“Wasn’t he scared?” I asked Uncle Harry when he was telling me and Harry Junior stories about some of his adventures with Dad.

  “Of course he was scared. But being scared doesn’t mean you’re frozen. It doesn’t mean you’re helpless. Don’t give in to panic. Remember you’re in control of your body.”

  Then Uncle Harry farted, and we all laughed even though it smelled like rotten cabbage.

  But Uncle Harry had a good point. This wasn’t the Klinck station in Greenland, which once reported a temperature of minus 67.7 degrees Celsius. I wasn’t frozen.

  I forced down the panic, staying in control of my body and my emotions and my mind, and my mind reminded me that I was climbing up dirt.

  Dirt was soft.

  I kicked the wall, digging a toe in, and then did it with my other foot, making my own ladder. Soon enough I was at the edge of the hole, and then I used the rope to haul the rest of myself out.

  Mr. Wintergarten still stared at me, and I ignored him, walking back to the house to conduct my experiment, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

  Mom and Dad and Uncle Harry weren’t the only ones who could have adventures.

  PHIN

  Less than half of the homes in Destiny, Colorado had basements. Something to do with a foundation being more stable if it’s below the frost line. Or maybe it had something to do with flooding. I didn’t pay much attention to the realtor’s explanations. My interest in owning a home with a basement had to do with the extra storage space, and the potential for a home gym.

  The home gym was somewhere between #40 and #75 on my growing to-do list, and it threatened to drop down even lower as I checked the unfinished concrete walls for cracks and leaks using my Olight everyday carry and a twenty-four-inch level.

  From a cursory glance, everything seemed intact. The overhead steel I-beams and supporting Lally columns were still square. No splits in the overhead joists. Floor remained level.

  I was almost ready to report to my wife that everything was fine and we’d dodged a major bullet, then I noticed the crawlspace. While ¾ of our basement was eight feet deep, the final quarter was non-livable space, with a one meter clearance, which began along the south wall facing Wintergarten’s property. There were three large, rectangular openings in the concrete at chest-height, allowing access. I’d barely glanced at the crawlspace when we first viewed the house, subconsciously noting that it had dirt floors, some ductwork and water pipes, and a whole lot of spiderwebs.

  Viewing it again, my earlier optimism vanished. The dirt had shifted, reaching the upper floor in some areas, and dropping several feet in others. It looked like a snapshot of an angry ocean, but made of soil instead of water. Some of the columns were completely buried. At least three were hanging from the beams over empty space, no longer offering any support for the main floor.

  I aimed my Olight beam into the dirt, and saw a companion sinkhole had opened up in the southwest corner of our house, dipping beneath the concrete foundation.

  After voicing a few strong words that would have made George Carlin blush, I snapped a dozen pics of the damage with my cell. Then I returned upstairs to share the news with Jack, who was just getting off the phone.

  She looked defeated.

  “Called our insurance agent. On the plus side, we’re covered. On the minus side, they are short inspectors, and they won’t be able to get anyone out here for at least two weeks, and it will only be that soon if we can show the house isn’t habitable. Which doesn’t really matter, because getting someone out here to fix it won’t happen until at least June, pandemic permitting. How bad is it down there?”

  “Foundation seems fine. But the earth shifted in the crawlspace, and we’re down at least three support posts. I’m going to walk the perimeter of the house, see if we’re sinking anywhere.”

  Jack held out her hand. I gave it a squeeze.

  “Did you try calling the county, to get someone from zoning to take a look?” I asked.

  “Phone tree. Recording said they’re closed for an unknown amount of time. I left a message.”

  Jack opened the oven to check on some food, frowned, and then turned it and the top burner on.

  I sat at the kitchen table and Duffy waddled over and put his head on my knee. I scratched him behind the ears.

  “If I was still a pessimist, I’d say we can’t catch a break,” Jack said.

  “Good thing you aren’t still a pessimist. Want to see some pics of the damage?”

