We Built This City Read online

  “Don’t be so dry, son!” That was Dad, scientific genius and the Speaker of the Science Circle, a committee elected by Scifun’s citizens. Evie, Rick, and their mother were also members of the Circle. Dad leaned against a car-sized computer terminal and smiled. “I thought your joke was genuinely witty, and you should never be afraid to be funny!”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Rick rubbed his cheeks. He looked tired.

  “What’s going on?” Evie nudged him. “What do you need?”

  “Ah, right!” Rick cleared his throat. “Dad and I are in the middle of an important experiment. You know that gross residue in the ocean surrounding the continent?”

  “Ew, yeah, it’s super gross. That’s like, the little bits of plastic left over from when the eighth continent was the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

  “Super correct, honey!” Dad again. He gave her a goofy grin. “2-Tor would be so proud of you.”

  Rick said, “Anyway, we’re trying to find a way to get all that plastic out of the water. It’s not easy, but so far our current experiment shows promise. We’re trying to re-create the Eden Compound.”

  “That’s right!” Dad said. “The Eden Compound would turn all that plastic into harmless organic matter.”

  “But I thought the formula for the Eden Compound was lost when”—Evie swallowed, pushing a sad thought from her mind—“the Mastercorp research submarine was destroyed.”

  “It was!” Dad said cheerfully. “But we’re gonna make up a new compound from scratch!”

  Evie frowned. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression Don’t reinvent the wheel?”

  Dad dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Oh, that doesn’t apply to this. We’re trying to reinvent the whole car!”

  With a laugh, Evie said, “Well, that’s great! How can I help?”

  Rick said, “Oh, no, we don’t need your help with this. We’re busy with our experiment, but I’m due for a meeting with Winterpole. Can you be my substitute today?”

  “Ugh, Winterpole? But those guys are so boring!” Ever since the Lanes had made a truce with Mister Snow, the senior agent in charge of Winterpole’s activities on the eighth continent, Evie had to admit that everything had been running more smoothly, in part because of the micromanaging bureaucracy Winterpole brought to the table. Law and order helped keep Scifun safe; although, Mister Snow’s long ramblings on urban planning made Evie want to bring a pillow to committee meetings so she could sneak a power nap.

  “I mean it, Rick. I can’t take another two-hour lecture on hexagonal building formations.”

  “And why not?” asked a stern voice from the doorway. “Hexagonal building formations are fascinating.”

  Mister Snow stood at the entrance to the lab in his trim white suit, having arrived, as usual, at the worst possible moment. His dark hair appeared freshly cut, and his gray sideburns neatly buzzed.

  Evie winced. “Oh, hey there, Mister Snow.”

  “Er, ahem,” Dad said. “Very busy, yes, we’re very busy.” He scooted into his office. Rick followed. They shut the door, leaving Evie alone with the Winterpole agent.

  But not for long.

  “Don’t take it personally, Mister Snow.” Diana Maple came up the stairs behind her Winterpole supervisor. Diana was Evie’s age, but she looked like she had drunk some of Professor Doran’s supergrow serum because she had stretched four inches taller in the last two months. Now she towered over Evie, and her new agent uniform made her look smart and capable. Diana was so nice that when she sneezed, sugar and spice came out. Sometimes Evie couldn’t believe a cool, friendly person like Diana could work for Winterpole, and even crazier, that she used to be best friends with Evie’s archnemesis, Vesuvia Piffle. Either way, those days were over for Diana. No one had heard from Vesuvia in half a year, and Diana was one of the good guys.

  Mister Snow’s eyes moved between Evie and the closed door to her father’s office. “We expected your brother to debrief us.”

  “Nope! Me today. Hey, Diana. What’s up?”

  “Hey, Evie.” Diana waved. “Unfortunately, we have urgent news.”

  “It is so urgent I filled out three permission slips to move up our scheduled appointment and change its location,” Mister Snow explained.

  Diana nodded. “On a routine patrol, two of our agents made a startling discovery.”

  Evie raised an eyebrow. “What agents?”

  From behind them, Evie heard more voices and footsteps coming up the stairs. “All I’m trying to say, Barry, is that hoverships shaped like enormous bumblebees are off-message for Winterpole.”

