Rise of the Elgen (20 page)

T
he Elgen’s Peruvian Starxource plant was situated near the southeastern city of Puerto Maldonado, a jungle town in the Amazon Basin. It was the largest of the Elgen’s compounds and built on a twenty-five-thousand-acre ranch hemmed in by jungle on all sides. Hatch and his team had selected the city for three reasons: First, it was remote, many miles away from curious eyes. Second, there was plenty of water, as the Río Madre de Dios, a tributary of the Amazon River, passed through the town; and third, it had an abundance of labor. Puerto Maldonado had once been a thriving logging and gold-mining camp, but both the gold and lumber were long gone, leaving few employment opportunities for the natives and guaranteeing an abundant workforce.

The compound had three main structures. The largest building was the Starxource power plant, called
el bol
by the natives, or “the bowl.” The bowl was a massive, redbrick building with stainless steel
casings that bulged out in the middle. Most said the bowl looked like a flying saucer had crashed into it. Just east of the building were three smaller buildings: the water house, the ranch house, and a food production plant.

West of the bowl was the Elgen Reeducation Center, or “Re-Ed,” as it was known by the guards, a rectangular building without windows used to rehabilitate uncooperative employees.

Connected to the Re-Ed by a brick corridor was the assembly hall, a massive building that could house more than two thousand people and served as both a cafeteria and an educational facility.

North of the assembly hall was residential housing, three long, rectangular buildings where the guards, scientists, and employees slept. Hatch, the electric children, and the Elite Guard—twelve men personally selected by Hatch to oversee the Elgen security force—had their own housing facilities on the west side of the Re-Ed.

The bus passed through two checkpoints during the drive into the compound, and even though the bus entered the gates only ten minutes from the airfield, it took a little more than thirty-five minutes for them to reach their housing facilities.

The youths were each assigned a guard and two personal assistants, all Peruvians who spoke English. While the assistants prepared their suites and oversaw the delivery of their luggage, the teens ate lunch in their private dining room. Afterward they gathered in the lobby of their new home, where Dr. Hatch was waiting for them.

“I know it’s not Beverly Hills,” Hatch said. “But I trust your suites are satisfactory.”

All of them agreed that their Peruvian accommodations were as luxurious as the academy in Pasadena.

“Then it will be my pleasure to give you a tour of your new home. I think you will be rather impressed with what we’ve built in the jungle. I know I am.” Hatch ushered them outside to a twelve-seat golf cart with a flashing amber light on top. The driver was a guard dressed in the standard uniform, except for a bright red patch featuring a condor, symbolic of the Chasqui, a special Elgen military order in Peru.

The teens boarded the cart and Hatch climbed up front with the driver and took the microphone. “Everything you’ll see on this tour is C9.”

The difference between C9 and C10 was that C9 could be discussed with other Elgen associates while in a secure Elgen facility. Unlawful disclosure, however, carried the same punishment as C10.

“Onward,” Hatch said.

The cart made a sharp U-turn, then glided silently down the smooth, resin-coated cement floor past the Re-Ed and toward the Starxource plant. Two guards stood at attention as they approached, and the metal doors behind the guards opened.

The inside of the building looked similar to the lower laboratory of the Pasadena academy, only on a much larger scale. The building was more than a hundred yards from end to end, the length of a football field. The corridors were lit with bluish-white indirect lighting, giving the hallways a futuristic, eerie look. It took several minutes for the cart to reach their destination—the elevator to the bowl’s observation deck.

As they approached the room Hatch said, “What you are about to see is the heart of the Starxource program—the very core of our power and our future.” A grim smile crossed his face. “I guarantee you won’t soon forget it.”

The elevator opened to reveal a sealed door guarded by two Elgen guards dressed in black with red armbands. The guards stood stiffly at attention and saluted as Hatch stepped from the cart. One of the guards opened the door, and the kids filed in after Hatch.

Bryan was the first to comment on what they saw. “No way!” he shouted.

T
he teens had seen remarkable things in their lives, far more than normal teenagers, but nothing could have prepared them for the bowl. The observation deck was sixty feet long, and the inner wall, slightly convex, was made of glass, which allowed them a view of something few would ever see: nearly a million electrified rats.

The swarms of rats crawled over one another, creating an undulating, massive orange-and-gray carpet, and in parts of the bowl they looked like molten lava.

“What you’re looking at is almost a million rats, each of them capable of generating two hundred and fifty watts and two amps of electricity an hour; that’s five hundred watts a second, nearly identical wattage to the electric eel. Combined, that’s three hundred seventy-five million watts a second, more than enough to light downtown New York City.

“You can’t see it because of the rodents, but beneath them, the floor is a delicate, silver-coated copper grid, the largest ever constructed. Its purpose is to conduct electricity to the capacitors below. We also use the grid to solve the problem of waste, as the rats’ excrement drops below and is conveyed out to be processed into manure, more than twelve tons a day.”

“That’s a lot of crap,” Bryan said, punching Torstyn in the shoulder.

“Do that again and I’ll melt your head,” Torstyn said.

“What’s that big arm thing in the middle?” Quentin asked.

Connected to the center of the bowl was a curved metallic blade about three feet high and a hundred and forty feet long. The arm slowly swept the bowl like the second hand of a clock.

“That’s the sweep,” Hatch said. “The rats only generate usable amounts of electricity when they’re active, so the sweep makes a complete revolution of the bowl every ninety-six minutes, forcing the rats to continually move. If we need more power we simply increase the speed of the arm, generating more electricity. The sweep has another purpose as well. The angle of the blade forces anything on the grid to its outer rim—so it disposes of animal bones and dead rats, pushing their carcasses off the grid.”

“With the poop?” Bryan asked.

