He tried to track down the Halls of Universal Justice. It didn’t show up either.
“I bet it has an invisibility shield,” I said.
His eyes bulged with wonder when I described the Pollendoozees and the crystalline judge. It was fun hanging out with Bobby. It reminded me of the old days, when we’d built a tree fort together deep in the heart of the woods.
He pressed another button on the console. “Look what I found on Intergalactic YouTube.”
“There’s an Intergalactic YouTube?” I asked.
“Of course there is,” he said.
Princess Petulance flashed across the floor screen.
“She must have her own Web cam,” Bobby said. “She’s constantly posting stuff.”
In the video clip she was parading through a palace, completely ignoring the fact that pillars were crumbling and tapestries on the wall were on fire and someone was hurling a rock through a stained-glass window. None of that bothered the princess in the least.
Her mom and dad rushed over to her.
“Young lady, where do you think you’re going?” hissed the queen.
“Disco dancing. There’s a rave. The Witches of Never-ending Misery are throwing it. Lousy dancers get dumped into their cauldron. It’s amazing.”
“You can’t go disco dancing,” insisted the queen.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re under attack!” bellowed the king, who was clutching a laser gun awkwardly in his purple hands, trying to figure out how it worked.
“The rebels want to chop off our heads,” shrieked the queen.
“They blame us for draining our planet of all its natural resources,” said the king.
“There’s nothing I hate more than rebel scum who believe in truth and justice,” said the princess. “Especially when they keep me from going to a rave.”
Her tattoo pirate fired a little cannon out the window.
“Good shot,” said the princess.
The pirate saluted her.
The screen went blank.
“She wants to turn Central Park into a mall, Bobby,” I told him. “That means good-bye to the Sheep Meadow and Strawberry Fields.”
“Well, it won’t be happening,” Bobby said. “’Cuz we’re not getting evicted.”
“What if she tries to sabotage us?”
“I’m not scared of her.”
“You think we’ll succeed in our quest?” I asked.
“Of course we will,” Bobby said.
Our quest. That was the first time I ever thought of it as our quest, not my quest. That was a mature way of looking at it. That was highly unusual for me, Giles.
Following Bobby into the living room, I wondered how many mature thoughts you had to have each day in order to be considered an adult. Ten? Fifteen? What’s the cutoff for being an adult? Could you still do stupid kid stuff as long as you met your quota of mature thoughts each day?
“I hope you guys are ready,” Tula said. “The test starts in seven hours.”
“You’re darn right we’re ready,” Toshi said. “Aren’t we, Giles?”
“Heck, yeah,” I said. “Aren’t we, Bobby?”
“Absolutely,” my brother said. “What about you, Big Daddy? Are you ready?”
“Big Daddy is always ready,” replied the android.
“Isn’t someone going to ask me if I’m ready?” asked Stanley.
“Are you ready, Stanley?” Toshi said.
“I’ll spit quarters at Princess Petulance if she tries to interfere,” said the parking meter.
The only unenthusiastic member of our team was Nikki. She looked miserable.
“What’s wrong, Nikki?” I said.
“I don’t have a job,” Nikki said. “Everyone has something cool to do except me.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Being a little girl sucks.”
“Little girls rock,” Tula said. “That’s why I’m giving you the most important job of all.”
“You are?” Nikki said.
Tula opened her briefcase and handed a set of papers to Nikki. “Can you read this sheet music, Nikki?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“It’s a violin solo for a very special symphony called The Music of the Spheres.”
“Never heard of it,” Nikki said glumly.
“It’s a symphony of magic,” Tula said.
Nikki’s mouth dropped wide-open. “Magic?”
“Nikki, an ordinary symphony has a beginning and an end. The Music of the Spheres is eternal.”
“An eternal symphony? Don’t the musicians ever get tired?” Nikki asked.
