“What, no ‘HAR’?”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“You know what else isn’t a joke? Part two of my diabolical plan! Brunswick, bring them to me. No, wait! Something isn’t right. What do you have in that pack?”
“Just some stuff you plan on using to try and defeat me, no doubt! Brunswick, see what’s in that pack!”
“Where do you think you’re going?! Get back here!”
Dad and I look at each other, stunned.
“What the heck is that thing, Kelvin?”
“I don’t know. I found it on the field-trip planet. I thought it was just a cool rock.”
“Well, those goofy, pin-shaped fellas are scared to death of it. Almost like they’re natural enemies.”
The boball begins to make a strange sound and starts rocking back and forth. It looks like it’s about to…
“Why are you always bunching together? Spread out! How many times did we go over this?!”
“Well, son, it looks like we won’t have to worry about those nitwits anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure we ever did. Leave it to Erik Failenheimer to put together an army of simpleminded, easily toppled scaredy-cats.”
“Don’t forget slow-moving.”
“They were merely a distraction anyway. The real prize is waiting for us over in your laboratory, isn’t it, Klosmo? Get moving if you ever want to see young Klevlin again.”
“It’s Kelvin.”
“Whatever.”
“Remember, one false move and I turn Mervin here into a stinkbug.”
“You invented a ray that turns people into stinkbugs? No wonder they made you a janitor.”
“Go on. Keep it up. I’ll be giving you a position far worse than janitor once I rule the universe.”
“Yeah, about that. Do you have any idea how big the universe really is?”
“Of course I do! I’m a brilliant scientist…”
“Janitor.”
“… and once I have the Zorb, nothing will be out of my reach!”
“Don’t worry, Dad. He won’t get the Zorb. We made sure of that.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“You’ll see, as soon as we turn this…”
“… corner.”
“Security bots—scan me for identification and then return to secure monitoring status.”
“The Zorb’s still here! What happened to the Shrink Ray plan??!”
“Brian got hungry and ate a chunk of the Cheese Dad’s face. The bots didn’t recognize him, so they trapped us.”
“I ran out of pickles.”
“All right. Everybody step away from the Zorb. Klosmo, deactivate the security bots.”
“Nope. You can do whatever you want to me, but I’ll never let you take it.”
“Oh, but it isn’t you who’ll be spending the rest of his life as a stinkbug. You’ll be spending the rest of your life as the father of a stinkbug! Unless, of course, you aren’t careful where you step. BWAHAHAHA!!!”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m just a Drifting Doofus, Under-a-Minute Moron, Larva Boy nongenius genius anyway. What’s adding stinkbug to the list going to do? Who knows, maybe I’ll even end up being popular in the stinkbug community.”
“If you turn Kelvin into a stinkbug, you’ll have to turn all of us into stinkbugs!”
“Yeah! Do stinkbugs like pickles?”
“Are you kidding me? A stinkbug?! Have you guys taken the time to think this through? I mean, they’re called STINKbugs for a reason! Okay. I’m in.”
“Nobody is going to be turned into a stinkbug. Security bots—scan me for identification and then deactivate for five minutes. Go ahead and take the Zorb, Failenheimer. I’m betting a ten-inch-tall, cotton-filled janitor won’t be able to use it anyway.”
“What’s the matter, Klosmo? No ‘HAR’? I happen to think this whole situation is hilarious.”
“Just take the containment vault and go. If you try to open it here, I’ll reactivate the security bots. We’re not about to be turned into goo.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. That wasn’t the real Zorb. It was just a big papier-mâché balloon that Bula painted in her art class. The real Zorb is over there, in the corner. In the real containment vault.”
“The real Zorb? The real containment vault? But that means the security bots were guarding the fake Zorb instead of the real one!”
“Yup. It’s called hiding in plain sight. And it’s the oldest trick in the book. By the time our cushy little custodian figures out what happened, it’ll be too late.”
“Too late? Dad, he’s just going to come back and try to steal it again.”
“Well, he can try, but there won’t be anything here to steal.”
“What do you mean? The Zorb is right over there.”
“Not for long. Kelvin, you were right. The Zorb is too dangerous! I see that now. And I’m sorry for not taking you seriously before. I really did think we could study it and harness its power and accomplish great things. And maybe we could have. But if a ten-inch-tall stuffed nitwit like Failenheimer could cause this much trouble, I don’t even want to think about what an actual, competent evil genius would do.”
“So what are you going to do with it, Professor?”
“Me? Nothing. You guys are the ones with the plan. Go ahead and use it. Besides, I wouldn’t want to accidentally shrink my suit. It’s a little too tight in the backside already. HAR!”
Hey, I wonder if he accidentally shrank his sense of humor. That would explain a lot.
Spotch, Rand-El, and I wheel the Shrink Ray over to the real containment vault. Brian is following behind with the partially eaten Cheese Dad on the hand truck. He’s chewing on something that looks like an elbow.
“I bet he’d be great at catching mice! HAR!”
Rand-El aims the ray. Spotch sets the dial to 0 percent of original size. Brian sniffs Cheese Dad. And I pull the lever.
