Nick and Tesla's Robot Army Rampage

by Bob Pflugfelder

  Having their robo-showdown outside also gave Nick and Tesla an excuse to get away from their uncle, who’d been pestering them with questions they either couldn’t answer or didn’t want to.

  “Do guys still bring gals boxes of chocolate, or is that just something I used to see in old cartoons?” Uncle Newt had asked.

  Nick and Tesla shrugged.

  “Is there such a thing as love at first sight, or is that simply a response to pheromones and stimulation of the medial prefrontal cortex triggered by subliminal visual cues?” Uncle Newt had asked.

  Nick and Tesla shrugged again.

  “Should I start working out?” Uncle Newt had asked, trying to flex an arm muscle and looking chagrined by the (non)result.

  Nick and Tesla scooped up their robots and fled.

  Unfortunately, although retreating to the back porch let them escape their uncle’s questions, it put them square in the sights of his most unneighborly neighbor.

  Julie Casserly was walking out to her car dressed for the gym in form-fitting red, blue, and white striped tights that made her look like a walking barber pole. She stopped in her driveway to glare at Nick and Tesla as they crouched over their creations.

  “What are those?” she asked. “Time bombs?”

  “No,” said Tesla.

  “Land mines?”

  “No,” said Tesla.

  “Nuclear reactors?”

  “They’re just robots,” said Nick (who usually tried to stay out of these conversations).

  “Oh.” Julie looked at her watch. “And when should I expect them to go berserk and begin attacking people?”

  Tesla picked up her robot and showed it to her.

  “Look. It’s the size of a cat and it’s made out of a soda bottle. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Yeah. Sure. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ ” Julie said. “Just make sure those things stay on your uncle’s side of the property line. I don’t want my lawn hurt when the explosions start.”

  She got in her car and drove off.

  “I blame sci-fi,” Tesla said.

  “What?” said Nick.

  “Science fiction. There’s always robots on the rampage, trying to take over the world of whatever. It gives ’em a bad rap. They’re really just cool tools that happen to move around on their own.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Nick, “it’s time to see who’s gonna win that five million dollars.”

  (Nick and Tesla often made bets with each other for high stakes. When they’d come to live with Uncle Newt, Nick already owed Tesla $14 million. Now it was up to $21 million.)

  “Right,” Tesla said. “You do the countdown, then we’ll let the Teslanator and Frank go head to head.”

  The Teslanator was Tesla’s robot.

  Nick, for some reason, had named his robot Frank.

  They put down their robots so they were facing each other on the cracked cement of the porch.

  “Three,” said Nick. “Two…one.”

  Tesla pushed the Teslanator’s batteries into place.

  Nick twisted together the black and red wires on top of Frank.

  Both robots came to life, hopping rapidly back and forth on their spindly little legs.

  Tesla whooped and pumped her fist in the air. “Get him, Teslanator! Tear him apart!”

  “Go, Frank!” cheered Nick. “Destroy! Destroy!”

  The Teslanator and Frank wobbled forward into each other, then bounced away and began moving in opposite directions.

  “So they’re not exactly battlebots,” Nick said. “But they both work great.”

  “Yeah,” said Tesla. “I think yours is a little faster, though.”

  “And I think yours looks cooler.”

  “Thanks. Tie?”

  Tesla held out her hand.

  Nick took it and shook.

  “Tie,” he said. “And thanks for the distraction. I needed it.”

  Yet Tesla could already see the sadness and worry creeping back into Nick’s eyes, even as he watched Frank scuttle off toward the grass. She hadn’t kept her brother’s mind off their parents for long. What would her next distraction be?

  The Teslanator bumped into the rusty ruins of an old barbecue grill and changed direction again. Now it was doing a quick, quivering walk up the concrete path to the driveway.

  “Watch out!” Nick called to the robot. “It’s a big, dangerous world out there!”

  Tesla rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t listen to him, Teslanator. The world’s big, but it’s not dangerous. Roam! Discover! Live!”

  The little robot seemed to scuttle away even faster, as if it heard Tesla’s words and was anxious to enjoy its newfound freedom.

  Then a bicycle zipped around the house and crushed it flat.

  “No!” cried Tesla.

