On the other wing, it had cost her a lot of pride to ask him to come. She’d never even taken his blog that seriously, and now she was using it to beg him to come back. Well, order him to come back. Which was as close to begging as Max would get.
What were they doing in Germany? How had they gotten to Europe? How did she expect him to get to Europe?
He looked at the date on the e-mail. Early this morning. And Germany was about ten hours or so ahead....
How would Max define “really bad stuff”? As opposed to just ordinary bad stuff? Stuff bad enough to make her swallow her pride and ask him to come help.
So they were talking pretty unimaginably bad.
“Okay, I got it,” said Mike, sitting back. He had a proud, satisfied smile on his face. “It’ll work a little like a virus, in that it’ll access other addresses through people’s e-mail programs, but it won’t cause any damage.” He frowned. “I think. Anyway, type your message and then hit this special Send box I created. Let’s see what happens.”
Fang swallowed. This was it. This was his chance to get kids to take this seriously, tell them what was going on. All over the planet, kids would read this message.
This was his chance to save the world.
He started writing.
94
To: undisclosed recipients
From: Fang
Subject: URGENT! We want our planet back!
Hey. If you get this message, we might have a chance. I mean the world might have a chance. Long story short: The grown-ups have taken a nice clean planet and trashed it for money. Not every grown-up. But a bunch of them, over and over, choose money and profits over clean air and water. It’s their way of telling us they don’t give a rat’s butt about us, the kids, who are going to inherit what’s left of the Earth.
A group of scientists want to take back the planet before it’s too late and stop the pollution. Good, right? Only problem is they think they need to get rid of half the world’s population to do it. So it’s like: Save the planet so the pollution doesn’t kill people, or...just kill people to start with, save everyone time. For you kids at home, that’s called “flawed logic.” I mean, call me crazy, but that seems like a really bad plan.
The other thing about these scientists is that they’ve tried to create a new kind of human who might survive better, like if there’s a nuclear winter or whatever. I won’t go into the details, but let me just say that this idea is as boneheaded and dangerous as their “kill half the people” plan.
What I’m saying is: It’s up to us. You and me. Me and my flock, you and your friends. The kids. We want—we deserve—to inherit a clean, unmessed-up planet, and still keep everyone who’s already living on it.
We can do it. But we have to join together. We have to take chances. Take risks. We have to get active and really do something, instead of just sitting at home playing Xbox. This isn’t a game. We can’t defeat the enemy by hitting them with our superlaser guns.
We want our planet back.
Kids matter. We’re important. Our future is important.
ARE YOU WITH ME?
95
The Gasman finished reading over Fang’s shoulder.
“I wish I had an Xbox,” he said. Fang rolled his eyes.
“Cool message, dude,” said Mike. “I feel like jumping up and starting a rally. Now what?”
“Now,” said Fang, starting to type another message, “we go to Germany.”
He ignored the way his heart thumped when he thought about seeing her—them—again. If she still had the cretin with her, he was going to be pissed. But cretin or no, splitting up the flock was wrong. If the world was coming to an end, they needed to be together.
To: Max
From: Fang
Subject: Yo