The Day I Started a Mega Robot Invasion

by Tom McLaughlin

  Contents

  1 P.M.

  2 P.M.

  3 P.M.

  4 P.M.

  5 P.M.

  6 P.M.

  7 P.M.

  8 P.M.

  9 P.M.

  10 P.M.

  About the Author

  Copyright

  To the biscuit makers of the world, without whom none of this would have happened.

  1 P.M.

  Saturday is the best day of the week and that’s a scientific fact. Sundays are spent thinking about how near you are to Monday. Mondays are for waking up and then remembering there’s school. Tuesdays are for waking up and remembering there’s more school, but being thankful it’s not Monday. Wednesdays are for double science – winner! Thursdays are for double games – loser! Fridays are for recovering from Thursdays and getting ready for Saturdays, which, as already mentioned, are brilliant.

  Molly, who came up with this theory wasn’t much of a one for school, as you may have guessed. Now, don’t think for a second that she wasn’t smart – Molly was as sharp as a bag of hedgehogs – but school was for people who didn’t yet know what they wanted to be and that was not Molly. She was an inventorneer – part inventor, part engineer – and she’d already come up with loads of inventions. Like the Octocycle! Who wouldn’t want to ride a bike with eight wheels? It wasn’t a machine built for speed, but what it lacked in performance it made up for in looks. A bit like Dad prancing around the house in his old disco clothes he broke out from time to time. Then there was the occasion she created the iMac & Cheese. Admittedly, bolting a fondue set onto a computer turned out to be a little dangerous – all that hot cheese squirting over electrical wiring – but it was only a small fire. And Dad needed a new computer anyway.

  “MOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLY!”

  came a call from downstairs. It was Dad. He always managed to change Molly’s name from a two-syllable sound to a droning fog horn. “Are you there? We’re off now … well, almost. Your mother’s just squeezing into her Lycra.”

  “Melvin!” Mum yelled.

  “Not squeezing, slipping in … she’s slipping into her Lycra. Her squeezing days are over – she’s actually lost four pounds…”

  “MELVIN!”

  Mum hissed. While Dad could make Molly’s name longer, Mum could turn Dad’s name into half a syllable, and she had been doing it a fair bit lately. Mum and Dad were spending more time together as part of a new fitness, well-being and happiness regime. Molly was pleased for them, until they decided to get a tandem and dress in skintight shiny sports clothing. It was like they had researched the most embarrassing pursuit in the most mortifying clothes possible. And if that wasn’t bad enough, their terrible sense of direction meant that whichever way they set off, they always ended up riding past Molly’s school at break time. In many ways, their commitment to making her feel like the most uncomfortable child ever born was quite remarkable.

  “Did you hear me?” Dad said, bursting into Molly’s room.

  “Yes, I heard,” Molly replied, snapping back to reality.

  “What were you thinking about?” Dad asked, noticing Molly’s pained expression. “You were miles away, like you were having a daydream, but a bad one!”

  “I’m all good, thank you. Dad, what are you wearing?”

  “Not bad, eh?” Dad said, eyeing himself in Molly’s mirror. “There was a sale. These were less than half price!”

  “They’re yellow … and also quite tight,” Molly said, trying to avoid looking at Dad’s shorts, even though they followed her around the room like a spooky painting.

  “They’re skintight! It’s for aerodynamics – you know, to go faster.”

  “I know what aerodynamics means.” Molly sighed. “Also, I don’t think skintight is the word – they’re clearly smaller than your skin. And the colour! You look like a giant banana.”

  “I know!” Dad grinned. “Yes, they pinch a bit, but, as they say, go big or go home!”

  “You should have gone big, or just gone straight home,” Molly muttered.

  “What are you two talking about?” Mum said, walking in, also wearing a banana-yellow all-in-one cycling outfit, complete with a fluorescent jacket, a high-vis vest and helmet with flashing lights. Molly’s parents were very hot on safety, which, according to them, meant wearing the yellowest yellow ever invented and riding slowly and steadily down the middle of the road, much to the annoyance of motorists. “What do you think? Jazzy, huh?”