I don’t know how they managed to escape the school and get back here without me, but their efforts were all for naught. Little do Brunswick and the rest of those pea-brained pinions know, but their celebration is about to end. Once I open the containment vault, nothing that lives can survive being this close to the all-powerful Zorb without transforming into a puddle of goo. And in their case, I must say it would be an improvement. Fortunately for me, my tiny little plushy body won’t be affected!
The dolts have served their purpose, though, so now it’s time to make those cave drawings come true! It’s time for me to wield the Zorb and become the most powerful being in the universe! NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW!!
“So what was the deal with that weird little guy with the big ears yesterday? He and that group of wobbly goofballs with him were the highlight of the dance!”
“I know, right? They said the whole thing was an act. Part of the entertainment.”
The “they” they’re talking about would be my dad. He thinks the other kids would be better off not knowing about things like the Zorb. He thinks they have enough to deal with out here in space without worrying about things like being turned into goo or being enslaved by a power-hungry plushy. Maybe he’s right, but I don’t think he’s giving us kids enough credit.
Either way, the rest of the gang and I are sworn to secrecy. Which means no one will know I helped save the universe. Again. It also means that instead of being an intergalactic hero, I’ll continue to be Larva Boy. Or the Drifting Doofus. Or Genius. Maybe I’ll write a book about all this someday. Although, with my luck, they’ll probably put it in the fiction section.
Of course it doesn’t.
“Mr. Klosmo, we’ll begin with you.”
Of course we will.
I hate writing theme papers. I spent an hour last night just staring at my blank tablet screen. Zilcharino. Then I overheard Mom reading Bula her favorite bedtime book, and it gave me an idea. So I decided to go a different route. I figured I might as well go for it. It’s not like a kid they call Larva Boy has much to lose anyway.
Right? I guess we’ll see.
My reputation when I got here
Was that I was really smart.
But instead of being honest,
I thought I could act the part.
Well, that was a disaster,
As I’m sure you’re all aware,
Because I’m barely average
When it comes to mental flare.
So now I’m teased by everyone.
Well, almost, I should say,
Because there are some classmates
Who’ve stuck with me all the way.
First, there’s Gil Lagoonie,
Who’s a friendly, happy soul.
How hard it all must be for him
To live inside that bowl.
And Brian’s brain is on display
inside a plastic globe.
We all know when he’s nervous,
’Cause it shrinks his frontal lobe.
Zot is full of energy,
Enough to light a moon.
She’s so graceful and athletic
That I feel like a buffoon.
Rand-El is the only kid
With glasses on his planet.
Some kids call him Twelve Eyes.
That can’t be too pleasant, can it?
Spotch is pretty even keeled,
He’s rarely up or down.
It’s really hard to make him smile,
Harder yet to make him frown.
Grimnee doesn’t say too much,
A chatterbox she’s not.
But if you are a bully,
She will squash you on the spot.
Mippitt’s brain is made of circuits.
He’s got wires instead of veins.
He mainly beeps and whistles,
But I like him just the same.
And Dorn was quite the bully.
He would terrorize the school,
But Grimnee put an end to that
And now Dorn’s pretty cool.
So the answer’s right in front of me,
I had it all along,
Because having awesome friends
Is the thing that makes me strong.
Oh, man. That sounded way less lame in my head before I actually read it out loud. Kelvin, you’re such a putz! D minus, here I come. And if I thought the teasing was bad before, I’m going to have to wear my helmet to class to deflect the bombs coming my way after this disaster.
“Hey! It’s the Radical Rhymer!”
The Radical Rhymer? Yeah, I guess I can live with that. At least until my Mighty Mega Supergeniusness kicks in.
We would like to thank the wonderful JIMMY crew for all their help in publishing this book. It takes a lot of hard work from a lot of dedicated and talented people to bring a hybrid project like this into the world, and these folks do a fantastic job. To our editor, Aubrey Poole, as well as to Tracy Shaw, Stephanie Yang, Sabrina Benun, Gabrielle Tyson, Ben Allen, Erica Stahler, Michelle Gengaro, and all those who work behind the scenes: our sincere thanks and major kudos to you all.
And, as always, continued thanks to our super agent, Dan Lazar, and everyone at Writers House, especially Cecilia de la Campa and Victoria Doherty-Munro. You guys are the best.
Now that you’ve finished the book, you probably noticed that the pinions didn’t always have their comments translated into English. Wouldn’t you just love to know what they were saying? Well, you can! Just replace each pinion language letter with the one that comes right before it in the alphabet. So, for example, replace a pinion d with c, a pinion s with r, and so on. If you encounter a pinion a, replace it with a z. Fbtz qfbtz!
John Martin is the illustrator of the Vordak the Incomprehensible series. A day doesn’t go by without him drawing monsters, robots, and characters from his childhood. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Mary; sons, Adam and Paul; and daughter, Grace.
Scott Seegert is the author of the Vordak the Incomprehensible series. If you didn’t know better, and couldn’t see him, you would swear he was twelve years old. He lives in Michigan with his wife, Margie; sons, Brad and Jason; and daughter, Shannon.
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