To my three girls,
Rosie, Connie and Louise
(SH)
For Charles, Mamie,
Brandon and Meagan
(BL)
Contents
I’M OLIVER
CHAPTER 1 CYBER-FAIL!
CHAPTER 2 THE NEW KID
CHAPTER 3 BIG BOOKS
CHAPTER 4 ATTACK OF THE MEGABOT!
CHAPTER 5 SURPRISE!
CHAPTER 6 TRAITOR!
CHAPTER 7 STARS IN THEIR EYES!
CHAPTER 8 THE CHALLENGE
CHAPTER 9 THE DOOMSDAY SCROLLS
CHAPTER 10 BLACKMAIL!
CHAPTER 11 A SENSIBLE ENDING
CHAPTER 12 CRITIC
I’M OLIVER
Hi! I’m Oliver Ranulph Templeton Tibbs, mild-mannered comic-reader and EXTREME PIZZA-EATER. Also Known as Oliver ‘Fibbs’, just because I tell people I’m DABMAN, the Daring and Brave, dashing and bold DEFENDER OF PLANET EARTH (D.O.P.E.).
Meet my family:
Mum, Charlotte Pomeroy Templeton Tibbs, is a life-saving brain surgeon.
Dad, Granville Fitzwilliam Templeton Tibbs, is an award-winning architect.
My big twin sisters, Emma Letitia and Gemma Darcy Templeton Tibbs, go to the National Ballet Academy: ballet, ballet, ballet – it’s all they talk about.
Then there’s my little brother, Algy – Algernon Montgomery Templeton Tibbs. He’s a maths genius, chess champion and King of Sneakiness.
And how could I forget Constanza, our Italian nanny? She’s a bit dizzy, but she gets me.
At school, I’ve got my best friend Peaches Mazimba on my side. She’s the most sensible person ever, so I’ve recruited her to be a D.O.P.E. like me: she’s ‘Captain Common Sense’.
Unfortunately, I’ve got the Gang against me:
Bobby Bragg can break bricks In half with his bare hands. Aka ‘the Show-off’, he has the Power to .
Hattie Hurley is a Spelling Bee Cheerleading Champion. Aka ‘the Spell Queen’, she has the Power of .
Toby Hadron is a science whizz. Aka ‘the Boffin’, he has the Power of Inventing .
And finally there’s my teacher, Miss Wilkins, Keeper of the Points, and dispenser of detentions, especially when she thinks I’m telling – but as I keep telling her (and everyone else): they’re not , they’re stories!
The ’s red eyes blazed into life. Yellow and white lights flickered and flashed across the bulging metal chest as electricity surged and sparked along the tangle of wire nerves inside. Plastic arteries throbbed as oil and water pulsed through them, pumping energy and power into gleaming limbs. Wheels whirred and cogs clicked as the android’s head slowly swivelled to stare at its creator, me.
‘Yessssssssssssssssss!’ I cried, punching the air. ‘I’ve done it! The actually works!’ I lifted the metre-tall metal man carefully off the desk and placed him upright on my bedroom floor. ‘This is sooooooooo cool.’
My little brother, Algy, stood eye to eye with the . ‘It doesn’t look like a toy,’ he said, his voice full of awe. ‘It looks . . . alive!’
I nodded. ‘This Construct-a-Bot kit is the best thing Mum and Dad have ever bought me.’
‘What about the Atom-Splitter Home Laboratory chemistry set?’ said Algy.
I shot him a fierce look. ‘Don’t mention the chemistry set.’
‘But it was having all those firemen in the house.’ A naughty Dr Devious-style grin spread across his face. ‘And what about the Wonder-Wok Chinese cookery course they sent you on?’
‘I poisoned the twins.’
Algy gave a dastardly chuckle. ‘I know.’
I laughed and pressed a button on the remote control. ‘Let’s see what this can do.’
Algy began to giggle. ‘It’s doing a pee!’
A trickle of yellow fluid dribbled down the ’s leg and formed a spreading puddle at its feet.