  “You both look like you fell into a jar of piccalilli.” Molly shrugged. “Still, at least the whole of Lewes will be able to see you … and probably the astronauts from the International Space Station too.”

  “So, we’re off cycling.” Mum smiled. “I’ve asked Mrs Jones from next door to pop in and check on you while we’re out. You have her number, she has our number, you have our number and we have yours.”

  “We won’t be able to reach our phones when we’re cycling,” Dad confirmed, “but we’ll stop to check them periodically.”

  “I’ll have my phone,” Mum mouthed.

  “What?” Dad asked. “Is that what you’re doing when I’m cycling up front? Checking your phone?”

  “No … well, sometimes.”

  “No wonder I’m so exhausted!” Dad sighed. “We’re supposed to be keeping fit, not updating Facebook!”

  “Actually I’m on Google Maps, making sure we don’t get lost … again.”

  “One time, Doreen! One time I got us lost!” Dad snapped.

  “EVERY TIME!”

  Mum snapped back.

  “OK. Well have fun, you two!” Molly smiled, ushering them out of the door. “I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied here,” Molly said, eyeing up the box in the corner of her room. To most it was a box of junk, but to her it was a world of possibilities.

  “Homework first!” Mum said, reading Molly’s mind.

  “Oh, Mum…!”

  “I’ve asked Mrs Jones to make sure you’ve done it too, so no sneaking out of it!” Mum said sternly.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll be a slave to the agenda of the school, just another bean counter, another cog in the system,” Molly huffed.

  “That’s all I ask.” Mum smiled. “Right, let’s do this!” she said, clicking her helmet shut.

  The front door slammed and Molly sat on the edge of her bed. She looked longingly at the box of electronic parts and wondered what she could invent. Then she looked at her school bag and groaned as she pulled out her geography homework book. There it was, in black and white:

  She felt her shoulders slump further down her body like they were ready to slide off altogether. Molly tried her best at school, but it just wasn’t for her. She liked to build, invent, create – not do as she was told. Molly wasn’t naughty, she didn’t misbehave – although some people confused her big brain with showing off – but she wasn’t a robot, she was her own person. All she wanted to do was—wait.

  Molly suddenly shook herself out of her head.

  A robot.

  That was it! Why didn’t she build something, or rather someone, who could do all the stuff she didn’t want to do? That way, she could concentrate on the fun – inventing things – while the robot did the, shall we say, less exciting stuff like geography homework. If she built a simple but effective robot that did her homework for her, that’d be the same as doing the homework herself, wouldn’t it? Mum and Dad couldn’t be cross and if Mrs Jones asked, she wouldn’t be lying; she would in fact be doing her homework. It was the perfect plan. All she needed was a few more parts, some tools and circuit boards, and she knew just where to find them.

  Suddenly, it was all so clear. M
olly jumped up and yelled,

  “I’M GOING TO BUILD A ROBOT! I’M GOING TO BUILD A BLOOMING GREAT BIG ROBOT!”

  2 P.M.

  “I am a genius!” Molly yelped. She often spoke to herself when an idea was forming – it helped her order her thoughts. “This is perfect! Why didn’t I think of it sooner? All those jobs that I don’t like doing, I’ll just get my robot to do! ‘Put out the bins.’ Why of course, Dad, I’ll press a few buttons and hey presto! My tin friend has got the job done. ‘Write to Aunt Jean to say thank you for the oversized homemade socks that she knitted.’ No bother, the robot’s on the case!”

  Molly looked at her watch. “I need to design and build a robot capable of semi-intelligent thought using old bits of junk that I’ve collected over the years, all in the small window of time while Mum and Dad are out,” she said, clapping her hands.

  “AND I KNOW JUST WHERE TO BEGIN!”

  Molly bounded down the stairs like a human slinky. There is nothing quite like the scent of an idea in your nostrils to get the blood pumping. She opened the back door and headed to the garage. No one ever really went in there, apart from Dad when he could be bothered to cut the grass. Other than that, it was Molly’s den; a workshop and laboratory all rolled into one.

