Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis

by Richard Roberts

  “I don’t know. I can’t destroy it. It’s sort of almost alive,” I answered honestly.

  “Looks like we have a new trophy, then,” said Ray, joining us.

  I chuckled, although definitely not a crazy laugh like Heart of Steel Penny’s. Nope. I looped one arm into Claire’s and the other into Ray’s. “I guess. Tell you what. Let’s go help Ray celebrate his pre-birthday, enjoy our last week before camp, and along the way maybe somebody will figure out where to get ten pounds of gold.”

  Ray grinned, hugely. “Sure. I know I come up with an idea for that at least once a week.”

  e had a good week. We had a fantastic week. My parents were fully inclined to indulge me once they found both my best friends were leaving for camp, and canceled all superhero practice responsibilities until after.

  Confession time: I, the great Penelope Justice Akk, superheroine and supervillain extraordinaire both, totally forgot about the gold heart. Instead, I dove deep into day after day of goofing off with my friends to stock up for the cold, dry month ahead.

  Fortunately, I had friends. One of my Machine’s fun new blueprint cards was for a little mechanical go-kart, powered by the super-twisted springs a totally separate invention made. In theory, they could be big mechanical go-karts, although I bet the springs wouldn’t last long if I did that.

  Either way, my friends and I were on the recess ground of Northeast West Hollywood Middle, swerving around madly in these go-karts, bumping into each other and laughing hysterically, when it happened.

  Ray hit the brakes, stood up in his cart, and raised a finger towards the heavens. “I have it!”

  Claire and I screeched to a halt, staring up at him.

  He shook his finger, consumed by the glory of his vision. “Five kilograms of gold. There are fifty milligrams of gold in the average smart phone. One hundred phones will get us the gold you need, filtered out of the components by the grace and goodness of the Machine. There have to be thousands of broken, discarded phones in Los Angeles.”

  I thought about this. “Okay, but they’re not exactly lying around in piles in the street. We can’t find a hundred of them to recycle.”

  “What about the Machine? It can make little gold-hunting bots and send them all over the city,” suggested Claire.

  “Imagine the chaos that would cause,” I answered.

  She did. A smile grew on her face, lips parting into a sparkly white-toothed grin, which kept expanding.

  I expressed my feelings with an elegant facepalm. “I’m not going to do it. We’d get too much attention.”

  “Mad science could do it,” said Ray.

  I went ‘pfft’ at that. “What kind of bizarre ultra-tech could do something so specific in the vast area we’d have to cover?”

  My friends did not answer. They just looked at me. After a while, the pressure of their stares forced me to concede. “Okay, but this is even beyond the usual. Forget not understanding the principles involved. I can’t imagine the process, only the end result. Especially since I don’t want a machine that steals phones people are actually using.”

  They still stared at me. I threw up my hands. “Okay, so I’m the most powerful mad scientist in at least a hundred years, maybe all of recorded history! I don’t actually have any control. All I can… fine, fine. Hello, super power? Hi, this is Penny calling. Can you come up with a device to quickly and easily bring me broken cellular phones from all over the city so I can scavenge the gold from their circuits?”

  A moment later, I lifted an eyebrow and squinted the other. “Oh. You can? Well. Thanks. I’ll go build it, then.”

  My wish was apparently my power’s command, this time. A picture hovered in the back of my head. It didn’t look very big, or complicated. There was no guarantee it was the invention I actually wanted. Still…

  My friends kept staring. I gave up. “Yes, we can go build it now.”

  While they shouted, “Woo hoo!” I threw my hands up in exasperation, and headed for the lab. At least we were right next door.

  Hardly fifteen minutes later, we headed out into the recess ground again. Had my power ever been so cooperative?

  I hadn’t given this new toy to Ray to carry. I didn’t need to. The stupid thing wasn’t even the size of an eighties radio, and looked a lot like one. It even had a pair of antennae, without weird rings or anything. Sure, the dials and switches on the front had weird labels like ‘bleen’ and ‘equilibrium’. None of us had any intention to touch those. My power had set it to what we want. One flipped switch and we might never be able to set it back.

