SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Junior Novel (7 page)

Patrick stirred in his sleep. Plankton froze, but the high tinkling sound continued. He looked back and saw SpongeBob playing a tiny piano. “Will you stop playing that tiny piano?” he said. “You're going to get us caught!”

SpongeBob sheepishly put the tiny piano away. “Sorry,” he apologized.

They both tiptoed over to Patrick, who was still snoring. The key was on his chest, hanging on a chain around his neck.

“Okay,” Plankton said to SpongeBob. “Just reach out and grab that key!”

SpongeBob took a step closer to Patrick and stepped on a floorboard.
CREAK!

“Halt!” Patrick said sleepily. “Who goes there?” But then he fell right back to sleep.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

SpongeBob gently grabbed the key and pulled it down.

“Stop!” Plankton hissed. “Pull it over his head!”

“Oh,” SpongeBob said. He lifted the key up toward Patrick's head, but the chain got caught in the folds of Patrick's neck fat.

“Stop! STOP!” Plankton warned. SpongeBob let go of the key. “Let me get up there,” Plankton continued. “I'm smaller. I won't wake him up.”

Plankton jumped onto Patrick and climbed up to the key. He yanked the chain free, but then the key slid
down Patrick's chest, heading straight for his belly button. Plankton leapt onto the key and rode it like a snowboard.

“YAAAAHHH!” he screamed as he headed into Patrick's belly button. Just as he and the key were about to completely disappear into the depths of Patrick's navel, SpongeBob plucked them out, covered in gross lint.

They had the key! Success!

Except—at that very moment, Patrick woke up.

When he saw SpongeBob and Patrick, he pulled out a giant whistle and inhaled, ready to blow a mighty blast!

“NO!” SpongeBob yelled, tackling Patrick. The two buddies struggled. Patrick kept trying to put his lips on the whistle, but SpongeBob kept stopping him.

“Plankton, help!” SpongeBob shouted. “I'll rock him, and you tell him a bedtime story!”

SpongeBob flipped Patrick over onto his lap. Plankton jumped onto Patrick's belly and talked quickly. “Once upon a time there was a big fat pink idiot who went to sleep. The end!”

“Nice try,” Patrick scoffed, “but it's gonna take more than that to—”

And he fell fast asleep.

SpongeBob and Plankton lost no time using the key to open the door. They burst through to find …

… K
aren chained to the wall!

“I told you I don't have the formula, you monsters!” cried Plankton's computer wife.

“Hey, baby!” Plankton called. “How are you?”

Karen was thrilled to see her husband. “Plankton! My hero!” She stopped. “You must need something. Otherwise, you wouldn't have come back.”

“Plankton has a plan to save Bikini Bottom!” SpongeBob said as he unlocked Karen's chains.

If Karen could have shaken her head, she would have. “It's impossible, Sheldon,” she said. “Krabs knows all your plans. He's been through my hard drive looking for the secret formula.”

Plankton hung his head. “Eh, I never had it.” Then he looked up and smiled. “But we're gonna get it! We're going back in time to steal the formula before it disappeared!”

“Really? Time travel?” Karen asked incredulously.
“Where are you going to find a computer that can do THAT?”

Instantly, her powerful computer brain gave her the answer. “Wait a minute …,” she said.

Outside, SpongeBob and Plankton sneaked away from the Chum Bucket carrying Karen's head. “I've never carried a head before,” SpongeBob whispered.

“You'll get used to it,” Plankton said.

“It's still warm,” SpongeBob said in a little voice.

They left the angry guards behind, still beating the tire. “So you won't talk, eh?” one of the guards snarled. “Let some air out of him!”

At an abandoned Mexican-German restaurant called Taco Haüs, SpongeBob carefully set Karen's head on the floor. “Is this where we're going to build our time machine?” he asked, looking around at the dusty restaurant.

Plankton nodded. “Sure! It's got everything we
need! A photo booth, a cuckoo clock, some stale chips…. Now all we have to do is build it!”

Seeing another opportunity for a song about teamwork, SpongeBob happily pulled out his trusty pitch pipe and blew into it.

“Oh, no, you don't!” Plankton protested.

“Hey!” SpongeBob cried.

“I, uh, need it,” Plankton said. “For, um … the time machine!”

“Oh, okay!”

Plankton took the pitch pipe into another room.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
It sounded as though he was smashing something with a hammer.
FLUSH!
Then it sounded like he was flushing something down a toilet. “Installed!” he announced when he came back.

And so, working together, along with Karen's powerful brain, using the crummy materials they found in the abandoned restaurant, Plankton and SpongeBob built a time machine. When they were done, Plankton spun the hands on the cuckoo clock, and an engine roared to life.
VRROOM!

