The Secret of Utopia Colony

"Where did you see Goro last?" Raven asked Arthur. "I could show you on a map," Arthur answered. "Of the mines? There aren’t any, I checked," Raven said. "Oh, well we have one," Arthur said. "We got it from the captain’s quarters on the Phantasm, you know, that crashed starship that was pushed up onto the beach during the tsunami? Well we found an old safe in it, with maps of the mines, the old city of Utopia Colony, and the outpost." "You have a map?" Raven repeated in surprise. "Did you bring it with you?" "No, that’s why I asked if you had one," Arthur answered. "But anyway, you know the passage from the cavern where they store their food and chemicals, to where they’re mining? That’s where we saw him last. He followed Mechi back up the passage to the storage cavern, and never came back down." "You actually saw them mining?" Samantha inquired sounding even more surprised...

When the kids got back to the outpost, they found Ms. Rylie waiting for them at the door. "Where have you been?" she demanded. "I’ve been worried sick about you." She looked sick, and even while she was speaking she trembled a bit, and Arthur jumped forward and caught her as she fainted. "You shouldn’t be out here," he said, helping her indoors, and to the couch. "Sorry we worried you. Samantha, bring her some water." Ms. Rylie was feeling a bit better after she drank the water, but it was clear she was really sick. "We’d better not tell her about Goro," Samantha whispered to Kiyoko. "It’ll just make her worry, and there’s nothing she can do." "I’ll help you to bed," Samantha offered her mother. As soon as Samantha and her mother left, Arthur went to look for Os'Surale. ‘He’s not back yet,’ he realized as he looked into the garage and saw the old hover-car was still missing. ‘Great, then he can’t know we took his sub.’ He went back inside, and found Kiyoko pacing back and forth in the living room, looking out to sea...

Arthur, Kiyoko, and Samantha were locked up in the small room for what seemed like days. Kiyoko finally stopped crying, and then fell asleep. Arthur and Samantha couldn’t sleep, so they decided to look around the room, and found there was more in the room than they had first noticed. The room looked like it had once been a storeroom of some kind, and the walls were lined with shelves. Most of the shelves were bare, but there were a few boxes left.  Samantha got up to look at them. "They’re old," she said as she carried one of the boxes to the table. "This one is filled with old tools. Look, a hammer like Goro’s," she said pulling out a hammer. "Made in Sri Vijaya Colony, Singapore Technologies Tool Co., And look, an old wrench of some kind. "Made in Etruria Colony, Rasenna Tools Co. Well, you wanted a souvenir like Goro’s, you take the hammer. I’m taking the wrench." "I didn’t want one the exact same as his," Arthur said, getting up to look in the box himself. "Here see this? I’m taking this."...

The kids stayed in the end of the passage, trying to see what was in the cavern, letting their eyes adjust to the bright light. There was a pile of boxes in the cavern, but nothing else. There were no people, but they could still hear the sound of machines coming from somewhere. "Let’s go back," Kiyoko said scared that they could get caught. "No, let’s look around a bit more." Arthur said. "There’s no one here, lets see what’s in those boxes." Kiyoko didn’t really want to, but everyone else did, so they quickly ran over to the pile of boxes, and started looking at them. "This looks like its all food," Samantha said. "Look, canned tofu, and vacuum-packed sausages and carrots." "This is food too," Goro said looking at the boxes in front of him. "Īräwāmhî-seed bars, ôkônīk mushrooms, and ûzîäd, that’s a Tenko food, there’s no Human word for it."...

Later that evening, Samantha and Goro told Kiyoko and Arthur about their trip to Utopia Colony, about the channel through the reefs, the forest that now filled the dome of the old city, and the mysterious path through the forest with the pile of garbage. Once Arthur and Kiyoko had heard the story, the four kids tried to figure out what they were going to do next. Should they tell Raven about the trip to Utopia Colony? Would she be angry because they’d gone to Utopia Colony in someone else’s sub, after promising not to go in hers? They thought that she might be very angry. She might think they'd broken their promises. "So do we tell Raven?" Samantha asked. "We wouldn’t have broken our promise and taken the Chidori to Utopia Colony, or the reefs. And we didn’t, we took the Rengilffed instead." "You know how adults are," Arthur said. "They don’t think the same way we do." They pulled out the map of the mines, to examine it better than they had before. The mines were much larger than they’d expected...

The next few days the kids practiced piloting the sub every chance they got, until they were almost as good as Raven. She was pleased, "It’s nice to see kids sticking with things, even if it’s difficult." One afternoon, after checking that Os'Surale was busy working up in the outpost, the kids went down to the dock to have a close-up look at Os'Surale's sub. They stood and looked at the Ren-gilf-fed, bobbing up and down in the water, it was bigger than the Chidori, but not by much, and they were sure they could handle it. "I wonder when Os'Surale is going to town again!" Samantha said. "I can’t wait to try it." "Me too," said Goro. "I keep thinking of that giant-thornback-ray I saw. I just have to find it again." "You probably won’t," Samantha said. "But wouldn’t it be funny if you did, imagine what everyone would think. Nobody’s seen one in hundreds of years and then a kid finds one!"...

