“It was weird,” I told Franklin when I got to the lab. “One minute I’m talking to Winnie, and she seems kind of mad at me, and the next minute she’s laughing and squealing with a bunch of girls.”
“Maybe it’s cooties?” he said.
I don’t know where Franklin got the idea that girls have cooties. Unless it was something I accidentally told him during one of my monster education lectures. Probably the one I call “Why We Never Go into the Girls’ Bathroom.”
“Who knows?” I said. “Anyway, Wendell says everything will be all right when the Winter Formal is over. You want to hang out with me while I study?”
“Sure,” Franklin said.
I reached for my backpack, which was sitting on the counter. I guess I must have bumped the backpack against the switch on my boom box because, all of a sudden, music blasted out of the speakers. I reached for the OFF switch.
“Hey, don’t turn it off!” Franklin said. “I like that song.”
I looked at the tablet. Franklin’s eyes were closed, and he had a goofy expression on his face. Then he raised his hands above his head and began to rock out to the earsplitting sound of the beat.
“Are you finished? I’ve got to study!” I yelled over the noise.
“What?” Franklin said.
I reached over and turned down the volume to a level where at least the walls weren’t shaking.
“I’ve got to study!” I repeated.
“OK,” Franklin said. “After this song!”
It was a long song. But it was a good song, and, after a minute, I found myself bobbing my head. Then I bobbed my whole body. Before I knew it, I was swinging my arms and kicking my feet.
“What are you doing, Howard?” Franklin yelled.
“Dancing!” I yelled back.
“You’re kidding.”
This is why I only like to dance when I’m by myself. Nobody appreciates my sweet, unconventional moves.
“What if I added some ninja kicks?” I yelled.
“Ninja kicks do make everything better,” Franklin said.
I was just about to insert them into my routine when, suddenly, I froze.
“What is it, Howard?” Franklin asked.
Carefully, I picked up the tablet and turned it until it faced the far corner of the lab. The box — the one I’d put the robot-goo into — was moving!
“Why is it doing that, Howard?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I pressed the OFF switch on my boom box. The music stopped — and so did the box.
I turned it on again. The box began to bounce.
“Whoa!” I said.
I walked slowly to the big, bouncing cardboard box and opened it. There inside was the living goo, pulsating and vibrating to the sound of the music — just like my boogie banana used to do! The goo had expanded, and now the box was in danger of overflowing. A rush of excitement came over me, and I laughed hard and loud like a mad man.
No . . . I laughed like a mad scientist!
“What’s going on, Howard?” Franklin said.
“It’s the goo,” I told him. “It’s dancing!”
Franklin didn’t share my excitement. In fact, he looked horrified.
“Stay away from it, Howard! You know what it can do.”
Franklin was a born worrier. Clearly, he was going to let himself get all worked up over this, and I didn’t have the time to deal with it. There was so much to do.
“Relax, I’ll take care of it. But it was great talking to you, buddy. I’ll tell you all about it later,” I said.
“Wait, Howard — the goo!” Franklin protested.
His words came too late. I touched the screen and disconnected.
I rushed to the box and looked in on the fantastic slime. The experiment had worked! I mean, the blob still looked like a blob and all, but at least it was doing something. Quickly, I scanned the garage for materials that could help me take the project to the next level. Because if the goo was going to become a robot, it needed to look like a robot.
Well . . . sort of like a robot.
The big square box it was in at the moment worked fine for a body. I came across a smaller box filled with old birthday cards and emptied it. That should take care of the head.
The arms were easy — dryer hoses. You know, those flexible vent hoses that attach to the back of a clothes dryer? The ones that look like giant silver earthworms? There were lots of them lying around the garage, and I chose two that seemed to be in the best shape. For hands, I used rubber gloves.
His legs were another matter because they’d have to hold his weight. I found some PVC pipe that looked good and sturdy. I figured those should work.
And finally, for his feet, I grabbed a couple of plastic dog food bowls that our dogs, Frisco and Pants, weren’t using anymore. Perfect!
Now it was just a matter of putting the pieces together.
A few hours and a lot of glue later, I was finished. The robot was complete!
Well, as complete as a robot can be when he’s made out of cardboard, aluminum foil, and duct tape. I’ll admit he wasn’t one of those flashy robots like you see in the movies. And he didn’t have booster rockets, or heat vision, or that death ray I’d set my heart on. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t totally awesome. I’d added some finishing touches to make him look more like a high-tech machine and less like a pile of dirty brown boxes. For instance, his torso now had switches and knobs, and I used parts from an old TV to add a cool antenna and wiring from his body to his head.
On his face, I’d glued two electrical plugs where his eyes should be, and I’d cut a slit for his mouth and installed a coil for his mouth that could adjust from a smile to a frown.
He was magnificent! Did he look like the sleek metal design I’d pulled up on my computer? No. But he looked a lot more like a robot than Gerald’s Basket-bot.
Besides, the Robotics Fair wasn’t a beauty contest. What mattered was what the robot could do. Which was a problem because, at the moment, all it could do was bounce up and down to loud music. That was pretty cool, but probably not good enough to win. When I’d created the monsters, I discovered the goo had this incredible ability to absorb information. It just made things work. So I was counting on it doing the same thing for my new friend. I reattached the cable from my laptop, uploaded some basic commands, and held my breath.
