Molly Moon, Micky Minus, & the Mind Machine

by Georgia Byng

  From behind her mossy rock, Molly watched Petula operate and was amazed. “YOU’RE BRILLIANT, PETULA!” she wanted to shout but didn’t want to spoil her pet’s work, so instead she kept quiet.

  Immediately Petula sent instructions to the horrid animal. Taramasalata, you are now under my power.

  The cat-spider nodded and twitched her whiskers.

  What is the code for the jellyfish room? Petula asked.

  Do—not—know, Taramasalata’s hypnotized thoughts stammered.

  Petula frowned. Where is your mistress? she asked.

  Co-ming.

  Petula darted a look toward the arch. Coming where? she said. Silver fluttered down to listen in on the conversation.

  Coming to—mind-ma-chine room, thought the cat-spider. Petula looked at Silver worriedly.

  Silver thought back, Genius, Petula! Genius! Craaark! Crrreeerrk! Now get the cat-spider to let her mistress open the door, then get it to distract her long enough for us all to slip inside. Petula nodded and gave a small bark.

  “Hide!” Silver croaked, hopping toward the end of the wall near the balcony to indicate where Molly should go. Molly concentrated on the bird’s thought bubbles and saw a crudely drawn person there. Who it was supposed to be, she wasn’t sure. But the person in Silver’s thought bubble was tapping numbers into the combination lock beside the mind-machine room door, then walking through it, followed, in the bubble, by a bird, a dog, and a girl. Molly got the idea. Dodging cameras, she hurried up the path to hide behind a pillar from where she could still see the mind-machine room door, while Silver flew into the branches of a nearby tree. Petula hid in the long grass again.

  A minute later Miss Cribbins, powdered and rouged as ever, came marching through the garden archway. She was dressed in a black linen, box-shouldered suit. Her hair was now bronze, in a tall bottle-shaped style. Her heels clipped the ground as she walked with precise efficiency along the path.

  As she approached the mind-machine room, her cat-spider sprang out onto the path in front of her. This made Miss Cribbins jump, but she simply sidestepped her pet and was soon at the control panel of the door, tapping in numbers.

  It swooshed open. As it did, Taramasalata leaped onto Miss Cribbins’s back, scuttled up her mistress’s suit, and pounced on her beehive hair. With all eight legs landing at once, she began tearing the hairstyle apart as if it was cotton candy.

  “Taramasalata! What are you doing?” Miss Cribbins screeched, staggering backward. She grabbed at the animal’s body and with some difficulty pulled it down from her head. But in doing so, since the cat-spider was attached to her tall hair, she tore that off too. Miss Cribbins was left bald as a boiled egg.

  “You stupid creature! What has gotten into you?” Taramasalata let out a spraying hiss of spit that hit Miss Cribbins in the face. Then she bit her on the wrist. “Arrghhhhh!” the woman screamed. With surprising swiftness, dexterity, and strength, Cribbins plucked the cat-spider from her wig and flung the creature toward a rosebush.

  “How dare you?” she shouted. Then, bronze-colored wig under her arm, she disappeared into the mind-machine room, the door slamming shut after her.

  Molly was impressed by what she had just witnessed. She patiently waited in her hiding place. She knew that guards watching the camera monitors would have observed Miss Cribbins’s squabble with her pet and she wanted to give them a few moments to lose interest in the screens before she came out. Then she patted her knees and Petula rushed over to her.

  “That was excellent,” she whispered to her, giving her a huge hug. “Well done!” In Petula’s thought bubble, Molly saw the machine room door shutting again and again. “Oh, don’t worry, Petula. You did absolutely brilliantly. It’s just Cribbins who mucked it up.”

  Molly and Petula stared longingly at the door. It was galling to think how close they had just been to getting in. Then Silver hopped in front of them.

  “Three, eight, six, five, four, one, three,” he whistled. Molly looked at Petula and then back at him.

  “Silver, you superstar!” she exclaimed. “Now this is the plan.” And bending down to her animal friends, she began whispering to them.

  Half a mile beneath them, the dognakes glided through the sinewy tunnels of the deep mountain. Riding on the creatures’ backs, Micky and Professor Selkeem were propelled forward and upward. The professor clutched his laboratory bag as though it was his ticket to life itself.

