Read Freddy Anderson’s Home: Book 1 Online
Authors: John Ricks
Freddy Anderson’s Home: Book 1 (13 page)
I
was awakened at 9:10 a.m. It was the changing of the guard, and a heated discussion on the other side of the door woke me. I listened in.
“No, you don’t understand. The kid is sleeping. You can’t go in until he wakes up.”
Cool! Katie is getting protec
tive.
“Standard procedure states that during the pass-down, I check the area to ensure that everything is proper. I trust you, but I can’t take over the watch until I see the merchandise.”
“No problem. I’ll simply stay here until I hear him get up.”
I took exception to being called “merchandise,” so I decided to put a stop to it. I yelled loudly enough for them to hear me, “Hey, you two! Shut up! I’m trying to sleep in here.”
Both were silent for a couple of seconds, and then Katie said, “Well, he’s awake now, so I guess you can go in.”
I heard a knock on the door, so I opened it and said, “I’m not merchandise.” Then I quietly shut the door.
“Whoops, I take it he likes his sleep.”
“He didn’t get to bed until 5:23. He’s tired, and I would bet a little cranky too.”
“Okay, I’ll take over from here. I don’t think I started out on the right foot.”
“Yeah. See you back at the barracks … and good luck.”
I got dressed but remained in my room, making a list of the items I would need from Mr. Thompson’s store. Becky came to get me when lunch was ready. Maggie, the navy SEAL, followed right behind.
“Freddy, I’m sorry about waking you up, but orders are orders.”
“Tell the lieutenant I said to change them. I don’t want to be disturbed when I’m inventing or when I’m sleeping. I think she’ll understand.”
“
Warning, Freddy! Two persons
. Petty Officer Frist Class Katie Swanson and Petty Officer Second Class Marian Smith are within one hundred feet.
Warning Freddy! Two persons
. Petty Officer Frist Class Katie Swanson and Petty Officer Second Class Marian Smith are within ninety feet.”
The warning continued each ten feet until finally, at fifty feet, I said, “Position, please, and stop reporting.”
“Straight up.”
I went outside and looked up. They were just getting to roof level, parachuting in. They saw me, and I waved.
Becky, who had followed me, asked, “What’s going on?”
“The master chief of the SEAL team and I have a challenge going on. She’s trying to fool my equipment and sneak up on me. If she succeeds, then I’ll grant her a reasonable request.”
“Then why don’t they just walk up to you when you’re drifting?” Becky asked.
My eyes went wide. “Becky, I hadn’t thought of that. What a good idea. Thank you for warning me. I’ll guard against that from now on.”
Becky smiled. “Happy to help, Freddy,” she said, with a smirk at Maggie.
After lunch, I went into town and talked to the shopkeepers. They assured me they could get everything on my list. It all would be sent to the base for pickup, packed in the large, closed trailer that I had rented from Devin Miles. I paid in advance, which made everyone happy. I was assured that my items would be there within twenty-four hours.
The next day I received reports from the shopkeepers that everything was ready, so I let the Crains know that I would be leaving the next morning. I needed to pick up some items on the base and then go out to my home site to do some surveying.
We played games that night. Pretty Pretty Princess was one of the games, and we made sure Johnny won, which meant that he had to wear the princess jewelry and tiara. We laughed and laughed, and Johnny laughed with us. Then we watched the news for the weather report. At bedtime, I asked Maggie to have a car ready to take me to the base right after breakfast.
The next morning, I packed up all my belongings and paid Mrs. Crain, thanking her dearly for her help. She gave me a bag lunch. There were hugs and kisses from everyone, but Mrs. Crain had to pull Becky off me. I promised I would visit her soon. Becky handed me a small box and said, “Please don’t open this until you get to your new home.” I thanked her and left with tears in my eyes.
“I’m beginning to like this Becky person.”
Everything went blurry. I was getting stronger.
“Master?”
“He decided to leave, and she beat him, until her mother pulled her off.”
“It seems a strange way to say good-bye. However, you seem to be right again.”