“Never,” Tula said. “It is the sound of peace and harmony in its purest form. Other noises try to drown it out. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes the musicians need a little help. You’ve been chosen to play a solo, Nikki.” Tula put her sky blue arm around the six-year-old. “Tonight at midnight it will begin. It will last for seven minutes. You will repeat the solo at the beginning of every hour for twenty-four hours, until the test ends on Sunday at midnight. The melody of universal peace will restore harmony between humankind and Planet Earth.”
A starfish cloudfish balanced itself on the tip of Nikki’s violin bow like a star on a Christmas tree.
“You will be hooked up to a microphone, Nikki,” Tula said. “When the Eco-droids go through the city cleaning, each one will be equipped with an iPod. They’ll be listening to your solo. They need your music as much as they require sunlight and lemonade. They won’t accomplish anything without the enchanting sound of your violin.”
Big Daddy whipped out his iPod. “Big Daddy listens only to you, Nikki,” the android promised. “He could care less about Lady GaGa.”
“Without The Music of the Spheres this city cannot be transformed,” Tula said. “It’s the final ingredient, Nikki. You are the final ingredient.”
“I’m so important!” Nikki declared.
“Nikki, you’ll be playing alongside the largest orchestra in the cosmos,” Tula said. “It is the cosmos.”
“Are you saying the cosmos is one giant orchestra, Tula?” Toshi asked.
“Everything is music,” she said, tapping her fingers on her briefcase. “Planets, stars, comets, asteroids…”
“This is better than traffic jam!” Nikki shouted. She popped a little red truck in her mouth. “Almost.” She ran off with the sheet music. “I’d better start practicing right now.” She stopped in the doorway and turned around. “Tula, why’d you wait so long to give it to me?”
“I apologize, Nikki. I’ve been waiting for that sheet music since Wednesday. The judge finally approved it.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “My little sister can memorize a solo like that in half an hour. She’s a prodigy.”
Bobby stood up. He had the most serious expression I’ve ever seen on his face. “Everything is in place. We’re ready to clean Manhattan.”
I got up and entered Grandma’s bedroom quietly. I held her hand for a long time. I must’ve dozed off for a bit because Tula was tapping me on the shoulder and whispering, “Giles, it’s eleven forty-five. The test begins in fifteen minutes.”
I kissed Grandma gently on the cheek and whispered, “Wish us luck, Grandma.” I straightened her blanket. I tucked her in. “When you wake up, this city will look so different you won’t even recognize it.”
I met up with Toshi in the kitchen. We shrank down and climbed in our flyplanes. I slipped on my helmet and goggles.
Are you ready, DubDub?
I’m ready, Giles!
The clock struck twelve.
Tula thundered, “LET THE TEST BEGIN!”
Toshi and I gave each other the thumbs-up sign. We soared out the window into the night, followed by an army of cloudfish.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NEW YORK IN JULY, you gotta have AC. I had it blasting while I kicked back in the cockpit, calm and cool and comfortable, doing laser removal of swear words spray-painted on walls and doors. In half an hour I cleaned off all
the graffiti on the Upper West Side while the cloudfish did their thing, creating patches of fog that fooled thousands of people.
Toshi and I were graffiti hunters roaming the streets of Spanish Harlem, zeroing in on walls and doors that had been tagged.
“Hey, Giles,” Toshi said over my intercom at one in the morning, “not only do we get to save the world, we get to stay up all night!”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not even tired.”
“Neither am I.”
When you embark on a quest, you get a burst of energy that never stops bursting.
Toshi called his flyplane Superfly. “Hey, Giles,” he said, “I bet Superfly can clean One Hundred Tenth Street faster than DubDub can clean Riverside Drive.”
“It’s a bet,” I said.
While I zapped graffiti off a row of brownstones, Bobby kept me up-to-date on how the rest of the cleaning process was going, feeding me images that streamed across the monitor mounted above my control panel.
