by R. McGeddon
“He was confused, that’s all,” Arty said. “And now they’re going to blow him up!”
Sam wasn’t so sure, though. As more laser fire tore through one of CHARLES’s components, it quickly re-formed into something much more solid-looking.
“I don’t think they’re destroying him,” Sam pointed out. “He’s looking even meaner, if anything.”
Arty’s jaw dropped as one of CHARLES’s arms exploded, then immediately rebuilt itself into an enormous armored spike that looked like it could poke someone’s eye out.
“He’s evolving,” Arty realized. “Every time the soldiers find a weakness, his upgrader chip makes it stronger.”
A fiery energy blast ripped through the air above Arty’s head. Sam and Emmie both ducked behind a mailbox and pulled Arty down with them.
“The way I see it, we have one option,” Arty announced, putting his big brain into action.
“You mean beyond ‘all die horribly’?” said Emmie.
“Okay, two options,” Arty said. “Dying horribly being the first.”
“And the second?” asked Sam.
“We turn CHARLES back from a ruthless killing machine to a lovely electronic pal.”
Sam and Emmie exchanged a glance. They both liked the sound of that. Lovely electronic pals were better than ruthless killing machines any day of the week.
“Okay, so how do we do it?” Sam asked.
Arty’s lips moved as he did a silent calculation in his head. It was very complicated and involved lots of letters where there should have been numbers—like x instead of, say, 5, or something. To be honest, I don’t understand any of it, but Arty does, and that’s what counts.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “If I can reset the upgrader chip, that should return him to normal.”
“Then do it!” said Emmie just as a soldier went sailing over their heads with his butt on fire.
“Well, I need equipment, obviously,” said Arty. “I can’t just reset it using the power of my mind.” He rubbed his chin. “Although that would be a handy feature for a future update.”
“There won’t be a future update if we don’t stop CHARLES now,” Sam pointed out.
“Or a future, probably,” said Emmie, who’d seen at least a hundred sci-fi movies and knew exactly what happened when robots took charge.
A laser blast punched a perfect round hole through the mailbox. The edges glowed white-hot for a few moments before it started to cool.
“We should probably move,” said Sam.
“Here,” said Arty, tearing a page off the little notebook he always carried in case any clever ideas popped into his head when he was out and about. He thrust it at Sam, who took it.
“What’s this?” Sam asked.
“It’s a list of what I need from my shed,” Arty said. “You’re faster than me. You can get to it before I can, and outrun any danger you come across.”
Sam nodded. He was definitely the fastest of his three friends, but he wasn’t about to make a big deal of it or anything. He was modest like that, which was one of the many reasons everyone thought he was great.
“Okay. Emmie, you and Arty try to find my dad and let him know what’s going on. Maybe there are still some of the security people who aren’t working with Earl Brute. Meet me on the steps of the Town Hall in an hour.”
“Gotcha,” said Emmie. She glanced at the worried faces of her two best friends. “So here we are again. Sitting Duck under threat, and there are just three plucky heroes who can save it!”
“There are?” said Arty, his face lighting up with relief. “Awesome! Where are they?”
“They’re here,” Emmie told him. “I meant us.”
Arty’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Yes. Right,” he mumbled, but before he could say any more, the mailbox exploded, showering scorched letters everywhere.
“One hour. Town Hall,” said Sam, breaking into a sprint. “Try not to get laser-blasted to pieces!”
Sam didn’t hang around to hear his friends’ reply. He ducked and dodged and weaved through the laser light show taking place in the middle of the street. A blast of energy crackled toward him, but he vaulted it like an Olympic hurdler, rolled on the sidewalk, then launched himself into a run again.
It was still early morning, but not as early as it had been earlier, because that’s just how time works. All around Sitting Duck, people were beginning to wake up and go about their day.
Once Sam was a few streets away from the battle, he couldn’t even tell it was happening. There were no stray laser blasts here, or soldiers flying past on fire. It seemed just like any other morning.
