came to the street sign. "We'll go on foot from here," he said.
"Where's the camera?" Cindy asked while taking out two flashlights from a supply box in the hover car.
Jimmy thanked her for the flashlight and flicked it on. "I don't remember exactly. I know that it's somewhere around the street sign. Just look around this area."
"Alright," Cindy said while staring at the various signs, sure that the camera was attached to one of them. After several moments of searching, she came up empty-handed. Frustrated, she sat down on a bench. "Jimmy, I think I found it," she shouted.
Jimmy came running up to her. "Where is it?" Cindy pointed to a lens on the ground. "Damn it, it was destroyed."
They both knelt down to examine the lens. "Looks charred," Cindy said while shining the flashlight on it. "Can you figure out what time it was disabled?"
Jimmy thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I could look at the control room's records back at the lab. Although I don't see the point; it was obviously hit around 8:15 tonight ... I mean last night."
"Shouldn't we check to be sure?"
"Ordinarily, I would say yes. We should be investigating every lead," Jimmy sadly explained. "But if the Yolkians took our parents, we may not have a lot of time before they kill them. I can't waste time checking things that we already know."
He pocketed the lens and closed his eyes for a moment to think. "Let's check out one more camera. If that one's destroyed, which I'm sure it is, then that's certainly what happened to the others. We'll visit the one on East Twelfth Street. That's at the edge of town. Maybe we'll also find what's blocking the communications there as well."
"Sounds like a plan," Cindy said while climbing into the passenger seat of the hover car. She rested her eyes for a moment as Jimmy revved the engine. After another moment of silence, she tried to recap what they found out.
"So, you think the Yolkians disabled all your cameras before the attack so that you wouldn't know what happened?"
Jimmy nodded his head. "It sure seems that way. Since the camera on Baltic was older, maybe that's why they didn't spot it at first. They probably were scanning for the best equipment. That is all that I use, after all."
Cindy nodded as well. "Now, how did they disable those cameras? Unless they disabled them with an electromagnetic pulse from a great distance, we should be able to see what destroyed them on the earlier footage."
"Right," Jimmy agreed. "But an EMP would have disabled a lot of other electronics in the city. I don't think that's what happened."
"You should check the earlier recordings from before eight o'clock after we get back," Cindy offered.
"If I have time," Jimmy said while groaning. He pulled the hover car to a stop and jumped out. "Well, that was easier than I thought," he said when he saw the camera attached to a street sign.
Cindy ran up beside him. They stared at it for a moment. The lens was cracked, and the circuitry had been torn out. "Seems more systematically destroyed than the first one," Jimmy noted.
"The one on Baltic must have been destroyed in a rush, after they realized what it had captured," Cindy told him.
Jimmy began pacing. "True. Now, let's see if we can find what the hell is blocking our communications with the rest of the world. I'm very curious as to what we'll…" he said before falling down onto the ground. "Ow! Son of a," he muttered while clutching his hand. He felt like he had just been mildly electrocuted.
"What happened?" Cindy asked while running up to him, but she also fell down. "Motherfu… ahem. What was that?" she asked while looking around and seeing nothing that could have hurt them.
Jimmy got up and grabbed a stick. He stared straight ahead. "I don't see anything," he muttered. Slowly and carefully, he pushed the stick in front of him. He watched in amazement as it sparked and began smoking. "What the hell?" he asked, amazed.
Cindy stepped back and grabbed a pebble. Jimmy also moved aside. Cindy tossed it as hard as she could. She saw a flash of light, and the pebble fell straight down onto the ground. "It's like an electric fence."
Jimmy shined his flashlight around. "Yeah, an invisible electric fence." He ran back to his hover car and grabbed a handful of inventions. He pushed a button on a blue square with a screen and two antennae on it. "I'm getting electrical readouts that are higher than anything I've ever seen, almost as high as my lab."
"Can you disable the…force field?" Cindy asked while tilting her head and staring at the invisible obstacle.
Jimmy put on a pair of goggles and flipped a switch. "These read electronic forces as yellow and render everything else blue." He paused a moment to wait for the device to work. "Holy cow," he muttered, amazed.
"What?" Cindy asked. Jimmy merely slipped the goggles off of his head and handed them to her. She slipped them on and stared in front of her. "Whoa."
The field in front of them was enormous. It was as thick as a house. Cindy turned around and realized that the vast force field was encompassing the entire city. She looked up and saw that it extended at least a mile into the sky. "It's ...amazing,
" she said.
Jimmy immediately threw the majority of his inventions back into his hover car. "None of these are going to do any good. It would be like tearing down a brick wall with a screwdriver." He picked up the largest invention. "I don't even think this is going to work."
"What is it?" Cindy asked.
Jimmy began turning the dials on the device fully to their right and shoved the cumbersome box as close to the field as he dared. "It's a small EMP," he said with a hint of pride. "It's not extremely powerful, because if it was it could become a devastating weapon if it fell into the wrong hands. Even at full power, it could only knock out the electricity and circuitry on one block."
Jimmy flicked a few more switches and grabbed a small detonation device. "This is going to fry my hover car's circuitry as well. Get into the hover car and hit the red, blue, and green buttons in that order after I've activated the pulse. That will initiate the recharging sequence."
Cindy remembered the sequence and jumped into the hover car. "Close your eyes," Jimmy instructed while doing so himself. He ducked and pressed the button.
A wave of brilliant purple and blue light encompassed the two children. Even through the cover of their eyelids, the light made their eyes water. After a moment, Jimmy opened his eyes, only to see swirling purple dots.
"Activate the sequence," he instructed Cindy. Cindy pushed the buttons in his hover car, and a low humming sound could be heard. She hopped out of the car and struggled to walk over to Jimmy, her eyes also hurt.
Jimmy picked up another stick and held his breath for a moment. He then thrust it forward, only to see it spark once again. Cindy, angry, tossed another rock. It sparked just as the first one did, and then fell onto the ground.
Jimmy cursed under his breath and jammed his hands into his pockets. "Well, there's nothing more to do now."
Cindy seemed confused. "Shouldn't we use those goggles to see if we at least weakened it?"
Jimmy shook his head. "All the circuitry's now fried. The hover car will take a half hour to recharge. Everything else has to be fixed at my lab."
"So we have to wait half an hour before we get to go home?" Cindy sadly asked. Jimmy just nodded.
Jimmy looked down at his digital watch, but of course the screen was blank, having been hit by the EMP. "Cindy, you have the time?"
Cindy struggled to see her watch, having only the moonlight to aid her. The flashlights had all been disabled as well. "The batteries just died, but it looks like it's a little past two."
The fatigue that the hot chocolate had washed away suddenly came pouring over him, only twice as worse as before. It had been a hectic day, and he hadn't slept in nearly twenty hours. "Great," he sadly muttered.
They both slowly entered the hover car and lay down, yawning. "If we have to wait an hour," Jimmy said while stretching.
"Then we might as well rest our eyes," Cindy finished while resting her head in her arms.
"Just for a few minutes," Jimmy whispered. Cindy, already asleep, silently agreed.