My Kids Are Saving the World: #1 Sun Block

Then there was the time that my son Atican saved the world by foiling a plan by Sindictive Nastevil.

Nastevil, at that time, was one of the top scientists at NASA. He co-wrote two important scientific papers, Sunlight's Flight and The Space between Hydrogen Molecules. The first paper was about the effect of sunlight on earth, and how long life on earth would exist if the sun went dark (about 8 and a half minutes, he figured). The second paper discussed how much space actually exists between the atoms in a molecule. If you condensed the space in any molecule, you'd alter the molecule's size, but not it's weight. In theory, he wrote, you could condense a 1964 Ford Mustang into a 3,000 pound jumble of steel, upholstery and rubber the size of marble just by taking out all of this molecular space.

Going the other way, you could quadruple the space in a hydrogen molecule before the object lost its opacity. In other words, you still could not see through it. In this way, if the Mustang was actually made out of hydrogen, and only hydrogen, you could quadruple the size of the Mustang, and it would still weigh 3,000 lbs, and you still couldn't see through it.

Atican, of course, could see right through Nastevil's sinister plan. After repeated readings of Nastevil's studies, he began to suspect Nastevil was planning on increasing the size of a group hyrdogen atoms on the sun, using sunlight to block sunlight from reaching earth! He also suspected Nastevil himself would be hidden in an underwater lair, waiting out the nearly instant death and destruction throughout earth. He and his handful of chosen humans and animals -- two by two -- would begin to repopulate the earth and he would be in charge instead of being a mere scientist with evil dreams and aspirations. But Atican knew that most brilliant scientists, evil or not, were short on common sense, and he thought Sindictive Nastevil had probably forgotten something very important.

Atican looked up the address of Nastevil's underwater lair in the Yellow Pages (see Lairs, Underwater or Lairs, Island), then used Google Maps to locate it (about halfway between Senegal and Venezuela, but a little more north). He borrowed his Dad's ocean kayak and paddled there in three days. It should have only taken him two and a half days, but he ran into Hurricane Jerry. Jerry was on it's way to ravaging Puerto Rico, but Atican had an idea. He paddled hard  into the eye of the storm and found the "down" button. It was a bit over his head, but he managed to reach it by standing up in the kayak and then using the paddle. It was hard to balance the skinny kayak in the forty foot seas but he managed to hit the down button 47 times, which downgraded the Category 5 storm to a more manageable fresh breeze. Then he took off his t-shirt and held it out and let the breeze blow him to the spot where his Google Maps printout indicated would be directly over Sindictive Nastevil's hidden lair.

It was for the hurricane's delay that he nearly missed the chance to thwart Nastevil. And Atican was a bit worried, because the printout had gotten wet and the ink had run. Maybe it wasn't the right spot? Would he find the lair? He took a deep breath and dove in. Down, down he swam. It was a long way down, perhaps almost a mile. It was very dark and the water very heavy. And, he was nearly out of breath when he got there, so when the first six secret knocks he tried didn't work, he came back to the top for air and had to swim back down. Finally, on the twelth secret knock he tried, the lair opened and Atican made it in. He stood there gasping, just in time to see that Nastevil was about to press a big red button on the wall, the button labeled "Activate Sun Block, SPF 4,000,000."

Nastevil turned to look at Atican and Atican stared back.  Nastevil blinked first! and Atican, in winning the staring contest, thus establishing his superiority.  Then he said, "Nastevil, if you kill everything on earth, nothing will grow for a whole year, until the seasons can cycle and catch up. Did you have the common sense to store up a lot of food?"

"Food! Darnit, I knew I forgot something!" Nastevil called off his evil plan because Atican had captured his element of surprise, and also because he only had two frozen TV dinners in the fridge in the Evil Underwater Lair break room (evil because it stocked only decaf coffee and diet soda). He didn't even remember to pack a TV!  Sheesh, these scientific types.  Nastevil hastily abandoned the compromised lair and went on the run. Atican couldn't catch him because he was busy helping to escape all the people and animals Nastevil left behind to die.

And thus Atican became, from that time forward, Sindictive Nastevil's arch-enemy.