“Then my answer is ‘no comment.’ ”
Matt smiled to show that he didn’t mean any offense, and then he turned to a nearby work bench. He picked up a black box with an antennae and two small joysticks jutting out of it.
“Now, who wants to see a giant talking robot head?”
When Tesla and DeMarco reached the side street where the cars were parked, they found the protestors still clustered at the edge of the set. A different security guard—a woman this time—was keeping an eye on them. She looked profoundly bored.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho!” chanted the protestor whom Silas had dubbed “Smelly Spider-Man Fan.”
“Damon Wilder’s got to go!” came the reply from the rest of the group.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho!” Smelly Spider-Man Fan said again.
“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” called out the security guard.
“Excuse me,” DeMarco said to the guard. “We just need to get something from my aunt’s car.”
“Sure,” said the guard. “You’re with Miss Helms, right? You need to get yourselves set passes. And you probably shouldn’t walk around without your aunt, even after you have ’em.”
“Fascists!” Smelly Spider-Man Fan yelled from across the street.
The guard rolled her eyes.
“You go get the box,” Tesla said to DeMarco. “I’m curious about something.”
As DeMarco headed for his aunt’s car, Tesla turned and walked up to the protestors.
“All right,” she said to no one in particular, “what’s the deal?”
“What do you mean?” asked Smelly Spider-Man Fan.
“What do you guys have against Damon Wilder?”
“Don’t play dumb with us,” said one of the other protestors. (His snarling tone reminded Tesla of what Silas had called him: “Rude Batman Fan.”) “Just because you’re so special that you get to go on set doesn’t mean that we”—and here he motioned to the crowd—“the lowly rabble, are idiots.”
“Hey, it just hit the ’Net last night,” said the boy whom Silas had referred to as “Stellan Something” … or maybe it was his brother, Casey Something. “Maybe she really doesn’t know.”
“Yeah,” Anime Girl said to Rude Batman Fan. “Geez, you don’t always have to be such a jerk.”
Rude Batman Fan crossed his arms across his chest and sulked.
“We can show you what the deal is,” Stellan or Casey Something said to Tesla, smiling at her in a nervous but friendly sort of way. “Casey, use your phone.”
So he was Stellan. That was one mystery solved. Casey, who looked to be fourteen or fifteen years old to his brother’s eleven or twelve, pulled a cell phone from his pocket and turned it on.
“What’s going on?” asked DeMarco, who had returned with the box of homemade movie props cradled in his arms.
“We’re about to find out why hey, hey, ho, ho, Damon Wilder’s got to go,” Tesla said.
“That was one of mine,” Stellan said with shy pride.
Casey called up an app and, after some quick thumb-typing, handed the phone to Tesla.
“The rumors started a few days ago,” he said. “Then this showed up on YouTube.”
A video began to play on the phone’s screen. The title of the video was Damon Wilder Goes WILD!!! The image was shaky and slightly grainy, but it was immediately recognizable.
The video had been shot not fifty yards away, on the street outside the Veranda Theater. Metalman, his armor scuffed and scraped, was talking to a pretty young woman in a lab coat as smoke swirled around them.
“I know you didn’t want to do that, Metalman,” the woman said. “But you had no choice. The zomboid fever had driven them insane.”
“Here it comes,” said Stellan.
“I blame myself,” Metalman intoned in a stiff, emotionless voice. “It was I who brought Lord Computron to face earth justice. I who unwittingly allowed him to spread his evil here.”
“Oh, man,” DeMarco said, shaking his head.
Tesla didn’t have to ask what he was talking about.
It was obviously Damon Wilder in the Metalman suit. And his performance was horrible. Tesla had seen more convincing acting in grade-school plays about meteorology and good nutrition.
The image on the cell phone kept shaking and shifting, and for a split second a dark smudge could be seen in the upper-left corner:
A person’s fingertip.
“We’re not just watching this on a cell phone. It was also shot with a cell phone,” Tesla said.
She looked over at DeMarco.
