Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage

by Bob Pflugfelder

  Somehow, she resisted.

  “Allrighty then,” Dobek said. “I’m looking forward to meeting your parents. While you’re waiting for them, feel free to help yourselves to—”

  He started to gesture toward the barrel of taffy, then caught himself, his smile wavering.

  “A good look around,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Nick.

  “We’ll do that,” said Tesla.

  Dobek nodded and clasped his hands together—he was practically bowing—then finally turned his back to them and walked away.

  “ ‘Gertrude’?” Tesla growled at Nick.

  “ ‘Herbert’?” he growled back.

  Tesla had a comeback ready—“If the name fits, Herb…”—but she gritted her teeth and swallowed it down.

  It kind of blows your cover if you get into an argument about your aliases.

  “Anyway,” Tesla said, “good save with the waiting-for-the-parents bit.”

  Nick shrugged listlessly. “Guess it was already on my mind.”

  Tesla stole a glance at Dobek. He’d settled himself on a stool behind the counter.

  Noticing that Tesla was looking his way, he gave her a little wave.

  Tesla waved back, then tried to look fascinated by a set of rickety-looking dining room chairs.

  “How much longer are we going to keep doing this?” Nick asked.

  As long as it takes for this not to have been a complete waste of time, Tesla thought. What she said was, “Long enough.” Which meant more or less the same thing but didn’t sound so pessimistic.

  Dobek sat at the counter looking pleasantly attentive for a while. But when it became clear that Herbert and Gertrude’s parents weren’t going to pop in right away, credit cards at the ready, he pulled down the glasses atop his head, perched them on the end of his nose, and went back to reading a book he’d left sitting by the cash register.

  The book was called Entomophobia and You: Stop Buggin’ about Bugs!

  Tesla elbowed her brother and jerked her head at the book.

  Nick glowered at her, peeked back, then mouthed the words So what?

  That was when the phone rang.

  “The Treasure Trove, Barry Dobek speaking. Ahh, Anton! What perfect timing. I got it.”

  Tesla and Nick froze.

  “It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it,” Dobek went on. “I think you’re going to be very, very pleased. It’s in excellent condition.”

  Tesla fought the urge to turn and stare.

  Nick apparently lost the same fight, because he was starting to turn.

  Tesla jerked him around again.

  “Hey, Herbert,” she said a little too loudly. She pointed at a bulky piece of wood-and-glass furniture that looked like a cross between a cabinet and a transparent refrigerator. “Look at this … item.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Nick said. “It’d be perfect for … uhhh … that place. With the stuff. By the thing.”

  Nick and Tesla stood there side by side, admiring the whatever-it-was that would go so well by the thing in the place with the stuff while Dobek chattered away behind them.

  “We can talk price once you’ve seen it with your own eyes. Um-hmm. Yes. Exactly. I’ve got it right here with me.”

  There was a sharp tap-tap.

  Dobek had rapped his knuckles on the countertop.

  “When can you come in to take a look? Five it is. It’s always slow around then anyway, and we’ll want some privacy, won’t we? To haggle.” Dobek coughed out a little lifeless laugh. “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  Dobek hung up.

  “Come on,” Tesla whispered to her brother. “We got what we came for.”

  Nick nodded, and they headed for the door.

  “Going so soon?” Dobek said when he noticed they were about to leave. He looked profoundly disappointed.

  “We’re gonna see what’s holding up Mom and Dad,” Tesla said.

  “They might have changed their minds and decided to go shopping for jewelry or a boat instead,” said Nick. “They’re like that.”

  “Well, be sure and bring them back here if they still want furniture!”

  “Oh, we’ll be back,” Tesla said as they headed out the door. “You can count on it.”

  Tesla wasn’t sure if Silas and DeMarco would still be waiting outside the Treasure Trove when they came down the stairs. DeMarco had a hard time staying in one place for long, and when he drifted off looking for fun, Silas usually drifted with him.

