Nudge the Quileute16

Going to Antarctica to save the world, getting kidnapped, birdseed, almost being sold in an auction, flying in a hurricane, Max talking to Congress, and then leaving a special mutant school to save the world

Nudge's POV

I was tired from all of the running away and I had asked Max earlier, if we could return to France. I liked France. France was fun. Now, I wanna learn how to speak French so I can move to France, someday. Then Max's Voice said that we had to go somewhere, meet up with her mom there.

I was really glad that we got to see Dr. Martinez again and then we had to go on a really, really, tiny, plane to Argentina. Then we got on a boat and went to the South Pole—Antarctica.

Then, Angel went for a walk with Akila and Total, and Total had a crush on Akila. Max and Fang went and rescued Angel, Total, and Akila, and meanwhile, back at the station, Ed, Gazzy, Iggy, and I all got captured by some Go-Bots. Max, Fang, Angel, Total, and Akila were kidnapped by a big thug and more Go-Bots.

Then the big thug said his name was Gozen and then after I asked like Japanese dumplings, Fang said, "That would be Gyoza." I shrugged and then we were taken into a giant, really tall building and learned that we couldn't just jump out the window. Then we were fed by some more Go-Bots and we got birdseed. We all ended up laughing and when Gozen came to lead us to a office room, I told Max I needed to grab something. I put the lid back on the container of birdseed and stuffed it into my coat. I was going to hang on it.

We met this gross, made-entire-out-of-boxes, guy, and the way Max would describe him is as gross as it sounds. It was like his guts and stuff were surrounded by and connected to machine parts—hoses, pumps, electronic things. And yes, it was as totally gross as it sounded. Once again, well actually, for the first time ever, I was grateful for all of the sick things I had seen throughout my childhood, because otherwise I would have been puking my guts up.

He tried to sell us in an auction, but then Gazzy unleashed his new "ability" and then we all stopped paying attention. I stood there, chatting a mile a minute and talking about random, unnecessary stuff that I think people should know. Then the hurricane hit the building and we all launched ourselves into the hallway and we escaped and nearly died, until we reached the eye of the storm. We followed the storm to remain in the eye and then we all agreed that global-warming was bad. We went back to Arizona to talk to Dr. Martinez—I left the birdseed with her—and we all went to Washington D.C. and Max gave a really interesting speech about global warming and what the United States could do as a nation to save the world.

"Thank you for inviting me here today. I'm here to testify about things I've seen and experienced myself. I'm here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We've gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we've harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormous superjets. We've even created new kinds of people, like me. But everything mankind—personkind has accomplished has had a price. One that we're all going to have to pay. Look. There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know, what the world needs to know, is that we're really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic way than anyone has ever imagined. I mean, I've seen a lot of the world, the only world we have. There are so many, awesome, beautiful things in it. Waterfalls and mountains, thermal pools surrounded by ice and snow as far as you can see. Beautiful beaches with sand like white sugar. Fields and fields of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside, like it's done for thousands of years. I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces come from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct in my lifetime. Just recently, I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge, worldwide climatic changes caused by...us. We, the people. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. A more perfect union? While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want, and other people live in subway tunnels. Where's the justice of that? Kids right here in America go to bed hungry every night, while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare? Where's the general welfare of strip-mining, toxic pesticides, industrial solvents being dumped into rivers, killing everything? Domestic tranquility? Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut? You'd be hearing chainsaws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty? Yes, I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now, my freedom of speech, to tell you guys, who make the laws, that the very ground you stand on, the houses you live in, the children you tuck in at night, are all in immediate, catastrophic danger. Every minute of every day, cars belch exhaust. Factories spew toxins into the air, land, and water. We've cleared millions of square miles of forests, rain forests, and plains, which means tons of topsoil are just washing away. Which means loss of animals and plants, and increased fires, floods, and coastal disintegration. Just by stuff people have made, created, we're raising the over-all temperature of the entire atmosphere. Well, we only have the one atmosphere! What do you plan to do when it's destroyed? Can we all hold our breaths until we get a new one? The problem is here, now. Nine of the ten hottest years ever recorded have happened in my lifetime. I'm fourteen. More or less. There have been record-setting extremes across the globe—tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis. We're warming up the planet, and the planet's ice is melting. If only fifty percent of the world's ice melts, countless rivers and streams will overflow and then dry up, killing hundreds of thousands of people from disease and starvation. The ocean water level will rise anywhere from four feet to maybe twenty feet. How many of your favorite vacation spots would be under water? Want to see the Eiffel Tower by canoe? Do any of you own beach houses? Kiss 'em good-bye. And not two hundred years from now. Soon. Maybe within this lifetime. We can't reverse this disaster, even if we all pitched in now and did everything we could, which face it, we're not going to do. A small percentage of us will do stuff, and other people will ignore the problem and hope they'll be dead before it gets really bad. But there are things we can do that would at least help. It would make a difference. The US could ratify the Kyoto treaty. Pretty much every country in the world, except us and Australia, has ratified it. How can we be so pigheaded? Wait—don't answer that. I know our time here is limited. In general, we need to pay more attention to what we do, what we buy, who we buy it from. Use compact fluorescent bulbs. If every house in America replaced one of its regular lightbulbs with a compact fluorescent, it would be like taking a million cars off the road. I mean, how hard is that? I can do the math, and I've never even gone to school! Look into other kinds of power. Windmills, watermills, solar power—every year corporations pay a jillion dollars in legal fees to avoid getting fined for pollution violations. What if they took a small percentage of that money and put it toward coming up with better energy source? Right now America looks like a fatheaded, short-sighted, gas-guzzling, arrogant, blowhard to the rest of the world. And Sweden looks all clean and tidy and progressive. I mean, where's our sense of pride? Why can't we be the progressive leaders, showing the rest of the world how to clean up its act? Why can't we the people, get more involved and push through legislation that will help clean up our air, land, and water? Why can't we take government funds from stupid things like war and use them for programs that will develop better fuel sources? I'm just one kid, and not even a regular kid. But if I can come up with all this, why can't you? Will you wait until the water is lapping at your feet?"

Then Max fell silent and everyone sat there, stiffly. We left and then had to go to a special school for mutants only. Then Max's Voice said we had to save the world, again. And so we left, once more, to save the world.