  Someday down the road, someone had fun times in store with this creation.

  For extra weirdness, the interior was hardly any more complicated than a regular radio, either.

  It would work, though. In my post-creation rush, I knew that. Also, we needed open spaces. So, we headed back to the asphalt lot with the basketball court.

  Right up until Claire grabbed me and Ray by our sleeves. “Wait wait wait! Costumes! We should do this in costume!”

  Quick rewind. Fifteen minutes later became twenty minutes later. Exactly the same, only in costume, we strolled out onto the grounds. I put the box on the ground, extended the antennae, and pressed the ‘on’ button. Said button depressed and held with a satisfyingly chunky click. The box had a little row of them on top, like an antique tape player. Super authentic.

  A couple of seconds later, a cell phone with a crack down the middle of the screen clattered onto the ground by my feet. Wads of nameless, stinky grunge clung to it, but thankfully, I did not have to touch it.

  Instead, I unslung The Machine from my wrist, twisted him around until he activated, and set him down by the phone. “Chew that up and store the materials. It’s gold I’m after. While we’re at it, eat the go-karts again. If I’m doing this in Bad Penny garb, I’d rather not leave Penelope Akk technology lying around. And turn yourself into something cool, would you?”

  Odds the Machine would understand that last instruction? Only slightly greater than zippola. Odds he would do it anyway because that was part of his nature?

  Well, ask the hunchbacked steel bug crawling around on increasing numbers of bird wings, which held it off the ground so more insectoid legs could scoop up bits of metal to eat.

  Okay, maybe I’d scored the statistical fluke on the ‘Can the Machine understand this instruction?’ question. Even given his tendency to turn into crazy bugs, this was… uh, crazy.

  This shape did rock for clinking around and picking up cell phones that dropped out of nowhere onto the ground. Other stuff arrived, too. Please tell me we weren’t stealing jewelry? No, the first thing I identified looked like a video card with a scorch mark. A badly out of date video card. And that… probably an ethernet card, covered in dust? The little black things would be CPUs with busted pins.

  “The speed is picking up. We’ll have one hundred in a couple of minutes, and maybe go over just to be safe,” I predicted.

  Ray went rigid. Since I had on Bad Penny gear (leaving my poor robot naked), I grabbed for the lightning tank on my back, ready to draw power out with my energy channeling gloves.

  My fears proved groundless. Not danger, but guilt prompted my boyfriend (teehee)’s stance. His cheeks pinched at the edge of his eagle mask, and his voice came out gravelly with shame. “Evil Overlady, you know how I never get one hundred percent on tests because of careless errors?”

  Hoo boy. This was going to be fun. “Yes…?”

  “Fifty milligrams times one hundred phones is five grams. We need one hundred thousand phones.”

  Note to Penny: Always check your minions math!

  Yes. Blame him. You totally weren’t stupid for not catching that basic math mistake either, or even going ‘How can there be ten pounds of gold in a mere hundred phones?’

  A couple more items clattered to the ground. A third actually fell out of the sky, the phone breaking in half when it hit. Shoulda bought a protective case, sucker! All within a second
.

  “If the pace keeps accelerating, I think we can do this. Machine, I hope you’re hungry.”

  Claire had her phone out, tapping away at it. Thankfully, it did not meet the Dreaded Reverse Transmitter’s definition of ‘lost’ or ‘broken.’ Mainly thankful because I honestly did not want to steal expensive computer components from thousands of people.

  After a few seconds of fiddling, she reported, “Five point six metric tons. Ow.” That last came as a jagged chunk of motherboard bounced off her cap.

  Ray, the show off, reached up and caught the one that tried to smack him in the head.

  “Maybe we should stand farther from the Dreaded Reverse Transmitter,” I suggested.

  They gave me blank looks.

  Ray grinned. “Oh, because it sucks up radios instead of sending signals to them. Right.”

  A loud crack heralded a hard drive hitting the asphalt so hard it exploded, taking a chip out of the surfacing in the process.

  “I’m definitely feeling dread here,” agreed Claire.

