Robots Go Wild! Read online

  “I know. Isn’t it awesome?”

  “Not really. SS-10K sabotaged E.”

  “Yeah, right,” says Trip with a lip fart of a laugh. “A righteous superhero like SS-10K would never do anything as evil and nefarious as that.”

  “I’m not kidding, Trip. The big bully fried E’s microchips.”

  “Aw, you’re just jealous, Sammy. It’s completely understandable. I mean, your mother only built E to be a third grader, not an awesome, cat-rescuing, Notre Dame–defending warrior like 10K. That’s what everybody’s calling him now: 10K. It’s snappier. They’re even selling Super Sugary 10K soda pop at the mini mart.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Trip,” I say, but he’s not listening to me.

  “Check it out!” He points to his bike basket. “I bought a robot last night so I can join the Robotics Club. 10K is going to be the guest speaker at their next meeting!”

  “Really? Maybe I’ll join, too.”

  “Sorry, Sammy. You can’t. You don’t have a robot anymore.”

  Yep. Trip’s right. I don’t have a robot, because stupid SS-10K set him up to shut him down.

  A favor I hope to return someday.

  Someday soon.

  After school, I’m still scheming, still trying to come up with the Big Idea that’ll simultaneously show the world how lame SS-10K is and how great E can be.

  Since Dad is an idea guy, always cooking up twists and turns for his comic book plots, I decide to spitball a little with him. That’s what writers call it when they bounce ideas off each other. No actual spitballs are involved.

  But Dad’s not in a brainstorming mood.

  “I’m creatively blocked, Sammy,” he says.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That I can’t come up with any new ideas. Nobody wants Hot and Sour Ninja Robots anymore. Okay. Fine. So what do they want?”

  I shrug. “I dunno. Trip would probably buy a manga about SS-10K rescuing another cat out of a tree.”

  “That’s brilliant, Sammy. Brilliant!”

  “Um, but he’s the bad guy…”

  “No. See, he’s got muscles. That means he’s the hero.…”

  So while Dad doodles, I slip outside and head over to Mom’s workshop.

  She’s not in there working like I think she should be. Guess she’s “creatively blocked,” too.

  I see what’s left of my bro-bot, E, sitting on a workbench.

  Okay, I know I’m probably not supposed to do this, but I need to talk to somebody I can trust. So I flick up the power switch on E’s back. (If he starts singing the Notre Dame fight song again, I promise I’ll power him down, fast.)

  “Ah, good morning, Sammy. Was I in sleep mode?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looks at his shoulders.

  “Any idea what happened to my arms?”

  Then he checks out his waist.

  “Or my legs?”

  “You had an accident.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. You went kind of wild. I think SS-10K did something to scramble your brains. Somehow he short-circuited your central processing unit.”

  “Fascinating. I did feel a certain surge when the big fellow patted my back. I thought the warm feeling was just an overwhelming sense of robot pride. That SS-10K is a fine specimen of servo sophistication.”

  “He was messing with your motherboard! Infecting you with computer viruses.”

  “Well, the best cure for any virus is bed rest and plenty of fluids. I’ve had lots of sleep, and my hydraulic fluid levels seem fine—in my head and torso, anyway. So once I pull myself together, I will be ready to rock, as you say.”

  “That’s good. But you’re kind of grounded.”

  “I see. And how about you, Sammy? How are you feeling?”

  “Not so good.”

  “Have you also been grounded?”

  I shake my head. “No. This is worse than that.”

  And finally, I unload. I tell E everything. About Dad and Mom and Dr. Ingalls. About SS-10K being a fake. About Dr. Ingalls trying to trick the US Army out of all sorts of money. About Eddie Ingalls not even having a brother. About how scared I was when they rushed Maddie back to the hospital. About how I promised her I’d make everything the way it used to be with E, only better.

  I tell E everything.

  He’s a very good listener. (And, without legs, he can’t walk away even if he is bored.)

  We talk for like an hour.

  And then Mom comes in.

  With more bad news.

