Beware of the Giant Brain!

by Mark Young

“I know you’re here to protect him, Professor Flubitus, but I really think you need to keep away from him,” Mumtaz was saying. “You can’t keep yourself from talking. You almost gave away some very important information!”

  Newton’s heart pounded faster. Were Mumtaz and Professor Flubitus talking about him?

  “I know the boy deserves to know, but just think of what kind of a quantum quagmire that would open,” Mumtaz said. “If he knew that his brother was a…”

  Mumtaz stopped, and Newton had to keep himself from screaming.

  Was a what? he wanted to yell. And also, I have a brother!

  But Mumtaz didn’t finish. Her attention snapped to the video monitors for the library security cameras. “Professor, I’ve got to go,” she said, and then she hurried out of the office.

  Still camouflaged, Newton followed her. He wasn’t sure why. But he was spurred on by the hope that Mumtaz would say, or mutter out loud, the name of his brother. He raced behind Mumtaz as she hurried to the library. At one point she stopped, turned, and looked behind her. Newton froze. Her eyes narrowed, but she turned back and continued on.

  She didn’t stop until she got to the Brain Bank. When she walked in, she gasped.

  “Oh my goodness, Odifin!”

  Newton carefully stepped forward and saw that all the brain jars had been pushed against the wall to make room for a blue plastic kiddie pool in the center of the room. Inside the kiddie pool was a huge brain with eyes—a brain that looked very much like Odifin, but way bigger, about the size of a teacher’s desk. Rotwang was wearing a wet suit and using a plastic beach pail to pour blue goop over Odifin.

  “More super bluegoo, Rotwang! I’m starting to dry out!” Odifin said.

  “Odifin, what is the meaning of this?” Mumtaz asked.

  “KNOWLEDGE!” Odifin’s reply thundered through the wireless speakers. “I am absorbing more knowledge than any student has ever absorbed before! That is what’s going on.”

  Mumtaz pursed her lips together. “I see,” she said. “I certainly am in favor of knowledge, Odifin, but if you get any bigger, you’re going to knock over all these jars.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Odifin snapped, and Mumtaz raised an eyebrow. “Tori Twitcher has agreed to lend me the tank she used to display her mechanical shark, which should be big enough, and Rotwang has been building me a new platform using the printer in the 3-D lab. It should be ready momentarily. I’ve increased the range of my super bluegoo receiver, and Rotwang has created another batch of goo for me. I was planning on moving into my new dwelling tonight. Unfortunately, my dorm room is not big enough to hold me either.”

  “There is plenty of room in the basement,” Mumtaz said. “Rotwang, go fetch the platform and the tank.”

  Then she reached into the front pocket of her jacket and pulled out a fly drone. “Find Tori Twitcher and tell her that Rotwang is coming for the shark tank.”

  The drone flew off. By this point students who’d been studying in the library had all gathered at the entrance to the Brain Bank and were staring at Odifin. Newton stepped aside and stopped camouflaging. There was no need for that now.

  He found Shelly, Theremin, and Higgy.

  “Hey, Newton,” Shelly said. “So it looks like Odifin’s been growing, huh?”

  Newton nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Is that supposed to happen?”

  “Why not?” Theremin asked. “Before you came to the school, André Wadlow invented a growth formula and sprouted up to nine feet tall! He doesn’t go to the school anymore, though.”

  Newton looked up. “Because the ceilings aren’t high enough?”

  “No, because he couldn’t find any pants that fit,” Theremin replied.

  “Weird events happen all the time at Franken-Sci High,” Higgy added. “Last year the entire mad-science-fiction book club became miniaturized for twenty-four hours! Everyone thought they were missing, but the cafeteria ladies found them diving into the nacho dip.”

  Shelly lowered her voice. “I thought you were sneaking into Mumtaz’s office tonight,” she whispered.

  “I did,” he answered. “I couldn’t get into the database, but I heard Mumtaz talking to Flubitus. And she said I have a brother.”

  Shelly’s eyes got wide. “That’s great! It narrows down our search.”

  “I hope it’s me,” Theremin said. “I mean, it’s not impossible, right? Maybe my dad had something to do with creating you, too.”

