Revenge of the EngiNerds Read online

  “Mikaela Harrington,” she says.

  “—or what you’re doing here—”

  “I came to talk about the extraterrestrial activity.”

  “—but . . .”

  My sentence goes unfinished, and I’m left gaping at the girl for several seconds.

  “What was that?” I eventually manage.

  “The aliens,” Mikaela says. “The ones in our town.”

  7.

  ALIENS?

  In our town?

  This girl is even kookier than I thought.

  “Are you telling me you haven’t noticed?” she asks me.

  Before I can answer, she turns to face the rest of the guys.

  One by one, they all drop their eyes and start fidgeting with their notebooks and binders. That’s because unless you count moms and sisters, the EngiNerds don’t have much experience interacting with members of the opposite sex—especially not ones who waltz in on us totally unawares, oozing certainty and self-confidence.

  “None of you?” Mikaela says.

  “No,” I tell her, bringing her attention back to me. “We haven’t noticed any aliens.”

  Mikaela frowns.

  “I thought you guys were nerds.”

  “Not those kind of nerds,” I tell her. “We’re into science. Not science fiction.”

  “This isn’t fiction,” Mikaela says. Then she starts slapping her fingers into her palm, listing off all of this supposed evidence of extraterrestrial activity. “First there was the blackout. Then there was the satellite. And after that the Food-Plus—the place got totally emptied out.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We know about all that. But none of it was caused by aliens.”

  Mikaela grins.

  “Then what caused it?”

  I open my mouth to answer.

  But stop myself just in time.

  Because I don’t need to tell Mikaela about the missing bot.

  All I need to tell her is that the rest of the guys and I are busy, and aren’t interested in hearing about her silly ideas.

  And I’m about to—but then I see that she’s staring at something across the room, her eyes lit up like she just found what she came here looking for.

  I follow her gaze . . .

  . . . and find Dan.

  8.

  DAN AND MIKAELA LOCK EYES for what feels like an hour.

  It just.

  Doesn’t.

  End.

  And I know what she’s doing:

  Daring him to ask her a question, to start a conversation about extraterrestrial activity.

  I step between the two of them before he can get tricked into doing it.

  “Look,” I tell Mikaela, “we’re busy. Really busy.”

  I motion toward the door, letting her know that it’s time for her to use it and get lost.

  She doesn’t.

  She narrows her eyes and looks at me long and hard. Then she nods, like something’s just clicked in her head.

  I don’t think it’s what I want to have click in there, though—that not a single one of us is interested in her aliens-in-our-town mumbo jumbo, and that she need not come back to bother us ever again.

  But before I can do or say anything else to help get the message across, Mikaela finally does head for the door. She exits with the same self-assured stride she entered with, hooking her toe on the door’s edge and swinging it shut behind her.

  “What a weirdo,” I say, chuckling as I turn back to the guys.

  None of them laugh along with me.

  “What a weirdo,” I repeat a little more emphatically.

  The guys smile and nod.

  Except for Dan.

  He’s staring at the closed door.

  His face is blank.

  He’s not even blinking.

  But he must feel my eyes on him.

  Because eventually he turns to me.

  And at last he smiles.

  It’s small, though, and I can tell it’s forced.

  9.

  AT THE END OF THE day, I almost don’t even stop by my locker. Jerry’s got a family thing he has to go to, and John Henry Knox made it pretty clear at lunch how he felt about my continuing to search for the missing bot. I’m nervous none of the other guys will be there waiting for me. Not even Dan. And that . . .

  Well, I just don’t know if I can take it.

  But I go, refusing to believe the worst about my best friend.

  And Dan doesn’t disappoint.

  He’s there, as is Edsley.

  I could hug him.

  Dan, obviously, not Mike—I wouldn’t have really minded if he didn’t show.

  We head to my house, since I need to walk my dog, Kitty, before we get the robot hunt underway. But once we get there, I think better of it and decide to just bring the pooch along. I’m thinking he might be able to help us. You know, put that powerful schnoz of his to work.

  Big mistake.

  “OW!” I shout as Kitty nearly tugs my arm right out of its socket.

  He’s been yanking me in random directions ever since we stepped outside. I’ve never seen him like this before. It’s like he’s possessed, and it’s making it impossible to do any actual robot-hunting.

  And Dan and Edsley?

  They don’t even seem to care.

  Dan’s got his head tipped back. He’s staring up at the clouds in the sky like he’s John Henry Knox Junior.

  Edsley, meanwhile, has his hand in his armpit. He’s flapping his elbow up and down like he’s doing the chicken dance, his sweaty flesh producing a series of disgusting fartlike sounds.

  I think back to just a few days ago. . . .

  To my shattered kitchen window.

  To the gaping holes in my bedroom wall.

  To the Channel 5 News Team’s ROBOTS ATTACK coverage.

  To all the terrified people at the farmers’ market and the bakery.

  To me and Dan and Jerry and John Henry Knox in the alleyway behind the Shop & Save, finally finding out just what these robots are capable of.

  Edsley makes his armpit fart again.

  He giggles.

  And I snap.

  “GUYS!”

  Dan looks down.