‘I don’t think that’s supposed to happen,’ said, checking the instruction booklet. ‘The can walk, talk and shoot rubber rockets from its arms, but it doesn’t say anything in here about going to the toilet. One of the hydraulic pumps must be leaking.’
‘What’s that smell?’ asked Algy, sniffing the air.
Wispy white smoke drifted up from the ’s bottom. My brother’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to say something else.
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘It doesn’t do that either.’
The Zybot made loud fizzing, popping sounds. It began to perform a weird jerky dance, lurching backwards and forwards, head swivelling, arms whirling like propellers.
I pressed the red OFF button on the remote control again and again, but the ’s barmy bopping just became even more . The Zybot was out of control!
It marched across the bedroom floor towards Algy, growling, ‘ ’ Thin beams of red light zipped from its eyes. A rubber pocket blasted from its right arm and fizzed past my brother’s head.
Algy backed away into a corner of the room as the terrifying toy closed in on him.
‘Stop it, Ollie! Save me!’ he cried.
In a flash, I remembered what had happened at the end of my new comic, . My hero was guarding a special meeting of world leaders. Just as President O’Bandana reached out to shake hands with President Putty . . .
Now I knew how to save my brother from my faulty Zybot.
Algy hod his loaded water pistol in my bedroom, ready to ambush our sisters, Emma and Gemma, when they came home from ballet school that evening. I snatched the gun from the windowsill, and squirted the maniac .
The toy made a coughing, whining, crackling sound, and smoke billowed out from every nook and cranny in its body. It staggered to a halt, arms frozen in mid whirl. With a deafening , the head pinged into the air like a party-popper and landed with a thump on the floor at Algy’s feet.
We stared at the soaking, smoking ruins of the .
‘Mum and Dad won’t be happy,’ remarked my brother, gingerly prodding the Zybot’s head with his foot.
‘Just because I fixed Dad’s glasses doesn’t mean I’m going to be an amazing mechanical engineer,’ I said.
‘But you know what they’re like – they’re desperate to find something you’re at apart from fibbing.’
‘I don’t tell , Algy – I tell stories.’ My shoulders sagged, and I flopped down onto my bed. ‘I was going to take the Zybot to at school tomorrow morning. It would’ve been spectacular.’
I held my head in my hands. was going to be again. My arch-enemy, Bobby Bragg, leader of the , was going to have a field day. I could hear his mocking voice in my head: ‘You’re a Tibbs –
Dead And Buried, more like.
The next morning, our nanny, Constanza, drove us to oar schools, shouting angrily in Italian at the other drivers on the road, while the twins twittered on about tours and temps and sous sous (whatever they are), and Algy played chess on his computer. I just stored out of the window, wondering what I could do to escape my fate.
. . . Constanza drove through a time portal, and we found ourselves monkey-rustling with my ancestor, the notorious pirate Block Jack Tibbs?
Or, . . . a black hole had appeared under the school and sucked it to another part of the universe, so we all got the day off!
Or . . .
Constanza braked to a halt outside my school gates. I sighed. It was still here: no time portal, no black hole. My best friend, Peaches, met me in the playground, and even though it was warm and sunny she was wearing a plastic raincoat.
‘It said on the weather forecast that it might rain,’ she explained when she saw my puzzled look. ‘So I put this on, just in case. Did you finish your Zybot?’
‘Yes,’ I
said, pulling the ’s head from my bag to show her. ‘Honest, Pea, it would have been the best ever. There was no way Bobby Bragg could have made fun of me. But the went berserk and attacked Algy, so I squirted it with water and it exploded.’ I held up the smoke-stained head. ‘This is all I’ve got to show.’
When we got into class, there was a boy standing next to Miss Wilkins. Everyone stared at him, like they always do with new kids, but he didn’t look away, or look down at his feet, or move closer to the teacher – he just stared back at them, like he wasn’t new at all, like he’d been in the class for years. I couldn’t help staring either; this kid was different – his smart clothes, his long hair, the way he stood with his hands casually shoved into his trouser pockets . . .
‘We have a new addition to our class,’ said Miss Wilkins when we’d all settled down at our tables. ‘I’d like to introduce Zoot Zipparolli, who will be joining us until the end of summer term. Zoot is Bobby Bragg’s cousin.’
