As he started to search through SpongeBob’s brain, Plankton heard two voices calling to him. “Hello, Plankton! Come play with us!”
He turned and saw two ice pops stuck together. They were smiling at him. “Hurry!” they called. “Before we MELT!” They giggled.
Horrified, Plankton ran away, scattering a bunch of happy balloons. He passed a doughnut blowing bubbles out of its hole. Screaming, Plankton ran off the edge of a cliff, landing in a pile of cute little fur balls!
The fur balls pushed together and transformed into a single giant kitten. It was cute but gigantic. Looming over Plankton, the kitten purred and meowed.
“So … much … sweetness,” Plankton groaned, heaving. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He threw up, but what came out of his mouth was a giant rainbow! He stared at the rainbow in disbelief. The giant rainbow suddenly grew arms and eyes.
“DADDY!” cried the giant rainbow.
Plankton screamed and ran away again. Soon he popped out of SpongeBob’s ear and landed next to their cold campfire. His grunts and groans awakened SpongeBob.
“Plankton?” he asked groggily. “Plankton! I just had the craziest dream, and you were in it!”
Plankton was covered in cotton candy, cookie crumbs, and caramel sauce. “I’m sure it was nothing,” he said quickly. “Now go back to sleep.”
“Well, good night,” SpongeBob said. But as he lay down, he noticed a candy cane stuck to Plankton’s head.
“Were you in my brain?” SpongeBob asked.
“What? No,” Plankton insisted. “That’s crazy talk.”
“Then why is there cotton candy on your antennae?”
“Because … um …,” Plankton said, stumped. “Okay, fine! I was in your brain!”
SpongeBob gasped, stepped back, and covered his head with his hands. “What were you doing in there?”
Plankton rolled his eye. “What do you THINK I was doing? Looking for the secret formula.”
“WHAT?” SpongeBob cried.
“Don’t act so innocent!” Plankton sneered. “You knew what I was up to. That’s why you’re pretending not to know the formula!”
SpongeBob looked shocked. “I’m not pretending! I can’t believe you thought I was lying!”
Plankton shrugged. “Hey, don’t take it personally. I just assume everyone’s lying.”
“That is a horrible way to live your life.”
“Whatever,” Plankton said.
“It is! And if we’re going to be on the same team—”
Plankton jumped to his feet and shook his fist. “Maybe I don’t want to be on a tee-am! You ever think of that?”
“But, Plankton,” SpongeBob protested. “EVERYTHING’s better when you’re part of a team!” With that, he pulled out a pitch pipe and blew through it.
“You’re not going to start singing, are you?” Plankton asked, shaking his head.
But he was. SpongeBob sang a song about teamwork—about how nothing is impossible if you tackle it as a team. In his enthusiasm, SpongeBob picked up Plankton during the song. After the song was over, Plankton said, “All right, you can put me down.”
SpongeBob gently set Plankton on the ground. “Well, that’s one minute of my life I’ll never get back,” Plankton complained.
“Not without a time machine,” SpongeBob pointed out.
Plankton froze. “Wait a minute!” he said. “Repeat that! Slowly!”
“Not … without … a … time … machine,” SpongeBob said in a slow, deep voice.
“Yes!” Plankton shouted. “THAT’S IT!”
“SpongeBob, you’re a genius!” Plankton cried, clapping him on the back.
“I am?” SpongeBob asked, puzzled.
“If we build a time machine,” Plankton explained enthusiastically, “we can go back to before the formula disappeared! Before society broke down! Before we became the hunted!”
SpongeBob looked doubtful. “That sounds great, Plankton,” he said. “But how do we build a time machine?”
Plankton paced back and forth, thinking. “Well,” he said slowly, “first we’ll need a computer powerful enough to calculate the intricacies of time travel.”
“Where would we get one of those?” SpongeBob asked.
“I just happen to be married to one,” Plankton answered with a smile.
High on another cliff at the edge of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob and Plankton looked down at the Chum Bucket. It was surrounded by guards. And they looked angry.
“Those thugs have got Karen tied up in the back room,” Plankton said. “We’re going to have to sneak by them. You know, it’s funny. I’ve never seen this many people at the Chum Bucket.”