Androids were reproducing all over town, in alleys and doorways, on subway platforms, multiplying in the mist. By four in the morning one thousand androids, resembling both men and women, were cleaning the streets of Manhattan. Some were black, some white, others looked Pakistani, Japanese. Some were tall, others puny like Big Daddy. They all wore blue overalls with big red letters printed on back. The letters varied from droid to droid, depending on what neighborhood they were assigned to. Some said, READY, WILLING & ABLE or VILLAGE CLEANING ALLIANCE or EAST MIDTOWN CLEAN PATROL or MANHATTAN GLEAM TEAM.
They blew my mind, these creatures made out of crumpled soda cans, these heroes made out of hot-dog wrappers marching through Hell’s Kitchen.
The trash that littered the sidewalks wasn’t trash talking anymore. It was terrified.
Bobby sent me a video clip of an android handing a diamond ring to a homeless man. “I found this. You can have it.”
“Thanks, dude.” The homeless man darted into an all-night pawnshop.
I landed my flyplane on the shoulder of an android picking up a Coke bottle on Amsterdam Avenue.
“Keep up the good work,” I said over my loudspeaker.
He didn’t hear me. He was listening on his iPod to Nikki playing her violin solo back in her bedroom. He was captivated by The Music of the Spheres.
Using his right hip, he nudged a garbage can set on rollers across the street. Passersby didn’t realize that the garbage can was connected to his body. Whenever he tossed a bottle or can or newspaper into it, the recyclables got sucked through a hose and deposited directly into the android. There was a flap on his right hip, which allowed him to remove the hose and seem perfectly normal while strolling alongside other pedestrians.
Toshi and I planted the mini-lemonade carts around the island and unshrank them. Androids programmed to be vendors wheeled their carts off, chanting, “Lemonade for sale. Lemonade for sale.”
The androids that were cleaning took a lemonade break every hour.
Once we reached our goal of one thousand androids, they would stop reproducing. Instead, all the recyclables they collected would be used to produce trees. Glass and plastic are made out of petroleum. Petroleum is energy. The lemonade and The Music of the Spheres were also forms of energy. All that energy combined would help fuel the transformation of discarded paper back into shimmering leaves and long, flowing branches.
Each android had to collect one thousand pounds of recyclables in order to produce a tree. Bobby kept track of their numbers back at command and control. Lucky he was doing that because my mind was on the girl with lovely little sky fingers.
As soon we save the planet, I’m asking Tula out on a date, DubDub.
That sounds like a good strategy, Giles.
Bobby’s voice crackled in my ear while I soared over Times Square. “We’ve got a problem, Giles.”
“What’s up?” I said.
“Big Daddy’s in big trouble. He’s in a Mob bar down in Little Italy.”
“What’s Big Daddy doing in a Mob bar?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But go check it out.”
I found the android in a seedy pool hall, standing toe to toe with a three-hundred-pound mobster who was also named Big Daddy.
“Who’s this, Big Daddy?” asked a gangster who had a scar running down his face.
“Some idiot,” muttered the giant mobster.
The android glared up at the giant. “How dare you call yourself Big Daddy?”
“Dude, I’d shut up if I were you,” the giant grunted, chalking a pool cue.
I sat in my flyplane on top of the eight ball, undetected.
“I am the one and only Big Daddy,” proclaimed the android in a squeaky voice.
All the mobsters burst out laughing.
“You’re Big Daddy?” said Scar Man. “Buddy, you’re four feet tall.”
The android didn’t back down. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a fake Big Daddy.”
The room fell silent.
“He just called Big Daddy a fake,” said Scar Man. “Prepare to die.”
The giant snarled. The other gangsters circled the android, whipping out switchblades and brass knuckles.
The giant swung his pool cue. In an instant I shrunk the Eco-droid down. The giant’s pool cue whacked Scar Man on the side the head. Blood dripping onto his leather vest, Scar Man grabbed a platter of chicken wings off the bar and shoved them in the giant’s face. A brawl erupted. I stuffed the android into the copilot’s seat of my flyplane and darted out the window, colliding with a buffalo wing along the way.
“Oh, great,” I said. “Now I’ve got buffalo wing sauce all over my flyplane. Thank’s a lot, Big Daddy.”