  She sat down across from me. “No. I want beer. And sex.”

  “Things are looking up.”

  Jack offered a small smile, and Sam came in the patio door and marched over to the step ladder, moving it to the sink. She had her tool belt on, and had tracked in dirt.

  “Were you in the backyard?” Jack asked, using her Mom voice.

  “I was getting some rock samples.” She removed two glass bowls from the cabinet and set them on the counter.

  “From the sinkhole?” My Dad voice was even shriller than Jack’s Mom voice.

  “I had a rope so I wouldn’t get sucked in.”

  Jack and I exchanged a WTF glance. We were used to Sam doing things above her age bracket. Like when she cooked us breakfast in bed and had somehow mastered Eggs Benedict with a homemade hollandaise sauce. Or when she’d changed the oil on our SUV with no assistance or advice from me while I supervised, quietly amazed.

  “Sam, that was foolish,” Jack admonished.

  Sam took a quart jug of white vinegar from under the sink and placed it next to the bowls. “I was safe. I used a Munter hitch, so I could ascend and descend.”

  “You’re eight,” I reminded her.

  “Symphony 1 in E Flat Major,” Sam responded.

  I glanced at Jack. She shrugged.

  “Mozart’s first symphony,” Sam explained. “Which he composed at age eight. All I did was pick up a few stones.”

  “You don’t risk your life composing a symphony,” Jack said. “This isn’t about capability. It’s about doing something dangerous.”

  “Don’t you want to know what caused the sinkhole?” she asked.

  “I actually do want to know what caused the sinkhole,” I told Jack.

  “Phin. United front.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Sam, you’re grounded until you’re forty.”

  Sam giggled. “I was totes safe, guys. I had an idea for an experiment, to check for karst.”

  I bit. “What’s karst?”

  “Topography formed by water dissolving limestone. It’s the major cause of sinkholes. With a sample of rock, it’s easy to test.”

  “Then you should have told us, honey. Then Dad or I could have gotten the sample.”

  Sam put her hands on her hips. “Mom, you and Dad weigh a lot more than me. It was safer for the lightest person to go.”

  Raising a child prodigy had its challenges. “You could have waited for us.”

  “You were both busy. Besides, you tell me all the time that everyone can be strong. It isn’t about size or age.” Sam brought the bowls and vinegar to the kitchen table. “Did you talk to our insurance agent?”

  Sam reminded us that we told her she can be strong, then she changed the subject. This was a smart girl. I should have been angry, but I was pretty amused. And proud.

  Jack frowned. “We’re covered, but they can’t send an inspector for a while.”

  “What does the basement damage look like, Dad?”

  “The soil under the foundation shifted in the crawlspace.”

  “Is the first floor stable?”

  “Seems to be. But I’m not an architect.”

  “Did you see any white rocks?”

  “No.”

  “I can check later.”

  I stepped up. “You will not. No going in the basement, or going in the backyard, without permission. Got it?”

  “I got it.” Sam got a colander out of a lower cabinet and placed it in the sink. She removed the stones from her tool belt pouch and placed them in the colander, then turned on the faucet to rinse them off.

  Again I traded glances with Jack, and noted that she seemed just as intrigued by Sam’s actions as I was.

  “Did you do this sort of stuff at her age?” I asked Jack.

  “I was dressing my Barbie dolls in G.I. Joe gear. You?”

  “Oh, sure. I made a fusion reactor out of our microwave.”

  “Dad, the electromagnetic energy generated by a magnetron in the microwave isn’t hot enough for nucleosynthesis.”

  “We should call a doctor,” I said. “She’s speaking gibberish.”

  Sam went to the fridge and took out an egg.

  “I’m making tacos,” Jack told her.

  “You were burning them, Mom. I turned off the oven.”

  “If you wanted eggs, you should have told me.”

  “This is the control. For the experiment.”

  Sam brought the egg to the kitchen table and placed it on a tea towel. Then she retrieved her washed rocks.

