Hello! I had an idea for chapter 2 so that's why I'm updating so soon. Disclaimer: I do not own NERDS. Michael Buckley does. Please review or I will be forced to do something!
Alexi sat at her lunch table alone, looking at the goop they called 'pudding'. Alexi thought that calling it that was an insult to real pudding. She fervently wished that she had brought lunch. This lunch was a disaster. The creamed corn smelled of feet, the pudding was rubbery, the cookie was as hard as a hockey puck (actually, it might have been a hockey puck in a past life) and the casserole bubbled occasionally. Alexi had a choice: eat her food and possibly have to get her stomach pumped, or throw it away and feel faint for the rest of the day.
She sighed. It looked like she'd be throwing her lunch away. But as she got up to walk to the trash can, she bumped into Brett Bealer. He yelled "Hey Four-eyes, watch it! With specs that big, I'd have thought you could see where you were going!" Her face flushed a deep red, but instead of sitting back down and mumbling an apology, she took a deep breath and said "'I'd have thought'? That's rich, coming from you. How can someone think without a brain?" She looked him straight in the eye, and then…
Brett's face contorted. He looked constipated, but now Alexi knew better than to say that. The look in his eyes was just plain scary. He leaped up, grabbed her lunch tray, and flipped it upside down over her head. Luckily the creamed corn missed her, but the pudding hit her right on the head, and the casserole dish slammed down on her toes. She screamed. Brett looked satisfied and sat down at his table, where he was instantly mobbed by admirers. Alexi watched him through pudding-flecked glasses. Then she sat down at her table and put her head in her hands.
Alexi felt someone watching her. She raised her head and saw Duncan Dewey, who was in her math class. He was looking at her with an expression of interest. She said "What do you want?" in a tired, worn out voice. "I'd like you to come with me," he said. Her expression shifted, from weariness, to surprise, to suspicion, and then back to weariness. "Oh, whatever," she muttered. "Let's get this over with." She rose from her chair, but Duncan grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. "First, I need to explain something to you. You can't tell anyone what you see-," he was cut off by Alexi "Who is there to tell? I mean, I can't tell my parents or my siblings, because no matter what it is, they'll laugh at me, and I can't tell anyone here, because their reaction will just be the same." Duncan looked at her, pity in his eyes. But he kept talking. "You are being invited to join a secret organization called NERDS. The National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society. It will give you upgrades that will turn your worst weakness into a huge strength. I will show you to the entrance. Come on!"
Alexi felt skeptic, but she kept that to herself. In the .5 chance that it was real, she didn't want to decimate her chances. So she followed Duncan to a row of lockers. When he stopped, she looked at him quizzically. "You're supposed to step into the locker," he prompted. "What? No way! What if this is a trick- ahhhhhhhh!" The 'ahhhhhhhh' was caused by the fact that Duncan had just pushed her into the locker and shut the door behind her. She was trapped in a dark metal space, and that was aggravating her claustrophobia. She started panicking. "Let me out of here!" she screamed, pounding on the metal door. "Let me out!" It did let her out, but not in the way she expected. The bottom of the locker slid out from under her, and she tumbled into a chute.
Alexi was officially panicking. Today she had been creamed by food, told she was joining a secret society, shoved into a locker, fallen down a chute in said locker, and she was now hovering over a giant fan, freaking out. Without warning, a panel slid over the fan, and she dropped like a stone, right onto the surface of the panel. The panel tilted, and she started to slide towards a hole. She scrabbled around, trying to get purchase, but there was none. She slid into the hole, and flew along a slide, turning loop-de-loops, screaming through turns, and dropping like a stone until, finally, she fell into an over-stuffed armchair. Her glasses flew off her face and went skittering down the floor.
She was dizzy and she felt sick. Duncan arrived seconds after her, and then four more people came after him. She knew their names. The blond with braces was Jackson Jones, the Korean girl with the inhalers was Matilda Choi, the hyperactive Latino boy was Julio 'Flinch' Escala, and the blond girl with puffy hair and glasses was Ruby Peet. They introduced themselves, but their voices didn't quite penetrate the haze surrounding Alexi's head. She staggered over to a table and promptly barfed all over a scientist's invention.
