A/N – Alrighty, we've officially got things rolling now! Why does everyone assume that they know where Tuck is going to wind up? After all, Drew didn't get a chance to enter the secret coordinates into his teleporter, did he? Well, I guess we'll just have to see where the little troublemaker lands. And we'll have to see how poor ol' Drew handles this little wrinkle in his afternoon plans. Now, to sit back with my gallon of Insta-Flavor ice cream and let my diabolical little mind dream something up nasty …
The Anywhere Cannon
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Five – O Little Brother, Where Art Thou?
The wild-eyed teen android bowled out of his bedroom like a rodeo bull barreling out of its chute, and scrambled downstairs, barely touching the steps with his elongated legs. Oh crap. Oh crap. Ohcrap-ohcrap-ohcrap. If only that stupid little runt had just minded his own business, but oh, no! Tuck had to go poking around in his bedroom, and find his hyperspace teleporter. For criminy's sake, his parents hadn't found that thing for the past two months – and Tuck finds it in five minutes! He mumbled a silent prayer, hoping that Tuck would turn up safe and sound somewhere. So he could wring his little neck. Even with a complex network of nano-processors for a brain, Drew couldn't count up all the ways he was in trouble right now. What was he going to tell Brad? What was he going to tell his Mom? What was he going to tell Tuck's Mom? And, oh yeah – what was he going to tell everyone after Smytus blew up half the galaxy with the Anywhere Cannon? Gulp. Okay, this wasn't the time to panic …
"Andrew? Sweetie?" Drew tensed up like he'd been hit with a million-volt power surge. It was his mother, carrying a tray of fresh cookies and milk, smiling like a television commercial brought to life. "Andrew, where's our special little guest? I thought he might like another snack, before we head over to that Glooping Zone place you two are so excited about. Didn't he go upstairs to get you?"
"Uh … yes! Yes, he did!" Drew edged closer to the front door, his mind racing for a plausible lie. "And … that's … why … I'm … taking the little fellow over there right now! Yeah, it's such a lovely day, I figured we'd walk. A little exercise does a body good, right? Heh-heh … heh …"
"Oh." His mother laid a thoughtful finger to her temple. "Odd, I didn't hear Tucker go outside."
"Well, he did! In fact, he's … uh … waiting outside for me, right now!" With a near-silent schwerrrrp, Drew stretched an arm underneath the front door – and around the corner of the house, where he morphed his hand into a small speaker membrane. A quick search of his memory archives brought up a copy of Tuck's voice print …
"Hi, Mrs. Nabholtz!" shouted the hand-speaker, faking Tuck's voice perfectly. "I decided I don't want to ride in the car. I forgot, I have … uh … Chronic Carsickness Syndrome! Yeah, that's it! Cars – can't stand 'em. Sooooo, we're gonna leave now and not come back, thanks for the cookies, don't bother to look out the window, bye bye!"
A hint of suspicion might have passed over his mother's face – but she smiled it off. "Well, it is a lovely day for a walk, I suppose. You two boys have fun, okay? And Andrew, do make sure and keep an eye on your little friend. You wouldn't want him wandering off somewhere by himself!"
"Oh, heh-heh, yeah … wouldn't want that," he groaned, rolling his eyes. He sprinted out of the house, put a running timer up in his computer-vision as a reminder of his Underground mission, and tried to conjure up something in his cyber-mind that resembled rational thought. Okay, when Tuck vanished into the vortex, he had not yet programmed the teleporter with an actual destination. And it was extremely unlikely that Tuck had accidentally entered a valid set of coordinates, with his random button pushing. Well, sort of unlikely. Drew tried to settle his churning nanobot innards. Tuck could be anywhere, and there was no way to track someone through hyperspace …
But, the teleporter was set by default for short-range hops … and it might be possible to scan for the large surge of energy that was given off when a vortex opened up. It was a long shot, but it was the best idea he could come up with. Drew morphed a large scanning dish out of the top of his head, picked a direction at random, and ran down the sidewalk on all fours, like a silver-green cheetah.
"Tuuuuuuck!" he yelled. Geez, where did that little squirt get himself to?