“I know!” SpongeBob exclaimed. “I’ve never seen ANYONE there.”
Plankton looked exasperated. “Now, was that really necessary?”
“Because the food’s really bad.”
“Oh, come on! REALLY?”
“SHH!” SpongeBob said. “How are we gonna sneak past those guards?”
“Hmm …,” Plankton said, thinking of a plan.
Moments later, a tire rolled down the cliff toward the Chum Bucket. When it reached the bottom of the cliff, it kept going, rolling right into the middle of a group of guards.
“Well, what do we have here?” asked one guard.
The guards pulled out some wooden sticks and metal rods and started beating the tire!
Behind them, SpongeBob and Plankton sneaked over to the Chum Bucket, hidden in a stack of tires. “We’d better hurry,” SpongeBob whispered. “Those guys really hate tires!”
Plankton tried to open a small door, but it was locked. “We’ll never get in!” he cried. “The door’s locked!”
“A team doesn’t give up that easily,” SpongeBob reassured him. “Let me take a closer look.”
SpongeBob climbed out of the stack of tires and examined the side of the Chum Bucket more carefully. When he looked up, he saw an open window.
“There!” he said. “That window’s open! C’mon, Plankton. Time for some real teamwork. Gimme a boost.”
“Okay …,” Plankton said uncertainly. Then he saw SpongeBob’s shiny black shoe coming down at him. “Wait a minute! NO!”
Plankton tried with all his might to hold up SpongeBob by his shoe, but he just didn’t have enough strength. SQUISH!
Not realizing what had happened, SpongeBob was still straining to reach the open window. “Just … a … little … higher, Plankton,” he said. Then he realized Plankton wasn’t answering him. “Plankton?”
When SpongeBob lifted his shoe and looked at its sole, he saw Plankton flattened across it.
“Why don’t YOU boost ME up instead?” Plankton suggested sensibly.
“Oh, yeah,” SpongeBob said. “Good thinking!”
SpongeBob lifted his shoe up to the open window and scraped Plankton off. Groaning, Plankton landed on the windowsill. Then he jumped through the window into the Chum Bucket. As soon as he hit the floor, he ran to the small door and opened it.
“Come on, SpongeBob!” he whispered intensely. “Come on!”
SpongeBob squeezed through the small door and into the restaurant. “We’re in!” he said. Then he swung the door closed. SLAM!
“Shhhh!” Plankton hissed. “There’s a guard over there!”
Plankton pointed across the room at the guard. It was Patrick, snoring loudly as he slept in a chair by another door. “The key’s around his neck!” Plankton whispered. “We can take it from him, but we’ll have to be very quiet. Let’s walk on the tips of our toes.”
Plankton raised himself up on the tips of his toes—which SpongeBob had never noticed before—and skittered across the floor. There was a high, tinkling sound.
Patrick stirred in his sleep. Plankton froze, but the high tinkling sound continued. He looked back and saw SpongeBob playing a tiny piano. “Will you stop playing that tiny piano?” he said. “You’re going to get us caught!”
SpongeBob sheepishly put the tiny piano away. �
��Sorry,” he apologized.
They both tiptoed over to Patrick, who was still snoring. The key was on his chest, hanging on a chain around his neck.
“Okay,” Plankton said to SpongeBob. “Just reach out and grab that key!”
SpongeBob took a step closer to Patrick and stepped on a floorboard. CREAK!
“Halt!” Patrick said sleepily. “Who goes there?” But then he fell right back to sleep. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
SpongeBob gently grabbed the key and pulled it down.
“Stop!” Plankton hissed. “Pull it over his head!”
“Oh,” SpongeBob said. He lifted the key up toward Patrick’s head, but the chain got caught in the folds of Patrick’s neck fat.
“Stop! STOP!” Plankton warned. SpongeBob let go of the key. “Let me get up there,” Plankton continued. “I’m smaller. I won’t wake him up.”
Plankton jumped onto Patrick and climbed up to the key. He yanked the chain free, but then the key slid down Patrick’s chest, heading straight for his belly button. Plankton leapt onto the key and rode it like a snowboard.
