Robot Revolution Read online

  My father is such a lucky guy. He gets to leave before Geoffrey starts talking.

  “Greetings and salutations, children. I am, indeed, a robot. That means I am an autonomous electromechanical machine guided by software and electronic circuitry…”

  He is also, to use another technical term, a big bore.

  “Dr. Hayes is, as you’ve heard, busy at home doing research. Research is what scientists do when they don’t really know what they’re doing, eh, what?”

  “Well said, old bean,” shouts Trip.

  Everyone stares at Trip. Then they stare at me.

  Hoo-boy.

  This is so embarrassing I may not climb out from under my desk until I go to college.

  When Geoffrey finally finishes (thirty minutes after he started), Mrs. Kunkel’s room looks like a kindergarten class during naptime.

  Everyone has their head on their desk, taking a quick snooze.

  Even Mrs. Kunkel!

  Thankfully, the bell signaling the end of the day rings.

  “Does someone need to answer that?” asks Geoffrey. “Hello? Is that the phone or is someone at the front door?”

  No one is listening to him. They’re all streaming out the door, heading to the gym to set up their science projects so Mrs. Kunkel can see our progress.

  They’re also laughing their heads off at me and my family, and poor Trip, too, because he’s a friend of me and my family.

  “That butler-bot is such a joke!”

  “Sammy’s whole family is a joke!”

  “I guess butler is another word for boring.”

  Randolph R. Reich marches up to me. “Well, that was extremely tedious,” he says. “The next time your mother is too busy to fulfill her obligations, please find someone—or something—more interesting to take her place.”

  Once again, he’s right! The guy is batting a thousand. He never makes a mistake. How does he do that? I seem to make a mistake every time I wake up and roll out of bed.

  “By the way,” says Randolph, “I can’t wait to see what you and your chum, Harry Hunter Hudson, have come up with for the science fair. I’m sure it will be just as dazzling as your butler’s scintillating and sparkling oration.”

  All righty-o. I think he’s being sarcastic. Then again, I could be wrong. Like I said, I make a lot of mistakes.

  Trip and I head into the gym and find the boxes Dad delivered. McFetch starts happily wagging his robotic tail and gives us a couple eager yaps when his incredible sense of smell picks up our scent. I’m guessing he smelled Trip first. If you eat peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches every day for lunch, you develop a very distinctive odor.

  “Hey, boy,” I say, patting McFetch on the head, right where Mom gave him a touch sensor. “You ready to go to work?”

  He yaps “Yes!,” I think.

  Trip hooks up his electric tire pump and blows up our clear plastic water ball. When it’s inflated to its huge six-foot diameter, I tug open the zipper, place McFetch inside, and seal the ball up tight.

  Mrs. Kunkel comes over, carrying a clipboard.

  “All right, Sammy, Trip. What have we here?”

  “This,” I say proudly, “is a prototype for the Germ-Free Freedom Ball, a completely sanitary mobile isolation chamber. Now kids with compromised immune systems can go outside, anywhere and everywhere other kids can go.”

  “We built it for Sammy’s sister,” adds Trip.

  “Fascinating,” says Mrs. Kunkel. “How exactly does it work?”

  “Perfectly,” says Trip, snorting back a laugh. “If we do say so ourselves.”

  “Allow us to demonstrate,” I add.

  Mrs. Kunkel steps back. I pull out McFetch’s favorite squeaky ball and heave it across the gym floor. It rolls to a stop under the far basketball net. McFetch yaps and starts furiously churning his legs toward it.

  The Freedom Ball starts spinning! It rolls up the hardwood like it’s on a fast break to do a dunk.

  “Very well done, Sammy, Trip,” says Mrs. Kunkel. “Your invention could provide Maddie with all the protection she needs to freely leave your home.”

  “Exactly!” I say.

  All the other kids (except R.R.R.) start cheering Trip and me. We slap each other a high five. It feels great to be a brilliant scientist.

  For almost a whole minute.

