Jack and the Geniuses Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER THE PRODUCT OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY, AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENTS, EVENTS, OR LOCALES IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  NAMES: NYE, BILL, AUTHOR. | MONE, GREGORY, AUTHOR. | ILUZADA, NICHOLAS, ILLUSTRATOR.

  TITLE: AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD / BY BILL NYE AND GREGORY MONE ; ILLUSTRATED BY NICHOLAS ILUZADA.

  DESCRIPTION: NEW YORK : AMULET BOOKS, 2017. | SERIES: JACK AND THE GENIUSES ; 1 | SUMMARY: TRAVELING TO ANTARCTICA FOR A PRESTIGIOUS SCIENCE COMPETITION, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD JACK AND HIS GENIUS FOSTER SIBLINGS, AVA AND MATT, BECOME CAUGHT UP IN A MYSTERY INVOLVING A MISSING SCIENTIST.

  IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2016047915 | ISBN 9781419723032 (HARDBACK) | ESBN 978-1-68335-065-1

  SUBJECTS: | CYAC: SCIENCE—FICTION. | SCIENTISTS—FICTION. | GENIUS—FICTION. | ORPHANS—FICTION. | BROTHERS AND SISTERS—FICTION. | ADVENTURE AND ADVENTURERS—FICTION. | ANTARCTICA—FICTION. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. | JUVENILE FICTION / SCIENCE FICTION. | JUVENILE FICTION / ACTION & ADVENTURE / GENERAL.

  CLASSIFICATION: LCC PZ7.1.N94 AT 2017 1 DDC [FIC]—DC23 LC RECORD AVAILABLE AT HTTPS://LCCN.LOC.GOV/2016047915

  TEXT COPYRIGHT © 2017 BILL NYE

  JACKET AND INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS COPYRIGHT © 2017 NICK ILUZADA

  BOOK DESIGN BY CHAD W. BECKERMAN

  PUBLISHED IN 2017 BY AMULET BOOKS, AN IMPRINT OF ABRAMS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PORTION OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, MECHANICAL, ELECTRONIC, PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING, OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER. AMULET BOOKS AND AMULET PAPERBACKS ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC.

  AMULET BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT SPECIAL DISCOUNTS WHEN PURCHASED IN QUANTITY FOR PREMIUMS AND PROMOTIONS AS WELL AS FUNDRAISING OR EDUCATIONAL USE. SPECIAL EDITIONS CAN ALSO BE CREATED TO SPECIFICATION. FOR DETAILS, CONTACT [email protected] OR THE ADDRESS BELOW.

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  FOR EVERY KID OF

  ANY AGE WHO

  SEEKS KNOWLEDGE

  AND ADVENTURE

  —B.N.

  TO CLARE

  —G.M.

  CONTENTS

  1. Attack of the Pizzabot

  2. An Unusual Invitation

  3. The Clutterbuck Prize

  4. The Bottom of the World

  5. Dining with the Enemy

  6. Some Kind of Trouble

  7. Happy Campers

  8. Mysterious Message

  9. Genius Is Overrated

  10. The Underside of the Ice

  11. Circle Marks the Spot

  12. The Worst Idea Ever

  13. Snowgoing

  14. A Desert of Ice and Snow

  15. The Call of the Seals

  16. World of Wonders

  17. The Future of Energy

  This Is Reality, People!

  Ten Absolutely Essential Questions About Antarctica

  The Density Difference

  1

  ATTACK OF THE PIZZABOT

  In the alley, Fred hovered above us, awaiting instructions. His four spinning blades buzzed like dragonflies. Ava tapped the cracked screen of her old smartphone, then dragged her finger slowly from the bottom to the top. Fred rose higher. “Should I start?” Ava asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Matt leaned forward and looked over at me, his head tilted slightly. “You’re sure this is legal, Jack?”

