VICTOR THE VECTOR

Lost in the Forest

Victor had just returned to the sea. That nice lady, Jo Ellen had secretly released him. HE WAS FREE AT LAST!! He stretched his little arrow body and settled into the flow. The water was cold, and he was below the surface. He looked around, but couldn’t see a lot because it was night. He wondered where he was. On his left side he saw some mountains. He assumed this was land, because it stuck up out the water. "Oh well, when it is light again, I’ll meet some animals, and they’ll tell me where I am." Victor was so happy that he started singing his little song. "Go with the flow, Go with the flow. Hi ho, Hi ho.... When I find mommy, I am going to learn the rest of the song."

Morning soon came, and he found himself floating among some long stalks. They were brown with long flat things on top of them that seemed to float on the surface of the water. "WOW! What am I in the middle of?!" he asked himself out aloud. "Silly vector!" a chorus of voices echoed,"You’re in a kelp forest." "Huh?" replied Victor. "A KELP forest. In fact, we call ourselves Forrest! - that’s with rr you hear?" the voices echoed again. It was like a singsong echo. "Well, I don’t know one r from another!" responded the little vector. "You do look very young. We don’t suppose you know very much then. We are a forest with one r, because forest is spelled with one r. But our name is Forrest spelled with two r’s. OK?"

"OK, Forrest with two r’s. Now, please tell me where I am and who you are."
"We are a kelp bed."
"I thought you were a kelp forest, Forrest with two r’s!" giggled Victor.
"We can see your confusion, vector. It is a figure of speech. Because we are plants and attached to the sediment, we are sometimes called a bed of kelp. And because we have long stalks and grow in groups, we are sometimes called a kelp forest. Got it?"
"Well yeah, but I haven’t met many plants yet. How are you different from animals?" asked Victor.
"OH BROTHER! You are young!" the group echoed again. "Animals have to hunt for their food. We make our own. Sometimes animals eat us!"
"Oh horrors! Don't you mind?" The little vector looked puzzled.
"Oh no, that’s what we are here for. We are algae. Or actually brown algae. We have flexible stalks so we can move with the currents. But when the currents get too strong, they rip us apart."
Victor did not like that. He didn't want to rip anyone apart. He shuddered!
Forrest continued, "We have broad flat leaves with bladders to help us float. And we make our own food. We take nutrients from the ocean and with the sunlight, we change it into food energy for us. We are primitive plants. The land plants are very advanced. They have strong root systems to anchor themselves to the ground. We have a hold fast that attaches in the sediment. You see, young one?"

"I guess" replied Victor. "By the way, my name is Victor the Vector." "Oh, you also have two r’s. They're just not together," echoed the chorus of voices. "Why do you all speak together?" Victor questioned. "Because, we are all together!" they laughed. "By the way, you are now in the Pacific Ocean." "OH NO! Am I a long way from my mother." Victor told them of his quest.The kelp forest listened and felt sorry for him. They told him that when the tide moved out, the currents would move faster and they would help him move out into the open ocean. Later that day, as the tide flowed out, Victor continued his search for his mother. The kelp forest said good bye with their leaves waving.

Off he was in deeper water, still below the surface. He was near the west coast of North America, where he found himself slowly rising. "Oooooou, this feels nice. I seem to be going towards the surface. It's cool to be a vector. I get taken lots of places!"
The Pacific Ocean heard him and said, "Little vector, you are in the California Current. You are slowly moving to the south - to warmer waters. The rising you are experiencing is called an 'upwelling'. Do you want to know what that is?"
"Yes, please!" Vector exclaimed.
"The water responds to the wind. When the winds blow along the coast, the water on the surface flows to the side. You're near the American West coast and the wind blows to the south. So, in this case, the surface water will move away from the land, out to sea."
"Hmm......well, if the water on the surface flows toward the open sea, does all the water eventually go away?"
The Pacific chuckled, "No, little vector. The water underneath the surface rises and.."
"Oh," Victor quickly responded, "the deep water rises to replace the water that moved away! That’s what is happening to me!"
The Ocean told him that this was a very important occurrence that happens in the ocean. "The cold water comes to the surface and brings with it lots of nutrients for the plants."

"I just met some plants this morning." Victor told the Pacific. Just then some very, very tiny plants came into his view. "Hi! The kelp told us that your name is Victor and that you are now part of the California Current." "Yep," said Victor, "and you are plants." "Yes," they answered together. "We are called phytoplankton. 'Phyto' for plant and 'plankton' for floating. Making us floating plants. We are tiny one-celled pants and we form the base of the food chain. The zooplankton, the floating animals, eat us and larger animals eat them, and so on." Victor shuddered at the thought of things eating things, and he wondered why plants seemed to like to talk at the same time. "We use the sunlight and these delicious nutrients to make chlorophyll so that we can grow and become food for other creatures," the plants explained.

"The kelp talked about nutrients, do you guys know what they are?" Victor asked.
"They are fertilizers and fertilizers are chemicals used to make plants grow. Land plants use them all the time. The main ones are nitrogen, phosphorous, silica and iron."
"Gosh, that’s interesting," said Victor, "Thanks. But why do you all talk at the same time?"
"Because we are all here together," they responded.
He did not understand, but they were plants. "It just must be the way of plants." he decided.
He noticed they were slowly floating away from him. As the days moved on, he kept moving south and the water became warmer and warmer. Pretty soon he found himself changing direction. HE WAS GOING WEST! Oh no! He just wanted to be with his mother.

