You Can't Have My Planet
Page 14
“I miss you too.”
Her face dissolved on the monitor.
Big Daddy’s squeaky voice took on a teasing tone. “Giles misses his girlfriend. How cute.”
“All right. I’ve had enough of you.”
I dropped him off in Chinatown and rejoined Toshi down by South Street Seaport. We spent the next half hour removing graffiti. Making skyscrapers immaculate burns fuel fast.
My gas gauge flickered on EMPTY. I did a nosedive, landing in a pothole. DubDub gave me a riddle.
If Bobby ate a bad burrito, what would you say in church?
I’d say a prayer for Bobby’s underwear.
Correct, Giles.
The needle shot back up to FULL.
I got my butt, which was about the size of a pencil eraser, back up there eliminating graffiti, making the metropolis immaculate. At dawn, a flood of golden light made Manhattan look even more pristine.
My big brother’s voice echoed inside my glistening spacecraft. “Giles, Stanley wants to know if you need a copilot.”
“No!” I said. “I just got rid of Big Daddy.”
“Please come get him,” Bobby begged. “He’s driving me crazy.”
“He’s your assistant, Bobby.”
“I don’t need an assistant.”
“Why did Dr. Sprinkles ever give me something so lame?” I said. “He’s completely useless.”
“I heard that,” Stanley said.
I forgot he had an intercom.
“I was just kidding, Stanley,” I said.
“Sure you were.”
There was silence while the parking meter pouted.
“Hey, I’ve got a job for you,” I said. “You can do surveillance. You’ve got wheels. Roll around the city and keep an eye on things.”
“That’s a great idea,” Bobby said. “We’ll give you some cloudfish cover. A moving parking meter might freak people out.”
“How does that sound, Stanley?” I said.
“OK,” the meter mumbled, still reeling from the insult.
Apart from hurting Stanley’s feelings, everything was going remarkably well. Toshi and I now patrolled the subways for graffiti. We removed all of it from aboveground by eight in the morning.
We didn’t take the cloudfish down below because people might’ve mistaken them for smoke and thought there was a fire. We didn’t want to incite a panic. Fortunately the subways were rarely crowded on a Sunday. We didn’t have to deal with rush hour. Also, many New Yorkers fled the city in July to escape the heat. Those who couldn’t afford to go on vacation were dazed by the mugginess.
When three sweaty people stumbled onto the Number 6 train, I gave a public service announcement over the loudspeaker on my flyplane: “WARNING. DUE TO HEAT EXHAUSTION YOU MAY START TO HALLUCINATE. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING STRANGE, PAY NO ATTENTION TO IT. JUST GO HOME AND DRINK SOME ICE WATER.”
The odd thing was, no one paid any attention to the graffiti removal taking place on the ceiling. They were all staring down at their smart phones. Thank God for texting.
With my phenomenally efficient flyplane, I cleaned an entire subway station in no time flat. I was ahead of schedule and having the time of my life when Navida called.
“Giles, what do you make of these street cleaners? Everyone’s talking about them.”
“Just don’t get in their way,” I warned her. “Whatever you do, don’t get in their way.”
“And what about this weird fog? It’s otherworldly.”
“It seems pretty worldly to me,” I said.
“Something big is going on. Isn’t it, Giles?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Did they ask you not to divulge their identity?”
“No comment.”
“Could the future of the planet be put in jeopardy if you told me?”
“Maybe.”
“All right, Giles. I won’t ask any more questions.”
“I think that’s a good idea, Navida.”
“I’ll post it on my blog. Don’t mess with the street cleaners.”
“Now you’re talking,” I said.
“I have to go, Giles. We’re turning a vacant lot into a community garden.”
Apparently some rich girl begged her daddy to donate the land. He was a real estate tycoon. She got inspired to do something environmentally responsible after getting drenched by the commercial for Navida’s blog. The guy gave his daughter a vacant lot and an ice cream cake for her birthday.
