Return of the Homework Machine (9 page)

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

I casually mentioned that I wished there was some way to make the chip disappear. Just get it off this planet so it would never hurt anyone again. Well, Snik got this gleam in his eye and instantly I knew what he was thinking. Both of us had the same idea, almost at the same time.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

We could build a rocket. We could shoot the chip into space. It was brilliant! Genius!

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I was against the idea. Building a rocket is expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous. There's a good chance you can have a misfire. What if the thing lands in a populated area? Or on somebody's house?

They begged me. Snik and Brenton actually got down on their knees. I thought it over and decided we had no other choice. We had to get rid of that chip. And the safest way to get rid of it permanently would be to shoot it into space.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

The boys got all excited at the idea of shooting the chip out of the Earth's atmosphere in a rocket. It didn't seem possible to me. But Mr. Murphy spent, like, his whole career working for NASA. So he knew what to do.

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

The question is, where does the Earth's atmosphere end and space begin? There's no precise answer. It's not like there's a strict border line, like on a map between two countries.

But most people don't realize how thin the atmosphere is. The planet is sort of like a human cell, and the atmosphere is like the protective membrane around it.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

Mr. Murphy told us there are traces of oxygen and nitrogen a hundred miles up. But almost all of our atmosphere is the troposphere, which is only about seven miles above the surface of the Earth.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

Seven miles? Who knew? No wonder people like Kelsey get so worked up about pollution and climate change. A seven-mile layer of protection surrounding the planet didn't sound like very much. I always thought it was like fifty miles at least.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

So if we could build a rocket that would fly seven miles up, we could get the chip out of the Earth's atmosphere. It was the only way.

Ha! Talk about rocket science!

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

When I was little, I used to read books about the space program all the time. I remember that when a spaceship returns to Earth, it has to enter our atmosphere at a very precise angle. If it doesn't, it will either burn up during reentry or bounce off the atmosphere and float into space. So if we could get a rocket—with our chip inside—above the atmosphere, chances are it would float away or burst into flames upon reentry. And either one would be fine with us, because we just wanted to get rid of the chip.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

Part of me was thinking that if we wanted the chip to burn up, why don't we just stick the thing in a microwave oven and set it on “popcorn”? You know? Or just melt it with a magnifying glass. That would be a lot easier. But the idea of building a rocket with Mr. Murphy—who spent years working for NASA—sounded cool, so I said let's do it.

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH: LOG BOOK

May 5: Call from New Jersey hiker named
Herbert Dunn. Saw a body floating near Glen Canyon Dam. Sent Officers Kommedal and Levin to conduct preliminary investigation.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

We all went over to Mr. Murphy's house—or his garage, really—to start building the rocket. I wasn't much help. Mr. Murphy and Brenton were like real rocket scientists. They were talking about all this stuff like ion propulsion and pounds of thrust that made no sense at all. I never realized that rockets don't have wings like planes because the wings only help at low speeds. Once you get moving really fast, wings would just create more air resistance.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

Mr. Murphy had it all worked out. He has been building rockets all his life, and he gave me a crash course. Basically, you need to shoot liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into a combustion chamber really fast, and ignite them. When the hot gases produced by the combustion shoot out through the nozzle, it produces thrust. The more fuel, the more thrust. The more thrust,
the higher you fly. That's how a liquid-fueled rocket works. It's simple, really.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

We worked really hard on the rocket. Brenton and Mr. Murphy did all the thinking and planning. The rest of us—me, Snik, Ronnie, and Judy—did the grunt work. Screwing in screws, getting materials they needed, picking up pizza and Chinese food to keep them going.

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH: LOG BOOK

May 6: The body that washed up at Glen Canyon Dam is Richard Milner, the guy whose van was found in the parking lot at Lee's Ferry. Alcohol in bloodstream. Possible suicide. No note.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

The rocket was coming along good. Mr. Murphy knows everything about aerodynamics and propulsion and stuff. Some of his old NASA buddies helped him get his hands on this special rocket fuel that is, like, totally powerful and you need top secret security clearance to get near it. This is the stuff they used to launch the space
shuttle. We had to have that fuel to get the rocket as high as it needed to go.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

Maybe this would be the solution to a lot of our waste problems, it occurred to me. Instead of filling up landfills, why can't we just shoot our garbage into outer space? Get rid of it entirely. The same thing with pollution, spent nuclear fuel, and the exhaust from coal-burning power plants. We should just put that stuff in a rocket once a month, and shoot it to the moon. It seems to me that if we can land a man on the moon, we can dump our garbage there.