  Both boys were still across the street, though, sitting on the pavement just outside It’s-Froze-Yo! Tesla was impressed with their patience and commitment … until she realized that they hadn’t even noticed her and Nick. They were too busy reading their comic books and eating their frozen yogurts.

  So much for patience and commitment.

  Tesla and Nick crossed the street and walked past the boys.

  “Meet us around the corner,” Tesla said without looking over at them.

  “Huh?” said Silas. “Hey, wait up!”

  Tesla heard DeMarco shush him.

  “We don’t want Dobek to see us together, remember?”

  “Oh,” said Silas. “Right.”

  Nick and Tesla just kept walking. When they reached the next corner, they turned and left Main Street behind.

  A moment later, Silas and DeMarco came strolling around the corner with their hands in their pockets, their comics tucked under their arms, and dopey grins on their faces.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” Tesla asked.

  “We’re trying to look inoculated,” Silas said.

  “I think you mean ‘innocuous,’ ” Tesla said. “And it’s not working.”

  Silas and DeMarco pulled their hands out of their pockets, their grins melting.

  “We think Dobek has the comic,” Nick said.

  Silas and DeMarco perked up again.

  “I knew it!” Silas said. “That jerk!”

  “Why do you think Dobek’s got it?” said DeMarco.

  “We heard him talking on the phone to someone named Anton,” Tesla said. “Sounded like a big-time collector. Dobek told him he’d gotten something for him, in good condition, but it wasn’t easy. Anton’s coming to the store at five to look it over.”

  “That jerk!” Silas said again.

  “We’ve gotta tell Sgt. Feiffer,” said DeMarco.

  Tesla shook her head. “What would we tell him? We were eavesdropping on Dobek and maybe we heard him talking to someone who might be buying Stupefying #6 from him? It’s not enough. Sgt. Feiffer can’t just go barging into the Treasure Trove. He’d need a … a…a whatchamacallit.”

  “Tank?” Silas guessed.

  “Search warrant,” said Nick.

  “Yeah. That,” Tesla said with a jerk of the head at her brother. “Who knows how long it would take him to get one … if he could get one at all before Dobek got rid of the comic book.”

  “So what do we do?” DeMarco asked.

  “We go back,” Tesla said, “and we see whatever Dobek’s got before this Anton does.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” asked Nick.

  Tesla shrugged. “We need some kind of distraction. Something that gets Dobek away from the front counter. I got the feeling that’s where he’s keeping the comic book.”

  “That jerk!” Silas said yet again. For variety’s sake, this time he drove a fist into his palm.

  Tesla ignored him.

  “It’s too bad none of us has a pet roach,” she said.

  DeMarco gaped at her. “A pet roach?”

  Tesla nodded. “Dobek’s entomophobic.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” DeMarco said, looking just as confused as before.

  “He has a fear of insects,” Nick explained. “We saw him reading a book about it.”

  “Ohhhh. Interesting,” DeMarco said. “If I knew where to get a big bagful of bugs, I’d tell you.”

  “Why don’t you just make some?” said Silas.


  Tesla had gotten so used to ignoring him she barely even heard his words. She just stared off over his head, wondering about big bagfuls of bugs and where she could get one in a hurry.

  Nick was listening, though.

  “What do you mean?” he asked Silas.

  “Oh, you know. You’re always whipping up weird stuff down in your uncle’s basement. Why not a bunch of bugs?”

  Nick mulled that over, then turned to his sister.

  “Yeah … why not make our own bugs, Tez?”

  Tesla looked at him to see if he was joking.

  He wasn’t.

  After she’d thought about that a moment, she understood why.

  A smile spread across her face, and she turned and said four words she thought she’d never say.

  “Silas, you’re a genius!”

