by M. E. Castle
They unzipped the bag and hauled the robot to its feet.
“Here goes,” said Fisher, toggling a pair of switches behind its neck. Both boys backed quickly away, prepared to spring at it if they had to.
Its eyes opened to the faint whirr of motors. Now that Fisher knew it was a robot, he couldn’t believe he’d ever mistaken it for his real mom.
The robot looked ahead, left, and right, without registering either Alex or Fisher. Then it made a few small clicks with its tongue, said, “Control,” and started walking.
Fisher and Alex nodded to each other excitedly, and they crept after it.
It was heading away from Wompalog and downtown, which surprised Fisher. There wasn’t anything but houses in that direction for several miles. Maybe Three had taken over somebody’s home? Or maybe he had an accomplice?
After three blocks, the robot took such an abrupt turn that Fisher had to leap back to avoid crashing into it. It headed across the still-empty street at a trot, straight for a small park that was ringed by thick trees.
“This can’t be right,” whispered Alex. “How could Three hide such a sophisticated operation in a neighborhood park?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Fisher. “Let’s hang back and see where it goes.”
The mom-bot continued into the park, and Fisher and Alex ducked into the trees, concealing themselves behind leafy branches. A few street lamps stood among the trees.
Fisher could make out a little conical shape right in the middle of the baseball diamond.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized it was a tent.
“Is that a tent?” Alex whispered, echoing his thoughts.
“Looks like one,” Fisher said. “Maybe camouflaging the entrance to an underground base?”
The mom-bot, now merely a fuzzy shadow in the darkness, stopped directly in front of the tent. The flap opened, and another shadowy figure emerged.
Fisher tensed.
“Stun sticks,” he said. “Let’s see if we can close in on him before he knows we’re here.”
Fisher crept left. Alex went right. Fisher thought he could hear faint words exchanged between the mom-bot and the figure he assumed was Three, but the sound was drowned out by his own cymbal-crash heartbeat. The stun stick quivered in his grip as he inched forward.
Then the shadowy figure suddenly struck out, and the mom-bot collapsed. There was a loud click, a bright light came on, and Fisher was blinded.
A trap! he thought. It was another trap!
He stumbled back, trying to regain the cover of the trees, when a voice came out of the blinding light.
“Oh, good. I was hoping she would work to draw you out. How nice to see you again.”
Fisher’s blood froze in his veins. It wasn’t Three’s voice. He blinked furiously to clear his vision. The light dimmed slightly, and an all-too familiar figure stood before them: a slightly built man, with thin black hair slicked straight back and a hooked nose that gave his already angular face the cruel, powerful menace of a bird of prey.
“Granger,” growled Fisher.
“Hello, Fisher,” said Dr. X. “You look as though you weren’t expecting—?”
Before he could say any more, Alex’s stun stick whistled through the air and cracked Granger on the head. Granger staggered back. A second and a half later, Alex’s fist found the same spot, and the man Fisher used to know as Harold Granger collapsed onto the grass.
By the time Fisher reached Granger’s side, Alex had pulled him to his feet and twisted one arm behind his back. Fisher was impressed by Alex’s combat skills. Maybe Amanda had been giving him lessons.
“Wait!” Dr. X said, a thin red trickle flowing down his forehead, wincing as Alex gave his arm a push. “Don’t kill me until you hear what I’ve got to say.”
“Unlike you,” Alex said, punctuating the you with another push to the twisted arm, “I don’t kill unarmed people for kicks. I will, however, make sure the police have a hard time identifying your face underneath all the bruises when they come to arrest you.”
“Tell us where Three is,” Fisher said, holding the buzzing stun stick inches from Dr. X’s hawk nose. “How long have you been working with him? Where does the tent lead? What kind of secret lab have you been building?”
“It’s just a tent,” Dr. X said piteously. “It leads to the inside of a tent. No secret labs. No labs at all! I’m not working with Three. And please—ow—before you throw me to the law, you need to listen to what I have to say.”