As Sam rounded a corner, the smell of fresh coffee from Coffee and Coffins—an award-winning local coffee shop and funeral home—wafted around his face. Before Sam could savor the rich aroma, he heard a scream from inside.
The owner, Amanda Bury, tried to hurl herself through the window, but the double-glazed glass meant she just sort of whumped against it and slid slowly down the pane. Behind her, Sam could see the coffee machine going crazy. It sprayed hot water and frothy milk over every surface, then lightly dusted it all with a layer of powdered chocolate. Meanwhile, Amanda’s assistant’s upper body was stuck in the door of the fridge. The door kept opening and closing, like a set of jaws devouring a tasty treat. CHARLES was already connecting with the other technology in the town, with scary effects!
“Help!” he cried. “The fridge is eating me!”
Sam wanted to help—he was that kind of boy—but he knew that the only way to really help them was to stop CHARLES, and the only way to do that was to get the stuff from Arty’s shed. And also, a fridge has gotta eat! How else does it get food in there?
Sam arrived at Arty’s house just in time to see Jesse come running out from inside, pursued by a particularly aggressive vacuum cleaner. Its long, twisting nozzle sucked at his heels as he sped away, like it was trying to swallow his feet. And, given half a chance, his legs.
“Get it off!” Jesse hollered.
Sam reached back over his shoulder and found the baseball bat sticking out of his backpack.
“Batter up!” Sam cried. He swung with the bat, smashing it down on top of the vacuum cleaner. It reared up, snapping at him with its hose, but Sam was too quick for it. He ducked low and slammed the bat into the side of the machine. Bang! Boom! Thwack!
“Wh-what’s going on?” Jesse asked.
Sam opened his mouth to answer, but Jesse held a finger up as his phone started to ring. “One sec, I gotta take this,” he said. He lifted the phone from his pocket, but as he moved it to his ear, the phone leaped from his hand and smacked him right in the face.
Jesse fell onto his back, clutching his forehead. “Ow!” he yelped as the cell phone bounced up and down on his head and body like a jumping bean. “Cut it out! Stop it!”
Sam took aim with his bat. Jesse’s eyes went wide with horror. “No, not my phone!” he howled. Sam’s bat connected with the phone, sending it arcing across the sky, and Jesse let out a sob of grief.
“My phone,” he whimpered. “My precious phone.”
“It was trying to kill you,” Sam pointed out, dragging Jesse to his feet, but his argument fell on deaf ears.
Jesse shoved him aside and set off running after his phone. “I forgive you!” he hollered. “Come back!”
Shaking his head, Sam hurried into the garden, around the side of the house, then into Arty’s shed. He wasn’t really sure what all the stuff on Arty’s list actually was, so he decided to grab one of everything and cram it all in his bag.
There was a set of blueprints for CHARLES spread out on the table, so he folded that up and shoved it into his bag, too.
Job done, he yanked open the shed door, darted out into the garden …
… and right into the path of a mean-looking lawn mower with murder on its mind.
* * *
Guide to Evil Sentient Technology
When the machines eventually take over—and they will,
people, they will—some of them will obviously be of more concern than others. But how to tell which is which? Cut out this guide and keep it with you at all times so you can be better prepared.
Worrying Appliances
• Power tools of any kind
• Microwaves with the door open
• Cotton-candy machines
• Anything with lasers mounted on it
• Walk-in freezers with doors that open only from the outside
Less Worrying Appliances
• Shoe polisher
• Battery-operated child’s fan
• Radios
• Bread makers
• Anything entirely encased in soft, squishy rubber
• Light-up sneakers (unless you’re wearing them)
• Videocassette recorders from the 1980s
• Videocassette recorders from any other decade
• Motorized elbow ticklers (not a problem, because they don’t exist)
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wow! I don’t know about you, but I’m on the edge of my seat after that last chapter ending. I mean—Sam is face-to-face with a killer lawn mower! Well, not face-to-face obviously—lawn mowers don’t have faces, but you know what I mean.
