by R. McGeddon
“Um, except it’s designed to keep bad people out, rather than in,” said Mr. Saunders. “Right?”
“Hmm? Yes, yes, of course,” said Brute.
“Won’t it keep good people out, too?” asked Sam. He liked meeting people. In fact, he quite liked the outside world in general, which was another of the reasons he wasn’t keen on the whole dome situation one little bit.
“We’ve got everything we need right here,” barked Brute. “Sitting Duck will be completely self-sufficient and protected. There’ll be no need for outsiders or their dangerous ways.”
A wicked smile crept across his face. “And if any of them do manage to sneak in here, then, oh boy, do we have a surprise in store for them! You’ll never guess what it is.…”
“Is it the lasers?” asked Sam.
Brute hesitated, his mouth open.
“I guessed it, didn’t I?” said Sam.
Brute closed his mouth.
“I did. I totally guessed it.”
Brute muttered below his breath, then swung around to face one of the operators who still stood at attention beside his screen. “Let’s give the boy a demonstration!”
Nodding frantically, the console operator turned and tapped some commands on a keyboard. On the screen above, the picture changed to show a little old lady walking an even littler dog. The dog was concentrating hard as it dropped a tiny pile of poop onto the sidewalk.
The old lady glanced sideways to make sure no one had seen, then tugged the dog’s leash and hurried away.
On-screen, the words CRIMINAL ACTIVITY DETECTED flashed in red letters. A set of crosshairs appeared over the image of the woman and began tracking her.
“What’s it doing?” Sam asked.
“Wait for it,” said Brute. “Wait for it…”
“Sh-should it be doing that?” asked Mr. Saunders as more writing flashed up on-screen:
Firing in five … four … three … two …
With a dive, Sam pushed the console operator aside and grabbed the joystick mounted onto the desk in front of him. The image on-screen banked sharply upward just as a beam of laser fire lit up the evening air.
They all watched as the laser fire streaked into the sky, rebounded off the glass of the dome, then vaporized the little curl of dog poop on the sidewalk. The old woman glanced back over her shoulder at the scorched pavement, then stuffed her dog under her arm and made a run for it.
“Yes, well,” said Mr. Saunders, straightening his tie. “There are still a few bugs to iron out, but you get the idea.”
Sam got the idea all right. Unfortunately, the idea he got was: This is not going to end well.
And, as usual when it came to this sort of thing, Sam was right.
* * *
7 Ways to Keep Your Town Safe
Worried your town is going to be attacked by supervillains/monkeys/your evil self from the distant future (delete as applicable)? Worry no longer. Just put one (or all) of these plans in place to ensure your town’s continued safety.
1. Move it to the moon.
2. Hide it behind a bush.
3. Bury it in sand.
4. Throw it in the sea.
5. Lock it in a safe.
6. Paint it with invisible paint, and then forget where it is.
7. Trap it in an impenetrable time bubble, where it shall exist forever beyond the realms of physics.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE
The next day, Sam slunk through the streets of Sitting Duck. Sweat trickled down his legs and collected in little puddles inside his shoes. It was winter outside, but under the almost-completed dome, the air was hot enough to bake brownies.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d had a chance to put on his zombie-stench deodorant to keep the sweats at bay. I mean, yes, he’d have smelled like a rotten corpse, but at least his T-shirt wouldn’t have big soggy patches under the armpits, which—let’s be honest—no one wants to see.
Unfortunately, his mom had gotten a whiff of the deodorant the night before and had immediately destroyed it in a controlled explosion. So, by the time Sam had cut across Hetchley’s Park and plodded up the path to Arty’s house, he was as damp as a swamp.
Sam knocked on Arty’s front door and waited. And waited. And then waited some more. He was just about to knock again when the door opened, revealing Arty’s big brother, Jesse, standing in the hallway.
“’Sup?” Jesse muttered, without looking up. His attention was flicking between a smartphone in his left hand and a tablet in his right. His eyes ticktocked between them like he was watching the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Jesse was Arty’s big brother in almost every sense. He was older, taller, and much more muscular. The only parts of Jesse that were smaller than Arty were his stomach and his IQ. And not necessarily in that order.