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH: LOG BOOK

May 7: Looks like that Milner fella did not just fall into the river. Cut marks on left cheek could only have been made by a sharp blade. I don't think the guy cut himself shaving. Looks like there mighta been a struggle.

Called Gerald Murphy, the teacher who spotted the body floating in the river. Not home. Left message.

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH: LOG BOOK

May 8: Murphy did not return call. Left another message. May have to go out to his house in person.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

Mr. Murphy seemed like he was in a big hurry to finish building the rocket. He wouldn't tell us why. We were working on it every night. Only later did we learn the police had found Milner's body and they were trying to reach Mr. Murphy to question him about it. He wasn't returning the calls. He was probably afraid he'd be sent to jail, and he wanted to get the rocket launched first.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

Finally we finished building the rocket. It was the middle of May, I guess.

BRENTON'S MOM

I was a little bit upset because it was Mother's Day, and he didn't get me anything. Usually, Brenton will make me a card or something. But all he seemed to care about was some top secret project he and his friends were working on. He wouldn't tell me what it was.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

It was a Sunday morning. We wheeled the rocket out of Mr. Murphy's garage and into the field behind his house. It wasn't some cheap plastic model rocket, mind you. This one was as tall as I am, and heavy.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

We set the rocket up on a slab of concrete in the middle of the field. I guess there had been a swing set there a long time ago.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

A bunch of those Canyonist nutcases were wandering around, like always. Some of them saw our rocket, and they started walking over, real slow. It was like
Night of the Living Dead
, with those zombies walking toward us.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

One of them says to me, “Will this rocket take us to another world when the Earth explodes?” I mean, really!

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

Everybody was telling me to hurry up and
launch the rocket before one of those Canyonists got too close and damaged it. I opened the door of the nose cone, and inserted the chip with the little red light. It was sad, in a way. I didn't want to see it go. But we had to get rid of it. “So long, old friend,” I said to it. We've gotta do what we've gotta do.

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

One of those nutcases comes over to us and asks if we know anybody named Brenton. So I pointed to Brenton.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

They all got down on their knees in a semicircle around me and started chanting “Notnerb! It is the immortal Notnerb spelled backward! At last we have found you. You are our savior!” and all this stuff. They were thanking me for the weight they lost and frequent-flyer miles they won. It was insane. I tried to tell them that Canyonism was just a joke, but they wouldn't listen. They were praying to me.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

Suddenly a cop car pulled up and you got out. We were all yelling at Brenton, “Hurry up!
The cops are here! We gotta get this baby up in the air!”

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

All these Canyonists started eating Twinkies and chanting, “Life began here! It will end here! Life began here! It will end here!” They were creepy.

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

That's when you went over to Mr. Murphy and started questioning him. I heard you say, “The body of a man named Richard Milner turned up at Glen Canyon. Is there anything you want to tell me, Mr. Murphy?”

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

So Mr. Murphy says, “One minute, officer,” and you said, “Not one minute. Now!”

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I was yelling at everybody, “Back away from the rocket! This is very dangerous!”

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

The Canyonists were telling everybody that the world was going to end, and that I predicted it.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

They were yelling that the aliens will return and only the Canyonists will be saved.

KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6

That's when you said to Mr. Murphy, “You got a permit for that thing? We got laws against firing off explosives so close to a national park.”

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

As all this was happening, a black car pulled up and four Japanese guys wearing trenchcoats got out. They were coming over to us, saying they wanted their computer chip back. I remembered Milner told me that some gangsters were after him.

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

I was yelling, “Hurry!”

MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER

I shouted, “Stand back!”

RONNIE TEOTWAWKI. GRADE 6

I said, “Don't we have to have a countdown?”

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

So I say, “No time for a countdown! Just fire it!”

JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6

The Canyonists were coming from all over, and another police car pulled up, and those gangsters were coming toward us, and everybody was yelling and shouting at each other. I just covered my ears.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

And I pushed the button.

Afterward

SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6

So, that's pretty much what happened. You guys saw the rocket go up. Man, it was a beautiful thing! Everybody just stopped yelling and looked up. Then they were all clapping. The rocket just kept going and going. Finally, we lost sight of it. It never came down, at least not anywhere around here. I have to assume it made it out of the atmosphere.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6

And for all we know, that little red light is up there in outer space right now, floating around, still blinking away.

Much of the information about the Grand Canyon was found in
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
, by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers (Puma Press, 2001). I also used
The Lonely Planet Grand Canyon National Park Guidebook
and
Frommer's Grand Canyon National Park
.