  “Blurk!” cried Nick (who was always more thrown by surprises than his sister, something he attributed to the fact that he was twelve minutes younger than she).

  “You’ve gotta come with me!” said the boy riding the bike: Nick and Tesla’s friend DeMarco. “It’s an—hey.” He glanced down at the little robot he’d just flattened beneath his tires. “Did I run over a walking bottle of root beer?”

  “Yes,” Nick said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” DeMarco took in a deep breath and started again. “You’ve gotta come with me! It’s an emergency!”

  He wheeled his bike around and sped off.

  Nick and Tesla ran around the house after him.

  “What’s going on?” Tesla called out.

  “I told you!” DeMarco shouted over his shoulder. “It’s an emergency!”

  “What kind of emergency?” said Nick.

  “The bad kind!”

  Nick looked at Tesla. “Is there a good kind?”

  DeMarco swooped out of the driveway and started pedaling up the street. He was addicted to adrenaline—he’d once told Nick and Tesla that when he grew up, he wanted to be a motocross driver, a stuntman, a mixed martial arts cage fighter, or, preferably, all three. But he didn’t go looking for trouble or imagine it when it wasn’t there. If he said there was an emergency, there was an emergency.

  “Come on,” said Tesla, running to the garage. “We’d better see what’s wrong.”

  “I hope Silas is OK,” said Nick.

  Silas was another friend from the neighborhood. He and DeMarco were total opposites. DeMarco was small and quick and excitable and came from a large family. Silas was big and slow and mellow and an only child. Yet they were inseparable. As far as Nick and Tesla knew, they spent every waking moment together.

  So where was Silas now?

  There were two bicycles in the garage: a rusty old ten-speed and a like-new mountain bike Uncle Newt had picked up for the kids at a garage sale the week before. Nick hopped on the ten-speed, even though the gears were a complete mystery to him and he always felt like he was trying to pedal up Mount Everest even when they were riding downhill.

  Tesla had bought the right to ride the mountain bike all summer for $4 million.

  By the time she and Nick raced down the driveway, DeMarco was a block ahead of them. They followed him up the street, around the corner, and out of the neighborhood. He had to stop when he hit a red light at the Pacific Coast Highway, but before Nick and Tesla could catch up the light turned green and he went speeding into downtown Half Moon Bay.

  “I think I know where we’re going,” said Tesla.

  “Me … too,” Nick panted as he pumped with all his might on the ten-speed. “But what kind of … emergency could there be … there?”

  A minute later, Nick and Tesla saw that their guess was right. DeMarco was hopping off his bike outside the town’s one and only comic-book shop—which Silas’s family owned. Whenever Silas and DeMarco weren’t cruising around on their bikes looking for something to do, they could be found there flipping through the latest issue of Scorpion-Boy or The Unstoppable Captain Carnage.

  HERO WORSHIP, INCORPORATED, the sign over the door said.
COMICS • COLLECTIBLES • STUFF YOUR MOM WOULD THROW AWAY (BUT SHOULDN’T).

  Standing at attention beneath the sign, fists on his hips and feet spread apart, was a tall figure clad in blue-and-gold armor: a statue of the superhero Metalman. DeMarco paused a moment beside it, gesturing for Nick and Tesla to hurry up, before going inside. Nick and Tesla parked their bicycles in a nearby rack—both noting that Silas’s bike was already there—and followed DeMarco into the store.

  Hero Worship, Incorporated was like a smaller version of the old Wonder Hut—dark, grungy, and cramped. There were thousands of comics in long, thin boxes, and toys and trading cards and posters and DVDs were packed in everywhere, too. What wasn’t packing the place were customers. This morning, like too many mornings, there were none.

  Sitting behind the counter was a big, burly man with a thick black beard and a fondness for plaid flannel shirts and knit caps. It always seemed to Nick as though Paul Bunyan had put down his axe and opened up a comic-book shop.

  Except it wasn’t Paul Bunyan, of course. It was Silas’s dad, Dave Kuskie. He was hunched over with his head in his hands.

  Silas and DeMarco stood watching him with forlorn looks on their faces.

  “We’re ruined,” Mr. Kuskie moaned. “Ruined.”

