How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees

by Paul Tobin

  The note read, “Delphine. You need goggles. Third cabinet from left.”

  “Goggles?” I said aloud. “Third cabinet from the left?” I was already in motion, heading toward the cabinet. It was another of Nate’s “forbidden” cabinets, the ones he doesn’t like anyone else opening. I put my hand on it for a moment because I knew it needed to scan for my palm print. There was a brief glow and then it clicked open, revealing a small refrigerator with several bottles of root beer, a selection of Nate’s invention-pills that needed to stay refrigerated, and then a pair of goggles that looked like swim glasses, except with black lenses.

  I picked them up.

  I put them on.

  They were cold.

  I said, “Brrr,” and shivered, with goose bumps rising on my arms, and then I looked around the room and I said, “GAHHH!” and my goose bumps got about ten times worse.

  My vision was now in shades of blue. Everything was blue, just darker in some areas, lighter in others. And I wasn’t alone in the kitchen. There was a man just running out of the room, leaping over an unconscious man on the floor. And there was another unconscious man slumped against the refrigerator, which likely explained why the door was so hard to open.

  There was also an unconscious woman beneath the table, and yet another man, dazed and senseless, struggling to get up from the counter, where he was stretched out with his head in the sink.

  There was even an unconscious man floating above me, bumping along the ceiling like he was an errant balloon.

  They were all wearing red suits.

  They were assassins from the Red Death Tea Society.

  I took off the goggles.

  Everyone disappeared.

  I put them back on.

  “There you are,” Nate said. He was standing right in front of me, and let’s just say that there’s a possibility I screamed and punched him. The chance of that possibility is, well . . . one hundred percent.

  And let’s just say that as Nate was saying, “Gahhgg!” I was trying to run past him, because he’d really startled me. And let’s just say that when I punched him in the shoulder, it twisted him around a bit, so that when I was trying to run past him we knocked our heads together, and let’s just say that this impact staggered me and that it knocked Nate unconscious.

  Let’s just say all that.

  Because it’s all true.

  Nate went limp and fell to the floor, and I tripped on him and sprawled just as the man I’d seen running out of the room came back.

  He was maybe six feet tall and was built like a bulldozer.

  He had a smirk, and he had one of those strange glass ray guns, and he said, “What happened?” when he looked down at Nate, who was entirely unconscious.

  “I accidentally knocked him out,” I said. “It’s . . . a thing I do.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and he leveled the disintegrator gun at Nate, and I scrambled to my feet and leaped in front of Nate, because it was all my fault and I was yelling something, not sure what, mostly just yelling out of fear . . . and then Melville stung the man on his butt.

  “Wharrgg!” the man yelled, just as he pulled the trigger, and the shot went whooshing past me, hitting the sink and absolutely disintegrating the faucet, which began spraying water all over the room.

  Luckily, “all over the room” included Nate, with the broken faucet spraying water like a small but enthusiastic hose, and Nate began sputtering and trying to push the water away, but of course water is rather insistent, so it kept spraying all over his face.

  “Guhh,” Nate said, coming to his senses. “Blarrg! What’s with the water? Oh. I get it. Delphine, did you knock me out again?” Luckily, I didn’t have to answer, because, unluckily, Nate’s attention became more focused on an immediate problem.

  The man with the gun.

  “Look out!” Nate yelled, pushing me to the side just as the man once again pulled the trigger, and this time he hit Nate right in the chest with a full blast of disintegration. There was a huge flash of light.

  I screamed in horror.

  Melville buzzed in dismay.

  The man laughed an evil laugh, displaying tea-stained teeth.

  And Nate Bannister said, “Nice try.”

  He was fine. Nate hadn’t been disintegrated at all. I did notice that one of the buttons on his shirt was glowing. It faded as I watched, and then I decided that it was stupid for me to be looking at buttons when I could be much more actively engaged in far more interesting pastimes, such as kicking an assassin in his shins.

  So I began kicking him, and as it turned out I was pretty good at it. And Melville, who has many times proven that she’s a world-class stinger, began stinging him in a variety of sensitive places, as if at some point in her past someone had given her a precise map of areas where humans would rather not be stung. The man was shrieking in pain and bellowing interesting curses, hopping on one foot and then the other, trying to aim his disintegrator pistol, but every time he did Melville would sting him or I would kick him and then Nate stepped forward with a spray can shaped more like a pencil than a regular can, and he spritzed the man in the face and the man’s eyes immediately rolled back in his head and he toppled to the kitchen floor.

  “Don’t breathe that,” Nate told me, pointing to the small blur of mist in the air. “That’s my special brand of knockout gas. You’d be unconscious for hours.”

  I hugged Nate.

  Hard as I could.

  “You scared me,” I said.

  “I had everything under control.”

  “You did? Then what did you mean on the phone when you were talking about something being nuclear?”

  “Oh. That. Okay, I had most things under control.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I said, stepping back from him. We paused as Algie walked back into the kitchen, completely oblivious to everything. He grabbed an orange juice carton from the refrigerator, having to tug at the door a bit until the man who was slumped against the refrigerator (who Algie clearly didn’t see) fell to one side. Algie, now with the orange juice, sloshed his way through the water on the floor to grab a glass from a cupboard. He poured the orange juice in the glass, drank it, then put the glass in the sink and the orange juice carton back in the fridge.

