A Bad Case of Robots Read online

  Giles couldn’t help smiling. But Tina looked very serious. She opened a small metal hatch in the robot’s head and peered inside.

  “This is terrible,” she muttered. “I don’t understand how this could have happened!”

  She shut the hatch and looked angrily at the robot.

  “You have made a mistake,” she said.

  “I have made a mistake,” echoed the robot.

  Tina sighed and turned to Giles. “I’ll need to make some major repairs. I don’t have the right tools with me now, but I’ll be back first thing in the morning. I’d better go to the workshop and get everything ready.”

  With that, she turned and left the room.

  “I have made a mistake,” said Tinatron. “I am no longer perfect.”

  For the first time, Giles almost felt sorry for the robot.

  He’d disliked Tinatron from the start, but it wasn’t the robot’s fault it was so insufferable. It had no real feelings. It was only a machine. It only did what it was programmed to do. And Tina had programmed it to be perfect.

  But with a start, Giles realized it wasn’t just Tina’s fault!

  His mom wanted the perfect math equation.

  His dad wanted the perfect home renovations.

  And he wanted perfect homework and perfect model airplanes!

  It was hardly a surprise that Tinatron blew a fuse! It was just trying to do what everyone really wanted!

  But what was so bad about a few mistakes anyway? It wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t get twenty out of twenty on all his homework, or his airplane models had a few crooked pieces! He’d tried his very best, and that’s all that mattered in the end.

  It was impossible to be perfect all the time.

  But, Giles wondered, did Tina know that?

  Chapter 7

  Panicking

  “Gone?” said Tina.

  “Yes,” said Giles. “When I woke up this morning, the robot wasn’t there. It must have sneaked out in the night.”

  “Gone?” Tina said again, her eyes wide.

  “She’ll snap out of it,” Kevin whispered to Giles. “She’s just a little upset.”

  “A little upset!” shouted Tina. “My robot has run away, Kevin. How do you think that makes me feel? It must have malfunctioned worse than I thought! It could be anywhere by now!”

  “Maybe it’s gone south,” said Giles. “This damp can’t be very good for its joints.”

  Tina turned a stony gaze on him.

  “I’m afraid I don’t find that amusing, Barnes. This is a HIGHLY SERIOUS MATTER! Anything could have happened to it. It could have been kidnapped by scientists at the university who want my secrets—yes, that’s probably it! They read all about me in the paper and now they want the robot for themselves!”

  Giles rolled his eyes.

  “We’ve got to find it!” said Tina.

  “Us?” said Giles, winking at Kevin. “I don’t know, Tina, we’re really not genius material.”

  “My name’s not even on the business card anymore,” Kevin pointed out.

  Tina flushed. “You weren’t supposed to see that, Kevin,” she mumbled. “It was just an idea I was toying with.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t need us anymore,” said Giles. “I mean, what good are we? We’re only human after all.”

  “You know, I sort of like not being part of the genius business,” said Kevin, stretching out luxuriously on the sofa. “It gives you a chance to kick your feet up, take a deep breath and enjoy the good things in life.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Tina. “You sound like a margarine commercial! We’ve got to find Tinatron!”

  Giles and Kevin just smiled at her.

  “Fine,” she said carelessly. “I don’t need any help. I never have, have I? It’s always me who’s done everything! All I need is a good plan…” Her voice trailed off as she stood stock still in the middle of the room, staring at the wall. “A plan will come to me at any moment…a brilliant plan…”

  “I think she’s panicking,” Giles said to Kevin.

  “No,” said Kevin, “she’s a genius, she’ll figure something out.”

  “I’ve never seen her like this, though,” said Giles.

  “All right!” exclaimed Tina, wringing her hands. “I’m panicking. I need your help!”

  “What about the small matter of those business cards?” said Kevin.

  “I’ll shred them!” said Tina.

  “What do you think?” said Giles to Kevin. “Can you live with that?”

  “Well…OK!” said Kevin, snapping to his feet. “Let’s get cracking!”

  Chapter 8

  The Hunt

  Kevin made a poster. He drew a picture of Tinatron, and above it in big letters wrote:

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS ROBOT?

  “Hey, that’s really good,” said Giles. “I didn’t know you could draw like that. You’ve captured Tinatron exactly!”

  “Thanks,” said Kevin, a little shyly.

  “You missed a bolt on the right of its head,” said Tina.

  “Oh, put a cork in it!” said Giles. “It’s an excellent picture. Who cares about a bolt or two!”

  “Shall we get going, then?” said Tina huffily.

  After scanning the poster on the Quarks’ computer, and printing it up, they pinned it up outside store windows and on telephone poles and mailboxes. Then they spent the rest of the day scouring the neighbourhood for signs of Tinatron, showing the poster to everyone they saw.

  “I saw it heading east,” said a paper boy.

  “I saw it heading west,” said the mailman.

  “I think I saw it talking to a telephone pole,” said a girl in the park.

  “It walked into my lawn mower,” said a man from his front garden.

  “It was muttering to itself,” said a boy on a bike. “It kept saying, ‘I have made a mistake’ over and over again.”