The land was worth millions of dollars. I discussed all this with my flyplane as we soared up out of the subway station at eleven in the morning, heading over to the vacant lot.
See, DubDub. There are good people in this world. Not everyone is a selfish, greedy, pathetic fool.
What a pleasant surprise, Giles.
The lot was over on Avenue B. It didn’t feel like I was wasting time. Navida was an unofficial member of our team. I was keeping an eye on a team member. That was my part of my job, right?
A couple of hundred kids were gathered at the vacant lot. I found Navida in the crowd, a pretty Puerto Rican girl in a wheelchair, her pyramid-shaped earrings swaying in the breeze, her sphinx necklace glimmering.
Navida had a rare disease. The doctors said it wasn’t going to kill her but it made her life pretty hard. She used to go to my school but had to drop out to do homeschooling.
I perched on her shoulder in my flyplane. Mosquitoes swarmed around her. Mosquitoes who pick on people in wheelchairs are the lowest of the low. It took a lot of self-restraint not to annihilate them. DubDub sprayed them with a special repellant that made them only bite people who litter. They took off in search of bozos tossing hot dog wrappers on the sidewalk.
Using my amplifier without her knowing, I helped Navida’s frail voice boom across the vacant lot. “OK, everyone. Let’s turn this junk heap into a little piece of paradise.”
While a bunch of kids scooped up broken glass with shovels, a nerdy guy tried to lift a rusty old refrigerator by himself.
A jock in a Mets jersey laughed at him. “Dude, like you could really lift that all by yourself.”
I flew into the nerd’s ear and said over the loudspeaker, “Dude, try to lift it again.”
It freaked him out. “Who said that?”
“Just do it.”
Kneeling down, he tried with all his might to lift the fridge. The fridge rose up into the air, with DubDub’s help of course. It looked as though the nerd was balancing a refrigerator on the tip of one finger. He tossed it effortlessly into a Dumpster.
The jock was stunned. “Dude, how did you do that?”
Half a dozen cute girls surrounded the nerd.
“How did you get to be so strong?” one asked.
“Chocolate milk,” he said. “I drink half a gallon a day.”
“Do you put protein powder in it?” asked the jock.
“No. I drink it straight.”
On the other side of the vacant lot, Navida was barking out orders. “Hey, you guys, there’s still some broken glass over here. Come on. Let’s get moving.”
When they finally got everything cleaned up and planted some seeds in the soil, someone handed the birthday girl a rainbow-colored watering can to sprinkle on the seeds.
She handed it to Navida. “No,” she said, “you do it, Navida. If it wasn’t for you and your blog none of us would be here right now.”
Everyone cheered for Navida.
Hanging upside down in my flyplane from her earring, I overheard her whisper to herself, “I’m going to imagine that this water came from the Nile.”
In ten seconds flat I shot over to Egypt, swooped down in between two Bedouins and a camel and landed on a hippo’s back in the middle of the Nile River.
“What’s up, hippo?” I said while DubDub collected a drop of water.
We raced back to the Big Apple and squeezed the drop into the watering can just as Navida sprinkled it all over the soil.
When you’re a superhero, you
can do stuff like that.
Superheroes also deal with trouble. We had some brewing. Toshi spotted it first. He said the androids were starting to create a spectacle. A crowd had gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, eyes fixed on a tall figure in blue overalls. He spotted a candy wrapper floating down from the top of Trump Tower. Rather than waiting for it to reach his outstretched hands, he took a running leap onto a park bench and vaulted himself into the air, grabbing the red wrapper high above a green traffic light. He did a back flip on his way down and landed on top of a cab. The crowd cheered madly while the cabbie swore in Russian.
“Look,” said an Italian tourist, “I caught it on my iPhone.”
He showed his wife the video.
“Great,” I told Toshi. “Now we’re going to be all over YouTube.”
“We already are,” Toshi said. “One clip already had thirty thousand hits. People all over the world are checking this out.”
