Robots Go Wild!

by James Patterson

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “On his bike. Headed north. I heard him say he was going to Notre Dame. Is he some kind of new bionic football player?”

  “No, sir,” I say. “He’s our robot.”

  “And, actually, he plays more basketball than football,” adds Trip. “You should see him slam-dunk.”

  Yes, Trip continues to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  “I did see him dunk,” says the zookeeper. “With a goat.”

  “Is the goat okay?” I ask, feeling guilty.

  “She’ll be fine. Which is more than I can say for your rogue robot. When the authorities catch up with him, they won’t put him in a cage. They’ll toss him in a car crusher!”

  “Not if my mom and I can shut him down before he causes any more damage,” I say.

  The zookeeper takes off to deal with some “very frightened ferrets.” I call home.

  “Maddie?” I holler. “Scramble the other robots. Tell them to meet Trip and me at Notre Dame.”

  “Why? Does Mom need them for something?”

  “Yes. We all do. E has gone wild. He’s tearing through South Bend. Notre Dame is his next target.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m pretty sure those magnets Penelope slapped all over his body messed up his motherboard again. Tell Mom that Trip and I are on our way to ND. We should be able to bike there in, like, ten or fifteen minutes. If all the other robots help us, I’m pretty sure we can surround E, power him down, and hand him off to Mom.”

  “I wish I could help you guys, Sammy. I hate being stuck in this room!”

  “You’ll be helping a lot, Maddie. Call Mom and send us every robot you can! Now!”

  Of course E will get to the Notre Dame campus before Trip and me.

  I just hope he doesn’t dent the Golden Dome, the most famous landmark on campus.

  Trip and I make it to the campus just in time to see some ND security guards chasing our rogue-bot down the maze of pathways in front of LaFortune Student Center, which, of course, is full of students who decide to join in on the chase.

  E decides to lose them all by ducking into the student center.

  Inside is the Huddle Food Court, with restaurants like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Burger King. By the time Trip and I get there, there are personal pan pizzas dripping off the ceiling, Nachos BellGrande smeared all over the floor, and onion rings in everybody’s hair.

  More students join in the chase, as E ducks out an exit and runs sort of south and east. I think he’s heading for the College of Engineering building, where Mom teaches.

  I am, of course, wrong.

  He races over to the football stadium, where the marching band is rehearsing.

  I don’t think this week’s halftime show was supposed to include a rampaging robot or the “Yikes! Run for Your Life” formation.

  Finally, some of the other robots from home arrive.

  Drone Malone, our handy helicopter-bot with a telescopic recording lens, hovers overhead like a traffic helicopter monitoring E’s position. “There he is. That’s him. There he goes. Yep, that’s E. He’s in the stadium.”

  Okay, Drone Malone isn’t much help.

  Mr. Moppenshine, Geoffrey the butler, and Hayseed CHUG SHIRKA-SHIRKA CHUG onto the field. Slowly.

  “Stop it, E!” calls Mr. Moppenshine. “You’re making a mess.”

  “Cease and desist,” barks Geoffrey. “Your behavior is rude and boorish, old chap! Bad form, Eggy. Bad form.”

  “You done dilled my pickle,” shouts Hayseed. “Stop acting like you’re two sandwiches short of a picnic, E.”

  Mr. Moppenshine waves his feather duster.

  Geoffrey says “harrumph” a few times.

  Hayseed rattles his rake.

  Somehow, I don’t think this will work.

  We’re going to need a new plan.

  And maybe a lasso.

  I call Maddie.

  “Did you find Mom?”

  “Yes! She’s here. Turns out she didn’t go to school today. She had to go to the bank with Dad. Something about a mortgage.”

  “What? Couldn’t they do that on a day when E wasn’t going berserk?”

  “Well, I don’t think Mom and Dad knew E planned to go whackadoodle on us today.”

  Good point.

