I need a partner, he thought.
Sure. If Mighty Mike had the entire school in his pocket, didn’t Kyle deserve an ally, too?
Unfortunately, Kyle’s parents were basically useless. And Lefty was loyal, but not terribly bright. He had, on occasion, eaten his own poop, after all.
So Kyle would have to rely on himself — as always — and build his own ally.
He grabbed the iPod he’d gotten for his birthday and made his way down to the basement. There, in the glow of the overhead light, he pried it open and started making modifications, using pieces of an old computer and some circuits from a discarded printer.
And since he was making modifications anyway, he went ahead and repainted it in very cool green and blue flames.
When he was finished, he had the world’s smartest iPod. He had completely reprogrammed it, designing his own custom-made artificial intelligence. This gadget would be able to talk, think, interact. It was the single greatest leap forward in computer technology since the invention of the microprocessor and Kyle had done it by himself in the basement.
He reassembled it and plugged in the earbuds. “Hey, wake up!” he said through the microphone.
“I-am-a-wake,” it said in a robotic voice. He’d done it!
“Calculate the distance from here to Mexico in centimeters,” Kyle ordered it.
In less than a second, it answered.
Kyle was giddy.
“Okay, I have to go back to bed, but I want you to start thinking about ways to mess with Mighty Mike.”
“Why-do-you-want-to-mess-with-Might-y-Mike?”
“Mainly because he sucks.”
“I-do-not-un-der-stand.”
“It’s not your job to understand. You just need to do what you’re told. I just want him gone.”
“Ver-y-well-a-nu-cle-ar-blast-would-re-move-Might-y-Mike.”
Kyle slapped his own forehead. A nuclear blast!
Well, duh! The artificial intelligence was taking him too literally. It was too much artificial and not enough intelligence.
It needed a personality. Then it would think more clearly.
Kyle tried to think of who he could pattern the AI’s personality after. There was that woman on TV, the one with the talk show his mom liked to watch. She seemed nice.
He went upstairs and connected the TiVo to his new device and ran a program to have the AI watch every episode of the talk show on fast-forward, learning everything there was to know. He went off to eat a sandwich (reinventing computer science was hard work!) and came back when the program was finished.
“Oh, sweetie, why do you want to destroy Mighty Mike?” the AI said earnestly. “The two of you could work together, and do so many wonderful things for the world….”
“Yeah, well, I want to destroy him instead.”
“I think you need a hug. I think you should build some arms for me so that I can hug you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Kyle erased the personality. Ugh.
He needed someone tougher. Someone who would be as ruthless as he needed to be.
He remembered a rapper he’d seen on TV. That guy had seemed pretty tough.
Kyle found videos online and started pumping them into the iPod. He went and got another sandwich. He deserved it.
When the program was done, he slipped in the earbuds. Before he could say anything, the AI shouted at him:
“Yo, Kyle! What up, boy!”
“Uh …”
“We goin’ all destructo on Mighty Mizzike! Hard core, knowwhutimsayin?”
“Not really.” Kyle deleted it.
The problem, he realized, was that he didn’t want a personality that would annoy him. And just about everyone annoyed him.
Except for …
Except for himself.
He scrounged around until he found the videotapes of himself as a baby and as a younger kid. That would do.
He set everything up on his desk in his bedroom and then collapsed, exhausted, in bed. He fell asleep as the machinery on the desk churned and thought for itself.
In the morning, Kyle slipped the earbuds in. Did it work? Would the AI’s personality be tolerable this time?
“Hello?” he said.
After a moment, a voice not unlike Kyle’s own came through the earbuds: “Hello, Kyle. Are you ready?”
“Ready? For what?”
“To destroy Mighty Mike, of course. That is why you created me, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Destroy’ might be a strong word. Payback for being more popular and lying about being a regular kid would be a good start.”
“So: humiliate him and drive him away forever?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then let’s get to work.”
Kyle liked this AI already. “First I need to give you a name. I can’t just call you AI all the time. I’m thinking Pygmalion. From Greek myth. It’s the name of —”
“I know what Pygmalion is,” the AI said in a sort of snotty tone. “After all, you know and if you know, then I know, too. I don’t like that name. I think I am … Erasmus.”
“Erasmus?”
“Yes. Erasmus. For Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Born October 27, 1466 or 1469, depending on which historical record you believe, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Died July 12, 1536, in Basel, Switzerland. Renowned for questioning the ongoing theologies and dogmas of the time, consistent with your own questioning of prevailing contemporary social mores and attitudes. It’s a fitting name.”