  Turns out one of the other kids in Mrs. Kunkel’s class, Josh DeBardeleben, is doing his science project to determine which brand of bacon has the most fat.

  He’s set up a line of hot plates and sizzling frying pans so he can cook six different kinds of bacon, pour the drippings into a measuring cup, and see which one generates the most grease.

  The second he starts his experiment, the whole gym smells like the Wakin’ to Bacon Diner, a place that serves nothing but eggs and bacon, BLTs, bacon-wrapped bacon balls, and bacon burgers. McFetch starts sniffing the air inside his plastic ball. I guess the zippered flap isn’t as tightly sealed as we thought. Besides, Mom gave the robo-dog extremely complex odor sensors.

  The plastic ball rolls across the slick gym floor like a bowling ball on a skating rink. I chase after it, but it’s slipping and sliding every which way.

  Our wildly out-of-control science project is careening toward the other side of the gym, rushing toward Josh DeBardeleben’s bacon station. But first, it has to go around Lena Elizabeth Cahill, who’s setting up a three-panel poster board exploring which candy causes Diet Coke to explode the most.

  Lena has an open two-liter bottle, and when she sees McFetch’s giant hamster ball rolling straight at her, she panics and drops a whole roll of Mentos into the jug.

  Brown foam starts spewing all over the place—especially when our sterile bubble ball slams into Lena’s table and knocks it over. I slip on the wet floor and get soaked in sticky Diet Coke… right in front of the cutest girl in school!

  When Lena’s card table topples to the floor, one of its pointy metal legs spears our ball, puncturing the plastic. McFetch rips the hole open even wider and escapes to go gobble bacon. Our bubble is officially burst.

  I pick up our Freedom Ball, which is now a shriveled heap of crumpled vinyl covered with Diet Coke lava. “I guess we have some issues to work out on how to control the ball’s direction,” I mumble to Mrs. Kunkel.

  “I’d say so,” says Mrs. Kunkel. She ticks a few boxes on her clipboard. “Not very sterile or hygienic, boys. I applaud the good intentions behind your, eh, invention, but I think you two need to head back to the drawing board and start over to achieve your desired results.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we both mumble as Lena Elizabeth Cahill yells, “Sammy Hayes-Rodriguez is an idiot!”

  Things can’t get much worse. Or so I think.

  At the far end of our row of tables, Randolph R. Reich announces, “If you’re quite finished doing damage control with those two, Mrs. Kunkel, I am ready to initiate my demonstration.”

  She bustles up the line to see R.R.R.’s entry for the science fair.

  Trip and I shuffle behind her to check it out, too.

  Having eaten all of Josh DeBardeleben’s science experiment, McFetch goes to sit under our table and squeak his ball.

  I sort of wish I could do that, too.

  What’s your hypothesis, Randolph?” Mrs. Kunkel asks Reich when we reach his exhibit.

  The guy is pounding his fist into a baseball mitt that has all sorts of LEDs blinking in the pocket and laser beams shooting out of the webbing.

  “It’s not actually a hypothesis, theory, or supposition, Mrs. Kunkel. It is a proven fact.”

  “You’ve already tested your concept?”

  Reich scoffs at that. “Of course. I never leave room for error. In fact, that is the guiding principle behind my latest invention: the Laser-Assisted Magneto Mitt. In baseball, particularly at the Little League level, there are far too many ‘errors.’”

  “They’re part of the game,” I say.

  “Correction. They used to be part of the game. With my ne
w and improved glove, plus a few simple alterations to baseballs, such as the installation of miniature GPS trackers at their core, a fielder should be able to catch anything hit his way. Allow me to demonstrate. Coach Stringer, if you please? Swing away.”

  At the far end of the gym, Coach Stringer tosses up a ball and taps it into a line drive.

  The ball changes its course in midair and sails into Reich’s glove.

  “I borrowed much of my technology from NASA and the Pentagon,” Reich says smugly, because that’s the way he says everything.

