Benjamin Blank was having a brilliant dream about kicking a giant up the bum when the world began to tremble. His eyes peeled open and he sat up on his horsehair mattress. The floorboards beneath him were rumbling and shaking.
“Earthquake,” he whispered, then he yelled, “Yes!” and punched the air. He’d never been in an earthquake before.
The rumbling stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he realised it probably wasn’t an earthquake after all. There was silence for a moment, followed by a loud boing. Something shot into his bedroom through the wooden floor, then punched a hole in the thatched roof on its way back out again.
“Sorry!” called a voice from below. “My fault. Breakfast’s ready!”
Ben clambered free of his knot of blankets, stretched, then slid down the spiral metal staircase that led into the room below.
A huge contraption filled one half of the circular room. Cogs clanked on the front of it. Steam hissed from little chimneys and water bubbled along narrow pipes. Somewhere, hidden in the inner workings, a chicken clucked impatiently. Ben hung back and eyed the machine warily.
“I built it while you were asleep. I call it the Automated Breakfast Producing Device,” said Uncle Tavish, who’d never had a knack for catchy names. He stepped out from behind the thing and waved the mechanical arm he’d made for himself after he lost one of his own ones. It was twice as big as his other arm, and the movement almost made him fall over. “Watch this,” he said, and he cranked a handle on the machine’s side.
The cogs turned, the steam hissed and the chicken quacked in a very un-chicken like way. A small brown oval fired out from somewhere inside the machine and rocketed straight for Benjamin’s head. Quick as a flash, he snatched it from the air just before it exploded against his face.
“An egg,” Ben said, then he felt his fingers start to burn. He tossed the egg up and began to juggle with it. “Ouch, ouch. Hot, hot!”
“Well of course it’s hot. Who’d want to eat cold eggs?” Tavish thought about this. “Unless at a picnic, perhaps. Or pickled eggs, obviously, mustn’t forget them.” His eyes lit up. “Ooh, an Automated Egg Pickling Device. I must write that down.”
“Still hot!” yelped Ben, flicking the egg from one hand to the other.
“Ah yes, sorry,” said Tavish. His mechanical arm whirred and the metal hand clamped shut around the egg. The shell splintered and a gooey blob of yellow yolk hit the floor with a plop. “Whoops,” he said.