Samantha told the others her plan on the way back to the outpost. At first they didn't think it was a very good idea, but as they talked about it, they started to get excited. "Do you think we could really find a way in?" Kiyoko asked. "I’m sure we could," Samantha said, who, once she had made up her mind, wouldn’t stop at anything. "That must have been a way in through that channel we saw today, and I memorized the co-ordinates. Once I’m comfortable handling Raven’s sub, I’m sure I could handle Os'Surale's sub." "Are you sure that’s a good idea?" Arthur asked. "How will you do it without him knowing?" "I thought about that," she answered. "I’ll wait for the next time he goes shopping in Acadia City, and take the sub out right after he leaves. Hopefully I’ll be back before he returns, but if not, you’ll have to distract him."...

Os'Surale spent the night thinking about how they could have gotten to Acadia City and back so quickly. "Someone must have given them a ride. But who?" He decided to watch them closely, until they went to visit their friend again. The next day he spent the whole day following them around, pretending to be doing this or that. If they went down to the beach, he found a reason to go down to the beach. When they went to the cliffs, he did too. And in the end, when they decided to stay inside, he found things to do inside. They couldn’t go visit Raven, and it was irritating them. That night the kids went up to the tower-room, to figure out what to do. "If he follows us around all day tomorrow too, we won’t be able to go visit Raven again," Kiyoko complained...

In the following week Raven and the kids became good friends. She showed them another entrance to the cave on the other side of the cliff, facing inland, where she parked her hover-car. She told the kids she thought the cave must have been used by refugees during the war, and the path out to the rocks must have been used by people watching for skyships. Raven was always happy, and never seemed to get mad, even when Arthur’s robot bug ran onto her arm one day. Samantha was angry that Arthur would let one of his robots run off like that, but Raven just handed the robot back like it was nothing. Raven liked the kids too, and took them for rides in her sub. They explored the underwater cliffs, and trenches, seeing many strange types of fish and crabs and other sea life. Goro named each type of sea creature they came across, and talked on and on about the ocean and the life in it. Fortunately for Goro, Raven was always interested in exploring the coast in her sub. She even taught them how to pilot the sub, and soon they could pilot it without any help. It was a lot of fun. One day Raven gave Goro a pile of plazper books on marine-biology...

"Where exactly did you see that sub?" Goro asked as they walked along the cliff-tops. "Right out there, in the reefs surrounding Utopia Colony," Arthur said pointing towards the abandoned underwater city. "It wasn’t a very big sub, so it couldn’t have come very far, and the license was Acadian." "I wonder where it’s kept when it’s not being used," Goro said. "Someone must live pretty close, but I don’t see any buildings." "There aren’t any real buildings around here," Arthur said. "People used to live around here before the war, but the whole of Acadia Province was scorched, and now there are only some old ruined buildings. Maybe there could be someone living in one of the old ruins, but I don’t know why they’d want to."...

That night Goro just couldn’t sleep, he’d spent all day looking at what the tsunami had done to the beach, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. "Most of the seaweed and fish are gone, but I did see a few crabs and shrimp," he had explained to Arthur earlier. "Do you think the dolphins survived? What about Utopia Colony? What kind of damage do you think the tsunami did to the coral reef? Utopia Colony seems so mysterious, an abandoned underwater city. How bad was it damaged during the war? Do you think the dome was damaged? Do you think the dome is flooded? If it is flooded, what kinds of fish live inside?" Arthur didn’t know the answers, but Samantha was sure the dome wasn’t flooded. She couldn’t explain why...

The first thing the kids did after breakfast the next day, was to get the captain’s safe, and start examining the lock to figure out a way to open it. It looked like a small metal suitcase, with a handle on one side. "It doesn’t seem to have any power," Arthur said. "Maybe if we power it up, it’ll be easier to open." "Maybe it’ll be harder to open," Samantha argued. "Maybe it will be," Arthur agreed. "But we can’t even try to pick the lock unless the safe has power." "How do we power it up?" Goro asked...

Arthur woke up first the next day, right as the sun was rising over the hills to the east. He stayed in bed looking up at the ceiling for a few minutes, and then remembered what had happened the day before. He got up and looked out the windows, and for the first time saw the full devastation of the tsunami. The ocean had returned to its normal level, although it now had a grayish-green color, but the tsunami wave had dropped large boulders all over the Acadian countryside, and new streams had appeared bringing the wave’s waters back to the sea. "Goro, hey Goro get up and have a look at this!" he called when he saw the starship Phantasm lying up on the beach. Goro got up and staggered half-awake to the window, stared for a couple seconds and then said, "Wow! How did that happen?"...

When the kids got back up to their room, their muscles were aching, and their clothes, hair, and feathers, were covered in dust. "What took so long?" Samantha demanded as they climbed out of the air duct. "What took so long! What took so long!" Meki repeated running back to Goro as he emerged from the air duct. "Wipe your feet! Close the window!" Meki was happy that Goro was back. "You won't believe what we found!" Arthur said excitedly. "We found where the refugees hid during the war!" Kiyoko said, showing Samantha the old doll she'd found. "And the old outpost power generator!" Arthur said. "Really? Great!" Samantha replied. "You'd better go turn it on, all our power up here's gone off."...

The next day the kids wanted to go looking for the owner of the sub that Arthur had seen in the Utopia Colony reefs, and even though the weather was perfect, Ms. Rylie made them promise that they wouldn’t leave the outpost. "Mars Weather Authority says there’s going to be a meteor storm today," she explained. "Somewhere out over the Utopian Ocean. None of the meteors should be very large, but there could be unpredictable waves, and unusual rip tides. You’re safer up here." Fortunately Os'Surale didn’t seem too interested in what they were doing. He was only interested in ruining their fun if he thought they were having some, and since they were stuck inside the outpost, he found other things to do...