They spotted the Ferris wheel first. It rose through the trees like the skeleton of a giant flower. As the truck got closer, they saw the sign.
“What’s Impossible Island?” Chet asked from the backseat.
“You’re looking at it,” Darla said. “Finest theme park within fifty miles of Xibalba.”
“Theme parks are torture,” Martin blurted out.
“What?” Henry said.
“It’s something … someone told me once,” Martin said.
“Well, someone was a real wet blanket,” Darla said. “Theme parks are all kinds of awesome. Even if abandoned ones have the occasional raccoon problem. Hope y’all had your rabies shots.”
Darla parked Kid Godzilla next to the gate and Henry took the lead, hopping a turnstile with his rifle at the ready. He checked all sides, then motioned with two fingers for everyone to follow.
The park wasn’t particularly big, but Martin didn’t realize that. To him it appeared to be an entire city. Lines of miniature houses, torn from the pages of storybooks, made up the downtown. Colorful insectlike rides lorded over the borderlands.
Lane was in awe. She stepped on a slat of a fence and hoisted herself up to get a closer look at a Tilt-A-Whirl. “All right. This place is pretty rad,” she admitted.
“Kelvin told me about it once,” Darla said. “I always figured it’d be a perfect site for a secret project.”
Lane circled the fence, found the controls to the ride, and gave them a closer look. Chet occupied himself with a taffy machine, knocking away hardened braids of sugar so he could give the arms a spin. Henry kept busy scouting for raccoons, kicking open any door he saw and thrusting his rifle inside. While next to a food cart, Martin stood with Darla. She opened a silver cooler and plunged her hand in. It emerged holding an orange soda.
“When we got in the truck, you said we had three Vaporists and a Spacer,” Martin said to her. “So you’re a Vaporist?”
“Used to be,” Darla said, cracking the soda open. She took a big slug from it and gave Martin a quick nudge to the ribs with her elbow. “I’m on your team now. Your drawings officially converted me into a Spacer.”
She lifted the can in a toast, then took another drink.
“What about Henry? What’s he?” Martin asked.
“He’s an idiot, Martin. But he’s eager, and he’s loyal. He told me once that he thought the Day happened because of all the bad things he did when he was a kid. Yikes! Right? He can’t help it, though, I guess.”
“I never asked him to be a part of this,” Martin said.
“He would’ve found out eventually,” Darla said. “Spying is his biggest talent.”
“Well, it’s probably best if he stays with you in the truck,” Martin said.
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re all working together, right?”
“Well …” Martin paused for a moment. He’d thought the distribution of labor would be obvious. “Lane, Chet, and I are going to do the actual building. I figured you, and Henry, could get us the supplies we need. You know, with the truck?”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Darla said quickly. “That makes perfect sense.” As if plugging up her mouth to stave off a snide comment, she immediately put the can back to her lips. When she was finished taking a long swig, she presented it to Martin.
“Thank you,” he said. He reached for it, but she yanked it away.
“No way, wild child,” she said with a half laugh, half snarl. “Gonna have to be faster than that if you want to keep up with me.”
With that, she turned and skittered away, joining Chet, who was rummaging around in a wooden shack that bore a sign reading UNCLE SCHMITTY’S SHOOTING GALLERY.
Chet pulled out a plastic toy rifle. He pointed it at Henry, who was prowling in the distance. “Lookie here, Darla,” Chet joked. “It’s me, Henry. I’m gonna win you a panda bear by shootin’ this here fire stick at a Mongoloid.”
Darla giggled guiltily. Martin was too far away to be positive, but he was pretty sure he saw Henry’s lips trembling, as if he was muttering something under his breath.
Impossible Island was the perfect place to build the machine. Not only did it provide an ample amount of hardware in the form of roller coasters and other amusements, it was also far from the prying eyes of Xibalba. Lane, Chet, Darla, and Henry were in agreement that the project was best kept a secret. For whatever their reasons, they believed in Martin’s designs, but they weren’t sure the other kids would be enamored.
“They’ll think they got another Kelvin on their hands,” Chet said. “And we all know how that ended.”
Actually, Martin didn’t know how that ended. The information on the Internet about Kelvin’s exile was limited at best, and kids always changed the subject when asked about it. All he knew was that it had ended badly and that Nigel had been involved. That compelled Martin to keep quiet about his meeting with Nigel as well. There was a good chance that in some minds, Nigel was a lunatic.
So as not to arouse suspicion, every evening for the next month, the team gathered in the parking lot of the large brick hospital on the edge of town, about as desolate a place as you could find in Xibalba, due to rumors that it was haunted. Unseen, all five would pile into Kid Godzilla. Darla would drop Martin, Lane, and Chet off at Impossible Island, and she and Henry, armed with the latest list of supplies, would go searching nearby communities. Around midnight, Kid Godzilla would return, full of the latest take. They would unload the gear; then they would all get back in the truck and go home together.
Their mornings and afternoons were still dedicated to their various “day jobs.” Martin tended to solar panels and installed a security system for Felix’s Internet. Chet worked his greenhouse. Henry guarded the town’s streets and hunted turkeys and rabbits and the occasional deer, which he traded for other goods and services. When she wasn’t driving Kid Godzilla, Darla made submissions to the Internet and sat on her front steps, doling out orders in the form of advice to anyone who happened to pass by.
“Hey, Wendy,” Martin once heard Darla holler from the steps. “A girl with your complexion should stick to the earth tones. Calls less attention to the acne, don’t you think?”
Only Lane, whose spectacular shows used to be Xibalba’s nightly entertainment, gave up the work of her former life. “Thanks to your solar panels,” she told Martin, “no one cares about live entertainment anymore. Video games and DVDs. The wave of the future.”
Martin felt guilty, of course, but he didn’t know what to do. Every time he tried to reach out to Lane, she gave him the cold shoulder. Other than contributing to the conversations that building the machine required, she remained silent on most evenings. It was strange that she even wanted to help. Still, she was always there. She always worked hard.
The plan was to make the machine twenty times as big as the one Martin had built with his father. It seemed ludicrous when Martin first thought of it, but when they put it into action, he saw how achievable it was. He was not limited by materials. The colossal rides at Impossible Island provided more than enough gears and knobs and metallic casings. He was also not slowed by the constant need for redesign. In all the years that Martin’s father had been working on the machine, he had tinkered and adjusted and rebuilt over and over again. But by the time of his departure, the machine had basically been completed. That was the machine Martin had studied, the machine that was only missing that final piece.
That final piece. That was another thing Martin kept to himself: he still didn’t know what it was. He had hoped either Lane or Chet would naturally figure out what it might be, but as both of them were willing to admit, they didn’t understand the machine beyond what Martin told them.
“Hey, chief, I’m far from a rocket scientist, but I’m still curious as to how this birdy’s gonna fly,” Chet once joked.
Martin was curious too. The machine looked like a giant bullet, and he could picture it ripping and flaming through the atmosphere. The only problems were it didn’t seem suited to the harsh environment of outer space and there wasn’t any logical place to put fuel. Martin tried to push these worries aside. His father had told him the machine was magic. After all Martin had experienced, after all the world had experienced, he was willing to believe in a little magic.