  Coach Stringer turns to face the far wall so his next hit will fly away from Reich. He flips up another ball, swings, and launches a soft pop-up.

  It should land, like, thirty feet away from Reich.

  It doesn’t.

  It curves hard to the right, like a guided missile, and plops into Randolph’s waiting mitt.

  “B-b-but your invention will ruin baseball,” stutters a horrified Trip. “No one will ever score a run. After nine innings, every game will end up tied at zero-zero. They’ll have to go into extra innings that last to infinity!”

  “Not necessarily,” says Reich, snagging yet another line drive. “Home runs, because of their trajectory and height, will continue to soar beyond the range of the L.A.M.M.”

  “The what?” I ask.

  “The Laser-Assisted Magneto Mitt.”

  “Right,” I mumble. “The L.A.M.M.—another way to spell lame…”

  Trip and I grumble some more as Reich snags each and every ball Coach Stringer puts into the air.

  Everybody else, Mrs. Kunkel included, is oohing and aahing.

  Reich’s science project is a definite hit.

  Ours? A big miss.

  Or, to put that in baseball terms, a total error.

  Unfortunately, E’s experiment is going just about as well as our science project.

  When we bike home, we discover that Mr. Moppenshine is still in the backyard, feather-dusting tree leaves.

  “I’m going to clean and disinfect all the flying creatures next,” he announces. “Some of them appear rather dingy.”

  “What flying creatures?” I ask.

  He points at a robin.

  “That’s a bird,” I tell him. “You can’t spray disinfectant on birds.”

  “Why not?” demands Mr. Moppenshine. “They’re filthy, as if they’ve been digging around in the dirt. That one even has a worm in its mouth.”

  Things inside aren’t any better. Blitzen mowed a path down the center of the carpet in the living room.

  “I finished fixing the SUV,” he tells E. “But I miss mowing. The feel of clippings tickling my belly. The rumbling roll downfield toward victory. The joy of trampling everything in my path. Tomorrow, I’ve got my eye on a few bath mats.”

  “Sammy, is that you?” Maddie yells from upstairs. “E? I need help!”

  We hurry up the stairs and into Maddie’s room. The air smells like burnt rope. Maddie is kind of cowering in the corner, pointing at the Breakfastinator.

  “It started cooking my socks!” Maddie informs us.

  “Now serving a tasty fried knee-high,” drones a computerized voice as the Breakfastinator shoots out wads of balled-up, smoldering socks. “Now serving an argyle omelet!”

  Even Matt, the educational exercise game, is acting up. Literally. It’s standing upright in the center of the room. “I’m tired of taking everything lying down. I’m too smart to be a rug. I want to be a game show host on TV!”

  “E? What new task did you give to Matt?”

  “Foot massaging. Perhaps he thought it was beneath him.”

  Even McFetch is acting up.

  He eats Maddie’s homework—even though robot dogs don’t need to eat anything except electricity.

  “Your theory about giving the robots new tasks isn’t working,” I tell E.

  “I beg to differ,” he replies. “All the bots seem ready to return to their original routines with renewed vigor and determination.”

  “If they don’t trash the house first!”

  “I will make the necessary adjustments to their motherboards,” says E. “Meanwhile, I advise that you and Trip should make the necessary adjustments to your science project.”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “Yes, Sammy. My social media feed reported that everybody at Creekside Elementary was talking about your science project and Randolph R. Reich’s magnificent magneto mitt, but for very different reasons. But do not despair. As you see by the misbehaving bots, all scientific experiments encounter slight bumps along the road to progress.”

  “Except Randolph R. Reich. He never makes a mistake.”

  “For now,” says E. “But perhaps that will prove to be his biggest mistake.”

  “Seriously? Doing everything perfectly is a mistake somehow?”

  E actually grins. “We shall see, Sammy. We shall see.”

  Okay. I need to talk to Mom.

  I know she’s super busy working on her top-secret project, but she’s a scientist. I need one of those—to help me with my science project. Dad’s a great artist and all, but he’s pretty terrible when it comes to fixing stuff. He can’t even make a Pez dispenser work right.