  But not once did Giles or Kevin or Tina catch a glimpse of Tinatron themselves.

  “I’m wiped out,” said Giles, sinking down into the sofa.

  “I think I’ve worn holes in my shoes,” said Kevin.

  “I just don’t understand how the robot could have made a mistake!” said Tina.

  “Don’t worry,” said Giles. “Machines always break down sooner or later.”

  “I’ll just have to try harder next time!” said Tina fiercely to herself. “I know I can do it!”

  “It’s not so important, is it?” Giles said.

  “Look,” said Tina, “if we don’t find the robot, the genius business is finished! Tinatron and all the others were going to attract lots of customers for us. I don’t know what we’ll do without them!”

  “There must be other ways to get business,” said Giles.

  The telephone rang and Tina fairly flew across the room to grab it.

  “Hello? Yes. Yes. That’s correct. Yes. Well, thank you very much. I’ll be sure to tell my brother, yes.”

  Giles raised his eyebrows at Kevin. Who was she talking to?

  “You have?” shouted Tina into the phone. “You’re quite certain? When? Where?” She grabbed for a pad of paper and hurriedly scribbled something on it. “Thank you very much.”

  She slammed down the phone.

  “What was that all about?” Giles asked.

  “What were you supposed to tell me?” Kevin wanted to know.

  “Never mind that now,” snapped Tina. “We’ve got to hurry! The robot’s been sighted. Its battery must have run out. It’s been picked up by the metal salvage truck!”

  Chapter 9

  Crushed

  Mountains of scrap metal towered up around Giles.

  “We’ll never find Tinatron in all of this,” he said, still out of breath from the long run.

  “Yes we will,” said Tina determinedly.

  In the distance, a huge metal claw descended from a crane and grabbed a fistful of trash. The claw lifted the scraps high into the air and then dumped th
em into a machine with a gaping mouth. The mouth closed and there was a terrible crunching sound. Giles shuddered.

  “There!” said Kevin, pointing to the top of one of the metal mountains.

  Giles squinted. It hardly looked like a robot now, all crumpled in on itself. And it certainly didn’t look like something you would call the perfect machine. It blended in almost completely with the other pieces of scrap metal.

  “Thank goodness,” said Tina.

  But no sooner had she said the words than the huge claw begin to slowly swing towards Tinatron.

  “No,” gasped Tina, her eyes widening. “My robot!”

  Before Giles could stop him, Kevin dashed towards the metal mountain and was leaping up its side.

  “I’ll get it!” he shouted.

  “Kevin!” Tina cried out, racing after him. “No!”

  “Stop!” Giles yelled.

  He could feel the mountain of rusted metal shift beneath his feet as he staggered up, Tina at his side. Kevin had a hold of the robot, but it was too heavy for him to lift by himself.

  Giles saw the pincers of the claw opening as it came closer. But Kevin was still stubbornly trying to drag Tinatron down the heap of scrap metal. Giles finally reached him and grabbed hold of his arm.

  “Let it go!” Giles shouted.

  The metal claw swooped nearer still, casting a huge shadow over all of them.

  “Come on, Kevin!” bellowed Tina, who now gripped her brother’s other arm. “Please!”

  Kevin let go, and they all lurched headlong down to the ground. The big claw sank its pincers into the robot, lifted it up and dropped it into the metal masher.

  “Kevin, why did you do that?” Giles demanded.

  “I felt sorry for it, I guess,” Kevin said. “Making all those mistakes. I know how it feels.”

  “It doesn’t feel anything! It’s just a machine!”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time,” Kevin said to his sister.

  “Kevin,” she shouted, “don’t you ever do anything so stupid again!”

  “But it was so important to you!” he shouted back.

  “Not as important to me as you are!” she shouted, and then looked a little confused. “Not anywhere near as important!”

  “Could have fooled me,” said Kevin.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tina. “It’s just that I worked so hard on that robot.”

  “I don’t mind sharing the business with a robot or two,” said Kevin, “as long as I don’t get replaced altogether.”

  “There won’t be any robots at all,” said Tina firmly. “We don’t need them now anyway. Remember the man who called about the robot? Well, he’d seen the poster, and he liked your drawing so much he wants to hire the genius business to do some work for him.”

  “Really?” said Kevin.

  “So the genius business will go on!” said Giles.

  “Without robots!” said Kevin.

  Tina nodded. “It was a stupid idea of mine. A very stupid idea.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kevin, throwing his arm around her shoulders. “Nobody’s perfect. Not even you.”

  ALSO BY KENNETH OPPEL

  Starclimber

  Skybreaker

  Airborn

  Darkwing

  Firewing

  Sunwing

  Silverwing

  Dead Water Zone

  The Live-Forever Machine

  (For Younger Readers)

  The King’s Taster

  Peg and the Yeti

  Peg and the Whale

  Emma’s Emu

  A Bad Case of Ghosts

  A Strange Case of Magic

  An Incredible Case of Dinosaurs

  A Weird Case of Super-Goo

  A Creepy Case of Vampires

  Copyright

  A Crazy Case of Robots

  Copyright © 1994, 2001 by Firewing Productions Inc.

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