“YAAAAHHH!” he screamed as he headed into Patrick’s belly button. Just as he and the key were about to completely disappear into the depths of Patrick’s navel, SpongeBob plucked them out, covered in gross lint.
They had the key! Success!
Except—at that very moment, Patrick woke up.
When he saw SpongeBob and Patrick, he pulled out a giant whistle and inhaled, ready to blow a mighty blast!
“NO!” SpongeBob yelled, tackling Patrick. The two buddies struggled. Patrick kept trying to put his lips on the whistle, but SpongeBob kept stopping him.
“Plankton, help!” SpongeBob shouted. “I’ll rock him, and you tell him a bedtime story!”
SpongeBob flipped Patrick over onto his lap. Plankton jumped onto Patrick’s belly and talked quickly. “Once upon a time there was a big fat pink idiot who went to sleep. The end!”
“Nice try,” Patrick scoffed, “but it’s gonna take more than that to—”
And he fell fast asleep.
SpongeBob and Plankton lost no time using the key to open the door. They burst through to find …
… Karen chained to the wall!
“I told you I don’t have the formula, you monsters!” cried Plankton’s computer wife.
“Hey, baby!” Plankton called. “How are you?”
Karen was thrilled to see her husband. “Plankton! My hero!” She stopped. “You must need something. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come back.”
“Plankton has a plan to save Bikini Bottom!” SpongeBob said as he unlocked Karen’s chains.
If Karen could have shaken her head, she would have. “It’s impossible, Sheldon,” she said. “Krabs knows all your plans. He’s been through my hard drive looking for the secret formula.”
Plankton hung his head. “Eh, I never had it.” Then he looked up and smiled. “But we’re gonna get it! We’re going back in time to steal the formula before it disappeared!”
“Really? Time travel?” Karen asked incredulously. “Where are you going to find a computer that can do THAT?”
Instantly, her powerful computer brain gave her the answer. “Wait a minute …,” she said.
Outside, SpongeBob and Plankton sneaked away from the Chum Bucket carrying Karen’s head. “I’ve never carried a head before,” SpongeBob whispered.
“You’ll get used to it,” Plankton said.
“It’s still warm,” SpongeBob said in a little voice.
They left the angry guards behind, still beating the tire. “So you won’t talk, eh?” one of the guards snarled. “Let some air out of him!”
At an abandoned Mexican-German restaurant called Taco Haüs, SpongeBob carefully set Karen’s head on the floor. “Is this where we’re going to build our time machine?” he asked, looking around at the dusty restaurant.
Plankton nodded. “Sure! It’s got everything we need! A photo booth, a cuckoo clock, some stale chips…. Now all we have to do is build it!”
Seeing another opportunity for a song about teamwork, SpongeBob happily pulled out his trusty pitch pipe and blew into it.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Plankton protested.
“Hey!” SpongeBob cried.
“I, uh, need it,” Plankton said. “For, um … the time machine!”
“Oh, okay!”
Plankton took the pitch pipe into another room. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! It sounded as though he was smashing something with a hammer. FLUSH! Then it sounded like he was flushing something down a toilet. “Installed!” he announced when he came back.
And so, working together, along with Karen’s powerful brain, using the crummy materials they found in the abandoned restaurant, Plankton and SpongeBob built a time machine. When they were done, Plankton spun the hands on the cuckoo clock, and an engine roared to life. VRROOM!
“I did it!” Plankton said proudly.
“No, WE did it!” SpongeBob corrected him.
“We DID do it,” Plankton admitted, “as a tee-am!”
“A TEAM!” SpongeBob said.
“Whatever,” Plankton said, climbing into the photo booth. “Say ‘Cheese!’”
“Cheese!”
The time machine sputtered and died.
Plankton stepped out of the booth. “What’s WRONG with this thing?” he fumed, studying his time-machine blueprint. “I don’t understand! We got EVERYTHING! It makes no SENSE!”
“Sense?” SpongeBob mused. “Cents!” He pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Twenty-five cents, to be exact!”
SpongeBob dropped the quarter in the photo booth’s slot, and the time machine started right back up. VRROOM! WHIRRRR!
