Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage

by Bob Pflugfelder

  He looked down at the control pad in his hands.

  “No!” said Tesla.

  “Don’t!” said Dr. Sakurai.

  “Flerbel jerz!” said DeMarco, who wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say but felt like he should say something. He’d never had to come up with last words before, and now that he actually needed some he’d messed them up.

  “Flerbel jerz?” said a puzzled Duncan.

  Then he shrugged and moved his finger toward the big red button.

  Tap tap tap.

  Duncan froze.

  He was so close to victory. So close to revenge. So close to escape.

  And now someone was knocking on the door a half step behind him.

  Whoever it was, they rapped again on the glass. Hard.

  “Stay right there,” Duncan told Tesla, Dr. Sakurai, and DeMarco.

  He turned to peek around the SORRY! WE’RE CLOSED sign.

  Standing outside, a metallic hand raised to knock on the door again, was Curiosity the robot.

  “Well,” Duncan said, “I didn’t expect that.”

  Curiosity crashed its hand through the glass and grabbed Duncan’s control pad. Duncan managed to keep a hold on it, though, and he and the robot began playing tug-of-war through the doorframe.

  “Run!” someone yelled.

  Duncan looked over his shoulder and saw the girl’s brother, Dick or Rick or Mick, charge out of the back room with the big kid whose dad owned the comic book shop.

  Dick/Rick/Mick was holding Curiosity’s controls.

  The big kid was holding a length of white pipe as if it were a rocket launcher.

  The two other kids and Dr. Sakurai were making a break for it, darting past the robots all around them.

  “Nooooooo!” Duncan howled. “You’re not getting away!”

  He wrenched the control pad away from Curiosity and stabbed a finger at the self-destruct button.

  Click, went the control pad.

  Nick opened his eyes.

  Without meaning to, he’d squeezed them shut when he’d seen Duncan push the button on the control pad.

  Only the robot army didn’t blow up. Didn’t send flames and smoke and metal and plastic spewing through the store. Didn’t do anything, actually, but start talking.

  “Arrrrrr! Thank ye for setting sail for the Treasure Trove, me hearties!” said the robot pirate.

  “Woof woof! It’s a dog’s life at Poochie Pizzazz!” said the robot dog.

  “Crime does not pay, evildoer!” said the robot superhero.

  “Dang,” said Duncan. “Hit the wrong button.”

  Dr. Sakurai and Tesla and DeMarco had escaped up the store aisles, but they weren’t out of danger yet.

  Duncan fiddled with the controls, and his robots took off after Dr. Sakurai and the kids, some zipping along the ground, others whooshing through the air.

  “Now, Silas!” Nick shouted.

  He jammed forward the throttle toggles on Curiosity’s control pad, and the robot smashed through the rest of the glass door and crashed into Duncan’s back.

  Silas, meanwhile, was pumping hard on the super soaker, sending jets of water spraying over one robot after another.

  The robot superhero began to sizzle.

  The robot cop threw off sparks.

  The robot chef simply stopped in its tracks.

  The robot pirate fell over with an “Arrrrrrrrrrr.”

  The hover-bots crackled and sputtered and nose-dived into display racks and model kits and the floor.

  One final robot—the little metal dog—managed to corner Tesla and Dr. Sakurai against a collection of model railroad switches and bridges. Silas turned the super soaker on it, but all that came out was a thin trickle and a fine, fizzy mist.

  The super soaker was out of water.

  “Finally!” Duncan crowed, fighting off Curiosity with one hand while holding up his control pad with the other. “It’s showtime!”

  He managed to push the red button with his thumb.

  The robo-dog shook and hissed and smoldered.

  A wisp of white smoke emerged from its butt, and then it went still.

  Even just a trickle and a mist from the super soaker had been enough to fry the robot’s circuits.

  “Awwww, man,” Duncan moaned. “What the—?”

  “The water’s got sodium chloride in it,” Nick explained. “From a chemistry set I found in the back room.”

  “You don’t want to know where we got the water,” Silas said. Then he added in a stage whisper: “The toilet.”