I can’t wait to find out what happens to Sam next!
But, alas, I’m going to have to, and so are you, because we’re whizzing back over to see what Emmie and Arty are up to instead. Hang in there, Sam—we’ll be back soon!
Mostly what Emmie and Arty were up to was narrowly avoiding being blown to bits. Both CHARLES and the soldiers were still shooting the place up with their lasers, locked in an epic battle that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster, if I do say so myself.
Arty sort of wanted to hang around and see what happened, but as he’s actually quite sensible by nature, he decided it was best to run away, instead. He followed Emmie as she went tearing up the steps of the Town Hall and barged in through the front door.
Sam had told his friends about the control room, so Emmie and Arty quickly made their way there. The control-room door was made of reinforced metal, with a little bulletproof window mounted in the middle. An eyeball scanner was built into the wall beside it so only authorized personnel could get inside. It would’ve been completely impossible to break into, were it not for one tiny detail.
“Someone’s left the door open,” Emmie said, stepping inside.
The control room was empty. Well, not empty. It had all the computers and desks and stuff. A rug and whatnot. In terms of objects and furniture, it was actually reasonably full. What it was distinctly lacking, though, was people.
“Where is everyone?” Arty gasped.
Emmie stepped farther into the room, casting her gaze across the banks of screens. The battle between CHARLES and the soldiers was raging, and for the first time, Emmie noticed that Earl Brute himself wasn’t down there.
She had just begun to wonder where he might be, when Arty grabbed her by the arm. “Shh!” he hissed, despite the fact Emmie wasn’t making a sound. “Listen!”
Emmie listened. All she could hear was the whirring of lots of computer fans and a faint hum from the lights overhead. But then she heard another noise, too: a muffled grunt, like someone had sealed a baboon in a bag and it wasn’t pleased. It seemed to come from a door at the other end of the control room.
Slowly, Emmie and Arty approached the door.
“Mr. Saunders!” Arty cried as he and Emmie stepped through the door and into a very large closet.
Sure enough, Sam’s dad was there, lying on the floor, his hands and feet tied together, and a piece of shiny silver tape across his mouth. What’s more, he wasn’t alone. The rest of the control room staff had all been tied up in similar ways, although one only had brown tape covering his mouth, and you could tell he was secretly quite jealous of the others.
“Lmm ouuu!” mumbled Mr. Saunders.
“What?” said Emmie.
“Lmm ouuu!”
Emmie and Arty exchanged a glance. Arty shrugged.
“We’re not getting it,” said Emmie. “Say it more slowly.”
“Lmm.”
“Right.”
“Oouu!”
“Lmm oouu?” said Emmie.
Mr. Saunders nodded frantically.
Emmie turned to Arty again. “Any idea what ‘lmm oouu’ means?”
Arty shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “We could always take the tape off.”
“Good idea,” said Emmie. She crossed the closet, then bent down and ripped off Mr. Saunders’s tape in one quick yank. It was times like this, Mr. Saunders realized, he was glad he didn’t have a mustache.
“Now,” said Emmie, “what were you saying?”
“I was saying,” began Mr. Saunders, “look out!”
Right then, there was the roar of something electrical springing to life. Arty and Emmie whipped around to see the office’s paper shredder thundering across the floor, its metal teeth chewing hungrily.
The control-room staff wailed and wriggled, desperately trying to get away from the approaching appliance.
The shredder dashed across the room like a hungry lion with metal teeth. It zigged and zagged across the floor, as if it couldn’t quite decide who its first victim should be.
To Arty’s dismay, it decided it should be him.
“G-get away!” he cried, trying to climb up a perfectly smooth wall to escape the shredder’s deadly shreddy bit. “I’m too big; I’ll get stuck in your teeth!”
“You heard him, shred-head!” Emmie snarled, hurling herself onto the machine and punching it repeatedly in its ribs. Or where its ribs would have been, if office paper shredders had any. (Which they don’t, by the way—I’ve checked the manual.)
