Chapter 5

Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009. 2:00 P.M.

Whoosh

Crack!

Where is it- where is it? Ooh, there it is! Coming back, coming back, a little right…

"I've got it!"

Oh boy, it's heading- Aghh!

Rattle. Smack! Thud.

No way I-

"You did it Goob! You saved the game!"

Mike stared down at the ball in his glove and quickly raised it above his head. "Yeah! We did it!"

It was the end of the seventh inning. Mike's daring jump had been just enough to secure yet another out and ultimately victory for the Joyce Williams Dinos baseball team. The two teams involved were quite tired, but Mike and his team held their heads high. They had put in the hard work in order to win games rather than "play the lazy game." With the game over, everyone headed back to their dugouts.

"Hey, Yagoobian! You did excellent out there!"

"Thanks coach! I'm sure I'll feel sore later, but slamming into that chain link fence was worth it."

Although Mike had been adopted almost two years ago, everybody still called him by his old last name. Mike really didn't care what they called him. He was just happy to be there.

"Hey, everybody! Listen up! I have one thing to say before you head out. Next Saturday will be our last game of the season. I want all of you to be practicing, eating well, and getting good sleep this next week. Okay? If we want to end on a great note, we've got to put in the effort. Alright, I'll see ya'll next week."

"You got it, coach." Mike always made sure to do these things. The part about getting enough rest was much easier now that he didn't share a room with an inventor.

Where are they? Mike scanned the short, silver bleachers at the east end of the baseball field. His parents were not in these stands, in fact they were not even at the field. Oh, right. I forgot that they couldn't make it today. Well, now I know what to do.

Mike turned southward and jogged over to the field's perimeter fence. He hoisted himself over the short, chain link fence with ease and trotted on another twenty-five feet to the next field. This mirror image to the other field was where today's softball game had been held. The entire field and stands appeared to be empty. There was, however, one person sitting on a wooden bench facing the small east side parking lot. The tired brunette turned around to smile at Mike. The smile was sort of fake, but a smile nonetheless. That might be a good thing, right?

"Hey, Katie. How's it goin'?" he asked as he took a seat on the right side of the bench.

"Eh, it's going. We lost our game. Our ride is running like ten minutes late. You know, just one of those days."

"Yeah. I hate these games right after lunch. It's always too hot, which makes the game harder. I guess all we can do is just play through it. We're blessed to even have 80 degree weather today."

"Still too warm though. What I really wish is that I had Franny on my team."

"Why is that?"

Katie giggled. "Her reflexes honestly. We need someone like her who can react to the ball in a split second."

"I thought she was interested in joining the team."

"She was seriously considering it for a while. She seems to have lost interest though. We still hang out all the time, but when I mention the idea of joining my team she usually changes the subject pretty quick. I'm not sure why because she still practices passing and stuff with me. Something is keeping her from doing it."

"Franny's been working on a lot of stuff with Lewis. That could be part of it."

"No, I'm pretty sure that isn't it. That hasn't kept her from doing karate or hanging out."

"Hmm, that's interesting. On a brighter note, my team won again."

"That's just great." Katie rolled her eyes playfully. "That's good though! You just have to win one more."

"Yeah, I think we'll do okay."

"So Micheal, tell me again what the plan is."

"Well, we get a ride from your folks and they drop me off at my place. Then- Hey, there's your dad!" Mike continued explaining as they walked toward Katie's dad's brown, 1990 Ford F-150. "Then we'll meet at Lewis' place at around 2:30ish and work on the canon or something like that. Franny might be there, ya never know."

"Okay, that sounds fun."

Katie opened the truck's passenger door and hopped onto the middle of it's bench seat. Mike followed suit, sitting on the right side.

"Hey, kids! How'd it go?"

"Well, Micheal's team won another game-"

"Congratulations bud!"

"Thank you."

"Aaand my team lost again. You know, the usual." Katie laughed.

"Hey, there's always next week kiddo. I'm proud of you regardless." A brief silence followed as they made their way to Mike's house. Their conversation picked back up later, but Mike was all of a sudden feeling quite tired. As a result he wasn't very present in the conversation, but he was sure it was a good one; they always were. "This your place Mike?" Katie's dad asked, stopping at a house on the corner of a block.

"Oh- Yup, that's it. Thanks for the ride."