  “So what’s the experiment, Mary Sue?” Jack asked.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “I’m not a Mary Sue, Mom. I’m just smart.”

  “Mary Sue?” That reference was lost on me.

  “It’s a young female character in movies that’s too perfect,” Sam explained. “Also, Mom, it’s sexist to call a competent young woman a Mary Sue. We’re fourth-wave feminists.”

  “You’re right,” Jack said. “I apologize.”

  “I’m not convinced.” I folded my arms across my chest and pretended to ponder it over. “This child is obviously too perfect. Is it too late to rename her Mary Sue?”

  “I think we can just cross her name out on her birth certificate and write in the new one,” Jack replied.

  Sam pouted, her eyes getting glassy. “This is why I don’t have friends. Because people make fun of me for being smart.”

  Oops. Teasing went too far. Raising Sam, we sometimes forgot that she still had the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old.

  “We’re sorry, pumpkin.” I patted her arm. “Show us your experiment.”

  Sam sniffled, which seemed sort of fake and made me wonder if she’d been playing us. Then she picked up the egg. “Eggshells are made of calcium carbonate. Like limestone. It reacts with vinegar by forming bubbles, because vinegar is an acid and calcium is a base. Like this.”

  Sam gently placed the egg in the first bowl of vinegar, and almost immediately it became covered by tiny bubbles. They broke away and floated to the top, fizzing.

  “The acid is dissolving the shell, turning it into carbon dioxide gas. Now watch what happens when I put the rocks from the sinkhole into the vinegar.”

  She did as she said. The rocks just sat there, no bubbles forming.

  “No reaction. It’s not limestone, or anything with calcium in it. So the sinkhole probably wasn’t karst.”

  “Which means what?” I asked.

  “It’s likely something hollow. Maybe a cave. There are old coal mines near Destiny. Could be an abandoned mineshaft. Destiny was also part of the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858. Lots of prospectors dug small mines, looking for gold. Some did it illegally, without staking claims.”

  “What about one of those monsters from the movie Tremors?”

  Sam made a face. “Dad. There are no such thing as monsters.”

  She’d never met my brother. But I stayed quiet.

  “So if it isn’t karst,” Jack said, “is that good, or bad?”

  “Good. You can’t stop erosion. But if it’s a tunnel or cave, it can be filled in.”

  “How do you find the cave?” I asked. “More vinegar?”

  Sam made a face. “That’s not how it works, Dad. We need radar. Like they have on that Oak Island show.”

  Our family loved The Curse of Oak Island, where two brothers spent millions of dollars searching a Canadian island for a supposed treasure. There was no treasure, of course. They’d spent a decade using super-advanced equipment hoping to find billions of dollars in buried gold, and hadn’t found a lick of the shiny stuff. If modern technology and machine power couldn’t uncover the loot, how did the pirates who buried it four hundred years ago expect to retrieve it?

  They wouldn’t be able to. Which made no sense. You don’t create a lock and not a key.

  Ergo, there was no treasure.

  But we loved the cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias from the search team. Their strong beliefs drove them onward, and they kept creating elaborate scenarios to justify their increasingly erratic actions and lack of progress.

  It was a compelling example of self-delusion. Their faith forced them to make excuses for not finding anything, which in turn made them double-down, throwing good money after bad.

  You can’t let pesky facts and data get in the way of a good story.

  Jack liked to put it differently; the goal is to find the truth, not to please yourself.

  Which led to the obvious. We needed answers, even if the cost wasn’t pleasant.

  Jack must have known the same thing, because I caught her frowning. “Ground penetrating radar,” she said.

  I nodded. “And we know who probably has that. He Who Owns One Of Everything.”

  Sam squealed and clapped her hands together. “Uncle Harry!”

  Wincing, Jack said, “Can you call him? He wants me to sign off on his stupid TV show.”

  “I loved that show,” I teased.

