Investing Well (In Supersonic Spaceships!) by Matthew Vimislik

Author:Matthew Vimislik [Bean, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 978-1-4965-0367-1; benji franklin; kid zillionaire; boys; chapter books; capstone; stone arch
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2015-12-09T16:12:49+00:00

Chapter 6

Invisible Data

Later that night, Dad and I decided we should head up into space. We needed to get a better look at the satellites orbiting the planet to have a better understanding of how they worked. We climbed into the cockpit, and my ship’s computer said, “Good evening, Mr. Franklin and Mr. Franklin.”

“Good evening, Saunders,” I said.

Saunders opened the roof of the building. The stars shined about as bright as could be. We lifted off slow, rising up like a helicopter, hovering above the hangar. Once we were high enough and had cleared the building, I hit the booster rockets, and we were off like a bolt. Within minutes, we were out of Earth’s atmosphere.

I turned on the GPS and asked Saunders to show us all the satellites in orbit. Then I asked Saunders to show me all the satellites owned by Mr. Crow’s companies.

Saunders was a robot, I understood that, but I kind of thought of him as a person too. He seemed so human that it was hard to remember that he was simply a complex computer program.

“I’m displaying all the known satellites orbiting Earth in blue. I’ve highlighted the ones owned by the Crow Corporation and its companies in green.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You do not have to thank me, sir,” Saunders said.

“It’s just a computer,” Dad said.

“Yes, but he’s extraordinarily smart.” As I said the words, I felt something about the mission click into place. The transactions were done by computers. People slid their credit cards through the computers at the store and after that every other step was completed by a computer.

The reason why Mr. Crow and his companies couldn’t figure out who was stealing their money was because the person stealing their money wasn’t a person at all. It was probably a computer programmed to steal and then cover its tracks.

Luckily for me, I just had five hundred new computers installed at school. All I had to do now was program them to work together, and we might be able to catch the thief.

“Benji, are you okay?” Dad asked. “You haven’t said anything in a while.”

I had slipped off into a daydream. It felt like only a few seconds had passed. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just thinking.”

“We’re approaching the first satellite,” he said.

I looked out the window of the spaceship. The satellite was like a floating tube with mirrors and long, flat panels on either side. The panels were solar panels and tilted toward the sun for power.

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