It was time to test it.
“Robot,” I said in a loud, commanding voice, “take one step forward!”
Then I waited. I could feel my palms sweating, and my heart was beating so fast, I was surprised it didn’t explode. But, slowly, one of the PVC pipes began to quiver and then — he stepped!
He stepped! Somehow, don’t ask me how, the goo had expanded itself until it filled both of the robotic legs.
“Robot, raise your right arm,” I commanded.
He did it! Do you know what that meant? It meant that the goo had filled the robot’s arms! And also that he knew the difference between his right and his left! Which meant he was already at least as smart as Stick.
I was overjoyed! I had an actual, functioning robot that could walk and raise its arms and . . . what else could it do?
I had to know.
“Robot, follow me.”
I marched around the lab in a small, quick circle, and the robot stayed in my steps. So I made another circle. He did it again. It was amazing! Excitement bubbled up inside me like a boiling volcano of happiness. But to find out what he was really capable of, I’d need more space — and that meant going outside. Checking my watch, I saw that it was late; my family would be in bed by now. Even better, the darkness would give me cover from the prying eyes of our neighbors. I decided to risk it. Slowly, I opened the dryer door and crawled into the tunnel. Then I waited.
A few seconds later, the robot’s square head entered the tunnel. Unfortunately, that’s as far as he got. It hadn’t occurred to me that a dishwasher-sized box was too big and bulky to slip through the round, narrow tunnel. Now I had a robot clogging the exit like a cork stuck in a bottle.
“Robot. Go back!” I said, pushing against the top of his head with both my feet.
The robot stumbled backward, and I climbed out of the tunnel.
Obviously, I had a problem. And since I couldn’t make the tunnel bigger, there was only one solution — a second way out. Working quickly, I removed pieces from the wall of the clutter between my lab and the garage door until I had a perfectly formed, robot-shaped hole leading to the outside world.
“There you go,” I said, “your own robot doggie-door. Give it a try.”
The robot hesitated for a minute, examining the opening carefully. I didn’t blame him. If I’d just had my head stuck in a dryer, I’d probably be nervous about unexplored holes too. But, at last, he moved forward and passed through the opening. We’d made it to the great outdoors!
I led my new creation out into the yard and had him walk around and grab tree branches and lift an old bucket. I didn’t know if he was having fun, but I was having a blast. I had a robot — one that would do anything I told him!
Suddenly, I got an idea: a crazy, wonderful idea.
“Wait here,” I told him.
I ran back to the lab, and when I came out again, I was carrying my boom box.
“OK, robot. Have you still got the bounce?” I said.
I turned the volume down to a whisper and pressed the ON button. The music started.
“Bomp. Bomp. Bomp. Bomp,” came out of the speakers.
When the quiet beat reached the goo-man, he didn’t bounce like he had when he was just a box. But I was pretty sure I saw him sway. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give me hope. I changed the music to something peppy and nudged up the volume.
Now the sway turned into a full-fledged wiggle. I bit my lip to keep from squealing, and also to see if I could still feel my face. Because, in the excitement, I’d forgotten that it was freezing outside. For once, I didn’t care. I had a robot. A dancing robot! And that was cooler than anything winter could throw at me.
I had to see more. Forgetting about how late it was, I cranked up the boom box. And then . . . WOW!
“BOMP! BOMP! BOMP! BOMP! BOMP!”
The vibrations seemed to pulsate through the robot’s entire body. His head bobbed. His arms stretched out. Suddenly, it was like he wasn’t made out of boxes at all. He was some kind of liquid cardboard, a mound of giant brown Jell-O cubes jiggling to the beat.
I turned the knob, and the music got louder. The speakers boomed, and the robot shook and rocked and shimmied. I was ecstatic! And it wasn’t just because I thought I was going to win some robot contest. It was because Gerald Forster was going to lose.
This was a great day for science!
Spontaneously, I broke into a dance of my own. Well, it was what I called a dance. Have you ever seen a hooked swordfish leaping out of the water to try and shake loose from a line? It was like that, only with ninja kicks.
Triumphantly, I swung my hips and pumped my fists and strutted around the yard. The music was pounding, and the robot was groovin’, and my mom was on the porch and . . . my mom was on the porch!
What was she doing out here? She had on her pink robe and flannel pajamas, so there was a pretty good chance she wasn’t out for a moonlight stroll. I froze in mid-gyration.
“Howard,” she said, her voice a mix of aggravation and confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Ummmm . . . dancing,” I told her.
“Dancing?” she said. “In the front yard? At night? With a robot?”
I was wondering when she was going to bring up the robot. I mean, you’d think a bunch of cardboard boxes dancing around by themselves would make more of an impression. At the very least, I thought she’d have a few questions — questions that would lead to my lab being discovered and the goo being confiscated and me being grounded for the rest of my natural life.
But, except for the noise, she was taking it all surprisingly well. So I just shrugged.
Mom rolled her eyes.
“Howard, shut off that music and come to bed,” she told me, then she turned around and headed for the door. “And tell Reynolds to take off that ridiculous costume.”
The door closed.
Reynolds? Whew! She thought the robot was Reynolds Pipkin — I was safe! I switched off the music, counted my blessings, and took the robot back into the lab. Before I left, I slid a sheet of plywood in front of the new robo-exit, sealing my secrets inside.