“Maybe?” Pounce said incredulously.
Pounce considered the options.
“Tell them to keep trying, and if they can’t get it, at least find a way to keep the Robots from getting it. Then tell him . . . to expect company.” Pounce made up his mind as soon as he mewed the words.
Oscar was less convinced. “Huh? Boss?”
“You heard me.” Pounce stuck his claws into the steering wheel. “It looks like we’re going to have to go down to the Furless planet ourselves.”
30
Sir Beeps-A-Lot Makes Progress
Beeps drifted silently, twenty-three miles above Earth, staring down at the swirling white clouds that blanketed his objective, somewhere down on the watery, backward planet.
He would not disappoint the Federation.
His mission was clear.
(Of course it was clear; Beeps could see it perfectly, probably because he’d printed it out on one of his extra-special “This is your mission!” notecards.)
THIS IS YOUR MISSION!
OBJECTIVE: (1) FIND THE CHIP BEFORE (2) IT FALLS INTO THE CLAWS OF THE GREAT FELINE EMPIRE AND (3) ENABLES THEM TO LIVE FOREVER (4) LIKE US.
Beeps shuddered in horror. Cats with infinite lives? Can you imagine? The havoc they would cause!
Beeps had been reviewing the files House had sent, and while Beeps could now believe such a chip existed, he had a hard time believing such a backward planet had created it.
Regardless.
Organics now possessed the power to put a soul in a machine, a way to create a copy of a feline mind that could be placed in a robot body and exist without the weakness of flesh and bone.
(And by the way? That’s totally our thing!)
The best part of being a robot was knowing you would outlast your enemies. No disease, no aging. Time was always on your side.
The kicker was that the chip doubled as a power source. One that never ran dry.
Now, that was something the Robot Federation could make use of.
Beeps thought about what to do next. This was definitely his problem to solve, as Number Two. Number One—SLAYAR—was a big-picture kind of supreme leader. He wouldn’t want to get caught up in the details.
Beeps ran one of his standard mission diagnostics, reviewing his progress. He had accomplished much since he arrived—that was conclusively true.
For one thing, he’d printed out that mission card and found the tape, hadn’t he?
For another, he’d established contact with his agent. House. Odd name.
With the help of the “House” sympathizer, Beeps had successfully lured the human guardians of the chip and sent them halfway across their planet, far from the facility site. With any luck, it would now be temporarily unguarded.
All that remained was for the Federation to find and infiltrate the location and recover the Singularity Chip itself.
Beeps was close to victory. Very close. And yet, there was a bug in the code. A fly in the ointment. A cat in the . . . well, a cat anywhere in anything was bad enough, wasn’t it? Somehow, Sir Beeps himself was being outmaneuvered, because two Feline agents were already inside the target site, and he had no idea how they had gotten there.
Especially not before he himself had . . .
This has POUNCE written all over it.
Sir Beeps cursed.
Four-leggers!
Even the rogue “House” was concerned. Apparently, the four-legger agents had already created much chaos. Two felines had been discovered sniffing around the site, marking items with their fluids, and generally leaving the mission in great jeopardy.
Sir Beeps reached to touch his mission-statement card with one grasper. He cringed at the thought of failing his Number One. He cringed even harder at the thought of what SLAYAR would do to him, if Sir Beeps were to fail in his mission.
This “House” was an excellent ally, but it did have one major weakness. No hardware. No graspers, treads, wheels, gears, or motors of any kind. He was . . . soft.
And software is just pathetic. Number Two sighed. It was also practically useless when it came to stealing stuff.
The rogue House claimed to have “tools” at its disposal and said it was willing to do the heavy lifting. The House also insisted it was confident its own agents—the Protos, it called them—would find the Singularity Chip before the cats ever could.
Still.
Beeps himself was less optimistic. A veteran of years of conflicts between the Cats and Robots, he knew how dangerously unpredictable his furred four-legger adversaries could be.
Beeps had a flawless memory—a googolplexabyte internal drive, big even by Number Two standards—which meant that when it came to the Great Feline Empire, he remembered enough to be uneasy.
And so, in the very last, the very sub-iest of his sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-routines, Beeps began preparing a worst-case scenario, a plan so dastardly that even he hoped he would never need to use it . . . but better to be prepared when it comes to the four-leggers . . .
“So be vigilant,” Beeps repeated to “House,” in his last Earth-bound message. “We must get the Singularity Chip before the cats, and get out before the guardians return.”
“Affirmative,” the next message from Earth said.
“If we don’t recover the chip, we must destroy it.” Beeps sent a detailed readout of the fleet following close behind, including the unreasonably large number of space-to-Earth missiles.
“Affirmative,” the next-next message from Earth said.
31
Hello from the Other Side (Of the Planet)
FWD: FWD: RE: FWD: FWD: NOT SPAM REAL EMAIL FROM PARENTS!
Hi kiddos!
I hope you get this . . . !?
I know you don’t ever check email (who uses email anyway, right?) but it’s our only option right now.
Big mixup over here.
As soon as we landed, Chinese police took our phones and computers and said they needed to inspect them for security purposes.
What??