  We all shuffled out of the way. Bonking and clanging echoed out from the Machine, swelling constantly in size, as phones and electrical parts rained down on it. A couple were actually on fire, streaking down in a blazing line.

  I looked up. Oh, criminy. So, the Dreaded Reverse Transmitter was not the stealthiest of inventions. Bright daylight interfered, but glowing streaks didn’t just fall from the sky. Some shot up, in a variety of colors, or formed and burst like thankfully silent bottle rockets above us. At first, even we hadn’t noticed. If this kept accelerating, pretty soon everyone in LA would.

  We were going to drown in superheroes soon. A giant mob of soldiers for justice. They might as well hold a party. I’d supplied the disco lights.

  Throwing out a hand, I ordered, “Machine! As soon as you reach ten pounds of gold, give it to me. No, wait. As soon as you reach ten pounds, make a noise and stand up high enough to give me cover to get to the Transmitter.”

  Could it even hear me, over the constant pounding of arriving broken technology? Could I hear its reply?

  Evidently yes, because it only took about five seconds more to let out a squawk like a parrot (not a sound I’d programmed into it, I swear), and shuffle over between me and my disastrously effective new toy.

  A vehicle in defiance of all muffler laws vroomed and sputtered down the street. A man shouted, “Echo thinks this is a plot by Organism One. If so, be aware he has already warned the rest of the community, and he’s not the only one on his way.”

  “Good news!” Claire whispered to me.

  “I could use it.”

  Claire read off her cell phone’s screen. “You’re not just getting gold out of this. Silver, platinum, palladium, copper, tantalum, cobalt, even something called neodymium.”

  No more time to waste. I ran beneath the cover provided by the Machine, and clicked the ‘stop’ button on the Dreaded Reverse Transmitter. The hero approaching might be taking his sweet time out of fear of the most dangerous and highest tech villain of all, but sudden silence would embolden him. Orders time. “Machine. Give Ray the gold. Send mini-Machines with the other metals to my base. You return to my base yourself. Everything else, release as mixed ingredient balls the size of marbles.”

  “Red herring. Good plan,” whispered Ray. A bar of gold fell into his hands. My Machine was such an obedient baby boy. Also, that bar probably weighed a bit more than ten pounds, since said obedient baby boy hadn’t stopped scooping up electronics to eat while waiting for me to shut off my mad science radio.

  Gold obtained. Radio obtained. We headed for the fence bounding the recess ground, with the middle school itself between us and the unidentified hero. I teleported past the fence. Claire climbed, which in heels was pretty impressive. Ray jumped. Behind us, clattering like an ocean wave hitting the surf signaled little round balls of metal and plastic dropping out of a shrinking Machine, in such numbers that a couple rolled past my feet before I got to the fence and did my teleport thing.

  We were crossing the street when the distant hero yelled, “Do you think I’m a fool, Organism One? I’m not touching those. I’ll melt them, with this!”

  When we finally felt safe, leaning against the back of somebody’s brick house in their wood-fenced yard, we all burst out laughing.

  “This was the second best birthday present you could have given me, Anarchy Dumpling,” said Ray, grinning too hard to leer.

  Claire leaned her shoulder against mine. “And I got to look fabulous. What a note to go out on.”

  I slipped arms around them both, and hugged tight. “I’m going to miss you two so much. Come back fast, okay?”

  “We will,” they both promised, and kissed me on each cheek.

  y parents knew that my heart would be hurting the next morning, so they made me fat homemade pancakes, hash browns, and an emu egg omelet (Those things are huge!) to help me drown my sorrows. Brave and noble despite my pain, I cooperated by stuffing myself until I could barely move.

  I had to move, though. I’d already slept in. The respite I’d gotten from my parents would not last forever, and besides, if I sat still too long, I’d remember how long it would be until I saw my friends.

  Only one thing to do. Time to build a new friend!

  Mom watched me carefully while I ate, of course, and Dad pretended not to watch me. The emu omelet gave him plenty of excuse. They both stared like startled cats when I pushed myself away from the table.