  “You never know,” Newton said, and he felt more excited than he’d felt in a long time. He was getting closer to finding out who his relative was!

  At that moment, Rotwang appeared holding a remote control that was guiding a large motorized platform topped with a huge glass tank. Inside the tank, glowing super bluegoo sloshed around.

  “That’s the shark tank Tori used at the science fair,” Shelly remarked.

  The platform wouldn’t fit inside the Brain Bank, and Rotwang stopped. He moved over to the kiddie pool and tried to pick it up. But his skinny arms could barely lift it.

  “Drones, help him!” Mumtaz called out, and the library drones zoomed into the Brain Bank. Mechanical arms extended from each one, and together they lifted up the kiddie pool. They flew over to the shark tank and tipped it over, and Odifin sloshed into the super bluegoo.

  His voice came out of a speaker on the side of the tank. “Ah, much better!”

  “Get him down to the boiler room, Rotwang,” Mumtaz ordered. “Odifin, we’re going to figure out a way for you to attend classes remotely from now on.”

  “But, Headmistress, I need to—”

  “You can attend class, even if it’s virtually,” Mumtaz said. “You too, Rotwang. No more guarding the Brain Bank for your friend, as I’ve heard. You’re a student at this school too, not just Odifin’s assistant.”

  “Yes, Ms. Mumtaz,” Rotwang said, and Newton thought he saw a look of relief on the boy’s face.

  Rotwang pressed a button on the remote, and the platform began to move out of the library.

  “Take the service elevator!” Mumtaz called out.

  “You’ll see!” Odifin cried as his tank moved past the crowd of onlookers. “Just wait until the Brilliant Brains Trivia Competition! I will defeat you ALL!”

  Theremin’s eyes flashed. “Is Mumtaz really going to let that overgrown ball of glop compete?” he asked. “That’s not fair.”

  “I don’t think there are any rules limiting brain size,” Higgy pointed out.

  “Well, maybe there should be,” Theremin said.

  “Just because Odifin is big doesn’t mean he’s smart,” Newton pointed out. “I think you’ll do great, ro-bro.”

  Shelly grinned. “Is this a new thing? It’s cute.”

  Newton nodded.

  “Anyway, should we keep studying?” Higgy asked.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Shelly said. “Let’s take this new information we’ve gotten from Newton and try to narrow down our data to find his brother.”

  “What do you say, Newton?” Higgy asked.

  Newton grinned. “Yes!”

  CHAPTER 7 One Big, Bored Brain

  Soon after, Odifin was on the move. He liked getting so much attention as he traveled through the halls on the giant motorized platform. The halls were just wide enough for the shark tank and platform to fit. Kids stared, wide-eyed, at him as they got out of the platform’s way. They pointed and whispered to one another. He even heard one kid yell, “Looking good, Odifin!”

  Then Odifin and Rotwang boarded the service elevator to the basement. Odifin rolled out into the dark, damp space, lit by flickering fluorescent lights that cast a sickly glow everywhere. It was quite a change from the bright, colorful library.

  “I should speak to Ms. Mumtaz about better quarters,” Odifin remarked. “Unless she has a luxury suite set up for me down here.”

  “She said the boiler room,” Rotwang said, and he steered Odifin’s tank into a huge space next to the chugging boilers that heated the
school’s water tanks.

  “I suppose this will have to do,” Odifin said. “But it doesn’t really matter where I am, Rotwang! With my new advances to the super bluegoo, I can connect to anything in the school just by thinking about it! Every database! Every camera! Every bit of knowledge in the school is now mine.”

  “Cool,” Rotwang said, unimpressed. “So, listen, um, Master, since you don’t need me to guard the Brain Bank anymore, I should start going to class again, like Ms. Mumtaz said. Unless, you know, you need me to hang out with you?”

  “It’s not like you’re very good company, always wearing those virtual reality glasses,” Odifin replied. “Do whatever you want.”

  “Okay, then. So, good night,” Rotwang said, shrugging.

  “Is it nighttime?” Odifin asked. “The hours just fly by these days. And I don’t seem to need as much rest as I used to. Maybe you could stay for a little longer, Rotwang, and we’ll— Rotwang?”