  “Hi, guys,” Silas said to Nick and Tesla. “Thanks for coming.”

  Mr. Kuskie jerked his head up in surprise. His eyes were red and puffy, his round, usually friendly face pale.

  He looked at Nick and Tesla, then DeMarco, and then finally Silas.

  “Son,” he said, shaking his head, “which part of ‘Leave this to the grown-ups’ did you not understand?”

  “The part about leaving it to the grown-ups, I guess,” Silas said.

  He wasn’t being sarcastic.

  He also didn’t understand rhetorical questions.

  “Mr. Kuskie,” DeMarco said, “if leaving it to grown-ups is gonna work, why do you keep sitting there saying, ‘We’re ruined, we’re ruined’?”

  “Well … because …” Silas’s father buried his face in his hands again. “We’re ruined.”

  Silas walked around the counter to pat him on the back. As he passed one of the store’s jumble-covered shelves, a little silver shape on it came to life.

  It was another robot, like the one Nick, Tesla, and Uncle Newt had seen inside Ranalli’s Italian Kitchen. Only instead of wearing a chef’s hat, it sported a cape and mask. And instead of spinning fake pizza dough, it raised a shiny finger and pointed it at Silas.

  “Crime does not pay, evildoer,” it croaked in a droning voice, its rectangular plastic “mouth” flashing red with each syllable.

  The “evildoer” ignored it.

  “Come on, Dad,” Silas said. “Nick and Tesla are smart. They can help. Just like they helped that girl a couple weeks ago.”

  Oh, man, Nick thought. Rescue one kidnapped girl, and people start thinking you’re kid detectives.

  A chill ran through him, but he couldn’t tell if it was from excitement, pride, embarrassment, or dread.

  “I don’t know if we can help, Mr. Kuskie,” Tesla said. “But I do know that telling us what happened couldn’t hurt.”

  Silas’s dad lifted his head and gave her a skeptical look. It was clear he wasn’t convinced they were kid detectives. Yet after a moment, he sighed and started talking.

  “I had it in my hands. Right here in the store. The answer to all our problems … and now it’s gone!” Mr. Kuskie leaned forward and pierced Nick and Tesla with a look of wide-eyed horror. “A mint-condition copy of Stupefying #6!”

  There was a long, awkward silence as Mr. Kuskie waited for Nick and Tesla to react.

  “So …” Nick said. “That’s … a comic book?”

  Mr. Kuskie looked appalled. “You don’t know?”

  Nick and Tesla shook their heads.

  “Aren’t you guys into comic books?” DeMarco asked them.

  “Not really,” Tesla said.

  Nick waggled a hand. “Meh.”

  “But … but …” Silas spluttered. “You’re nerds!”

  “What?” Nick and Tesla said together.

  “You do science projects for fun,” Silas said, “and you read books—without pictures!—even when you don’t have to. Obviously, you’re nerds. And all nerds love comics … don’t they?”

  “No,” Tesla said. “They do not.”

  “Not that it matters,” Nick threw in. “Because it doesn’t apply to us. We’re not nerds.”

  He turned and gave his sister an uncertain look that silently added, “Or are we?”

  She was looking at Silas’s dad.

  “So this Stupefying #6,” she said, “it’s valuable?”

  Mr. Kuskie nodded solemnly. “Stupefying Comics #6 from July of 1944 features the first-ever appearance of a certain special someone named Metalman. You do know Metalman, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Nick. “We’ve even seen the movies.”

  Mr. Kuskie nodded again. “Sure you have. Metalman is one of the most popular superheroes in the world. Which means Stupefying #6 isn’t just valuable. It’s very, very, very, very, very valuable.”

  “How did you get a copy?” Tesla asked.

  “I found it at an estate sale yesterday morning.”

  Tesla furrowed her brow. “Estate sale?”

  “If you die,” Silas explained, “and, like, there’s no one you wanted to give your stuff to, then, like, it’s all sold off one day to whoever walks into your house and pays for it.”

  “Sounds like the Yard Sale of the Dead,” Tesla said.

  Nick shivered. “Creepy.”

