A landmark

In the burning midday sun Line Baumer carefully steered the rubber dinghy towards the disused skyscraper. She knew that she had less than 9 feet of water under the boat and she was constantly nervous in case it should be punctured from underneath. In the area there were still many wrecks of cars, and sharp bits of glass and metal from street lights and traffic signs. She had asked many times to have a more solid boat put at their disposal, but she could just as well talk to the wall.

Seen with present day eyes, the skyscraper wasn't anything special, but it was still the highest block in the area. Initially the building had been completely black, but now big pieces of the façade had fallen off. The building looked as if it had just barely survived an act of war.

It was a well known fact that people, looking for a thrill, used the scarred walls as a climbing ramp. It was said that from the top of the building one had the very best view over Amager, the island which had been taken back by the ocean.

Line Baumer had no plans to climb up to the roof, quite the opposite in fact.

It could be seen that the building had recently got a slight list to the South East. This irregularity had caused raised eyebrows among technicians in the administration. This was why they had been sent out to inspect the bearing elements and come with a recommendation. In the back of her head, Line hoped for a controlled demolition. She loved that kind of work.

There were three people in the dark green rubber dinghy. Line and her work mate were already wearing red wet suits. Tatiana Oksholm sat in the bows of the boat. She was wearing ordinary work clothes. Her job was to keep an eye on the boat, while Line and Erika dived down into the building's cellar.

Line and Erika got out their oxy-pens and injected the required dose. Line injected in her left under arm while Erika stuck herself just over her right ankle. Then they put their under-water glasses on and glided backwards into the water.

Tatiana saw how they swam down into the old entrance. Where, once upon a time, there had been an impressive entrance hall, it looked now like a huge open sore near the base of the building.

A long time ago, when it became clear that the buildings in Amager would be flooded, all the usable materials had been removed. Almost everything made of metal had been collected and reused. In order to be able to go into the building when necessary, a hidden entrance had been established which only the administration knew of.

Line had, of course, carefully studied the plans before leaving home.

When they came into the original entrance hall she set off without hesitation in the direction of the left elevator.

The doors into the elevator shaft were bolted tightly shut, so that they could no longer be opened. Inside the elevator itself had been removed long ago, before the house was flooded.

Above the door to the left elevator there was a very ordinary looking piece of iron. Line had a small crowbar in her belt and she used it to turn the little iron fitting round. She pressed her shoulder to the door and after a couple of tries it opened.

Line was the first that swam into the empty lift shaft. She kept completely to the rules and swam first the few meters up to the top. She stuck her head above the water and used her torch to inspect the inside of the shaft. It was not a pleasant sight, but luckily nothing seemed to be dangerous – no loose pieces from the building nor any exotic animals.

Line dived again down to the bottom of the dark shaft.

Down in the bottom of the shaft she dusted years of dirt away from one of the corners.

The bottom was made of 16 large tiles. In the tile in the corner to the north there was an almost invisible hole. Line took her crowbar out again and stuck it down in the hole. She quite easily lifted the whole tile free and laid it over on the other side of the shaft. After that she removed three more tiles, so there was a square opening. Then she lifted the frame which the four tiles had rested on.

She fixed her light on to her head band and dived through the opening down to the next level. Erika followed.

Tatiana sat in the dinghy, bored to tears. She knew that it would be quite a while before her colleagues returned. The house was big and if they used their oxy-pens correctly, they could stay under water for hours.

It isn't easy to sit alone, left on the bench, especially when one is used to being amongst the first. Tatiana was tall, slim and feminine – and a bit of a tomboy. She sat and gazed with longing up to the top of the old skyscraper and thought of the marvelous view, which she had heard so much about. And while she sat there and looked up and down the building, she caught sight of something that swayed gently in the breeze. At the corner of the third floor she could see a rope.

That was more than Tatiana could stand for.

In the nature of her work she had quite a lot of tools and ropes in the boat. Part of it was special equipment to be used in life saving situations in empty houses like this. Tatiana had all she needed to climb the building.

So it was not long before Tatiana crawled in through a window on the third floor. But, when she began to move diagonally across the room towards the empty window where she could see the famous rope blowing in the wind, something odd happened. She heard a clapping sound and from one of the rooms to the left of her a creature came in sight. It was hardly as big as a human being, but it had arms and legs. What had started off as clothing now was reduced to shreds.

Without hesitating the creature hopped out of the window, grabbed the rope and swung itself away. It looked very much like an ape, but Tatiana knew exactly what it was.

It was child robot. A runaway child robot.

Without giving herself time to think what she should do, Tatiana followed. She reckoned from the beginning that the robot had hid in the house so that it couldn't be found. And if it had hid here for a long time it must be having problems with its battery. Perhaps she could catch it simply by making it run until it had used up all of its power. It was also a well known fact that people who lost their child robot often promised a large reward to get it back.

But even though Tatiana was both fast and agile she could not catch the robot. Only a few seconds went by before she caught the rope and had climbed up to the fourth floor after it. But the robot was gone – not a sign of it. She went through the empty rooms and tried to find its hiding place. Nothing could be seen.

And it was not a very comfortable place to be. Old wall paper hung in shreds from the faded walls, the floor and ceiling were clearly in a very bad state. Spiders and their webs flourished everywhere. One could not see what was spider webs and what was plain dirt. And in the places where the light of the sun couldn't reach, Tatiana had a catastrophic feeling as if a damp hand was on her throat.

Many places also smelt rotten.

It was not very long before, once again, she sat in her place in the boat. But now Tatiana was on guard and much more aware of her surroundings than previously.

Down in the dark cellar, Line and Erika had enough to see to. The main problem was very simple – it was almost impossible to see anything at all. Even with their lamps on they could only see a few feet in front of them. Luckily Line had a complete map of the building on her pda. The digital dog for the blind, was what they usually called the system. And now, on the inside of her goggles, it showed a clear bright orange cross-section of the plan of the building.

In front, Line saw something that seemed to be both dark and dangerous. Seconds later the software displayed bright orange lines and numbers inside her goggles, and Line could now see that it was in fact the entrance to the old heating plant.

The door was not locked.

The heating plant was completely empty and totally flooded. But there was life. As soon as they opened the door fish swam towards them. And when they swam into the big room the fish reacted to the light from their lamps.

Line was not at all sure that she was happy with that development.

But the fish must come from somewhere so she started to look for a hole in the wall.

It wasn't difficult to find.

In the far corner of the heating plant, which at the same time was the south easterly corner of the whole building, the solid concrete elements were broken through and a new construction led straight through the heating plant. In an elevated concrete cable tray, which was about 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep, there were three thick cables. The map software on the pda didn't react at all to this huge cable tray. Quite obviously it was not included on official maps.

But Line knew exactly what it was she was looking at. It was the secret installation which supplied more than 40 million people on Zealand with electricity from Sweden.

Line had a lively imagination and she had no trouble in deciding for herself what had happened. When the cable was laid, an engineer somewhere, poor fellow, had made a mistake. And that mistake first came to light when a skyscraper stood in the way of the laying of the cable. Most likely it was easier and cheaper to work through the heavy concrete elements than it would have been to alter the already planned route.

But this discovery, without doubt, made the situation much more difficult....