  How’s it going, boys?” Mom asks as she enters her workshop and flicks on a few more lights.

  Usually, Mom’s robot workshop is the coolest place on earth. All sorts of mechanical creations buzz around the floor, helping Mom tinker with new projects.

  Today? Not so much.

  “I turned E on,” I admit, figuring Mom will be ticked off about it. But she isn’t. She seems distracted.

  “Good afternoon, Professor Hayes,” E peeps. “How are things at Notre Dame?”

  “Not so good,” she says with a sigh as she kind of flops into her rolling work chair. “Unfortunately, Sammy had a little run-in with the law.”

  “Samuel? Surely you are mistaken.”

  “No, E,” I say. “It’s true. I was kind of snooping around Dr. Ingalls’s house.”

  “Is this where you learned all those things we were talking about earlier?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should tell your mother what you discovered. Immediately.”

  I take a deep breath. I’m set to let it all out again, but Mom holds up her hand.

  “Don’t, Sammy. I can’t hear any of what you think you may have heard outside that window at Dr. Ingalls’s house. The lawyers at IRAT are claiming I sent you there to do ‘intellectual espionage’ for me.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “They also say I was so desperate to save my own substitute student project that I made you go steal Dr. Ingalls’s patented technology.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “The spying was my idea. Totally.”

  “Sammy can be quite the creative thinker when he’s motivated,” adds E.

  Mom gives us the thinnest smile. “Dean Schilpp says she admires all that I’ve done for the College of Engineering, but, well, it might be time for a change. Max Riley and a lot of the alumni agree. This weekend, after the big homecoming football game, they’ll announce a new head for the ND robotics department. Dr. Ignatius Ingalls.”

  “Icky?” I shout. “No way. That bald buzzard’s a big fat faker! He wants to cheat the government! And I can prove it!”

  Mom holds up her hand again. “Don’t, Sammy. Please? You’ll only make things worse. As it is, I can still work at Notre Dame. I just have to stop all this.” She gestures at her awesome workshop. “I’ll also have to report to Dr. Ingalls.”

  “No, Mom. You can’t work for Dr. Ingalls. I know that he—”

  “Sammy? I told you—we cannot have this conversation. Have you done your homework?”

  “Not yet. I was kind of hoping E could help me out.…”

  “Fine. But don’t stay out here too long. And be sure to shut off all the lights when you leave.”

  E and I exchange a look.

  We’re both feeling the same thing. Once I turn off those lights, they may never be turned back on.

  And so we stay up for, like, six hours, and together, we cook up a plan. It’s sort of based on Maddie’s suggestion that I find a way to convince Mom to fix E and show the world that SS-10K is a fraud all at the same time.

  It’s a pretty good plan, if I do say so myself.

  Like E said, I can be quite the creative thinker when I’m motivated.

  The next morning, the House of Robots isn’t a very happy place.

  Mr. Moppenshine tells all the other automatons that he overheard Mom tell Dad that “maybe we should shut down the workshop, move somewhere else, and start all over again.”

 
; “And they’re not just gonna reboot us,” says Hayseed. “I hear tell they’re gonna give us the boot. So don’t nobody stand too close to a can crusher.”

  “I don’t want to be recycled!” screams Brittney 13, the hysterical, hyperventilating, mood-swinging teenager-bot Mom invented to test whether she could electronically reproduce human emotions. She could and she did. Brittney is a rolling emoticon.

  “Geoffrey?” I say to the butler-bot.

  “Yes, Samuel?”

  “Remember that ‘keep calm and carry on’ thing you told me?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Tell it to the robots. Please. Nobody’s getting recycled or stripped for spare parts. But I am going to need each and every one of you in top physical condition.”

  “Very good, sir. May I inquire as to what task we will be performing for you?”

  “Football.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tell everybody to put on their game faces. I’ll give you guys all the details once it’s official. First, I have to go to Notre Dame.”