  He left.

  “Manipulating his mind?” I asked Nate.

  “Yeah. Mom, too. She’s gardening out back. Bosper is protecting her.”

  “Why weren’t you disintegrated when that man shot you?”

  “Force field,” Nate said, tapping on one of his buttons. “But . . . why are you here? I thought you were disabling the remaining transmitters?”

  “Your ‘nuclear’ call scared me, so I decided you needed help.”

  “Thanks. You might be right. I should show you the nuclear thing. Come with me.”

  We started walking down the hall to his room. There were more unconscious members of the Red Death Tea Society slumped against the walls, sprawled out on the floor, and one woman was even halfway through a wall. The wall wasn’t broken or anything like that; it looked like she’d been intangible, passing through the wall like a ghost, but had somehow fallen unconscious.

  Also, there were teacups just everywhere. Broken ones, for the most part, and the smell of spilled tea filled the hall.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  “Some of this is me,” he said, gesturing to the various unconscious Red Death Tea Society assassins slumped here and there in their red suits. “And some of this is doorknobs.”

  “Not even remotely understanding what you mean, Nate.”

  “Doorknobs,” Nate said. We were walking past the door to the laundry room, and Nate tapped on the doorknob. “Extreme defenses. I’ve installed Category Seven Comprehension Distorters in each of them.”

  “Still. Not. Remotely. Understanding.”

  “They emit signals that interfere with the synapses in your brain. You know how your senses work? Things like light and sound make signals that y
our brain understands, signals that travel through the air. My doorknobs emit signals that turn off your understanding. Interfere with it. So you don’t hear some sounds, or see certain things. You’re partially immune because of the nano-bots you inhaled, and then those goggles give you the rest of the real view of what’s going on.”

  “You know, since I met you, I’m not sure I’ve ever had the real view of what’s going on.”

  “Well, we can never be entirely sure of anything. That’s what’s so exciting, right?”

  “Right,” I said, entirely sure that Nate wouldn’t detect the sarcasm in my voice. We were on our way to his room, and having to step over five more members of the Red Death Tea Society, three women and two men, all jumbled together in an unconscious pile. Nate held my hand, steadying my balance as I stepped over them. He gestured to them with a nod.

  “It’s been interesting,” he said. “A full Red Death Tea Society assault on the Infinite Engine. Their attacks have been surprising, innovative. I have no idea what they might do next. Usually I know everything, so having no idea is fun.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s great. I do it all the time. Even more since we became friends. What’s all this stuff?” We’d made it into his room, which was a mess. There were strange instruments and small inventions tossed all over the place. Nate doesn’t usually have them in plain sight because he doesn’t want his parents to know about them.

  Nate said, “The assassins were looking through my rarest inventions, searching for the Infinite Engine.”

  “They’re not exactly tidy burglars, are they?” I asked. Nate just shook his head, and we started putting things back in place. There was a Sonic Fork (which jiggles the calories out of food) and Nate’s Mighty Underwear (they allow Nate to levitate, although the wedgie problem is still eluding solution), and I saw his Carrot Jet, which allows carrots to fly, which was apparently something that Nate felt needed to be done. Discarded on Nate’s bed was a tube of Ape Balm, which can turn you into an ape with a one hundred percent chance of success, and right next to it was a jar of I Shouldn’t Have Made That Ape Balm ointment, which turns you back from being an ape, with a forty percent chance of success, so there’s still some work to be done there, obviously.

  “What are those?” I said, pointing to a pair of athletic shoes with metallic sides.

  “Swagger Shoes,” Nate said. “They turn you into a better athlete, but also into kind of a jerk.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And . . . how about this?” I was holding up a bolt of cloth. It felt like silk but looked like . . . wood, maybe? Or . . . metal? Denim? Maybe leather? It was constantly changing, fluttering back and forth.

  “That’s nano-clothing,” Nate said. “The same material I use to make all my clothes, so I can turn my clothes into anything I want.”

  “Wait a second, are you saying that you mean to wear those clothes of yours?” Nate had changed from his vintage clothes into his more-than-a-bit-messy pants and his customary checkered shirt.

  “Yes,” Nate said, confused. “Why?”

  “That’s not important, Nate,” I said, patting him on the back of his ugly checkered shirt. Melville made a buzz of fashion judgment, but luckily Nate didn’t understand what she was saying.

  “Oh,” Nate said. “Okay.” He was reaching inside a small piggy bank, pulling out an invention that couldn’t have possibly fit within, but Nate has always been on very good terms with the impossible. The invention he was holding was a circle of metal about the size of a baseball, but with what seemed to be five glass chopsticks stuck through it. The whole thing was softly humming. Melville began buzzing along in harmony.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “This is it,” Nate said. “My Infinite Engine. An engine with unlimited energy. The math was very difficult, owing to how it exists in fifteen dimensions, three of which need to be anti-structural, but Bosper and I were able to work through all the calculations and now this has the power of hundreds of thousands of suns, or even more.”