I noticed that the Green’s face changed to controlled laughter every time it turned away from the Gray. I tried to use my mental powers to find out, but those abilities were not there. Still, I was adjusting. I would find a way.
Green’s face changed, looking upset. “None of that, creature!”
Everything returned to black. Darn.
T
he car was there and already packed with my stuff, so off we went. When we reached the base, they drove me directly to my supplies, as I had requested. I packed most of my stuff in the sixty-foot trailer and took out twenty little black disks. I placed them around the trailer and then shook hands with Maggie and Janice, my driver, and climbed on top of the trailer. I took the controls and energized the disks. I had never done this before, so I was a little shaky at first, but I raised the disks, and everything within their perimeter rose with them, including the dirt. (Note to self: work on that.) I was too busy working the controls to watch Maggie and Janice, but their feelings were nothing short of total astonishment. I ascended two hundred feet and slowly moved everything toward my new home site. Last night, I’d downloaded my big scanner into my pocket scanner and then tied it into the controls for the antigravity disks. Thanks to the lieutenant, I had complete directions and terrain data.
Once I reached the mountain peaks, I was glad I had worn a coat, as it did get cold crossing the mountains. It took me only fifteen minutes to reach the canyon. I set my load down in one of the few sections that was not contaminated. When I climbed down, I was standing on a rock only fifty feet from the water. The place stank, but my scanners showed that the air would not harm me. I started unpacking my equipment first. I took all the disks I had and placed them around the area. That was harder than I thought it would be, because the land area was over a mile wide at its widest point. I then went back to the trailer and took the controls. I turned on the disks and raised all the trash and junk. Of course, the disks took all the trees and bushes too, but they were also contaminated and would have to be destroyed anyway. I drove the disks together until I had one big pile. I set the pile down where it would cause no more damage by draining into the water, and then I removed the disks.
Next, I took out my laser and my tunneling unit. My tunneling unit was different from the ones I had previously patented; it had a reverse mode. Normally, I would drill a small hole with the laser and then point the tunneler into the hole while on its narrowest setting. As I slowly widened the beam, the hole would expand by condensing the rock molecules. What was left was a tunnel that had a condensed rock surface that was as hard as steel and many feet thick. It was almost impossible to collapse and wouldn’t rust or erode.
The reverse mode started out wide and moved inward, condensing everything into a little round stick. With the device on its widest setting, I pointed it at the trash pile. I set the distance for fifty feet and pressed the remote button. It only covered about 30 percent of the pile, so I shut it off and adjusted it to take out the right side. When I pressed the button again, it was in the correct position, but I had to adjust the length to include another fifty feet. This time, when I turned it on, it covered the entire length. I set the unit to Auto-Close slowly and then started unpacking my supplies.
I looked into the package that Becky had given me and to my surprise, there was a set of 14-carat gold dangly earrings, with tiny bells at the ends. A hair ribbon was wrapped around a note.
Freddy,
I find it most intriguing that you wear earrings. I have always liked boys that are different. They seem to be so much nicer. I truly hope you like these earrings—they are my favorite pair, and they will remind you to come visit me every time they ring. Use the ribbon to tie your hair back out of your face when you are working.
Enjoy!
Hugs and kisses,
Becky
This was a very nice thing to do for me. I could not wear the earrings just yet, as I might lose them in the trash, so I put them aside for later.
Some of the equipment I purchased was so heavy that I had to attach the antigravity disks to lift it. I spread everything out so that I could get to what I needed quickly. When the trailer was empty, I leveled it and then set it up to live in temporarily. By the time I had finished leveling the trailer, the tunneling unit had completed condensed the first section of trash. I adjusted it to set the trash down. When I turned the Molecular Condensing Tunneling Device (MCTD) off, the condensed trash started to roll toward the water. I panicked, running back to my equipment, trying to find something to stop it. Luckily, the trash stopped against a small raised area. It was completely solid; even the liquid was solid at that point. I had condensed a seventy-five-foot long by thirty-foot wide section down to only seventy-five feet by four inches, exactly one-ninetieth its normal size. I set the tunneling device to do the same thing with the left side and went back to my camp.