The Tremorton Convention Center was filled to overflowing with pasty-faced high school kids in home-made costumes and overweight single men wearing foam rubber masks. Brightly colored banners hung from the ceiling, marking the territory of the Confederation of Planets, the Klingoid Empire, the Romulese, the Blorg, and a dozen other alien races that existed only on weekly television. Hundreds of convention booths hawked everything from mint-condition comic books and action figures to the actual toupee worn by Captain Smirk in Episode Forty-One. Yes, the Annual Tri-County Star Dreck Convention was in full swing, and no self-respecting nerd would dream of being anywhere else on this glorious day. Why, Sheldon had marked it down on his calendar six months ago.
He wiped his clammy hands against his blue science tunic to dry off the anxious sweat, then checked to make sure that his pointy rubber ears were still glued on. Mister Spork was his favorite Star Dreck character, and he'd been patiently waiting in line for an hour to get his autograph. He patted his tote bag, where he kept his ultra-rare Mister Spork collector's plate wrapped in protective plastic. Getting that plate autographed would be a young geek's dream come true …
Suddenly the air above him hisssssed like a swarm of insects. Startled, Sheldon looked up just in time to see a pinprick of light grow out of nothingness – to form a howling hole, filled with a crazy kaleidoscope of colors. And he saw something that looked like a tumbling, screaming little boy …
"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIGHHHHHHH!" shrieked Tuck, as he plummeted out of the hole and landed on top of Sheldon like a sack of wet cement. The two boys collapsed to the floor in a tangled, groaning heap. Tuck was so freaked out from his bizarre trip that he was literally vibrating. Seeing himself surrounded by weird-looking people with bumpy foreheads and goofy uniforms did not help matters any. He hauled his MegaSoaker 400 out of his backpack, took aim at the first person he saw … and pelted Sheldon right in the kisser with a disgusting blast of sticky, green slime.
"S-s-stay back, alien scum! Don't get any crazy ideas …" – then Tuck took a second look, and cautiously lowered his plastic rifle. "Sheldon?"
"Ptui! Ptui!" Sheldon wiped as much green goop from his face as he could, and scowled down at his pint-sized assailant. "Tuck! What's the big idea? And what are you doing here?"
Another conventioneer, dressed in full Klingoid battle armor, gave Sheldon a condescending sneer. "It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain," he said in a lisping voice, "that he was re-enacting the energy-creature wormhole attack from Episode Twenty-Six, Terror From Dimension X. Although," he huffed, pushing his glasses back up his nose, "he totally got the special effects wrong on the wormhole. And that cheap prop in his hands doesn't look anything like …"
"Hold a just a second," interrupted Tuck, making a time-out signal with his hands. "Wormhole? What are you nerds talking about?"
"You tell me!" said Sheldon, as he helped Tuck to his feet. "You're the one who just fell out of a tear in the space-time continuum! Where'd you get a gizmo like that, anyway? Is Dr. Wakeman having a yard sale?"
Instead of answering, Tuck held the brick-sized contraption up to his eyes and gazed at it, as if he'd just pulled Excalibur free from the stone – and an evil grin spread from ear to ear. Realization sunk into his little brain – I just traveled through a real life wormhole! That meant that the gizmo in his hands had to be … a teleporter! His imagination raced with fantastic possibilities. What was Drew doing with a teleporter gizmo in his school knapsack? Something totally weak, no doubt – maybe he used it to get to his stupid job at Wonder Weenie. Well, he certainly wouldn't miss it if Tuck … borrowed it for a little while. Say, until after the Bot Buster tournament was over. Just think – he would literally be able to zap himself from place to place in the blink of an eye! If someone aimed a Goop gun at him, he'd be able to disappear – and then re-appear behind his attacker! "This – is – the – most – awesome thing ever!" he shouted, holding the teleporter high above his head, in a melodramatic pose. "Now no-one will be able to match my mad Bot Busting skills! I shall be undisputed champion of all Goop Zone! Nay, I shall be master … of space and time itself!"
"Actually," said Sheldon, "those things only travel through space."
"Eh, works for me," smiled Tuck. He rubbed his chin in devious thought. "I've got plenty of time before the tournament starts … maybe I should see what this little baby can do. Heh, heh, heh." Tuck stuffed his Goop rifle back in his backpack, and noticed a couple of other objects lying on the floor. "Oh, here you go, Sheldon. I think this fell out of your tote bag."
Sheldon shrieked like a distraught schoolgirl. "My Mister Spork collector's plate! Gahhh, if there's so much as a chink in its finish, its book value drops by fifty percent!" He frantically unfolded the cloth cover, unwrapped the bubble wrap – and sighed with relief. Not a scratch on it.