  “Not really,” said Mr. Kuskie. “You can find amazing stuff at estate sales. And if someone doesn’t buy something, it just gets hauled off to the dump. That’s probably what would’ve happened to that copy of Stupefying #6 if I hadn’t found it. It was at the bottom of a big pile of old Life magazines and issues of Reader’s Digest and junk comics that aren’t worth a nickel. Whoever had it all these years had no idea it was valuable. But I knew. And that Barry Dobek—he knew, too.”

  For the first time, Nick saw something like spite on Mr. Kuskie’s face.

  “Who’s Barry Dobek?” Tesla asked.

  “He owns one of the antiques places up the street. The Treasure Trove,” Mr. Kuskie said. “He hits the local estate sales every weekend, too. Always tries to beat me to any good comics or toys, even though that’s not his business at all. He just likes competition … and winning. When he saw me with Stupefying #6, I thought his head was going to explode.”

  “I see,” Tesla said, nodding knowingly. “And after you bought the comic, you brought it to the store?”

  “Yeah. I put it in a manila envelope and left it right there.” Mr. Kuskie waved a hand at a sloppy stack of comic books and magazines piled on the floor behind the counter. “I was going to put it in a safety-deposit box this morning and then set up an online auction. This isn’t the kind of comic you sell to any schmo who walks in off the street. I was going to make enough from it to pay off all our debts and make sure the bank doesn’t—”

  Mr. Kuskie cut himself off, his gaze drifting to half a dozen white envelopes piled up by the cash register.

  They looked like bills.

  “The store hasn’t been doing well,” Mr. Kuskie said sheepishly.

  “We noticed” was the first response that occurred to Nick. He thought it best not to say it.

  “So what happened to the comic book?” Tesla asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Kuskie said with a shrug. “When I came in this morning, it just … wasn’t here.”

  Tesla opened her mouth.

  “And before you ask,” Mr. Kuskie said, “no. I did not simply lose it. You don’t misplace a miracle when it drops into your lap.”

  “You’ve gone to the police, then?” Tesla asked.

  Mr. Kuskie nodded, but the way he tilted his head and pinched his lips and almost rolled his eyes made it obvious he didn�
��t think much would come of a call to Half Moon Bay’s police force.

  The “force” was composed entirely of one overworked cop and one elderly clerk.

  “Sgt. Feiffer came and looked the place over,” Mr. Kuskie said, “but he couldn’t find any evidence of a break-in.”

  “So how did the thief get inside?” Tesla said.

  “I have no idea! The doors were still locked when I came in this morning.”

  “Who has keys?” Tesla asked.

  “Just me, though there’s a spare set that I …” Mr. Kuskie tilted his head farther to the side, looking even more skeptical than before. “Explain to me again why I’m telling this to a couple of twelve-year-olds.”

  “We’re eleven, actually,” Nick said.

  It was his first contribution to the investigation.

  Tesla threw him a glare that told him what she thought of it.

  “So,” she said, turning back to Silas’s dad, “who else knew you had the comic book?”

  Mr. Kuskie just looked at her for a moment and then shook his head sadly.

  “You know what? This is ridiculous. Metalman’s not going to save the store, and neither is Nancy Drew. I appreciate your willingness to help, but I’d prefer it if you’d just leave.” He turned to his son. “Silas. Please.”

  “All right, Dad. Let’s go, guys.”

  Silas began ushering his friends toward the door.

  “Now where was I?” Nick heard Mr. Kuskie mutter as they stepped outside. “Oh, yeah. I’m ruined.”

  “I overheard him talking to Sgt. Feiffer,” Silas said once the kids were outdoors beside Metalman. “He really might have to close Hero Worship for good. I had no idea we were going broke, but … well, I guess we are. That comic book was going to save the store. Now that it’s gone …”

  Silas shrugged miserably.

  Nick placed a hand on one of his friend’s broad, slumping shoulders. “I’m sorry, Silas.”

  “Can’t you guys call in that spy lady with your little dog collars?” DeMarco said to Nick and Tesla. “I bet she could help.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Tesla told him.

  “That spy lady” was Agent McIntyre, a friend of their parents who’d helped get them out of trouble once before. She tracked Nick and Tesla, they suspected, with star-shaped pendants their mom and dad had given to them—the “little dog collars.”