“So there’s a spy on the set,” he said.
Anime Girl said, “Keep watching. It gets better.”
“By which she means worse,” added Stellan.
On the screen, Metalman took a lurching step forward and then he clenched a fist and thumped it against his armored chest.
“A human heart still beats inside this metal shell,” he said robotically. “And today that heart is breaking. Lord Computron has broken it. I have broken it. And there is only one thing that can—what do you think you’re doing?”
Wilder’s emotionless drone had suddenly disappeared. He sounded human again. And angry.
“I said what do you think you are doing?” he said, grating out the words.
“Checking the fog machine,” said a man’s voice off-screen. It sounded familiar.
“Checking the fog machine? Checking the fog machine?!” was Wilder’s incredulous reply. “In the middle of a scene?!?”
“I’m sorry, Damon,” the man said. “The fog machine was about to—”
“Do I care what the fog machine was about to do? Do I? Do I?”
“Well—”
Wilder ripped off his Metalman helmet and hurled it with all his might at the man they couldn’t see. There was a painful-sounding thunk, and several people could be heard gasping.
“I do not care about the fog machine!” Wilder said in a rage. His hair was slick with sweat, his eyes wide. “I care about stopping Lord Computron! I care about stopping the zomboid virus! I care about saving the human race! And I care about holding on to the last shreds of my own humanity! When I put on this costume, I’m not Damon Wilder, who has to worry about amateurs wandering around trashing his scenes! I am a hero who has to worry about protecting everyone and everything! Including my very soul!”
“Let’s just take a minute,” said another voice. This one belonged to Cash Ashkinos.
“I don’t want to take a minute, Cash!” Wilder answered. “I just want to know that this idiot isn’t going to go skipping right in front of me and ruin my scene!”
“I absolutely apologize, Damon.”
Tesla didn’t think Wilder could open his eyes any wider, yet somehow he managed to. They looked like a couple of pupil-pocked ping-pong balls about to pop right out of his face.
“What did I just say, Matt?” he roared. “I’m not Damon! I … am … Metalman!”
“Hey—that’s Matt Gore!” said DeMarco.
And that’s a motive, thought Tesla.
“If Damon Wilder had done that to me,” DeMarco said as he carried the box of special effects gadgets back to Matt’s trailer, “I would’ve put something a lot worse than itching powder down his back.”
“What could’ve been worse than itching powder?” asked Tesla.
DeMarco looked at her sadly.
“Tez,” he said, “remember who my sisters are. I’ve found stuff worse than itching powder on my toothbrush. I’ve found stuff worse than itching powder in my shorts. I’ve found stuff worse than itching powder stuffed up my—”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
The kids had been through the set enough times already that they were now a familiar sight; most crew members simply ignored them. But one—a husky man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy work boots—suddenly stepped into their path, blocking their way.
“Whoa, there,” he said. “You two look a little young to be Teamsters.”
&nbs
p; “Uhh, that’s because we’re not,” Tesla said.
“Whatever those are,” added DeMarco.
“Teamsters,” the man said, “transport and assemble film equipment. And their union makes sure that they, and only they, do the transporting and assembling. Which makes me wonder who’s got you doing that.”
He pointed a stubby, callous-tipped finger at the cardboard box in DeMarco’s arms.
“We were going to show it to Matt, the special effects guy,” DeMarco said.
“Matt Gore’s hiring ten-year-old assistants?”
“I’m eleven,” muttered Tesla.
“I’m twelve,” grumbled DeMarco.
“And anyway,” Tesla said, “we’re not Matt Gore’s assistants. We’re guests.”
Tesla looked pointedly at DeMarco.
“Zoe Helms is my aunt,” he told the man.
“Ohhhhh. Zoe Helms is your auuuuuuuunt,” the man said, sneering in a la-di-da kind of way. “Well, you know what, kid? Usually, it wouldn’t matter if George Lucas was your uncle, Michael Bay was your cousin, and Walt Disney was your long-lost twin. Unattended children cannot go wandering around an active set. But I happen to like Zoe, so I’m going to cut her some slack and let it slide. This time.”
