"The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown, Chapters 45–80

On the other side of this ocean, a robot is demolishing an underwater mountain. The robot doesn’t look like you, Roz. He looks more like a giant crab. He tears rocks from the mountain, creating huge dust clouds that stream away on the currents.

What Roz loved most about herself was her peaceful temperament, and suddenly that had changed, forever.

Wind could gust and waves could crash and currents could ebb and flow, but that station wouldn’t budge as long as its engines were active.

This complex, state-of-the-art industrial mining station had a name. It was called the Juggernaut.

BOSUN 3 had a searing-hot blowtorch for a hand and was welding together steel beams.

A large drone flew past the control tower and settled onto its landing platform on the roof of a lower building.

There was a lull in the conversation, and then Leo grumbled, “I really hate that mining station.”

Early in her life, Roz knew very little about the night sky, but now she looked up at a million points of light and recognized them all. Spaceships and space stations and satellites. Stars. Planets. Meteors. Galaxies. The moon and the aurora.

At daybreak, the humans stepped out from their living quarters and another workday began.

Across the mining station, alarms were blaring and lights were flashing red. Nimbus jolted awake.

He clamped his bulky hands around Roz’s arms and said, “I have restrained the prisoner.”

“There is toxic runoff flowing from your deep-sea mining site,” explained Roz.

There are poisonous plants and venomous animals and acidic hot springs. Nature also creates toxic minerals.

“And the seafloor is barren around here,” added George. “So there’s nothing for the runoff to harm.”

I’ll send the HYDROs down to thoroughly inspect the runoff. If it’s as bad as you say, we’ll try to fix it.

From time to time, she sent a fish into the fray with messages for the ocean warriors.

There were seagulls and puffins and cormorants and vultures and skuas and terns and sandpipers and eagles and every other type of northern bird, all flying together.

The flying machine zigged and zagged, dodging eagles and vultures. But before it could find safety it was swallowed up in a seething swarm of birds.

They were ready to fight, and the water thrummed with their battle song.

Ocean water was pouring through the gash in the station’s outer wall. Such severe damage would sink most vessels, but not the Juggernaut.

But even the mightiest sea creatures were afraid of those huge spinning propeller blades. However, the Ancient Shark had planned for this. Reinforcements were on their way, and these creatures were so incredibly small that there was no risk of them being cut to pieces.

The tiny creatures packed together so tightly that they formed a glowing slime, which began oozing into the engines. The propellers seemed unstoppable, but the zooplanktons kept coming. A never-ending stream of glowing sludge forced itself into the engines, whirling around the propellers, gumming them up, slowing them down, bringing them closer to the breaking point.

The water was brimming with creatures, and the station was bristling with birds, but Brightbill and Glimmer ignored the other animals and concentrated on finding Roz.

A gang of spunky seabirds was quickly assembled, and everyone followed Nimbus down through the air.

Several more geese had left the flock. Neighbors were lashing out at each other. The island community had splintered apart.

BOSUNs sprayed jets of water at a roaring blaze, but the flames were too ferocious, and the robots were quickly engulfed.

They crawled around blowholes and dorsal fins, and soon each human was sitting on the back of their very own whale.

She felt something like fear at the idea of confronting the monstrous machine. And yet she pushed that fear from her mind
and bravely marched out from the shadows.

And it was during one of those flights that our friends made a truly momentous discovery.
The poison tide was leaving.

Farther out, enormous robotic barges plowed through the waves.

I hid beneath a mangled machine as a crew of cleanup robots descended.

Flowing swiftly here and drifting gently there, the poison tide meandered farther and farther to the south.

Fields and forests will regrow. The ocean will thrive again. Our island is already beginning to heal, and so are we.

When they passed under an old oak tree, Roz explained that old trees could support a broad swath of forest.

“Underground, their roots entwine with the roots of their neighbors,” she said. “Through that connection, they share water and nutrients and even information. The forest is a diverse community of living things which is linked together by old trees, like this oak.”