I had my doubts about anyone from Colossal Chemistry helping us, even if we were lucky enough to find them, but what else was I going to do? The terror in my armpit didn’t even come close to fitting in my armpit anymore. For all I knew it was only going to get bigger. I sat at my desk and flipped open my laptop while Fen kept tapping away on his tablet.
“The name on her lab coat is Vexler,” I said. “Maybe we can find something online about her.”
“Actually her full name is Dr. Vernsy Von Vexler.”
“That can’t be a real name,” I said. “How do you even know that?”
“Because I was in her office at Colossal Chemistry,” Fen said, and then he picked up the file. “These were her notes, and I think she left them there for someone to find.”
“You think she went rogue?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Fen said shaking his head. “Maybe? And if she did, she might know how to help us.”
“Where did you find the picture of her?” I asked.
“Some biochemistry convention where she was scheduled to speak. Her talk was called ‘Beware the Coming Storm.’ And her title? Former head of research at Colossal Chemistry. I think she may have been trying to warn people about what was going on in there.”
“Are there notes about her talk?” I asked. “Maybe there’s something about removing a monster from your armpit.”
“That’s the thing,” Fen said. “She didn’t give the talk. She never showed up.”
“That’s weird.”
“I think she was going to share stuff she wasn’t supposed to,” Fen said. “And someone at Colossal Chemistry stepped in.”
I looked at Fen and thought about what this could mean.
“You think she was silenced?” I asked.
Fen shrugged again. “Or something worse.”
The thing from my armpit made some bubbling sounds and lolled back and forth on my bed. Was it growing or just sleeping?
“Let me see the file,” I said.
Fen handed it over and I flipped through the pages. I thought there might be a clue that would help me. There were charts and equations that didn’t make any sense, and dense paragraphs full of words and terms I didn’t understand—like “chromatography” and “molecular weight.”
“What’s this line of nonsense at the bottom of the last page?” I asked.
Fen glanced over and shook his head, frowned. He had no idea.
The line read: only the robot knows achtung.
Maybe it was some sort of secret code—a message, meant only for someone who knew how to read it. Maybe I could be that someone.
“Okay, Fen,” I said. “Time for some computer investigating work. Are you with me?”
“I’m at a dead end,” Fen said. “Whatcha got?”
I stood up and started pacing my room. There was something about robots that was important, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
“My dad is a computer programmer,” I said. “He likes to show me popular websites and then open up the code. Like he’s a mechanic opening up the hood of a car so he can dig around in there. I usually don’t pay any attention, but the other day he wanted to tell me something about robots. I just can’t remember what it was.”
“Robots are taking over the world,” Fen said. “That’s happening.”
“Go to one of those translation sites and put in “achtung.” I think that’s German or something close.”
Fen got busy and I kept pacing. Only the robot knows . . . The robot knows what though?
“Okay I got it,” Fen said. “You were right, it’s German.”
“German for what?”
“Achtung means danger,” Fen said.
Now we were getting somewhere. I mumbled the complete sentence so I could hear it out loud.
“Only the robot knows danger.”
I felt like I was right around the corner from solving a puzzle, like the solution was on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t quite remember it. And then my phone rang. Unfortunately, I had my ringer set to play a classic 80s hair metal song because the only people who ever called me were my parents.
“Uh-oh,” Fen said.
The sound of my phone woke up the terror that used to be in my armpit. All the hose arms started waving around the room banging into things and the giant eyeball opened up like a garage door. The eyeball darted around in every direction searching for the sound and then it locked on my phone, which unfortunately was also in my hand.
“Something about that thing has changed,” I said, and boy, was I right.
All at once it sounded like a dozen vacuum cleaners half-clogged with cream of mushroom soup. It was a slurpy, gloppy, air-filled noise filling the entire room.
“The hose arms are sucking in air!” Fen yelled.
Wind was whipping around my room like a tornado.
“And the holes in the side of the furry orange blob are sending the air back into the room!” I yelled.