SpongeBob and Plankton jumped into the time machine. “So,” SpongeBob said, looking around, “how do we tell this time machine where to go?”
“I don’t know,” Plankton said. “Let’s try THIS button!”
He pressed a big green button. Lights flashed! SpongeBob and Plankton hurtled back through time. When they stopped, SpongeBob cautiously slid open the photo booth’s curtain and stepped out.
The time machine was sitting in the middle of a desolate wasteland. There was no sign of Bikini Bottom anywhere.
“According to my calculations, the Krusty Krab should be right here,” Plankton said, puzzled.
SpongeBob pointed. “What’s that over there?”
He ran over and found Patrick! But Patrick was much, much older, with a long beard.
“Patrick?” SpongeBob asked.
“SpongeBob?” older Patrick croaked. “Is it really you?”
“Yes, Patrick, it’s—”
“Finally, the Great Krabby Patty Famine is OVER!” Patrick cried in gratitude.
“Great Krabby Patty Famine?” SpongeBob said. “What year IS this?”
“It’s Thursday,” Patrick answered.
“According to my calculations, we’ve only gone four days into the future,” Plankton explained.
Patrick was celebrating. “They said you’d never come back, but I knew you would!”
“Where’s the Krusty Krab?” SpongeBob asked, looking around.
Patrick shrugged. “Same place it’s always been,” he said.
A gust of wind blew away sand from underneath Patrick, revealing that he was sitting on the Krusty Krab’s old sign.
“I’m sorry, Patrick!” SpongeBob said. “I’m sorry I let you down!”
“Don’t apologize to me!” Patrick said. “Apologize to HIM!”
SpongeBob looked confused. “Him?”
Patrick pulled in his stomach, making a crease that looked like a mouth. Then his stomach spoke! “If I don’t get a Krabby Patty soon, I’m going to eat you AND your friend!” it growled.
Horrified, Patrick cried, “He’s joking! He’s got a really great sense of humor!”
But Patrick’s stomach turned into a huge mouth and started gobbling up the Krusty Krab sign. Patrick screamed!
SpongeBob and Plankton ra
n back to their time machine and climbed in. “Well, the GREEN button didn’t work, so let’s try the RED one!” Plankton said, pushing it.
VRROOM! WHIRRR!
The time machine disappeared!
Once again, SpongeBob and Plankton hurtled through time and space. When they opened the photo booth curtain, they peeked out and saw …
… nothing. Everywhere they looked, they saw gray nothingness.
“Uh-oh,” SpongeBob said. “This still looks like the future!”
He and Plankton stepped out of the time machine and found themselves in a great hall. They cautiously followed a long corridor. At the end of the corridor, they could see a mysterious hooded figure standing with his back to them.
They approached the figure. “Excuse me, sir,” SpongeBob asked politely. “Could you tell us WHEN we are?”
Without turning around, the figure spoke in a low voice. “Who dares disturb the One Who Watches?”
“The One Who Watches?” SpongeBob said. “Your name is The One Who Watches?”
“No!” the hooded figure said. “My true name is … BUBBLES!”
The figure turned around. It was a dolphin!
“Bubbles?” Plankton said, laughing. “What kind of a name is Bubbles?”
The hooded dolphin drew himself up with great dignity and said, “It is my ancient dolphin name.”
“What’s a dolphin doing out in the middle of space?” SpongeBob asked.
Bubbles looked out the window. “My kind have been watching and protecting the galaxy for ten thousand years.”
SpongeBob suddenly understood. “So YOU’RE the one keeping the meteors from hitting us!”
Bubbles nodded solemnly. “Yes, I am. I could really do with a toilet break. Would you mind keeping an eye on things?”
“Sure thing!” SpongeBob said. Then he thought of something. “WHAT am I keeping my eye on?” he called after the dolphin.
But Bubbles had already left, closing the bathroom door behind him. SpongeBob walked over to the window and stood still, staring.
“What are you doing?” Plankton asked, tugging SpongeBob’s arm.
“I’m watching,” SpongeBob answered.
“But you don’t even know what you’re watching FOR!”
SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Junior Novel Page 4
