How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees

by Paul Tobin

  Wait a minute.

  “Bits of metal?” I said.

  “Bosper is alert!” Bosper said, reacting to the tone of my voice, letting the rug drop from his mouth and standing to attention.

  “Right,” Nate said, moving closer to the giant hologram. I resisted the urge to pull him back. I was so freaked out that I picked up the cereal bowl of olives and started eating them, one after the other.

  “They’re actually a metallic-crystalline compound substance,” Nate said, peering closer at the giant image of Melville. She herself was now perched on my shoulder, buzzing in confusion.

  “Hmm,” Nate said, studying the weird metallic things, or the crystalline things, the “definitely not supposed to be there” things. They were covering the tops of Melville’s front legs. Several metallic dots on each leg.

  “Scent traps,” Nate said. “Each containing approximately a mole of perfume.”

  “She’s wearing perfumed moles?” That didn’t sound right. That’s something I would have noticed.

  “Not that type of mole,” Nate said. “That’s something you would notice. No, in this case, a mole is a unit of measurement.”

  I said, “I suspect you are about to confuse me.”

  Bosper said, “Bosper is going back to chewing on the rug and not getting in trouble, okay? Is true? Okay?” He was skipping in place, leaping up and down. I used my foot to nudge the rug, and Bosper snarled and went into full attack mode.

  Nate said, “A mole is the amount of any chemical substance that contains as many elementary entities as the atoms you would find in twelve grams of carbon 12. Pure carbon 12, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But . . . and this may shock you . . . I’m rarely searching for elementary entities at all, not in carbon 12, or carbon 1, or carbon 2, or even that rascal, carbon 3.”

  “You should!” Nate exclaimed. “It’s lots more fun than any video game!” He was looking at me, more pleased than ever before. At first I thought he was just happy to be talking about moles, but then I realized he was thrilled that he’d been a good host, as I’d eaten the entire bowl of olives.

  “So, what do these things do?” I asked, moving a finger through the metallic scent traps.

  Nate said, “I designed them to release an arrangement of perfectly timed scents in order to modify a bumblebee’s behavior.”

  “Wait. Hold on. Stop. Did you just say that you designed them?”

  “Umm . . .” I could see the worry in Nate’s eyes, and I could also see that he was worried about getting shoulder punched.

  “Don’t worry, Nate,” I told him. “I promise I won’t punch your shoulder. Just tell me the truth.”

  “Okay,” he said, relaxing. “So . . . yesterday was Friday the thirteenth.”

  “Right. And you made that extra-sweaty deodorant, and you made the Infinite Engine, and you . . . you . . . hmm. You never told me the third thing you did.” I could feel my eyes narrowing, almost out of my control. I could feel my fingers clenching into a Shoulder-Punching fist, totally within my control.

  “Well, you know how your birthday is coming up?” Nate said.

  “I do. I am totally aware. Keenly aware, in fact.” I had a long list on my bedroom wall, a list of seventy-seven potential inventions I’d been hoping Nate would make for my birthday, such as a machine that senses the nearest cakes (although, to be honest, I’m enormously talented in that area already) or something useful on an everyday basis, such as pills that would make my brother Steve uncontrollably fart, or a designer jetbelt, so that I could soar through the skies. Really, with Nate’s genius, the possibilities of amazing birthday presents was endless.

  “I made you a present,” Nate said. His eyes were glinting.

  “Ooo,” I said, thinking of the inventions on my wish list. Maybe he made me all of them? Although, seventy-seven gifts was probably asking too much. I’d say . . . thirty would be sufficient. Maybe fifty.

  Nate gestured to the giant hologram-thingy of Melville and said, “I’ve been adhering these scent traps to tens of millions of bees, so that they will fly in precise formation and spell out ‘Happy Birthday to Delphine Gabriella Cooper!’ across the whole of the sky.”

  “Really?” I said. My fist was clenching again.

  “Really!” Nate said. His eyes were glinting again. They should have stopped.

  “So, of all the things you thought I might want, tens of millions of bumblebees was first on your list?”