  “Quite the opposite, Larry. Bees represent cooperation and hard work—an excellent depiction of Winterpole’s main objectives—while avoiding the usual links to snow and ice.”

  The two familiar agents Larry and Barry entered the lab. Diana chimed in. “I like it as a symbol. Winterpole gives us lots of busywork to do. That always makes me think of bees. You know, like a busy bee?”

  “You are a busybody!” Barry snapped. He clutched his chest. “No one understands my mission to show the world just how wonderful Winterpole can be.”

  “I understand it,” Larry said. “I just think it’s dumb.”

  “Two penalties!” spat Barry. “Insulting a Winterpole agent.”

  “Knock it off, all of you.” Mister Snow adjusted his necktie. “Proceed with your report.”

  Larry cleared his throat. “Barry and I just completed a perimeter sweep.”

  “That’s right!” Barry added. “We circled the whole continent.”

  “And what did you find?” Evie asked.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid,” Diana said.

  Mister Snow elaborated. “The agents sighted the Master-corp dreadnought off the west coast of the continent, over by the ruins of New Miami.”

  Evie gulped. She had spent time imprisoned inside the giant black robo-shark and didn’t envy anyone who caught a glimpse of it. “What was Mastercorp up to?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Mister Snow answered. “But I have submitted a request to Winterpole Headquarters that would allow me to speculate on the possibilities.”

  “You need permission for that?” Evie raised an eyebrow.

  Mister Snow gave her a stern look. “Miss, at Winterpole you need permission for everything.”

  But Evie could speculate without permission just fine, and what she came up with wasn’t comforting. Mastercorp had been trying to manufacture the Anti-Eden Compound, a substance that did the opposite of what the Eden Compound could do—it turned organic matter into inorganic materials like metal, plastic, and garbage. Mastercorp could be planning to turn the whole eighth continent back into a floating garbage patch.

  “This is serious. Diana, please call an emergency meeting of the Science Circle,” Evie said, worry creeping into her voice. ”We have to figure out what to do about this news, before it’s too late.”

  BENEATH SPIRE ONE, THE FIRST AND LARGEST TREESCRAPER IN SCIFUN, WHERE THE LANE FAMILY lived, was their personal storage vault. It was here that the Lanes kept their most treasured belongings, including everything recovered from the wreckage of Lane Mansion, which was destroyed in an unfortunate accident.

  Rick had mixed feelings about going into the vault. The dark chamber was filled with happy memories of all the fun past experiments the family had conducted, like the hover pogo stick and the universal birdcall translator. (They had concluded that the translator didn’t work, as it translated everything birds said as very bad words.) Many of the family treasures kept in the vault were broken or showed signs of serious damage from the accident. That accident had led to Rick’s worst fight ever with Evie and it brought back bad memories of her time away from home. He didn’t like thinking about that.

  Rick knew the vault could also contain clues to recreating the Eden Compound, so he reluctantly followed h
is father and sister through the vault, searching. After Evie had delivered Winterpole’s report to the Science Circle, they held an emergency meeting to decide what to do about Mastercorp. They devised a multi-pronged strategy. Winterpole would handle security and monitor the dreadnought’s movements. Meanwhile, Dad would continue trying to re-create the Eden Compound. He had invented that substance with Doctor Grant many years ago, and it had started Rick and Evie on their adventure to make the eighth continent in the first place. In case the unthinkable happened, and Mastercorp spilled Anti-Eden Compound all over the continent, a re-created Eden Compound would be the only way to reverse the effects.

  The thought of Mastercorp harming even one person or one building in Scifun made Rick bristle. He and his family had done so much to create the eighth continent, and now with its survival at stake, he would do anything to protect it. He’d even promise never to play video games again if it meant the continent was safe. The continent was a symbol of all his hard work, and of his family being whole.

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” Evie asked as they explored the vault.

  Dad raised a flashlight and aimed the beam at dark corners of the room. “Lab notes, old hard drives, anything that might contain the formula for the Eden Compound.”

  Evie sighed. “But, Dad, you came up with the formula yourself. Why can’t you just throw some ingredients together and guess?”

