Globe Tracers 1: The Case of Thomas Crain

Chapter 23: Submarine

Kyle:

After the water had been drained and the decompression had completed with a loud hiss, we climbed to the upper level, I looked around the inside of Xao's submarine. There was no doubt that this thing was massive compared to what one might expect. The walls and floor were all steel; the floor stretching out for a good thirty feet and the ceiling was fifteen feet up. I looked around seeing that the vessel was actually mostly bare. At the front were a series of controls and in the center was a four-legged table. Around were scattered cups and silverware and various... toys I supposed. However, there were no cupboards of any kind or storage areas. There were no indicators of anything but a bunch of stuff just thrown inside. Really it looked like a place where a pair of kids just hung out every so often, never actually going anywhere.

"This is the sub?" I asked. "Are there any... facilities?"

"Facilities?" Xao asked.

"Bathroom." I clarified.

"Oh... um..." Xao looked around. "Well you see... no one's actually ever driven in this thing for longer than a few hours." Xao continued looking around. "I'm sure it will be interesting, but you could just go in the entry chamber where we just came in and we'll let it go out the hatch."

This idea did not appeal to me in the least but I didn't want to dwell on it- at all. Thus I changed the subject. "How do you keep the air fresh?" I asked.

Xao pointed back. "Vents in the back circulate it and draw oxygen from the water."

"We're not going to be knocked off our feet when this thing gets moving are we?" I asked.

Xao moved to the front of the vessel where a large computer system resided saying. "No... well maybe when we first start, but that's really not how things work when in motion. Once an object is in motion it stays in motion, and we'll be part of the ship when it gets moving, thus we'll have the same momentum as the ship. When a plane goes over the sound barrier all its parts don't suddenly fly off now do they?" He hit a few knobs and pushed some buttons. The vessel started to create a humming noise.

"Ever the pragmatist," Jessica said, clicking her teeth at me in disapproval. "How fast does it go?"

Xao chuckled at this. "Top speed? I don't really know. I think it can actually go a full Mach two, but I've never really pushed the engines. Truth is, we won't be going anywhere near that fast today though. We'll be clocking at about three hundred miles per hour. Suppose I should say two hundred sixty knots seeing as we should be using naval terms."

"How does that even work?" I asked. "Seriously, how did two people make this, even given a hundred years to do it?"

Xao turned from the controls and hung his head-scratching it nervously. "To tell you the truth... I don't know how this thing even works. I just know what buttons to push to make it move where I want. Regent and I really didn't build it, we kinda cheated. We made someone wish for it as part of a "deal". Thus you see, we had the entire trickster community working on this at once, Regent and I just helping out on a few things here and there." I gave Xao a lazy-eyed look. "Yeah when we showed it to Darius he gave us the same look and said it didn't count."

"So where's the food?" Jessica asked.

"Did you bring any?" Xao asked back.

"No," Jessica replied.

"Then that's where it is," Xao replied with a shrug and a smile. Jessica folded her arms at him. Xao turned and pushed a few more buttons. A green holographic screen appeared above the controls. It appeared to have a large map of the world on it outlined in yellow. "Alright listen up." he pointed to North America on the map, along the west coast of what I knew to be the United States. "This is where we are, right off the coast of Oregon. We're going to cut through the Pacific ocean," Xao lead our eyes with his finger up to a chain of islands appearing to make a leg off the northernmost state of the US known as Alaska. "To here, and drive through a chain of islands known as the Aleutian Islands." Xao moved his finger between Alaska and the edge of the territory belonging to the Russians. "We'll then go around the nose of Alaska cutting through the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea where we will of course enter the Arctic Ocean."