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Chapter 13: Answers

Gizmo turned to face the eight pups as they raced down the railway. "This island is… different from normal islands. It's surrounded by a giant force field called the Island Dome, which is created by a device called the Shield Sphere. It prevents anything from entering or exiting, and it's there for an important reason. I'm sure you saw the cliffs. Well, without that force field, those cliffs are all that's preventing this island from being flooded under a kilometer of water."

Everyone gasped.

"Back on the beach, the water level there is about a kilometer below sea level. It wasn't always that way; the island only sank down that far due to a series of subterranean collapses back in the 1800s. The danger of the cliffs collapsing from ten megapascals of pressure was real enough that they got to work right away on a solution. It had to be something that would protect the island from flooding in any form; ocean, waves, or even rain. They came up with the Island Dome, and somehow it worked. It wasn't flawless; sometimes lightning strikes can disrupt the continuity of the electrosphere, but it worked. It's powered using a geothermal turbine in Mount Ashton, along with most everything else on the island. As the years passed people forgot about the island. After all, nobody could go in or out. Eventually an invisibility shield was added to the dome and the island faded out of knowledge entirely. So in order to get you guys off the island, we need to build an aircraft, turn off the dome, get you through without slicing you in half, and then turn it back on while keeping the dome off for the least amount of time possible. The longer the dome is off, the more likely it will be that the Rim will collapse. Any questions?"

The pups had plenty.

"Slicing us in half?!"
"Why is the beach water freshwater if it used to be ocean water?"
"So does it never rain here?"
"What's a geoturnal turbine?"
"So was it the lightning that hit our plane that made us get through the dome?"
"What's the Rim?"
"How did you make the shield?"
"How much longer do you think the cliffs will hold for?"

Gizmo answered back in a rapid string of responses. "Yes. Because of the Lake's filtration. Nope. Geothermal, and it's a type of generator. Probably. The cliffs. I didn't. Not long." A normal person would have been able to neither comprehend nor answer all these questions. Gizmo, however, was no normal person. The other pups, though, weren't able to pick out the answers to their questions.

"Wait, so what…?" Everest asked uncertainly.

Gizmo sighed. "I'll answer them again. Yes, Marshall, if the shield turns back on when you're in the range, you'll be sliced in half."

Marshall gulped. "Oh my…"

Gizmo then turned to Rocky, "Rocky, yes, if your plane was hit by lightning right before you crashed, then what probably happened was the lightning conducted through your plane, hit the force field around the island, and created a hole in the dome. You then slipped through the hole, which immediately closed back up again, cutting off your wing. It would make a similar cut as a laser would, even going as far as cauterization."

"That makes perfect sense!" Rocky exclaimed excitedly.

Marshall whimpered. "How do you know about the cauterization...?"

"Well, it's simple science," Gizmo replied. "But I've also used my miniaturized Shield Sphere to hunt with from time to time. Anything within one meter gets chopped in half. I call it the One Meter Rule."

Marshall tried to refrain from imagining what would happen if his paw was in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Oh- okay..." he whispered.

"Rubble," Gizmo said as he directed his attention at him, "I didn't make the shield. My ancestors did. But I can tell you a bit about how it works later. Chase, the lake is freshwater because they needed a source of freshwater from somewhere. With no rain, they decided to filter out the entire lake. All they needed to do was draw lake water, run it through a fine grade filter, and add potential energy. Tracker, yes. Because of the Island Dome, it never rains here. There's been once or twice during a thunderstorm that I can remember where lightning struck and some rain has fallen through onto the roof above, but it's not very much. Zuma, a geothermal turbine is a turbine that takes energy from a heat source underground and turns it into an electrical current."

Rocky decided to ask a follow-up question, "For a geothermal motor to work, doesn't it need an underground heat source?"

Gizmo smiled at him, "Yep! There's usually one of two types of energy sources that the turbines run on. The first type is radiation heat." Everyone gasped at this. "Oh, don't worry. There's not many radiation sources around here. We use the second source. Magma."

"Magma? You mean like, lava?!" Zuma shouted out.

"Yep! It keeps the turbines going, the energy supply up, and it cools the volcano to the point where it stays dormant."

"Volcano?!" all the pups exclaimed in unison.

Gizmo wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. He also wasn't feeling very comfortable with all the attention they were giving him. It made him very self-conscious to have eight pairs of eyes on him. "Yes…?"

"Is it going to explode?" Tracker asked worriedly.

The Labrador sighed, "No, it's not going to explode anytime soon. I just said it's dormant. Anyway, moving on. Everest, the Rim is just what I call the cliffs surrounding us. It's a catchy name that matches The Bowl. And Skye, the cliffs won't hold for long. They're weak enough as it is, and the sea has been wearing away at the rock face on the other side of the shield for well over a hundred years. I wouldn't be surprised if it's almost completely eroded away by now."

A curtain of silence hung over the nine pups as the Paw Patrol absorbed the information. Skye eventually broke the silence. "So if you help us out, then the city might get flooded?"

The black dog nodded slowly. "It's a possibility."

"But wait a minute," Everest began, "If you're here to keep people away from the research, then couldn't you just destroy it by flooding the island and then come with us?"

This made Gizmo pause for a bit. He was now feeling very uncomfortable. He had never held a conversation with anyone before. He disliked having the attention on him, and loathed the question. Sure, it would be nice to see the world outside, but even the thought of him having to start doing this type of thing every day made it seem like the walls of the room were closing in on him. He knew being scared of socializing was irrational, but knowing it made frustration boil up inside of him. He felt a rush of blood to his head as he grew mad, not at the other pups, but at himself. It was an emotion very new to him. Sure he had been upset before with his projects, but never outright mad. "No!" he said, much more forcefully than he intended. "I can't go back. It wouldn't work. It's complicated. You wouldn't understand." Or at least that's what Gizmo thought. After all, how would someone understand when he himself didn't? The pup turned around to face the control panel again, staring ahead into space.

Everyone wanted to find something to say to help, but they couldn't. They simply didn't know him well enough yet, and frankly were taken aback by how he had snapped. Eventually Chase sneezed, shattering the gloom. "How much longer until we get there?"

"We've been here for seven minutes," the black Lab replied coldly. Gizmo walked over and pushed open the door, revealing the docking station. "Sorry," he apologized, regretting his tone. He walked out, and the rest of the pups tentatively followed the frustrated pup out through the exit passageway.

Finally, after ten chapters, I'm giving out answers about the mysterious island! Most of the questions up until this point should be answered now, explaining the crash and most of what happened to them after that. There are still a good number of things that were hinted at that are floating about, though! Initially this chapter ended significantly milder, with Gizmo just saying he had never thought about leaving before. After reading through it one last time before posting it I realized that that's not the type of reaction he would have at all to being put on the spot like that. What I have now is (I think) a more accurate depiction of Gizmo's character and the inner struggle he's having and will continue to have.