As if that wasn’t enough, two hundred tourists aimed their camcorders at another android who climbed up the side of a brownstone like Spider-Man to snatch a paper bag out of some ivy.
He was listening to The Music of the Spheres on his iPod. Swooping in my flyplane, I dislodged his earphones, flew into his ear and said over the loudspeaker, “Dude, you obviously love your job. I appreciate that. But you’re way too acrobatic. This isn’t Cirque du Soleil.”
He ignored me.
I landed DubDub behind a newspaper stand and returned to my normal size under cloudfish camouflage.
I rushed over to the street cleaner. “Dude, it’s me, Giles. I’m in charge here. You need to calm down. Humans can’t fly, OK?”
“I’m sorry,” said the android. “I can’t hear you. I’m listening to music.”
He marched away.
A little boy ran over to him, waving a pen and paper. “Can I have your autograph?”
Toshi shook his head. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone ask a garbage man for an autograph.”
“I’m sorry,” the android told the kid. “I have to go drink lemonade.”
He nudged his garbage can across the busy intersection.
“What are we going to do about this?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Toshi. “There aren’t enough cloudfish to conceal all the street cleaners.”
While we stood there pondering our dilemma, someone said, “I think they’re robots.”
Toshi and I turned around.
It was an old man.
Toshi snickered. “That’s a good one.”
“Yeah,” I said, emitting a fake laugh, “there’s an army of robots cleaning New York City.”
“Did you see it climb up the side of that building?” the man asked.
“It had suction cups, sir,” Toshi said.
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”
“Why do they breathe so strangely?” the old man said.
“Sounds perfectly normal to me,” I said.
“Me too,” agreed Toshi.
“I’m telling you,” he muttered. “They’re robots.”
“Robots don’t go around picking up trash off the streets of New York,” Toshi said.
“Look at Wall-E. He was a robot. He went around picking up trash.”
That was an insult I just couldn’t tolerate. “Listen, buddy,” I said. “I loved that movie too. But these are intergalactic Eco-droids. They can turn paper back into trees. They’re far more powerful than a man-made robot like Wall-E.”
I couldn’t believe I said it.
Toshi pulled me aside and hissed, “Dude, what is wrong with you?”
I gave another fake laugh to the old man. “Just kidding.”
He didn’t believe me.
Toshi jumped in. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir. But you’re a grown man talking about robots. Aren’t you supposed to be setting an example for us kids.”
“That’s right,” I said. “We look to you for guidance, sir.”
He looked us up and down. “Who are you?”
Toshi did the talking. It was safer. “I’m a dancer. He’s a poet. We’re geeks, OK? We live in a complete and total fantasy world.”
“Seriously,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Nevermind,” Toshi said, yanking me down the street. “We have to go.”
The old man followed us. “What planet are you from?”
“Earth,” Toshi said. “Just like you.”
“Where are the cleaners from?” he asked.
Toshi stopped, a sly look on his face. “Listen, if you want to know the truth, we don’t even exist.”
“You’re hallucinating,” I said.
“It’s the heatwave,” Toshi said.
“It’s messing with your brain,” I told him.
“You’re talking to yourself right now,” Toshi said.
“It’s embarrassing,” I said.
We managed to lose him in a wave of tourists. We shrank down and took off in the flyplanes in search of four-letter words spray-painted on deli signs.
Man, did I ever screw up.
Even the cloudfish got on my case, skywriting: THAT WAS PRETTY STUPID, GILES!
What would Tula think? Now I’d never get a kiss. No way. She’d never kiss a mouth this big.
“Do you think he’ll tell other adults?” I asked Toshi over the intercom.
“Probably,” he said. “But who’s to say they’ll believe him.”
Before we could stress out about it, Bobby gave us an even bigger problem to deal with. “The lemonade vendors are getting arrested down in Washington Square Park.”
We shot down to Greenwich Village.