  “No. I actually thought you might want a designer jetbelt, but it was Friday the thirteenth, so I went with the bees with the modified behavior.”

  I went with punching Nate’s shoulder.

  “Oww,” he said. “You promised you wouldn’t punch me.”

  “True,” I said. “But then you modified my behavior. And let me ask you this. If they were supposed to sing me ‘Happy Birthday’ or whatever, why did the bees sting me?”

  “Good question,” Nate said. “Here, look at this.” He was pointing to the giant Melville hologram, where I could see a small switch on one of the metallic traps.

  “This isn’t mine,” he said. “It’s Maculte’s. I recognize his work. He’s added a remote control device on all the bees, basically turning them into robots that he can force to do whatever he wants. Meaning, the Red Death Tea Society has corrupted your birthday present.”

  “Those fiends,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  “This is really dangerous,” Nate said. “With tens of millions of bees under Maculte’s control, the Red Death Tea Society now has an army that could terrorize the entire city.”

  “Well, so far, they’ve only terrorized me,” I said. Melville buzzed in embarrassment. Nate nodded, working out some sort of calculation in his notebook, scribbling a series of numbers, letters, and peculiar symbols.

  “Right,” he said. “I calculate that Maculte was trying to use an attack on you either to distract me away from the Infinite Engine, or possibly even to intimidate me into giving it to them.”

  “Hah!” I said. “That would never work.”

  “It totally would,” Nate said. “I couldn’t allow you to be hurt. You’re my . . . friend.” He’d hesitated before he said “friend.” I saw it. I heard it. I have to report it honestly, but I can just as honestly say that he was busily working out another equation in his notebook, and was probably distracted, and it didn’t have anything to do with Nate possibly about to say that I was his girlfriend, because neither of us would ever even think about that.

  “So now you’re going to give away the Infinite Engine?” I asked. “Just because bees stung my butt? You can’t! The Red Death Tea Society is evil! And they only have tea, not chocolate. I mean, if they were the Red Death Chocolate Society, I could understand, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t be tempted to help them myself if they were the Red Death Cake Society, but—”

  “I won’t ever help them,” Nate said. “And they can’t have the Infinite Engine, ever. But I’ll need to be more alert. I’ll have to increase the security on this house, and on you. The robots will help.” He gestured to the air, or I guess to some robots, or . . . something.

  “Robots?”

  “Oh, they’re nano-robots,” Nate said. He tapped on some papers on the dining table and said, “Take a look at this.” I picked it up. It was a handmade comic book titled Comic for When Delphine Asks about the Nano-Robots.

  “You knew I would ask?”

  “There was a 94.87 percent possibility.”

  “And you want me to read this?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “You couldn’t just tell me?”

  He reached over and turned the first page, then tapped on it. I looked down. There was a cartoon drawing of Nate saying, “It’s more fun to make a comic!”

  “Okay,” I said. “I do like comics.” I turned the next page. There were a series of smiling faces, with arrows that said, “Robots!” pointing to them. I turned the next page. There was a single speck of black. A pi
nprick. It was labeled, “Another robot, this time to scale.” Next to it was a line. The line continued off the right side of the page. I turned the page. The line went across both pages, and then continued on the next page. And the next. And the next. And the next. And so on. For twenty pages. Then, on the last page, the line was labeled, “This line has been the thickness of a human hair, proportionate to that robot speck you saw several pages ago.”

  “You made really small robots,” I said, looking up from the comic.

  “Bosper helped,” Nate admitted, gesturing to the Scottish terrier. Bosper looked up, woofed, then ran a couple of steps closer to me, at which point he turned around and gave a warning bark to the rug. Satisfied, he turned back to me.

  He said, “Bosper did good math and coughed up a quarter!”

  “Good job with the math,” I told him, reaching down to pet him. “But, quit eating quarters. They’re not good for you.”

  “No?” Bosper said. He gave a hopeful look to Nate for, I think, permission to keep eating quarters. Nate shook his head. Bosper slunk back to the rug, plopped down, and started to chew on the edge. But his heart wasn’t in it anymore.