  “We’ll put a stop to it!” he shouted again and again. “We’ll stop it!”

  “Get to Rockeeeee!” Micky screeched like some demented background singer. “Rockeee! Yeeeeeeah!”

  Twenty-five

  In the palace security-control room, twenty screens blinked boringly because nothing was happening in the royal grounds. Everywhere was quiet. The action was concentrated instead on four monitors focused on Princess Fang’s afternoon entertainment in the royal auditorium. Three guards watched numbly as the performance commenced and as a troupe of people dressed as woodland animals danced. Then “The Greatest Circus Show on Earth” began. The guards weren’t that interested in the red-and-blue-spotted panthers or the tightrope-walking squirrel monkeys, but they were distracted by them. Every so often they would throw a cursory glance at another palace screen, only to find their eyes wandering back again to the strange zoo creatures. There was a little action on monitor sixteen when Miss Cribbins seemed to be having trouble with her pet, but this had sorted itself out and the woman had gone into the mind-machine room. So the guards’ attention drifted back to the show.

  Molly waited for the cameras to twist away before, with Silver perched on her wrist, she approached the mind-machine room’s combination lock. There, using his beak, Silver tapped in the number 3, 8, 6, 5, 4, 1, 3, and the door slid effortlessly apart. Petula quietly padded in, followed by Molly with Silver. Before the door shut, the hypnotized Taramasalata scuttled in too.

  Inside, a sea of blue light washed the room. Miss Cribbins, now in her blue, electromagnetic lab suit and with her disheveled bronze wig back on her head, saw a red light flash on the wall, indicating that someone had entered the laboratory. She left the side of the Chinindian scientist whose brain was being drained and went back past the giant jellyfish to one of the arches that led to the changing zone. She stood on its threshold, not wanting to step in, as she didn’t want to be switched back into her ordinary clothes. To her surprise, a small bedraggled quog stood at the other side of the changing chamber, under an arch there.

  “How did you get in?” Miss Cribbins said suspiciously. She stared at the animal, who had awfully big, pulsing eyes.

  Feeling a little dizzy, Miss Cribbins put her hand against the wall to steady herself. She hoped the injections she gave herself every day weren’t making her feel queasy again.

  Petula glared up at the beautiful spinster, beseeching her to look at her. Then the cat-spider appeared by her side.

  “You!” Miss Cribbins exclaimed. “Taramasalata, my little munchkin! So you learned that combination code? You clever darling! Come to say sorry to mummy for biting her, have we?” Her pet stepped forward and was immediately given a blue electromagnetic suit, so that only the pink fur of her head was visible. The rest of her body was blue and shiny. Then Miss Cribbins heard Princess Fang’s voice.

  “Cwibbins!” she said. “Stand attention! Important visitor!”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” said Miss Cribbins, flustered. “Sorry, Your Highness, I assumed you weren’t here.” She hurriedly tried to pat her hair into place. Then she took her position, standing bolt upright with her hands behind her back.

  That was when Molly pounced. She’d sneaked in under the other arch and was already in her buzzing electromagnetic suit. Realizing Petula’s hypnotism had not properly worked, she leaped toward Cribbins. One swift movement with the supertape that had gagged her so effectively a few days before was all it took. She strapped and stuck Miss Cribbins’s wrists tightly behind her back and wound tape around her ankles too. The
woman yelped and tottered on the spot.

  “You!” she cried out before Molly slapped a third piece of tape over her red-lipsticked mouth.

  In the guards’ room, all eyes were on the show. The elethumpers were still causing trouble. Two were hopping about, kicking their enormous back legs in the air, while another was on its hind legs, attempting to mount the auditorium walls. Two flamingolike young zooeys were trying to control them with long sticks that seemed to have fluffy feathers on the ends of them.

  The guards watched with doleful interest. The audience laughed.

  “Time to—inter-vene?” the first guard suggested.

  “If they haven’t—calmed down—in five minutes—yes,” the other replied.

  Neither noticed Miss Cribbins’s silent yelp on screen twenty-six.