  Just when I’m about to give up all hope, who should come charging onto the field but my heroes: the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

  They stream into the stadium and join the chase.

  At first, they think Hayseed is the robot they’re after.

  “Wrong robot,” I shout. “We want E!”

  The marching band, the entire student body, and even the security guards pick up the chant.

  “We want E! We want E!”

  But E doesn’t want to quit running around like a lunatic.

  He shucks off all his would-be tacklers.

  He jukes out all his pursuers.

  He busts into the locker room, where he tosses helmets and shoulder pads and dirty towels around before slapping the famous sign all the Notre Dame football players touch before they take to the field for home games.

  I turn to Touchdown Jesus and ask for a little help.

  That’s what everybody calls this huge mural on the side of Hesburgh Library that looms over the football stadium. In it, Jesus sort of looks like a referee signaling a touchdown.

  Then my prayers are answered, although not the way I wanted.

  SS-10K—who must have a rocket hidden inside his backpack—zooms over the top of the stadium, swoops down to the field, and zips down the tunnel that leads to the locker room.

  I hear a KATOONK!

  And a FLABADAP!

  And a CLUNK!

  From the sound of it, I think SS-10K knocked E to the ground with an illegal spear tackle.

  The heroic IRAT robot drags my dented and dinged electronic buddy onto the field.

  “Be not afraid, citizens of Notre Dame,” he declares. “I have subdued your malfunctioning robot. All is well. Cheer, cheer for me!”

  The campus police arrive.

  “You Professor Hayes’s son?” one of them asks me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on. We’re taking you and your rogue-bot home.”

  Believe it or not, things get even worse when we make it home.

  Remember all those TV reporters and news crews who were in our driveway when E and I went to school a couple weeks ago?

  Well, they’re back.

  And they’re not as friendly as they were the first time.

  A very angry reporter jabs her microphone in Mom’s face.

  “Do you have anything to say to the little girl who dropped her ice-cream cone because your robotic monster terrified her?”

  “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. E is definitely grounded. He will not be allowed back on the streets or sidewalks of South Bend until he is fully functional and certifiably safe.”

  “Did you lose your job at Notre Dame because of E’s rowdy pranks on campus?”

  “No,” says Mom.

  And, from the look in her eyes, I can tell she’s thinking, Not yet, anyway.

  “Has your boss called you to say your job in the robotics department is still secure?”

  “No. But Dean Schilpp is a very busy woman.”

  “Have you thought about trashing E?” asks another reporter. “You could put him out on the curb with all your other recycling.”

  “E’s not garbage!” I shout, because I’m a kid and I don’t like hearing grown-ups say cruel stuff like that.

  “Take it easy, Sammy,” says Dad, who’s on the back stoop of our house with his arm around Mom, trying to protect her.

  “Hey, aren’t you the guy who draws those comic books about wild and crazy ninja robots?” says the nasty reporter. “The ones nobody reads anymore?”

  “They’re not comic books. They’re graphic novels.”

  “And I still read them,
” says Trip.

  All of a sudden, a black SUV with tinted windows screeches to a halt at the end of our driveway.

  A chauffeur jumps out, runs around the car, and opens the rear door.

  Out steps this skinny bald man with thick black glasses and a scary goatee—a beard like the devil wears sometimes. The bald man is wearing a lab coat just like Mom’s, only his name is stitched in gold, scrolled letters above the chest pocket:

  Dr. Ignatius Ingalls

  All the TV cameras swing to him.

  “Greetings, South Bend. My name is Dr. Ignatius Ingalls, PhD. My college, Indiana Robotics and Automaton Tech, is very proud that our trustworthy SS-10K was the one who was able to finally subdue and apprehend the University of Notre Dame’s much more primitive android.”

  “Is SS-10K a superhero?” asks a reporter.

  “No,” says Dr. Ingalls with a little chuckle. “But today he certainly acted like one! In fact, right now, SS-10K is at the PamPurred Pet Shop, where he just rescued both a cat and a parakeet that escaped during the Notre Dame robot’s spree of destruction.”

