by Adam Frost
As they flew higher, Danny stopped thinking about anything except how cold he was. First he lost sensation in his fingers, then his toes, then his ears, then his nose, then his lips turned blue and his cheeks turned purple and finally he went stiff as a board and couldn’t move anything except his eyes.
He was about to pass out when the parrot veered sharply to the left and he was hit by a warm current of air. Suddenly, he could move his arms and legs again. Danny breathed a deep sigh of relief. A few seconds later they were flying over land again, clipping the tops of pine trees and mountain ferns. For a while, they flew beside a flock of blackbirds, who looked warily at the parrot and cheeped quietly amongst themselves.
The blackbirds dropped away and the parrot began to slow down. His eyes seemed to be focusing on someone or something just over the horizon. A few seconds later the trees and hills vanished, and they were flying across a small flat clearing. In the middle of the clearing, there was a series of buildings: houses, huts, factories, warehouses and cabins. Danny noticed that, from above, they spelled out a word:
This wasn’t a good sign.
But then again, he had clearly reached his destination. Danny was sure that the cosmic remote would be here.
The parrot flew towards a long brick building in the middle of the complex. Danny wasn’t ready to meet the Night Scientist yet, so he prised the parrot’s claws off his sweater, checked that there were bushes and trees to break his fall, and then dropped quickly to the ground.
He clambered out of a clump of ferns and looked at the two small huts in front of him.
He thought that he’d better come up with a plan. He decided to start with the buildings on his left and sneak into them one by one, going through every box and drawer and cupboard till he had found his remote. If he saw anyone – especially the Night Scientist – he would hide. Only when he had his remote back would he show himself openly.
The first building was a long white concrete block with two storeys and tinted windows that prevented Danny from seeing inside. From above, it would have formed the bottom of the E in EVIL.
The door was ajar and Danny slipped inside. He found himself in a corridor with a door at each end. The door on the left was clearly some kind of fire escape. As Danny got nearer to the door on the right, he began to hear squeaking and whirring and tapping noises. He opened the door quietly.
He found himself in some kind of animal laboratory. There were narrow wooden tables stretching the length of the room. On each table, there were glass cages containing different species of animal. However these weren’t ordinary animals; they were the Night Scientist’s electronic pets. Danny walked past robot rats and remote-controlled raccoons and mechanical monkeys. Most of them were switched off but occasionally he passed a weasel or a goat that fixed him with a steady glittering eye.
At the end of one of the tables, there was a dog in pieces. It was similar to the dog that had attacked him in the park two short days ago. Its legs had been unscrewed and two springs were sticking out of its eye sockets.
The laboratory was certainly creepy, but in one way it put Danny’s mind at rest. He knew for certain that he was in the right place: this was definitely the Night Scientist’s lair.
He checked in every cupboard and cabinet for his cosmic remote and then went upstairs. There was nothing there but empty offices.
He moved into the next building. This was a single-storey warehouse containing more animals. However, where the last building had been full of mammals, this one was full of birds. Unlike the mammals in their cages, the birds were hanging from long metal racks that ran parallel to each other. The birds were grouped by species: there was a row of eagles, and then a dozen vultures, and then an albatross or two. They all hung there silently, ready to take off when their master called.
In the next building Danny saw the electronic fish. Robot crabs and eels and octopuses sat in large tanks filled with strange silvery liquid.
The building next to this contained six robot crocodiles. They had collars round their necks and they were all chained to a stake in the middle of the room. They were all switched off except one who opened his mouth wide and snapped it shut as Danny crept past.
So far, there was no sign of the remote.
There was a stretch of straggly yellow grass and then another building. This was tall and narrow like a lighthouse.
Danny darted inside and found himself in a single circular room with a high vaulted ceiling. All along the curved brick walls, somebody had pinned up hundreds of drawings, diagrams, blueprints and maps. Stacks of paper were piled up in the middle of the room. Pens, rulers, protractors and compasses were strewn across the floor. Danny picked up a sheet of paper at random and saw a sketch of what looked like a robot. It looked roughly the same size and shape as a human. He wondered if this was what the Night Scientist was working on now: robot humans as well as robot animals.
Danny kicked through some of the paper on the floor and quickly decided that his remote wasn’t here. He was about to leave the building when he saw something glinting next to the door. It looked like the top half of a robot.
Danny was curious and walked towards it. It looked like the Night Scientist had started building one of his robot humans. Danny took another few steps forwards. It was the torso and head of an electronic boy. It had no arms and no legs and its chest was a half-built circuit board.
Danny leaned forwards and squinted at its face. He quickly recoiled. For a few seconds he found it hard to breathe. It was obvious that the robot boy was meant to be an exact replica of himself. He looked at the hair, the nose, the shape of its face. Was the Night Scientist planning to get rid of him, and replace him with this robot version?
Danny ran out of the building, leaning against the closed door, trying to get his breath back.
He didn’t have time to think about what he had just seen. He needed to focus on his remote.
The next building was a small brick hut surrounded by barbed wire, a wire fence and a ditch full of fizzing blue sludge that looked highly toxic. There were signs tied to the wire fence and hammered into the ground behind the ditch.