  “You get an Oscar for that!” Molly whispered to Silver, who was now hopping about excitedly at her feet. “That was a perfect imitation of Fang.” Silver bowed, his blue laboratory suit glinting in the pale light. Petula, whose quog disguise had been whipped off and who also now wore a laboratory suit, trotted over. “And you get the prize for Cleverest Dog in the World!” Molly whispered gratefully to her. “Don’t we look blue?” she said, frisbeeing her sabrerat mask toward the surveillance camera so that it was covered. She hoped that the screen going blank in the guards’ room wouldn’t alert them. Then she pushed Miss Cribbins into the main part of the blue-lit laboratory, past the giant squelching jellyfish toward the platform where the unfortunate Chinindian scientist sat. Green sparks shot out of the metal skullcap on his head, and with every pulse the white bones of his skeleton were visible through his skin. Molly rushed over to him and undid the strap of the cap. She ripped it off his head and placed it on the floor.

  “I hope that didn’t hurt,” she said apologetically. The scientist didn’t reply. He was too dazed.

  Behind her, Petula began snarling. Molly swiveled to see her nipping at Cribbins’s heels. The woman was trying to hobble to the exit, but with Silver flapping about her wrecked wig, the cat-spider scuttling over her face, and her ankles bound, it was proving difficult.

  Molly grabbed her arm. “Oh no, you don’t,” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re needed here. You’re going to tell me how this mind machine works.” Miss Cribbins shook her head defiantly. “Listen, Cribbins,” Molly warned, “many of the most useful things I know are in that machine, stolen from me. I want them back and if you don’t help me, I’ll … I’ll …”

  Miss Cribbins smirked nastily behind her tape gag.

  Molly snapped. “I’ll put you on the machine now!”

  On the floor by the scientist’s foot, the skullcap lay flashing and sparking. Molly saw panic dash across the spinster’s face.

  “Mmmmh! Mmmmhh!” she frantically burbled. Molly put both her hands up to the woman’s mouth, one to unpeel the gag slightly, the other to seal her mouth quickly again should she attempt to scream to alert the guards.

  “I’m going to let you say something,” Molly said firmly, “but you only have a few seconds. If you shout, I’ll put that skullcap on you. Got it?” Miss Cribbins nodded, but Molly didn’t trust her one jot. She let a tiny piece of tape off the corner of her mouth so that the woman could only just speak.

  “Fang is ze only one who can program and operate ze machine,” Miss Cribbins whistled though the side of her mouth. “I merely came in to turn it off as ze physicist was nearly cooked.” Molly slapped her hand over the woman’s red mouth and retaped it. Cribbins stared coldly at her, her eyes dark and sharp.

  Molly read her thoughts. In the bubbles she saw pictures of guards and of Miss Cribbins standing obediently away from the mind-machine control panels as Princess Fang programmed it. This was enough for Molly. Miss Cribbins seemed to be telling the truth. Then the woman was imagining Molly sitting in a large birdcage that dangled from a mountain ledge. And of knives being sharpened.

  “It’s a pity your thoughts are so mean,” Molly observed. “Bet you’re picturing me caged up like a pet grasshopper. And what would you do with a sharp knife now, if your hands were free?”

  The woman’s eyebrows arched, but Molly ignored her reaction. Instead she pushed the skinny woman into one of the chairs at the side of the room and with more tape strapped her thighs to the seat. Miss Cribbins hardly struggled, which Molly took as a sign of her utmost confidence that the palace guards would soon arrive.

  “Watch her, would you?” she asked Petula and Silver. Taramasalata made herself comfortable on Miss Cribbins’s head, pawing at her wig and pulling her hair apart even more.

  Molly quickly went to the control panel of the mind machine. Before her an array of unlabeled buttons winked expectantly. Molly looked at the now sparkless skullcap on the ground and then at the throbbing, watery jellyfish machine. There was no way she could experiment with the skullcap. If she did, the chances were she’d end up doing a lot of damage to herself. Waiting for Fang to arrive wasn’t much of an option either. The last thing the princess would ever agree to do would be to put Molly’s hypnotic know-how back, even if Molly threatened her with death. Anyway, Molly thought, she could never threaten to kill Fang. Killing wasn’t one of her hobbies.

