Eye of the Storm (6 page)

None of it makes sense. What's keeping the storms at bay? Where do they go when they turn away from the fence?

If. Then.

Where could the storms go that wouldn't hurt anyone?

Not away. But up.

Back into the sky.

If. Then.

What makes a tornado go away?

I close my eyes. The DataSlate is still cool in my hands, but the rest of me breathes in the memory of hot, humid air. An August night, five, maybe six years ago, watching a storm in the distance with Dad. It loomed, big and dark, over the Adirondacks, heading east across the lake to Vermont. We creaked back and forth on the porch swing as the thunder grew louder.

We watched that storm swell bigger, watched it uncurl a long, dark arm that wrapped around the sky and started spinning. It dropped down from the cloud, then stretched into a longer, skinnier funnel as if some potter's hands were shaping it, all the while spinning the wheel faster and faster.

“Dad, should we go downstairs?” I felt like we should. The storm was getting closer, and tree branches were starting to scratch against the porch roof in the wind.

“Soon.” Dad stared at the storm, mesmerized. Then he squinted off to the west. “Or maybe not.”

Another cloud was approaching, a big brother to the first, taller, with broader shoulders. When they met, it was like the younger brother flinched. The tornado lifted up from the ground and never caught its breath again. We watched, creaking back and forth as it rose slowly back up into the cloud.

Then we sat and listened to the rain.

Later, when Dad tucked me into bed, I asked where the tornado had gone. Most fathers would have made up a story for a kid my age, maybe something about God pulling on the rope, tugging it back to the heavens, away from us. A cozy-under-the-sheets, sleep-tight story. Mine gave a meteorology lesson.

“Sometimes, Jaden, a cold outflow of wind from a storm system can cause a tornado to dissipate.”

“You mean go away?”

“Yes. And in this case, it was that second thunderstorm that came and wrapped up the first one in its outflow.” He tucked the cool sheets around me. “Bet you can't spin around now either.”

I wiggled, and giggled, and Dad kissed me on the head. “Night, WeatherGirl.”

“Twenty-five minutes left.” Van's voice snaps me back to now. I open my eyes and stare at the blank box on my screen.

I have an idea. It's an old one from a hot summer night that feels like a lifetime ago, but it's all I have, so I start typing.

IF a tornado-producing storm collides with a second, larger storm . . .

That's a good start. There will be data from different-size storms loaded in the simulator. I can choose two that should work.

THEN . . . Then what?

I fly through the procedural steps, and I'm thinking how to state the outcome when Van calls time, so I simply type:

PROJECTED OUTCOME: Tornado dies.

—just as he steps down the row, takes the DataSlate from my hands, and adds it to the stack teetering in his arms.

“Well, now,” he says, lining them up on the counter outside the safety box that encloses the real control panel. “This is an interesting collection of theories.” He picks up the first few and sets them back down without saying anything. “I can see we'll need to work on experiment design. Some of these aren't even in a format that could be entered into our dome software.”

He moves on to the next DataSlate, which he reads and tucks under his arm, nodding. He goes through the rest of the slates and picks up the last one, too.

He holds those up and turns to us. “We have two theories that are developed enough—not perfect, mind you—but developed
enough
to run on the simulator. Mr. Carillo?”

Alex stands up.

“Come on into the control chamber with me. Miss Meggs? You, too. The rest of you head over to the observation area behind the glass. We'll explain each simulation on the microphone so you know what you're seeing. Let's find out if either theory holds up in the Dome.”

“Can everyone hear me?” Van's voice booms out of the speakers, and on the other side of the room, behind the safety glass, the rest of the campers nod. He turns back to Alex and me. “Who's first?”

I look at Alex. Is his stomach churning like mine?

“I'll go first,” he says. Van stands up, and Alex slides into the chair in front of the control panels. “Do you want me to explain what I wrote?”

“Of course.” Van adjusts the microphone.

“My theory involves storm dissipation,” Alex says. His voice echoes through the dome.

Van leans in toward the microphone, glancing back at me. “Actually, both theories do. That's why this is a particularly interesting pairing.”