The man reached out with a big hand and patted DeMarco on the head.
“Don’t make me regret it, nephew. Now go to wherever you’re supposed to be, and stay there.”
The Teamster guy walked away whistling.
“Come on,” Tesla said to DeMarco. “We need to hurry and get back. Leaving Silas with our prime suspect makes me nervous.”
“Don’t worry. Nick’s there to keep him out of trouble,” DeMarco said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“How dare you meddle in my affairs, Silas Kuskie?” a voice suddenly boomed from somewhere nearby. “I shall commit what crimes I like … and kill whom I like! Starting with you!”
Tesla and DeMarco burst into a sprint.
They both knew that voice.
It belonged to Matt Gore!
“Die! Die! Die!” he bellowed.
Tesla and DeMarco tore around one truck, dashed past another, and then went pounding up the ramp into the special effects trailer. There they found Nick and Silas staring slack-jawed at the fiend who was roaring threats at them:
Lord Computron.
Specifically, Lord Computron’s robot head.
Silas glanced over his shoulder and grinned.
“Cool, huh?” he said, not noticing that Tesla and DeMarco were flushed and panting. He turned back to Lord Computron’s giant disembodied head.
Its glowing eyes were shifting this way and that, and its mouth moved when Matt—who was standing in the corner holding the control pad—hollered out the words.
“Feel the deadly sting of my laser vision!”
Then Matt pushed a button, and the light in Lord Computron’s eyes shone from yellow to bright red.
Then the right eye flared white and, with a pop and a puff of smoke, burned out.
“Oh, well,” Matt said with a sigh. “Not using CGI does have its downside.”
He pushed another button, and the giant head powered down and went still.
“Who cares about downsides?” Silas pointed at the robot head. “That. Is. Cool. Cash should be making the whole movie with stuff like that.”
Matt shook his head sadly.
“Movie fans these days expect CGI. And doing effects with a computer gives the studio more control. If they think the audience wants exploding unicorns? Type-type, click-click—you’ve got exploding unicorns. Shooting with practical effects—the kind you actually do live on set with props like this one—that’s too slow, too old-fashioned. No one’s interested in building things anymore. Not when you can fake it with a few mouse clicks.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Tesla said. She looked over at DeMarco and waved him forward. “Go ahead. Show him.”
“We built these for the film I’m directing,” Silas said as DeMarco brought the box of props to Matt. “And writing. And producing. And editing and scoring, too, once it’s ready.”
Matt leaned over the box, gazed into it for a moment, and then reached down toward the grappling hook and wrist launcher that Nick and Tesla had built for Bald Eagle.
Perfect, Tesla thought.
Except that Matt was simply moving the grappling hook and launcher to the side so that he could get at the one thing Tesla didn’t want him to pull out: the robo-arm. Not perfect!
“Interesting,” Matt said.
As he examined the robo-arm, made mostly of ice-pop sticks and zip ties, it looked rickety and fragile. All he had to do was hold it the wrong way or grip it too hard, and the whole thing would crumple into splinters, putty, and string.
Matt found the handle, took hold of it, and gave it a tug.
The “fingers” curled in on themselves, making an ice-pop fist.
Matt looked up at the kids—and then he burst into a huge grin.
“I love it!” he said. “You guys are naturals. What else you got in here?”
He carefully put the robo-arm back in the box, laying it beside the grappling hook and the launcher, before pulling out the homemade camera-steadier contraption.
“Whoa. What the heck is this?”
“Show him how it works, DeMarco,” Tesla said.
“Sure.” DeMarco handed the prop box to Nick and then took the camera steadier from Matt’s hands, moving closer to Lord Computron. “Now, Mr. Gore. Why don’t you come over this way and look at it like this?”
Matt moved forward.
Nick stepped back, blocking Matt’s view of the box.