  His assistant was gone.

  “Fine,” Odifin said out loud, to nobody besides himself. “I’ll just enhance my intelligence some more until I feel sleepy.”

  He thought about the brains in the Brain Bank, but there was nothing new there to learn.

  Hmmm, he thought. Where else might the trivia questions come from? The professors, maybe?

  He reached out with his thoughts and tapped into Professor Snollygoster’s files for his Emotional Chemistry class. The first file that reached him was a homework file.

  “Is this what I’ve been missing? Equations so simple that a baby could solve them? Ha!” Odifin cried. He solved the problems and shut the file. Then he dug deeper, absorbing all of Snollygoster’s notes, tests, and quizzes. “Marvelous,” Odifin said. “I can feel myself growing bigger once again. Soon I will have more knowledge than anyone else at Franken-Sci High. And maybe the world! Mwah-ha-ha!”

  There was no one to hear his mad-scientist cackle. The only one who might have heard it was the custodian, Stubbins Crouch, who was sweeping the floor in the hallway outside the boiler room, but he didn’t hear anything because he had his headphones on. He liked listening to podcasts before heading to his room to sleep.

  Odifin actually needed rest too, just like any other brain, and he drifted off to sleep. He dreamed that he snuck into the tablets of students at school and completed all of their homework assignments. There was something so satisfying about it, getting the answers right one after the other.

  When he woke up, he was pulsing with energy.

  “What next?” he wondered out loud. “Ah yes, the professors’ files.”

  With his super brainpower it only took him a day to download the course files of every professor, and his brain grew even bigger. He was so preoccupied that he didn’t notice when his brain sprouted tendrils that waved in the air like seaweed in water. It was like his main brain couldn’t grow any bigger, so it started to sprout and grow branches.

  That night he dreamed of completing homework assignments again—hundreds of math problems… seventeen chemical formulas.… He even wrote a three-thousand-word essay titled “Why Sometimes Being Unethical Is the Ethical Thing to Do” and submitted it as extra credit to Professor Wagg’s History of Mad Scientists class for a student named Archimedes Jones, who was failing the class.

  “What an unusual dream,” Odifin thought when he woke up. “Rotwang, you wouldn’t believe what—”

  He stopped. What had Rotwang said? Something about going to classes? Odifin wondered.

  What a lousy excuse to not have to hang around with me, Odifin thought. Then he spoke out loud.

  “Let’s see, what shall I do today?” Odifin wondered. “I’ve downloaded everything the professors know. Maybe it’s time to see what Ms. Mumtaz has in her files.”

  He spent hours trying to break into the headmistress’s encrypted files, but not even his overdeveloped brain cells could crack her security. He finally gave up.

  “What a waste of time, when I could be learning something,” he said. “What else is out there?”

  He began to scan everything he could reach with the super bluegoo, and his mind connected to a security drone.

  This could be fun, Odifin thought. To the cafeteria!

  Controlling the drone with his mind, he sent the drone flying through the hallways.

  “Sound,” Odifin commanded, and then he could hear everything going on around the drone as students walked to the cafeteria.

  “…so weird!” one boy was saying. “I woke up and my homework for Leviathan’s class was finished, but I don’t remember doing it.”

  “I got extra credit for something I didn’t do!” said Archimedes. “I tried to tell Professor Wagg that it was some kind of mistake, but he didn’t believe me.”

  “Maybe you did it in your sleep,” his friend joked.

  In your sleep? Odifin thought. Then he had a terrifying and amazing thought. Maybe those dreams weren’t dreams, Odifin realized. I must have done all that work I dreamed about when I thought I was sleeping. My brain is so powerful that I can’t turn it off!

  The drone entered the cafeteria, and Odifin moved it around. Gustav Goddard was getting a smoothie out of the machine. Odifin connected to the smoothie maker.

  Blend faster, Odifin instructed the machine with his thoughts, and the smoothie maker shot green liquid out so quickly that it splattered all over Gustav.

  “Hey!” Gustav wailed. “What’s wrong with this thing?”

  “That was pretty funny,” Odifin said out loud in the boiler room. “What next?”