“Okay.” Alex takes a breath. “Current theory holds that tornadoes form when the hot updraft within a supercell meets a cold rainy downdraft. So here's my idea.” Alex reads from his DataSlate. His fingers have dirt and grass stains as if he came right from working on the farm this morning, but his hands aren't shaking like mine.
“
If
the cold downdraft of a tornado-forming supercell is heated with microwave energy from an orbiting satellite,
then
an essential ingredient for tornado formation will be absent, and the storm will dissipate.”

He looks at Van, who nods. “Similar to the research you were doing last summer, no?”

“It is, but I've been tweaking it,” Alex says. “Should I just . . . run it now?”

“Go for it. The Dome has simulated satellites built into the ceiling. Adjust the level for how much energy they'll be giving off. Choose one of the preloaded historical tornado models—any one of those should work—give it a few seconds to form, and then run your simulation. We'll see if it dissipates.” He almost sounds bored, but my heart is pumping, and it's not even my turn yet.

Some of the confidence has drained out of Alex's face, but his hands are steady as he connects his DataSlate to the main system, transfers his data, and presses the button to start the Sim Dome recreation.

The lights go down, and immediately, water vapor hisses out of ducts in the ceiling and on the upper walls. Like magic, clouds form over the model city. The synthetic fabric that makes up the tree foliage rustles and then whips in the wind generated by the fans that surround the community on all sides. When the cloud darkens and gives birth to the beginning of a swirling, charcoal-colored funnel, Van nudges Alex. “Go ahead.”

Alex's finger hovers over the INTRODUCE VARIABLE button. He takes a breath and then taps it lightly.

A panel slides open on the ceiling, exposing a model satellite that lowers slowly, a foot or so. Under the clouds, the tornado stretches lower, lower, until it touches down inches from the first building—a small red barn next to a white farmhouse outside the city.

A sharp ray of light streaks down from the satellite. I can't look away from the light, the storm, the clouds, the funnel, to see how Alex is reacting, but I feel his body tensing next to me. Will this blast of energy warm the tornado away?

The tornado licks at the edges of the barn. “Come on,” Alex whispers, and I tear my eyes from the storm to look at his face.

His eyes travel down the beam from the satellite, as if he could strengthen it by pure will, all the way to the heart of the cloud, where that blast of energy
should
be warming the downdraft,
should
be stopping the storm's rotation.

“Come on, come on!”

The storm explodes then, with a sharp burst of lightning, and even Van jumps in surprise. Blinding light fills the dome and seems to feed the tornado. It swells up bigger, darker. It devours the barn, the house, and then races from the farm to the first simulated neighborhood. Houses. A school. In pieces. A church steeple flies off into the vortex. The rest of the building follows. A playground. Slides. Swings. A tumbling jumble of monkey bars all sucked into the storm.

Alex's fist pounds down on the counter, and Van reaches forward to press a red button on the control panel.

The lights flicker, then come on overhead.

The rain stops pounding. Leftover drips from the ceiling plunk
down onto the rubble as the clouds are sucked into the ventilation system in the walls.

When they clear, I stare out at half a town, perfect and painted with trees still standing, plastic people still posed on porches.

The other half is flattened.

Alex's jaw is tense, his fist still clenched on the counter where it landed.

“That's why we have the Sim Dome, my friend.” Van puts a hand on Alex's shoulder. “Sometimes, things work on paper; they work fine in your mind, but the real deal turns out very different. That's why we don't do this all digitally anymore. Until you're dealing with real wind, meeting real buildings, you don't know what'll happen.” He turns to me. “You're next, Miss Meggs. Let's see what you do with the half a city that survived your colleague's experiment.”

Alex stands and steps back so I can sit down, and I feel his eyes on me as I'm opening my file. I glance over my shoulder, expecting . . . I don't know. Maybe that he'll want me to fail, too, not to show him up. But even though his eyes are still intense, frustrated, he gives me the smallest nod. Encouragement?

I make the connection and feed my data to the mainframe computer.

