My Life as a Computer Cockroach Read online

  The good news was my room is so small I could leap to my bed in a flash. The bad news was my room is so small that when Mom opened the door, it blocked my path and I leaped into the back of it instead.

  K-THUD!

  I staggered this way and that, that way and this . . . seeing more stars than the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of my little catastrophe. In the next minute and forty-seven seconds I was about to experience the worst McDoogle mishap in the history of my life . . . actually, in the history of the world . . . or what would be left of it.

  Chapter 2

  The Cheating Begins

  Actually, at first it didn’t look like much of a disaster. In fact, on the McDoogle Scale of Mishaps it only registered about a 6.4. I mean, all I did was run face first into the door Mom had just opened . . . and stagger around a little, looking for a good place to fall.

  “Wally, are you all righ—”

  Unfortunately, the only place I could find to fall was into Mom.

  “WALL—”

  That was all she got out before I slammed into her. The good news was she managed to hang on to the tray with my dinner of tomato soup and macaroni and cheese. The bad news was that didn’t stop us from staggering across the room and K-Bamb! slamming into the wall, where we accidentally turned on the switch to my ceiling fan. Unfortunately, our dance routine wasn’t quite over. Next, we staggered over to my bookshelf and

  K-Bamb!

  crashed into my CD player.

  No problem, except that Collision, the family cat (who did not get his name by accident), was sleeping on one of the speakers. Well, he had been sleeping on one of the speakers . . . until they blasted on and he shot straight up into the air . . . so high that he hit the ceiling fan and

  MEOWRRR . . .

  whip

  MEOWRRR . . .

  whip

  MEOWRR . . .

  whip

  he hung on to the spinning blades for dear life as he flew around and around and around.

  But even that wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t managed to step on my skateboard and

  “WHOAHHHH . . .”

  send us both flying across the room toward Ol’ Betsy, which still sat running on my desk. Fortunately, I veered us hard to the left and we missed her. Unfortunately, we did not miss my science fair project of cockroaches

  K-RASH!

  Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle

  Scamper, scamper, scamper

  The K-RASH was our hitting the glass terrarium. The tinkle, tinkle, tinkle was the glass terrarium shattering. And, of course, the scamper, scamper, scamper was all those lovely cockroaches racing across my desk for freedom . . . many of them across Ol’ Betsy and some of them straight into her keyboard.

  Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if Mom didn’t have like major “Cockroachit is.” It’s a common disease among women that involves throwing up their hands and screaming for their lives . . . not a great idea when those hands happen to be holding a tray of tomato soup and macaroni and cheese. And an even worse idea if those same food items should happen to fly high into the air and hit a kamikaze kitty clinging to a whirling ceiling fan, knocking him off and causing him to

  K-SPLASH

  fall smack-dab into my saltwater aquarium on the other side of Ol’ Betsy.

  Unfortunately, Collision liked water even less than Mom liked cockroaches, which meant

  MEOWRRR . . .

  K-RASH

  chug-chug-chug

  he panicked, dumped over the aquarium, and spilled water all over my desk.

  The good news was the water helped wash most of the cockroaches out of Ol’ Betsy’s keyboard. The bad news was salt water (and a few confused fish) does even less than cockroaches to make computer keyboards happy . . . especially if it’s accompanied by a

  K-splash

  glug-glug-glug

  crashing bowl of tomato soup and

  fling

  K-splat

  fling

  K-splat

  globs of macaroni and cheese flying off a whirling ceiling fan.

  I looked down at my desk, horrified. Poor Betsy. She was popping and sizzling like bacon in a hot skillet . . . smoking and fuming worse than Dad trying to barbecue. Between the cockroaches, flopping fish, salt water, tomato soup, macaroni and cheese, and what looked like a little hairball Collision had thrown in for good measure, things did not look good for the ol’ girl. Not good at all. Poor Betsy.

  As I watched her, my heart sank. We’d written so many cool stories together. And now this. What a way to go.

  “Oh, Wally,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I kinda croaked.

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  I shook my head and kept staring at the smoking and shorting-out circuits. It was hopeless. Any minute now she’d be heading for that great IBM factory in the sky. At least that’s what I thought.

  But luckily for her, I would be wrong.

  Unluckily for me, it would have been more lucky if her luck had not been so lucky. Confused? Don’t sweat it, it’s all gonna start making sense in a minute . . . if you’re lucky.

  After carefully cleaning and wiping off Ol’ Betsy (and retrieving what I hoped to be the last of the cockroaches from under her space bar), I said a silent prayer and turned her back on. To my amazement she still worked! It was incredible! A miracle! I turned on the Internet to check out the modem. It worked, too! I quickly brought my Choco Chum story to the screen, and it was in perfect shape, too! I couldn’t believe it, everything was as good as new!

  Unfortunately, better than new . . .

  I first noticed something was up when I returned to my Choco Chum story and wrote something about our hero ordering a free case of chocolate bars from the local grocer for Choco’s upcoming adventure. Fifteen minutes later, the grocer down the street knocked on the door and dropped off a case of chocolate bars . . . for free.