  The reporters all cheer.

  Dr. Ingalls smiles and sidles over to Mom.

  He leans in close to tell her something.

  I lean in closer to hear what he says: “Who’s ‘Icky’ now, Lizzie?”

  The reporters all leave when Dr. Ingalls promises them they can go see SS-10K in the middle of another rescue operation.

  “He’s on his way to the zoo to clean up the mess Professor Hayes’s robot left behind there.”

  When they’re gone, Dad turns to Mom and asks, “So, uh, why did that bald guy in the lab coat call you Lizzie, Liz?”

  Mom sighs. “That’s what everybody called me back in high school.”

  “I forgot you went to high school with that creep!” I say.

  “Yes. Ignatius Ingalls and I went to St. Matt’s together. In fact, he asked me to be his date to the junior-senior prom.”

  “What’d you tell him?” asks Dad.

  “That I already had a date.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Carl Sagan. The world-famous astronomer was going to be in town that same night giving a lecture. My dad took me.”

  “So who did Dr. Ingalls take to the dance?” I ask.

  Mom sighs again. “Nobody, unfortunately. All the girls thought he was, you know, icky.”

  “Because he was bald?”

  “No, Sammy. He still had hair in high school. But he was very, I don’t know—intense. Supercompetitive.”

  “Looks like he still is,” says Dad.

  “Maybe I should’ve said yes when he asked me out.…”

  “No way, Mom,” I say. “That guy would give anybody a permanent case of cooties.”

  We all laugh (for the first time all day) and head inside to make sure Maddie is doing okay.

  “Mom,” she says, “I don’t want E to ruin your reputation.”

  “Don’t worry, Maddie,” says Mom. “I can fix E.”

  “But what if he acts up again?”

  “He won’t. I promise.”

  When she says it, she doesn’t sound as confident as she usually does. Probably because she just promised the same thing, and here we are. I think she might just be trying to make Maddie feel better, like the great mom that she is.

  “But what if you lose your professor job at Notre Dame on account of what E did today?”

  Mom shrugs. “No biggie. Your father can support us with the mucho dinero he earns from his awesome graphic novels.”

  Dad makes a giant GULP noise. He also has a very funny look on his face, like he just ate something really sour.

  But he doesn’t tell Mom how he just lost his big, fat book contract, so I don’t, either.

  Then I realize something: E may have done even more damage than we thought during his bonkers joyride of destruction.

  He might’ve really hurt my family, too.

  Mom toggles the remote control for Forkenstein—a headless robot with forklift arms that she uses to move the really heavy stuff in her lab.

  Rumbling on tank treads, Forkenstein extends his hydraulic arms and snags E—who’s slumped against the garage door in a heap—like he’s a lumpy bag of metallic bones.

  “Take him to the shop,” Mom says into her handheld controller.

  “Affirmative,” drones Forkenstein, who only knows maybe three words: affirmative, negative, and oilcan.

  “You can fix him?” I say to Mom. “For real this time?”

  “I’m going to try, Sammy.”

  “I think it was the magnets that Penelope Pettigrew plastered all over him that made E go bananas.”

  “Sammy, E already has an extremely powerful magnet inside each of his hard drives that controls the read-write head’s movement.”

  Uh-oh. Mom’s talking techno mumbo jumbo with me. She does that sometimes when she doesn’t want anybody to know how sad she really is.

  “If that magnet is inside the drive,” she goes on, sounding semi-robotic herself, “and it doesn’t wipe the drive clean, then any other magnet, especially tiny refrigerator magnets such as those affixed to E by Miss Pettigrew, are not likely to cause significant damage, either.”

  I think I understand what she’s saying: It wasn’t the magnets.

