Lab Rats in Space

by Bruno Bouchet

‘That’s impossible,’ he said at the sight below him. Then the more immediate problem of falling from a great height took over. If he could have screamed he would have. He could see Zed running hard and hoped the boy could catch him.

  As Zed ran, he fixed his eyes on XL. Without looking he crashed into someone and they both fell to the floor.

  He tumbled but managed to turn his body and steady his third hand on the ground behind him. He held his front hands up just in time to catch XL.

  He lay for a second catching his breath. The person he had crashed into groaned and tried to move. Zed looked over. It was Miss Tennet.

  She was looking very dazed. Her hair had come out of its bun and was hanging around her face. Her special librarian glasses had been knocked off her head by the collision. She looked quite different with long wet hair and no glasses.

  ‘Wow, you’re beautiful!’ said Zed without thinking.

  ‘I’m soaking!’ she said as she realised that she and everything in the library were drenched in water. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘The librarians have all gone mad, Xanax is approaching. We’ve made a fort out of overturned bookcases.’ Zed filled her in as quickly as possible.

  Miss Tennet stood up. She felt like she’d been fast asleep but had dreamt a very tiring dream. She raised her glasses to her head. As she got close she peered through them and suddenly stopped. Everything came back to her.

  ‘How sinister!’ she declared. ‘Let’s get to safety and then we can share information.’

  In the fort, Jay had woken up.

  ‘I had the weirdest dream. XL was talking to me in this field of chocolate flowers.’

  ‘Never mind that, we’ve got an emergency,’ said Dee.

  ‘The whole of Libris has gone mad, Xanax is just over there…’ Katy started to tell Jay everything that had happened.

  ‘You’ve just fired XL up into the air with an almighty sneeze…’ Dee added.

  ‘…and Emm is that big lump.’

  ‘Oh… where’s Zed?’ asked Jay.

  ‘I’m here!’ Zed climbed over the top of the upturned bookshelves with XL under his arm.

  ‘XL, it’s great to see you!’ Jay was delighted to see the small furry creature. ‘I know you can’t talk, but I had a dream that you could…’

  ‘Look who else I found out there,’ Zed interrupted.

  ‘Miss Tennet!’ the girls cried in unison.

  ‘Wow!’ Dee looked at the librarian without her librarian glasses and with her loose hair. ‘You’re beautiful.’

  Miss Tennet blushed at all the compliments but moved on quickly.

  ‘No time for that,’ she said, ‘I think I know what Xanax has been doing to us.’

  Miss Tennet held up her glasses. The Rats all peered into them and saw myriad reality TV shows being blasted through them.

  ‘If we can block transmissions from all non-Libris sources, the librarians will return to normal.’

  ‘What then?’ asked Katy. ‘Xanax is here in the Great Hall and moving really fast.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that when librarians are functioning at their best, there’s nothing we can’t achieve,’ Miss Tennet smiled.

  They crammed into the shelter. Using one of the book computer interfaces, Miss Tennet began activating the emergency shutdown of all links with other worlds.

  ‘This was installed during the Intergalactic Computer Virus Epidemic of ten years ago. It threatened to destroy all our records. We built in a safety switch so that any senior librarian could shut down all links in an instant and protect our systems. As you can imagine it causes severe disruption. The fine for improper use is very considerable. However, I think we are justified on this occasion… Here!’

  Miss Tennet entered the emergency code and the millions of reality TV broadcasts stopped. The librarians, dazed and exhausted, quickly came to their senses.

  She continued tapping away at the terminal in the back of the book. The sprinkler system shut down and the noise stopped.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Miss Tennet. They climbed out of the shelter to savour the quiet dry air. They could not see the rest of the Great Hall beyond the wall of their fort, but they soon heard the sound of moaning and gasping. The librarians were taking in the terrible scene.

  ‘What about Professor Xanax?’ asked Zed. ‘He could be anywhere.’

  ‘What about me indeed!’

  They looked up to see Xanax standing on the wall of their bookcase fortress. He had been waiting for the water to stop to make his move. He had calculated the sprinklers had made conditions less controllable for him. Now he felt able to assume complete control.

