Clones vs. Aliens (2 page)

Fisher, however, had other plans. He’d engineered a special hovering pickpocket drone. If it worked correctly, it would secretly float up behind his parents after they’d entered the park, slip the special entrance passes from their pockets, and deliver them right back to Fisher.

“We’re home!” Alex said as he pushed open the front door, which didn’t change shape or scan people for DNA because it was just a regular door made of wood.
No need to reinvent the wheel
, Mrs. Bas always said—which was a slightly confused philosophy, since she had, in fact, reinvented the wheel. Three times.

“Hey, boys!” their dad said from the landing halfway down the stairs. “Welcome ho—oooooooooo—” He was interrupted mid-greeting by one of his more recent genetic experiments, Paul, the walking octopus, who had just wrapped himself around Mr. Bas’s ankles. Paul had
lungs as well as gills, and two extra tentacles that were strong enough to let him glide around on the floor.

With a loud
thunk
, Mr. Bas and Paul landed in a tangled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Paul’s tentacles waved in panic as he wiggled underneath Mr. Bas. Fisher was grateful he had recently installed shock-absorbing, impact-reducing stairs. Living with his parents, and his dad in particular, had made them an obvious invention to pursue.

Walter Bas rolled over so Paul could slip out from underneath him. The good-natured cephalopod freed himself, shaking his tentacles out and rubbing his bulbous head. FP stepped up and sniffed at Paul curiously. He was still getting used to having the strange animal around. Paul gave FP a little pat on the snout, and the pig gave a friendly snort.

“Getting into the roller coaster spirit a little early, huh?” said Alex, helping their dad up.

“I guess I am,” Mr. Bas said, chuckling a little as he straightened up. “Tomorrow’s the big day!”

“I can’t wait to see it,” Fisher said, feeling the gentle pressure of Paul’s many-armed hello on his left calf.

“Unfortunately, you’ll have to, at least for a little bit,” Mr. Bas said sternly, adjusting his glasses on his nose. Fisher felt Alex’s sideways look. “There are a lot of things we need to test before the park can open to visitors,” Mr.
Bas went on. “We won’t be certain everything is safe and working properly until at least a week of trials have been done.
Especially
on the M3.”

Fisher’s heart skipped. The M3. Short for Mega Mars Madness. Soon to be the greatest roller coaster in existence. His parents had finally relented and showed Fisher the architectural plans they’d drawn up for its completion. The M3 was so complex even Fisher didn’t fully understand it. All he knew was that the beauty of the physics of it overwhelmed him.

Fisher had never been on a roller coaster before; he’d always been too scared. But no more. Maybe it was the influence Alex had had on him. Fisher was still scared, there was no doubt about it. He was just less willing to let fear stop him.

“Of course, we understand,” Fisher said, smiling nervously and nudging Alex with an elbow. “We can be patient. It’s only a week, after all.”

“Boys! I had no idea you were home. Is it three o’clock already? I haven’t even had lunch,” said Mrs. Bas, stepping in from the living room with a small beaker in her hand. She tapped the beaker a couple of times with a fingernail. “You know how time flies when I’m working on something. Well, I’d better get back to testing this project.”

“What is it?” asked Fisher, stepping forward to get a better look. But it just looked like a beaker full of water.

“I call it H2Info,” she said. “Scientists have talked about the idea of storing information in liquid form for years. But I imagined going a step further. What if, instead of just storing information as a liquid and then putting the liquid in a machine that could read it like a disk, you cut out the middle step? What if you could ingest the liquid and have the information transferred directly to your mind?” She shook the beaker slightly. “There are millions of nanomachines in here … tiny drones that can interpret the information coded into the water molecules and create new neural pathways … literally writing information into the brain.”

“Wow,” Fisher said. “What’s in this one?”

“‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ in Russian,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “I needed something simple for this first test. I’m going to call a physicist friend in Saint Petersburg and see how I do. Wish me luck!” With that, she tossed back the liquid and walked upstairs, already humming the rhyme.

“I’d better put this little guy back in his tank and get back to work,” Mr. Bas said, patting Paul on the head and scooping him into his arms before heading up himself.

“They don’t suspect a thing,” Fisher said, smiling at his brother as FP hopped around their feet. “We’ll have to keep a low profile tomorrow, but since the park is so big and there are only two of us—”

A chime sounded at a control panel in the hall. Somebody was at the gate. Alex quickly tapped the button to manually mist-ify the Liquid Door without bothering to ask the house who it was.

“Uh, yeah,” Alex said, “about that …” He opened the door.

Amanda Cantrell stood on the step, black hair shimmering, glasses gleaming in the sun.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” Alex replied, glancing nervously over his shoulder at Fisher.

She glanced over her own shoulder, as if worried someone had followed her. “You got it?” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

“I got it,” Alex said.

“It?” Fisher said. “What is ‘it’?” He crossed his arms.

Alex reached into his backpack and pulled out a small plastic card.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Fisher said, rushing forward and snatching it from Alex’s hand. “Is that one of our parents’ Loopity Land passes? We can’t steal them before
they
need them or they’ll find out, that’s the whole reason I made the pickpocket drone! Besides,
we
were going to use the passes.”

Alex gave Fisher a very large, very fake smile, reached into his backpack again, and pulled out a whole sheaf of
the specially encrypted entrance cards. Amanda quickly tucked them into her own bag.