  How weird.

  Figuring it was just a coincidence, or a prize from one of those hundred and one contests Mom enters every week, I went back to the story and wrote how Choco Chum called up the local TV stations and ordered them off the air until he solved the Outrageous Ray Wrestling problem. Fifteen minutes later, my brothers were complaining that all of the TV stations in our city had gone off the air.

  Uh-oh.

  Next, as a test, I wrote that Choco Chum changed his mind and called up the stations to tell them to come back on the air.

  Fifteen minutes later, all our stations were back on the air.

  Double uh-oh.

  That’s when I decided it was time to invite Wall Street over. As a computer whiz who planned to make her first million by the age of fourteen, she played the stock market every lunch hour on the Internet. If anybody could figure out what was going on with Ol’ Betsy, she could.

  When she arrived, the first thing she did was run Ol’ Betsy through about a hundred drills. When that was finished, she ran her through another hundred. Finally, she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “You’re right,” she said, “something’s wrong.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I don’t know how you did it,” she sighed, “but you’ve got more fried circuits in there than Colonel Sanders has fried chicken.”

  “And?”

  “And somehow you’ve created a program that— when Ol’ Betsy is connected to the Internet— affects the real world.”

  “No way!” I cried.

  “Oh, yeah. Big way. Somehow your program overrides all the other computer programs in the world and makes them think that what you type in your Choco Chum story is the actual reality.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “Not exactly.”

  I could already see the wheels of commerce turning inside her head. I knew I shouldn’t ask the next question, that it would only get me in trouble. But since there was no other villa
ge idiot around, I figured the job had once again fallen to the seasoned pro . . . me. “What do you mean . . . ‘not exactly’? ” I asked.

  Wall Street broke into her world-famous grin . . . the one she always grins before beginning one of her schemes. Without a word she turned back to Ol’ Betsy and began typing.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m entering our school’s computer,” she said. “You can’t do that.”

  “I can’t, but Choco Chum can.”

  “What?”

  A moment later we were staring at Wall Street’s upcoming report card. “Look at that,” she whined. “Mrs. Fipplejerken is giving me a C in English again.”

  “Maybe if you tried studying,” I suggested.

  “Why bother studying?” There was that grin again. Her fingers flew across the keyboard and she wrote:

  Choco Chum, change Wall Street’s C to a B.

  And, just like that, her grade changed to a B.

  “That’s amazing!” I cried.

  “It sure is,” she said, beaming. “The school computer believed that what we typed on Ol’ Betsy was the truth, so it changed its information to fit.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Okay, go ahead and change it back.”

  “Why?” she asked with the same grin.

  “You can’t keep it that way,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, that’s . . . that’s cheating.”

  “No way.”

  “What would you call it?”

  She thought for a second, then answered brightly, “Just knowing how to beat the system.”

  I frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s just one grade higher.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Nobody’s getting hurt.”

  “Yeah, but—” I seemed to be in a rut in the debating department. Unfortunately, Wall Street wasn’t. Suddenly, she had another idea.

  “Here, check this out.” Again her fingers flew over the keys until it was my report card up on the screen.

  “Wall Street—”

  “Take a look at that P.E. grade,” she said. “See, right there. Kilroy is about to flunk you.”

  I stared at the screen. Sure enough, there was a big fat F glaring back at us.

  “That really stinks,” I complained. “Everyone knows Kilroy’s got it in for me. That’s so unfair.”

  “So let’s make it a little more fair.”

  “What?”

  Wall Street giggled and quickly typed:

  Choco Chum, change Wally’s F to an A.

  Suddenly, the grade on the screen changed from an F to an A.

  “Wall Street!” I cried.

  “What?”

  “That’s . . . that’s . . .”

  “. . . pretty cool, isn’t it?”

  I had to admit, it did look pretty cool seeing an A next to my name for P.E.

  “Wall Street?” It was Mom calling from downstairs. “Your mother’s on the phone. She says it’s time to come home.”

  “All right, Mrs. McDoogle,” Wall Street called back. “Tell her I’m on my way.” With that she reached over and started to shut down Ol’ Betsy.

  “Wait a minute,” I protested. “You can’t leave my grade like that.”

  Wall Street gave me one of her famous eye rolls . . . so hard I thought she was going to sprain them. “Wally, no one’s going to care.”

  “Coach Kilroy will,” I said. “He’s been waiting all year to flunk me. Think how disappointed he’s going to be.”

  Wall Street began to nod. “Good point.”

  It was about time I had one. I let out a sigh of gratitude. Then, without a word, she reached down to Ol’ Betsy and typed:

  Choco Chum, make sure Coach Kilroy no longer teaches at our school.

  “Wall Str—” But before I could stop her she snapped the computer off. “Wall Street?!”

  “What?” she said, looking at me with that grin. I stared at her, unsure what to say. Part of me wanted to order her to turn Ol’ Betsy on again and change my grade back to an F. But another part of me sure liked the idea of that A. Then there was the thing with Coach Kilroy. It would sure be cool if for some reason he was transferred to another school, where he couldn’t torment me. But still . . .

