Beware of the Giant Brain!

by Mark Young

  “Don’t feel bad, guys,” Rotwang said. “I know you’re all smart. But it’s hard to be smarter than a big, fat giant brain.”

  Newton grinned. “We may not be smarter than a giant brain, but do you know what is?” he asked.

  Theremin grinned back at him. “A whole lot of brains!”

  “Good thinking!” Shelly said. “Let’s go to the Brain Bank!”

  CHAPTER 10 Drone Attack!

  The five of them hurried into the school. By the time they reached the library, Newton was ten steps ahead of everyone else.

  Shelly called to him. “Newton, wait up!”

  “Sorry,” he answered slowly. “It’s awfully hot in here, isn’t it? I’m feeling really energetic all of a sudden.”

  Theremin’s eyes flashed as he scanned the temperature. “You’re right!” he cried. “It’s almost one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in here!”

  “It’s got to be Odifin.” The lights flickered again as Shelly spoke, since they were back in range. “He’s messing with the heat system.”

  “Why does the school even have a heat system on a tropical island?” Higgy asked.

  “I think it was installed after the invention of the Freeze Ray,” Shelly said. “But we’re getting off track. We need to find a way to bypass Odifin messing with the controls and get to the sprinkler system.”

  “Right,” Newton said. “And there’s got to be somebody in the Brain Bank who can help us.”

  When they arrived in the Brain Bank, the eyes of all the brains turned to them. Shelly plugged her tablet into the directory. “Let’s see, there’s Elvira Mixenhooper, Ignatius Nakamura, Rodena Mezmer—”

  “I know that name,” Theremin said, interrupting her. “Father always talked about her as being a master programmer. She designed the original technological infrastructure of the school.”

  “Then let’s talk to her,” Shelly said.

  The lights in the Brain Bank flashed off and on. The school’s fire alarm began to sound.

  “I think Odifin knows we’re up to something,” Rotwang said, and the lights flashed again.

  “I’ll talk to Rodena,” Newton offered. “How does it work again?”

  “You connect your tablet to her brain port, or use one of the new headsets to talk to her,” Shelly suggested. “That might be the easiest way, in this case. You can tell her exactly what we need.”

  Newton nodded. “Got it,” he said. He picked up one of the headsets and walked past the jars of brains until he found the one labeled with the name Rodena Mezmer. He put the headset over his ears and plugged it into the port on the jar.

  “Hello? Ms. Mezmer?” he asked out loud.

  Hello, young man. And please, call me “Rodena.”

  “Hi, Rodena,” Newton said. “I’m sorry to ask for your help when I don’t even know you, but my friends and I have a favor to ask.”

  So many favors these days, Rodena said. But at least you’re polite. Unlike that brain who just wanted our knowledge and then disconnected from us all without so much as a thank-you!

  “That’s why we’re here. We’re trying to stop that brain from taking over the school. Can you help us?” Newton asked. “Please? You’re the only one who can do it.”

  Rodena’s eyestalks moved up and down as she, seeming to recognize him, looked at Newton. Say, you’re Newton Warp, aren’t you?

  “Yes,” Newton replied. “How do you know my name?”

  We all remember the day you showed up in the Brain Bank, Rodena replied. Very interesting circumstances. You were right in my line of sight, you see, and… She paused.

  Newton felt a burst of hope in his heart. “What did you see?”

  Then, from across the room, he heard Shelly cry out. “Newton! Hurry up!”

  He turned to see an army of security drones flying toward the Brain Bank. Shelly, Rotwang, Theremin, and Higgy slammed the doors shut and pressed their bodies against them.

  “It’s Odifin!” Rotwang cried, and the lights flickered. “We need to hurry up and drain his tank!”

  “Right,” Newton said. “Rodena, it’s an emergency. Odifin”—the lights flickered—“is controlling all of the technology running the school, and we need to turn on the boiler room sprinklers to help stop him, but we need your help to keep him from stopping us.”