By nightfall, I was completely ready to spend a month out here by myself. The trash was condensed, cut into three-foot strips and piled onto eight steel leak-proof skids that I had ordered and had my supplies packed on. I chained everything down and then placed the disks around the entire group. For dinner, I ate one of the sandwiches that Mrs. Crain had given me.
The Gray said, “It sounds to me like this tiny one has something we could use.”
Everything went black.
“Yes, master. We have no condensing device. It would help on some planets in building dwellings.”
“Dwellings! Think of the power such a device would have in war. You scientists are all alike. You are always thinking of yourself and not the greater good of expanding our race. Continue.”
Chapter 22
Visiting the General and Cleaning, Cleaning, and More Cleaning
A
t midnight, I called the lieutenant and told the SEAL on duty at the quarterdeck that I was leaving my area and would be gone for about four hours. She had several questions, so I told her I was visiting the general, as the admiral did not have the proper equipment to handle my gift. Climbing up on an empty pallet and taking the controls, I started up the unit and checked the power supply to ensure there was still plenty of juice. I had thought of using the helicopter at the base but decided it would be too noisy. At first I flew close to the ground and very slowly. As I became better at controlling the piles of compressed contamination, I sped up and flew just a little higher. I didn’t want to get too high, as radar could pick me up and panic someone. The map showed me where I needed to go, so there was no problem finding the army base. I called the general on the way there but got his answering machine, so I dropped the piles on the largest, greenest lawn I could find, hoping that it belonged to the general. I climbed off, removed my disks from the piles, and then placed a sign on them that read: “Merry Christmas, General! Caution: Possible Hazardous Material.” After that, I climbed back on my skid and left.
I was seen leaving. As I waved, I heard gunshots, and one hit the skid. Thank the Lord I was now a thousand feet up and moving away quickly.
Once I was back home, I called in to let the SEALs know I was safe. The lieutenant got on the line and asked me to let them know at what point I would be coming out next time. She wanted to know what I was up to, but all I said was, “Ask the general; he shot at me!”
I went to bed. The trailer was a little cold, so I set up the portable heater that I’d bought from the sporting goods store and drifted off to sleep. Since I still had a lot of work to do, I got up early that same day, after having slept only a couple of hours. I ate another sandwich and went to work.
Removing the cause of the contamination was only part of the problem. I had to clean up the entire canyon, and that meant making some temporary changes. After mounting my tunneler and laser on a skid, I flew it up to the top of the canyon. Once there, I created a new path for the rivers, so that they flowed around the canyon and emptied into the ocean from the right side. That took most of the morning, especially since I had to dig down to the center waterfall and then block the entrance so the water would flow up, out, and around my property.
When the rivers were not flowing into my home site anymore, I cut huge slabs off the contaminated rock at the canyon bottom and condensed them into little cubes, only three feet wide. When I had made about forty cubes, I attached the disks and sent the cubes, twenty at a time, up and away. Following them with my scanners out over the ocean was boring. These rock cubes had little contamination left in them, and I knew the junk would disperse quickly, but I did not want to ruin the fishing, so I set my disks on full and let them drift straight up. When they were at the limit of their abilities, about two hundred miles, I hit the release button. The cubes were moving fast enough that they continued to travel up and out toward the sun. It would take a long time, but eventually, the sun would incinerate them.
I had miscalculated and lost two disks before I could reverse the polarity and have them drift back down to me. The movement of the earth and the pull of the moon were taking effect, so I had to work hard to get eighteen of them back, and they were hot from friction. The other two traveled along with the rock cubes. I did not make the same mistake with the next load of cubes. I sent only ten disks up and then eight more an hour later, and I took my time so there was little friction. That gave me time to get the others back. By dinnertime, I had jettisoned all forty cubes toward the sun and retrieved seventeen of my disks. One was crushed when I moved the cubes too close to each other.
