My Life as a Screaming Skydiver

by Bill Myers

  I looked at him and slowly started to nod. I think I was beginning to get it. “So,” I finally sighed, “what do we do now?”

  “Do you ztill vant to help?” Tall Guy asked.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, it’s the responsible thing to do, isn’t it?” I glanced over to Dad to make sure he approved, but instead of smiling over how fast I was learning he was frowning.

  “How dangerous would it be?” he asked.

  “Not dangerouz at all. You vill be wiz hem zee entire time, and vee vill be monitoring your every move.”

  “And you’re sure it’s safe?” Dad insisted.

  “Zer iz alvayz zome rizk,” Tall Guy said. “But conzidering zee ztakez, it iz a rizk vee all need hem to take.”

  Everyone waited. After another moment, Dad slowly started to nod. “If you’re sure it’s necessary.”

  “Yez, I am afraid it iz.” With that, Tall Guy turned to my friends and asked, “Vhat about you two? Do you ztill vant to cume?”

  “You bet,” Wall Street said.

  “Do we get more chips?” Opera asked.

  I threw him a look. He gave me a shrug.

  “Vell zen, if you vant to help, if you vant to continue zis mizzion,” Short Stuff said, “zen it’z important you appear not to believe our ztory. You muust pretend to ztill believe Mr. Blond.”

  “Zat’s right,” Tall Guy agreed. “Zen you can ztay in contact wiz hem. You can ztill pretend to help hem look vor zee Giggle Gun.”

  “Wow,” Wall Street exclaimed. “ That would make Wally kinda like a double agent?”

  I swallowed hard. I hadn’t been all that successful at being a single agent.

  “Zat iz correct,” Tall Guy said. Then turning his eyes intently upon me he continued, “If it’z vhat Vally vants.”

  I glanced around the plane. Now every eye was on me. I took another deep breath and slowly let it out. “Sure,” I kinda half squeaked. “If you think you can still use me.”

  “All right!” Wall Street and Opera gave each other a high five (though I’m sure it had more to do with all the stuff they were getting than with my heroics).

  I glanced over to Dad, whose reaction was slightly different. I couldn’t believe it. There was actually moisture filling his eyes. Amazing. For the first time in the history of the human race, Dad was actually looking at me with pride.

  I gave him a smile, and he reached out and tousled my hair. I knew he wanted to say something, but I knew he didn’t trust his voice. I tell you there was more emotion flying around than in one of those “sense and sensitivity” movies Mom’s always trying to get us to watch.

  “So,” I said, doing my best to swallow back the lump in my throat. “What uh, what exactly do I do?”

  “Firzt vee muust stoop ovv at headquarterz. It’z deep in zee mountainz ov Zwitzerand.”

  “Switzerland!” Wall Street cried. “That’s a major world banking center!”

  “Switzerland!” Dad exclaimed. “I can buy your mother some great postcards!”

  “Switzerland!” Opera hooted. “That’s the home of Swiss chocolate!”

  Yes sir, it seemed everybody was thrilled about the decision. Well, everybody but me . . . because, somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspected the fun and games weren’t exactly over. And whenever the back of my mind suspects these things, I know the rest of my body will soon feel them in a major McDoogle mishap kind of way!

  Chapter 7

  Don’t Forget to Floss!

  Headquarters was at a secret airfield somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Once we landed they whisked us straight inside, which means we didn’t get to see much scenery, but we sure got to see a lot of cool, superspy stuff.

  After entering the lobby there were the usual superspy sliding doors; the long, superspy hallways; and of course your typical superspy body searches (which would have been a bit more typical if I wasn’t so ticklish). I tried to warn them, but they weren’t exactly in a wanting-to-be-warned mood. . . .

  “Not ho-ho-ho, there he-he-he. Please I can’t harhar-har breathe. My side is tee-hee-hee killing me. Oh no, ho-ho-ho, I’m getting sick. I think I have har-har-har to throw ho-ho-ho . . .”

  (If you don’t mind, I’ll spare you this sound effect.)

  After losing my cookies (or whatever in-flight snack they’d served on the plane) my bodysearching pals let me go in an “Ooo grosss, get him out of here!” kinda way.