“Which storm's going to be your subject?” Van leans over my shoulder and taps the screen, and a list of model storms appears. I choose an NF-3 that hit Germany eight years ago. And then I'll need to introduce a larger supercell to serve as the second storm in my experiment. My hands shake so much I can barely control my finger to point to the right model. Some of the shaking is nerves—Van
standing over me, Alex's eyes on me, the wall of faces behind the glass, all staring from the other side of the room—but some of it is excitement, too. Could this actually work?

“Go ahead.” Van flicks his hand toward the button that will dim the lights and start the clouds building.

I swallow hard and tap the command: BEGIN SIMULATION.

Clouds swirl out of the walls and down from the ceiling, like they did with Alex's storm, and this time, I'm ready when the wind starts to whip the trees and the rain pounds down on the roofs that are left in the model city. I watch the bottom edge of the wall cloud, holding my breath, until the funnel cloud takes shape and touches down.

The ground explodes in a whirl of dust, and Van points to the words INTRODUCE VARIABLE on the screen. “Do it now.”

I press the button and hold my breath.

The tornado is already on the ground as the second storm begins to form off to the left. The vapor is still gathering when the first storm hits the model town's business district. It's not as strong as Alex's tornado, so the buildings aren't flattened, but roofs tear away from shops, and debris flies.

“Come on,” I whisper, and I hear the echo of Alex's hopes as I watch the new funnel finish forming, watch it darken and advance toward the first. “Come on. Go.
Go
.”

The first tornado strengthens. It tosses cars that were parked on Main Street, hurls them through store windows, and the sound of shattering sim-glass—how do they make it so loud?—crashes over the wind.

My second storm closes in on the first. “Come on,” I whisper. “Knock it down. Do it.”

And I hear Alex's voice, quiet behind me. “Come on, work.”

For a second, the tornado stops in its path, churning up dirt, frozen in time as the two storms finally touch.

Then it goes wild.

The big brother cloud, the one that was supposed to wrap around the first storm and settle it down, does something else. It opens up its arms, sucks the first storm inside, and squeezes, until the whole thing turns into a darker, angrier, super-charged monster.

“No!” I scream. I can't help it. Because a second tornado drops down from the cloud like an angry whip. And a third. Both stronger than the first. They barrel down streets, through downtown, and the office buildings implode and feed the storm until the whole city is gone.

Van's arm blurs in front of me and presses the button to shut down the dome. Only then do I feel my face is wet with tears. I swipe at them with my sleeve.

Van smirks. “Well, scholars. We have some rebuilding to do, don't we?”

I feel a hand on my shoulder. Alex.

I brush it away, stand up, and head for the door, but Van puts up a hand to stop me. “Those were good efforts from both of you. But you've got a long road of research ahead before you can produce something that works in this world as well as that one.” He nods down at the DataSlate in my hand. I'd forgotten it wasn't mine.
Mine's at home in the drawer with my poetry book. I haven't brought it back since that first day.

I set the DataSlate on the counter, but Van shakes his head. “Keep that one over the weekend. Play with some new ideas. Bring it back on Monday. I'm going to recommend you two for the meteorology team.” He opens the door, and we head out into the humid air of the Dome to meet up with the others, filing out of the observation room.

“All right, campers, let's call it a day. I've seen what I need to see. On Monday, I'd like you to tell me what you'd like to study and whether you'll work alone or with a partner.”

We leave the Dome and start back toward the welcome building, but there's none of the usual in-between-buildings banter. I get the feeling that even the campers who were around last summer have never seen anything in the Sim Dome quite like this.

“Whatcha doing for lunch?” Risha finally asks when we get back to our bikes.

I shrug. “I'm not too hungry. That was just so . . . intense.”

“I think we need a picnic!” Risha stands up on the pedals of her bike and pulls the front wheel off the ground to spin around.

It's such a crazy idea, I laugh, which I'm sure was her whole goal. Picnics are like bike riding back home. But it figures there'd be a StormSafe picnic shelter, too. “Where do you have picnics?”