With Matt facing the other direction, Tesla snatched the robo-arm and shoved it at Silas.
Silas stared back at her blankly.
Silas was the tallest of the four kids, but, unfortunately, he wasn’t the most devious. He hadn’t intuitively grasped the plan—or even noticed that there was one.
“Let’s say we want to start with a close-up of Lord Computron,” DeMarco was saying. “Well, we’d just set up right here and—”
“Hey—I see it now! It’s a homemade Steadicam!” Matt said. He started to turn to face the others. “Which one of you dreamed up this little—?”
“It was me! All me!” DeMarco said quickly. “And just look at how well it works! Up, down, this way, that way, and the camera mount never wobbles. You want to try it?”
“Well, I—”
“Here, take it. See how that feels?”
DeMarco looked over Matt’s shoulder long enough to throw his friends a glare that said, Hurry up!
Tesla jabbed a finger at Silas three times. Point point point. You.
Again, Silas stared at her blankly.
Then she jabbed the finger at the robo-arm three times. Point point point. The robo-arm.
Silas still stared at her blankly.
Then she jabbed the finger at the high shelf holding the powder. Point point point. The powder!
At last, Silas stopped staring at her blankly. Understanding finally dawned in his eyes.
He grinned, gave Tesla and Nick a double-thumbs-up, and took the robo-arm, tiptoeing toward the shelf.
When he was close enough, Silas reached up with the robo-arm, groped around for the right canister, pulled back the lever that curled the fingers, and proceeded very slowly to take down the jar marked KA-BLAM!
When Silas turned to face Nick and Tesla, he was beaming with pride. The look of horror on his friends’ faces was completely mystifying. He had no idea that, over his head, he was holding the wrong canister.
Or that the canister, marked KA-BLAM! in big, thick, explode-y letters, was starting to slip through the robo-arm’s clumsy wooden fingers.
Both Nick and Tesla began vigorously shaking their heads while also stabbing their pointer fingers up at the shelf.
Point point point. Point point point.
Put it back! Put it back!
Silas gave them a stare
that was meant to say, Geez, make up your minds. You just told me to take it down!
The canister slipped an inch, then another inch. Then six more.
“Okay. I see. Very clever,” Matt was saying as DeMarco kept trying new ways to keep him interested in the camera steadier. “So, what else do you have in your box of—?”
“Hold on!” DeMarco said a little too eagerly. “You haven’t seen the really cool part yet.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah! Uhhh …”
An awkward silence filled the room while DeMarco tried to figure out what the “really cool part” was.
Silas, meanwhile, gave an irritated shrug before turning to put the KA-BLAM canister back on the shelf.
He was still holding the can over his head, however, and his shrugging caused it to slip even more. Now, the only thing that the robo-arm fingers were gripping was the lid. And if the can did fall, well, it was going to land right on Silas’s head.
“… pennies!” DeMarco was saying. “You use pennies for weights. So it also doubles as a piggy bank!”
Nick and Tesla liked explosions as much as the next kid, but when the thing exploding was their friend’s head—and maybe them along with it—well, then, not so much.
Tesla reflexively shut her eyes.
Nick kept his eyes open, but only because he was concentrating all of his effort on not yelling.
Finally, the canister fell.
Fortunately, by then Silas was holding it over its old spot on the shelf, so the drop was mere millimeters. It landed silently, without even a clunk. And, more important, without a KA-BLAM!
Nick breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Silas turned toward Nick. In the process, he knocked the robo-hand against the container of orange-brown powder, the one he was supposed to have grabbed in the first place.
It went flying.
And so did Nick. He dove forward, caught the container when it was barely a foot off the floor, and then landed on top of it, sprawled out like a squashed bug.
“Whoa! Are you okay?” Matt said, taking a step toward his friend’s prone body.
“I’m fine! No problem!” Nick said as he scrambled to his feet. “I just, uhh, fell down.”
“He does that a lot,” Tesla said.
Nick and Tesla's Special Effects Spectacular Page 6