  Sounds like that young man is out of control, Rodena said. But I can help. The original system I created was never dismantled. If you can access the mainframe and log into the Y-Me 2 port, you should be able to turn the sprinklers on from there. Your grumpy robot friend should be able to do that. It should take you-know-who a few minutes before he discovers what you’re doing and locates the Y-Me 2 port himself.

  “Got it,” Newton said. Then he called out to Theremin. “Theremin, come here.” Then he lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “You need to log into the mainframe and find the Y-Me 2 port from the original system Rodena built. You can access the sprinklers from there.”

  Theremin sped over to a control panel on the wall. A metal rod sprang from his chest and plugged into the panel. “I’m searching for it now. But don’t forget, we need to drain the goo from the tank.”

  “I’m on it!” Higgy said, and he moved away from the door, where the security drones were banging against the glass, trying to get in. He slipped down into a vent in the floor.

  “Just give me a minute or two!” he called out as he disappeared.

  “Newton, we need help with this door!” Shelly cried.

  Newton slipped off the headphones and raced to the door, glancing back at Rodena’s brain.

  What does she know about the day I came to Franken-Sci High? he wondered. I’ll have to ask her later.

  “I found the Y-Me 2 port!” Theremin cried. “Turning on the sprinklers now.”

  Bam! Bam! BAM! The drones crashed against the glass doors. The glass began to crack.

  “Master, cut it out!” Rotwang yelled, since Odifin seemed to be listening. “We’re trying to help you!”

  “What do you think will happen if those drones break through?” Newton asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Shelly replied. “But if anything happens, Newton, I’m glad I’m here with—”

  Crash! The drones suddenly lost power and fell to the floor.

  “Awesome,” Shelly said. “I can’t believe Higgy pulled the drain from the tank already.”

  “Higgy had nothing to do with this,” Ms. Mumtaz said, walking through the pile of fallen drones. She kicked them aside with her lime-green stiletto heels as she flung open the doors to the Brain Bank. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to stop Odifin for days now,” she said.

  “Hey, did you notice that?” Shelly remarked. “The lights didn’t flicker when you said his name, Ms. Mumtaz. He must be weakening. Maybe it’s working already!”

  “I’ve been working with the faculty to try to stop him, but he keeps getting smarter and smarter and harder to stop. We did manage to break his connection to the drones just now, but that’s all. What did you mean when you said, ‘Maybe it’s working’?”

  “Follow us!” Newton cried.

  “Can you explain what’s happening on the way?” Ms. Mumtaz asked.

  “Sure,” Newton said. “We figured out a way to drain the super bluegoo from Odifin’s tank. Super bluegoo is allowing Odifin to connect to everything wirelessly. But we needed to access the sprinklers to get rid of the goo, so I talked to Rodena Mezmer about how to access them without Odifin knowing, so we could be a step ahead of him.”

  “You talked to Rodena?” Mumtaz asked, and her thin eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes, and Theremin followed her instructions for how to access the mainframe to turn the basement sprinklers on,” Newton said. And she also hinted that she knows something about the first day I came to the school, he thought, but he didn’t say that out loud.

  Mumtaz pursed her lips and nodded. “I hope it works, Newton. I really do.”

  In the basement they stepped into a sticky river
of super bluegoo flowing from the boiler room. Higgy had been able to open the drain!

  Stubbins Crouch was not amused. He was standing outside the room, waving a mop at Higgy. “You put that goo stuff back in there, Mr. Vollington!” he was yelling. “This is one mess I am NOT cleaning up!”

  Inside the boiler room Higgy was sitting on top of the tank, holding the drain plug. The sprinklers were filling the room with water as the super bluegoo was quickly draining out of the bottom of the tank. Odifin was already smaller than the last time Newton had seen him—and was shrinking every second.

  The friends hadn’t realized that removing the super bluegoo would also drain Odifin’s brain of what he had learned from the Brain Bank, or that he would shrink as a result.

  “Stop this right now!” Odifin was yelling through the speaker on his original jar, which was still connected to the shark tank since he needed the data panel to talk. “This isn’t funny, Higgy!”