"Oh, and this is yours, too!" added Tuck, handing over a glossy-covered magazine titled … Space Wars Fan Universe Monthly.
"Space Wars?" snorted the Klingoid with the glasses. "Star Dreck is way better than Space Wars! It's the best show in the history of television!"
A teenager wearing an aluminum-foil spacesuit interrupted. "Actually, both are inferior to classic British literary science fiction like Doctor Whozit," he sneered.
"Are you some kind of blarg-brain or something?" a heavily pimpled kid snorted through his retainer. "That's all insipid commercial pulp compared to the critically acclaimed Mesopotamia Five!"
"Okay, I am so out of here," groaned Tuck, sneaking away from the full-blown war he'd just ignited. As Sheldon and a Blorg drone got into a vicious slap-fight over who was cooler, Captain Smirk or Ham Solo, Tuck made his way to an empty convention booth, quickly looked over the arrow navigation-keys on the teleporter, and enthusiastically mashed a new set of buttons. The chittering hiss of a freshly opened portal was drowned out by the squeals and howls of the nerd riot that had erupted behind him. Cinching the straps on his backpack, Tuck clutched tightly onto the handle of his new toy, and jumped into wormhole with boyish delight.
Jenny nibbled on the tips of her fingers with gear-wrenching angst, generating a fine dusting of iron filings that drifted down onto the theatre floor. Alcohol tears pooled up in her optic sensors; she deployed tiny wipers to keep her vision clear, so she wouldn't miss a minute of the greatest romantic drama in movie history. The Tremorton Rialto Theater was filled with emotion-choked teenage girls, staring intently at the big screen, hoping with all their hearts that the hunky Connor – played by teen heartthrob Ian McCauley – would leave that nasty, manipulative witch Veronica, and realize that his lifelong friend Jessie was actually meant to be his one true love. Jenny's torso quietly slid open to deploy a roll of tissues, which she kindly shared with the girls on either side of her. The big scene was coming up. The soundtrack built up with tear-jerking violins. Connor was about to make his decision …
And the mood was shattered as a screeching portal ripped open directly over Jenny's head, showering all of the girls in her row with hot buttered popcorn. Squeals of protest erupted as the startled robot girl wiped the greasy puffed kernels from her eyes, and looked up just in time to see a grinning little black-haired boy spill out of the wormhole, and land hard in her lap.
"Uuunnghh," she grunted, as if she'd just been punched in the belly. "TUCK! What the … how did …"
"Ha-haaaa! Success!" laughed Tuck, punching the air with victorious fists. This was so cool – he was really starting to get the hang of the teleporter gizmo now! He'd snuck into the box seats at the baseball stadium, then he'd snuck behind the snack bar counter to help himself to a little popcorn, and now he'd snuck into the ultimate off-limits location for a grade schooler – a PG-13 movie! "Now nobody can tell Tucker Carbunkle where he can and cannot go! I can finally go anywhere I want to, no matter what Mom or Dad or Brad says! I laugh at closed doors and locked gates! I …" – and only then did he look up and realize where he was sitting. "Oh, hi there Jenny! Say, any chance you happened to see where my popcorn bucket went?"
"I'm wearing most of it!" she growled at him. "Tuck … what on Earth are you doing here?"
A dozen angry teenage girls turned as one. "SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
But while Jenny winced and sunk down into her seat, Tuck suddenly grew bold and indignant. "Hey, wait a minute!" he shouted. "You said that you couldn't take me to the Goop Zone because you had to go home and study battle strategy with your Mom. So I guess the real question should be … what are you doing here, Jenny?" Imagine that! She had fibbed to him! That was such a gross violation of a friendship's trust! Well, at least it was whenever someone else did it to him.
The frenzied robot girl waved her arms, frantically trying to quiet the little fellow down. "I was just taking a break! I mean … I'm going to study later! That is …" – Jenny ducked, as volleys of popcorn and empty soda cups sailed towards her head. "Tuck, be quiet! You're going to get me kicked out of the movie! And this is the big dramatic scene where Connor picks …"
Tuck turned towards the screen with a flinched eyebrow. "You ditched me to watch some stupid romance movie?" he shouted. "Say, wait a minute … isn't this the one where he dumps both girls and announces that he's becoming a priest?"