The Sea Turtle

While he was floating along, a large creature swam by. "Hello, vector," said an old voice beside him. "Hi. Are you a plant or an animal?" Victor asked. "I’m an animal. I’m an 100 year old old sea turtle!" "Wow! You are old. My name is Victor. What’s yours?" "I am Annie the Sea Turtle." "Do you wear your house with you? Carrie the Conch did." "Me too," said Annie. "This is my shell. I am a different kind of animal, though. I am a reptile which means that I am cold blooded and have to live in water that is close to my body temperature. That’s why I live in the tropics. I swim with these paddles you see sticking out the sides. I use front ones to paddle with and my back ones to steer with. I breathe the air, not the water."

"What is that hanging around your neck?" Victor observed.
"Oh, my little one. You are so young, you just don’t know. This is human trash. I swam into it accidentally and just can’t get it off. I can’t even retract my head into my shell to rest. The life of a turtle is very hard. We lay our eggs in the sand on the beach and land animals and humans come to steal them. Then, if our little baby turtles make it to the ocean, fish and other animals try to eat us. Did you know that of the 100 eggs only 1 will survive? But those of us that make it live a very long time."
"Boy, does this animal talk a lot," thought Victor, "But if you live to be that old, I guess you deserve to talk a lot."
"Annie, would you like to get rid of that thing?"
"Oh, yes would I! But I just don’t know how to do it. I’m afraid if I asked a fish, he would probably eat my head!"

"Well, Annie, if you would be quiet, I’ll tell you how. You go and swim in front of me", he instructed, "and get just below the water with your head just above the surface. My current will float me over you and with my arrow I will pull the trash off your neck." "Oh, Victor, do you think it will work?" "We can try. Now swim ahead...OK..stay there. I will float over you now." He floated across Annie. He could feel his arrow scrape across her shell. He was over her head - and missed it! "Let’s try again," he said. "When you feel me come across your shell, move your head to the side so my arrow will touch the trash." Annie got into position again, and Victor floated across.

This time his arrow snagged the trash... AND HE PULLED IT OFF! The tip of his arrow cut through the trash so it could never hurt any other animals.
"Oh thank you, thank you, Victor!" Annie was so happy. She pulled her head in and out of her shell. "Oh this is wonderful!"
"I know how you feel. I was also trapped for awhile until a very nice human set me free."
Suddenly, Victor felt something very strange happening to him. "WAAH! Annie, what’s happening to me?"
"You are evaporating." She saw the panic in his eyes. "It's OK, Victor. You know you are near the equator. The evaporation is high here in the Equatorial Current. It just means that you are going up into the air for a while as water vapor. Why, you may even become a WIND VECTOR! Just go with the flow."
"But Annie, will I find my mom?" Victor cried.
"Probably. Wind vectors can travel very fast. Just ask some of the other wind vectors when you get there. Bye, Victor. Thanks, and good luck!"

Going Up, Going Down

All his little vector parts were rising into the atmosphere as water droplets. Soon he was high in the sky. He saw something that looked like himself. And then he remembered the terrible storm. He had looked up into the sky during the storm and saw.....vectors. They were vectors, but in the air. And he looked at himself and saw that all his little parts were together again. He had become a wind vector!

"Helloooo there. I watched you travel up here. My name is Wally" "Oh..uh...hi." Victor was not quite sure how to respond. "My name is Victor. I was an ocean current." "Yes, I know. I watched you save Annie the Sea Turtle from that awful trash." "What happened to me?" asked Victor. "You have become part of the water cycle." Wally answered. This was just too much for Victor. There were so many things to learn. Exasperated, he asked, "What does that mean?" "The sun heats up the ocean water. This water evaporates into water vapor and rises up into the atmosphere. When droplets gather together, they form clouds. These clouds are made of small water droplets.,

More droplets, mean bigger and darker clouds. And when the clouds become very heavy with water, they form rain and fall to the earth. Some rain falls into the ocean and some falls on land. When the rain falls on the land, the water will form rivers and eventually flow into the sea. This completes the water cycle."
"That’s what happened to me then?"
"Yes, indeed. Now, I understand you are looking for your mom. Way up here in the sky, we will blow around the world. When you see the ocean she is in, hang on to a cloud and you'll change back to water droplets and fall to earth."

So off they blew, travelling around the earth. Many days passed and Victor kept looking for his mother. He saw the Arctic Ocean and the ice caps where he was stuck in with Winston and Alison. He missed them, but was glad he wasn’t stuck in the ice. He watched the oceans circulate and vectors moving along. But he nowhere did he see his mom. Wally was very nice. He taught him many things about the atmosphere. They were over South America when Victor got trapped in a cloud. "Wally!" he called. "Victor, it’s OK. You'll just fall to the earth." "But, I haven’t found my mom yet." "You must be close to the place where you lost her. You will flow back into the ocean. When you are there ask around. Bye, Victor. It was nice blowing around the world with you."

Ploink! Ploink! Victor’s little body parts were falling down as rain. He fell into a vast river and his arrow became whole. He was sad. Where would this lead him? He started to cry.
The river said, "Don't cry vector, I know where your mother is. I will bring you to her. I am the Amazon river and I flow into the Atlantic Ocean." Soon he was out in the vast Atlantic Ocean, moving south. He looked ahead and heard a beautiful voice singing. "Go with the flow, Go with the flow. Hi ho, Hi ho...Around the ocean, with the motion, I flow, you know."

MOM!!