"No problem, any time bud."

Mike hopped out and made his way to the front door. His family's house stood out from the others in the neighborhood. It was a simple two level with a connected two car garage on the left side. It was clad in light yellow, aluminum siding with white accent trim around the windows, doors, and roofline edges. Since it was on the corner plot, it had a large yard that was very green. The yard had two trees, an Ash tree in the front and a smaller Aspen at the right side of the house. Mike was grateful for the shade that these trees provided on hot summer days.

Alright, just gotta get a shower in and head over to Lewis' place.

He turned the key and pushed the door open. The house was nearly silent with the only sound present being the central air conditioning unit. Huh, they must still be out and about. Mike caught a glimpse of a clock on the wall. "2:20. I better get to moving!"

"Took ya long enough! I've been waiting a little while."

"Hey, I'm only-" Mike glanced down at his watch. "It's 2:35, so I'm only five minutes late. Anyway, why have you just been standing out here? You could have knocked and they would've let you in."

"You know the Robinsons better than me. It's just kind of weird to ring the doorbell of a mansion as a stranger basically. And there are two doorbells! It's confusing!"

"Haha! Stranger? No, they don't know what that is. I bet they would've let you in. In fact, how about you ring the doorbell."

Katie's face slipped into a grin. "Alright you 'Goob'." she teased.

Mike stayed at the end of the sidewalk as Katie approached the entryway and rang one of the bells shortly thereafter. Then, the door opened, revealing the very opposite-of-menacing figure of Bud Robinson.

"Hey there! Are you one of Cornelius' friends? I recognize your face from somewhere."

"Kinda, sort of. I don't really kn-"

"Why don'tcha come on in!" Bud looked up and saw Mike. "Hey, Micheal! Come on in!"

The two entered at the same time. Mike looked at Katie and gave her a grin that practically said "Told ya so!"

"It's pretty darn warm out there. Here, you better refresh yourselves." Bud pulled two Seven Up sodas out of the fridge and handed one to each of the teenagers.

"Gee, thanks!" Mike replied.

"My pleasure! Cornelius and Franny are upstairs with my wife if you'd like to go see them. Otherwise, you could stay down here and we could talk about something riveting, like quantum theory!"

"That would make my brain explode! We better head upstairs." said Katie.

"Alright. If you need anything from me just holler."

Mike led Katie up the stairway that went to the upstairs observatory. Upon reaching the top, they realized that they appeared to be the only ones in the main lab. Everything was in its normal place. The ABS project was still out on its own table with Franny's makeshift frog enclosure next to it. The baseball canon sat under a canvas cover by the staircase and to the left of Lewis' main desk. Right next to it rested the infamous memory scanner. Mike's attention shifted to Lewis' desk. He noticed the latest version of his friend's humanoid robot sitting there. Currently it was just a lifeless, metallic torso laying among piles of papers. Mike looked at some of the more interesting papers on top of a stack. They were labeled "ABS Testing & Findings, August 2009" and contained several graphs and all sorts of data that Mike couldn't understand.

"Kinda looks like they might be getting somewhere. I could be wrong though."

Katie completely blew off this remark as she was quite distracted. "This place never ceases to amaze me. There's no way that I could understand most of this stuff." she said, looking around.

"Let's mess with something that we can understand while we're waiting on the nerds." He walked over to the canon, uncovered it, and rolled it to the center of the lab.

"I thought that was done?"

"Mostly. Lewis fixed the programming. There are a few upgraded 3D printed parts that need to be installed."

"Okey dokey. We better get to work."

Mike rolled a large, red toolbox over and the two of them began to disassemble and reassemble parts of the canon. They were replacing various mounting components that were prematurely cracking and deteriorating. Mike found himself admiring Katie's mechanic skills. She had learned about repairing stuff through helping her father repair his truck and even his airplane on occasion. It just seemed to come natural to her and her father.

"Dude, I'm going almost twice as fast as you!"

"Hey, you have little tiny fingers and a ton of dexterity. I do not."

"Skill issue." Katie teased before switching gears. "So, why was your family not at the game earlier?"

"Oh, they took my brother to a physical therapy appointment. He has this condition, I can't remember what it's called, but basically he has a sunken sternum."

"Could you pass the 5 millimeter wrench?"