  “Come on,” Wall Street urged. “Let’s keep it, just for a day, and see if anything happens. We can always change it back if we want to.”

  I looked from her, to the computer, then back to her again. And then, for some unknown reason, I felt my head begin to nod up and down.

  “Great,” she said, gathering her things and heading for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And, just like that, she was gone.

  I sat there for a long moment . . . feeling kind of bad and kind of excited at the same time. Of course, I figured it was just a computer glitch and everything would be back to normal in the morning. Unfortunately, my figurer had misfigured this figure.

  Translation: Things were going to get majorly weird majorly soon . . .

  Chapter 3

  Bye-Bye, Kilroy

  “Tuck and roll, McDoogle!”

  TWEET!

  “Tuck and roll! Tuck and roll!”

  It was another grueling day of Coach Kilroy’s extra credit class, and he was busy doing what he did best—yelling at and humiliating me. (Actually, he was just doing the yelling, I took care of the humiliating part.)

  Since I’d pretty well destroyed the obstacle course the day before, we met inside. Now he had us running around on tumbling mats, holding tightly wrapped gym towels. Every time he blew his whistle, we were to pull the towel into our gut and tumble, doing our best not to crush it.

  “When that massive food shortage hits,” he screamed, “and you’re the only one with a loaf of bread within twenty miles, you gotta protect it with your very life!”

  TWEET!

  “Tuck and roll! Tuck and roll!”

  Actually, I was doing a pretty good job of running and pretending to hold the imaginary loaf of bread in my hands. I was even falling down all right (I’d had lots of practice). It was only when I tucked just a little too close to the door and rolled just a little bit out into the hallway that things got just a little bit ugly. Actually, it wasn’t even the tucking and rolling, but the bouncing down the flight of stairs . . .

  bounce— “Ouch!”

  bounce— “Ooch!”

  bounce— “Eech!”

  that got painful.

  “McDoogle, you moron!”

  Of course, everyone had a good laugh. Everyone but me . . . and Wall Street, who rushed down to the bottom of the steps to help me up. Normally, I’d be embarrassed getting helped by a girl, but when you’re majorly unconscious and seriously considering death as a pastime, you forget those minor details.

  “Too bad that computer thing didn’t work,” I groaned as she helped me sit up and we started counting my broken bones.

  “Actually, it did,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I called up Mrs. Fipplejerken this morning and asked her if I could do extra credit, kind of like we’re doing here, to raise my grade.”

  “And?”

  “She said I was already getting a B . . . just like we typed in Ol’ Betsy.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Big way.”

  “But what about Coach Kilroy. How come—”

  Suddenly, I was interrupted by a loud police siren. Actually, several loud police sirens. I got up and kinda half limped, half dragged myself to the nearest doorway to take a look. By the time I stepped outside, there were about a hundred policemen swarming around the building, and they were all heading in one direction . . . straight toward the gym doors.

  “All right, Kilroy!” a police officer shouted through a blow horn. “Come out with your hands up.”

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Wall Street.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think we really want to know.”

  A moment
later, Coach Kilroy stepped outside. His hands were on top of his head, and he looked even more clueless than me. “What’s going on?” he shouted. “What have I—”

  But that was all he got out before a half-dozen officers jumped him and tackled him to the steps. Coach shouted, officers yelled, kids screamed.

  “What’s happening?” I cried to Wall Street.

  She said nothing as we watched them hoist Coach to his feet and cuff his hands behind his back.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled.

  Slowly Wall Street turned to me. Her usual grin was no longer grinning. And for good reason. “Looks like Ol’ Betsy kicked in after all,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “It looks like we really are getting rid of Coach Kilroy . . . for good.”

  Wall Street and I burst through the front door of my house and headed for the stairs. Opera was right behind.

  “Sweetheart,” Mom called as we breezed past her. “I just heard the news. Isn’t that a shame about Coach Kilroy?”

  “Yeah,” I shouted as we raced up the steps to my room.

  “Such a pity,” she said, shaking her head. “To think that nice man actually robbed seventeen banks.”

  Suddenly, we came to a screeching halt. Well, two of us came to a screeching halt. With Opera’s extra weight, it took a little longer for him to slow down, which explains why

  THUD, THUD

  CRUSH, CRUSH

  SUFFOCATE, SUFFOCATE

  I was suddenly on the bottom of a giant, two-man pig pile.

  “Opera,” I gasped. “I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said as he staggered back to his feet.

  Wall Street and I pulled ourselves back up and, after checking for any major injuries, we turned to Mom. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I just saw it on the news,” she said. “There’s some confusion about the fingerprints and surveillance tapes, but they’re pretty sure he’s the one who’s been holding up all of those banks.”

  I looked at Wall Street and Opera. They looked at me. Then we turned and raced up the stairs for all we were worth. We entered my room, and I quickly turned on Ol’ Betsy. As she booted up, Opera kept shaking his head. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” Wall Street said as she grabbed a chair and scooted behind me. “Whatever we type on Ol’ Betsy actually happens.”