by Jim Smith
First published in Great Britain 2015
by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2015
The moral rights of the author-illustrator have been asserted.
ISBN 978 1 7083 1429 7
www.futureratboy.com www.jellypiecentral.co.uk www.egmont.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group
56628/1
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Hello, my name is Colin Lamppost and this is the story of how I got zapped millions of years into the future and turned into a superhero rat.
5
It all started one Saturday night when I was at home in Shnozville, sitting on the sofa with my cuddly toy bird, Bird.
My mum and dad and little sister were on the sofa too, and
we were all waiting for . . .
to start on our really old TV.
6
said my mum, and my dad scrabbled his hand down the side of the sofa, looking for the remote control. He pulled it out and pointed it at the TV.
7
‘Stupid twiddler!’ he grumbled, banging
it against his knee, and the volume zoomed up to a hundred.
cried my mum, and my dad got up and plodded over to the telly. ‘Blooming telly!’ he growled.
8
Suddenly there was a tap on the window. A raindrop had hit the glass and was zigzagging down it like a tear.
‘Aw, don’t cry, little window!’ said my sister, who’s one of those sisters who feels sorry for things like windows.
9
‘Hmmm, looks like we’ve got a problem, Bird,’ I said to Bird, even though he was just a cuddly toy bird who didn’t understand anything. ‘Mr Window’s sad, and if we don’t cheer him up,
my sister’s gonna be going on about it all the way through ATTACK OF THE KILLER ROBOT GRANNIES!’
Bird’s shiny plastic eyes stared at the bowl of popcorn on the table. But only because that was the way he was facing.
10
I grabbed a tissue, leapt off the sofa and forward-rolled across the living room towards the glass.
‘Colin Lamppost to the rescue!’ I boomed in my best superhero voice, and I handed the tissue to the window. But because the window didn’t have hands, it couldn’t take it. ‘Argh, foiled again!’ I said, crumpling the tissue up in my hand.
11
Another raindrop tapped against the glass, then about seventeen more. ‘Hmmm . . . must be that storm the weatherman was talking about,’ I said to Bird.
‘Brilliant thinking, Colin!’ I squawked, doing Bird’s voice for him. ‘Thanks, Bird!’ I smiled, and I forward-rolled back to the sofa and grabbed a handful of popcorn.
12
‘WAAAAAHHH!’ screamed my sister, and I threw my popcorn in the air, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.
‘Nobody panic!’ said my dad, or at least I think it was him, because all I could see was pitch black. The TV had turned off, as well as all the lights in the living room, and everyone else’s
in the whole street too. ‘The lightning must have blown the electrics!’ said my dad, and just as he said it, all the lights came back on.
13
‘Phew, that was close!’ I said to Bird. ‘Thought we might miss ATTACK OF THE KILLER ROBOT GRANNIES for a second there!’ I grinned, looking at the TV, which was still black.
cried my mum.
‘RIGHT, THAT’S IT!’ boomed my dad, pulling the plug out and lifting the TV off its stand.
14
‘I’VE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS PIECE OF JUNK!’
he shouted, marching into the hallway and out of the front door, towards our wheelie bin.
15
‘NOOO!’ I cried, running out of the living room and diving into the cupboard under the stairs. I grabbed my anorak and put it on, pulling up the hood.
Hanging on a hook was an old scratched-up scuba-diving mask. I’d need that too, what with all the rain outside. ‘Operation Save The TV!’ I shouted, heading for the front door with Bird tucked underneath my arm.
16
‘COLIN SWEETIE, COME BACK HERE!’ shouted my mum, as I stretched the scuba mask over my head and zoomed out of the front door, past my dad who was coming back in, minus the TV.
‘I’VE GOT TO SAVE THE TELLY!’ I shouted. ‘OTHERWISE I’LL NEVER SEE ATTACK OF THE KILLER ROBOT GRANNIES!’
17
A bolt of lightning hit the little apple tree in our front garden and a branch exploded, spraying tiny little bits of bark through the air.
‘WAAAAAHHH! BE CAREFUL, MY DARLING!’ screamed my mum, as
I lifted the lid of our green plastic wheelie bin and dived into it, which is another thing I’ve always wanted to do.
