Rabbit Hole on Mars - Day 24 (Nov 24) 656 words

Chapter 24

“I feel like I'm supposed to be at the police station doing this, not my office,” Brian said as he paged through all the group photos taken of visiting high school students throughout the years.

“Just keep an open mind about...,” Kanptis said.

“I don't need a pep talk. I look at rocks all day long on Mars for a living and figure out which ones are more important. I'll recognize the kid when I see him.”

“Okay, take your time. We're just about out of time, but take as much as you need.”

“They call me the asshole around here.” Brian flipped another photo over, “I should introduce you to more people.”

Don and Samantha sat on a large beach towel at the public beach. The sun was going down on the other side of the lake. They had swam most of the day.

“So where did you build the rover?” Samantha asked.

Don said, “You know Potter Road?”

“Down by the old green house?”

“Yep.”

“Yep, what? You built it in the old green house?”

“Yep.”

“How? Is the power still on there?”

“I don't know who's paying for it, but no one ever turned it off. I started acquiring supplies. Random stuff from thrift stores. I got a bunch of air bags from a junk yard. Welded a few dozen frying pans together. Fit the rover inside a roll cage. It really didn't have a face, so welded a rabbit faced cake pan over the optics. Reminds me of Donnie Darko. Lifted it up into the air with some weather balloons and set off just enough nuclear fusion to get it moving towards Mars. No friction in space. All you do is wait several months.”

“How did you achieve nuclear fusion?”

“Well, I got most of the ideas from the Radioactive Boy Scout.”

“What's this pile?” Kantpis asked.

“That's the pile of kids who might be Don,” Brian said.

“What's the other pile?”

“I feel pretty confident those kids are too dumb to cause the fiasco on Mars.”

“The Radioactive what?”

“I'll give you the brief synopsis. In 1994, seventeen year old David Hahn attempted to build a homemade breeder reactor out of smoke detectors. He achieved a merit badge in Atomic Energy from the Boy Scouts, but no nuclear fusion. The FBI and EPA showed up at his house and treated his shed in the backyard as a nuclear containment area. Copy cats like Taylor Wilson at age fourteen became the youngest person to produce nuclear fusion. So I'm not trying to get the same results as them, I just needed enough to give my craft a strong enough push towards Mars.”

“Don you built a nuclear reactor? Are you crazy, what about the radiation?”

“It didn't go off until it was in space. It was either going to work and send the craft to Mars or burn up as it re-entered the atmosphere.”

“And no one saw the balloons and capsule going up into the air?”

“Not in the middle of the night. Potter Road is dead in both directions for miles.”

“How did you beat Jason there?”

“Well, I figured he stole enough equipment to make his own craft and shot it off himself. I built it all so I just intensified the nuclear fusion a little more to give me a faster fly time.”

“And now he's landing any day now?”

“I'm guessing. I'd like to call the cops myself, but if he's in hiding, he's definitely not going to come out if he knows the world is looking for him. At least this way, he's still motivated to come after me. I just have to keep pissing him off.”

“You and me both,” Samantha said.