My boss'll never buy the smallpox excuse, thought Mr. Krantz as he stiffly gripped the steering wheel. I'm sure to lose my job, but I must do as master commands—I can't even begin to resist.
"Don't worry, Dad," said Sue, who was relaxing in the passenger seat with the glowing sphere in one hand. "Once we're done with this trip, you'll get your free will back."
"My master is too kind," said the moose man flatly.
"Yeah, I know," said the cat girl. This thing scares me, she thought. Once I've accomplished my purpose, I'm going to shatter it into a million pieces, and then shatter every one of the pieces into a million pieces. No one will ever abuse its power again…
They drove past a sign that read, NOW LEAVING YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
All throughout the aforementioned neighborhood, the kids began to feel that something was amiss. Just as Buster was about to ask Scrunchy the bodyguard whether he had ever killed a person, he slapped his forehead in consternation: "Omigosh, I'm supposed to be in school right now!"
In a nearby room, Bitzi was explaining her situation to Mr. Haney: "Harry and I are separated now, but I expect the divorce proceedings to take even longer than they did when Bo and I split, since Petula's in the mix now."
"That's perfectly all right," said the principal. "I'm a patient man." His eyes suddenly widened to the point that they were almost as wide as his glasses. "Holy mother of all that's holy, what am I doing here? I'm needed at the school, and I mean right now! There's not a second to lose! I won't even have time to take a shower!"
"Herbert, wait a minute!" called Bitzi as the principal bolted from the room, not looking back.
Seated in their living room, Arthur and D.W. looked away from the TV screen and looked at each other. "School!" they exclaimed in unison.
Muffy, lying miserably on her stomach, heard her mother's voice through the crack under the door: "Get dressed, young lady. I don't know how or why, but school is not cancelled after all."
Alan, meanwhile, was theorizing about the latest developments with his mother and Tegan. "First we thought school was out for the day, now we think it's not out for the day," Alan mused. "It's like someone's messing with our minds."
"Maybe it's connected to the zombie incident at your school yesterday," said Tegan.
"It all points to an attempt to undermine our educational system," said Mrs. Powers suspiciously. "But who would want to do that?"
"The Communists," Tegan suggested.
"Or possibly a disgruntled elf," Alan added.
In no time at all, nearly everyone in the vicinity was in a rush to reach Lakewood Elementary, Albertson High, or the as-of-yet-unnamed middle school. Mr. Haney, thanks to his enhanced cardiovascular system, arrived at Lakewood before anyone else—with the unfortunate exception of one person.
"HAAAANEEEEY!" screamed the imposing aardvark man who stood in the school's central court. "It's the middle of first period. Why is Lakewood Elementary completely empty?"
The principal swallowed anxiously as a new layer of sweat drenched his skin. "Er, ah, Superintendent Palmer, sir," he stammered. "There's a very reasonable and convincing explanation for this. It has to do with, uh, Daylight Savings Time."
Moments later Arthur and D.W., lunch boxes in hand, bashfully poked their heads through the school doors. "Uh-oh," said D.W. "It's Super Nintendo Palmer."
"And he looks angry," remarked her brother.
"Arthur did it!" cried D.W., pointing at him with both hands.
"The list of funny goings-on at this school just gets longer and longer," said the aardvark man to Mr. Haney. "Kids being attacked by ghosts, kids disappearing into thin air, kids turning into zombies…and now, the entire student body absent! I've tolerated this nonsense long enough. If I see another incident like this one, I'll be forced to take drastic action."
"Not that," said the principal, terrified. "Don't even joke about stepping down. You're the very glue that holds this district together."
"I'm serious, Haney," said Superintendent Palmer. "After I'm gone, see how you like being glue."
The whiteboard was filled with scrawled numbers and equations, which Professor John Frink navigated as if they were his native tongue. Scanning one line after another with his laser pointer, the smock-clad scientist babbled, "And if you divide the quantum entanglement coefficient by the determinant of the Hamiltonian matrix, with the rows and the columns and the linear transformations…"
The students in Frink's advanced quantum mechanics course at Springfield Heights Institute of Technology paid rapt attention to his every word, except for those (about half of the class) who were gawking at Ling Tao, his pretty, raven-haired assistant.
"Dude," whispered one of the students to his neighbor, "I am so going to ask that chick on a date."
"Forget it, man," his friend whispered back. "She's a robot."
The first student shrugged. "Well, nobody's perfect."
"…which we will hereafter refer to as a glavinon, with the spin and the attraction and the wave-particle duality," Frink went on, and then he abruptly stopped. Without a word of explanation, he switched off his laser pointer, stowed it inside his pocket protector, and marched up the aisle towards the classroom exit.
"Plofessor?" said Ling Tao, sounding more curious than concerned about this development. When Frink failed to answer or even look behind him, the teacher's assistant bolted upright and started to walk hastily after him.
A few of Frink's colleagues hailed him as he trudged through the drab corridors of the Marvin Monroe Memorial Psychology Building, to which the science department had been relocated following the destruction of the Rosen Building. The bespectacled boffin, however, acknowledged no one.
His gait remained constant until he reached the colonnade at the institute's entrance. Waiting for him there was a small cat girl in a green dress and red shoes, and behind her stood a tall, somewhat overweight man with broad antlers.
Frink, upon seeing them, stopped quickly and glanced in confusion at his surroundings. "Ga-hoyven," he cleared his throat. "Could you nice animal people kindly tell me…why am I here, and not at the head of my class, with the teaching and the pop quizzes and the…"
"You will take us to Clive," said Sue, holding the sphere aloft in hopes that Frink could make it out through his thick glasses.
A weird, but not entirely unfamiliar, sensation swept through Frink's tube-like body. "I will…gloyven…take you to Clive," he said meekly.
To be continued