by Dustin Brady
“Eric!” I gasped.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Mrs. Gregory just came back from the store with ice cream. I probably should have told you, but it’s Moose Tracks with fudge, and you know how I love to scrape the fudge off the top of
that one.”
“Where’s Charlie?!”
“Like I said, I took a small break from looking to … ”
Just then, Charlie walked into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“Moose Tracks with fudge!” Eric said. “Your mom gets the good stuff!”
“It is good stuff, isn’t it?” another voice said. Mr. Gregory rounded the corner.
I got goose bumps. “Guys, I really think … ”
“Oh, come on, Jesse. Get over it. I’m sorry, OK?” Eric said. He turned to Charlie. “He’s mad at me for eating ice cream instead of looking for you guys. But it’s Moose Tracks with fudge, ya know? Jesse, I’ll get it from the freezer for you guys. Just sit down and don’t worry about a thing.”
“OK, that’s not it,” I said.
“Then what is it?” Eric walked to the freezer. Before I could answer, Eric got distracted by something on the refrigerator door. “Hey, Charlie, who’s Raul Ludbar?”
Charlie looked up with a start. “What?!”
Eric pointed to an invitation hanging on the fridge. “You got invited to a surprise party for someone named Raul Ludbar. That’s not anyone in our class, right? I certainly didn’t get invited to a party for Raul Ludbar. Did you get invited to a party for Raul Ludbar, Jesse?”
I couldn’t take any more of Eric’s babbling. I grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “Eric. Focus.” When he shut up for two seconds, I stared him square in the eyes and asked, “Do you want to play Mousetrap?”
Eric looked confused. “Uh, the board game? No, not really.”
I wanted to slap him so much. “MOUSETRAP.”
Eric stared at me for a second before his expression changed. “Ohhhhh.” Then he looked disappointed. “But … the ice cream.”
“I’ll put yours away in the freezer. OK?”
Eric sighed and turned around. “Mr. Gregory, Roger did this cool high dive loop thing before, and we were wondering how to make him do it again.”
Mr. Gregory’s face lit up. “Maneuver 459! That’s a good one! I can show you in the backyard right now if you want!”
“That would be great,” Eric said, even though his expression said otherwise.
Mr. Gregory and Eric walked outside with Roger zipping behind. When the door closed, I pulled the cord out of my pocket. “Charlie, look! This is what we need!”
“Great,” Charlie said with a faraway look in his eyes.
“Your dad—or I guess not your dad, but that robot—pulled his own skin back and plugged this into his finger! It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I’ll bet,” Charlie said, still staring through me at the refrigerator.
“Hey!” I tapped Charlie’s head. “You OK? We found what we need! Let’s take this cord to the police and get your dad back!”
“We don’t need to take that to the police.”
I threw up my hands. “And why not?!”
Charlie didn’t answer. I looked behind me to find out what had him so mesmerized. It was the invitation that Eric had mentioned earlier. I took a second look. The front of the invitation featured a cartoon robot holding balloons and a birthday cake. The robot had its finger in front of its mouth. “Shhh!” a speech bubble said. “It’s a surprise!”
Charlie’s hand trembled as he reached for the invitation. “I think my dad sent me a message.”
Chapter 4
Dead Drop
Charlie wouldn’t tell me anything else about the invitation that afternoon. All he’d say was that he needed to check something out, and he’d let me know more through a secret message the next day. So the following day, I brought Eric to the secret message spot—the wooden castle playground near our school.
On the way to the playground, Eric typed a message on his watch and showed me when Roger had his back turned. “This is why we all need spy watches.”
I shook my head. Spy watches are great until a robot snatches one away and discovers the whole conversation. No, I wanted to do this right, and that meant dead drops. (“Dead drop” is an old-school spy term for leaving a secret message for another spy under the nose of the enemy. I probably could have just said that instead of using a phrase you didn’t understand, but I wanted to show how much I know about spy stuff.)
To pull off this particular dead drop, Eric and I needed to play a game of tag. To review, hide-and-seek and playground tag were our two big spy moves. The CIA would have been proud. “You’re it! Ready, set, go!” I yelled and raced to the playground.
Roger followed me until I got to the playground, then he raced back to Eric. He could fit inside the little crawling tubes, but he knew from experience that he was at risk of breaking one of his propellers if he got bumped in there. Once I reached the playground, I climbed up a ladder and dove inside the red crawling tube we’d agreed to use. Sure enough, an old piece of gum was stuck to the wall. I took three quick breaths to pump myself up and peeled the gross, chewed gum off the plastic. Behind the gum, Charlie had folded a small note with a five-word message.
“Come over. Now. NO ROGER.”
My heart raced faster. I put the note back, crawled out of the tube, and immediately let Eric catch me.
When he tagged me, I gave him a little nod to let him know he should check for a message. Then, I closed my eyes and started counting slowly. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi … ” While I counted, I started fiddling with a piece of candy in my pocket. I always have to fiddle with something while I’m thinking of a plan. No Roger. Just how were we supposed to do that? You can’t run away from something that can fly, and Roger didn’t have an “off” switch. When I finally got to ten, I started to turn around. “Ready or not, here I … AHHH!”