“Hey, Jesse. Is Arty in?” Sam asked.
“Who?” Jesse mumbled, hypnotized by his two screens.
“Your brother,” said Sam. “He lives here.”
Jesse grunted. “Oh, him. He’s in the shed. Doing nerd stuff.”
“What’s ‘nerd stuff’?” Sam wondered.
Jesse reluctantly tore his eyes from his devices. He scowled. “You know. Stuff. For nerds.”
“Gotcha. Can I come through the house?” Sam asked, but Jesse was already gazing back at his screens again and closing the door with his foot. The door clicked shut right in Sam’s face.
“Or … I could just go around the side,” Sam said.
Sam scampered around the side of Arty’s house and found him knee-deep in nerd stuff in the shed, just as Jesse said he’d be. There was a sea of wires, fuses, circuit boards, and other stuff like that all over the shed floor. Arty waded through it to greet Sam as he stepped inside.
“Sam! Just in time!” Arty said. He pulled off a welding mask to reveal a face that was far more cheerful than the one he’d worn on the car ride home yesterday.
“For what?” Sam asked.
“I’m about to take CHARLES for a test drive,” Arty announced.
Sam looked around the shed. There was a lot of junk scattered around the place, but what there didn’t seem to be was a Chore Helper and Really Lovely Electronic Pal.
“Where is he—” Sam asked, but before he could finish, some of the junk began to pile up in the corner. As Sam watched, the junk took the form of … no, not CHARLES. Not quite. It looked like CHARLES’s cooler older robot brother.
The new-and-improved CHARLES looked sleeker somehow, yet more homemade at the same time, as if someone had built an accurate reproduction of a state-of-the-art fighter jet out of yogurt containers and detergent bottles. Sam found himself taking a step back as CHARLES’s eyes lit up in a pulsing red glow. I would have, too, frankly. I mean, have you ever met a robot with pulsing red glowing eyes? You’re going to want to take a step back.
“CHARLES is online,” the robot announced. “Systems functional. Upgrader chip active.”
“Upgrader chip?” asked Sam. “What’s that?”
“It’s CHARLES’s most amazing feature!” Arty babbled. “It allows him to learn new skills, interact with other technology, self-repair, and even think for himself! A bit!”
“Arty!” Sam gasped.
“I know! Artificial intelligence!” Arty cried.
“No, I was going to say you’re standing on my foot,” said Sam. He breathed a sigh of relief when Arty stepped back. “But, you know, that other stuff is cool, too.”
“Good morning, Sam,” said CHARLES, taking Sam by surprise. “How are you today?”
“Um, fine, thanks,” said Sam. “How are you?”
“Functional,” said CHARLES. “Thank you for asking.”
Sam was impressed. Yesterday, CHARLES had seemed like little more than some junk with a whisk attached to his arm. Now he was some very polite junk with a whisk attached to his arm. With a whirring and clanking, the whisk that was attached to the robot’s arm folded away and was replaced
with a series of other objects in quick succession. Sam spotted a flyswatter, a corkscrew, a feather duster, a photo of a dog, a photo of a different dog, and a toilet plunger before he started to get a bit bored and started thinking about the big baseball game that was happening the next day.
After a lot of haggling with Earl Brute’s forces, the opposite team had been granted special clearance to enter the Sitting Duck dome. It was going to be awesome! There were going to be balls, bases, hot-dog stands …
“Sam!” said Arty, snapping Sam back to the present. “I said, what did you think?”
“Urm, it’s great,” said Sam.
“We should go show Emmie,” Arty said eagerly, because he didn’t like to leave their fellow hero-champion out of the equation, you know? “Where is she?”
“Stuck at home,” Sam explained. “Doris won’t let her out until she’s finished tidying the house.”
Arty beamed from ear to ear. “Well, I know someone who can help with that!” he said. He turned to his really lovely electronic pal. “CHARLES, it’s time to get to work!”
