The Eden Project: Humanity's Last Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

attack occurred,” Doctor Quarna continued. “And, god forbid, his grandson won’t even still be there.”
    Doctor Becker had to stop him. All she could do was keep to her plan. “You will see on page four—”
    “Please, Lotte, stop. I understand it’s painful. I mean, god, we all want Hoss to save his grandson,” Doctor Quarna shocked the room with his own brand of human emotions. No one was used to seeing him like this and it was exactly what Doctor Becker had wanted.
    She knew the printouts would do nothing for her argument in an empirical sense, but she knew it would make her seem desperate and emotional. And she’d made Doctor Quarna reveal his human side too.
    He even called her Lotte.
    They looked at each other and connected. Had she reached him? She began to think she had, until his big brain processed the final possible scenario of why Lotte had called this meeting. She watched deep alarm and disappointment overcome him. She knew her little ruse had ended. She hoped it would be enough.
    * * *
    ADAM CLIMBED THE LADDER to the lookout post. Two boys a couple years younger than Adam sat together at an all glass desk. Milo scrolled through multiple camera views of the surrounding sea on his screen while Isaac watched an empty radar screen.
    Both boys sat up straighter as Adam approached.
    “Relax, guys,” Adam said. He stepped behind them and touched their backs reassuringly. “I’m just killing some time.”
    Gen watched from the shade beneath the plastic trees. Tuna squatted down next to her to get a better angle up to the lookout. They could see Milo and Isaac turned around in their chairs talking with Adam.
    “What’s he doing up there?” Gen said under her breath. Tuna quickly realized she was asking herself and not him.
    Gen watched Adam closely. She noticed his hands and their expressive movements. She noticed his easy smile at what appeared to be cheery banter with the boys. She knew something was off. There was something wrong with this picture. Adam does not banter cheery with anyone let alone thirteen-year-olds.
    Somehow he was toying with them, working them the way he worked everyone, even Doctor Becker. That damn blue coconut explosion!
    It was obvious from Tuna’s evasive smile that he had come to the same conclusion. Something was happening.
    “Milo and Isaac are in our navigation class,” Tuna offered. She tilted her head at him wondering if that was the best he could do.
    Then Gen looked up and beyond him. Not at Adam, at the sea. All feeling suddenly fell from her face. Her blank expression confused Tuna. Gen was witnessing a thing she could not quite comprehend.
    A boat. Out there on the sea. In the choppy waters. It was like seeing a rainbow or an eclipse. There had never been anything out on the sea. She had often thought that the sea may not exist, that perhaps it was a projection within the glass.
    She’d even spent an hour or two trying to find a pattern, a repetition of wave activity to prove that the ocean was being projected, that it was not real, but she never could. And now, in plain view, a boat moved magically across the water like a cloud moved magically across the sky.
    Tuna saw it too. He stood next to Gen stunned. “A boat,” he proclaimed to Gen and the world. She nodded barely at Tuna then lifted her eyes to Adam still chatting up the lookouts.
    The truth rushed into her lungs leaving her breathless. Adam and the boat were connected. His cheery banter and that magical vessel. She turned quickly back to the boat and realized something else.
    “That’s our boat,” she said, turning to Tuna who opened his eyes wider before glancing back at the water. He knew she was right. The boat came from the dome.
    Adam could see the boat, but did not seem to care. In fact, he acted like the boat did not exist. Instead, he kept talking to Milo and Isaac and tried not to give the boat any of his attention.
    “There’s a boat!” someone within the dome yelled.
    Milo and Isaac