"Yup. So, he's doing exercises that will hopefully keep the condition from getting worse."

"I hope he gets better."

"That's what we're hoping, Otherwise, he'll have to-"

"Eureka! Is that not what we've needed all this time!"

"Oh my gosh! I'm speechless Lewis."

Mike and Katie both looked toward the biology lab door. Katie giggled aloud and Mike smiled.

"Sounds like somebody's excited. Anyways, back to what I-"

Suddenly, the lab door burst open. Lewis, Franny, and Lucille came out, all dressed in lab coats and smiling like maniacs.

"We did it! We found the- the thing that we needed! Lewis grasped for words. With a snap of his fingers, he exclaimed, "The gene! That's what it is." It wasn't often that his friends witnessed him this elated. He couldn't even form an eloquent sentence.

"Now we just need to get the new gene 'into their system' so to speak?" asked Franny.

"Yes a-"

"And that's been done before!" Lucille excitedly interrupted. "Scientists did that to create the GloFish a few years back." She paused when she noticed Mike and Katie. "Oh, Hi guys! I'm so sorry that we just ignored you! We were having a bit of an 'Aha!' moment."

"I could tell. That's alright, we were busy working on this canon." Mike replied, tapping a wrench against the machine.

"Oh, my! I have to go." Without any further notice, Lucille rushed downstairs.

"Uhh…"

"It's fine Goob. I think she has a meeting coming up. She has like four caffeine patches on, so that certainly doesn't help."

"I totally understand." Mike replied. He then held up a caffeine patch and slapped it on his right bicep. "I need something to keep me awake."

"Where did you find that?" giggled Franny.

"Oh, they're everywhere in this house." Lewis explained. "It's just a part of living here at this point. You'll get used to it eventually."

"Weird." Franny grabbed her right pinky finger with her left hand and fidgeted nervously. Mike had noticed that Lewis would smile whenever this nervous habit of Franny's occurred. He couldn't figure out why this was though. It was like Lewis knew something that nobody else knew.

Then she looked Lewis straight in the eye. "So… do you think that the recombinant DNA stuff will actually work out?"

"Yes, without a doubt. I feel a lot more confident since my mom brought up the fact that it's already been done before with success."

"Okay! I'm glad you understand this part, because I'm not that far along yet."

"That's what I'm here for."

"What are you two up to?" Franny asked.

"Just replacing broken plastic stuff. Then… I don't know what we'll do. Micheal didn't really explain what we would do after that."

"Well, we test it of course! I guess I thought that was implied."

"That looks fun! I wish I could stay, but I've got karate. Maybe next week." She paused for a second. "So, I guess I'll head out. See you later." She began to walk toward the stairs.

"Hey-" Lewis held up his right hand for a high five. "Great work today!"

Smack!

"Ouch! That was a stinger!" Lewis winced and shook his hand, which was now turning red. Before he could recover, Franny wrapped her arms around him in a quick hug and murmured, "Thanks for everything." Lewis appeared to be frozen with a smile stuck on his face. Franny had caught him with his arms at his side and all he could do was idly stand there; he was effectively disabled. The other two found this quite amusing. The hug ended as quickly as it had begun. Franny let go and gracefully descended the stairs out of sight, leaving Mike and Katie watching an awestruck Lewis.

"Bro, you okay? Lewis?"

Katie quickly shushed Mike. "Quiet! He's still processing."

"Huh, wild…" Lewis quietly mumbled something that the others couldn't quite understand.

Mike glanced at Katie and asked again, "You okay?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. I'm… great."

"See? I'm right, he's still processing."

"You're fine. I just feel like a three volt circuit that got a spike of twelve volts." Lewis smiled, "Maybe that somehow tripped a fuse and now I can't think properly."

Mike laughed. "Nice excuse, nerd."

Lewis looked over at the baseball canon. "Looks like you guys finished fixing this."

"We did. Well, she did two-thirds of it, but the point is that it's done and needs to be tested. I bet we'll break at least five parts though."

"Nah," Katie responded, "It'll be three..."

"Hey, Goob!" Lewis yelled, "We only broke two parts in 1,000 cycles!"

"That's great!" Mike replied from the far north end of the Robinson's back yard. He had been catching incoming baseballs shot from the canon. It hadn't been too boring until Katie left at 4:00. But, it was now past 4:30 and Mike was getting tired of this.