18
‘Phew, that was close!’ I whispered, giving Bird a stroke and patting the TV. My eyes were getting used to the pitch blackness, and I noticed I was sitting on a half-filled-up bin bag, which was actually quite comfy.
‘Squeak!’ squeaked something, and seeing as it couldn’t have been Bird, because he was just a cuddly toy bird that couldn’t speak, I looked around the bin for something else that might have made the noise. AND THAT WAS WHEN I SPOTTED THE RAT.
‘RAAAAAT!’ I screamed. Not that anyone
could hear me,
what with the
lightning bolt
hitting the bin.
19
I woke up and didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered I was in a bin.
I lifted the lid and jumped out. It was morning and the little apple tree in my front garden was now a gigantic, ancient one. ‘Coooool!’ I said, and I looked up at my house, which was two times taller and more metal-looking than I remembered. ‘Also coooool!’
I smiled. I like saying ‘cool’, in case you haven’t noticed.
20
‘Mu-um! I’m ho-ome!’ I shouted, knocking on the front door.
The door whooshed open like one of the ones at my local supermarket, and an old lady with a shiny metal head and red traffic-light eyes peered
down at me. ‘HELLO DEAR,’
she bleeped,
in a robotic
voice.
21
‘Hmmm . . . you’re not my mum,’ I said, scratching my chin and looking her up and down. She had skinny metal legs, just like a robot would, except at the end of them were clippy-cloppy brown shoes. Dented into her metal skirt in scary-looking capitals was the name ‘MAVIS 3000’.
bleeped MAVIS 3000, her mouth not moving.
‘So where are my mum and dad and little sister?’ I said, peering past her into the hallway. Usually our hallway is filled up with trainers and coats and tennis balls and things like that. Now it was just an empty metal tube with flashing buttons on the walls.
22
MAVIS 3000 opened a
little door on her square, metal belly and stuck her claw-hand in, pulling out a mug. ‘NICE CUP OF TEA?’ she bleeped, pouring a sip’s worth into her non-closing mouth. ‘MMM,’ she pinged, like
my mum’s microwave,
and a cloud of tea
steam hissed out
of her nostrils
and into my
face.
23
‘DIVE FOR COVER!’ I shouted in my superhero voice, not diving for cover at all. My scuba mask had misted up from all the tea steam, and I backed away down the path, bumping into the green plastic wheelie bin I’d just jumped out of.
Bird fluttered out of the bin. ‘WAAAHHH! he screeched, peering up at MAVIS
3000, and he flew through the air towards me and tucked himself
under my arm.
24
I glanced down at Bird, forgetting about the crazy robot granny for a millisecond, and wiped the tea steam off my scuba mask.
‘Something weird’s going on here,’ I mumbled, poking Bird’s fat furry belly, and he squawked. ‘Bird doesn’t ruffle his fur . . . or fly through the air . . . or squawk when you poke his belly!’
I peered into Bird’s shiny plastic eyes, and they blinked. ‘YOU’RE NOT BIRD!’ I shouted.
screeched Bird, copying what I’d just said, and I was just about to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, when I heard MAVIS 3000 clip-clopping down the path towards me.
25
‘FANCY A BISCUIT?’ she bleeped, towering above us like a lamppost, which is my second name in case you forgot. A chocolate digestive whirred out of a slot in her belly and she pincered it with her claw and slid it into her mouth. ‘YUMMY,’ she bleeped, and a crunching sound blurted out of the little speaker on her chest.
You know when you chomp on a chocolate digestive and the crumbs start flying out of your mouth? That’s what was happening now. Except that the crumbs flying out of MAVIS 3000’s mouth were zooming towards my
face like billions of tiny bullets.
26
‘ARRGGHH!’ screamed a flower sticking out of the front lawn, as a crumb shot through one of its petals. Which was weird, because I’d never heard a flower scream before.
‘OOF!’ groaned a snail, its shell exploding from a biscuity bullet.