  “Neat,” I said, a little scared of getting a sunburn. “No wonder Maculte wants that thing. With that much power he could control the whole planet. He’d be unstoppable. You’d better hide it again. Hide it where nobody would ever find it.”

  “Right,” Nate said. He looked around for a moment, and I could see his brain working. I could see perhaps the greatest mind in all human history calculating the very best hiding place, with Nate’s vast intellect weighing the various possibilities and working on a scale that I couldn’t even possibly comprehend.

  And then he stuck the Infinite Engine under his pillow.

  “There,” he said. “That should do it.”

  “What? Under your pillow? Are you serious?”

  “Here,” he said, waving off my concerns and also waving me toward a wall. “This is what I really wanted to show you.” I was still staring at Nate’s bed, and that obvious lump under the pillow. Nate, meanwhile, was looking at a poster of Nikola Tesla, the amazing inventor, that he’d put up on the wall. Tesla is pretty interesting, but I wasn’t paying attention to a poster . . . not when the fate of the entire world was resting on Maculte and the Red Death Tea Society not looking under Nate’s pillow for an engine with infinite power.

  But out of the corner of my eye I noticed Nate putting a finger on Tesla’s mustache, and Nate twirled his finger and the mustache on the poster twirled around like a dial, and a door opened in the wall.

  “You have a secret room?” I asked, seething with jealousy. I’ve always wanted a secret room.

  “Sure,” Nate said, walking through the secret doorway, which led almost immediately to some metal stairs leading down. “I have lots of secret rooms. You sound jealous. Do you want me to build you one?”

  “Oh. Yes. Please. Nate. Secret room. Me.” I’d lost all power of speech. The human mind only has so much capacity for thought, and I was using almost all of mine to design a secret room.

  “Put this on,” Nate said. It was a hard hat. There were three of them hanging from hooks on the wall.

  I said, “Uh, okay.” Saving the city was apparently about to get dangerous.

  “Stand like this,” Nate said. He was standing with his legs wide and arms outstretched. So, saving the city of Polt was about to get . . . silly, I guess?

  Suddenly, jets of mist starting coming from everywhere around us on the walls, from the ceiling, and even from the floor. Jets of cold mist.

  “Yi-yi-yiiiii!” I said, because it was cold and wet and Nate really could have warned me it was going to happen.

  “I should have warned you that was going to happen,” Nate said, and I had an amazing comeback for him (it mostly involved me punching him in the arm), but he was already thumping down the stairs, disappearing from sight.

  Which meant that I . . . dripping wet and shivering cold, had little choice but to follow.

  “Down here is Project A,” Nate said. His voice was coming from the darkness.

  “Project A?” I asked.

  “The Red Death Tea Society’s infiltration plan,” Nate said. “You’re not going to like this.”

  “I do not like this,” I told Nate.

  More insects.

  Ants, this time.

  We were in an underground tunnel, and it was filled with ants.

  Filled with them.

  They were each at least an inch long, and they were everywhere, at least a foot deep on the floor and several inches thick on the walls and the ceiling, blocking out so many of the lights that the tunnel had a horrible gloom, and also a constant seething clamor that was something like stomping on dry leaves and brittle sticks, magnified a thousand times over.

  Luckily, the ants couldn’t touch us. The spray valves had doused Nate and me with ant repellent. Each time we stepped forward, the ants would back off, staying a good two yards away from us, as if Nate and I were in the eye of an ant hurricane.

  “Project A,” Nate said, gesturing to the ants.

  “A for �
��ants,’” I said. “Very inventive. But what are they doing here?”

  “Infiltrating. Trying to find a way into my house. They were able to breach a lot of my defenses, just small cracks, but that opened the door, so to speak, and that’s why the Red Death Tea Society is in my house now.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Convince them to leave,” Nate said. “I’ve already been working on it. That’s why there aren’t very many ants here anymore.” I looked around. I would have guessed that the number of ants was at something verging on infinite. Nate noticed the look I gave him.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. This is a lot of ants, but not as many as before. I created tiny robot ants that emit the proper chemicals to blend in with the regular ants. And my robots are emitting other chemicals that are chasing the real ants away. Anytime now, we should reach the tipping point.”

  “The tipping point?”

  “If my robots persuade enough ants to leave, then at some point all the ants will become collectively convinced.”

  “How soon do you think that will happen?” I was scratching at my arms. I was scratching at my legs, my stomach, and my back. I was using my fingers to comb through my hair. I knew there weren’t any ants on me, but it felt like there were.

  “According to my calculations, that should happen in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”

  All the ants shuddered. Shivered. And then they turned back down the tunnel, suddenly racing away.

  “Hmmm,” Nate said. “I was a little bit off, there.”

  “I’m just glad they’re leaving,” I said, only then noticing there was a greenish tint to the walls, but only where the ants had been. It was almost as if they’d been painting the walls. And the floor. And the ceiling, too.

  “Oh, that’s nuclear,” Nate said.

  “What?”

  “Nuclear.”

  “What?”

  “Nuclear.”