Eric was already standing face-to-face with me. “I got it,” he said.
“You got what?!”
Eric winked, then announced loud enough for Roger to hear, “I’m bored with tag, wanna play with Roger for a bit?”
Beeweepdiddywoop! Roger whistled and spun.
“Come on,” Eric said, “I’ll show you the trick we learned yesterday!”
“What are you doing?” I whispered as we ran. “Did you see the note?” Eric winked again.
When we got to the edge of the park near the street, Eric turned to Roger and held out his palm. “Roger, come.” Roger landed in Eric’s palm. Eric then turned his back to the playground. “Watch this,” he said with his eyes down the street.
I watched for a few seconds while Eric did nothing. Finally, I gave up. “What are you waiting for?”
He licked his finger and held it up. “The winnnnnd,” he said like he was Squanto or something. Finally, he was satisfied. “Ready, Roger?”
Bloopity-bloopity.
“One … two … three!” Eric threw Roger at the sidewalk as hard as he could. Roger was up for the challenge—he put his little propellers into overdrive and pulled up an inch before he hit the concrete. Using the force from the throw as momentum, Roger zoomed as fast as I’d ever seen him go along the ground, into the street and up into a magnificent—
CRASH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
Bus.
Roger was so focused on pulling into his loop that he didn’t notice the quickly approaching bus. He splatted onto the windshield like a bug, then bounced a couple times onto the street.
“ERIC, WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
Eric looked quite pleased with himself. “Maneuver 459!”
“No, what you did was throw Roger into a bus! Which is something that’s going to get us in big trouble with the suits!”
&n
bsp; “Or it’ll give us an excuse to go to Charlie’s house so his fake dad can fix Roger. Which will give us plenty of time alone with Charlie.”
That stopped my ranting right there. “Oh. That’s actually a good idea.”
Eric wiggled his eyebrows. “I know.”
We picked as much of Roger’s plastic and metal off the street as we could and dumped it into Eric’s book bag. Then we took off on our bikes. I turned around to make sure no suits had pulled into the parking lot or landed in a helicopter or something. We’d made it!
“Jesse, watch out!”
I turned back around and slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a mom walking to the parking lot. She put her hand on my bike to keep me from running over her toes.
“I’m so sorry!” I said. “I should have been watching where I was going!”
The mom shook her head and continued walking to her minivan. I yelled another apology and caught up to Eric. If I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed something strange about the mom. She didn’t have any kids with her.
Chapter 5
Reactovision
As we pedaled to Charlie’s house, Eric reviewed the plan with me. “OK, so if the robot Mr. Gregory comes to the door … ”
“Oh, we’re calling him the RMG now,” I interrupted.
Eric squinted at me. “I thought that was the name of the mission.”
“It was, but I just changed it. Now it stands for ‘Robot Mr. Gregory’ because that takes too long to say.”
“It doesn’t take too long to say.”
“It does! Also, the initials make him feel more like a robot. It seems icky to say ‘Mr. Gregory’ when we know that’s not him. Just use the initials, OK?”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Fine, so if he comes to the door, we cry and cry about Roger being broken until Mr. Gregory … ”
“The RMG!”
“Until the RMG volunteers to fix him.”
“Yeah, except maybe we just ask nicely instead of crying. I think he can tell when we’re faking.”
“Don’t worry. I can handle it,” Eric assured me.
Five minutes later, Eric showed that we have very different definitions of “handling it.”
“Mr. Gregory! Mr. Gregory!” he bawled before we even got to the door. I nudged him, but that only made him act harder. “Roger broke! OUR BEST FRIEND IS DEEEEEAAAAAAD!”
The RMG quickly opened the door. “Oh no! What part broke?”
Eric dumped his book bag onto the porch. “All of them!”
The RMG’s eyes got wide.
“He ran into a bus,” Eric said, still trying to act sad, but clearly a little proud of himself.
“A bus?” The RMG stared at the parts in shock.
“Can you fix him?” I asked.
The RMG continued to stare. “I do have some spare parts in my workshop out back.”
We picked up the pieces and followed the RMG to a shed in the backyard. He turned on the lights to reveal shelves and workbenches lined with parts. He grabbed a flashlight and started picking through a bin. “PCFI capacitor, now where’s the PCFI capacitor?” he muttered to himself.
“Uh, is this gonna be a while?” Eric asked.
“Presumably.”
“Then we were gonna hang out with Charlie for a little bit if that’s OK.”
“Mm? Oh yes, of course,” the RMG mumbled.
Charlie met us at the back door. His hair was all messed up, and he looked like he hadn’t slept at all. “Did you get rid of him?”
Eric grinned. “Got rid of both of them!”
Charlie looked both ways. He was trembling. “Cool. Follow me.”
We followed Charlie to the basement—a little kids’ paradise packed with wall-to-wall toys. There was a stuffed animal classroom, a minefield of Legos, and a sprawling Star Wars battlefield. I suddenly got nervous. “Wait, is your brother around?”