  “Glad to hear it. He needs your signature, too.”

  “I’m sure the character based on me will be realistic and true to life.”

  “Keep holding onto that delusion, Buttlips.”

  “Can Harry Junior come over?” Sam asked. “Please? I don’t have anyone to play with.”

  “We play games almost every day,” Jack reminded her.

  “You’re not my age group, Mom. You’re almost seven times older than me.”

  “We’ll all talk to him.” I called, and hit speaker phone, placing my cell on the table.

  Harry answered with his usual exuberance. “Phin! You in the shower, lathering up your stinky bits? You probably want to send me a picture, I bet.”

  “Hey, Harry. I’ve also got Jack and Sam listening.”

  “Sam! Tell your Dad to stop sending me dick pics. He’s a married man.”

  Sam giggled. “Dad, stop sending Uncle Harry dick pics.”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  “Are you calling to tell me that we can move ahead with Total Fatal Autonomy: The Soft Reboot?”

  Jack winced like she’d just swallowed a bug. “Is that the actual name?”

  “We’re laying all the cards on the table, Jackie. It’s part sequel, part prequel, part remake, part nostalgia, part homage, part reimagining, and it all fits in perfectly with the original series. Except for all the stuff we retconned and the new stuff we made up. It’s technically called a requel, but the suits are worried not enough people know that stupid word.”

  “Language constantly evolves,” Sam said. “That sounds like a portmanteau of reboot and sequel.”

  “You’re a frighteningly little alien robot child, Sam,” Harry said. “Honestly, you really scare me. If you were an artificial intelligence, I’d pull the plug right now before you wiped out humanity.”

  “You shouldn’t fear people with a higher IQ than yours, Uncle Harry,” Sam said.

  “But he does,” I cut in. “That’s why Uncle Harry is afraid of everybody.”

  No one laughed, but I did my own rimshot sound anyway.

  “Anyway, Jackie, I talked to the writers about your character. Now she doesn’t wet her pants when she’s scared.”

  “Well, at least that’s a step in the right direction.”

  “Now she wets her pants all the time.”

  “One step forward, two steps back.”

  “Born without a bladder. Test groups say it will score high with the differently-abled demographic, and with the elderly. It’s about inclusion, Jackie. Pants-wetters demand representation in media, and they deserve it.”

  “Very woke of the network.”

  “All those urophobics are gonna have to learn that bigotry is full of shit. Speaking of, so is your character. Along with the pissing, she also shits herself. Your nickname is Code Brown. I can’t wait to see the action figure toy.”

  “I’d buy one,” Sam said. “Will it come with a diaper?”

  “Of course. And Jack Daniels wears her diapers on the outside, because she refuses to let society shame her. We’re making brown and yellow solidarity ribbons for Accident Awareness. There’s also going to be a 10K Walk For Enuresis.”

  “That seems like a long walk for people who have accidents,” Jack opined.

  “We’re going to have Porta-Potties every three meters. We won’t rest until people like you can live without that embarrassing, bed-wetting stigma, Jack.”

  “I don’t actually have enuresis, Harry.”

  “First comes denial. Then self-loathing. Then acceptance. Or maybe it’s public shaming. One of those.”

  As much as I enjoyed my wife getting teased, it was time to get to the point. “We need a favor, McGlade.”

  “Happy to help my surrogate family in any way I can. Unless it involves me having to actually do anything.”

  “A sinkhole opened up in our backyard.”

  “Shit. Does Repairman Jack know?

  “Who’s that? Does he repair sinkholes?”

  “He’s a friend of Chandler’s. I just like to name drop. What do you need from me?”

  “Do you have ground penetrating radar?” Jack asked.

  “You know I have many things that penetrate. Including radar.”

  “Can we borrow it?”

  “So you can check to see if you have holes in your property that could swallow up your house and suck all of you into the ground, where the suffocating earth would muffle your last, helpless cries of terror and pain?”

  “That would be the reason,” Jack said.