“So start talking,” said Alex, tightening his hold.
“I’m—agh—not here to fight you. In fact, I’m here to help you.”
“Help us?” squawked Fisher. “Have you forgotten that the last time we saw you, you tried to tear us to pieces with an army of metal henchmen?”
“Not at all,” said Dr. X. His grimace of pain turned briefly into a smile. “But this is the difference between what people like you call good guys and bad guys. Good guys have principles and rules.
“We bad guys, on the other hand, work for ourselves and for our own personal gains. We will work with whomever it is in our best interest to work with at any given moment. It doesn’t matter that I was gleefully anticipating your destruction weeks ago. In my current situation, you can help me. And I believe I can help you. So for the moment, I’m over it.”
“Over it?” Fisher repeated. “You mean over your desire to kill us?”
Dr. X inclined his head in a nod.
“Sorry if that doesn’t make us want to trust you,” growled Alex. It was clearly taking all of his willpower to keep from pummeling Dr. X into the ground until the pummeling set off the San Andreas Fault. Alex was obviously not over the fact that Dr. X had very nearly killed him.
“I’m not asking you to trust me,” said Dr. X. “I’m simply asking you to—ow!—work with me. You are scientists. Consider this situation rationally. I have been deposed by Three. I have no resources available to me, other than my admittedly gigantic intellect. Three is in command of everything I once owned. He knows that we are the biggest possible threats to him. Therefore, we are all his targets. And the only reasonable way to fight against the power he commands is to combine our efforts.”
The stun stick was shaking in Fisher’s hand. Mr. Granger had been a trusted teacher and friend once. Then he had kidnapped Alex to force Fisher’s mother to betray her colleagues and the government, and hand over the AGH to him. He revealed himself to be Dr. X in the process. Fisher and Alex had almost gotten vaporized in their escape from his compound. When they’d thought Dr. X was finally gone, he’d reemerged and tried to end their lives all over again. And now, here he was, if not asking for their friendship, then at least claiming to be on their side.
“We have no way of knowing he’s not still working with Three,” Alex said to Fisher. “This whole deposed routine might just be an act.”
“Boys, if I wanted to fool you, I could do it in a hundred different ways, as I demonstrated in LA.”
Dr. X had a very good point. But Fisher wasn’t ready to relent. Dr. X had tried to wipe out him and Alex more than once—and he’d threatened their mother and father to boot.
“So what about the robot?” he said. “If you’re not working with Three, how’d you engineer it?”
“I didn’t,” Dr. X said, still wincing in Alex’s grip. “I merely reprogrammed it, as you did. Remember, I pioneered the technology that all of Three’s robots are based on. I understand how they work. I’ve been keeping watch on you for days. I recognized the robot for what it was immediately. Impressive modification, I must admit. Three applied his own genetic material to the robot’s silicon surface so that your Liquid Door would let it pass. I anticipated that you would discover it was a fake, and programmed it to return here if reactivated, hoping you’d follow.”
“I’m guessing you reprogrammed its mission, too, so it wouldn’t kill us,” said Alex.
“No,” Dr. X conceded. “The only thing I altered
was its home base location. I don’t know what its original mission was, nor did I try to change it.”
Fisher and Alex frowned at each other.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Fisher said. “All it did was give us cookies.”
“And try and get us to watch TV,” Alex added.
A small trill of excitement zipped up Fisher’s spine. “TV …,” he said, recalling the mom-bot’s insistence that they turn on Family Feudalism. “Wait a minute. What if getting us to watch TV was the robot’s mission?”
Alex finally let go of Dr. X’s arm. Dr. X tried to massage some feeling back into his shoulder.
“What if the crazy pox isn’t biological or chemical?” Fisher said excitedly. “What if it’s a transmission?”
“A radio or television broadcast could have a subliminal element,” Dr. X said. “Over time, it might affect behavior.”