  “It’s not supposed to be funny, but it has to happen,” Higgy replied. He called down to the others. “I never got a chance to make replacement goo. What’s going to happen to Odifin when all the goo is gone?”

  “Hold on!” Rotwang cried, and he dashed away, his feet squishing in the super bluegoo as he ran.

  “Give me back my super bluegoo!” Odifin yelled. “I WANT MY SUPER BLUEGOO!”

  But as the super bluegoo drained away, Odifin shrank smaller and smaller. He began to float in the big shark tank, looking more like a small octopus than a brain. Then his brain tendrils began to shrink too.

  Rotwang raced in with a fishing net on a long pole in one hand, and in the other hand he was pushing Odifin’s old mechanical rolling table. On top of it was the jug of regular goo he kept in his room.

  “I’ll save you, Master!” Rotwang cried. He climbed up the tank, scooped Odifin out with the fishing net, and asked Theremin to use his telescoping arm to grab Odifin’s original jar from where it was attached to the tank. Then Rotwang carefully poured the regular goo into the jar, disconnected the jar from the tank, and used the net to deposit Odifin into the jar with a gentle plop!

  “It’s good to see you back to normal,” Rotwang said with a smile.

  Odifin’s eyes twitched as he gazed around the basement, and Newton thought he looked dazed.

  “I don’t want to be normal,” Odifin said. “I want to be smart! The smartest boy in the world! All that knowledge—it drained away with the super bluegoo! You’ve ruined my chances of winning the trivia competition!”

  “Is that what this was about?” Ms. Mumtaz asked. She shook her head. “Hmph. I never knew you were so competitive, Odifin.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Odifin said. “I’ll never win now.”

  Ms. Mumtaz looked down at her shoes. “Well, this has been an interesting day,” she said. “Now I must go take care of a few things. And order some new shoes. Stubbins, would you please get started with cleaning this mess up?”

  The custodian grumbled.

  “Thank you so much,” Ms. Mumtaz added. “I know this is above and beyond your normal scope of work.”

  Meanwhile, Odifin was eager to leave. “Come, Rotwang,” Odifin said. “I want to go back to our room.”

  Shelly stepped in front of them. “Odifin, why don’t you join our study group?” she asked.

  “Shelly, you know what he’s like!” Theremin hissed.

  “No, I mean it,” Shelly said. “Winning must mean a whole lot to you, for you to go through all this. And we’ve been studying almost every night. It’s much better studying together. And we were going to head to the library before… all this happened. We can go now and get at least an hour of studying in.”

  “Yeah, come with us, Odifin,” Higgy offered. “It’ll be fun.”

  “Fun?” Odifin asked. “You want me to… have fun with you?”

  “I’m not sure how much fun it will be,” Theremin said. “But sure, I guess. Why not?”

  “I’ll go too,” Newton said.

  Shelly turned to Newton and whispered, “I thought you weren’t competing.”

  “I’m not. I need to go back to the Brain Bank to ask Rodena Mezmer a question,” he whispered back. “And also, I didn’t get a chance to interview Odifin yet.”

  Shelly nodded.

  “Plus, it’ll be fun to hang out, even if I’m just helping you guys study,” Newton added in a louder voice. “What do you think, Odifin?”

  Odifin looked like he was struggling to decide, but then he thought of his mother wanting him to have friends, and he decided to give the kids a chance. “I will… I will go with you,” Odifin said. Then he turned to Rotwang. “What do you say, Rotwang?”

  “Sure,” Rotwang said. “If you want me there.”

  “Of course I do,” Odifin said.

  They moved to the nearest transport tube and stepped inside. Newton stood next to Odifin.

  “So, Odifin, is it okay if I ask you some of those questions I tried to ask you earlier today?” he asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Odifin said. “I guess I’m not going to be a question in the competition anymore. Funny, I’m not sure where I got that idea.”

  “You get a lot of ideas when you’re a giant brain, I guess,” Rotwang remarked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Odifin said.

  “So, um, Odifin,” Newton said. “Where were you born?”

  “I don’t know,” Odifin replied. “My mom adopted me. She picked me up here at the school when I was a baby brain.”

