Immortalys

Chapter Two: The Tracking Device

Each day of that week was the same as the previous one: Trisha Brumbah made breakfast, her husband went off to work, and once home from school Willow and Friction holed up in Willow's little room in the back of the house and toiled over their mysterious device. Every once in a while, Trisha would see Willow go outside and measure something, take some notes, tap her pencil on the side of her nose thoughtfully, and then return to Friction's room. She would sit on the floor and fiddle with the old, beat-up radio, turning the nobs and muttering to herself.

Friction, meanwhile, would sit at his desk for hours, writing code on his desktop computer. He would stare at it intently, then his fingers would fly over the keyboard, then he would report his findings to Willow, who took some more notes. Every once in a while, his mother would drop in and bring them cookies, and they'd be sitting in the same spots each time, telling each other technical things that made no sense to her.

Finally, on Wednesday Friction stood up suddenly from his computer, and with one stride he crossed the room and sat next to Willow.

"Willow," he said excitedly, "I know why it's not working properly. Give it to me real quick."

Willow, who was turning their project over in her hands intently, gave it to him. "What is it?"

"I had the program wrong," Friction said, and he began typing something speedily into the device. The lines of code whizzed away before Willow's eyes. "Let me fix this... and then we should be good to go..."

He finished, and exclaimed, "Whoa... whoa! Willow, look at this!"

"What?" She scanned the lines of code with wide eyes, watching it execute flawlessly. "You mean... you mean we can use it now?"

"Yes, Willow; yes!" Friction pushed a button and held out the device so that its antenna pointed at his desktop computer. "Let's test this thing."

Willow got closer to it, narrowing her eyes at the screen. "...Yes...yes! It's picking up your computer's magnetism."

Friction's hand flew to his forehead. "Wow... Willow..."

Willow felt lightheaded with relief. "I can't believe it... we did it, Friction! We did it! We made our Tracking Device!"

Friction stood up, his eyes still glued to the screen. "YES!" He ran toward the door. "Come on, let's go outside and see!"

Both of them rushed out of the hallway and cannoned past Trisha, who stared after them, completely baffled. "...Where are you two going?"

Willow didn't answer. Friction threw open the front door and stood on the porch, the Tracking Device clutched in both hands. Willow stared over his shoulder at it, glancing up at the hazy blue horizon.

The screen of the Tracking Device flashed with dozens of different numbers, marking latitude and longitude. Friction slowly rotated northward, and the digits changed drastically. Finally he faced directly north. Both the latitude and longitude kept jumping between a short number and then a long decimal number, so fast that it was hard for Willow to tell what they were. Friction held his breath and stood as still as possible until the switching slowed down, and he was able to see that the numbers were alternating between 90 N, 0 W and 68.882085 N, 155.554609 W.

Willow said, feeling her heart pound rapidly in her chest, "Friction, look... it's finding the north pole, and then it's finding something else."

"Yeah... I see it..."

And finally the switching stopped, and the tracking device fixed on this mysterious coordinate somewhere north of Willow and Friction. She and Friction shared a glance, both too excited to speak. We found it, Willow repeated to herself, her hands shaking. We located their magnetic field. We found it.