"NOOOOOOO!" shrieked every last girl in the theater, enraged that the climactic scene had been spoiled for them at the last minute. The mob rained down a fresh hail of candy wrappers and empty snack boxes on poor Jenny, forcing her to retreat into the protection of her Turtle Shell Mode. Tuck shrugged his shoulders, not understanding what the big deal was all about … then scampered towards the theater's rear exit, eager to get on with his next abuse of the teleporter. With the press of a button, another portal spawned open in the back wall, and Tuck leapt through, disappearing with a quick flash of light.
Which meant that Jenny had nobody to blame the ruckus on when the two stern-faced ushers marched down the aisle, like a pair of prison guards ready to escort her to a holding cell. Despite her pleas of innocence, the ushers escorted the horrifically embarrassed robot girl out of the theater, to the cruel cheers of everyone around her. Blue-cheeked, frustrated and boiling over with anger, Jenny stomped away with tiny lightning bolts leaping from her cheeks, leaving a trail of cracked sidewalk behind her.
She didn't even see Drew sprinting down the other side of the street, twisting his dish-head around in a frantic search for the same little boy who'd just ruined her afternoon.
The soft, soothing strains of classical music wafted through the elegantly decorated dining room, and tuxedo-clad waiters breezed about the tables with silver trays and bottles of champagne. Lace curtains, silk tablecloths, and fine art on the walls left no doubt in the minds of the restaurant's patrons that Le Bistro Swankée Foo Foo was the most upscale dining experience to be had anywhere in Tremorton. It certainly was reflected in the prices, Brad gulped to himself, as he tugged uncomfortably at the knot in his tie. He was going to be mowing lawns for months to pay for this dinner – but it would be worth it, if it impressed the cute blonde girl sitting across the table from him. Some people might say that Kiki was a little on the high-maintenance side, but to Brad, that just meant she had high standards. Which should be obvious to anyone, since she did dump Dom Prima for me, he smirked. Of course, that was after she had dumped Brad in the first place – ehh, details. Kiki looked amazing in her new red dress, she was laughing at his jokes, and the date had gone flawlessly so far. It was time for the ol' Bradster to turn on the charm.
"So, my little chocolate chip Kiki," he grinned, "see anything here that looks good enough to eat?" He wiggled his eyebrows playfully. "Besides me, of course."
"Ohh, stop it, Braddums," she snickered … and then the most peculiar thing happened. A bright flash of light pulsed from underneath their table – accompanied by a weird chittering hissing sound, and a swirling puff of air against her legs. "Yikes!" she squealed. "What was that?"
"Probably just the air conditioning kicking in," said Brad, eager to keep the mood alive. "You're so hot, they're probably worried that the whole building is going to melt."
"Oh, you …" – then Kiki twitched her head, in confusion. "Brad, do you hear that? That sounds like somebody … chuckling, under the table."
"All I can hear is the angels singing your name," he swooned. "Hey, all right, our salads are here!" He checked a tiny cheat sheet of useful French phrases that he'd folded inside of his left shirt cuff. After all, French always made the girls go crazy. "Ah, trays bee-yins! Mer-see, Gar-kone."
The waiter rolled his eyes and walked away, leaving Brad and Kiki to get started on their meals. However, to Kiki's surprise, when she reached down for her salad fork …
"My fork fell on the floor," she puzzled. "Weird … it's like somebody pulled my napkin off the table."
"Not to worry, my sweet," said Brad, eager for the chance to be chivalrous. He rose from his chair …
And fell flat on his face, like a felled redwood tree. Somehow, Brad's shoelaces had gotten tied together in triple knots. He slammed hard into the floor, arms flailing like a baby bird trying to fly – but his troubles were just beginning. Somehow, the fancy silk tablecloth had gotten tucked inside of his belt. Brad's momentum yanked the tablecloth clear off the table in one mighty jerk, catapulting every last plate, glass, and utensil into the air. Salad dressing splattered all over Brad, Kiki, and the horrified diners at the surrounding tables. The basket of rolls landed twenty feet away, plunking down in the lobster tank. A goblet of ginger ale spiraled into the air, and spilled itself all over Kiki's new dress. And finally, the fancy plates crashed to the floor in a crescendo of shattering china.
Wiggling his bound legs back and forth, Brad managed to get himself flipped over. Kiki wailed in agony as she plucked romaine lettuce from her hair. Two furious waiters stood over Brad, with an intimidating manager glaring down between them. And underneath the table …
Underneath the table was a dead little rat, laughing himself silly.