They took us to the hotel and when we went to the factory, they said there were no problems, and they never sent for us?!?!?
They didn’t know what we were talking about.
Something is UP.
We’re just a tiny bit worried about this.
Maybe some competition trying to slow us down?
Anyways, we’re about to go to the airport and come straight back home.
We’ll hopefully get our stuff back before we leave, but if we don’t, just know that we’ll be back sometime tomorrow!
Sorry about all these shenanigans!
Oh—someone’s coming—have to send this now before they kick us off their computer.
MISS YOU LOVE YOU XOXOXO
BE SAFE AND SOUND OK???
SEE YOU SOON!!!!!
MOMMA & DADDY
32
The Big Oops
“MAX! Get up, we’re late!”
Max opened his eyes, confused. He felt warm, soft fur and looked down to see two kittens snuggled next to him.
Stu yawned and dove his nose back into the blankets.
Scout opened one eye, blinking, confused . . .
Max remembered and smiled. “Oh yeah, hey there, little buds. Almost forgot I broke you guys out last night.”
He had stayed up late putting the finishing touches on his level. It was almost perfect; just one last problem to fix before they submitted.
The main character was stuck in a “T” pose. It looked terrible, but Max knew how to fix it. He had just fallen asleep before he’d finished implementing the change.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
“Max? Are you even awake?” Min pounded on his door again.
“Yeah! Okay, I’m coming!” Max grabbed his bag, homework unfinished (again). No time for that. No time even to change clothes. He’d hardly gotten himself up and out—still had one hand around the doorknob—when he heard a tiny sound coming from his feet.
MEOOOOOOWWWWWWWW?
The two wobbly little kittens had followed him to the door and were now looking up at him expectantly.
“Oh no. I forgot about you guys!”
There was no way Max could sneak them back downstairs now; everyone was waiting outside. He tried to figure out what to do, but he was still groggy from sleep and couldn’t come up with a solution . . .
Max knelt down next to the kittens. “I have to go to school now. You’re gonna have to stay here today, okay? Can you guys promise to be good?”
Scout yawned. Stu reached up and gave him a playful boop.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Max smiled and stood up. “I’ll be back before you know it. Just don’t pee on anything!” He pulled himself to his feet. “Well, not anything important.”
Then he yanked open the door and slammed it shut behind him. “Coming!”
Stu got up and took a long, luxurious stretch, his mouth opening wide, tongue on full display. “That was a great nap.”
Scout couldn’t help but yawn again. “Seriously. How awesome was it to have our own bed warmer? I’ve never been so comfy.”
She followed her brother back to the big warm spot where Max had just been sleeping. “Aaaah. I could get used to this place.”
Stu licked his paw and wiped his face clean. “Mmmm-hmmm,” he murmured, content. He looked around this new place. “It’s not as big as the downstairs, but there are a lot more things to mess around with in here.”
He was right. Max’s room was full of toys, and Stu and Scout took it upon themselves to sniff them all. Action figures from movies and comics cluttered on the shelves. Max’s computer monitor was lined with mini figures he collected from his favorite TV shows, and even his bed was littered with a mass of prized plush figures.
Max was a skilled collector of cool stuff, and he had what his dad called a great eye. He was proud of his menagerie of awesome.
On his desk, one figure stood out apart from the others: it was a limited-edition statue of Noxious, the main character from Demon Souls, the game he had played more than any other. Only five hundred had ever been made, and you could tell his was unique. Noxious held up a clear crystal sword and shield, the best gear you could get in the game.
Max had stayed up late the day it was released, and at 12:01 a.m., he’d begun constantly refreshing the sale page online until the BUY button lit up.
BOOM.
His parents weren’t too happy when they learned he had borrowed their credit card to make the purchase—he’d been grounded for a month and had to clean out his life savings paying them back—but he didn’t care. He still had Noxious, and his friends—the ones that he’d told, anyway—were so jealous.
So what if this was his birthday present for the next two years?
WORTH IT.
And that was exactly what Stu thought, when he began to rub his furry cheek on the edge of Noxious’s crystal sword . . .
Stu’s morning went on from there, just like this:
Eight a.m.: explore.
Nine: Pounce on all the tempting sparkles and shiny spots on the floor—and everywhere the sun makes them—as it comes through the window.
Ten: Stalk the creatures on the bed, approaching each one slowly, giving it a tentative poke with a paw.
Eleven: Sniff. Boop. Move on. Repeat as needed.
Noon: Nap.
Scout’s morning unfolded a little more slowly than her brother’s. She took in the perimeter of the room, casing the joint.
Being a climber by nature, she spent a good part of the morning sizing up the figures on the shelf with increasing curiosity.
“You think I can make it up there?” she asked her brother, her eyes on the shelf.
“No way,” Stu replied, knowing it didn’t matter what he said. If Scout wanted to get somewhere, Scout found a way to get there.
Always.
“Hmmph,” Scout said, mildly annoyed. “I’ll show you.”
She knew the shelf was too high, but she saw a small table near it and began to work what was sort of the cat version of a word problem out in her head.