  “My goodness,” says Geoffrey. “You’re already attending college? My, oh my. Where does the time go? They grow up so fast.…”

  I kind of tiptoe through the kitchen, where Mom and Dad are drinking coffee and talking about moving.

  “I can find a new college,” says Mom.

  “I can draw anywhere,” says Dad.

  “But all Maddie’s doctors are here,” says Mom.

  “And her sterile room,” adds Dad. “And all the hand-sanitizer pumps mounted to the walls.”

  “Keeping her care consistent won’t be easy,” says Mom.

  “She really likes the doctors and staff at St. Joe’s,” says Dad.

  And then they both see me. I almost made it out the door.

  “Sammy?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Why are you wearing a tie and your one good suit?”

  “Because it’s Dress Like a Grown-Up day at school.”

  “Well, I better run,” I say.

  “Be careful. Those are your Easter clothes.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not riding my bike today. I’m taking the bus.”

  Of course I don’t tell them I don’t mean the school bus.

  I mean the bus to the Notre Dame campus!

  Okay, the real reason I’m all dressed up?

  I’m taking the bus to the University of Notre Dame’s College of Engineering building so I can visit my godmother, Dean Allison Schilpp. She once told me her “door was always open.” She also said if I ever had any questions or concerns, I should come see her.

  But she’s still kind of surprised when I show up at her office.

  “Come on in. Are you here because you’re worried about your mother?”

  “Mom? Ha! She’s the best robotics professor in America. She’ll find a new job in a nanosecond.”

  From the look on her face, I don’t think that was the answer Dean Schilpp was expecting.

  “But,” I say, just the way E and I rehearsed it, “I am worried about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, you and Notre Dame. What if Dr. Ignatius Ingalls isn’t as good as he claims he is? What if he does something dumb to embarrass the university?”

  “You mean like E and you have already done?”

  I let that zinger roll right off me.

  “No,” I say smoothly, “I mean something way worse. What if his robots really aren’t as good as Mom’s?”

  “But they are, Sammy.”

  “Then Dr. Ingalls shouldn’t be afraid of a little friendly wager.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mom’s robots against his. You turn the annual mechatronic football game this Sunday into a huge event. If Mom’s team wins, she keeps her job. If Dr. Ingalls wins, she leaves town or does whatever you guys tell her to do, because everyone will see that you clearly made the right choice by going with Icky.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry. That’s Dr. Ingalls’s nickname. All of his friends call him that.”

  “Sammy, I can see the public relations value of your idea—”

  “The robotic football game will be a sellout. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be even bigger than the real homecoming game on Saturday.”

  “I sincerely doubt—”

  “Call Dr. Ingalls,” I suggest. “Tell him you’ve found something epic and spectacular that will, once and for all, prove SS-10K’s superiority over anything Mom and her team could ever create.”

  Yep. I’m parroting Dr. Ingalls’s words—the ones I heard while I was hiding in the bushes outside his window. I leave out the bit where he told his flunky that they needed to “publicly humiliate” my mother.

  “I’m not sure Dr. Ingalls will agree to this, Sammy.”

  Good… I can tell she likes the idea.

  “I guess there’s only one way to find out,” I say. “Ask him. I have a feeling Dr. Ingalls is going to loooove a publicity stunt like this.”

  “Well, it would be a very exciting way to introduce Dr. Ingalls to the faculty and alumni,” says Dean Schilpp.

  All righty-o. She’s definitely taking the bait.

  She punches the speakerphone button and calls Dr. Ingalls to tell him “her” idea.

  “What an excellent suggestion, Dean Schilpp,” Icky says eagerly.

  “This is just the sort of idea I was looking for to impress our very important friends down in Washington,” says Dr. Ingalls.

  “And if you should somehow happen to lose this football game, you agree that Dr. Hayes should stay on as head of my robotics department?”

  “Of course. It’s only fair. She doesn’t stand a chance, but it’s fair.”

  “Very well,” says the dean. “I will instruct Dr. Hayes’s emissary to make all the necessary arrangements.”