* * *
Emmie, Sam, and Arty sat back in Emmie’s kitchen, watching CHARLES whiz around the place like a whirlwind made of cleaners. His floor-mop attachment mopped the floor, his dish-scrubbing attachment scrubbed the dishes, while his getting-all-the-spiderwebs-out-of-the-ceiling-corners attachment got all the spiderwebs out of the ceiling corners.
“He’s pretty handy,” admitted Emmie, which was the closest she would ever get to actually paying CHARLES or Arty a compliment.
There was a loud rattling as CHARLES vacuumed up Great-Aunt Doris’s toenail clippings. Emmie was even more impressed at that—those toenails had been known to punch holes in solid concrete whenever Aunt Doris’s clippers sent them pinging across the room, but CHARLES had handled them without any problems.
With a final flourish, CHARLES spun to a stop. The kitchen shone and sparkled like a kitchen-shaped diamond, but CHARLES wasn’t done yet. With a signal from his built-in Bluetooth transmitter, he fired up the dishwasher, turned on the washing machine, and set the microwave to cook the meat loaf he’d prepared when no one was looking.
With all that done, CHARLES focused his digital gaze on the only other nonhuman occupant of the room. Attila, Great-Aunt Doris’s cat, stared back up at him.
Calling Attila a cat was probably unfair to all other cats everywhere. He was a monster in cat form. He spent his days devising new ways of messing with human beings—from clawing at their stupid smooth faces to pooping in their stupid crunchy breakfast cereal—and if anyone ever tried to give him a telling-off, they’d usually find themselves regretting it. And hospitalized.
“I think you should probably say good-bye to Charlie boy,” Emmie said. “Attila’s going to tear him to shreds.”
Sure enough, the cat was standing on his hind legs, the claws of his front paws extended and ready to swipe. CHARLES’s LED smile widened. “Cleaning required,” he chimed, and then a net attachment snapped out from inside his chest, pinning Attila to the floor.
There was a blur of machinery, followed by a screeching of cat.
A moment later, a neatly combed Attila stood blinking in surprise in the middle of the kitchen, with an adorable red bow tied neatly on top of his head. Honestly, you should check him out. Look …
* * *
Atilla Character Profile
1. Deadly claws for tearing through flesh. And curtains.
2. Tail for hitting people with.
3. Evil scowl that could stop an undead horde, dead in its tracks. Also, sharp teeth for biting unsuspecting ears, fingers, and noses.
4. Nine lives for coming back from the dead. Eight times.
5. Shriveled, hate-filled heart. (It’s somewhere in there.)
* * *
See what I’m talking about? He’s a king among cats. Somebody give that handsome feline a palace and a butler.
“Cleaning complete!” announced CHARLES. His top and bottom halves spun in different directions as he scanned the kitchen and found nothing else in need of cleaning.
“Wow!” Emmie gasped. “I’ve never seen Attila look like that, ever!”
“Searching for targets,” CHARLES continued, trundling past Sam and the others and out into the hallway.
“He’s intense, isn’t he?” Sam asked.
Arty frowned, just for a moment. “Just a bit—” he began.
From out in the hallway there came a loud crack. Sam, Arty, and Emmie all jumped up and raced through in time to see CHARLES polishing the wooden banister on the staircase. He’d polished it so hard, in fact, that it had snapped cleanly in two, but he wasn’t about to let a little thing like that stop him.
“Must clean!” he said, a little more forcefully than Sam was comfortable with. The red glow of his eyes now made him look a bit scary, and just before he polished the banister away to nothing but splinters, Arty flicked the switch that powered him off.
“I think,” Arty began, flashing Emmie a worried smile, “that’s enough cleaning for one day.…”
CHAPTER FOUR
With Emmie’s chores out of the way, the three friends and their lovely electronic pal headed out to enjoy the sunshine. A whole day of adventure lay ahead, and they couldn’t decide what to do.
Arty wanted them to go to his shed and work on CHARLES some more. Sam wanted to go and practice for tomorrow’s ball game. Emmie, on the other hand, liked the idea of finding Phoebe, covering her in spiders, then firing her into the fiery heart of the sun.