  Zed picked up a book and hurled it as hard as he could at the professor. It hit him in the chest. Xanax lost his balance, tipped and fell backward off the wall.

  Katy, Dee and Jay gave him a high five on each of his three hands.

  ‘Great shot!’ Katy said. Zed was worried. It had been just a bit too easy.

  ‘Not bad for a monkey,’ a voice sneered behind them. They turned round and saw Xanax again.

  ‘But, that’s…’ Dee couldn’t believe he could have moved around so quickly.

  ‘Impossible?’ Xanax finished her sentence with his right eyebrow raised precisely.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ another voice said to the left of them. It was Xanax again. The children’s mouths dropped. There were two Xanaxs.

  ‘Neither do I!’ A third Xanax appeared on top of their newly made walls.

  ‘After all, nothing is impossible,’ a fourth Xanax stepped up.

  ‘I agree!’ Yet another one spoke. Soon they were surrounded by dozens of Xanaxs. Some had their arms folded, others stood with their hands on their hips. All stared down at them with the same icy cold eyes.

  ‘I always said I was my greatest asset,’ said the first Xanax, ‘so what could be better than dozens of me?’

  All the Xanax copies burst out laughing at his own joke. The sound of his cackle echoed through the Great Hall.

  Chapter 22

  Too Much of a Bad Thing

  The children stared in disbelief. One Xanax had been hard enough to escape, but dozens of them would be impossible!

  Zed didn’t waste a second thinking. He hurled another book at a Xanax, who staggered but remained standing. In a flash Zed had leapt up onto the wall of the fort and knocked the Xanax down off the wall. Zed put his fists up and was soon punching in front and behind himself as the Xanaxs moved onto him.

  He glanced out over the Great Hall. For a second he almost gave up, there were not dozens of Xanaxs, there were hundreds of them. He felt better when he saw all the librarians fighting the Xanax copies. Not used to fighting and without the benefit of a combat trainer, they weren’t very good but none of them was giving up. Zed was not going to either.

  The real Xanax saw the huge battle scene too. The librarians fighting had been one of the possible outcomes he had calculated. Librarians were supposed to be peaceful people who hated all forms of violence, but Xanax had anticipated that the intense exposure to reality TV would change them. Such smart people were very angry indeed at having such terrible television forced on them. They were ready to fight.

  ‘Interesting outcome,’ he thought to himself as if it were just another experiment.

  ‘The librarians are all helping,’ shouted Zed to his friends. ‘Come on. We can win!’ Dee climbed up with him and was swinging her hammer at the nearest Xanax.

  Katy and Jay were about to join in. XL desperately wanted to stop them. He was sitting on one of the library’s computer books. Through that he had contacted the library’s life sensors. From those he learned that the Xanax copies were not real people. They were an incredibly advanced holographic projection that looked and felt real. XL knew how to stop them but could not do it himself.

  ‘Pick me up!’ he screamed as loudly as he could into Katy’s and Jay’s heads. It worked, they both leaned over to pick him up without thinking why. Katy was there first.

>   Immediately she realised that the Xanax copies could be holographic projections. Xanax was controlling them through the Typetor.

  ‘We’ve got to find the Typetor!’ Katy shouted. ‘Come on Miss Tennet!’

  ‘I’m working on a plan here!’ Miss Tennet said as she furiously typed into one of the books. ‘The Typetor is no match for you two brave things. Go!’

  Katy and Jay climbed up the fort wall and looked out over the battle scene in the Great Hall.

  ‘There!’ Jay spotted the Typetor. They charged towards it.

  Zed worked his way through the Xanaxs. They weren’t quite as strong or as quick as the Xanax who had tried to strangle him in the lab but they were still strong enough to fight hard. He threw punches in every direction.

  Dee worked hard too but she could not fight behind her back like Zed. As she fought one Xanax, she felt another one grab her from behind. Next thing she knew she was falling down the outside of the fort. She tumbled to the floor. As she rolled, her screwdriver fingers dug into her stomach and nearly stabbed her.

  She ignored the pain and bruises from her fall and was on her feet in seconds, looking around for a Xanax to fight. There wasn’t one but she saw the next best thing. A short spiky-haired head disappeared around one of the bookcases. It was Bumface.

