Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

larger circle represented the area where everyone on the surface was killed but a few ruins of cities remained. There was no place where the bigger circles didn’t overlap.
    But today Mr. Allen wasn’t talking about World War III, the bombs, or General Shadel. He was talking about the inventions that existed before all that. “Before the bombs,” he said, “there were a million inventions people used every day that we no longer have.”
    Mr. Allen motioned to the table next to him. There were a few things I had seen before in the library or in other classes, but some of them I had no idea about.
    I loved seeing relics. But just like we gathered into groups and formed towns, bandits gathered into groups and stole from towns. It was dangerous to search for relics left over from before the bombs, and to transport them all the way back to White Rock, so we didn’t have many.
    “Since everyone seems to be in the mood for inventions today, we’re going to be talking about the technology revolution of the twenty-first century.”
    He reached out and grabbed something silver and shiny about three inches by two inches, and about a half inch thick. There was a strange circle thing on the front ofit, and the back was mostly black, and buttons and knobs were all over it but they were almost flat against the metal. “Anyone know what this is?”
    Along with the rest of the class, I shook my head. Everything on it was so small. Even the words printed on it or carved into it were minuscule.
    Nate Vanlue raised his hand. “A cell phone?”
    A cell phone!
I’d heard of those. They let people talk over long distances. Aaren’s brother Travin said they didn’t just carry voices, though. He said they contained images and books and music and moving pictures and games and news, but I didn’t believe him. I heard they were teeny.
    “Nope. Any other guesses?” When no one raised a hand, he told us. “It’s a camera.” I had heard of a camera before, too, but I’d never seen one. Mr. Allen picked up a book from the table and thumbed through it. “A camera could be used to take a picture of anything. Like this.” He held open a page that showed hundreds and hundreds of people sprawled out in a field, listening to people play musical instruments.
    Mr. Allen showed us a cylinder called a flashlight. Then he passed around a flat object about a foot square that had individual twists of something that looked like short pieces of thick string sticking up, but it was so much softer than any string I’d ever felt. He said it was calledcarpet, and that it used to cover the floors in people’s homes. When it was my turn, I just laid my cheek on the soft fibers and imagined an entire room of it. Then he showed us a picture of my favorite thing—a machine that actually washed your dishes for you!
    And the best thing about the inventions before the bombs was that there were enough people—thousands and thousands in every city—so not everyone had to invent. Only the people who were really good at it invented, and only because they wanted to. It was strange to think that if World War III hadn’t happened, I’d be living with the kinds of technology he showed us.
    It was even stranger that people I knew had used that stuff—all the twenty-six original members of White Rock. Since Mr. Allen was the first person born in White Rock, he was also the oldest person here who hadn’t used any of those inventions. The more Mr. Allen told us about the things that once existed, the more I understood why everyone placed such importance on inventing. They wanted that technology back.
    But it wasn’t going to happen.
    When the green bombs hit, they left behind side effects. Besides new plants, metals having different properties, weather patterns changing, and the existence of the Bomb’s Breath, the green bombs destroyed any ability to create a stable magnet. No magnets meant no electricmotors. And no electric motors meant no to a lot of the