“We can’t fire her into the heart of the sun,” Sam pointed out.
Emmie groaned. “You always spoil my fun.”
“No, but we really can’t,” Sam said. “The dome, remember?”
Arty’s eyes widened. “Wait, I almost forgot—it’s the closing-off ceremony this morning.”
Of course! Sam’s dad had been going on about it for weeks, but because kids always completely ignore everything their parents say or do, he’d forgotten all about it. Today was the day that the gates would be closed, and Sitting Duck would be sealed off from the outside world forever.
“Want to check it out?” asked Arty.
Emmie and Sam both shrugged. “Meh.”
As they couldn’t agree on what else to do, though, they decided they might as well go along and watch for a bit. Emmie made them all keep their eyes peeled for spiders on the way, just in case Phoebe was there.
When they arrived at the last remaining road out of town, a large crowd of Sitting Duck residents had gathered to watch the ceremony. Sam recognized most of them. There was Old Mrs. Missus, chairwoman of the Old Lady Association. Behind her stood Werewolf Alan, who wasn’t actually a werewolf at all (or called Alan, for that matter). Over on Sam’s left he could see the Kevin twins—both of whom were called Kevin, which was unfortunate, as they were both women.
Sam stopped crowd-watching and turned his attention to the enormous metal gates ahead of him. They were still open. Beyond them, Sam could see the road stretching off into the distance. Part of him was tempted to make a run for it, but a bigger part of him knew that he belonged there in Sitting Duck.
Sure, it was unpredictable at times, and it had almost been the death of him several times over. And there was a massive dome over it and lasers and there were drones spying on everyone. And …
Sam shrugged. Actually, Sitting Duck had a lot of problems, now that he really thought about it. He considered making a last-ditch run for the door, but then his dad appeared at a podium. Big mistake I’d say, not getting out of there. But then, what do I know? I’m only telling the story, aren’t I? I don’t decide what happens. Why are you looking at me? It’s not my fault, okay?
The crowd gave Mr. Saunders a round of applause, which made him turn red with embarrassment.
“Thanks for that,” he said, because he was a very polite man. “We’ve had a rough time of it over the past few months, haven’t we?” said Mr. Saunde
rs, leaning on the podium. There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd, and an “Amen, sister!” from Old Mrs. Missus.
“Zombies. That was unpleasant,” Mr. Saunders continued. “Aliens. We didn’t see them coming, did we?”
Actually, Sam, Arty, and Emmie had seen them coming, but let’s not get sidetracked on that right now, shall we? The mayor is making a speech.
Here we go.
Pay attention.
Shh.
“… And that concludes my speech,” Mr. Saunders said. The crowd erupted in cheers and whoops and whistles. Some of them wiped tears of joy from their eyes, safe in the knowledge they’d just witnessed the single greatest speech anyone would ever make in the history of the world.
“I could die right here and now, and that speech would make it all worthwhile,” croaked Old Mrs. Missus. She didn’t die, though. Not right then, anyway. She actually dies in Disaster Diaries book seventeen, when a time-traveling grizzly bear from the future swallows her whole.
SPOILER ALERT! (Sorry.)
Once Mr. Saunders had finished his speech, Earl Brute took to the podium. He wore a military-style uniform with dozens of shiny medals pinned to his chest. His mustache had been neatly combed (and braided, which was a bit weird), and his eyes were so wide and boggly they looked like two Ping-Pong balls had got themselves stuck on either side of his nose.
“Thank you!” he barked, even though no one had applauded him. “Some of you folks know me, some of you don’t. But that don’t matter, and I don’t care. Who I am is not important. What I do is all that matters, and what I do is keep you safe!”
“Amen, sister!” cried Old Mrs. Missus, just because she had discovered she quite enjoyed shouting it earlier and wanted to do it again.
“I have utilized the finest security known to man so that each and every one of you can sleep soundly in your beds,” Brute continued. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a remote control. “And, with a press of this button, I’m tucking us all in!”