  Nope. Definitely not. I’d already checked, and this sort of thing was completely against the law. But the neighborhood wasn’t even awake yet. There was no one around to catch us, and we absolutely had to find out what was going on in the building across the street. “It’s totally fine,” I lied. “Trust me.”

  Fred spun, tilted forward, and zoomed toward his target. Did I mention that he was a robot? A plastic cube, basically, along with a camera, some electronic brains, motors and batteries, and miniature fans attached to four mechanical arms. A pretty simple drone, I guess, until you figure that my twelve-year-old sister built him from scratch. At our kitchen table. From a collection of spare parts.

  The name was Ava’s choice, and although Matt guessed the initials stood for Flying Robotic Electronic Drone, she swore she just liked the name Fred. By that point she’d also built a dangerously fast motorized skateboard called Pedro and a talking toaster named Bob. Pedro had sent me tumbling into a pile of overstuffed trash bags a few weeks earlier, and poor Bob exploded after some sesame seeds caught fire. That was a real shame. I liked Bob. He had a nice, light touch with bagels.

  As Fred flew higher, my brother and sister huddled around the screen of her laptop, but I crept out of the alley and watched the robot approach the strange building. We live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, across the East River from New York City, and new apartments and offices are always popping up around us. Most of them are pretty similar, but then this one went up last year that was just plain weird. Ten stories tall and skinny, the outside a chessboard of reflective-glass windows, the top floor covered with a ring of solar panels that resemble some kind of high-tech headband. The structure has no front door. Or back door. Or side door. No entrance or exit at all. None of the windows ever open, and because they reflect light like mirrors, you cannot see inside. A balcony was tucked into the north side of the building on the third floor, but did we ever spot anyone up there? An old lady in her flowery bathrobe drinking coffee? A bald man in a ribbed tank top scratching his hairy armpits as he stretched? A kid braiding the fur of her pet llama? Nope. Not once.

  So we’d started guessing what really went on inside. Hypothesizing, as Matt would say. I was hoping the new tower was the headquarters of an evil billionaire plotting world domination. Ava suggested it might be an internationally renowned superspy’s secret office. But Matt’s bet was typically logical. He said some company probably kept its computers there.

  After we’d been watching the building for months without discovering a single clue, I begged Ava to use Fred. I bribed her. I pleaded. Once I even pretended to cry. Eventually she agreed, and now our mechanical spy was rising up toward that third-floor balcony. I rushed back into the alley. The screen of Ava’s laptop showed the view from the robot’s camera, so we could watch the scene from Fred’s perspective.

  Ava used her smartphone to steer him forward for a closer look at the balcony. I held my breath.

  And I sighed.

  No spy telescope. No jet-pack landing pad. No laser gun mounted on a swiveling turret. And certainly no llama.

  “Told you,” Matt said. “It’s a data center.”

  Ava leaned my way and started to explain. “That’s where companies house the servers they—”

  “I know.” To be honest, I didn’t know, but it’s super annoying to have your genius brother and sister teaching you stuff all the time.

  Something flashed across Ava’s screen. “Wait, what was that?” she asked.

  I ran back out onto the sidewalk and stared across the street. Fred was gone. A glass door to the balcony was open for the very first time, but no one was in sight, and I couldn’t see inside, either. Had Fred fallen? There was no sign of him on the pavement below the building. I held my breath and listened, but I couldn’t hear the buzz of his fans.

  Returning to the alley, I peered over my sister’s shoulder just as the robot’s camera view went dark. The signal on the laptop blinked out. “Fred!” Ava
cried.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think someone inside grabbed him.”

  My heart started pounding. Ava had spent months constructing that robot. She’d worked so hard and grown so frustrated that I’d actually caught her eyes tearing up once or twice. And my sister never cried. Still, she’d stuck with it, and once Fred flew, she was as happy as I’d ever seen her. Now the drone was gone, and it was all my fault.

  Ava slammed her laptop shut with unusual force, shoved it into her shoulder bag, and stomped out of the alley. One side of her mouth peaked into an angry snarl.