“It would have to be something popular,” said Alex. “To engineer behavioral changes this significant, it would have to have a cumulative effect and build up over time. Rewire the mind bit by bit.”
Fisher nodded.
“Okay. So people would have to be exposed to it regularly over a long period of time. Like a new fad show that everyone’s watching and talking …” Alex stopped. “Family Feudalism. Which is what the mom-bot was trying to make us watch.”
Fisher frowned. “The crazy pox started soon after the show went on the air. We’d watched six episodes before the fall formal, and that night we almost knocked each other’s teeth out. We and our parents were affected until Dad threw the TVs away. Veronica was affected until she was grounded and couldn’t watch TV anymore.”
“And Ms. Snapper was affected until she accidentally destroyed her TV,” Fisher continued. “CURTIS watches TV all the time. And most of our kitchen appliances are designed to receive broadcast signals, too. But Lord Burnside isn’t.”
“All the evidence points to it,” Alex said.
“It’s ingenious, really,” said Dr. X. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
Fisher turned to him. “You’ve provided us with valuable intelligence,” he said, although he hated to admit it. “Is there any other way you can be useful to us?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. X. “Have a look at this.” He backed up to the tent. Fisher and Alex drew their stun guns.
“Don’t try anything funny,” Fisher warned.
Slowly, keeping his eyes on Fisher and Alex, Dr. X knelt and rummaged around with one hand inside the tent. He extracted a thick stick somewhat taller than he was and straightened up again.
“A stick,” said Alex dully.
“Not ‘a stick,’ ” said Dr. X. “An English quarterstaff. It is an old and venerable martial art that I had the privilege to study while on the set of Family Feudalism. I actually got quite good at it. You’ll need all the fighting help you can get, soon enough.”
Fisher and Alex looked at each other. After a moment, Alex nodded, very slightly.
Fisher looked back at Dr. X. “I don’t trust you, and I don’t like you. But you’re right about one thing. We need all the help we can get right now. Will you work with us to bring Three down?”
“My boy,” Fisher’s former biology teacher said, raising the staff to his heart and smiling, “it would be an absolute pleasure.”
This is it, the final battle we have to fight.
Unless there’s a Four out there somewhere.
If there’s a Four, I’m just going to retire. Probably to Saturn.
—Fisher Bas, Personal Notes
“Ho! Ha!” Dr. X shouted as he demonstrated his skill with the staff. “Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Thrust!”
“All right,” Fisher said, “I believe you. Let’s focus, okay? Can you recover the robot’s original home location?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. X. “But I’ll take a stab at it.”
“Well, get cracking,” said Alex. “In the meantime, we’ll …” He trailed off, cocking his head to the side. “Does anybody else hear that?”
“Sounds like an …” But Fisher didn’t get the chance to say “earthquake.” What started as a low hum grew slowly, steadily, and transformed into a rhythm. He looked down and saw dust and pebbles hopping from the vibration. But it was too regular to be an earthquake. It sounded almost like … footsteps.
Thousands and thousands of footsteps.
Fisher, Alex, and Dr. X dashed to the edge of the park.
Fisher felt like the world had been kicked out from under him.
Figures were marching in the streets. In the faint moonlight, he couldn’t tell who or what they were. But there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
An army.
And in the air, dozens of tiny objects, visible from their faint blinking red lights, were spiraling. They were coming down all over the town. One landed on the corner of the next street.
“Come on,” Fisher said.
They reached the small device just as its top unfolded into a complex series of lenses. After a few seconds, it projected a life-sized hologram.
“Three,” breathed Alex, Fisher, and Dr. X at the same time.
Three was projected in front of them, dressed in a dark gray suit cut and tailored like a military uniform, with an officer’s cap pulled low to hide his eyes. His face was barely lit, as in Dr. X’s old videos, so it would not be recognizable.