  Rick rolled his eyes. “Really, Evie? That would be like Dad asking you to ‘guess’ the exact wording of an essay you wrote for school a year ago, and if you got one word, even one punctuation mark wrong, your essay would blow up in your face.”

  “Exploding homework? Cool!” Evie flashed Rick a mischievous grin.

  Dad chuckled. “That reminds me of Poof Paper. One of my first inventions, when I was about your age, kids. If you did your homework on Poof Paper, and you were worried you weren’t going to get the right answers, just fold in the corners and poof! The paper would disintegrate in a puff of smoke.”

  “But then you wouldn’t have any answers at all!” Rick said.

  Scratching his chin in thought, Dad said, “Hmm, well, I don’t remember all the details. Hey, Evie. That reminds me. Go check out that filing cabinet over there.”

  Evie opened the dented cabinet. Peering into the top drawer she said, “Oh wow! Look how boring this is!”

  “Come on, Rick,” Dad said. “Follow me over here.”

  Rick tailed his father through the vault, until Dad stopped at an old steamer trunk covered in blankets. He pulled off the blankets and undid the clasps, then popped the trunk open. Inside was an assortment of dusty knickknacks.

  “A lot of this stuff I haven’t touched since college,” Dad explained. “But that’s a good thing. It means these are items untouched since I was a student working with Doctor Grant on the design of the Eden Compound.”

  Just the mention of Doctor Grant’s name made Rick feel a pang in his chest. The good old doctor had heroically sacrificed himself to save Rick and Evie’s lives and protect the Eden Compound, allowing them to create the eighth continent. Doctor Grant had taught Rick a lot about life and family and what it meant to be a good person.

  “Oh hey, look at this!” Dad pulled a stack of framed pictures out of the trunk. He handed one to Rick. “Look like anyone you know?”

  It was a photo of his father—he looked about ten years old in the picture—dressed as a cowboy. Sprout would have hooted and slapped his thigh if he had seen it. Young George Lane wore oversized glasses and sported the same dome of red hair that Rick had.

  “And check this out.” Dad held up another picture. In this photo, Dad was a teenager and wearing a mortarboard. It must have been his high school graduation. Standing beside him, with a proud arm around his son, was Rick’s grandfather Jonas Lane.

  Sort of. One of the sad truths Doctor Grant had told Rick aboard the Mastercorp research vessel the Cichlid was the secret of his father’s upbringing. It had sparked the young George’s lifelong obsession with cleaning up the planet.

  Rick glanced over his shoulder. Evie had stuck her whole head inside the middle drawer of the filing cabinet and was pulling out a bunch of papers. She wasn’t listening. Maybe now was the time to ask the question. Rick had been too afraid to ask all this time, out of fear of—he wasn’t sure, exactly—the answer? With Mastercorp back after them and Doctor Grant on his mind, he could no longer keep the question inside.

  “Dad . . . Who were my grandparents?”

  Rick’s father stopped still. He did not look up from the trunk as he asked, “What do you mean, son?”

  “Doctor Grant . . . He told me about the garbage dump. About the orphanage. How Grandpa”—Rick lowered his voice—“adopted you.”

  “I see.” Dad usually had such a goofy expression on his face, always trying to crack a joke and make Rick laugh. Now he had a somber look, deep in thought, or perhaps just sad. “I don’t know, Richard. Nobody knew, and perhaps we never will.”

  “But with all your success and money, didn’t you ever wonder who your parents were? Didn’t you ever think to go looking?”

  “Of course I did! So many times. But you can’t buy the answers to life’s mysteries, son. For a long time I was consumed with the desire to know who my parents were. It’s the question humans have been puzzling since the beginning of time: Where did I come from? I searched. I researched. I pushed my brain to its limit, yet I never found out who my parents were. And you know what? That’s okay. Because it doesn’t matter who they were. Jonas Lane was my father, and I’m your father, and you will never be alone. That is what matters.”

  Rick’s eyes felt moist, but before he could react his dad pulled him into a deep hug. When at last they parted, Rick glanced down and noticed another picture frame in the steamer trunk.

  “Hey, what’s this?” he asked, picking up the photo. The glass was cracked. “Must have been damaged in the crash.”