  Next up was the superspy weapons room. Now this place was cooler than cool. It looked like it came right out of a James Bond movie (but without all the sex and violence). At the far end there were a bunch of targets. At our end there was a long, modern-looking table, with all sorts of computers and electronic gizmos.

  Short Stuff had to leave and get something ready, so Tall Guy led us over to the table. As we took a seat he punched in a six-digit combination, and a small Plexiglas cube silently rose up out of the table. Inside were two rolls of extra fluffy, delicately scented . . . toilet paper.

  That’s right, toilet paper.

  “You may vind yourzelf hafing to uze zis zome-time,” Tall Guy said as he pulled one out and handed it to me.

  “What is this, a joke?” I said.

  He motioned to the toilet paper. “You hav had experienze wiz zis bevore?” he asked.

  Wall Street and Opera snickered.

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling my ears growing hot, “I’ve had a little practice with it.”

  “Good,” he nodded. “Juz make zure it’z ztrapped virmly to your body bevore lighting it.”

  “Strapped to my body?! Lighting it?!”

  “Zertainly.”

  Seeing the surprised look on my face, he took the roll back from me and set it on the table. Next, he carefully pointed it toward a target about twenty feet away. Finally, he pulled out a match and lit the back end of the tube.

  K-WOOOOSHHhhhh . . .

  The thing shot from the table faster than a kid who’s told he doesn’t have to finish his broccoli.

  “Wow,” Opera cried. “Jet-powered toilet paper!”

  “Impressive,” Dad observed.

  “ This will give a whole new meaning to T. P.ing somebody’s house,” Wall Street agreed.

  Tall Guy pulled the other roll out of the Plexiglas cube. “Put zis in your shaving kit and be fery carevul how you uze it,” he said as he handed it to me.

  I nodded and gingerly placed it inside my kit.

  Next, he entered another combination and another cube rose from the desk. Inside this one was a container of dental floss. He carefully removed it.

  “What’s this do?” I asked, reaching for it.

  “Not zo fazt!” he cried, quickly pulling it away.

  “Why? What is it?”

  Without a word, he opened the top and pulled out about a foot of the floss. Then, taking aim at a nearby computer terminal, he flicked his wrist and snapped the end of the floss against the monitor.

  K-BLAMB!

  Everyone jumped in surprise. Well, everyone but me. I was too busy crying out in terror to remember to jump. When the smoke finally cleared, the fancy monitor was nothing but a smoldering pile of ash. We all stared at it in amazement as Tall Guy carefully closed the floss container and handed it to me. “Zis iz a fery powervul veapon,” he said.

  I swallowed hard. “And a good way to remove ugly plaque buildup, too, I bet.”

  Before he could respond, the doors hissed open and in walked Short Stuff. “Zis iz our latezt and mozt zpectacular invention of all,” he said as he proudly approached.

  I looked at it and blinked.

  So did everybody else.

  To be honest, it didn’t look like anybody’s most “zpectacular” anything. In fact, it looked exactly like—

  “A taco?” Wall Street asked.

  “This is your best invention?” Dad scowled.

  “Does it come with extra cheese?” Opera asked. “It only lookz like a taco,” Short Stuff said as he carefully set it on the floor in front of us. He t
hen reached into his pocket and pulled out three packets of hot sauce. He handed two of them to me and opened the third. “But vhen you add zis extra hot zauce . . .”

  We crowded around as he opened the packet and carefully squirted a single drop onto the taco. To our amazement, it started to hum.

  We stepped back a little.

  He squirted on another drop. Now it began to vibrate.

  We stepped back—a lot.

  He finally gave the pack a big squeeze and squirted out the rest of the sauce. Suddenly, both sides of the taco shell folded down. Next, those same sides began to grow, telescoping out, becoming larger and larger, until each one looked like a giant four-foot wing.

  But that was only the beginning . . .

  Next, the center tomato slice began to expand, growing larger and larger, until it formed a round platform between the wings—a platform so big that a person could actually stand on it!