  I asked Nate, “So, these tiny robots, are they like the ones we had searching for cat hair?” Nate and I’d grown to know each other during the incident with the giant cat, the incident that was completely and totally his fault. It was terrifying at the time, but now, looking back, it was still terrifying, but also a bit fun. And it had involved microscopic robots looking for cat hairs, as these things so often do.

  “That’s right,” Nate said. “Nano-robots.” He gestured to . . . to the air again, I guess?

  I said, “You mean they’re here? All around us?”

  “And in us. We inhale them. They’re an early warning system and a security defense system, all in one.”

  “You made robots that I’m inhaling?” My eyes narrowed. My designated Nate-punching hand (it’s my left) balled into a fist. I dredged up another of the expressions that Mom gives Dad. It’s the one that makes him retreat.

  “Uhh,” Nate said. “Umm, well . . . yeah. But they’re really helpful! You won’t even know they’re there! And now, the main thing is that, short of seeing us with their own eyes, the Red Death Tea Society members won’t be able to find us in any way. No tracking us with cameras or satellites or with robots of any kind!”

  “That’s great, Nate, but . . . next time? Let a girl know before she inhales robots.” I was staring at him. Making him nervous.

  He said, “Uhh, enough about robots! So . . . the thing about the bees, Maculte’s remote control device would need a series of localized transmitters to emit the coded scents, drawing the bees closer to Polt, and to us, contributing to the overall chaos and providing the Red Death Tea Society not only with a vast army, but a distraction from Maculte’s true purpose of stealing the Infinite Engine. We need to disable the transmitters before Polt is totally swarmed.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, it sounds like you want me to break things, and, Nate, I have to tell you, I am very good at breaking things. So, where are these transmitters at?”

  “Maculte would want them mobile. And, disguised. And, close to us.” Nate was jotting down equations on his pants as he spoke. “I’m thinking . . . he’s probably used our classmates as transmitters.”

  “Our classmates? How?”

  “By secretly linking the bee-controlling scent codes to our classmates’ biorhythms, attuning the trans­mitters to their heartbeats, to their breathing, encoding the transmitters to work on our classmates’ natural frequencies. We’ll need to somehow disrupt them, to un-attune them, or else hundreds of thousands of bees will be drawn to Polt. Millions of bees, even. Then, the Red Death Tea Society could act with almost total impunity in the midst of all the pandemonium.”

  “I suppose it does make sense to use our classmates to cause chaos,” I said. Our classes at Polt Middle School are not known for their lack of chaos, after all, though I’m normally proud to contribute to the overall commotion and consider myself to have a leadership role. “So . . . all our classmates, or only some?”

  “I’ve narrowed it down to five,” Nate said. “Based on a vector analysis of commonplace proximity alignments.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Exactly what I would have done. Who are they?”

  “Kip Luppert. Gordon Stott. Jeff King. Marigold Tina. And Tommy Brilp.”

  “And . . . would they know about these bee-transmitter thingies?”

  “No. Maculte could have easily inserted the transmitters without their knowledge, so our classmates are perfectly ignorant. Um, I should have said ‘innocent.’”

  “Yeah. You should have. And now, how should we do this? If they’ve had these transmitters secretly implanted, how can we . . . what did you say, ‘un-attune’ them?”

  “Ooo!” Nate said. “That’s the fun part! All we’ll have to do is knock them unconscious. Or put them to sleep. Or really do anything that overloads their bio-systems. Scare them, even. Or just get them really excited, like . . . by showing them cool math problems!”

  “Math problems would be exciting!” I said, excited to have a chance to exhibit my assuredly world-class acting skills by pretending to be excited about math problems. Unfortunately, I kind of burped when I spoke, and that threw me a bit off. It also scared Bosper. I wondered if it had upset his bio-system. Could that be the solution to everything? I could just . . . run around burping in front of my classmates?