  Newton gasped, and Shelly, Theremin, and Higgy turned around to look at him, because they’d heard the word “adopted” too. If Odifin was adopted, they thought it might be possible that he could be Newton’s biological brother without knowing it.

  “Do you know anything about your birth parents, or why you’re, um, a brain in a jar?” Newton asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Odifin replied. “But you know, it never really mattered to me when I was growing up. Mom always said that choosing me was the best thing she’d ever done, and that we were meant to be family.”

  “That’s amazing,” Newton said, and he felt a little pang of jealousy for a mom he’d either never had or couldn’t remember. Then Newton’s mind began to race as he reviewed what he had just learned. Odifin didn’t know anything about his birth family, just like Newton didn’t know anything about his parents. Odifin’s first moments were at Franken-Sci High, and Newton first showed up at Franken-Sci High. Odifin didn’t know why he was a brain in a jar. Newton didn’t know why he had strange abilities.

  Odifin looked at Newton. “Why are you asking me all this? I thought we were going to the library to study!”

  “Odifin, I think you might be my brother,” Newton blurted out.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Odifin asked.

  “No, no, I’m serious,” Newton protested. “You know that I just appeared here in the school one day, right? And I’ve been trying to find out where I came from, and Professor Flubitus told me I have a relative at the school, and then I found out that my relative is a brother. And since you don’t know where you came from either—”

  “And I don’t care about where I come from,” Odifin snapped. “I had a nice life with my mother, until I came to this school. She’s all that I need.”

  “But aren’t you curious about your birth parents, just a little bit?” Newton asked.

  Odifin’s eyestalks turned so he could stare right at Newton. “If you were a brain in a jar, would you want to know how that happened? I’d rather just remember the happy times with my mom.”

  “I’m not a brain in a jar, but I’m—” Newton began, and then he stopped because Shelly nudged him and gave him a warning glance. He knew what she was probably thinking. It was too soon to trust Odifin with the secret of all of Newton’s special abilities. Newton sighed. “I understand, Odifin, I guess,” he said.

  The transport tube doors opened, and they made their way to the library. It was back to normal. They noticed that the
temperature was a perfect 70.3 degrees. The lights weren’t flickering, lockers weren’t opening on their own, and the crashed drones had been removed.

  Odifin, Rotwang, Shelly, Theremin, and Higgy settled around a library table.

  “I’ll be right back,” Newton said, and he entered the Brain Bank. There he picked up a headset and plugged back in to talk with Rodena Mezmer’s brain.

  “It’s me again. Newton,” he said.

  Hello, my boy, she replied. It appears as though you were successful in stopping Odifin.

  “Yes, it sure is. Thank you so much, Rodena,” Newton said. “He’s back to his old self now.”

  Excellent! she said.

  “So, I wanted to ask you about the day I woke up in the Brain Bank,” Newton said.

  Right, Rodena replied. You were—hmm. She paused. This is interesting. I remember seeing you, but I don’t remember anything else about that day at all! If I didn’t know better, I would say that someone wiped it from my memory banks.

  “Mumtaz,” Newton muttered, and he sighed. “Thanks, Rodena.”

  You’re welcome, Newton, she replied. Come back and visit me anytime.

  Newton sank down to the floor. It was another disappointment. Odifin could be his brother, but he’d never know for sure, because Mumtaz didn’t want him to know, and Odifin didn’t care enough to find out. It wasn’t fair!

  “Hey, Newton, get over here!” Theremin called out. “Higgy bet me that I can’t balance twelve books on my head, and I’m up to thirteen!”

  Newton stood up. One day soon, he hoped he would know the truth about his family. For now, though, he had his friends at least. They were more of a family to him than Odifin might ever be.

  CHAPTER 11 Teams Stick Together

  “This question’s for Newton,” Theremin said. “Who was the first mad scientist to create a thunderstorm generator?”

  Newton bit his lip, thinking. “Um… Ludicrous Kilowatt?”

  “Wrong! It’s Ludwig Kilowatt,” Theremin replied.