While Candace was finishing her math, Goofball, Max, and Calamity were hard at work putting together their time machine. It was a battery-operated model, and it had three seats. It would be perfect, Goofball decided. They’d all travel back in time together.
“Is this thing powered by the flux capacitor?” Max asked. He thought he had seen something like that in an old movie.
“No. This is powered by the slip transistor or the slide battery.” Goofball didn’t know how the darn thing worked, actually. He just liked messing with Max, which was one of his hobbies.
“How should I know?” Goofball said finally. “Hand me that wrench.” He fastened the final bolt and stood back to admire their new mode of travel. It looked sinister all right—sinister with a capital S. Or devious. Take your pick.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” Max ran his hand along the pinstriping. “I bet this baby goes from zero to sixty in way less than 59 seconds.”
“Yes, if this thing’s as slow as Thunderman’s pickle, I’m going to shoot myself.” Goofball circled the device a few times, looking for any flaws. He had to admit, it really was a beauty. The question was: Would it work? Would it transport them back so that they could get Melvin Beederman before he became powerful?
Goofball stopped and looked at his partners in crime. “Where was Melvin Beederman before he came to Los Angeles?”
“The Superhero Academy,” Calamity said. Calamity wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but even he knew that. “Los Angeles is Melvin’s first job since graduating.”
“Then that’s where we’re headed, boys.” Goofball began making notes. “When was he at the academy? Can you give me the exact dates?”
Max and Calamity gave the information to Goofball, who wrote it down. “This is perfect. Melvin Beederman won’t suspect a thing,” he said with an evil laugh. As evil laughs go, Goofball had a great one. He had been the National Evil Laugh Champion three years in a row, and that ain’t bad.
That ain’t bad, indeed! Oops!
“Who said that?” Max asked.
“Who said what?”
“Who said ‘oops’?”
“The narrator.”
Max scratched his oversized neck. “That’s strange. Why didn’t he just put the ‘oops’ as a footnote on the bottom of the page?”
It was horrible being in a story where the narrator was obviously off his rocker.