"TUUUCK!" Brad yelled, his face beet-red with rage. He clumsily lunged at Tuck, but only succeeded in tumbling to the floor one more time. "You little runt! You're dead meat, you hear me! Dead meat! You just wait till I get my hands on you! I'm going to give you the mother of all wedgies! I'll give you a purple nurple your grandkids will be talking about!"
Tuck wiped a tear from his eye, and activated the teleporter again. "You just can't buy entertainment like that," he laughed, as he jumped through the vortex in the floor.
In all the commotion, nobody noticed the silver-green teenage android run past the window like a scalded dog, desperately trying to catch up with his dimension-hopping little quarry.
Dr. Wakeman dug in her heels, grunted with all the strength that her diminutive frame could summon up, and slowly pushed the two-foot-thick reinforced-titanium door – the one labeled Secret Underground Vault – until it slid shut with a loud, echoing clang. Wiping the perspiration from her wrinkled brow, she spun the combination lock a few times, and punched in the new twenty-digit access code that reactivated the laser grid, the swinging sawblades, the motion-seeking missiles, the flamethrowers, the automated phaser cannons, and the auto-tracking fifty millimeter machine gun which all combined to protect the super top secret technology she kept locked up inside. She collapsed against the cold metallic door, her lungs heaving as she struggled to catch her breath; voyaging into her Secret Vault was a little more demanding than simply fetching a jar of marmalade from the pantry. Which made it all the more perplexing as to just how her youngest neighbor had managed to get inside.
She shushed Tuck away from the Vault's door, corralling him towards the basement stairs with an old broom. "Get upstairs, you little misanthrope! Heavens to Heterodyne, Tucker, what were you thinking? Going into my Secret Vault like that? You're lucky to be alive!" She gave him a little swat on the bum to coax him up the stairs.
"Chill out, Mrs. Wakeman!" Tuck patted his backpack, with a smug little smile. Two-foot-thick steel doors and a super alarm system were no problem for a guy with his own teleporter. "I just wanted to have a little look around. Y'know, say hi to Jenny's sisters, check the Future Scope, see how those talking apes in the distant future are doing ..."
"Just wanted to look around? Just wanted to look around? In case you hadn't noticed, young man, this is not the public library!" Dr. Wakeman ran an exasperated hand through her disheveled hair as they reached the main floor. "That vault was designed to keep out a team of fifty trained commandos! And it will. I know. I hired a team of commandos to test it. They're recovering nicely. But obviously," she gasped, "I need to redesign it to keep out a persistently troublesome seven-year-old paste-eater!"
"Hey, I don't eat paste!" Tuck protested. "Well, okay, I'm down to once a week."
"If only you could keep your bothersome visits down to once a week," huffed the doctor, as she hurried Tuck out onto the front walkway. She slammed the front door behind him, and methodically twisted half a dozen locks and deadbolts, as if to silently add and stay out.
"Man, what got into her prune juice?" snorted Tuck, as he straightened out his shirt collar. Old people sure did act weird sometimes, for no reason at all that he could see. Maybe she needed to stick some test tubes in the dishwasher, or something science-y like that. Oh well, he wasn't about to let a grumpy old coot rain on his parade today.
Because the day was still young, and the whole city of Tremorton was laid open before him like the sumptuous all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at Will-E-Wombat's. Sweet freedom, at last! Nobody understood how much it stunk being a little kid. Everyone was always bossing him around, telling him not to eat so much candy, telling him not to wander off by himself, telling him he couldn't stay up to watch the late night movie. It seemed like grown-ups spent all their time making up stupid rules, just to boss poor little kids like him around. Well, no longer! Tuck pulled his purloined teleporter out of his knapsack, feverish with the infinite possibilities for fun and mischief it represented. He could take another fun trip through a vortex, maybe to the shop floor of the Popsicle factory or the testing room at the video game store. Or maybe back to that fancy French restaurant – snicker – I wonder if Brad realizes yet that I sprinkled itching powder on his date's shoes? – chuckle – Then a stroke of inspiration hit him. He could go to the mall, open a portal to the girl's bathroom, and toss in a stink bomb! That would be classic!
But it would have to wait until after he won the Goop Zone tournament. Popping from place to place in the blink of an eye, he was a shoo-in to win! He glanced at his watch; he'd frittered away a little more time than he realized with his horseplay, but it didn't matter. After all, the Goop Zone was only one little hyperspace-hop away! He'd be there in a matter of milliseconds. "I guess it's time for me to take my rightful place in the annals of Goop history," he grinned. He began to punch in a new series of arrow buttons …
When the teleporter was snatched out of his hands, by the swipe of a silver-green robotic arm.