What that actually looked like, to an outsider, was this:
The kitten stared, measuring the distance with two cat eyes, wiggling her butt with increasing confidence until . . . she exploded upward . . . leaping . . . curving through the air . . . and landing awkwardly on the table.
A jar of colorful pens Max kept on the table crashed to the floor.
“Oops,” Scout said, but she was already looking back up at the shelf. She could definitely make this jump . . .
“Can’t make it up there? I’ll show you,” she muttered as she wound up and launched herself at the shelf.
Scout’s aim was perfect, and she landed, almost gracefully, on the shelf, taking her place among Max’s prized figures.
“Ha!” she taunted Stu. “Easy peasy!”
Stu looked up, a plushy in his jaws. “Mmmfph hmmph,” he said through a mouthful of collectible.
“What’s that? You’re saying, Wow, Scout, you’re the best leaper in existence?” Scout grinned. “I graciously accept your praise, brother.”
Stu snorted.
Scout set out exploring the shelf, sniffing each figure as she picked her way carefully between them. Her cat balance was still developing—and a couple figures toppled to the ground as she squeezed her way to the end of the line—but she figured it out.
Satisfied for the moment, Scout settled down into the shape of a tiny loaf on top of a tin box of collectible cards and enjoyed her perch.
Stu had thrown most of the plushies off the bed by now and was preparing to pounce down on a green zombie that was rumbling on the floor.
It had motion sensors and had started squirming, mumbling, “BRAAAAIINNNSSS.” Stu growled and double pounced, scratching and biting the zombie, batting it around the room.
“Not getting my brains!” he shouted.
Circling the zombie, he bumped into a trash can, accidentally knocking it over.
An old half-full can of Game Juice rolled out, purple liquid slowly oozing onto the floor. Stu shoved the wriggling zombie right into the puddle and watched as it began to soak up the spilled energy drink. . . .
After a second, it stopped moving.
Stu approached, sniffing, to confirm the kill. It was true. He had vanquished his foe. He licked the purple slime. “Ugh, gross.”
Scout laughed from her perch—then yawned.
Within minutes, both kittens had collapsed into sleep.
The sun moved slowly along the far wall as the rest of the afternoon passed.
Scout stayed in her perch up on high—snoozing atop two curled paws—until she opened one eye wide enough to see the sun hit the statue on Max’s desk.
The crystal weapons sparkled.
Scout sat up, staring intently. “Stu, you gotta see this,” she said.
But Stu was still napping, only his tail visible from beneath Max’s bed.
“Whatever,” Scout said to herself.
She considered the leap to the desk. It was pretty far, but she figured she could make it. She gathered herself and gritted her teeth . . .
Then she jumped . . .
This time, her aim was off.
She tumbled through the air and landed on Max’s keyboard.
Max, in his rush, had left his level up and running. He’d opened a “level submission” window, checking the deadlines before he fell asleep . . .
Scout scrambled to get her footing.
“WHOOAOAHAHAHAHAAHAOH!”
She twisted and struck out with all four paws, and through some twist of kitten chaos, Scout managed to press the perfect combination of buttons on the keyboard.
The “SUBMIT” button lit up, and a message flashed on-screen: “Congratulations, your level has been received!”
“Huh?” Scout watched the screen . . .
But she wasn’t through.
She scrambled to regain balance and slid right into
Noxious, teetering dangerously near the edge of the desk.
“Watch it—” Scout scrabbled but slid right off the desk, alongside Noxious. They both hit the ground hard.
Scout rolled to her feet and sprinted away from the loud crash Noxious made when he landed.
“RUN FOR IT!”
By the time Scout stuck her nose out from beneath the bed, she had recovered. Stu poked his head out from beneath Max’s bed.
They were fine.
Noxious, not so much.
Crystal shards were scattered across the floor.
Before they could investigate, footsteps approached . . .
The door swung open.
“I’m back, guys!” Max said, but his smile quickly turned into a look of horror as he viewed the destruction. “What did you—?”
“Oh no,” he said when he saw his sticky, ruined zombie. Noxious was in ruins. The sad stub where his shattered crystal sword had been snapped off. “No, no, no . . .”
Stepping around the spilled purple juice, Max followed the trail of damage up to his desk and looked at the screen . . .
“No. No no no—!”
He dropped his backpack and stared at the computer. “That’s impossible!” He read the message on-screen. “No. No way. This can’t be happening!”
But it had.
His level, unfinished and broken, had been sent to the game developers. You only got one submission. All his work, all his friends’ work, was for nothing.
“What have you DONE!!!” Max turned and shrieked at the kittens, who were now cowering together in the shadowy corner beneath his reading chair. “GET OUT OF HERE!”
The kittens panicked and tore past Max through the open bedroom door.
They disappeared down the hall.
Max sank to his floor, heart pounding, face in his hands.
“I wish I’d never found those cats.”
33
The Reckoning
Min was in her room, speeding through her homework with her favorite mechanical pencil, working as quickly as possible.
The Battle of the Bots competition was tonight, and she still had a few last-minute adjustments to make, but she always did her homework first. Somehow, it calmed her down to know she was ready for the next day.
Cats vs. Robots, Volume 1 Page 13