  Edsley pulls his arm out of his T-shirt.

  I take a deep breath.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  Because as frustrated as I am, I know we’re not going to make any progress if we start fighting with one another.

  “I’m just worried, all right? And feeling a little—OW!”

  Kitty.

  10.

  WE DECIDE TO LET KITTY lead us around for a few minutes, hoping he’ll tire himself out and then let us lead him around. You know, like how it usually works with people and their dogs.

  Soon enough, though, it starts to look like Kitty has a specific destination in mind.

  “I think he wants to go to Things & Stuff,” Dan says, pointing to the store across the street that the dog is cutting off his air supply in a desperate attempt to reach.

  Edsley wrinkles his nose.

  “Ugh,” he says.

  And I can’t help but agree.

  Things & Stuff is this weird little store that seems to sell both everything and nothing. They’ve got motor oil and shoelaces and watering cans, but none of the stuff you might more regularly need—like, say, toilet paper or pens. The store is only open at bizarre, random hours, their prices are far from competitive, and the place is run by a guy named Stan who hates—and I mean hates—kids. If you’re under the age of twenty-five and step into his establishment, he automatically assumes you’re there to steal a pack of thumbtacks or burn the place to the ground. I have no clue how the place has stayed in business so long.

  For all these reasons, I do my best to avoid Things & Stuff, just like every other kid (and the majority of adults) in town. But I brought Kitty there once when my mom sent me out to find one of those super tiny screwdrivers you use to fix eyeglasses, and back behind the store the dog found this b
ig, nasty Dumpster, and in Kitty’s world, a big, nasty Dumpster is like a treasure chest full of gold.

  I tell the guys about the Dumpster.

  “He found this dirty sock under there, and now it’s, like, his all-time favorite dirty sock.”

  As if he can understand what I’m saying, Kitty strains against his leash even more.

  “Man,” Edsley says. “Must be some dirty sock.”

  “It is,” I tell him.

  Dan scratches the back of his head.

  “Hold on,” he says.

  He wanders off for a second, and comes back holding a rock the size of a grapefruit.

  Right away, I know what he’s doing: the Ol’ Make Him Look. That’s what Dan and I call any effort to take advantage of my dog’s less-than-stellar intellect. Sometimes this is accomplished using a handful of nickels and dimes. Other times it’s by giving a can of seltzer a good shake and then popping the top. And sometimes all you need is a nice enough rock.

  “Kitty!” Dan shouts, waving the rock around. “Look, Kitty! Look what I’ve got!”

  It’s a nice enough rock to tear Kitty’s attention away from Things & Stuff and the big, nasty Dumpster that he knows is right behind it. And a nice enough rock for us to lure the dog down the street and then on to a few more of the spots on our list of places where the missing robot might be.

  11.

  UNFORTUNATELY, THE SECOND HALF OF the afternoon goes just as poorly as the first.

  Cheese Louise’s is robot-less.

  So is Country Joe’s Fish.

  And while Animal Chin’s All-You-Can-Eat has seen plenty of ravenous customers over the past few days, it seems all of them have been of the human variety.

  After that we make our way back to my house. We take a seat on the curb out front, and Dan gives Kitty the rock he’s been waiting for all this time. The pooch squeals in excitement, traps the rock beneath a fuzzy paw, and then starts licking the thing like another dog might if it was made of pepperoni.

  And then we just sit there—Dan, Edsley, and me.

  We’re silent.

  Well, Dan and I are.

  Edsley’s making plenty of noise.

  He got himself some mozzarella sticks at Cheese Louise’s, and then a fish sandwich at Country Joe’s, and now he’s inhaling them like he’s competing in a speed-eating contest against himself.

  Kitty, meanwhile, is still busy slobbering all over his rock.

  Between him and Edsley, it’s like a symphony of disgustingness.

  It’s a gross but appropriate soundtrack for my gloomy, hopeless mood.

  12.

  DAN AND EDSLEY GO HOME.

  But only an hour or so later, Dan calls me up.

  “Ken,” he says.

  “Dan,” I say.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he tells me.

  “Always a good sign,” I tell him. “What have you been thinking?”

  “Maybe . . . ,” he starts.

  But then doesn’t finish.

  “Maybe what?” I press.

  “Maybe the bot really isn’t responsible for all this stuff that’s been happening.”

  The way he leaves it hanging, I can tell he’s got more to say.

  And for a second, I’m worried he’s going to say that maybe it’s aliens who are actually responsible for all of it.

  Fortunately, he doesn’t.

  Instead he says, “I mean, it’s not like they’re programmed to mess with power lines or satellites or anything like that.”

  “Sure,” I say. “But they weren’t programmed to fart speeding food-cubes, either. They weren’t programmed to stomp on people’s feet. Or sucker punch them in the gut. Or headbutt them. Or claw at their faces. Or—”

  “Okay, okay,” Dan says. “Point taken.”

  Silence.

  Until Dan, sounding excited and hopeful, starts back up again.

  “But—but it’s been a couple of days now since anything else has happened. Say the blackout and the satellite and the Food-Plus were caused by the bot. He could’ve taken himself out of commission after all that.”