  “Wait!” I said. “Where are you going?”

  “To get Fred.”

  I followed her across the pothole-lined street. “What are you going to do?”

  She locked her fingers and cracked her knuckles. “Shout, yell, make some noise until someone answers.”

  “You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”

  “Too bad. I’m getting Fred back.”

  As we squeezed between two parked cars with dented bumpers, I stared up at the balcony. “Let me try something first.”

  “It’s not like there’s a front door,” Matt called out from a few steps behind us. “You can’t just knock, you know.”

  No, but I could climb. Most of my experience was with trees, as I’d spent pretty much all of third and fourth grade hiding from my foster family in a backyard oak. Normally I only scaled buildings when we locked ourselves out of our apartment, but this was an exception. I hurried ahead of Ava and inspected the building’s walls up close. The edges of the square windows were deep enough to grip. The building sloped in slightly as it rose, so I wouldn’t be going straight up. I was sure I could make it. And if someone yelled at me? I was just a kid trying to get his toy robot back.

  Matt leaned back against the building, clasped his hands, and held them at his waist. I tightened my shoelaces, grabbed his shoulders, planted my right foot in his hands, and pushed myself up. At fifteen, my older brother was already taller than most adults, so he was a good ladder, and the climbing was easier than expected. The window edges were a few inches deep. The big problem was the windows themselves. You couldn’t see through them from the outside, but they were also strangely slippery, as if they were coated with some kind of invisible grease.

  “What’s wrong?” Ava asked.

  I told her. Matt ran one finger across the glass, then waved it below his nose and dabbed it against his tongue. “Interesting,” he said. “No smell. Not much of a taste, either.” He walked a few feet and swiped another pane. “All the windows seem to be coated with it.”

  “I wonder why,” Ava said.

  “Maybe it’s to prevent people from climbing,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s really encouraging.”

  Moving slowly, I focused on my grip. Between the first and second floors I stopped to rest.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  “Three meters,” Matt said.

  “Or about the height of a basketball hoop,” Ava translated. “Be careful, Jack. Take your time.”

  “But hurry up,” Matt said.

  A car turned the corner and started rolling toward us.

  “Act natural!” Ava said.

  She faked a laugh. Matt copied her. My task was a little more difficult. How are you supposed to act natural when you’re clinging to the side of a glass building at six in the morning?

  The car cruised past without slowing, but the neighborhood was definitely coming to life. Delivery trucks were rumbling down the avenue a block away. A small bell chimed as the owner of the German deli across the street propped open his door. I needed to hustle.

  An arm’s length from the balcony, I reached for the next window edge, and the fingers of my right hand slipped. I tried to push them against the glass, hoping to stop myself from swinging. But my right hand slid like a hockey puck across a frozen pond. The fingers of my left hand lost their hold. My feet lost contact with the building. And a second later I was airborne, falling backward—a bird without wings.

  My landing pad was going to be a wide square of concrete. I wrapped my head in my bare arms and shut my eyes hard.

  Matt shouted.

  Ava yelled.

  But the sound of their cries was muffled by an explosive hiss.

  I braced for a brutal slam against the pavement, then hit . . . something else. Instead of smashing down onto the concrete, I bounced. In midair again, I opened my eyes and glanced down. The hiss had been the sound of some kind of cushion inflating, and now I was gently bouncing to a stop on what looked like a bouncy house from a kindergartener’s birthday party. The material was smooth to the touch and almost shiny. I rolled off the cushion.

  My siblings’ eyes were as big as golf balls.

  “Did that really just happen?” Ava asked.

  “I would’ve caught you,” Matt said.

  No way he could have caught me.

  The three of us leaped back as the lifesaving surface collapsed. Within seconds it was completely deflated. Then the building started to slurp it up like a strand of spaghetti, sucking it back inside through a slit near the sidewalk, just below the first row of windows. Ava pointed, speechless. The gap was smaller than a mail slot. Once the cushion was completely coiled back into the building, Matt crouched forward to peer through the tiny opening. But before he had the chance to see inside, a steel panel slid shut. Whatever had saved me from broken bones or worse was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  Matt pulled at his hair with both hands. “I don’t like this,” he said.