  “So you made a saline solution to short out the robots,” said Tesla. “Nice one, Nick!”

  Nick grinned. “Thanks.”

  “Hey! I did all the shooting!” Silas said.

  Duncan threw his control pad at him.

  “Keep congratulating yourselves, suckers!” he spat as Silas ducked aside. “I’m still getting away with your precious comic book!”

  He whirled around and started for what was left of the front door—just as Sgt. Feiffer stepped through it.

  “Uhhh … hi, kids,” the sergeant said, surveying the broken glass and salty puddles and ruined robots strewn all around him. “Angela said you needed to see me about something?”

  It took a little time to sort things out. Everyone had to walk down the block to Half Moon Bay police headquarters (because Sgt. Feiffer’s little scooter-cart could carry only one person at a time) and answer a lot of questions.

  Fortunately, Duncan was still in a talkative mood, and he admitted everything from his seat on the lone bunk in the police station’s teeny holding cell.

  “Apparently, the surveillance video he shot with his robots is on the computer in his apartment,” Sgt. Feiffer told the kids. “He says everything he stole is there, too.”

  “Including Stupefying #6?” Silas asked.

  Sgt. Feiffer nodded. “I’ll be picking everything up as soon as I can get a search warrant. Your dad’ll have his comic book back by the end of the day tomorrow.”

  “Hero Worship, Incorporated is saved!”

  Silas woo-hooed and turned to high-five DeMarco.

  DeMarco managed to put his hand up and smile feebly, but he couldn’t woo-hoo, too.

  “What’s the matter?” Silas asked him. “We solved the mystery and caught the bad guy.”

  “And ended up at the police station waiting for our parents to come get us. For the second time in two weeks,” DeMarco said. “My mom’s not going to let me out of the house till the first day of school.” He looked over at Nick and Tesla, who were sitting beside him in the waiting room. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

  They all shook hands grimly, as if they’d never see one another again. And indeed when DeMarco’s mother and father came to get him, the glares they gave Nick and Tesla said it all.

  DeMarco might have broken more than one bone riding his bike down slides and trying to parachute off roofs with umbrellas. But until he’d met Nick and Tesla, he’d never been mixed up with real-life criminals before. These new kids were trouble.

  DeMarco’s parents hustled him away as if Nick and Tesla were radioactive.

  Silas’s dad, on the other hand, burst in with a grin on his face and his big arms opened wide.

  “Forget Metalman!” he exclaimed as he crushed Nick and Tesla and Silas in a bear hug. “From now on, you guys are my biggest heroes. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” Nick and Tesla wheezed.

  It was unclear if Mr. Kuskie heard them, though, because their faces were smooshed deep into his broad chest at the time.

  Before leaving with his son, Mr. Kuskie told Nick and Tesla their money was no good in his store. They could come in for free comics whenever they wanted.

  “Too bad we don’t like comic books,” Tesla said after he was gone.

  Nick shrugged. “Maybe they’ll grow on us. Free is free.”

  At last, they were alone in the waiting room with Hiroko Sakurai—she’d insisted on staying until al
l the kids had been picked up—and for the tenth time Tesla turned to her and apologized.

  And for the tenth time, Dr. Sakurai said it wasn’t necessary.

  “The robots I gave away were spying on people,” she said. “Of course you were going to think I was up to no good. I’m just glad you caught Duncan before he could destroy the Wonder Hut or sell off Mr. Kuskie’s comic book.” Dr. Sakurai’s expression turned wry and sly. “And I think it’s sweet that you were mad at me for supposedly breaking your uncle’s heart.”

  Tesla squirmed in her seat. Apologies made her uncomfortable enough without dragging that into it.

  “He really does like you,” Nick told Dr. Sakurai. “A lot.”

  Dr. Sakurai nodded.

  “I’d guessed,” she said.

  “Hey, ho!” Uncle Newt bellowed as he burst into the police station. “Who’s up for It’s-Froze-Yo!?”

  For some reason, trouble always seemed to make him hungry.

  Dr. Sakurai stood and started toward him.

