Return of the Homework Machine (5 page)

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

Mr. Murphy gave us an assignment to write a one-page essay on what we did over the weekend. I wrote a letter to my congressman saying we should put solar panels on every roof in Arizona to generate electricity so we won't have to burn fossil fuels anymore. Then I wrote an essay about how I wrote a letter to my congressman saying we should put solar panels on every roof in Arizona to generate electricity so we won't have to burn fossil fuels anymore.

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I was collecting their essays when Sam Dawkins raised his hand and asked me what I did over the weekend. So I told the kids I went kayaking in the canyon and I told them about the article in the
Phoenix Gazette
. Judy knew about it, of course, because she was the one who found it in the first place. But she had just read the first few paragraphs. She didn't know all the details.

I'll tell you one thing I noticed. When I was describing the caverns and treasures, the mummies and everything, everybody was fascinated.
But the one who tuned in the most was Ronnie Teotwawki. It was the first time I ever saw that boy pay attention in class. He was staring at me, and he was hanging on every word.

February

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I'm not really a book guy. I figure that if the stuff in libraries was so great, they wouldn't have to give it away for free. You know what I mean? But when Mr. Murphy told us there was an ancient Egyptian treasure hidden in a cave in the Grand Canyon, I went straight to the library after school. I had to look at that article he was telling us about.

It wasn't hard to find. The library keeps old issues of the
Phoenix Gazette
. There it was, right on the front page. April 5, 1909. It said there were golden statues, weapons, mummies, and all kinds of other stuff hidden in a cave right here in the Grand Canyon. This explorer guy named Kinkaid supposedly found all this stuff. But nobody knows what happened to it. It's not in any
museum. There's no record of Kinkaid taking the stuff out of the canyon. Either it vanished…or maybe it was still there. There was no record of what happened to Kinkaid either.

Man, I sat there and felt the hair on my neck rising up. If this article was for real, and the stuff was still sitting there a century later, what was to stop
me
from getting it? Nothing. Finders keepers. Maybe I could use the GPS I got for Christmas to help me find it.

The article was real long. There was a lot of detail about the location of the cave. I made a photocopy of the article so I could go over it real carefully.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

Everybody was buzzing after Mr. Murphy told us about this treasure hidden in the Grand Canyon. I met up with Brenton in the playground after school and told him that I was gonna try to find it. He said he would help.

Kelsey and Judy came over and asked what we were whispering about. When I told them, they laughed and said we were silly. But when we told them we were serious, they said they wanted in on
it too. We all agreed that if we found any treasure, we would donate it to a museum.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

The four of us went to the library after school so we could read the
Phoenix Gazette
article carefully. And guess who was sitting there in the periodicals room? Ronnie Teotwawki! I could hardly believe my eyes. He probably never set foot in a library in his life!

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

The four of them walked into the library and saw me sitting there. Judy was all, “What are
you
doing here?” Like I'm not allowed in the library, right? I told her it's a public place and I have as much right to be there as she does.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

Ronnie left the library after we came in, but we saw his name on the sheet of paper you have to sign if you want to look at the old newspapers on microfilm. We knew exactly what Ronnie was doing there. He wanted to find out the location of the treasure. Just like us.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

We copied the article and I asked the librarian if we could look at some maps of the Grand Canyon. She had a whole bunch of them, some recent ones and some dating back to the 1920s when they were still exploring it. Mr. Murphy wasn't very specific about where the treasure was. Maybe he didn't know himself.

Every summer, millions of tourists come here. They usually only go to Grand Canyon Village, where the visitor center is and there are some hotels. But the whole canyon is hundreds of miles along the Colorado River. Even if the secret cavern was as big as Mr. Murphy said it was, locating it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

I often wonder if there is a square inch on this planet that has never been stepped on by a human foot. If such a place exists, it would probably be in the Grand Canyon. I've done some hiking in the canyon, and it is just so vast that it would be hard to imagine all of it has been explored. Even today.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

Brenton unrolled this old map and we were looking it over. Judy got a magnifying glass from the librarian so we could read the tiny print. That's when we noticed something. On the north side of the canyon, in the area around Ninety-Four Mile Creek and Trinity Creek, there were a whole bunch of rock formations with names that sounded Egyptian or Hindu—Tower of Ra, Horus Temple, Osiris Temple, Isis Temple, Cheops Pyramid, the Buddha Cloister, Buddha Temple, Manu Temple, Shiva Temple. Stuff like that. Brenton and I turned to each other and whispered, “That's where it is.”

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

It didn't occur to me at the time that the kids would get so excited about the idea of a secret treasure in the Grand Canyon. I had come to believe that kids today don't care about stuff like that. They just want to watch TV and go on YouTube. I certainly didn't think they would actually make the effort to try and find a real treasure. It's so much easier to play a video game and find a virtual treasure.

It was around Presidents' Day. I remember, because I told them to do a research project about the presidents. As usual, Brenton turned in the most interesting paper. I even saved it….