Her guess was closer. She's gonna rub that in later. Mike began to head back up to the house. Oh well, it's fun anyway.

Once he got to the back porch, he noticed Lewis sitting in a wooden chair. Lewis was slouched over, looking at a bunch of data on his laptop. Hmm, looks like he's still in nerd mode. "Watcha doing?"

"Just looking over data to compare what was supposed to happen with what actually happened. Everything looks good, minus the last shot that broke those parts."

"I thought the computer did that on its own."

"It does. I just like to look it over every now and then. It's kind of a waste of time." Lewis paused for a bit. "Say, would you like to stay for dinner?"

"Sure! I'm really hungry right now. I just need to call my folks to let them know."

"Okay, sounds great."

The boys made their way back through the garage, up a set of stairs, and into the kitchen. Mike called his family and Lewis asked his parents about having Mike over. Unsurprisingly, both parties were totally fine with this. Mike and Lewis then took seats at the dinner table. This table was made of a light colored cedar and could be extended. Mike knew that the table was massive when all of it's segments were in place. He couldn't imagine that the Robinsons would ever use even half of its potential size.

Mike then noticed Lewis tapping the table very nervously. He had become increasingly anxious about something over the past half hour. Dang. What is up with Lewis? "Are you okay man?"

There was a short pause. "Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"This afternoon you've gone from being on cloud nine to being somewhat depressed. It's just not quite normal, for you at least."

"Yeah, I was really excited when we found the specific gene that we needed for the frog experiment. Well, Franny and I were both excited." Lewis grinned, "I think that was quite evident."

"No kidding! Yeah, you don't uh... celebrate like that very often."

"No. I don't." Lewis sighed and looked down at the table. He appeared as if though he had blanked out, but Mike knew better. His friend was most likely deep in thought right now. Just gotta let him think. He'll break the silence eventually.

"Goob, you know how it feels when you have to make the winning catch and the whole team is counting on you?"

"Oh, yeah. That happened to me this afternoon."

"Well, that's how I feel with this project. Except with this I'm the only catcher out here and literal lives are on the line. If I miss the catch, I could end up accidentally, killing frogs or ruining friendships. I can't let anything go wrong. It's too risky."

"Hmm, well for one, you're the smartest person I know. I can't really see anything going wrong; you triple check everything. Two, the only thing really at stake here is the frogs, and frogs are replaceable. Three, I don't think you'll loose friends over this. Even Franny understands the risks involved. I think you might be over thinking this."

"Maybe. But, you don't understand, those frogs are like her babies. She knows each and every one through and through, all their individual quirks and everything. I doubt any one of them could be replaced easily."

"Okay, if anything did happen to go wrong you could just get a new frog and tell her the truth. Simple as that."

"I guess. But showing up at her door and saying, 'Hey, I killed your beloved pet, here's a replacement.' doesn't really come off right."

"It was the best that I could think of. You're gonna have to accept the risks at some point if you want to do this."

Lewis sighed again, "Yeah, you're right. At this point I have no choice but to accept the risk."

"Did I hear risk? I love trying risky experiments!" Lucille exclaimed as she made her way out of the kitchen. Bud followed her with a baking dish full of steaming broccoli casserole.

"Well, this is Franny's frogs we're talking about. I really don't want to, but I have to."

"I saw your work earlier. You were being very methodical and had extreme attention to detail. I don't think you have anything to worry about honey. It'll be a surprise!"

"The best way to learn is through experience!" Bud chimed in. "But let's stop worrying about hypothetical things and dig in!"

"Yeah! Thank you for the food by the way. It looks really good!" said Mike.

"No problem Mike, it's a pleasure to have you." Bud replied. After a pause he continued, "The future sure looks bright for this project. I'm proud of ya!"

Boy, if only Lewis could see that. If he doesn't, he's just gonna scare himself out of doing anything. All he needs to do is k- "Hey, just keep moving forward! Everything else will fall into place."

Author's Note:

The idea for the part about Franny's nervous habit came from the movie scene where she offers to adopt Lewis. Watch her hands in this scene and you'll see what I'm talking about.

As always, don't forget to review or check my profile for weekly progress updates. You can even PM suggestions if you would like, I'm always around. Doesn't matter if it's positive or negative feedback, any feedback helps me continue to improve.