  “Sorry, Newt—I need to get back to the Wonder Hut,” she said. “I still have to figure out how I’m going to lock up for the night with no front door. Plus I have a dozen or so wet, dead robots to clean up.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Newt said. “We have a dozen or so wet, dead robots to clean up. I need to get Nick and Tesla home, but I’ll come straight to the store as soon as I can.”

  “And Tez and I can come by tomorrow if there’s still more to do,” Nick added.

  “Yeah—we really ought to help clean the place up,” said Tesla.

  Dr. Sakurai smiled. “Thanks. I’d like that.”

  Like Mr. Kuskie, Dr. Sakurai gave Nick and Tesla hugs—though separately, and not hard enough to crush any ribs—and then said good-night and left.

  “ ‘A dozen or so wet, dead robots’?” Uncle Newt mused. “I don’t know what the heck you two have been up to, but it sounds like fun!”

  “I guess you could call it that,” said Tesla.

  “If you consider being terrorized by exploding robots fun,” muttered Nick.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Uncle Newt. “But that’s another story.” He wrapped his arms around the kids’ shoulders and started guiding them toward the door. “You can tell me yours on the way home.”

  Trouble might have made his uncle hungry, but it made Nick very, very tired. He nearly fell asleep while Tesla explained what had happened.

  When they got to the house, Uncle Newt said simply, “Well, that was quite a day, wasn’t it?” Then he grabbed the last stale bagel off the counter and headed out the door again, bound for the Wonder Hut.

  As Nick stumbled toward the stairs to the bedroom he and Tesla shared, he was mulling over plans for an automatic pigeon-poop scooper. (He felt guilty about the mess they’d made in the Treasure Trove.) His brain was too fuzzy to work out the details, though, and he was practically snoring as he took the first step up the staircase.

  Yet still, worn out as he was, he stopped and turned around when he remembered the nightly rite he’d almost skipped.

  He shuffled off to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and punched up voicemail.

  Suddenly Nick was wide awake.

  “Tez! You’ve got to hear this!”

  “What is it?”

  Nick answered her by pushing some buttons on the phone and then holding it up between them.

  “Message left today, 5:16 p.m.,” a robotic voice droned.

  Nick had turned on the speakerphone.

  “Tesla! Nick!” a woman said. “There’s so much I want to tell you, but there’s no time!”

  Tesla dropped her Pop-Tarts.

  The woman was their mother.

  “Everything’s more … complicated than we led you to believe,” she said. “We sent you to your uncle to keep you safe. But you’re not. The people we were trying to hide you from know where you are. They might even be there already. Whatever you do, don’t trust—”

  There was a burst of crackling static, then a beep.

  The call had been cut off.

  “It’s not fair!” Nick wailed. “Why’d she have to call when we were gone?”

  Tesla had no answers. In fact, all she had were more questions.

  Why did their parents think they were in danger? Who were she and Nick not supposed to trust? Who were the “they” who meant them harm?

  And when would they be coming for Nick and Tesla?

  “It’s her,” Nick said. “She’s the spy.”

  “Who is?” said Tesla.

  She looked around. She and her brother were in their uncle’s backyard about to test-fly the hoop glider they’d been working on that morning. There was only one other person in sight: a fortyish woman crouched over a bed of begonias about forty feet away. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and dirty gardening gloves.

  She didn’t look much like a spy to Tesla.

  “You mean Julie Casserly?” Tesla said.

  Nick nodded.

  “She’s always watching us,” he said. “Always glaring.”

  “Wouldn’t you if you lived next door to Uncle Newt?”

  As if on cue, Julie turned to glower at them.

  “What’s that?” she said, jabbing a trowel at the glider in Tesla’s hands. “A remote-controlled spear?”

  Tesla looked down at the glider. It was just a couple hoops of stiff paper, a small one in front and a larger one behind, connected by a straw.

  “No,” said Tesla.

  “A computerized javelin?” said Julie.

  “No.”

  “A self-shooting arrow?”

  “No.”

  “Some kind of missile?”

  “No. It’s a glider.”