“I’m calling the police,” the droid muttered. “How many years do you get if you’re a fake Big Daddy? It better be at least fifty. Without parole.”
“I’m supposed to be a superhero. Superheroes don’t smell like chicken wings.”
“You’ll be the first,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with being original.”
“There’s nothing wrong with obeying the rules either,” I said. “You’re supposed to be cleaning the streets of Manhattan.”
“Big Daddy doesn’t clean,” insisted the android. “Big Daddy is a progenitor.”
“A progeni-what?”
“Progenitor. He gives birth to droids. Have you ever heard of a queen bee, Giles?”
“Of course I’ve heard of a queen bee, you stupid droid.”
“The queen bee doesn’t do anything. She just sits around all day while the other bees work their butts off. Big Daddy’s the same way.” The android glowed haughtily. “I’m like a queen bee. But I’m Big Daddy.”
“I’m telling Tula.”
“Go right ahead.”
I got ahold of Tula. Her cotton candy hair hardly fit on my monitor.
“Big Daddy said he doesn’t clean, Tula.”
“That’s correct, Giles. Big Daddy will not turn into a tree like the other androids. Instead, he will move on to other cities around your planet and give birth to new armies of Eco-droids.”
“Wait. Hold on a second. Did you say the Eco-droids are going to turn into trees?”
“You didn’t know that?” she said.
“Well … no. I mean I knew they had environmental-reversal software that could turn paper back into trees. But I had no idea they’d actually turn into trees. I mean the droids themselves. That’s like the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“They will become a permanent part of the city, Giles. An enduring reminder of all your species can do when it tries.”
“Will they have to be watered with lemonade? They need it now, don’t they?”
“Yes, but once they turn into trees they will only require water, just like normal trees.”
“Call me an idiot, but I still don’t understand how they’ll turn into trees.”
“The heart of every android is a greenhouse,” Tula said. “Show Giles, Big Daddy.”
> Big Daddy opened himself up. His torso parted like the doors of a china cabinet. Down where human intestines would be, a platinum engine threw off waves of shimmering light. It was connected to a tube running up to his throat. This is where the lemonade went. Any glass and plastic that got sucked into his body also ended up here in the Energy Center, my lawyer explained.
“Do you see the seed, Giles?” Tula said. “All the paper gets shrunken down and stored inside it.”
Big Daddy’s heart, a glass greenhouse, contained a seed in the center, sitting on a golden pedestal.
“That tiny seed can store up to one thousand pounds of paper,” Tula said. “Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, all the seeds in all the droids will pop like popcorn kernels. Thanks to the Energy Center. Presto, you’ll have five million leaves.”
“But my seed won’t pop,” said the pain-in-the-butt android.
“I wish you’d turn into a tree right now,” I said. “Then you’d stop bothering me.”
“Don’t forget, Giles,” Tula said. “Everything started with Big Daddy. You wouldn’t have an army of Eco-droids if it wasn’t for him.”
“That’s right,” said the android.
“OK, OK,” I said. “Now what am I supposed to do with him, Tula? I have to get back to work.”
“Let him wander around the city. Big Daddy, if you don’t behave I’ll tell Dr. Sprinkles. She’ll reduce your personality.”
“I don’t want to be boring!” cried the android.
“Then be a good droid,” Tula said.
“When are you coming back to Earth, Tula?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m at the hospital right now. We’ve got a major crisis going on.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’m representing a planet called Nawdry in the Salvakian Galaxy. A neighboring planet has been dumping refuse on Nawdry’s moon. We’re finally about to go to trial but one of the jurors just got rushed to ER. One of his heads had a brain aneurysm.”
“How many heads does he have?” I asked.
“Three.”
“A three-headed juror?” I said.
“We have to decide if he’s still fit to be a juror with only two heads. There’s always something to deal with. Bye, Giles. Good luck.”
“I miss you,” I said.
You Can't Have My Planet Page 13