  Dee sprinted after her and leapt forward, pushing her hammer arm out to knock Bumface’s legs. She tripped and fell. Dee jumped on top of her. Bumface’s lips practically disappeared she pursed them so tightly. Her face looked even more like a constipated bum. She squealed with horror as Dee smashed her hammer hand on the ground close to her head.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me!’ Bumface pleaded pathetically.

  Dee had a better idea than hurting her. Sitting on top of Bumface, she smashed the side of a bookcase with her hammer. It splintered so she could tear wooden stakes from it. She jammed one through Bumface’s hair and then hammered it into the ground. She carefully stuck stakes through the edge of Bumface’s clothes and hammered those into the ground too. She worked so quickly Bumface had no idea what was happening to her.

  Dee didn’t feel the hammer hurting like she did before. It was like she was born to hammer. For the first time it felt like part of her. In no time, Bumface was pinned to the floor. She screamed, she wiggled, she squirmed, but she couldn’t budge an inch.

  ‘Don’t move, Bumface!’ Dee grinned. She tickled her under the chin with her screwdriver fingers before jumping up and charging after the nearest Xanax.

  Jay and Katy set to work trapping the Typetor. It hovered in front of them, moving to the left and right to avoid their hands. It jumped to one side and then the other until Katy dashed forward and grabbed one of its mechanical arms as it jumped away from Jay. He moved quickly and took the other one.

  ‘What now?’ asked Jay as they struggled to keep hold of the Typetor.

  Katy looked round.

  ‘I know, run for that bookcase!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Jay. They sprinted towards the end of a bookcase.

  ‘Hold on!’ Katy shouted. They charged past both sides of the bookcase holding the Typetor between them.

  Crunch! The machine slammed into the hard end of the bookcase. Katy and Jay felt a jerk on their arms and then they shot forward. It worked.

  The machine’s mechanical arms had ripped out of its body. The Typetor slid down the bookcase and fell to the ground. Its screen flickered off and it let out a slow sigh as its systems shut down.

  Katy and Jay looked at the machine and then at its arms, which they were still holding.

  ‘Yeah!’ said Katy and they high-fived using the Typetor’s arms.

  With the Typetor no longer working, one by one all the Xanaxs vanished. Across the Great Hall, librarians stood with their fists in the air with nothing to hit. Two librarians who were both trying to punch the same Xanax punched each other as he disappeared.

  On top of the fort wall, Zed stood panting with exhaustion, facing the one remaining Xanax.

  ‘It’s just you and me now, Xanax,’ he growled. He could feel his heart beating faster, the blood pumping through his arms and legs. He was tired and sore but excited. It might be wrong to feel it but part of him loved fighting.

  ‘Come on little monkey, try your best.’ Xanax began to walk slowly around the top of the fort wall to the Lab Rat he hated most of all. He was furious that all his intelligence and all his inventions had been reduced to this, a straight fight. He was determined to win. Zed moved as fast as he could, clambering quickly over the bookcases and desks. He sped round to Xanax faster than he had ever moved in his life.

  He stopped suddenly as Xanax grabbed Zed’s throat in his hand, just like the time in the lab. Xanax lifted him off his feet.

  ‘Time to go home, monkey boy,’ he said calmly, squeezing Zed’s throat.

  ‘Not yet!’ Miss Tennet said from behind him and slammed a book as hard as she could into the back of his head.

  Xanax had been so obsessed with Zed he hadn’t noticed Miss Tennet climb up quietly behind him. He dropped Zed, turned and smacked Miss Tennet’s face with the back of his hand.

  She flew backwards and tumbled down to the ground on the outside of the makeshift fort. Dee rushed up to see if she was all right.

  ‘I’m fine Dee but I’m worried about Zed. Look!’

  They saw Zed, red with fury, hurl himself at Xanax again. It was no good. In seconds Xanax had knocked Zed to the ground inside the fort and leapt down after him.

  Dee and Miss Tennet climbed up the wall. Jay and Katy joined them. Their fort now looked like an arena for a fight between Xanax and Zed. The boy was dazed on the floor. Xanax prowled around him like a lion. Right in the middle of the arena, XL sat helpless. Unable to move he was terrified, more for Zed than for himself. He might not have been touching him but he could feel how much pain Zed was in.