“I did it!” Plankton said proudly.

“No, WE did it!” SpongeBob corrected him.

“We DID do it,” Plankton admitted, “as a
tee-am
!”

“A TEAM!” SpongeBob said.

“Whatever,” Plankton said, climbing into the photo booth. “Say ‘Cheese!'”

“Cheese!”

The time machine sputtered and died.

Plankton stepped out of the booth. “What's WRONG with this thing?” he fumed, studying his time-machine blueprint. “I don't understand! We got EVERYTHING! It makes no SENSE!”

“Sense?” SpongeBob mused. “Cents!” He pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Twenty-five cents, to be exact!”

SpongeBob dropped the quarter in the photo booth's slot, and the time machine started right back up.
VRROOM! WHIRRRR!

SpongeBob and Plankton jumped into the time machine. “So,” SpongeBob said, looking around, “how do we tell this time machine where to go?”

“I don't know,” Plankton said. “Let's try THIS button!”

He pressed a big green button. Lights flashed! SpongeBob and Plankton hurtled back through time. When they stopped, SpongeBob cautiously slid open the photo booth's curtain and stepped out.

The time machine was sitting in the middle of a desolate wasteland. There was no sign of Bikini Bottom anywhere.

“According to my calculations, the Krusty Krab
should be right here,” Plankton said, puzzled.

SpongeBob pointed. “What's that over there?”

He ran over and found Patrick! But Patrick was much, much older, with a long beard.

“Patrick?” SpongeBob asked.

“SpongeBob?” older Patrick croaked. “Is it really you?”

“Yes, Patrick, it's—”

“Finally, the Great Krabby Patty Famine is OVER!” Patrick cried in gratitude.

“Great Krabby Patty Famine?” SpongeBob said. “What year IS this?”

“It's Thursday,” Patrick answered.

“According to my calculations, we've only gone four days into the future,” Plankton explained.

Patrick was celebrating. “They said you'd never come back, but I knew you would!”

“Where's the Krusty Krab?” SpongeBob asked, looking around.

Patrick shrugged. “Same place it's always been,” he said.

A gust of wind blew away sand from underneath Patrick, revealing that he was sitting on the Krusty Krab's old sign.

“I'm sorry, Patrick!” SpongeBob said. “I'm sorry I let
you down!”

“Don't apologize to me!” Patrick said. “Apologize to HIM!”

SpongeBob looked confused. “Him?”

Patrick pulled in his stomach, making a crease that looked like a mouth. Then his stomach spoke! “If I don't get a Krabby Patty soon, I'm going to eat you AND your friend!” it growled.

Horrified, Patrick cried, “He's joking! He's got a really great sense of humor!”

But Patrick's stomach turned into a huge mouth and started gobbling up the Krusty Krab sign. Patrick screamed!

SpongeBob and Plankton ran back to their time machine and climbed in. “Well, the GREEN button didn't work, so let's try the RED one!” Plankton said, pushing it.

VRROOM! WHIRRR!

The time machine disappeared!

O
nce again, SpongeBob and Plankton hurtled through time and space. When they opened the photo booth curtain, they peeked out and saw …

… nothing. Everywhere they looked, they saw gray nothingness.

“Uh-oh,” SpongeBob said. “This still looks like the future!”

He and Plankton stepped out of the time machine and found themselves in a great hall. They cautiously followed a long corridor. At the end of the corridor, they could see a mysterious hooded figure standing with his back to them.

They approached the figure. “Excuse me, sir,” SpongeBob asked politely. “Could you tell us WHEN we are?”

Without turning around, the figure spoke in a low voice. “Who dares disturb the One Who Watches?”

“The One Who Watches?” SpongeBob said. “Your name is The One Who Watches?”

“No!” the hooded figure said. “My true name is … BUBBLES!”

The figure turned around. It was a dolphin!

“Bubbles?” Plankton said, laughing. “What kind of a name is Bubbles?”

The hooded dolphin drew himself up with great dignity and said, “It is my ancient dolphin name.”

“What's a dolphin doing out in the middle of space?” SpongeBob asked.

Bubbles looked out the window. “My kind have been watching and protecting the galaxy for ten thousand years.”

SpongeBob suddenly understood. “So YOU'RE the one keeping the meteors from hitting us!”

Bubbles nodded solemnly. “Yes, I am. I could really do with a toilet break. Would you mind keeping an eye on things?”

“Sure thing!” SpongeBob said. Then he thought of something. “WHAT am I keeping my eye on?” he called after the dolphin.