The shredder thrashed and bucked like an angry bull, flipping and tossing Emmie around. She clung on tightly, hammering her fists against the machine in the hope of smashing something vital.
But then the shredder stopped suddenly, raising its bottom end into the air. Emmie was thrown into a clumsy somersault. She landed on her back on the carpet and craned her neck in time to see the shredder’s metal teeth closing in fast.
Emmie covered her head with her hands. She shut her eyes.
Then she opened them again when the roaring of the shredder spluttered and died. Arty stood over by the wall, an electrical cord in his hand.
“I unplugged it,” he said.
“Genius move, Arty!” cried Mr. Saunders.
Arty blinked. “Well, not really. It was pretty obvious, actually.” He bent down to also open up the shredder’s back and ripped out any electronic machinery—he didn’t want to take any chances.
“What I want to know,” said Mr. Saunders, as Arty untied him, “is how it came to life in the first place.”
“It was CHARLES,” Arty explained.
“Aha!” said Mr. Saunders, nodding sagely. “Who’s CHARLES, then?”
“He’s my robot.”
“He’s gone evil,” Emmie explained. “He wants to clean us all out of existence, and he’s taken control of all other electronics so that they’ll help him.”
“Well,” Mr. Saunders huffed, standing up and rubbing the rope-marks on his wrists, “I’m sure Earl Brute has it all under control!”
“Erm, no. He’s also evil,” Emmie added. “He wants to take over the town and rule it with an iron fist. Sorry, I almost forgot that part.”
“Right,” said Mr. Saunders, trying very hard to smile, but not making a very good job of it. “Busy day ahead, then, what with one thing and another.”
“Who tied you up, by the way?” Emmie asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” he said, setting to work unraveling a colleague’s knot. “They jumped us from behind.”
“Minions!” Emmie guessed. Obviously Brute’s soldiers had been hard at work.
When everyone else was untied, they
headed back through to the control room. “We could use the lasers,” Emmie said. “Blast CHARLES to bits.”
“No!” Arty yelped. “We agreed. The plan is to keep him in one piece. He’s my lovely electronic pal.”
Emmie gestured to one of the monitors, where CHARLES was unleashing another volley of laser fire on Brute’s minions. “Not anymore he isn’t.”
Suddenly, a flash of movement on another screen caught her eye. “Hey, look, there’s Sam!” she said. They all gathered around the monitor to watch Sam racing across a lawn at blisteringly high speed.
“He’s in a rush, isn’t he?” said Arty. Then a quick glance at another screen revealed why. Charging up behind him was an out-of-control lawn mower.
“It’s gaining on him!” cried Mr. Saunders. He began running in circles, because running in circles was his default way of dealing with emergency situations. “What will we do?”
Emmie slid onto a seat in front of a console. She took hold of a joystick. “We’ll do this,” she said, then gritted her teeth, shut one eye, and pressed the button.
CHAPTER NINE
Sam ran, using all his world-famous speed, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough. He could hear the mower chewing up the ground behind him, getting steadily closer with every moment. He was still holding his baseball bat, but the lawn mower was built like a tank, and no amount of thwacking was going to put a dent in it.
Sam’s life flashed before his eyes. The first few years weren’t much to write home about, but the final few months were pretty flippin’ exciting. If he had to go, he supposed being chewed to bits by an artificially intelligent lawn mower under the control of a massive robot made about as much sense as anything else.
But he wasn’t going to just lie down and let it gobble him up. Sam ducked his head and kicked his legs for extra speed. He glanced back over his shoulder, sure he’d see the lawn mower falling behind. Instead, he saw it leaping into the air (surprisingly gracefully, he couldn’t help but notice) and hurtling toward him.
Then, with a bzzzt and a boom, the lawn mower exploded. Sam stopped running and blinked in surprise. He glanced up and noticed one of the town’s laser blasters. It looked like he had a guardian angel—a guardian angel with high-velocity laser-based weaponry, which really is the best kind of guardian angel.