  “But what if Penelope jammed more metal down his ear? Or a bent wire hanger from the coatrack? Or a pointer? I think Ms. Tracey has one of those collapsible ones that look like a radio antenna. She uses it to point at stuff on the Smart Board.”

  Mom shakes her head. “The polymer mesh screens I installed over E’s ears are intact.”

  Guess that means there are no new holes in E’s earholes.

  “So what are you going to do?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure, Sammy.”

  “You have to fix E, Mom,” I say. “You promised Maddie.”

  “I know. But I also promised the police I’d keep E off the streets. He did a lot of damage today, Sammy.”

  “But you told Maddie not to worry.”

  Mom sighs. “Sometimes adults have to say things they don’t really mean.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because.”

  All righty-o. We’re back to when I was three years old and the answer to every question Mom and Dad didn’t really want to answer was “Because.”

  A phone rings at her desk.

  Mom jabs the speakerphone button.

  “This is Dr. Elizabeth Hayes.”

  “Liz? It’s Ali.”

  Uh-oh. Ali is short for Dean of Engineering Allison Schilpp, Mom’s boss at Notre Dame. She’s been a friend of our family for years. She’s even my godmother.

  But I don’t think she’s calling to ask Mom what I want for my birthday this year.

  Dean Schilpp sounds semi-robotic, too.

  Maybe that’s how all the professors in the College of Engineering speak when they’re talking about stuff that isn’t fun to talk about.

  “Have you confined E’s movements?” asks Dean Schilpp.

  “Yes,” says Mom. “He’s here in my shop. Powered down and decommissioned. He is no longer a public safety hazard.”

  I look at droopy E, collapsed into himself on the worktable. His blue eyeballs are as blank as bicycle reflectors in a dark garage. E looks worse than powered down. He looks sort of dead.

  “E will not be going to school for Maddie at any time in the foreseeable future,” says Mom.

  I want to say, Oh, yes, he will! Just as soon as you fix him.

  But Mom probably wouldn’t want to hear it, so I don’t.

  “Liz,” says Dean Schilpp, “you might consider scrapping this whole substitute student project—even though I know how important it has been to you and your family. The folks over at IRAT seem to be light-years ahead of us. It might be time for you to move on to something a little less complex and more, I don’t know, predictable.”

  Like my stupid stuckless-bagel toaster idea.

  “I agree,” says
Mom, much to my surprise. “In fact, I’m thinking about spending the whole day baking cookies.”

  I do a double take.

  Mom hasn’t baked cookies since I can remember. In fact, as far as I know, Mom has never baked cookies. She’s always been too busy tinkering with her robots to do momish stuff like that. If Maddie and I ever really wanted homemade cookies, she probably would’ve built us an E-Z Bakenator–bot with a two-hundred-watt lightbulb in its belly or something.

  “Maybe you should take a little time off, Liz,” says Dean Schilpp. “As you know, this weekend is homecoming on campus. Mr. Riley and some of our other very important donors have asked that we downplay the robotics department with the visiting alumni. Maybe even postpone the annual mechatronic robot football game until…”

  She takes a big pause.

  “Until when?” asks Mom.

  “Until things are more… settled. I have to think about what’s best for the college, Liz.”

  “I understand, Ali,” Mom says.

  “Take all the time you need,” says the dean. “I’ll make sure your classes are covered.”

  “Thank you.”

  They say some pretty gloomy good-byes, then Mom turns off the speakerphone.

  “Okay,” I say, trying my best to rally Mom, “what do we do first? Should I charge E’s battery so you can run some tests or something? Maybe we should get a metal detector and scan his cranial cavity for paper clips?”

  Mom shakes her head. “No, Sammy. You should go inside and call a friend. Find out what you and Trip missed at school today. Then head upstairs and do your homework.”

  “Okay. What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll teach myself how to bake cookies.”

  Mom’s workshop has become the opposite of Disneyland—making it the Saddest Place on Earth.

  Things inside our house aren’t much jollier.