27
‘Operation Don’t Get Hit By A Chocolate Digestive Crumb!’ I cried, diving into the wheelie bin with Not Bird. My hous
was on a hilly road, and I’d always wondered what it’d be like to roll
down it - NOW WAS MY CHANCE!
‘Let’s get the uncoolness out of here!’
I screamed, as the bin began to move and we zoomed down the slope towards Shnozville High Street.
28
The bin crashed to a stop and I crawled out. We’d bumped into a pair of legs with yellow trainers on the end of
them. The trainers hovered a centimetre off the pavement, which was lucky, because underneath them was a worm going for his morning stroll.
29
‘Hey, your bin just crashed into my legs!’ shouted the owner of the legs, who was an angry-looking lady with a see-through TV screen floating in front of her face. She wasn’t actually even looking at me, she
was more staring at her screen.
30
‘Good morning! It’s Sunkeels the
two-hundred-and-seventeenth of Plurgtember, Eight Million and Twelve, and this is today’s news . . .’ said
the man on the screen.
‘Sunkeels?’ I said, looking around at Shnozville High Street.
31
The buildings were about a hundred and seventeen times taller and shinier than I remembered, and the cars floated more than usual. ‘What’s a Sunkeels?’ I said. ‘And what was all that about it being Eight Million
and Twelve?’
The lady looked down at me, her eyes turning from angry to scared.
32
‘RAAAT!’ she screamed, which was weird seeing as I was Colin Lamppost, not a rat, and she zoomed off in her hover-trainers.
Not Bird floated out of the bin and landed on the pavement. ‘Not Bird, there seems to be a problem,’ I said
in my superhero voice. ‘I think we might’ve been zapped into the future!’ I cried, pointing around at how shiny and futuristic Shnozville High Street had become.
33
‘NOT!’ chirped Not Bird, pecking at a dried-up blob of pink bubblegum, and the blob twitched, slithering off to find a quieter bit of pavement.
‘You see!’ I said, pointing at the blob. ‘You’d never get a bit of bubblegum doing something like that in the old days!’
34
Not Bird looked up at me and tilted his eyebrows into their scared positions.
I said.
Then I realised he was looking at whatever was behind me.
35
‘HELLO DEAR,’ bleeped a familiar robotty voice, and I turned round to see
MAVIS 3000 standing there with another robot granny.
She was fatter than MAVIS 3000 and had neon-red lipstick zigzagged round her mouth. Dented into her metal skirt in scary-looking capitals was the name ‘DOREEN XL97-220’.
36
Both the robot grannies were carrying handbags and pulling old granny shopping trollies, except unlike normal old granny shopping trollies, these ones floated - probably because we were in the future.
‘EEK!’ squeaked Not Bird’s bubblegum blob, trying to slither off a tiny bit faster, and MAVIS 3000 stomped her foot down on the pavement, spiking
it to death with her clippy-cloppy heel. She held her shoe up to
DOREEN XL97-220’s mouth and waggled her metal eyebrows.
‘OOH. TA VERY MUCH, MAVIS,’ bleeped DOREEN XL97-220,
pincering the blob off MAVIS 3000’s heel with her jaggedy metal teeth and
starting to chew.
‘Operation Back Away Quietly,’ I whispered to Not Bird, dragging the wheelie bin in front of us like a smelly plastic shield, and the bin scraped along the pavement, not being quiet at all.
MAVIS 3000 nodded at me with her square head, and her red traffic-light eyes flashed. ‘THIS IS THE ONE I TOLD YOU ABOUT, DOREEN,’ she bleeped,
and DOREEN XL97-220 did a computery-sounding tut.
40
‘OOH, YOU’RE RIGHT, MAVIS. HE IS A BIT RATTY, ISN’T HE?’ she bleeped, and I wondered if they maybe weren’t talking about me at all, seeing as I wasn’t ratty in the slightest, I was Colin Lamppost-y.
I twizzled my head around, looking
for that rat that’d been in the bin
with me and Not Bird the night before. ‘Operation I Reckon It Must Be That
Rat They’re Talking About, Not Me . . .’ I said.
41
That was how big my gasp was
‘RAT!’ I shouted, pointing at myself.
I pushed my scuba mask on to my forehead and stared at my new reflection.