"Alexi!" Duncan exclaimed. "No, no, it's OK," said the scientist. "That invention wasn't working anyways." Alexi, who was feeling a lot better by now, said "I might be able to help. Show me the equation you're using to make it work." The scientist dug through his desk, unearthing quite a few things (including an action figure, several screws, and his lunch from two weeks ago) before he found the equation. He handed it to Alexi, who said "Can someone get me my glasses?" A young female scientist had found them under a workstation, so she handed them to Alexi. "Ah, I see why this isn't working!" exclaimed Alexi. "You made a mistake right here. You're supposed to divide by the square root of pi." The scientist was stunned. He started talking to her about math, and was bowled over by how much she knew. This girl was a walking, talking calculator!
Alexi was explaining the subtle patterns hidden in pi when she realized that the room was completely silent. She turned around and saw all of the scientists staring at her. So were Duncan, Ruby, Matilda, Flinch, and Jackson. She blushed, her face turning the color of a ripe tomato. Duncan was the first to recover. Seeing how uncomfortable she was, he decided not to talk about it. "So," he said. "Welcome to the Playground. This is the center of NERDS operations, where missions start and end." Matilda jumped in. "We'll be taking you to meet our director, Agent Alexander Brand. But our team leader is Ruby here." Ruby piped up. "Nice to meet you," she said, in a brisk voice. "I'm sure you'll be a valuable addition to our team." Jackson and Flinch were silent, looking at her like she was an alien from another planet. She blushed again.
The team led her through the lab, which was breath-taking. She hadn't been able to take it all in at first, but now she saw the murals, the computers, the tables of inventions. It was a nerd's paradise. She was still taking it in when a man burst into the room. He was handsome and wearing a black tuxedo, although he carried a white cane in his left hand, which supported him. He was followed by a pretty blond woman in a cardigan sweater. The man introduced himself as Agent Alexander Brand, the Director, and the woman as Ms. Holiday, the librarian and research specialist. Alexi felt self-conscious in the presence of these two very important people. She was suddenly aware of her pudding-stained shirt, her untidy brown hair, and her run-down jeans with a hole in the left knee. She ran her hands through her hair to try to get it not to poof up, but it was hopeless.
Agent Brand turned to a small glass table and tapped on it. Swirling blue particles appeared, forming into a figure that Alexi knew very well. "You're Ben Franklin!" she said with a gasp. The apparition shook its head. "In truth, I am a computer. The real Ben Franklin has been deceased for a long time. You may call me Benjamin, if you prefer. I have Level-4 artificial intelligence and I can do almost anything: track villains, formulate battle strategies, or devise when the sun will go out." Alexi interrupted. "But can you knit?" Benjamin chuckled. "Unfortunately, no. I have tried, and it was… well, let's just say messy." Jackson shuddered. "Don't remind me," he said. "I had a knitting needle stuck in my backside for three days."
Alexi strained to hide a smile. Benjamin continued. "We have invited you to join our top-secret organization: NERDS. NERDS was formed in the 1990's to protect the world. Children were the ultimate secret agents. They are rarely noticed, good with technology, and, most important, smarter than adults think they are. You, Alexi, are a perfect example of that." Alexi beamed, flushed with pride. "The finest minds in the country came together and invented a program designed to take children's weaknesses and make them into super strengths. You, Alexi, have the worst pair of glasses in the country. You are practically blind without them. We can take that, and we can make it different. You could defend your country." Alexi thought it over for about, oh, say, two seconds? The decision was reached inside her mind. "I'm in." she said.
Ms. Holiday escorted her into a room with a gigantic computer at the front. "You only have five minutes until lunch ends, so I'll streamline this." She did some fancy tap-tap-tapping, and then looked at Alexi. "Code name?" Alexi thought. She could choose something cool, like Awesome, or Platypus (in honor of the revenge plan) but she thought the better of it. She had an idea. People had been calling her Four-eyes for years, so why shouldn't she take it in stride? Alexi took a deep breath and said. "Four-eyes. Code name: Four-eyes."
Ms. Holiday entered that in, and suddenly a large leather chair rose out of the ground behind her. She sat in it, and then Ms. Holiday left. Hurriedly. That gave her a clue that something was wrong. She looked up. Tons of robotic arms dangled over, each holding a different device. All that they had in common was that they all looked scary. Alexi screamed. Then one arm, holding a hypodermic needle, jerked down and injected something in her arm. She felt a sting, and the whole world went black.