Danny started looking for ways across the ditch or holes in the fence. There had to be a way in somewhere.
After circling the building three times, he noticed a wooden sign that was outside the barbed wire and the fence. It was leaning to one side and had the word SCRAM painted in the middle of it.
Danny nudged it with his shoulder. It was definitely loose. He shoved it hard and it fell over backwards, sending a sprinkling of soil into the air.
Danny pulled the stake off the back of the sign, twisting it until all the nails came loose. He ran towards the barbed wire, waving the stake in the air. Now he’d be able to get in.
He used the stake to pull the barbed wire up into the air while he crawled under it. Then he used the pointy end of the stake to dig a hole underneath the fence. It took him at least half an hour to make the hole deep enough.
As he was digging, he became more and more convinced that the remote would be in this building. His hands began to shake and he stopped digging for a few seconds. He looked at his right thumb and wiggled it back and forth. He was lucky that it was still there, lucky that it hadn’t been snipped off.
When the hole was big enough, Danny slipped under the fence, dragging the stake with him. Now there was nothing between him and the building but the ditch full of strange blue gunk.
He grabbed a handful of grass and threw it into the ditch. Before it had even touched the surface of the blue liquid, it sizzled and vanished into thin air.
Probably best not to swim across, Danny thought to himself.
Instead he glanced down at the stake and smiled. He looked at the other side of the ditch and smiled. He ran at the ditch as fast as he could, planted the stake into the ground and used it like a pole vault to fling himself across the blue channel. He hurtled through the air and landed with a crunch on the grass in front of the building.The
stake dropped into the blue sludge and disintegrated into splinters.
Danny clambered to his feet and looked back at the barbed wire and the fence and the ditch. He smiled a relieved smile.
He turned round and looked up at the building. It was about four metres wide and four metres long, not much bigger than a shed or a garage. There were no windows, just a single metal door on the right-hand side.
Danny walked towards this door and turned the handle. It opened with a rusty creak.
Danny stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He looked up and nearly passed out.
The room was dark and bare except for a marble pedestal right in the centre. On top of the pedestal, Danny saw his cosmic remote. It was lit up by a spotlight that hung from the middle of the ceiling.
Danny stared at his remote without moving for at least two minutes.Then he began to move cautiously towards it. Every step he took, he expected an alarm to go off or a red light to start flashing. But now he was halfway across the room and nothing had happened.
He couldn’t believe he was so close to getting his remote back. He couldn’t believe that the agony would soon be over.
He took another step forwards. Still, nothing happened.
He ran out of patience and dashed towards his remote, his arms flailing. He grabbed the remote with his right hand. He was so excited, he missed it. So he reached out for it again. Once more, it seemed to slip from his grasp. So he moved his hand towards the remote very slowly, curling his fingers around the sides. He squeezed the remote, expecting to feel its plastic case, its rubber buttons and the crystal on its back. But he felt nothing.
It was then that he realised that the remote wasn’t there. It was just a recording.
His heart sank and he felt sick. Then something hissed underneath him and the ground gave way. He was falling.
He threw his arms out but there was nothing to hold on to. He was in a dark chute, falling faster and faster.
He landed on something soft and leapt up straightaway. The momentum of the fall carried him forwards and he did a head over heels, hitting his head on his knee. Everything went black.
11
EJECT
When Danny came round, he wasn’t sure where he was or how much time had passed. Just as he had decided to stand up and find out, he heard a whirring noise.
The ground had given way again and now he was on a gigantic slide. He tried slowing down by clamping his hands and feet on to the sides, but it was no use. It was too steep and too slippery.
The slide ran out and he rolled forwards on to a hard grey concrete floor.
He looked up and saw the Night Scientist in front of him.
They were in a massive underground warehouse, lit by ultraviolet panels that were screwed into the walls. There were huge double doors at each end. In the middle of the warehouse there were four or five tables, piled up with computers, circuit boards, screwdrivers, blowtorches, iron rods and gigantic crystals.
“Good evening, Daniel,” said the Night Scientist. “And may I be the first to bid you welcome to my humble abode.”
Danny stood up and looked at the Night Scientist with what he hoped was a brave face.
“You’ll notice the ultraviolet light,” said the Night Scientist. “You remember that my skin is ever so slightly sensitive. Then there’s the underground location. That’s so I can work by day as well as by night. Undisturbed.”
“Wh-what do you want with me?” Danny managed to blurt out.
“Don’t you want the tour first?” asked the Night Scientist. “Well, if you insist, we can get down to business.” He reached into his pocket. “Here’s your remote back.”
He threw Danny’s remote on to the ground, where it landed with a clatter.
Danny looked at it for a second, then threw himself on to the floor and picked it up.
“I don’t get it,” said Danny when he was back on his feet. “Last thing I knew, you were trying to cut my thumb off. Have you broken the remote or something? You have, haven’t you? You’ve broken it!”
Danny went to press the Pause button.
“NO!” roared the Night Scientist. Danny froze in terror.