"Hey!" he shouted in protest. "What's the big …"
A six-foot green-striped android glared down at him, with eyes like a bounty hunter that had just tracked down an escaped convict. After running through the streets of Tremorton and chasing wormhole portals like a raving idiot, Drew had finally caught up with the little vortex-jumping varmint. He braced his hands on his knees, chest heaving like a marathoner about to collapse at the finish line, and clutched tightly onto the handle of his missing teleporter as if he'd just discovered the Holy Grail. "Finally," he panted. "Man, I have got to learn how to grow me some rocket engines out of my head."
"Drew!" Tuck smiled, completely unfazed by the android's appearance. "Hey, you're just in time! I was just about to use this bad boy to head on over to the Goop Zone. It's not too hard once you …"
"You're not using it to go anywhere. I've been chasing you around town for fifteen minutes!"
"Really? Huh … it seemed longer than that."
Drew cocked his head as he re-absorbed his scanning dish, stunned at the brazenness of the little fellow. "Listen up, you little kleptomaniac," he gasped, struggling to keep his temper in check. "You're lucky I don't use this thing to send you to the South Pole!"
Tuck planted his little fists on his hips, bristling at the accusation. "I didn't steal it! I found it. I mean, it was carelessly lying right there in your knapsack – I couldn't help but find it! And you know what they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law." Tuck had a rather twisted take on the whole concept of private property. "If anything, this is all your fault. You're lucky I didn't zap myself to China!"
"Gshnxxxrt … MY fault!" Drew started counting to a million again …
"That's okay, don't beat yourself up about it," smiled Tuck. "I forgive you! Tell you what, you let me borrow your way cool teleporter gizmo for a couple of hours, and I'll forget the whole thing."
"Gee, let me give that some careful thought," sneered Drew, resting a sarcastic finger against his chin. "I'm going to have to go with … no freaking way."
"But you weren't even using it for anything! It was just sitting in your knapsack!" Tuck grew angry as he realized that his ticket to fame and freedom was slipping out of his fingers; just like always, someone bigger than him was telling him what he couldn't do and where he couldn't go. "I'll give it right back! I just need it to win the Bot Buster tournament! C'mon, what are you going to use it for? You need to rush back to the mall and sell some more hot dogs?"
"This isn't a negotiation, Tuck," growled Drew, "and I do not have the time to deal with you right now. Look, we're right next to your place." They were still standing right in front of the Wakeman house. Drew picked the youngest Carbunkle up by the straps of his knapsack, and glared into his unapologetic little face. He'd never wanted to strangle a small child so badly before in his life. No jury would convict me. But like he'd just said – he didn't have time to waste on the little twerp right now. Drew tossed Tuck over the hedge, and the little guy landed in his front yard with a solid thump on his bottom. He got to his feet, and shot Drew a nasty look that could have peeled the paint off a fender.
"Just … try to stay out of trouble for ten minutes," said Drew, stabbing an authoritative finger at him. He called up a mission file from his molecular memory. "I'll be right back."
Drew stomped a few steps away, and tried to settle down his jangling circuits. He checked the running clock in his computer-vision. How long had it been since he'd spoken with Allison on the hyperwave? Seventeen minutes? Sheesh, it felt like seventeen hours. The Cluster Underground must be wondering if he was trying to walk to that stupid asteroid. For crying out loud, how was he supposed to deal with the Cluster Army when he couldn't even deal with Brad's little brother? "Sorry about Earth being destroyed, guys, but man – that seven-year-old was a lot tougher to handle than I expected!"
He smacked himself in the forehead – this was not the time to spaz out about Tuck. He had plenty of other stuff to spaz out about. His subroutines chewed through the numbers from Allison's communiqué, and retrieved the galactic coordinates for the Anywhere Cannon's asteroid base. He pulled up a computer blueprint of the base, and picked out a nice deserted service tunnel to jump into.
"All right, pull yourself together, Nabholtz," he muttered, as he entered the new settings into his teleporter. Time to enter Mission Mode. Time to get serious. Time to forget all about his overprotective Mom, and his stupid fast food job, and that weaselly little suck-up brat who played his Mom like a fiddle and made him look like a bad guy and ransacked his bedroom and stole his teleporter and embarrassed him in front of Ally and made him run around town like a chicken with his head cut off and was such an irritating spoiled little … snxxxshrffl … Pant. Pant. Pant. "Okay, we had a little excitement there," he said to himself, with forced calmness, "a little unforeseen complication. Happens all the time. It'll make for a wacky story over petro-shakes at Oil Can Joe's, after the mission is done."