  Meanwhile, the lettuce and cheese were doing their things as they grew into a set of handlebars (complete with a little bike bell) and a dashboard with all sorts of controls (but, unfortunately, no CD player). In less than a minute the entire taco had transformed into some sort of humming vehicle with wings. And then—to our astonishment— the whole thing began to rise until it was floating a good foot above the ground.

  “What is it?” I cried over the hum.

  “A hofercraft,” Short Stuff shouted proudly. “It iz our latezt invention. Vhat do you zink?”

  “I zink it’s pretty cool,” I shouted.

  “Pleaze,” he motioned to me. “Ztep onto zee platform and try it out.”

  I threw a nervous look to Dad and my friends. After all, they knew I was the master of disaster. But they nodded for me to give it a shot. So I carefully lifted my foot and stepped up onto the floating hovercraft. It dipped slightly but easily held my weight. I lifted my other foot, and in a moment, I was standing directly in the center of the floating platform. I grabbed the handlebars and looked down at the controls. “What do all these do?” I asked.

  “Zat lever, zer, is vor your gearshift,” Short Stuff explained.

  I nodded.

  He pointed to other controls. “Here iz your aczlerator. Oh, and ov courz, your eight-track player.” (These guys may know about cool spy stuff, but they were a little behind in the car stereo department.)

  “Let’z zee, I am forgetting zomezhing,” he said frowning. “Vhat iz it . . .”

  “Is it this switch here?” I asked, reaching for a red switch with a cover that read, “WARNING— DO NOT TOUCH!”

  “No.” He shook his head, without looking. “It’z zomezhing elze.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked flipping up the cover. “’Cause this looks pretty important.”

  “No,” he scowled. “It’z zomezhing different.”

  “Well, what does it do when I flip it on?”

  For the first time he glanced up and saw what I was doing. He opened his mouth, he started to shout, he started to scream—but he was too late. I had just flipped the switch.

  K-VROOOOOM!

  “AUGHhhh . . .”

  The hovercraft shot off. Come to think of it, so did I (which would explain the AUGHhhh).

  I hung on to the handlebars for dear life and tried to steer the thing as I zoomed back and forth around the room. I tell you,

  K-SMASH! K-SMASH! K-SMASH!

  other than a few destroyed desk lamps and computers

  “LOOK OUT! HE’S COMING BACK!”

  and my pals having to hit the deck every time I passed over their heads, I think I was starting to get the hang of it.

  Still, there was one important thing missing. I looked over my shoulder and shouted back to Tall Guy, “WHERE ARE THE BRAKES ON THIS THING!?”

  Short Stuff leaped to his feet. “Zat’s vhat I forgot to tell you!”

  “WHAT?” I cried.

  “Zee brakez, zee brakez. Zay are over on your—”

  But that was all I heard before

  K-RASH!

  splinter splinter splinter

  I failed to make one very important turn, which meant I broke through one very important, superspy, sliding door.

  Next, I shot down the very important, superspy hallway and past my superspy body searcher buddies . . .

  “See ya,” I gave a little wave as I finally sped out of the superspy front doors.

  It was a beautiful day to take a little ride. The majestic mountains glistened with snow. The lovely, pastoral cows grazed pastorally on the pastoral, er, pastures. And the military cargo plane directly in front of me had its engines running and its cargo doors open.

  Military cargo plane!?

  I’m afraid so. I tried to pull up or swerve to the side, but I was too late. I roared through the door, into the plane, and . . .

  K-POOF!

  hit the wall. But it didn’t hurt. In fact the crash was as soft and painless as the time I hit that extra-padded wall in Mr. Blond’s old place. And for good reason . . .

  “Good afternoon, Agent 001/7th.”

  I immediately recognized the voice. With more than a little fear, I dug myself out of the wall and turned to see James Blond sitting at his desk.

  “Take a seat and buckle in, Wallace. We’re off to Africa.”

  Chapter 8

  Africa!

  Once again I was airborne, and once again I was hit by major I-don’t-want-to-be-doing-this-somebody-get-me-out-of-here-I-want-my-Mommy kind of fear. It wasn’t just my fear of heights, but my fear of flying around with a pretty bad, bad guy who claimed to be pretty good.