  “He could’ve,” I admit. “But we’ll never know for sure unless we find him. And finding him is the only way to make sure that down the road—next week, next month, next year—we don’t get bitten in the backside. Remember?”

  “I remember . . . ,” says Dan, the excitement and hope already gone from his voice.

  “Dan,” I say, since I can see what he’s getting at. “It’d be crazy to stop looking now. There’re only a few more food places left on our list. The two of us can probably finish checking them out tomorrow afternoon.”

  “But what then?” Dan asks. “What if the bot’s not at any of them, and hasn’t been at any of them? Do we come up with another plan, and then spend the rest of the week doing that?”

  “You said he couldn’t have made it more than five miles from Edsley’s. And I know there are a lot of other, non-food places within a five-mile radius of Edsley’s. But not so many. I mean, it wouldn’t take us too long to check them all out.”

  “But you just said it, Ken. The other bots did all sorts of things they weren’t programmed to do. So yeah—Edsley’s bot isn’t programmed to go more than five miles away from his home base. But how can we be sure he hasn’t?”

  He gives me a second to turn the question over in my head before he answers it himself.

  “We can’t. For all we know, the bot’s made it to another state. For all we know, he’s in another country. Maybe he’s roaming around Canada as we speak. And if that’s the case, Ken . . . well, what are we supposed to do then?”

  I gulp.

  “If that’s the case, Dan, then I think we better figure out how to contact the Canadian government.”

  13.

  I HANG UP WITH DAN and head to the kitchen. There, I stuff my face like I’m a bottomlessly hungry robot.

  Maybe it’s stress.

  Or maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with Edsley.

  All I know is that I’m starving.

  So I gobble down a banana, then cram a granola bar in my mouth while I fix myself a bigger, better snack. My favorite snack: popcorn dipped in heated-up peanut butter. Not only is it delicious, but I’m hoping the warm, rich, salty-sweet awesomeness of the snack will cheer me up a bit.

  I’ve got the preparation of it down to a science.

  Or an art.

  No, you know what?

  A science and an art.

  I grab a spoon and a jar of peanut butter and plop a hefty scoop of the stuff into a bowl. Then I get a bag of popcorn. I place them side by side in the microwave and set the thing to run for precisely one minute and fifty-six seconds.

  Why?

  Because I’ve done this dozens, probably even hundreds of times, and for the type of popcorn and the type of peanut butter my parents buy at the store, one minute and fifty-six seconds is exactly how long the popcorn needs to fully pop and the peanut butter needs to turn perfectly gooey.

  Set the microwave for one minute and fifty-five seconds, and you’ll be breaking your teeth on un-popped kernels and dipping the pieces that did pop into merely semi-gooey peanut butter.

  Set it for one minute and fifty-seven seconds, and every few pieces of your popcorn will taste burnt and the peanut butter will scald your tongue.

  I check to make sure I entered the time right.

  And yep—the little screen on the microwave reads 1:56.

  So I press start.

  And the microwave explodes.

  14.

  OKAY—SO THE MICROWAVE DOESN’T actually explode.

  But it sounds like it does, and even looks a little like it too.

  First there’s a WHOOP! that’s loud enough to get Kitty abandoning his rock (which he insisted on bringing inside) and darting into the living room to take cover under the couch.

  Then there’s a pair of flashes, the first yellow-white and the second bright blue, like the color of fire at its hottest.<
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  After that the microwave goes totally bonkers.

  The light inside flashes off and on and off and on again, and the tray spins around so fast it looks like the bowl of peanut butter and bag of popcorn are on one of those vomit-tastic teacup rides they have at amusement parks.

  And then there’s the little screen. It’s not counting down from 1:56. It’s not doing anything that has to do with numbers.

  ENNKNN

  That’s what it says.

  Then:

  GGOG

  And then:

  OTTOUTOU

  It’s at this point that I start to wonder whether a satellite is about to fall on my house.

  15.

  I RUSH OUTSIDE AND SCAN the area for a walking, talking, satellite-downing, microwave-exploding robot.

  He’s nowhere in sight, so I peer up into the sky.

  Thankfully, nothing’s plummeting out of it.

  There’s nothing up there at all.

  Except for a cloud.

  It’s big. So big I can’t even see all of it. The back half is blocked by my neighbor’s roof.

  Even in my panicked state, I can’t help but think of John Henry Knox. Because this is just the sort of cloud the kid would go wild over. It might even be one of those cumulo-nimbo-whatchamacallits that showed up behind the Shop & Save on Saturday afternoon with all that rain and that he’s been losing his mind over ever since. If the kid were here, he’d take a thousand pictures of the cloud. He’d chase it all around town, staring up at its bright white belly until he fried his retinas.

  I consider calling him.

  But then I remember that I’d been trying to cheer myself up, not drive myself nuts.

  So I head back inside.

  The microwave has stopped . . . doing whatever it was doing.

  Still, I approach it cautiously, and open it nice and slow.

  Then I put the bag of popcorn back in the cabinet—it didn’t even begin to pop—and use the peanut butter to make myself a sandwich.

  It’s not as good as the snack I had in mind.

  But at least I know a sandwich won’t blow up on me.