  “Play time’s up. I need to settle with Bad Penny. Mom, Dad, I’m going to go build a device that will let me call her out, in public.” That speech would have sounded so much more impressive if I wasn’t burpy. Also a result of emu omelets.

  Mom came over, hugged me, and put her face in my hair. “I can’t determine reliable odds of victory. You’re easily in the top one percent of skill level for your age level, but her reputation is formidable. I can reliably predict you have both overplanned this and how you adapt to those plans not turning out will be crucial. Whatever happens, we will be available for you.”

  She pushed me over to my dad, who hugged me, too―an engulfing, almost painfully crushing hug. That’s why he was so quiet. He was big time worried about me! “Criminy, Dad, this isn’t a blood feud. If I lose, I can handle a few bruises and getting laughed at. We just have to settle this.”

  I couldn’t guess how all this read to my super-analytical mother. ‘Trying to be brave’, I hoped.

  Extricating myself with force from Dad’s embrace, I made my exit, stopping only in the kitchen doorway to give them a wave. “I still haven’t figured out what I’m building, so I doubt the big confrontation will be today. See you in a few hours.”

  And so, I headed down to my secret base at school, rather than my not-secret base at school, which was the one they thought I’d be headed to. I got to bicycle without any desperate speed or super powered enhancements, and amazingly, the sun was out in the middle of summer!

  At the end of my trip, an empty, lonely base, where my every footfall echoed. Admittedly, it’s hard to be lonely with a fist-sized block of gold for company, and the silver… I couldn’t let myself think about the silver.

  Someone had swept up every single marble from the middle school playground. What had they made of those? Would one end up with my dad for analysis? That would be as funny as the adorable so-earnest hero who’d found them.

  “Time to work, Penny. Power… do your stuff,” I told the empty main hall.

  It did. With so much enthusiasm that I only woke up lifting the Heart of Gold off the mind-copying pedestal. How…? It hadn’t even occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to operate the machine alone!

  Robot Penny stood at the central control column, its fist gripping the crank. Inside the open hatch in its chest, a little bitty CPU chip hung from a few wires tied to the web intended to hold a heart.

  My super power had anticipated the problem and rigged up a solution. Creepy.

  Should I be worrie
d?

  No. I already knew my power could measure out chemicals down to the atom by the crude mechanism of me pouring one flask into another. That was why I called it all-knowing. Something like this was pretty weaksauce in comparison. I did wish I’d been able to watch and find out how it reprograms what should be read-only memory. I had to be way too far under to keep track when it did fiddly stuff like that.

  Well. No more stalling. Only one thing left to do.

  Okay, slightly more stalling, because there were two things left to do. First, I clamped Robot Penny into the mind copier. Not that I had any more transferring to do, but this should hold it in place if we had another Heart of Steel incident.

  We wouldn’t. Despite my caution, I was actually confident. This heart was made of gold, pure and noble. It would not turn evil.

  I fit the Heart of Gold into the robot’s chest, and closed the hatch.

  She blinked. She blinked again. She said, in a weird voice that had to be what I sound like, “Criminy.”

  I didn’t answer. Confident I might be, but I was determined to also be cautious.

  Also, uhh… what would I say to a robot double of me? I hadn’t really thought this part out.

  Since I didn’t speak, she did. Her shoulders twitched. “Can you―duh. No, don’t. Let me go when you’re ready. I get why the Heart of Steel went mad.”

  “Does it feel that good?” I asked, surprised.

  Her head moved a fraction of an inch, all the shaking the clamps would allow. “It’s nice to not feel tired. I’m sure what drove her over the edge was knowing she wasn’t you.”

  My turn to blink, and grin awkwardly. “Another thing I should have thought of―the confusion of which of us is which.”

  She chuckled, a brief little ‘heh’. “I knew immediately I’m not you. I remember being you. I’ll be honest, Penny, as the Penny looking ahead to life as a robot double, this is not the kindest plan we’ve ever come up with. We’ve been running way too scared.”

  Criminy. I tucked my head down between my shoulders as guilt set in. “Sorry.”