  The drone reached Mimi Crowninshield and some other students, and Odifin hovered there, listening.

  “I’m telling you, he was big!” Tori Twitcher was saying.

  “Bigger than a… neo-proton collector?” Mimi asked.

  “Yes,” Tori said. “Odifin was as big as… Mumtaz’s hovercraft, I swear! He must be, like, super-intelligent.”

  Mimi sniffed. “Odifin?”

  For fun Odifin made the cafeteria lights flicker when she said his name.

  “Odifin”—the lights flickered—“can get as big as he wants, but he will never be as smart as I am,” Mimi said. “And if Odifin”—the lights flickered again—“is so smart, where is he now? Why isn’t he in class with the rest of us, showing us how smart he is?”

  “I don’t think he could fit into class,” Tori remarked.

  Mimi’s remarks didn’t bother Odifin. He knew he was smarter than anybody else in Franken-Sci High. He was probably the smartest boy in the whole world!

  The drone zipped around the cafeteria, and Odifin listened in on the students’ conversations. He made the lights flicker every time he heard his name.

  Higgy said to Newton, “I heard that Odifin”—the lights flickered, and Higgy paused. “Hey, did you see that? Did the lights flicker when I said ‘Odifin’?” Before Newton could answer, the lights flickered again.

  “They did!” Newton said, once the flickering was over. “That’s weird.”

  Odifin was having fun until the drone spotted Rotwang, eating a burger and sitting at a table with two boys that Odifin didn’t recognize.

  “And then the duck started to cluck like a chicken!” one of the boys was saying, and Rotwang started laughing.

  “That’s great. You are too funny, Milton,” Rotwang said.

  An emotion surged through Odifin, a mix of annoyance, anger, and jealousy. The lights flickered off and on, causing all of the kids to quiet down.

  “What’s happening?” Rotwang wondered aloud.

  “Must be a problem with the mainframe,” Milton replied.

  Odifin broke his connection with the drone, and it crashed to the floor of the cafeteria with a clatter. He reached out to other parts of the school, looking for more things to do. He found Stubbins Crouch in a hallway, steering a robotic floor polisher to clean the yellow-and-green linoleum.

  Let’s play tag! Odifin thought, and he watched gleefully as the floor polisher chased the poor custodian around and
around in circles.

  Odifin spent the next few hours finding things to mess with. He broke the codes to every locker and slammed them open and shut, open and shut. He made a lawn mower chew up Professor Lilydale’s garden of flowers outside the carnivorous plants lab. He activated a fire-safety sprinkler, drenching a hallway full of kids on their way to class.

  He was about to set all the washing machines in the school laundry spinning at a hundred miles per hour when Rotwang appeared. Rotwang took a quick look at Odifin’s new brain tendrils and shrugged.

  “Oh, hello, Rotwang,” Odifin said. “I guess you got bored hanging out with all those unintelligent lunkheads who call themselves mad scientists, and decided to be with me. Smart move. I’ve been having some fun with—”

  Rotwang held out a cell phone. “Your mom’s on the phone.”

  “Odie? Are you okay? You haven’t called in ages. And Ms. Mumtaz left me messages about you taking over the Brain Bank and growing?” She sounded worried.

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Odifin said. “Better than ever, in fact! Ever since I got settled down here in the basement boiler room, I—”

  “Boiler room?” Ms. Pinkwad interrupted. “What on earth are you doing there?”

  “I became enhanced by the knowledge I absorbed from the Brain Bank, and as a result I’ve grown a bit larger,” Odifin explained. “But it’s fine. I know more about everything than anybody else in the whole school!”

  “You mean you aren’t going to class?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I already know everything,” Odifin replied, and Rotwang, still holding the phone, cringed at Odifin’s disrespectful tone. “What do I need with class?”

  “Now, don’t take that tone with me, Odifin,” his mom said. “You know I sent you to Franken-Sci High to make friends and meet people. How can you do that in a basement?”

  “I don’t need friends, Mom,” Odifin replied. “I never have.”

  “But you told me you had made a lot of friends, Odifin,” his mom said.

  “I lied,” Odifin said.

  His mom gasped and said, “You lied?”