The important thing was, he was ready to jump now. Drew quieted his nano-circuits, and went over the mission in his head one more time. Jump to the asteroid. Sabotage the force field, so the Underground can blow up the Anywhere Cannon. Jump off the asteroid.
It didn't sound too bad, when he thought about it like that. In and out. Simple. He'd done sabotage missions before. This one wouldn't be any different. Right?
A miniature bolt of energy leapt from the tip of the teleporter, and circumscribed a six-foot-wide circle, as if it were carving a hole out of the very fabric of space. With a pulse of light and a familiar chittering sound, the hyperspace portal opened up to reveal an infinite realm of insanely flickering colors. It was a real-life magic portal, a doorway leading from the mundane realm of everyday suburban life into a bizarre, dangerous, alien unknown. Drew never got used to the surreal dichotomy of the whole thing. On this side of the portal, his greatest worry in life was making sure that the fry vats at Wonder Weenie were set to the right temperature. But on the other side …
He leapt through the vortex, and immediately lost all sense of direction and orientation. Light and color screamed by him too fast to register as more than mere after-images. It was difficult to even identify which direction you were traveling in when you passed through a wormhole; it felt like riding a zero-gravity waterslide, while you were stuffed inside a washing machine. But with experience, you could tell when you were about hurtle out of the other end …
A flash of light, a swirl of wind, and Drew stumbled out into the middle of a long, dark, corridor. Instinctively, he slammed his back against the wall, and quickly scanned left and right to make sure that nobody had seen him arrive. The corridor was actually a tunnel carved out of cold, hard rock, reinforced with durable ceiling beams of gunmetal grey; with a quick wave of distortion, his body repainted itself in textured dark browns, rendering him nearly invisible to any observer. The faint crackle and hum of high-tech machinery hung in the background, punctuated by the occasional sound of shouted military orders and the marching of robot soldiers. The stark artificial lighting and reduced gravity both served to reinforce the alienness of the environment; I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Okay, he thought, better get started. He had a force field to deactivate. I've already wasted enough time.
He carefully snuck towards one end of the tunnel, where the glow of the light was a little brighter. The tunnel let out into an intersecting larger corridor, which had a rectangular viewing window cut out of its curved wall. The robot boy tiptoed up to the window … and stared in awe.
Below him was a massive cavern that was easily large enough to hold a football stadium. The cavern walls were rimmed with levels of scaffolding and metal grating, which held row upon row of computer screens and monitoring equipment, like an ancient NASA mission command room. Hundreds of Cluster roach-drones serviced the monitoring stations, working at a feverish pace under the watchful eyes of hulking, fifteen-foot ant-bot guards. And hundreds more roach-drones with wrenches and torches swarmed over a gargantuan piece of lethal-looking machinery that sat in the middle of the great cavern. Drew recognized it from the stolen blueprints, but it was none the less impressive a sight to look at. The Anywhere Cannon. A two-hundred-foot cylinder tipped over on its side and bolted to the floor with steel tie-downs. Dozens of cyclotrons were clumped together at one end, sucking in the power of four fusion reactors to generate anti-protons, and pipe them into a gun barrel that could have doubled as a subway tunnel. Sitting in front of the business end of the cannon was a giant metal ring, fifty feet across, studded with electronics and connectors for thick power cables. It was the hyperspace portal, the part of the cannon that did the aiming. You could have driven four semi trucks through it, side by side. The sheer scope of the weapons engineering before him made Drew's knees feel like they were turning to fudge.
"Ho-lee schnikey," he gulped.
"You can say that again," said an enthusiastic little voice.
Drew's nanobot innards froze in terror.
His eyes shrunk to the size of ball bearings.
He slowly turned his head, and looked down.
And his molecular circuits nearly fried themselves.
Tuck gave him a huge grin, and squashed his face up against the viewport glass, overflowing with youthful, hyper excitement. "Is this the coolest thing you've ever seen in your life or what?" he squealed, bouncing up and down to get a better view. "Man, when the Goop Zone says they're building a new addition – they don't fool around, do they?"
Continued in Chapter Six