  “Where are you going?” someone yelled from the other side of the garden fence.

  “WHHHHAAAAA!”

  Molly screamed and stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, Mrs Jones. How long have you been there?”

  “Since 1962,” Mrs Jones answered, popping her head over the fence. “That’s when I moved in. Of course, it was all fields round here before that.”

  Mrs Jones was Molly’s neighbour. She was the sort of person who would send people Christmas cards on Christmas Eve so that no one had a chance to send one back, and then she’d hold it over them for the entire year until next Christmas. Some might call her a busybody, but that would be unfair on busybodies the world over. She was like the FBI of the street; she knew what was going on before anyone else, she knew how old everyone was, who they were related to, whose car was whose and who hadn’t brought their bin in as soon as the bin men had gone.

  “No, I meant … never mind.” Molly sighed. “Anyway, must dash. Homework to do…” she said cheerily.

  “Are you sure you’re doing it?” Mrs Jones asked. “I had very clear instructions from your parents. Where have they gone, by the way? To a fancy dress party?”

  “Yes, Mrs Jones. Anyway, how are you this fine Saturday? It looks like—”

  “I know what the weather looks like deary. I was on the phone just now to my son, you know, who works for a very important news station, saying that it looks ever so dreary. I get up at five a.m. every morning to listen to the shipping forecast you see.”

  “But, Mrs Jones, you don’t own a boat … and you’re afraid of the sea!”

  “I like to keep an eye on things. Anyway, I don’t have time to stand here and chat all day.” Mrs Jones said.

  “You were the one who … wait a second, are you on stilts?” Molly asked, trying to work out how such a small woman was towering above the fence.

  “No … well, maybe. I just happened to be on stilts when I saw you coming out,” Mrs Jones snapped.

  “OK … anyway, I’ll just be on my way then – to do my homework,” Molly said reassuringly.

  “To the garage? Your homework is in the garage?”

  “Yes,” Molly sighed. “It’s mechanical homework – you know, building things.”

  “Building? Girls building things? Well, I’ve heard it all now!” Mrs Jones sniffed. “Hippy nonsense, that’s what that is.”

  “Toodle pip,” Molly said, biting her lip.

  She lifted the door of the garage to reveal an Aladdin’s cave of old computers and mechanical bric-a-brac that Molly had collected over the years.

  “Where is it, where is it? Aha!” she said, lifting up a dusty box. “Dad’s old PC computer. There’s enough RAM and circuit boards here to power a small spaceship. This will be my robot’s brain.”

  Molly emptied the box onto the floor, then she looked around for what else she could use. There was an old lawnmower and some sheets of tin for a bunker that Dad was going to build because he was so worried about the end of the world. There was some welding equipment too, as well as a whole host of electrical bits and pieces that Molly could throw into the mix. She grabbed some chalk and, on her old kids’ blackboard, began to make some calculations.

  “Now, the robot needs basic movement … I have some hydraulics from Mum’s old Mini Metro that I rescued before it went to the scrapyard. These computer chips will give it a personality and there’s a couple of old webcams that can be used for vision.” Molly took a breath. “But, how do I teach it everything it needs to know? Wait, I don’t need to. If I teach it how to learn, not what to learn, then the computer will work things out for itself. I just need to add a modem so that it can connect to the Internet!” she yelled excitedly. “Now, it’s time to get building!”

  Molly spent the next half an hour sawing, welding and fusing the various parts together to give the robot movement, vision and the ability to learn. She tested and retested to make sure that every detail was fully operational and that all the pieces of the puzzle were working as one.

  Finally, it was all done. Molly stood back proudly, her expression somewhere between that of a sculptor admiring her work and Doctor Frankenstein looking at his monstrous creation. Whichever it was, Molly was now the creator of a robot, and a huge one at that. It stood over six feet tall.