  I tiptoe into Mom’s workshop. When she’s in the zone, you definitely don’t want to startle her. She’ll jump right out of her lab coat.

  The walls are covered with math equations that I don’t think even Albert Einstein would understand. There is an entire row of robotic arms squirting goop into glass trays and then shuffling them down the line for different goop squirts. Tools and machinery parts are everywhere. There’s even a wrench poking out of Mom’s mug of day-old coffee.

  The place is a wreck.

  And Mom looks worse.

  Mom sees me. I think. Her eyes have a glazed and distant look.

  “So, Mom,” I say. “I know you’re super busy, but, well, I need to talk to you about something extremely important.”

  “This isn’t really a good time, Sammy. Can’t your father help you?”

  “No. Not really. Because this is a science question and, in case you haven’t noticed, Dad isn’t much of a scientist. He can’t even mix hot water and tea bags to make tea. You, on the other hand…”

  “I, on the other hand, am extremely busy, Sammy, working on two breakthrough ideas. One will improve the lives of every human on the planet. The other will, more important, significantly improve your sister’s life.”

  “This is all something for Maddie?” I say, gesturing at the jumble of clutter surrounding us.

  “Most of it.”

  “Well, what are you building her? A karaoke robot?”

  “Where did you get that idea? No, it’s something much more meaningful.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not ready to talk about it, Sammy.”

  I roll my eyes. We’ve all heard this so many times. “Because talking about it can jinx it.”

  “Exactly. And both of these projects are too important to jeopardize with premature speculation.”

  “So why are you working on two projects at once?”

  “Ideas come when they come, Sammy. We cannot dictate the timing of our inspirations.”

  I nod.

  But inside? I hate to admit it, but I’m sort of mad.

  How come improving Maddie’s life or the lives of everybody else on the planet always comes first?

  What about my life? I live on the planet, too! Am I just supposed to muddle through everything without any help from my genius mom?

  I mean, if Trip and I had her brain on our team, we could crush Randolph R. Reich at the science fair. She could use one of her “inspirations” to make our giant plastic hamster ball fly like it was fired out of a cannon. And I’d put a magnet in it so it’d shoot right for Reich’s batty baseball glove—while he was wearing it.

  We could totally make him crash and burn. Hand him his first mistake. Not that Mom ever would. But we could.

  I stuff
my hands in my pockets and slouch out of Mom’s workshop. I don’t think she even notices me leaving. She’s too busy working on something to save the planet and make Maddie’s life better, while mine keeps on getting worse.

  I find Dad. He’s at his drawing board, putting the finishing touches on his masterpiece.

  “Looking good, no?” he says.

  “Looking good, yes!” I tell him.

  “Almost done.” He puts down his pen. Rubs some of the ink off his fingers with a blackened cloth. “I need to scan in these drawings, but I can do it later. Now, what’s on your mind, Sammy? You have that look on your face.”

  “The science project,” I tell him with a sigh. “All that stuff you dragged to school for me and Trip.”

  “Right. How’d that work out?”

  “Terrible.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse. Lena Elizabeth Cahill may never speak to me again. Not that she’s ever spoken to me before…”

  “Ouch.”

  “Our whole idea stinks.”

  Dad nods. “I know the feeling.” He points to the wire basket near his drawing table. It’s filled with crumpled balls of sketch pad paper.

  “So, what do you do when your first idea is horrible?”

  “Easy,” he says with a smile. “I come up with the second idea.”

  I try to follow Dad’s advice.

  Hey, with Mom so busy, it’s the only advice I’m going to get.

  “I need a new idea for the science project,” I tell E as we’re biking to school the next day.

  “And it seems I need a new idea for restoring order to the house of robots. You were correct yesterday when you said my idea was not working.”

  “Well, maybe we can help each other.”

  “An excellent suggestion, Sammy. We can brainstorm. Free-associate. Bounce ideas off each other. Spitball concepts and see which ones stick to the wall.”