"Are you insane?!?" Erek yelled.
(Um, we like to think that we're not.) Tobias said
They were at the Chee home, and had just asked them about the toys. Erek was taking it worse than they thought.
"We could do it, but it might blow our cover!" Erek yelled. "A week away from the yeerk pool, and the yeerks might notice. Do you think Christmas is more important than saving the world?"
"No, no!" Cassie said hastily. "I mean, are you all really important controllers?"
"Greg is an extremely important controller, along with about twenty other Chee." Erek said, slightly calmer.
(How about all the other Chee, then?) Tobias said. (Those twenty go about there normal routines, and you guys make the toys.)
"We'd have to increase our toy creation rate by 0.5 percent." Erek said. "We wouldn't have time to recharge, so we'd need a massive power source."
"How big?" Cassie said apprehensively.
"About 1.21 gigawatts." Erek said.
(1.21 gigawatts!) Tobias exclaimed.
"Yes." Erek said. "Surely you have such a power supply somewhere on earth?"
(Well, yeah.) Tobias said. (But you don't just pick some AA batteries from the supermarket to get that kind of energy.)
"Just tell us where the power supply is, and we can tap it." Erek said. He sounded slightly smug. "We can tap any power supply on the planet."
(Um.) Tobias said. (Tap a couple of nuclear power plants.)
"Which ones?" Erek said impatiently. A hologram of the earth appeared, with a glowing power grid.
Cassie pointed to a couple a points. "That one, um, that one, ooh, that red one looks pretty."
(Red means that it's a low power generator. Don't listen to her, Erek.) Tobias sighed. (Take those two bright green ones a couple of miles from here, that yellow one near here, that orange one, and the high-power white all the way over there.)
Erek touched the points in quick sequence. After a moment, they glowed. Erek started humming loudly.
"IGuessThisIsWhatYouFeelLikeWhenYouHaveTooMuchSugarOrCaffine." Erek said quickly. He ran up the steps and back down in a millisecond. "AnyoneWannaRace?"
He ran around the house five hundred times in half a second.
(Maybe I shouldn't have added that white one.) Tobias said privately to Cassie.
"Let'sGetToWorkPeople." Erek babbled. He sat down and built two hundred dolls.
"WorkWorkWork!" Chee yelled. They all sat down and started building toys.
Tobias and Cassie helped them find a couple of toy blueprints to download, and then left them to their toys. They met Jake outside.
"How'd it go?" Jake asked. Tobias was about to answer when the windows of the house filled with toys.
"Never mind." Jake grinned. Then he frowned. "Oh yeah. We came up with a highly suicidal plan to carry all of those toys around the world."
(More like Rachel came up with a highly suicidal plan to carry all of those toys around the world.) Marco said, flying overhead. (Only Rachel would think of a plan as insane as this.)