  Julie narrowed her eyes. “And what’s that supposed to do?”

  “Uhh … glide,” said Tesla.

  Julie cocked her head, her lips twisting into a tight, sarcastic smile.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. She pushed herself off her knees and began walking away. “Let me get inside before you set it loose. I don’t want to be here when it ‘glides’ someone into the hospital.”

  The woman stomped around the corner of her house and disappeared.

  “Not very brave for a spy,” Tesla said.

  “Maybe that’s just her cover,” Nick muttered. “Anyway, go ahead. Try the glider.”

  Tesla brought the glider up, pointed it away from Julie’s yard, and launched it with a flick of the wrist. It shot away with surprising speed and flew smoothly over Uncle Newt’s lawn, arcing to the left as it went.

  “Whoa! Look at it go!” said Nick.

  “And go and go and go,” said Tesla.

  She’d expected the glider to fly five yards, tops. Yet even after twenty it was still six feet off the ground and not slowing down. In fact, it was soaring toward some trees on the other side of Uncle Newt’s property, perhaps about to fly out of the yard altogether.

  “Hey, kids!” a cheerful voice called out. “Whatcha up to?”

  It was Uncle Newt’s other neighbor, Mr. Jones, stepping out onto his patio. The paunchy gray-haired man always had a smile and a wave for Nick and Tesla.

  Unfortunately, it was a really bad time for a smile and a wave.

  “Mr. Jones!” Nick cried out. “Duck!”

  “A duck? Where?”

  Mr. Jones gazed up into the sky.

  The glider came swooping through the trees and smacked him in the face.

  Nick and Tesla ran up to the old man as he staggered back into his house.

  “Where did that crazy duck go?” he started to say.

  Then he saw the hoop glider lying in the doorway.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Jones,” Nick said.

  “We had no idea it would fly that far,” said Tesla.

  Mr. Jones rubbed his bulbous (and now red) nose.

  “No harm done,” he said.

  He didn’t sound like he meant it, though, and the smile he gave the
kids when he handed back their glider seemed strained.

  Mr. Jones closed the door on Nick and Tesla, grumbling something about getting an ice pack.

  “Great,” Tesla said as she and her brother trudged away. “The one neighbor who’s nice and we go and throw a paper airplane up his nose.”

  “It was an accident,” Nick said. “And who’s to say Mr. Jones is such a nice guy anyway?”

  “What?”

  Tesla looked over at her brother, thinking he might be joking.

  Nick hadn’t been joking much lately, though. And he never joked about this.

  “It’s him,” Nick said. “He’s the spy.”

  “Mr. Jones? He must be, like, two hundred years old.”

  “Spies get old just like normal people.” Nick threw a suspicious squint over his shoulder. “He’s always watching us. Always smiling.”

  “So now being nice makes someone a suspect?”

  “Maybe. You remember what Mom said in her message. There’s someone here we can’t trust. We have to be careful.”

  “There’s ‘careful’ and then there’s ‘paranoid.’ ”

  A squirrel scampered across the lawn in front of them.

  Tesla pointed at it.

  “Watch out! A spy!”

  “Come on, Tez. I’m not being that bad.”

  A car honked in the distance.

  Tesla cupped a hand to her ear.

  “Hark! A spy!”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. I’m going overboard.”

  Tesla pointed at herself. “Oh, my gosh! Right next to you! Spy!”

  “Geez, Tez—I said I get it.”

  Tesla smiled.

  “Good. I know that message was scary, but there’s nothing to freak out about. I’m sure things aren’t nearly as bad as they sounded. I mean, what kind of spy is going to waste his time on a couple kids?”

  Nick nodded glumly, looking unconvinced.

  Tesla wasn’t convinced herself, but she wasn’t going to show it.

  “Now let’s get a new straw for the glider and try it again,” she said. “And no more obsessing about spies, all right?”

  “All right,” Nick sighed.

  He and Tesla crossed the patio and entered the back door.

  A huge man in a trench coat and fedora was waiting for them in Uncle Newt’s kitchen. He was holding something long and shiny and sharp in his right hand.