  Wow. I’m an emissary. It’s amazing what you can be when you put on a suit and tie.

  “Kickoff is three o’clock this Sunday,” says Dean Schilpp.

  “We’ll be ready,” says Dr. Ingalls.

  Yes! It’s on!

  Now I just have to convince Mom to get E into shape for the big game, which is only three days away.

  Because it’ll be hard for him to play football without feet.

  I am definitely pumped. But before I head home to give Mom a much-needed pregame pep talk, I swing by the gym where the ND Mechatronic Football Club holds its practices.

  Boxy contraptions that look like laser printers on wheels, miniature laundry carts, and high-tech catapults are whizzing and whirring around the shiny floor. Geeky-looking college kids in jeans and T-shirts thumb remote controls to put the robotic players through their paces. I look a little out of place in my suit.

  The club’s president, Joshua Chun, is one of Mom’s graduate assistants.

  “They want to fire Dr. Hayes?” he says after I explain the high stakes we’ll be playing for this Sunday at the ND vs. IRAT Robot Bowl.

  “Yup. And I know for a fact that Dr. Ingalls is a phony. So is his main player, SS-10K.”

  “The mechatronic dude who’s always rescuing cats out of trees?”

  “That was rigged,” I say. “SS-10K is all show and no go. So are the empty-headed camo-coated battle-bots Dr. Ingalls wants to sell to the army. We can beat these guys, Joshua.”

  “I don’t know, Sammy. Our best players—RG3PO, the quarterback; and Airhead, the kicker—are pretty primitive. Yes, the quarterback has a GPS tracker, so he can tell where his receivers are and triangulate his toss trajectory, but that SS-10K is practically human. He’ll be Peyton Manning, and we’ll be Charlie Chun.”

  “Who’s Charlie Chun?”

  “My seven-year-old nephew. He plays quarterback for his Pee Wee Football team.”

  “Well, what if we drafted a bunch of players from Mom’s workshop?”

  “Seriously? She’d let E and Blitzen and the whole House of Robots crew play for ND?”

  “Hey, they’ll be playing for her job, too.”
r />   “Excellent.” Joshua gets the intense look on his face that Mom always gets right before she starts spouting technical gobbledygook. “Okay, you’re going to need to install a digital accelerometer on all the players. It’ll sense if an upsetting event—knockdown, fall down, or tackle—has occurred. The sensor must then signal an LED light to turn red and simultaneously instruct the player’s microprocessor to remove power from the drive system for two full seconds.”

  He goes on like that for maybe five minutes.

  Fortunately, Joshua sends me home with a very thick Technical Appendix.

  Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to make the alterations we need to get the House of Robots team ready for the rules of Collegiate Mechatronic Football.

  I can’t do this thing without Mom’s help.

  When I get home, Trip is waiting for me in the driveway.

  “Why weren’t you in school today, Sammy?”

  “I went to Notre Dame instead.”

  “Wow. You skipped, like, seven years and went straight to college? How’d you swing that? Did you take an IQ test or something?”

  “I’m not going to college, Trip,” I explain. “I just went to Notre Dame to make sure that E can still be Maddie’s eyes and ears at Creekside Elementary.”

  “Oh. How’d you do that?”

  “By talking my mom’s boss into changing around the annual robotic football game so that it’s between our robots and Dr. Ingalls’s creepy creations. If the House of Robots team wins, Mom keeps her job and E has his name cleared, once and for all.”

  “Be careful, Sammy,” says Trip. “That SS-10K is a big cheat.”

  “I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. But I thought you were in loooove with the stupid robot.”

  “I used to be. That’s why I came over here this afternoon. To apologize. But first I stopped by the T-shirt shop.”

  Trip unzips his jacket so I can read his new slogan.

  “What made you change your mind?” I ask.

  “I went to that Robotics Club meeting. SS-10K taught us how to program our toy robots to do dirty tricks. Stuff like sending out signals to jam the other guy’s remote control. ‘You’ll always be the best,’ he said, ‘if you make the other machine look its worst.’”