  “Why not? That was awesome,” I said.

  “Someone must be watching us.” Matt turned, scanning the block, then scowled in the direction of the alley across the street. “That camera over there, on the fire escape. Was that there before?”

  He pointed at a black device about the size of an energy-drink can, with a lens at the top. Who cared about some security camera? I’d just been saved by a magical cushion after falling thirty feet off the side of a building!

  “I would’ve noticed,” Ava said.

  The camera suddenly unfurled two long black wings, sprang off the fire escape, glided downward, then flapped like a mechanical hawk, narrowly dodging the roof of a rusted van parked at the corner. The flying camera soared higher as it crossed the road, swooped over our heads, then dipped again and dropped straight onto the balcony of our mystery building.

  “Whoa.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Matt said. He grabbed the back of my shirt.

  “You two can go,” Ava said. “But I’m getting Fred back.”

  She walked along the side of the building, leaning in close to look for another opening. At a few points she knocked. She pushed against one of the windows as if it might pop open. Matt kept turning and glancing over his shoulder. Maybe he was worried that a fleet of black cars was going to roar up, screech to a stop at the curb, and spit out a dozen secret agents in dark glasses. Or maybe that was just me.

  “We already looked for a door,” I reminded Ava.

  “Maybe we missed something.” She raised her eyebrows at Matt. “Are you going to help or just stand there looking scared?”

  “Fine,” Matt barked back.

  As my brother crossed the road for a different view of the building, I wondered if there was an easier solution. What if we just had to ask nicely? I pulled out my pocket-size spiral notebook, dashed out a quick but sincere apology to the owner of the building, and tore the page loose. At the curb I found a chunk of asphalt about the size of a large green grape, wrapped the paper around it, aimed, and tossed my message up toward the balcony. Once the little rock left my hand, I wondered whether I should’ve stopped to think through my plan. An apology delivered by broken window probably wouldn’t be that effective. I closed my eyes and winced, waiting for the sound of shattering glass. Thankfully, my message landed safely.

  On the street. But
on my third attempt I succeeded. Without breaking a single pane.

  Ava returned to the front of the building. “What did you just do?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Hey,” Matt said, crossing back over to our side of the street. “Follow me. I think I know the way in.”

  “What? How?” Ava asked.

  We waited as a blue minivan clunked down the street. Then Matt explained as he led us back across the street to the alley. “I was thinking about rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?” I asked.

  “Yes, and their warrens in particular. For safety reasons they have multiple entrances and exits to their homes, and none are right next to the main living area.”

  “You think rabbits live in there?” I asked. The words were hardly out of my mouth before I started wishing I could reel them back in unsaid.

  “No, Jack,” Matt said. “I don’t think that building is occupied by giant hyper intelligent bunnies.”

  I tried to stop myself from imagining those rabbits. I was unsuccessful. Would they still eat carrots? Would they order takeout from the burrito place up the block? Would they wear tuxedos? Yes. They would absolutely prefer elegant evening attire.

  Naturally Ava understood what Matt was trying to say. “So the front door is here across the street?” she asked. “But where?”

  “Well, rabbits cover their entrances with leaves and brush—the sort of thing you’d normally find around a field or lawn or hill.”

  Now I was really lost.

  “The Dumpster?” Ava guessed, pointing.

  “Exactly,” Matt said. “It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to find in an alley.” He hurried over and tapped the side with his fingers. “Look. The paint has barely been scratched. I bet it’s not even a Dumpster at all. What if it’s some kind of elevator?”

  I opened the container’s heavy black lid. A hurricane of horrible smells attacked my nostrils. The stench was like a combination of rotting ham sandwiches and spoiled milk. “Nope, it’s definitely a Dumpster.”

  My brother’s shoulders sank. “Really?”