“Excuse my rudeness,” continued the Night Scientist in a quieter voice. “Allow me to explain and then you’ll be free to use your remote howsoever you choose.”
Danny was still too frightened to move, but he managed to nod mutely.
“Your remote fell into my hands yesterday. Initially I tried to get it to work without fingerprint recognition.This I couldn’t manage. So early this morning, I took a closer look at the amber crystal in its back.Why, I asked myself, does it need to be so large? Would the remote still work if I split it in two? It turns out, it works just fine. It’s funny, you’d have thought that those clever people at EUREKA! would have worked this out. But then, they were probably too busy ‘doing good’ or ‘saving the world’ or something equally pathetic.”
“I don’t understand,” stammered Danny.
“What I’m saying is that I don’t need your remote,” said the Night Scientist, pulling a black baton out of his pocket. “What I’m saying is that I have a better one.”
“What?” said Danny, blinking hard.
“I used the half-crystal I took out of your remote to make another remote. I finished it while you were upstairs having a little snooze. Obviously I added a few features of my own. A Brightness button. An Eject button. Makes it a bit more fun.”
“So, so why—?” began Danny.
“Why have I given yours back?” said the Night Scientist. “Just my strange sense of humour, I suppose.You see, I intend to Rewind time. I thought you might like to stop me.”
“I don’t see what you—” murmured Danny.
“Then I might Pause time for a while,” continued the Night Scientist. “Maybe rob a few banks. Settle a few scores.Your uncle and your sister might not feel so good when I’ve finished. After that, I might press Fast Forward and see how you react to the news.”
He pointed the remote at Danny. “Goodbye,” he said.
Danny instinctively pointed his remote at the Night Scientist.
“Good,” said the Night Scientist with a smile.
Danny saw the Night Scientist’s finger pushing a button. He began to feel the strangest sensation, as if someone was tugging both of his arms, as if part of his brain was being slowly wiped clean and the warehouse in front of him was losing its outlines and becoming one big grey blob.
He guessed that time was being rewound. He tried to move his thumb but it felt impossible, like it was encased in concrete. He fought harder, willing his thumb towards the Fast Forward button, determined to cancel out what the Night Scientist was doing, growling with frustration when his thumb moved backwards not forwards.
Something gave way and his thumb was wedged down on Fast Forward.Time seemed to stop. He saw the Night Scientist in front of him, looking annoyed. Then everything tumbled forwards, he felt a huge pressure lift from his shoulders, and the warehouse came back into focus. He let go of Fast Forward.
“Very good,” snarled the Night Scientist. “I pressed Rewind.You pressed Fast Forward.We cancelled each other out. But what next?”
Danny saw the Night Scientist pressing another button. It was as if someone had poured ice into his veins. The warehouse was still in front of him, but he felt separate from it, like he was a cut-out or a waxwork. The Night Scientist must have pressed Pause. Danny tried his hardest to press the Play button. His thumb moved feebly like he was an invalid. But somehow he pressed Play and his body felt warm and alive again, he smelled the stale air of the warehouse and he felt the hard concrete floor under his shoes.
“Mnnrrgh,” growled the Night Scientist. “I wasn’t expecting our duel to last this long.Well, this should finish it.”
But Danny had already pressed Rewind.The Night Scientist gasped and forced his thumb on to Fast Forward. Then Danny pressed Pause, but the Night Scientist had already pressed Play. Danny tried pr
essing Fast Forward, hoping that this would catch the Night Scientist off guard. But the Night Scientist calmly wedged his thumb on to the Rewind button.
Both Danny and the Night Scientist lowered their remotes for a few seconds, breathing heavily.
“Enough!” said the Night Scientist. “It’s time to end this. I’m going to press Eject now. When I point it at someone, they get wiped off the face of the earth. Ready?”
Danny was about to press Rewind again, when he saw a beam of light shoot out of the end of the Night Scientist’s remote. He leapt out of the way. The Night Scientist pointed his remote at Danny again. Another lightning bolt shot out of the end. Danny rolled over backwards.
“Now this is fun,” declared the Night Scientist.
Danny began to realise that there was no way of winning. He was about to throw his remote at the Night Scientist’s head when he saw its Play button flashing.
He frowned at it for a second or two.
Another jolt of light leapt across the room. Danny sprang forwards, glancing back at the smoking black crater that had appeared in the ground.
As soon as he felt steady on his feet, he pressed Play.
He heard Uncle Charlie’s voice whispering: “Buy us some time, Dan. We’ll do the rest.” Then there was a crackle and silence.
For three seconds Danny stood absolutely still. This must mean that Uncle Charlie was alive and well and very close by.
Danny tried not to grin; he tried not to giggle. He needed to act quickly.
“Wait!” he called out.
The Night Scientist was aiming the remote at Danny’s chest. “Ah, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Look, you’ve won, you’ve won,” said Danny. “But before you press Eject, just tell me what happened to my uncle.”
The Night Scientist flicked the remote up and pressed it against his mouth.
“Hmm,” he said. “I owe you that much, I suppose. Lay your remote down in front of you.”