 

HOW TALL WERE THE PRESIDENTS?

by Brenton Damagatchi

 

Below is a list of the presidents, starting with the tallest (Lincoln) and ending with the shrimpy James Madison. Twenty-four presidents were under six feet tall, and eighteen were six feet tall or more.

 

 

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I was wondering what was taking Milner so long to get back with the second superchip. It was around the end of February when he finally called me on my cell. He was home from Japan. I asked him if he was able to get another superchip, but he shushed me and said we couldn't talk about stuff like that over the phone because somebody might be listening in. I agreed to meet him at the Canyon View Information Plaza.

I don't know what the big deal was, because when we met up, all he had to say was that he
didn't
get another superchip. It wasn't because it was too expensive. It just didn't exist. The one we had was a prototype. We had the only one in the world. And in fact, he told me he was worried that some Japanese gangsters might have followed him home, because they wanted the first superchip back. I remember thinking,
This guy is paranoid.

Anyway, without a second superchip, we wouldn't be able to link up two computers in a network and do all kinds of cool stuff with it. It was a good idea, anyway.

We got to talking about stuff, and I happened to mention that newspaper article and the treasure of the Grand Canyon. I had the Xerox I made at the library with me, and I showed it to Milner. Well, his eyes lit up like headlights! It was like he forgot about the superchip and all he wanted to talk about was hiking into the canyon for the treasure. He kept saying, “I've got to find it. I've got to find it.”

I was a little P.O.'d, you know? I mean, he didn't know anything about the treasure until I told him about it. If anybody should get it, it should be me. I got him to agree to work as a team. It made sense for me, because he was a grown-up and he'd be able to get us a raft and supplies and all the stuff we'd need to go after the treasure.

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH

Startin' 'round the end of February, every coupla days a few more people would show up at the south entrance gate. They came in buses,
cars, some of 'em hitchhiked. A lot of 'em used frequent-flyer miles. One guy claimed he walked from Alabama. They came from all over. Some of 'em were runaways. They weren't your usual tourists who want to see the canyon with their own eyes, snap some pictures, buy some souvenirs, and get on home.

No, they all said the same thing—the end of the world is comin' on Mother's Day. Claimed the canyon is gonna open up and the earth'll cleave in half, like a busted Wiffle ball. They'll be saved. I have no idea where they got them crazy ideas. What a bunch of nuts! Must've been the Twinkies they were all eating. They called themselves “Canyonists.” Put 'em on a bus and sent 'em home. Or we tried to, anyhow. After a while there were too many of 'em to round up.

You'd see these raggedy people wanderin' around, lookin' for food in garbage cans and so forth. I'll tell you, they were worse than the bears! They would all be babblin' about aliens and some prophet named Notnerb. Sometimes you'd see a group of 'em out in the middle of a field, standin' on their heads in a circle. Strangest thing.

The Grand Canyon is a place for folks who
wanna appreciate the beauty of nature. This ain't no place for weirdos.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

Snik and Kelsey wanted to rush off and go look for the treasure—that afternoon! They were just going to hike down and get it. It was as if they were going to the store to get a loaf of bread. That's the way they do things. Act now and think things through later.

So I said to them, do you realize we're seven thousand feet above sea level? Do you realize it takes a full day to hike down to the river and another full day to hike back up? Where are we going to get a raft? How are we going to pay for it? And what if there
is
some fabulous treasure down there? How are we going to carry it back out? You can't just go running off to do crazy stuff. You've got to plan things.

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

Judy, Brenton, Sam, and Kelsey came to me one day after school and said they wanted to talk in private. I figured it was about schoolwork, but it wasn't. They told me they wanted to hike down
into the canyon and search for the secret cave that was mentioned in that newspaper article. They asked for my help.

Well, I must admit that I was flattered, honored, and pleased that they were interested. So many of the kids here never even venture below the rim of the canyon. This could be the ultimate field trip. A real teachable moment. It was extremely doubtful that there was any treasure to be found, but they would learn about indigenous plants, trees, insects, wildlife, and the geology of the canyon.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I wanted to give it another shot at finding the secret caverns myself. These kids were young and strong, and they would be a lot of help.

On the other hand, it could be dangerous. Accidents happen. I wasn't sure I wanted to be responsible for the safety of four kids. I thought it over and agreed to be their chaperone if they each got their parents to sign a permission form.

February is a bit too cold to be taking long hikes in the canyon. The summer is too hot. It gets up over a hundred degrees, and people have been known to die out there from heat exhaustion.
I thought a weekend in April or May would be perfect.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I'm not sure if it was me or Milner who came up with the idea. Probably me. I was fooling around with the GPS I got for Christmas. It was pretty cool, but the capabilities were limited. That's when I started to wonder what would happen if I took the superchip out of my computer and put it in my handheld GPS instead. It would make it into a super GPS!

And a super GPS was just the thing I needed, because it could lead me right to the location of the secret caverns. Right to the treasure of the Grand Canyon.