“He went with my mom and sisters to my grandparents’ house,” Charlie said as he picked his way across the room and opened a door. Once we all got inside, Charlie closed the door, locked it, and clicked on a lamp.
“Whoa!” Eric and I said in unison. This smaller room was stuffed with a different type of toy—electronics. Mr. Gregory had guts of old computers strewn all over a table in the corner, tons of old video games lining shelves against the wall, and a ratty couch facing a tube TV. Charlie turned on the TV and hit a switch on one of the video game systems.
The screen flickered a few times, and then video game music from the 1980s greeted us as a title popped up—“DOOM ISLAND!” A blocky, little man swung back and forth on vines hanging off of the letters, while another character threw coconuts at a gorilla.
Eric’s eyes lit up. “Is this what I think it is?!” Charlie didn’t answer. Eric picked up one of the controllers almost reverently. “A Reactovision 9000. These are, like, super rare.” Then his eyes got huge. “Can we play it? Can we play Doom Island?!”
I doubted Charlie had us go through all that trouble just to play an old video game. “What does this have to do with your dad, Charlie?”
Charlie took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “This is my dad’s system from when he was a kid. He always said it’s what made him want to start making video games. As soon as I got old enough to pick up a controller, we started playing Doom Island together. I still remember when we beat it for the first time. I actually hadn’t thought about the game for years—that is until you guys pointed out the invitation on the fridge.”
“The party for that kid we don’t know?” Eric asked.
“Raul Ludbar,” Charlie said. “That’s the code my dad and I always used in Doom Island to get infinite lives.”
“Ohhhhhhhh!” Eric said. Then he paused for a second. “Actually, I don’t get it.”
“You know how sometimes video games let you put in codes to get extra stuff?”
“Of course.”
“Well, you put codes into Reactovision games through button combinations on the controller.” Charlie grabbed the controller from Eric. “See, there’s up, down, left, right, ‘A,’ and ‘B.’ If you put in the right combo, you get cool stuff.”
“Okayyyyy.”
“The code for infinite lives in Doom Island is really complicated. Right-‘A’-up-left-left, blah, blah, blah. It’s really hard to remember unless you write it down, or … ”
I was getting it now. “Or unless you come up with your own code!”
Charlie nodded. “Raul Ludbar isn’t a name; it’s a trick for remembering the Doom Island code. ‘R’ for right, ‘A’ for the ‘A’ button, ‘U’ for up.”
Now I was getting excited. “So your dad was telling you to put that code into this game! And he wanted you to do it without telling anybody, which is why he sent the message through a surprise party invitation!”
Charlie nodded, then looked back at the door and slowly started punching buttons on the controller. Right, A, up, left—Eric and I held our breaths until he hit the last button and a chime sounded. The screen turned black, and a message appeared on the screen one letter at a time.
ARE YOU ALONE?
- YES
- NO
Charlie selected “YES.”
Another message typed onto the screen.
CHARLIE, YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. SOMETHING BAD IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. GET THE FAMILY TO SAFETY BY BRINGING THEM INTO THIS ROOM AND TYPING THE CODE AGAIN.
LOVE,
DAD
We sat in silence for a moment. Charlie was still shaking. “Guys, what’s going on?”
“Can I see the controller?” I asked. Charlie handed it to me, and I tried to scroll around the screen to look for any other clues. “Were there more instructions?”
Before Charlie could answer, the doorknob rattled. Charlie jumped to hi
s feet. “Who is … ”
The door swung open, and in stepped the RMG, holding a key.
Chapter 6
Blink and You’ll
Miss It
“Hey, guys, I fixed Roger!” the RMG said when he entered the room. Roger flew behind him and perched on his shoulder.
“That was—uh, fast,” Eric said.
The RMG looked from me to Eric to Charlie to the TV. When he saw the TV, he stopped. His eyes didn’t even move back and forth to read the text. He must have been able to read it all instantly, because the moment he saw it, his whole demeanor changed. His breathing slowed. He got cold. Robotic. He slowly swiveled his head to Charlie. “What’s the code?” he asked in a flat voice.
Charlie looked like someone had kicked him in the stomach. “It’s all part of the game.”
“What’s the code?” the RMG repeated in the same flat voice.
Charlie went silent. The only noise in the room was the sound of heavy breathing.
The RMG blinked and tilted his head. “Charlie?” Then his eyes changed. They started getting brighter. Blink. Now they were turning red. Blink.
I looked around for an escape path. No windows, no other doors—the only way out was past the crazy-eyed death robot. Unless … I glanced at the controller in my hands.
“Roger,” the RMG said without turning his head. “My son is having a hard time accessing his memories. Let’s help him out.”
Roger blooped and opened one of his belly compartments to reveal a spinning blade.
“Roger, no!” Eric yelled. He looked at me for help, but I couldn’t take my focus off of the RMG’s eyes. Blink. There it was. The instant he blinked, I pressed “right” on the control pad and started counting down.
Five … four … three … two … one … Blink. I pressed A and started the countdown again.