  The photo was a picture of Dad with Doctor Grant. The old doctor had a big grin on his face, the same grin he’d had when Rick and Evie had helped him complete the Eden Compound, over a year ago. Had it been that long?

  As Rick contemplated this, the back of the damaged picture frame fell off and landed on the floor with a crash.

  Evie gasped. “What the heck was that?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” Rick said. But his father wasn’t listening; he was staring intently at the piece of the frame still in Rick’s hand. Rick looked down at it. “What?”

  Turning over the frame, Rick saw something written on the back of the photo in black marker.

  “I didn’t know that was there,” Dad said. “That’s Doctor Grant’s handwriting.”

  Rick squinted at the messy script. “To learn my secrets, just ask my friend from Copenhagen.” He looked up, puzzled. “Copenhagen? Did Doctor Grant work with any scientists from Denmark?”

  Evie squealed. “Wait! Wait! I know the answer. I remember this from one of 2-Tor’s quizzes.”

  Rick did not like the idea that his little, easily distracted sister had solved a brainteaser before him, but he was stumped. “Okay, who is it?”

  Breathlessly, Evie said, “A famous scientist, from Copenhagen. It’s Niels Bohr!”

  “But he died in 1962,” Rick said.

  “Not that Niels Bohr!”

  It felt like Rick’s brain was a house and someone had run through turning on all the lights. “Doctor Grant’s cat! Niels Bohr! Of course! How could I be so dumb?”

  “It’s a mystery,” Evie grinned. “We have to find that cat. Come on!”

  BENJAMIN NAGG HELD HIS CLAWED, METAL HAND UP IN THE AIR. NARROW BEAMS OF SUNLIGHT pierced the tree canopy, reflecting off the gleaming surface of his artificial paw. It was quiet in the forest. The wind whispered through the trees. A freshwater brook murmured nearby. Inside Benjamin’s head, a voice was screaming.


  ANGLE EXTREMITY JOINTS. READY COMBAT POSITION. SUBDUE EMOTIVATORS. STAND BY. STAND BY.

  Benjamin clenched his robotic hand in a tight fist, ready to strike anything that came close. He was so filled with vengeful fury that he wondered if his metal skull would melt.

  AIRBORNE INTRUDERS DETECTED. INITIATE INTENTION SPECULATION. ANALYSIS COMMENC-ING IN THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .

  Intruders? Benjamin’s microphonic ears had not heard anything. His eyes, which had been transformed by the Anti-Eden Compound into high-definition cameras, could only see the slightest traces of infrared light through the treetops. The roboticized boy ran between two trees and ducked into his cave, the hideout where he had been concealing himself for months from the Lanes, Winterpole, and Mastercorp. His metal hands grabbed the camouflage door, an eight-foot square panel woven from branches he had stripped off nearby trees. He covered the entrance to the cave. Then Benjamin peered through the leaves, waiting for the intruders.

  His sensors picked up the sound of flapping metal wings. He recorded the ting sound they made and processed the audio in his databanks.

  AUDIO FILE IDENTIFIED: LIGHTWEIGHT ALUMINUM SEGMENTS. PROBABILITY 91.9%.

  Seconds later, Benjamin saw the source of the sound. Three kids dropped out of the sky and planted their feet in the dirt. They had robotic enhancements that gave each a strong resemblance to a different animal. One was a scrawny punk kid with a shaved head and a nose ring. He looked like one of the kids who rode a skateboard and used to pick on Benjamin back when he was human.

  The boy wore a leather collar around his neck and a black T-shirt with a white skull on it. His T-shirt had two slits running down the back, and emerging from those openings were ten-foot-long aluminum wings. The sound of the massive wings flapping was what Benjamin’s sensors had picked up. The serrated feathers looked sharp enough to sever bone. He was a human buzzard.

  The two other kids looked equally bizarre. There was a nimble girl with the legs of a cheetah, and she pounced around the wooded glade, sniffing the air and looking for something—Benjamin, no doubt. The third and final member of this ridiculous zoo was a tiny boy wearing glasses half the size of his face. A huge shell covered his back, like that of a giant hermit crab.