“Good morning, citizens of Palo Alto,” the clone began, his voice charged with a passionless but piercing electricity. “I am sure many of you are confused and afraid about what is happening in your city, and indeed in the wider world. I’m afraid I must confirm your fears: There is chaos in the streets. Crime is everywhere. It is unsafe to travel, and conflict is threatening to tear our communities apart. I’m afraid this is only the beginning of a long, dark era. I bring you good news, however. I have foreseen these events, and have been preparing for them for some time. Even now my loyal servants are moving into place, dedicated to protecting order and, more importantly, protecting you. Together we can ride out the storm.
“That is all for now,” Three said, his silhouetted face inclining in a nod. “I will address you all again soon.”
The hologram blinked off. After a short delay, it blinked back on and the message repeated.
“So now we know what he’s been planning all this time,” Alex said grimly.
“And why he sent us on our wild goose chase,” Fisher said. “He was keeping us busy so he’d have time to build this army. By morning, when most people see this message, his soldiers will be everywhere. What do you want to bet they’ll come for us soon?”
“We have to go for him first,” said Alex. He sucked in a deep breath. “We need Amanda,” he blurted out. “We need everyone we can get.”
“But can we convince her to help us when she’s still affected? I’m not getting rid of Three just to see him replaced by Undying Chancellor Times Infinity Cantrell or whatever title she decided on.”
“Maybe we can cut power to her house,” suggested Alex. “Give her until tomorrow to get over the effects of the brainwashing broadcast.”
“Do you really think that one of your twelve-year-old peers is going to be of any use to us?” Dr. X said to Fisher with a smirk. “I taught at Wompalog, remember. I can’t recall being impressed by anyone’s potential to defeat the most calculating and powerful villain of our time.”
“You’ll remember this one,” Fisher said. “The last time you saw her, she was tearing your robot army apart.”
“Ah,” said Dr. X as the smile faded from his face. “Well, if you want to disable her home’s electricity, I can reprogram the robot to do just that,” he concluded.
“All right,” Fisher said. “Let’s get it back home before Three takes over the streets.”
Alex and Fisher retrieved the mom-bot from the park and hefted it into the air. Dr. X trailed behind them, quarterstaff in hand. Dim shadows were assembling a few blocks away from the park, but the street leading back toward th
e Bas home was still clear.
The mom-bot’s weight dug into Fisher’s right shoulder as he ran, thumping his collarbone with each step. Shadows flickered in the corner of his vision. Were they Three’s henchmen, waiting to spring?
“Keep up the pace!” Alex half whispered.
Fisher heard footsteps about a block away. Quick ones. Were those just their footsteps echoing off the houses? He couldn’t quite be sure.
The house was in sight, and Dr. X’s breathing was getting louder and harsher. The sprint was clearly not his event. Fisher’s breathing pounded in his ears as they rounded a corner, and the wall around the Bas house became visible.
“Front gate!” Alex said. “Front gate!” It would take time to pull the mom-bot back up the wall. They’d have to risk going in the front way, even if the noise might disturb their parents.
Alex and Fisher skidded to a halt at the Liquid Door front gate, which turned from a suspended near solid to a cloud in their presence. They stayed in place so that Dr. X, whom the gate wouldn’t recognize, could pass through as well.
Only after they were through the gate and had set down the mom-bot did Fisher breathe a faint, relieved sigh. His shoulders were aching and he felt a throb in arm muscles he never knew even existed.
“Okay,” he whispered to Dr. X. “Let’s get to work reprogramming this thing.”
“Out here?” Dr. X frowned.
“My parents are asleep,” he answered sharply. “I don’t want my mom coming face-to-face with her own imposter—or with you. Once we’ve set the robot on its way, we’ll go inside and find you a place to hide.”
The three set to work, guided by the dim beam of Fisher’s flashlight, which he fished out of his backpack. Dr. X fiddled away, making occasional noises of disgust or satisfaction. If their plan worked, the robot would proceed to Amanda’s house, cut the power, transmit a “mission success” message and then self-destruct.
“All right,” said Dr. X, after nearly an hour “Stand back.”