“No. The outer rim falls into special troughs that convey the dead rats into an electric grinder. There, the meat and bone are milled into powder, mixed with an iodine supplement and a glucose solution, then stamped and baked into biscuits, which our scientists call Rabisk—short for rat biscuits. We then feed them to the rats.”

Tara grimaced. “You mean they’re cannibals?”

“Rats are naturally cannibalistic, but ours are a little different. The electric rats won’t eat their own. Our scientists believe that they learn this from shocking each other when they’re young. So they won’t eat a rat, even a dead one, until it no longer looks like a rat, or until it’s been processed into Rabisk. It’s an extremely efficient way of feeding. When we first started this process we had some problems with the rat version of mad cow disease, but our rats only live
nineteen months on average, so by genetically altering the rats we were able stave off the disease for their lifespan. Our rats die earlier than other rats because of their constant state of motion and the electricity that flows through them.”

“Where did you get so many rats?” Tara asked.

“The old-fashioned way,” Hatch said. “We bred them. Rats are one of the most efficient breeders of all the mammals on the planet. They are capable of producing offspring within six weeks of birth—compared to twelve to thirteen years for humans. It’s been speculated that two rats in an ideal breeding environment could produce more than a million offspring in their lifetime.

“Of course, until now, that has just been speculation. But we’ve proven it. We are able to create thousands of rats a day, far more than we need.” Hatch pointed to the far edge of the bowl. “See that small door there? You can just make out the outline. That is where new rats are delivered to the grid. We introduce about seventy new rats every hour, twenty-four/seven. In addition, we keep a twenty percent surplus of rats at all times, in case of disease.”

“What if they escaped?” Bryan said. “That would be awesome.”

“No,” Hatch said coldly. “That would not be
awesome
. In fact, it’s one of our greatest concerns. They would spread throughout the world like an epidemic. Rats are already the world’s leading cause of extinction. Electric rats like ours could destroy entire ecosystems.

“It would also allow anyone to breed our rats and create their own power source, something that would forever end our monopoly. So, as I said, it
would not be awesome
. And it will never happen. Our rats have been bioengineered to die outside of captivity. However, accidents happen. We had a few dozen rats escape before we reengineered them. It might have been an utter disaster, but fortunately the rats have a weakness. Water applied directly to their bodies kills them.”

“Like Zeus,” Kylee said.

Hatch spun around, his face twisted in fury. “What did you say?”

Kylee flushed as she realized what she had done—they were not
allowed to speak Zeus’s name. The other youths looked at her with anger and sympathy.

“I—I didn’t mean to. . . . It just came out. I’m sorry. . . .”

“To your room,” Hatch said.

“I’m so sorry, sir. It will never happen again.”

“Indeed it won’t,” Hatch said. He turned to the guard. “Take her back. Punishment B.”

Kylee grimaced but dared not complain. Punishment B consisted of a full week of room confinement on a bread-and-water diet. During that time she would be required to write
I will not disobey Dr. Hatch’s rules
ten thousand times.

Bryan grinned. “Have fun.”

Kylee shot him a look as she walked away with the guard.

Quentin slowly shook his head. “That was dumb.”

“It was just a mistake,” Tara said softly. “Anyone could have made it.”

“I’m just glad it was her and not me,” Quentin said.

Just then an alarm sounded from inside the bowl.

“Hear that?” Hatch said. “We’re in luck. You’re going to get to watch the feeding.”

“You’re going to love this,” Torstyn said to Tara. “The guards usually come up here on their breaks to watch.”

Thirty yards to their right, a chute, about eight feet wide with metallic rollers, suddenly protruded from the wall. The feeding chute was connected to hydraulic lifts that extended it about twenty yards out from the bowl’s side, slowly lowering it until the end of the chute dangled less than ten feet above the rats, which had already begun congregating around it. A door opened from the wall.

“Watch,” Torstyn said. “Here it comes.”

Suddenly a massive, long-horned bull slid down the chute. The animal’s feet were tied together and it struggled against its bindings but was able to move only its head.

“What is that?” Bryan asked.

“It’s a bull,” Hatch said. “Raised on our own ranch. We passed many of them on our way in.”

“It’s still alive?” Tara asked, slightly grimacing.

“Always,” Hatch said. “Fresh meat produces more electricity. Or, more accurately, struggling meat.”

A spiked-wheel mechanism caught the animal near the bottom of the slide, and the end of the chute snapped in the middle, slowly tilting farther down until the animal was about six feet above the grid. The animal was desperately trying to free itself.

“The chute can’t touch the grid or it will damage it,” Torstyn explained. “The grid, as a whole, can hold more than a thousand tons, but square by square it’s actually pretty fragile.”

In anticipation of their meal, the rats clambered to the chute, climbing on top of one another in a massive wave of fur that glowed a dull red like a hot plate. For the first time since they’d arrived, the glistening copper grid was partially visible, as the rodents were all gathered beneath the chute. When the bull was lowered within a yard of the grid, rats began jumping up onto the animal.

“I didn’t know rats could jump that high,” Quentin said.

“They look like spawning salmon,” Bryan said.

“Rats can jump up to forty inches vertical,” Hatch replied. “That’s the equivalent of a human jumping three stories.”

Within seconds the bull was completely covered by the rodents in a wild feeding frenzy. The rats increased in brightness like a filament. Blue, white, and yellow electricity arced around the carcass, and steam and smoke rose around the bull. The arcs and colors, highlighted by the steam, were, in a peculiar way, beautiful to look at—like the aurora borealis.

“The vapor you see comes from the rats’ electricity against the bull. They’re actually cooking the meat with their bodies,” Hatch said. “That’s a rat barbecue.”