CHAPTER TWENTY
WE UNSHRANK OURSELVES and rushed over to defend a street cleaner who was getting hassled by a burly bearded cop.
“Do you have a permit to sell lemonade?” asked the cop.
“A permit?” asked the vendor, circling his cart in a jittery, mechanical, un-human way. “What’s … what’s that?”
I hoped that cop didn’t have good eyesight.
“Come with me,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”
“Leave him alone,” I said.
The cop eyed me sternly. “Son, mind your own business.”
“There’s a heat wave, officer,” I blurted. “People will die of thirst without lemonade.”
He rested his hand on his holster. “Son, don’t make me shoot you.” He shifted his attention back to the vendor.
“Wait, hold on a second,” Toshi whispered. “What kind of cop would threaten to shoot a thirteen-year-old kid?”
“Those aren’t real cops, Toshi. They’re droid cops. Look at their faces. Look at that weird twitch. They all have it.”
“Droids arresting droids,” he said.
“I bet they work for Petulance,” I said.
“She planted a black butterfly,” he said. “I guess she could plant droids.”
The cop handcuffed the vendor and stuffed him into the back of a squad car. Another cop wheeled the lemonade cart up a ramp onto the back of a flatbed truck already loaded with fifteen other carts.
We ducked behind a statue, did a quick shrink, hopped in the flyplanes and took off after a convoy of twenty squad cars and three flatbed trucks. Speeding through a red light, they disappeared. How does a convoy of squad cars disappear in the blink of an eye?
“They must’ve gone through an envelope in space,” Toshi said over my intercom.
“Into a parallel universe,” I said.
DubDub interrupted us.
My sensors have confirmed Toshi’s theory, Giles. They went through an envelope in space. However, I do believe that the vendors are still on the island of Manhattan.
Great, DubDub. Where?
I’m afraid I don’t know, Giles.
“Hey, Giles,” Toshi said, “how long can the street cleaners survive without lemonade?”
“One hour.”
It was 1:26 p.m.
I contacted Bobby in command and control. “Bobby, we lost them.”
“So did I,” Bobby said.
We searched in vain up and down Manhattan. Now we only had a quarter of an hour. In fifteen minutes, one by one, the androids would drop dead on the city streets. In fifteen minutes we’d fail the test. Fifteen minutes until the end of the world. Fifteen minutes until the hairy cages.
“I found them!” Bobby’s triumphant voice made my helmet rattle. “Or should I say Stanley found them.”
“Stanley?” I said in utter astonishment. “No way.”
“That was a good idea to have him do surveillance, Giles. He’s on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Go pick him up.”
I sped over there, shrank Stanley down under cloudfish cover and heaved him into my copilot’s seat. Now that he had actually done something heroic, did he ever have an attitude. He was the most pompous parking meter of all time.
“What good is a parking meter?” he said in a mocking tone. “Useless. That’s what I am. Useless.”
I kept my mouth shut.
He went on. “A parking meter can’t do anything. Like a parking meter is really going to help me save the world. This is the lamest gadget I’ve ever seen in my life.” He was impersonating me, Giles. I have to say. He was pretty good.
“OK, OK,” I said. “I’m sorry I said you were useless.”
“Apologize for calling me lame.”
“I’m sorry I called you lame.”
“Say, ‘I wish I was a parking meter.’”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Say it or I’m not showing you where the vendors are.”
“OK. OK. I wish I was a parking meter.”
“Say, ‘I wish I could spit quarters at bad guys.’”
“I wish I could spit quarters at bad guys. There. Are you satisfied?”
“Make a left at the next corner.”
The vendors were being held hostage in a recycling center over by the West Side Highway.
One of the fake cops was operating a crane with a giant scooper attached to its end. Dozens of Eco-droids and lemonade carts were crammed inside the scooper, which hovered perilously in the air above a machine used to shred recycled materials. As soon they got dropped into the shredder, our droids would be crunched, squashed and pulverized. They’d come out the other end as balls of paper, glass and plastic.