Everyone turned to look at Bobby, who leaned back in his chair, his arms folded, smiling at Zoot.
I groaned quietly. , I thought, .
‘Now then, Zoot,’ continued Miss Wilkins. ‘Normally we do on a Monday morning, and as your last name begins with Z, you should go last. However, I think everyone would like to know a bit more about you, so, just this once, why don’t you go first?’
Zoot shrugged. ‘Sure, no problem,’ he said. His accent was American, but with a bit of Italian mixed in, like Constanza’s. ‘My dad’s Antonio Zipparolli, the famous film director. He’s in town filming a new spy thriller starring George Looney.’
Everyone – including me – went, ‘Oooooooooo.’
‘When the filming’s done, we’ll be leaving for Australia to shoot his next film,’ continued Zoot. ‘That’s why I’m only here for a few weeks.’
‘So where do you live?’ asked Melody Nightingale.
‘We have a home in Los Angeles.’
‘Is it magnificent, gargantuan and luxurious?’ asked Hattie Hurlie, who was a National Cheerleading Spelling Bee Champion, and loved using .
‘It’s big and fancy, if that’s what you mean,’ laughed Zoot. ‘But I don’t get to see it much. I’m usually travelling around the world from place to place with my mom and dad.’
The class gave out a low, whispered, ‘’
‘How !’ said Miss Wilkins. ‘Have you actually met George Looney?’
Zoot nodded. ‘I’ve known him all my life. I call him “Uncle George”. He’s a pal.’
‘Is it true what all the gossip magazines are saying, that he’s going out with Ritzy Savoy, the famous actress?’ Miss Wilkins gushed.
Zoot frowned and laughed. ‘I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.’
This new kid was definitely , but then I realized what was different about him: he was the coolest person I’d ever met; he was almost as cool as my hero, !
Miss Wilkins’s face went red and she sighed. ‘George Looney’s my favourite film star.’ She stared into space for a few seconds, sighed again, then pointed to the empty chair next to Bobby. ‘Zoot, why don’t you sit next to your cousin?’
Bobby gave Zoot a playful punch on the arm as he took his place, looking around the classroom, grinning at us all.
It was time for Time to begin properly and as usual the had all got amazing things to talk about.
Bobby told everyone he’d got through to the county 100 metre finals, and that if he won he’d go on to the Regional Championships. He showed us a newspaper clipping about him headed: ‘Local Boy in a Hurry!’
‘How promising!’ said Miss Wilkins. ‘Let’s hope you win.’
Toby Hadron showed us a jam full of thick, liquid. A sticker on the jar said, ‘Primordial Soap’. I thought he was going to talk about his lunch, but I was wrong.
‘This mix of chemicals is what scientists think the first life on Earth came from,’ he told us, staring intently at the sticky goo. ‘All I need to do is pass a million volts of electricity through it, and there’s a sixty-three point five per cent chance I’ll make new life.’
‘How dangerous!’ exclaimed Miss Wilkins.
‘You’re going to need a lot of batteries,’ laughed Jamie Ryder.
Hattie Hurley had made a giant word-search puzzle, made up entirely of strange animal names like ‘axolotl’, ‘bandicoot’ and ‘dromedary’.
‘This is just the first,’ she said. ‘I’m going to do a new one every week.’
‘How useful!’ enthused Miss Wilkins. ‘We can all do the puzzles in literacy!’
Melody Nightingale was a singer, and was always being asked to perform at big events. This time, she’d been given a part in a big science-fiction musical on stage in London: . She sang a slow, soppy song from the show called, ‘’.
‘How beautiful,’ sighed Miss Wilkins.
The rest of us – the – did our best.
Leon Curley showed us his new haircut.
‘How cool!’ said Miss Wilkins. (I’m not sure if she meant that she liked it, or that his hair was now so short he’d get cold ears?)
Millie Dangerfield told us a sparrow had pooped on her head outside the BestCo supermarket, and showed us the photograph her mum had taken.
