It had finally arrived, the day Julian had been looking forward to for almost an entire school year. His alarm clock blared its usual "Autobots, roll out!" as he smashed Optimus Prime on the foot to shut it off and tumbled out of bed. His usual routine, which on any other day takes 30 minutes to do, was completed in 15. Shower, teeth, hair, clothes. Julian darted down the stairs skipping 3 steps as he went.
"Where do you think you're going?" His mom shouted at him as he ran to the car and jumped in. Mrs. Casitory sighed as she grabbed the paper bag she had put his lunch in and made her way to the car.
"Come on mom, let's go! I can't be late for class today." Julian buckled his seatbelt and bounced up and down in his seat as if it would start the car and zoom off.
"When are you ever late for school?" Mrs. Casitory was always 20 minutes early for everything she did. Even if it meant running a red light or two. "Besides we have to pick up, Patrick, so cool your jets, kid." Patrick was waiting on his front porch with Toothless. Mrs. Casitory hopped out of her car and helped him load up before heading out. The two boys sat in the back listening to a news broadcast of the upcoming event that Julian had been so amped up about.
"Is it showing anything?" asked Patrick looking towards where he knew the sound was coming from.
"Yeah, but nothing too exciting. Just what the submarine looks like and the mechanics of it. They haven't started diving yet."
"What does it look like?" Julian smiled. He loved describing things to his best friend. He was good at it too. It helps when all you do is read books made for adults and play video games with intricate storylines. He always thought it strengthened his vocabulary. His mom once told him that he could describe every color perfectly to Patrick if he tried hard enough.
"It looks like it's made entirely out of rubber with weird metal fish fins that can rotate in any direction." Even Julian was having a hard time describing this kind of technology because of how advanced it was.
"Fish fins." Repeated Patrick
"Like two metal triangle pieces that are on each side of the body." Julian made a triangle shape with his fingers so that Patrick could feel.
"Tell me more!" Yelled Patrick.
"There are obvious air propulsion tanks on the sides of the fins, a see-through rounded piece of plastic that covers the entire front end of the sub, something that looks like small robotic arms that they can control from inside, and the door to get in. Other than that it looks like all of the important technology is on the inside." Julian squinted his eyes and held his mother's cell phone close to his face to try and get a better look at the machine.
"Alright boys, you're here. Patrick do you need help getting out of the car?" Mrs. Casitory started unbuckling her seatbelt to assist Patrick.
"No I'm fine, we taught Toothless last weekend how to help me get out of the car." Patrick smiled and kindly asked his companion to lead him out of the van and onto the sidewalk. Julian ran around the other side of the car and grabbed his friend's backpack. As the boys walked up their school's handicapped ramp they heard a skateboard behind them.
"Hooooo yah! Guess what today is boys!" shouted a very excited voice from behind. Both boys were smacked on the back as their friend met up with them.
"It's Deep Sub Diving Day! How far do you think they will go? What if they find some creepy shit down there?" Tristan bobbed up and down with excitement as they walked to their science class. The boys sat in their assigned seats, completely separated from each other because they had been known for "disrupting the class" according to the principal. No matter how much their science teacher liked them, they had to be separated. Tristan threw a wadded up piece of paper at Patrick, hitting him in the head. Patrick held out his hand as Toothless gently dropped it for him. He turned around, facing the direction it came from and mouthed to Tristan, 'Can't read idiot'.
At last, the final bell had rung, and without wasting one second Mr. Johnson turned off the lights and turned on the tv. The live stream had just started. It showed the scientists climbing into the submarine, then finally after a 45 minute descent things got interesting.
"Titan is a swiss-designed, american-built deep diving research bathyscaphe, which with its crew of two people, reached a record maximum depth of 50,797 ft in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific." A news broadcaster spoke over the soundless live stream of the submarine shining lights on different rocks and creatures.. "Today, November 8th 2017 is a record breaking day folks. With the data collected from this ship and it's crew, scientists will be able to know much more about the deep sea. Stay tuned to hear our interview with one of the lead scientists from this mission when we come back from this commercial break." The room was dead silent. They had predicted that the Titan would go deep, but not THAT deep. The boys were in awe. Suddenly the bell rung, startling Julian out of his thoughts.
As the day came to an end the boys once again walked down the ramp to the lunch benches to sit and wait for Julian's mother.
"Sooooo holy shit guys, were you expecting that thing to go that deep? There HAS to be some new and crazy creature that they found, right?" Tristan blurted.
"Yeah almost 60,000 ft is insane. I think the last record was only 34,000 and they found all sorts of things. I'm excited to hear within the next few months about what they found." Julian rubbed Toothless' ear as he spoke. "That is if they found anything." Patrick sat there silent as the other two continued to discuss the record.
After a short while, Tristan had gotten picked up and not moments later Julian's mom arrived to take the two boys home. Julian looked over as Toothless sat abnormally close to Patrick.
"Patrick, are you okay? Toothless only sits next to you like that when you're nervous."
"What? Oh, yeah i'm okay, I just feel a little strange. Not a bad strange though, a good strange. Like that relieved feeling you get once a big test is done and you feel like you did well on it." Patrick's glazed eyes stayed forward as they pulled up to his house. Toothless nudged him letting him know they were home.
"Thanks again for the rides Mrs. Casitory, I'll see you tomorrow morning at 7:30." He waved at what he thought was Julian's mother then walked inside.
"See you tomorrow!" she chuckled.
Julian went to bed that night feeling like he had finally lived through something exciting. He had always felt like his life wasn't that fun and was worried that it was always going to be that way, but he had a good feeling that things were about to change for the better.
"Goodnight Optimus." he whispered patting the alarm clocks plastic head and slowly drifting off to sleep.
YOU ARE READING
Ashrays
Ficção CientíficaFinally scientists have been able to travel deeper into the ocean then they ever have before, but something was brought back up without anyone knowing.
