“Cool, huh?” Jack asked. “No back, just two fronts, so if you get stuck you just reverse it. The extra treads extend automatically to grip the ceiling if the descent gets too steep, for one hundred percent traction. The thing can even ride on the extra treads if it gets flipped on its side.”
“But, Jack, how does it do zee drilling? And what is all this?” Fastbinder looked at the roof of spun crystal.
“That’s the coolest thing. Pops! The whole exterior surface is imbedded with proton discharge devices making really big honkin’ wads of static electricity. You should see this thing at work. Lightning everywhere! It makes, like, this air hammer that breaks it all down to particulate, dirt or sand or rock or whatever, and sends it flying around, and the particles at the perimeter of the proton discharge get melted in place, and the swirling crumbles stick to ’em and it builds a crystallized support structure. The crystal makes it strong enough, and the computer guides the protons to make tempered, noncrystalline filaments for more support—like rebar inside of concrete. See?”
Fastbinder was still woozy. He understood the concepts his son was throwing at him, and yet…
“You built this thing from nothing? How long have I been down here?”
Jack’s grin faded. “Six days, about. You should have taken more oxygen. You shouldn’t have even tried this in that old junker of yours.”
Fastbinder glanced at the hole where they had emerged from the Mighty Iron Mole. It was a classic, a one-of-a-kind marvel of engineering, built in 1938 by a demented inventor in Oregon. The inventor used it once, boring just eighteen feet into the rich black soil before the engine seized up. The inventor exited through the rear hatchway and was pulled out of his tunnel by rope. The tunnel collapsed as he and his assistants were discussing engine improvements.
The Mighty Iron Mole remained buried, and over the years its very existence came into doubt. Fastbinder, who was an avid collector of antique engineering oddities, heard the rumors, saw the sixty-year-old photos and paid the son of the inventor ten thousand dollars for excavation rights on the property, then paid another hundred thousand to purchase the MIM after he located it.
Fastbinder told the inventor’s son that the mole would be restored and put on display at the Fastbinder Museum of Mechanical Marvels.
“Not restored so’s it will work?” asked the son, now a retired plumber in Portland.
“Not quite,” Fastbinder said.
The inventor’s son considered the machine a death trap, but Fastbinder was in love with the Mighty Iron Mole long before he ever laid eyes on it. He’d intended to restore it fully—and he did. He even improved it. Still, it took blind desperation to convince him to actually use it.
The Iron Mole hadn’t exactly proven itself to be mighty. Now it looked almost as dead as when he’d first dug down to it in Oregon—a metal hulk, smothered in the earth. The entrance made by Jack was an ugly, burned gash in the aluminum-plated steel shell.
“I would like to put this old junker in zee museum, even if she did almost kill me,” Fastbinder lamented. “She is a special machine. Nothing was like her, ever.”
Jack looked gloomier. “Pops, the museum was trashed, and I mean totally. They took it to pieces. There wasn’t so much as a screw and a bolt still put together. Everything’s gone from the house, too.”
Fastbinder nodded. “I see.”
“These are some bad guys, Pops. Herbie was right. They’re freaks or something.”
“I know this. I met them, remember? I watched them on zee video when I was trying to make an escape. They used no weapons or tools. They did all the destruction with their hands.”
Jack nodded seriously. “That’s what Margo told the police.”
“Margo? She is okay?”
“She’s fine,” Jack assured him.
‘T would like to see the devastation for myself.” Fastbinder sighed. “Is it safe to return?”
“No. Uh-uh. The cops must’ve got word I was back in town. They started nosing around. We gotta surface somewhere else. Don’t worry, this baby’s nuclear. She’ll go for a thousand miles if you wanna. I’ve got oxygen for a week, and she’ll extract and replenish her air supply from any and all water we run into.”
“I am starving.”
“I have lunch meat inside JED. We’ll stop for supplies a few miles down the road.”
“JED?”
Jack looked sheepish. “Well, I been working all hours and didn’t have time to think of a better name, so I just called it Jack’s Earth Drill. JED for short. You think it’s a dorky name?”
Fastbinder shook his head. “Jack, I think JED is magnificent.”
Jack beamed.
Fastbinder crawled through the hatch into his son’s gleaming vehicle, never looking back at the old diesel earth drill that had been built by a lunatic in 1938.
For eighteen years Frank Socol operated the This Little Piggy Market and Gift Shop on America’s Historic Route 66. He bought the place because he loved the mother road and he wanted to be a part of it.
“But, Frank, it’s a convenience store,” his wife protested way back in the 1980s.
“It’s a market, a grocery, a community meeting place. This Little Piggy is a part of the history of Route 66.”
“I know you like Route 66 and all, but Frank, you are an ophthalmologist—you can’t give up your practice to run a 7-Eleven, even an antique 7-Eleven.”
“Lorraine, somebody has to save the This Little Piggy. We can’t allow another piece of Americana to just fade away.”
“Why not?” Lorraine asked.
In the end, Dr. Frank Socol had to choose between Lorraine and This Little Piggy. Lorraine now lived in Sioux City with an endocrinologist.
Frank kept This Little Piggy Market and Gift Shop on America’s Historic Route 66 in pristine and pseudo-vintage condition, including a screen door that slammed. He did add air-conditioning, and the valuable cool air buffeted out that screen door every time a tourist opened it, but every three-dollar bottle of pop they bought helped offset the A/C bill.
The tourists just kept on coming. The Japanese kept the cash flowing during lulls in American interest. There were also big influxes of Route 66 aficionados from Finland, of all places. Hell, the Finns would pay four dollars for a bottle of pop and never even complain—especially the stuff in brown glass bottles that claimed to be handcrafted, even though it came from a big plant in Albuquerque that produced the big soda brands.
Frank’s real profits came from water. “The rare water of the desert, hand-bottled at the hidden springs of the American Southwest.” That’s what the label said. Frank Socol composed it himself and had the labels printed in town, and bought the glass bottles—glass for the authentic look—by the truckload. He filled them in the back room between tour buses and motorcycle gangs.
That’s what he was doing—filling Mother Road Agua bottles—when he heard a rumbling noise like a really big truck thundering down the ancient, crumbling asphalt of Route 66. He turned off the faucet and noticed that the droplets in the sink were shivering.
Frank Socol walked out of his living quarters in back. From the narrow aisles of the ancient grocery store he could see the heat-shimmering mother road with nary a vehicle on it.
The rumbling became violent and Frank jogged onto the old plank porch, his body instantly engulfed in the desert heat.
It felt like the vibration came from behind This Little Piggy. That couldn’t be. There was nothing but empty desert for miles. In fact, there was nothing to the left or right of the market, either.
But when Frank went around the back, he did indeed find the source of the vibration.
The earth was bulging, growing, only a stone’s throw from the garbage bins. For a heart-stopping second Frank thought there was some sort of freak desert volcano coming to the surface. But who ever heard of a desert volcano?