  I burped again while thinking about burping. My stomach didn’t feel so good. It had to be the olives, right? Maybe the tree juice? What else could it have been? Other than having been nearly obliterated by bees, falling out of a helicopter, and inhaling tiny robots?

  Nate said, “We’ll have to protect the Infinite Engine from the Red Death Tea Society, but that won’t be truly possible until we protect Polt from what I’m calculating could be a devastating bee army. I can’t have the city in danger. I can’t . . . I just can’t have you in danger, Delphine.” Nate was staring at nothing, blushing.

  “Burp,” I said. Or rather, I belched.

  Nate said, “I never minded it so much when it was just me in danger, but now things have changed.”

  “Burp,” I said. It was the wrong time, but burps never make appointments.

  Nate said, “So, even though our priority is to stop Maculte from getting the Infinite Engine, we can’t truly do that until we stop the bees. The ones you saw this morning are just the beginning. I won’t have this city in danger! I won’t have you in danger. I won’t.” He had an intense frown, and he thumped his fist on the table, scattering the letters, meaning the ones from the League of Ostracized Fellows and the Red Death Tea Society and . . . hmmm. There was a letter I’d missed before.

  I picked it up.

  “Oh,” Nate said, watching me. His face had gone oddly pale. I’ve seen him fall from immense heights and fight giant cats, but I’ve never seen him so anxious. Was the letter even worse than the death threats from the Red Death Tea Society? What could possibly scare him so bad?

  I looked down to the letter.

  And started reading. Out loud.

  I read, “Dear Susan. Your smile makes my heart collapse into a singularity, such as that caused by the dilation of time inside a black hole’s area of effect, owing to the relativistic effects of the immense gravity and the extreme speed of all matter being drawn into the vortex.”

  I stopped. Looked up.

  Nate was having trouble breathing.

  “What is this?” I asked him. The handwriting was . . . his. It was an unfinished letter. I kept reading.

  “Your hair, Susan, shines like a quasar, emitting intense radioactive energy across the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum.” I stopped. And I put down the letter.

  “Oh gosh,” I said, tapping on the letter. “Nate. Piffle. Is this a love letter to Susan Heller?” Susan is one of our classmates. She’s one of those girls who shop as a lifestyle, and who probably
thinks an adventure starts with a fifty-percent-off sale, and who was entering beauty pageants before she’d ever opened a book.

  “No,” Nate said. “It’s not.” He was twitching.

  I said, “Nate. You’re twitching.” In response, he twitched more.

  “It’s okay, Nate,” I told him. “I’m not mad. Why would I be? I mean, Susan isn’t really very interesting, but it’s no business of mine. You and I are just friends, right?” I gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. He grimaced. I’d hit him a little too hard. Being extra-friendly, I guess. I opened my mouth to apologize, but I burped instead.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. Melville buzzed through the air and landed on my shoulder. I burped again. She flew away.

  “Did you make some special burp-olives?” I asked Nate.

  “Why would I do that? And . . . how would I do that?” He wasn’t asking me the second question: he was talking to himself, clearly now considering the possibility of making burp-olives. Maybe it was something he could do on the next Friday the thirteenth, when he did his three not-so-very-smart things? Thinking about Nate’s dumb things led me to thinking about the Infinite Engine, and about what Maculte could do with it. Then I had to quit thinking about that, because it gave me a sinking feeling. Also a burping feeling. Well, more like a roaring belch of a feeling. So, I burped. This time, Proton got up and left the room. I’m just going to go ahead and point out that while Bosper and I had been thinking we were fighting a giant bee, we hadn’t made enough noise or commotion to scare Proton out of the room. But my belch did. So . . . you do the math.

  I heard Bosper scurrying along on the floor, and then he was standing in front of me. Staring at me. His eyes were huge.

  “Bosper?” I said.

  “This dog is much impressed by the belching!” he said, leaping up onto the couch. “Delphine made thunder!”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, waving him off the topic, though, to be honest, I felt a stirring of pride. Also, another belch. I let it rip. Bosper watched me with awe.