  XL cried out inside, feeling even more pain as Xanax put his foot on Zed’s neck. The professor grabbed Zed’s third arm and began twisting it. Zed felt an agonising pain shoot through him. It felt like Xanax was tearing his arm off.

  ‘Stop!’ screamed Zed. ‘Please stop.’

  ‘If you’re not happy with this extra arm, I’d be happy to remove it!’ Xanax growled.

  Zed’s vision was turning white, the pain grew more and more intense until he felt a crack shudder through his whole body and everything grew dark.

  XL reeled, he felt every pain that Zed felt. His eyes were wet with tears.

  The sound of the snap echoed around. Dee, Katy and Jay all jumped down from the wall and onto Xanax. He was incredibly strong but the three of them pulled him away from Zed.

  ‘Hold him!’ screamed Dee as she swung wildly at Xanax with her hammer. She missed, angry tears blurring her eyes.

  Xanax laughed and suddenly she found her focus. Instead of swinging her hammer hand at him, she lunged at him with her fingernails. They pressed into his throat as he staggered back under the force of the three Lab Rats. He was pinned against the fortress wall with five angry screwdrivers pressing at his throat.

  ‘Just hold him!’ shouted Miss Tennet. ‘Please children. I can help.’

  She jumped down, opened up one of the books and began typing away. It was time to activate the program she had been working on while the children fought.

  Jay, Katy and Dee pressed their faces into Xanax as his shiny head began to go red.

  ‘That’s for Zed,’ Dee pushed her hammer into Xanax’s belly.

  ‘That’s for Emm,’ Katy grabbed a muddy book and smeared ink all over his perfect white lab coat.

  ‘And this is for all of us!’ Jay stuck a hand up his nose, scooped out the gooiest snot he could find, and wiped it all over Xanax’s shiny head.

  ‘Got it!’ Miss Tennet shouted. ‘On my word, let him go… Now!’

  The Rats stood back. The minute they let go, Xanax ran. He shot up the fortress wall like a ferret and ran down the other side.

  ‘Miss Tennet… why?’ Jay moaned. ‘He’s
getting away!’

  ‘Not very far,’ Miss Tennet smiled as she replaced her glasses.

  All the doors to the Great Hall flew open at the same time and automatic book trolleys charged in. They were followed by massive vacuum cleaners, sucking up all the water soaked into the carpet. The walls of the fort began to shake and the bookcases on the ground began to move on their own.

  ‘Down, children, down,’ Miss Tennet dived to the floor as all the books on the floor flew up. The Rats hit the ground too, just missing the flying books, desks and bookcases. As they lay on the ground, automatic trolleys charged up to them, scanned them with a red light and moved on.

  When a trolley approached Bumface, it scanned her and a beep sounded. A giant scoop emerged from under the trolley, slipped itself under her and pulled her up, releasing all Dee’s stakes.

  ‘Arrgh!’ she screamed, as the trolley scooped her off and headed for the doors at lightning speed.

  ‘What’s happening?’ shouted Dee as the noise of bookcases moving, books re-shelving themselves and carpet being sucked dry whirled around them.

  ‘I’ve activated the emergency re-shelving procedure,’ said Miss Tennet. ‘Everything in the Great Hall is being restored to its correctly catalogued place and all foreign objects are removed to the Allocation Pending room. Because you were all registered as library members, you are left alone. I calculated that Xanax and his nasty assistants would not be registered Libris users and so would be picked up as foreign objects. We’ll be done shortly!’

  Within minutes the furious activity stopped and silence descended once more on the Great Hall. The children looked up.

  ‘Wow!’ Jay gasped and earned a ‘shh’ from a passing librarian. The Great Hall was exactly as it had been when they first entered. Row upon row of books were neatly ordered. Desks had spotless surfaces. Calm librarians quietly checked the shelves. Miss Tennet’s hair bun had even been restored to its perfect form—not a hair out of place.

  ‘See children, it always pays to join the library,’ she said smugly. She even smiled with satisfaction when a fine flashed up on her glasses. She had spoken in the Great Hall and so should be fined. All was right.