  NICK AND TESLA’S (AND SILAS’S, SORT OF)

  HOMEMADE ROBO-BUG

  THE STUFF

  • 1 new toothbrush

  • 1 paper clip

  • 1 3V micro-vibration motor (available at most electronics stores; the RadioShack catalog number is 273-107) (A)

  • 1 CR2032 3-volt button battery (B)

  • 2 3-volt LED bulbs (C)

  • Hot-glue gun

  • Wire clippers

  • Scissors

  THE SETUP

  1. Use the scissors to cut the toothbrush bristles to an equal length (if necessary).

  2. Snip the head off the toothbrush with the wire clippers.

  3. Trim the motor’s wires so that they’re about 3 inches (7.5 cm) long. (Set aside the extra piece of leftover black wire for later.) Remove the plastic coating from the last ¾ inch of each, exposing the wire.

  4. Note that the LED bulbs have a longer wire and a shorter wire. Carefully twist together the two shorter wires of each LED bulb.

  5. Tape the two loose LED wires and the red wire of the motor to the positive side of the battery (labeled +).

  6. Straighten the paper clip.

  7. Apply hot glue to the top of the toothbrush and attach the center of the paper clip to it.

  8. Hot-glue the taped side of the battery to the top of the toothbrush, too.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Get the extra piece of black wire you cut from the motor. Expose the wire at each end and tape one end to the top of the battery.

  2. Hot-glue the motor onto the top of the battery, with the spinner (the little spinning thingie on one end that gives the motor its bounce) in the front. Make sure the glue and wires don’t prevent the spinner from spinning.

  3. Bend down the ends of the paper clip so they almost touch the ground, as shown in the image of the completed robot on this page. (The paper clip keeps your robot from tipping over.)

  4. Connect the two black wires to the LED “antenna” wires.

  5. Watch in amazement (or disgust, if you’re entomophobic) as your robo-bug starts scurrying around just like the real thing—only with super-cool light-up eyes!

  Tesla could picture the robo-bug so clearly it was as if step-by-step instructions were floating in the air in front of her.

  She assumed that she and Nick could build it, of course. She assumed that they could do anything until life proved otherwise (as it sometimes did).

  But Tesla could think of only one kind of motor that would be small enough to run the little robot. And there was only one place in town where they might—might—be able to find one.

  Nick knew it, too.

  “The Wonder Hut?” he said.

  “The Wonder Hut,” said Tesla.

  They started back toward Main Street. Silas and DeMarco fell in behind them.

  “So you are gonna make your own bugs?” Silas asked.

  “We’re going to try,” said Nick.

  “Cool!”

  Silas thought it over for a moment, then seemed to decide it wasn’t so cool after all.

  “Remind me again,” he said. “How is a fake bug gonna get Stupefying #6 back for my dad?”

  “One thing at a time, Silas,” Tesla said. “One thing at a time.”

  She picked up her pace, as if her friend’s question was something she wanted to leave behind.

  When the kids got to the Wonder Hut, they found Duncan, the stocky little man who was usually hunched behind the counter reading, on his feet for once.

  He was leaning against a spinner rack stocked with dollhouse furniture while Curiosity the robot scratched his back.

  “Oh, yeah,” he moaned. “That’s the spot.”

  He jumped when he noticed he was being watched, fumbling the rover’s remote control so badly that Nick was afraid it was going to fly out of his hands.

  Fortunately, Duncan managed to get a grip on the control box before it could hit the floor and burst into a thousand pieces.

  “I had a horrible itch,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “Right between my shoulder blades where I couldn’t reach it.”

  He scurried around the counter and took up his usual position near the cash register.

  “How can I help you today?”

  You could go down the street and steal back a comic book for us, Nick thought.

  “Did those new parts come in that you were expecting?” he asked.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Mini-vibration motors.”

  Duncan jerked his flabby chin to the right. “Last aisle, halfway down, on the left. Between the motor-speed adjuster controller drivers and the ultrasonic distance sensors.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said.

  He started to walk away. But Tesla had already hurried off ahead of him, DeMarco and Silas on her heels. (“It’s between the what and the what?” Silas was saying.) His sister would know what to look for. There was no reason Nick couldn’t linger a moment over something that had caught his eye: Curiosity’s control box. Duncan had left it on the counter.