“I didn’t steal them,” Alex said. “Or, well, I did steal one, briefly. I figured out how to duplicate them. With CURTIS’s help.”

Fisher’s eye started to twitch, and he fought down a surge of irritation. How could Alex have plotted with Amanda behind Fisher’s back when Fisher had trusted him to plot with Fisher behind their parents’ backs!

“Let me get this straight,” Fisher said in a harsh whisper. “You conspired with my artificial intelligence behind my back to make counterfeit tickets. You’re going to flood the park with kids, and people will find out, and then—”

“I made one for Veronica, too,” Alex interjected.

At the mention of Veronica Greenwich, Fisher’s objections got into a pileup somewhere between his soft palate and his teeth, realized they weren’t needed anymore, and retreated back down his throat.

“… Okay,” Fisher said after a minute. His cheeks felt like he had Bunsen burners under them. Amanda smirked.

“Glad that’s settled,” Alex said. “Don’t worry, Fisher. It’s a big park, and we’ll make sure the kids keep a low profile. Besides, I engineered the passes to self-destruct after use so they can’t be traced back to us. All our friends agreed that if they get caught by security, they’ll claim to have snuck in.”

“Good thinking,” Fisher said, ignoring the anxiety that resurged after Alex said
all our friends
and wondering if it was sad that the mere thought of his dream girl could defeat him so easily. He could take on evil robots, evil clones, and evil mad scientists, but the thought of one single, beautiful girl stopped Fisher’s brain right in its tracks.

Sharing the brand-new Loopity Land with Veronica wasn’t a chance Fisher could ever have passed up—Alex knew him too well. Even with things so good between Veronica and him, Fisher was still just beginning to figure out how to act around her and what made her happy. It wasn’t as straightforward as relativity or advanced particle physics. Loopity Land was a risk, but one well worth taking. Besides, how wrong could things possibly go?

Fisher pressed himself up against the metal gates of the brand-new, one-of-a-kind Loopity Land. With the cautiousness of a secret agent on a life-or-death mission, Fisher scanned the entrance to the most high-tech amusement park in the world. He hoped Alex’s fabricated tickets would pass the test.

Joining Fisher and Alex on their mission were FP, Amanda, Veronica, and three other seventh graders: Trevor Weiss, with one of his vintage pencil cases sticking from his pants pocket, Erin “Mac” McLemore, a tall girl who was one of Amanda’s wrestling teammates, and Warren Deveraux, whose constant twitching and bouncing was the only thing that kept him awake.

“Just look at this place,” said Erin, looking past the tall gates at the rides that towered into the air. “Your folks really built it?”

“Well, they designed it,” Alex said, opening a canvas tote bag next to FP and using a carrot stick to lure the little pig inside. Alex scooped the now-wriggling bag onto
his shoulder. “I don’t think putting a hammer or a drill in either of their hands would be a good idea.”

“You sure you’re all right carrying FP?” Fisher said.

“Sure,” Alex said with a small wink. “We’re pals now. Right, boy?” Alex patted the side of the bag. A faint snort sounded in reply.

“Oh man oh man oh man!” said Warren, almost tap-dancing as he bobbed. “I don’t know what ride to try first. Maybe bumper cars. Are there bumper cars? If there aren’t maybe there are bumper bikes or bumper unicycles or—”

“Hold it, hold it,” Fisher said, putting a hand on Warren’s shoulder. “We’re not supposed to be here at all. Remember that. As far as our parents know, the eight of us are going to the movies.” Fisher didn’t add that they’d been so happy to hear he was actually socializing with other humans, they hadn’t bothered to ask which movie or when. “We’ve got to be careful, so follow my lead once we’re inside, okay?
Okay
?”

Warren, who had started to doze off as soon as Fisher started talking, snapped back to attention and nodded rapidly. Amanda and Trevor gave nods as well.

Fisher turned back to the gate. His parents and people with
real
invitations were already inside the park, touring the place, examining the rides, and doing whatever else they planned to do. Fisher hadn’t seen any other
kids: just the Bases’ fellow scientists and technicians. Fisher was surprised just how many there were—the guests numbered in the hundreds at least. Either his parents were being extremely careful with these tests, or the rides were more complicated than he’d thought.

Still, given the size of the place, if the seventh graders were careful, they should be able to enjoy the rides undetected.

The entrance to the park was an elaborate main gate
with an archway, topped with LOOPITY LAND in huge, glowing, plastic letters across it, but the area under the arch turned out to be a thick Plexiglas wall. Four sliding doors were set into it, each guarded by large men in black fatigues, helmets, and tactical vests.

“I’ll take point,” said Alex. Fisher nodded him ahead. Alex moved forward, looking left and right, checking for their parents. He motioned them forward after a moment. Fisher led the others up to the gate, taking a deep breath as the mountainous guards examined them.

“Passes please,” said a massive, gruff-throated man from behind mirrored aviators. Fisher fanned all the passes out for inspection, glancing sideways at Alex as the helmeted behemoth took them in a hand that looked like it could turn a baseball to powder.

Fisher’s neck was starting to sweat. The guard’s scanner was taking an awfully long time to process the passes. Fisher mentally cursed himself for blindly trusting Alex. These guards didn’t look like the type of security that would send the kids away with a stern word and a finger waggle if they caught you.

Just when Fisher wondered if there was a little cement room with a single lightbulb in his near future, the scanner gave a little beep.