Now I had the entire land section, including the riverbeds, clean. I checked with the scanner and found only one place where I needed to go deeper due to a crack in the rock. The next day, I took that section out and sent it on its way. Next, I went to the opening where the saltwater and fresh water met. This was going to be harder. I placed several disks on the side of the rock wall, and using the laser, I cut that section off. I moved it out and placed it in the ocean, just past the contaminated area. I continued this cutting and moving of rock until I had a wall blocking out the ocean. I filled in the cracks with sand, using disks to grab big sections of contamination off the beach. It took eight days to make a dam to hold back the ocean.
I used the disks again, this time to drift down to the bottom of the lake. When I turned the disks on and raised them, they took most the lake with them. Using this method, it took another three days to empty all the water from the lake, and then it was just a matter of cutting off the sides and bottom and sending them to the sun.
It took weeks, but when I was finished with the first phase of my plan, there was not even a hint that the area had ever been contaminated. The lieutenant would be getting worried about me. Time for me to check in. I called and told her I would be coming out the next day to pick up supplies. Then I called the stores and arranged for another delivery. I picked up my supplies the next day and came right back because I was eager to begin phase two.
While the water was out, I deepened the channel using the laser and tunneler. I evened up the sides and made them straight up and down. I condensed the surrounding rock so that it was better than having a fortress. The result was more wonderful than I could have expected.
As I flew on my platform from the ocean toward my canyon and into the lake area, I saw cliffs going straight up about eight hundred feet that were as smooth as glass. The area was over five hundred feet deep and straight down to a smooth-as-glass bottom, making it a total of 1,300 feet deep from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the riverbed. The colors were amazing. I left the three natural bridges in place, but I did condense the bottoms so that they would never collapse. If I had wanted to, I could have built my house on any one of them, and it would provide support for it, but that wasn’t my plan.
Upon entering the canyon from the ocean by boat, one now would see walls of polished rock. I left a couple of sections in the rock jutting out for a dock and three landing pads. I also left a walkway around this whole section of cliff. I evened out the sides of the canyon and condensed them. I made a stairway from the top to the bottom and set areas for waterfalls to plummet straight down. I dug out areas for the rivers to flow into the lake with a minimal amount of noise and almost no splash. I had rock bridges across the rivers and a lip of rock separating each land area, so if one flooded, it would not flood all the others.
I took sections of dirt from the riverbeds and the mountain to fill all my land areas. Sifting the dirt to get all the rocks and tree limbs and junk out of it was difficult, but I did it. I readjusted the disks to a low level so that they could not pick up anything over one pound. This left me with topsoil covering my entire canyon land area, which was terraced in three levels.
Each terrace level was twenty feet above the one below and had six feet of topsoil and fourteen feet of rock. I drilled holes in the rock for drainage. The top level had nine ramps leading down into the middle level, and there were six ramps leading from there to the bottom level. Each ramp was solid rock that went up over the lip of the next higher level. The bottom level had three large places where the terrace ramped down to the water, twenty feet below.
I placed the disks on my dam and removed it slowly, allowing the ocean to rush back in. I was glad I was sitting on top of the cliffs, because the force of the returning water would have knocked me down.
Because the dam was contaminated, I sent it up to the sun. I now had a deep channel that any ship could navigate; bringing in supplies would not be a problem.
I then set the rivers back on course and watched as they plummeted over the sides of the canyon into deep pools before flowing into the lake. While watching, I realized that something was wrong—I had made the sides too smooth! The water went over the sides of the cliff without enough turbulence to create white water. Bummer! I decided I had to redo that section, because I prefer whitewater falls. I did not redo the terrace waterfalls, preferring to leave them smooth.
I traveled my shoreline and removed all the contamination I found there too.
“I need this boy to work for me!”
Everything went black—well, almost everything.
“Master?”
“How many of my men could do what this boy did in just a few of his weeks?”
“Even if we had the equipment, none.”
“Exactly! Something is driving this child to a near-death pace. He is literally working himself to death.”
“Master, I think it’s that planet-destroying issue.”
“I would like to know what that issue is. Our scanners have picked up nothing.”
“Perhaps, master, he has already alleviated the problem.”
“Perhaps. Continue.”