When everyone laughed, Miss Wilkins said, ‘How lucky!’
Peaches showed us the dog collar she’d made from an old leather belt.
‘But you haven’t got a dog,’ called out Bobby Bragg.
‘No,’ replied Peaches, ‘but if I do get one I won’t have to buy a collar.’
‘How sensible!’ said Miss Wilkins.
When it was my turn to stand up in front of the class, I held up the Zybot’s head.
‘I built a ,’ I said.
‘It’d work better if it had a body,’ shouted Bobby, nudging Zoot and laughing.
I thought about what had happened when I’d pressed the button on the remote control. The words tumbled out on my mouth before my brain had chance to say, ‘Don’t do it, Ollie!’
. . .
‘When we bought the robot, we were tricked by the shopkeeper, who was actually the twisted criminal Tarquin Doombringer in disguise,’ I told the class. ‘This Construct-a-Bot Kit was supposed to be a , but he sold me a instead. As soon as I turned on the power, the evil android began attacking my little brother, Algy – aka Dr Devious.’
I noticed Zoot staring at me open-mouthed. Bobby whispered something in his ear and the new kid smiled.
Miss Wilkins sighed. ‘Oliver, we really haven’t got time for one of your flights of fancy . . .’
‘There’s not much more to tell, miss,’ I replied. ‘As the deadly machine began firing rockets and laser beams at Algy, I pulled out my special pen, took aim and zapped its metal head off.’
I tossed the ’s head in the air like a football and caught it. ‘The world is safe again.’
‘How reassuring,’ said Miss Wilkins. (I think she was being sarcastic).‘Is there any chance that one day you might do a normal ? Write this down as extra homework.’
‘But, miss,’ I protested. ‘The really did attack Algy, and I really did save him.’
As I slunk bock to my seat, I heard Bobby Bragg sing, ‘Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!’
I sat back down next to Peaches and she tutted and shook her head. ‘Will you never learn?’
‘Before we start lessons I have an announcement to make,’ said Miss Wilkins when was over. ‘As you know, the school has been given money to improve our library. We’ve ordered lots of new books and equipment, like computers, printers, a copying machine and a paper shredder. A lot of work needs doing to organize and run the new library, and I’d like to ask Peaches if she’d help me do it.’
The class turned to stare at Peaches, who had a smile so wide it seemed too big for her face.
‘Me, miss?’ she said. ‘I’d like to be a librarian when I grow up.’
‘It’s a very important job, and I can’t think of anyone better to do it,’ added Miss Wilkins as she pre
sented Peaches with a shiny badge that said, ‘Library Monitor’.
As the class applauded and Bobby Bragg yawned, I shouted, YAY! GO, PEA!’
For the rest of the day, Bobby acted like he owned Zoot, taking him around the school, showing him off to the other kids and teachers. ‘This is my cousin, Zoot. He’s famous. He knows George Looney.’
At lunchtime, Bobby, Zoot and the other made a grand entrance into the dining hall. ‘Make way for the ,’ called Bobby, clearing a way through the kids queuing for lunch.
As usual, I sat with Peaches and watched as she gobbled down her food.
‘I know it’s not sensible to eat so fast, but I need to hurry,’ she said between mouthfuls of apple pie and custard. ‘I want to start working in the new library.’
There was a burst of laughter from the ’ table. Zoot was sitting there with Bobby, Toby and Hattie. He even managed to look cool eating spaghetti Bolognese, separating out the thin strands of pasta, curling them expertly on his fork and getting them into his mouth without slopping a single drop of sauce down his shirt.’
‘I wish I was cool like Zoot,’ I said.
Peaches smiled. ‘And I bet he wishes he could have custard on the end of his nose.’ She handed me a napkin. ‘Just like you.’
‘I’ve got to get this working,’ I said to Algy that night as I screwed the Zybot’s head back on to its body. ‘I’m fed up with being . I want to be as cool as the King of Coolovia, the coolest country on the continent of Cool.’ I didn’t say it to Algy, but I what I was really thinking was that I want to be as cool as Zoot.
Oliver Fibbs and the Clash of the Mega Robots Page 1