Before I tell you what else was happening in my room, I want to thank you again for being my friend through thick and thin. I mean let’s be honest, when you met me, I had a little red blotch in my armpit. It was no big deal. I probably seemed like a normal kid. You probably thought we would go on bike rides and play board games together. It would be fun! And you’ve stuck with me as the little red blotch outgrew my armpit, outgrew my backpack, and took over my bedroom. But now, since I really am a good friend, I feel like it’s only fair to tell you . . .
I think I may have completely lost control of this situation. You may not want to hang around while some sort of vacuum cleaner monster tears my room apart.
“What’s it doing?!” Fen yelled. Fen’s scooter was inching toward my bed near one of the vacuum hose arms, but that was the least of my problems. My arm was being pulled toward the bed! This was terrifying because the various hoses were sucking up all kinds of stuff in my room including my stapler, my book report, and my headphones.
The terror that came from my armpit was vacuuming up my whole room.
I let go of my phone as it was still ringing, and it flew across the open space between me and the Snerb and into a vacuum hose.
“It ate my phone!” I yelled.
“It’s trying to eat my scooter!” Fen replied, and he was right. It was trying to swallow the scooter whole, but the scooter was jackknifed at the hose opening like a wishbone at a Thanksgiving dinner.
My pillow went next with a flump sound as it hit the end of a hose. After that it was like a snake eating a chicken egg as the pillow moved slowly closer to the furry orange blob and then finally thwomp! The shape of my pillow disappeared right into the Snerb. But all the objects the Snerb was eating weren’t even half the problem.
It was spitting most of that stuff back out!
“Incoming!” I yelled.
The stapler flew out of an air hole, hit the wall, bounced off the ceiling, and nearly clobbered Fen in the face. My homework blasted back into the room in a flurry of paper and then the Snerb expanded like a balloon, made a giant fawump sound, and my pillow reentered the atmosphere in the form of a million tiny feathers. The wind was whipping and the feathers created a whiteout right there in my bedroom.
“I can’t see anything!” I yelled. “It’s like a blizzard in here!”
Sticky, wet feathers pelted me across the face and stuck in my hair and I’m pretty sure at least three went right down my throat. Note to self: shut your pie hole when you’re caught in a feather storm.
Just as quickly as the Snerb had gone into overdrive, everything went deadly quiet. The hoses stopped sucking and a million feathers slowly settled onto the floor of my room.
“Um, Jen-Jen?”
“Yeah, Fen?”
“I’m having a little trouble over here.”
I wiped the feathers from my face, coughed up a feather ball, and turned toward Fen. Unfortunately I responded by screaming. You would have too. One of the tubes was examining Fen’s face like an elephant trunk searching for peanuts.
“I really don’t want to end up inside a Snerb,” Fen whispered. “Can you hit it with a baseball bat or a golf club?”
I didn’t have a baseball bat or a golf club, but I did know some sweet wrestling moves (they were pretty much the only things my brothers ever taught me). I raised my arms up in the air, got ready to attack, and then the hose retracted back to the bed, satisfied that eating Fen would be a terrible idea.
“Whew,” Fen said. “That was a close one.”
I heard a fwomp sound from behind me and my phone bounced across the floor and landed at my feet. The one giant eyeball was staring at me from the bed.
“There is a small item of good news in all of this,” I said as I looked at the disaster that used to be my bedroom.
“And that is?” Fen asked.
“I know what the message meant.”
“What message?”
“Only the robot knows danger, remember? The message Vexler left behind,” I said. “I know what it means.”
I looked at my phone screen and saw that it was Barker Mifflin who had called. I needed to call him back, but it would have to wait.
“Maybe turn the ringer off on that thing,” Fen said. “Clearly, Snerbs don’t like loud music.”
I flipped the ringer off and sat down next to Fen.
“Can I borrow your tablet?” I asked.
“What for?” Fen asked. But he didn’t wait for an answer. He handed it over and I started tapping commands on the screen.
“We’re going to figure out what the robot knows.”