  Without even realizing he was doing it, Nick began reaching out a hand toward it.

  “Do you think maybe I could try—?”

  “No,” Duncan snapped.

  Nick jerked his hand back.

  “The controls are extremely delicate and complicated,” Duncan went on. “You’d probably break something.”

  “Sorry,” Nick muttered, embarrassed.

  Duncan smiled apologetically.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. Dr. Sakurai keeps telling me I need to work on my customer service skills, and I guess she’s right. It’s just that it takes a steady hand and a lot of experience to get Curiosity to do what you want it to. I’m only beginning to get the hang of it myself.”

  Nick glanced down at the control box again. Aside from a small view screen that showed what the robot’s camera was pointed at—a Grow-Your-Own Fungus Farm Starter Kit at the moment—it didn’t look any different from what you’d need to fly a model airplane. And any kid could do that with a little practice, right?

  Still, Nick decided not to say so. Duncan was being sorta-kinda nice for once. Why contradict him?

  And anyway, something else had caught Nick’s eye.

  It was on a low shelf behind the counter.

  A row of robots.

  There were nine of them, all about a foot tall. Eight were generic and clunky—like the angular, lumbering robots from goofy old movies, only with what looked like propellers stuck to their heads.

  The ninth was different, though.

  “Is that a robot pirate?” Nick asked.

  Duncan turned, picked up the little figure Nick had noticed, and placed it on the counter.

  It was wearing a buccaneer’s plumed hat and oversized coat and broad, black belt. It even had a peg leg, though instead of being made of wood, it was metal.

  Duncan waved a hand in front of its flat, silver face, and its eyes began to glow red.

  “Arrrrrr,” the robot said, waving a tiny cutlass it clutched in one of its hands. “Thank ye for setting sail for the Treasure Trove, me hearties!”

  “Th-th-the Treasure Trove?”
Nick spluttered.

  Duncan was gazing admiringly at the robot pirate. He didn’t seem to notice how surprised Nick was.

  “Yeah. It’s one of those antiques places up the street,” he said. “Dr. Sakurai’s been giving out toy robots all over town. As a promotional thing. She thinks people will notice them, ask where they came from, and then maybe come in here. That’s what she and your uncle are doing right now, actually. They’re over at the police station dropping off a robot cop.”

  “Ou-ou-our uncle?”

  It was turning out to be a big day for spluttering.

  “Yeah. Ol’ Romeo,” Duncan said. “He came in here with flowers that looked like they’d just been yanked out of somebody’s yard.”

  Nick cringed.“They weren’t begonias, were they?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not good with flowers.”

  “Sort of big and floppy and reddish pink?”

  “Yeah. That was them. With roots and clumps of dirt still hanging off the bottom.”

  Nick sighed.

  Their uncle’s neighbor Julie had just planted a fresh bed of begonias.

  If Uncle Newt wasn’t careful, the day would come when Julie was planting him in her yard.

  Tesla, Silas, and DeMarco appeared beside Nick, and Tesla plonked three small, plastic-coated packages on the counter.

  Inside were three mini-vibration motors.

  “Cool pirate,” Tesla said to Duncan as he rang up the sale. “Did I hear him say something about the Treasure Trove?”

  “Yeah. Dr. Sakurai offered it to the guy who owns the place, but he wouldn’t take it. Said it would ‘disrupt the store’s old-fashioned, down-home charm.’ Or something like that.” Duncan looked at the total on the register. “That’ll be ten dollars and forty-two cents.”

  Tesla produced a wad of crumpled bills.

  “Nick,” she said, “we need another dollar forty-two.”

  “I don’t have a dollar forty-two. I don’t have a penny.”

  Tesla shot her brother an irritated glare.

  “Hey, when DeMarco got us this morning, it was for an emergency, not a shopping spree,” Nick said. “How would I know we might need … excuse me. What are you doing?”

  Duncan had pulled out his wallet and placed two ones on the little pile of bills on the countertop.