  “Name, I need a name,” Molly said, looking around. There on the floor was the box the computer had been hiding in. It said Bob’s Dog Food Company on the side. “Perfect, I’ll call you Bob.”

  Molly pulled up a stool, hopped aboard and lifted a panel on Bob’s tin chest where the circuits were whirring and buzzing, busily going about their business out of sight. Molly flicked a switch. “Initializing start-up mode!” There was a second of silence and then the lights in Bob’s eyes flickered on. Molly pressed a button on Bob’s chest. “You are Bob. I am Molly, your creator. You are to only follow my commands, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Molly. I am BOB; I work FOR you and only YOU,” Bob said in a rather strange way, randomly shouting words he shouldn’t be.

  “YES!” Molly squealed with delight. “I did it. I made a Bob!”

  “Whoooo…” Clank. “WHOOOOOOO,” Bob said, moving around, his monotone voice making everything he said sound utterly miserable. “Why are WE happy, Molly?” Bob asked.

  “Well, I don’t mean to show off, but I think I’ve just created the world’s first fully thinking robot. I’m … you know, I don’t want to use the word ‘genius’– that’s for others to say, not me – but this is pretty incredible!”

  “Well, this IS great,” Bob said robotically, looking around. “Where is HE?”

  “No, it’s you … you’re the robot.”

  “Oh, never mindy. That’s still pretty GOOD. So what shall we do now, Ms Molly, builder of ROBOTS and all-round GENIUS?”

  “We should call the news, maybe the Queen and certainly Instagram about it. Oh no, wait … I know what we need to do first.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I need you to write an essay about oxbow lakes.” Molly smiled at Bob. “There are some pens and paper in my bedroom.”

  “Is that what ALL famous people BE doing first?”

  “No, no, just you really. Sorry, we can celebrate later.”

  “What is an oxbow CAKE?” Bob asked.

  “Well, err, it’s oxbow lake … and to be honest, I’m not sure. But that’s why I built you, so you could find out for me. Robots are for doing homework!” Molly said excitedly.

  “You built a robot rather than just looking it up in a book? That seems a BIT extreme. I am so excited. What wonderful things this world has to offer me. All many of incredible sights and sounds to absorb and learn FROM and stuff. And to think, this fantastic journey starts with an oxb
ow lake,” Bob said in his monotone voice.

  “Yeah … one second, I’m just going to modify your sarcasm levels,” Molly said, reaching inside his chest once more.

  “HA-HA-HA! That be TICKLING a lot,” Bob giggled robotically as Molly poked around his circuits.

  “Hmm, maybe giving you a personality was a mistake.” Molly said as she shut Bob’s tin chest.

  “Thank you, Molly,” Bob said, opening his mouth and producing some sort of smile.

  “You are already connected to the Internet, which has everything you’ll need to find out about oxbow lakes and what have you. All you have to do is learn,” Molly said, smiling.

  “You do not need to worry, Molly. I am here to serve.” Bob nodded. “I shall begin my task,” Bob said, clunking towards the back of the house.

  “Molly, who’s that?” Mrs Jones called over the fence, seeing a figure strolling in the garden.

  “Err, no one. Just the window cleaner!” Molly called back. “Quick, past the busybody,” she whispered.

  “Busybody: a person who delights in the pastime of gossip,” Bob said, learning the word.

  “Exactly!” Molly said and opened the back door for Bob. “Now, go inside and head up to my room – it has my name written on the door. Find the pen and paper, learn all about oxbow lakes and get cracking with the essay. Meanwhile, I’ll go and deal with our nosy neighbour.”

  “Yes, Molly,” Bob said.

  “Great – see ya!” Molly said, wiggling a loose panel in the fence, before disappearing through the gap shouting, “Mrs Jones! I was wondering if I could borrow some milk? You see, I’ve … err … run out and I want a glass. Do you mind if I pop over?”

  Bob walked into the house and went upstairs to Molly’s room as instructed. “Pen and paper found. Now … begin search for OXBOW LAKE … SEARCHING INTERNET!” Bob announced to no one.