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Annalynn said good-bye to her family and ran out the door. Once outside, she stopped in her tracks. Sure enough, there was a jet outside, waiting for her. It was huge! She had no idea jets were so large. Around the jet were some kids from the neighbourhood. They were touching the wheels and the wings, and one of them looked ready to climb the ladder into the cockpit. She could hear them asking each other who owned the jet.
Annalynn didn’t want to waste any more time. She had a mission, and she needed to get it done!
As she ran up to the jet, she hollered out, “Everyone back away. I’m going to fly this thing, but I don’t know what I’m doing. This might not go so well!”
The kids screamed in terror and ran for their lives as Annalynn climbed the ladder and settled into the cockpit. She had never been in the cockpit of a jet before. When she looked around at all the buttons and dials, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at.
As she examined all the buttons around her, she saw one that said, “On.” She pushed it and quickly covered her ears. The jet roared to life. It sounded like it was exploding around her. It was hard to believe anything could be that loud!
She scanned the buttons in front of her and saw another one that said, “Close thingy above your head while you are sitting in the cockpit.” She pressed that button, and the canopy over the cockpit closed. When it came down and sealed itself shut, the sound of the jet was much quieter. She saw the ladder outside the jet—the one she had used to climb inside—fold itself up.
Her first thought was, “This is so cool!” Her second thought was, “What do I do now?”
She looked around again and saw a button that had a label under it which read, “If you don’t know what to do now, press this button.”
Annalynn pressed that button and watched the screen in front of her come alive. “Welcome,” the screen said in large, happy letters. It then started to write out instructions. “First, look around for the eject button.”
Annalynn looked around and found a button that said, “Eject.” When she looked back at the screen, the screen said, “Do not press that button unless you are about to crash.”
“Okay, that’s good to know,” Annalynn said.
The screen then read, “Second, if you want to fly up into the air, press the button in front of you that is labelled, ‘Up.’ ”
“Well, that’s simple,” Annalynn said to herself. She pressed the button and screamed as the jet took off. It flew straight up! Once it was far above the roof of her house, it stopped and hung there in the air.
She looked back at the screen and continued to read. “Third, if your seatbelt is not on and you are not wearing your helmet, you should fix those problems.”
She quickly did up her seatbelt and found a helmet sitting beside her. She put it on and then looked back at the screen.
The screen read, “Fourth, if you know where you are going, input the coordinates now.”
She pulled out the piece of paper Agent Rick had given her and looked at the coordinates. It read, “Just down the road from Amanda’s place, next to the tall Maple tree.”
“That’s the coordinates?” Annalynn asked. She wasn’t sure it would work, but she typed it into a keyboard in front of her and then pressed the “enter” key.
Next, the screen read, “Thank you. We will now take you to the CSIS headquarters. By the way, did we mention that the jet only flies backwards?”
“Backwards?” Annalynn shouted just as the jet took off. She looked around, trying to see where she was going, but the back of the jet was in the way. She flew backwards super-fast, and she could see the city below her, whipping by. She craned her neck around to see where she was going. What she saw caused her to scream again. The jet was flying right towards her school.
“No, jet!” she yelled, hoping the jet could hear her. “You’re going to crash into my school!”
The jet slowed down, but not in time. It hit the side of the school and smashed through the wall before coming to a stop. Annalynn looked around and realized the jet was hovering inside her classroom. Standing off to the side, was her teacher. She looked scared and shocked, but when she saw Annalynn, she smiled and waved.
“Bonjour, mon petit chou,” Madam Heureux said.
Annalynn attended a French immersion school, and her teacher was so kind. She felt bad about smashing into the side of the school, but her teacher just smiled at her. Madam Heureux was so nice.
“I’m sorry for breaking down a wall in our classroom,” Annalynn yelled above the sound of the jet.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Madam Heureux said. “En Francais, s’il vous plaît.”
Annalynn remembered that her teacher would not let her speak English in the classroom. “Je suis désolé, Madam Heureux.”
“Trés bien!” said her teacher.
The jet then turned around, inside the classroom, and flew backwards out of the hole it had created. It then, still flying backwards, flew around the school and off towards where she hoped was the CSIS headquarters.
A few minutes later, the screen read, “We have arrived at CSIS headquarters. Would you like a soft landing or a bumpy landing?”
Two buttons appeared on the screen. One said “soft,” and the other said, “bumpy.”
Annalynn pressed the one that said “soft.” She watched as the screen went blank for a moment, then said, “You have chosen a bumpy landing. That is not recommended, but it was your choice. Prepare for something terrible to happen.”
Annalynn yelled as the jet fell out of the sky and rushed towards the ground. A second later, she hit... and it was bumpy. The jet then turned off as Annalynn said, “Ooooowww.”
She pressed a button that said, “Open Canopy,” and watched as the canopy raised up and moved out of the way. Just before she could take off her seatbelt and helmet, she read the screen. It said, “Ejecting now.”
Annalynn screamed again as her seat fired up out of the jet and into the air. Once she was way up in the sky, she started to fall, and a parachute shot out the back of her seat. The parachute slowed her down as she fell. A few minutes later, she had landed in a parking lot outside a building. On the side of the building was a sign that said, “Secret Headquarters for CSIS” in large, bold letters. Underneath the words was a smaller sign that read, “sshhhhhh... don’t tell anyone...”
It had turned out to be a strange day. She wondered if it could get any weirder.
She had a sneaky feeling that it could... and would.