  Molly stared at the mind machine in desperation. She wished she knew how it worked. She sank to her knees and put her head in her hands. She needed to keep calm. To think logically and clearly. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. Who had invented the great big artificial brain? Was there time to find them? Were they alive or had Fang used them to make the machine and then put them on it and sucked their brilliant minds out too? Their genius thoughts were probably bubbling about in the artificial brain right now. And then, as Molly imagined a white-haired scientist pottering about, inventing the incredible jellyfish, something struck her. The gelatinous machine was in fact a huge artificial brain. Maybe it behaved like a giant mind. Maybe, just maybe, Molly would be able to read its thoughts. The idea was so simple and so ludicrous that it made Molly gasp.

  She thought of Forest. In Los Angeles he’d taught her how to meditate. This had helped make her mind stronger. A strong mind was what Molly definitely needed now. So, sitting cross-legged in her meditation position, she looked up at the jellyfish. If she just focused her mind and let thoughts of the world slip away, as Forest had taught her, perhaps she would be able to penetrate the jellyfish’s blue slippery exterior and make it show her what it had inside. But would that be enough to get her precious hypnotic knowledge back? Molly took five deep breaths, breathing out very slowly each time.

  Then she beamed up at the machine, Show me your thoughts.

  Nothing happened. Molly’s heart was pounding. She could imagine the guards running up the paths toward the jellyfish room right now, with Fang marching after them, her little feet angrily pounding the ground. Molly could hardly bear it. Like treasure lost at the bottom of the sea, her knowledge was before her but hidden out of reach. Molly shut her eyes and tried to calm down. In her mind she heard Forest’s voice.

  Cool it, Molly. Just concentrate on your breathing and cool it. Imagine yourself a tiny thing on a huge planet. Zoom up into space and look down on yourself. Cool it.

  Molly found her breath steadying, and she cut off all fearful thoughts of people at the palace. She visualized herself on this mountaintop above the lake. This was good. She began to really feel how high up the palace was, and she imagined the land below the mountain too. It stretched away for hundreds of miles into the distance. And then her mind began to levitate above her body. Up and up she went, until the mountain with Molly Moon on it was a long, long way beneath her and the land around the mountain was the surface of the planet. Up and up Molly’s spirit rose, until it was floating cross-legged in space. Now when she summoned the jellyfish, it was there too, floating in front of her. Black space was all about them, and then deep blue water. Molly felt like she was at the bottom of the ocean. The vibrations of the pulsing jellyfish lapped against her skin like waves and, knowing that
the moment was perfect, Molly’s thoughts reached out to it like wide, long tentacles.

  What are you thinking? Her question flowed clear as a crystal spring toward the jellyfish.

  And immediately a huge, misty bubble popped up. Molly opened her eyes and gave a whistle of amazement. An overwhelming number of images and numbers and pages of writing filled the bubble above the jellyfish. Its thoughts flicked by, thousands every second. Molly realized she would have to be more specific.

  Thank you. Her hair felt as if it was standing straight up on her head, and her scalp was tingling as if a million ants were dancing on it. Now please show me all the thoughts that come from Molly Moon, she asked with her mind. Thoughts on how to hypnotize, how to time travel, how to make time standstill. Show me all the thoughts that were taken from Molly Moon.

  The jellyfish bubbled and sparked, and Molly saw a multitude of images of herself and her life. Pictures of the hypnotism book and the pages in it … memories of the time she’d hypnotized Petula … memories of a clear crystal and the times that she’d made time stand still … memories of time traveling. She saw the white sievelike Bubble at the beginning of time that she’d traveled to, where the light restored a person’s youth.

  Molly desperately wanted these memories and lessons all properly back in her head. But she didn’t have time to learn them all over again, one by one. Hoping that it was possible, and shifting her focus up a gear, she thought up to the jellyfish, If it is possible, would you be able to please put all these thoughts, feelings, lessons, and memories—all this knowledge—BACK INTO MY HEAD? As she launched the request, her earlobes began to burn. They felt so hot that Molly thought they might actually catch fire.