  Of course Mr. Blond congratulated me on my cool getaway from Tall Guy and Short Stuff, and of course, I pretended like it was on purpose. (Sometimes being a double agent means not being as honest as you’d like to be.) Anyway, as far as I could tell, he didn’t suspect that I knew the real truth, which was fine by me.

  “Well,” he said, as he headed toward the back of the cabin, “the flight will take a little while, so make yourself comfortable.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Is there anything wrong?” he asked.

  “I hate heights, remember?”

  “Of course,” he smiled. “That’s why I brought another replica of Ol’ Betsy—to help take your mind off the flight.”

  I glanced beside my seat, and sure enough, there was another laptop computer, just like the others. “How many of these did you get?” I asked.

  He grinned. “K-Mart was having a sale. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do. When we land, things will become a little busy.”

  “I just have one question,” I said.

  “You want to know if I’m real or another holographic image?” he asked.

  Actually I was going to ask what the in-flight movie was, but since his question sounded a little more intelligent, I went with it instead. I nodded, and he immediately reached over to shake my hand.

  With a little reluctance, I reached out and took his hand.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you face to face, 001/7th.” He grinned as we shook hands.

  I also managed to crank up a little smile. The guy was definitely flesh and blood. This was good and bad—good because he would have to share whatever McDoogle mishaps were on their way, bad because flesh and blood spies usually have a way of hurting flesh and blood people.

  So, with that extra little worry to be worrying in the back of my worrier, I braced myself as the plane took off.

  Mr. Blond went to work at the rear of the cabin. And with nothing else to do except tie myself into knots (which isn’t much fun unless you want to become a human macramé), I opened up Ol’ Betsy IV and snapped her on to see what would happen to Gigabyte Guy . . .

  As we rejoin our hero, he is fighting a computer character with teeth as big as Jim Carrey’s. (Well, not that big, but almost.) The creature snaps and bites at him as Gigabyte Guy tries to explain how unhealthy in-between meal snacks can be——especially if they happen to be him.

  And then, as
luck would have it (along with some very clever writing from the author), our hero remembers the Control, Alt, Delete keys on his computer. It’s a dangerous move, but the only one he has.

  After a deep breath, he strikes the three keys. The computer begins shutting down all of its programs——including all alien monster games and all computer superheroes.

  “All COMPUTER SUPERHEROES?!”

  Great Gigabytes! If our hero doesn’t get out of there fast, he’ll be history. Within a nanosecond, he slips into the modem and e-mails himself directly to the computer of his archrival, Excuso Man.

  Instantly, he zaps through the phone lines (except for the part where he has to wait half an hour for his Internet server). Once he arrives, he power surges his way through the computer all the way to the bad guy’s monitor and takes a look. Mother of Megabytes! It’s worse than he fears. In the lab he can see the diabolically devious, sinisterly slimy, and just the type to spit chewing gum out on the sidewalk where everyone walks...Excuso Man, who at that very moment is powering up his Excuse-a-tron.

  In desperation, our hero leans back and rushes at the screen.

  K-LUNK!

  In a fit of major ignorance, he hits the glass just like he did back in chapter 5.

  After making a note to upgrade his memory chip, he begins banging his fists on the inside of the screen. “Excuso Man! Excuso Man!”

  The terrible tyrant turns and tosses a troublesome taunt. (Translation: He kinda yells.) “You’re just in time, Giga Goon. All I have to do is fire this Excuse-a-tron Beam one last time and the entire planet will be polluted by its power. Soon, no one will be responsible again! Everybody will have an excuse for everything!”

  Our hero searches his hard drive for some kind of solution. Suddenly his circuits recall the weakness of every bad guy who ever lived...pride. That’s the thing that always gets ’em.

  Turning up the volume on the computer’s speakers, our hero shouts, “Those are pretty brave words, Excuso Man! Especially considering you’re afraid to let anybody try to stop you.”

  “Afraid?” Excuso Man sneers. “I invited you, didn’t I?”

  “Only because you knew I couldn’t get out of this computer to reach you. A real villain would have the courage to go oneon-one with his story’s superhero.”