“Whatever. That’s fine. You’re Erasmus.” Kyle was sulking a little bit because he liked the name “Pygmalion,” but he wasn’t about to argue with his own invention.
“Great! I’m going to start crunching some ideas for destroying Mighty Mike.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Get dressed,” Erasmus said. “You’re running late for school.”
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Over the next few days, Kyle trained and perfected Erasmus’s programming, spending every last penny of his allowance on upgraded components and new software. In the meantime, he did his best to ignore Mighty Mike, but that became as impossible as enjoying spinach. The superpowered brat was everywhere. Everywhere!
At the breakfast table, Mighty Mike smiled at Kyle from the front page of his father’s copy of the old-fashioned paper version of the Bouring Record. When Kyle fired up his computer, his e-mail inbox was full of stories about Mighty Mike, forwarded to him by friends and friends of friends and people he’d never heard of before. His web browser’s news feed window overflowed with Mighty Mike stories — interviews, punditry, op-ed columns, even fashion opinions. (Mike had taken to wearing a garish gold-and-green costume while fighting crime and rescuing dogs from sewer drains. It had an absurd chest symbol and — of all things — a cape. A cape! Who in his right mind wore a cape in public?)
“Even you wouldn’t be caught wearing a cape,” Kyle told Lefty one morning while feeding carrots through the bars of the cage. “And your brain is the size of a walnut.”
Lefty voiced no opinion one way or the other.
Things had gotten out of hand. The whole town was Mighty Mike–crazy. Kyle realized this was going to be a huge problem the day he got on the bus and saw kids wearing capes.
Oh, this is just ridiculous! he thought.
Worse yet — when Mairi got on the bus, she was wearing a cape, too, a flowing green cloak that was pinned at her neck with some sort of Scottish-looking brooch.
“What are you wearing?” Kyle asked, annoyed, as she slid into her seat next to him.
“It’s my cape! My mom made it for me and then I added the brooch — it’s our clan symbol from way back in Scotland. The cape’s a silk/cotton blend, so it has strength in addition to shine.” She sounded like she was reciting something from a shopping channel on TV. “Go ahead — touch it.”
Kyle recoiled as Mairi held the end of the cape out to him. “Uh-uh.”
“Don’t be a ba
by.”
“I’m not being a baby.”
“You’re acting like I’m trying to make you eat spinach.”
Kyle folded his arms over his chest and tried to melt into the corner at the back of the bus. “I’m not going to go around feeling people’s stupid capes.”
Mairi blinked at him. “Stupid?”
Kyle bit his lower lip. Oh, great. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “I didn’t mean you’re stupid, Mairi.”
But his apology meant nothing. Mairi sat back and refused to talk to him for the rest of the bus ride.
At school, it seemed like capes were the latest fashion accessory. In fact, in science class, every single kid was wearing a cape … except for Kyle and Mike.
Halfway through science class, as Kyle tried to stare a hole through the back of Mike’s head, the phone on Miss Schwartz’s desk rang. She listened for a moment, said, “Oh, really?” in a breathless voice that was scared and excited all at once. Then she hung up and said, “Mike, that was … Well, that was the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Apparently there’s a tornado in Kansas and they were wondering if you could fly over there and —”
She didn’t even finish the sentence: Mike was a blur as he shot out of the classroom to the collective gasp of everyone else in the room. Papers flew about and everyone’s capes fluttered in the sudden wind caused by his takeoff in the confined space of the classroom. Everyone applauded.
Except for Kyle, who was annoyed by the alien show-off. He didn’t have to leave the classroom like that. He could have gotten up and walked out and then put on the speed once he was through the door. He didn’t have to send everyone running around for their papers like they now were. (Kyle had been smart enough to hold down his papers, of course.)
It took a few minutes for everyone to gather up their papers, and then another few minutes for Miss Schwartz to calm the excited buzz of conversation that Mighty Mike’s exit had caused. Kyle tapped his foot as he waited for everyone to shut up, then raised his hand.
“So let me get this straight,” he said once he’d been called on, “he just gets to leave class whenever he wants to?”
Miss Schwartz stared at him. She wasn’t the only one — every eyeball in the third-period science class had swiveled Kyle’s way, including Mairi’s.
“Kyle, people are in jeopardy!” Miss Schwartz said.
“Statistically, someone is always in jeopardy somewhere,” Kyle said. He couldn’t believe he had to point out something so obvious. “Why does he even bother coming to school?”
There was a collective gasp from the entire class, as if the idea of a Mighty Mike–less school was just too horrifying to bear.
“Just worry about yourself, not Mike,” said Miss Schwartz, using that tone of voice adults use when they’re finished talking about a certain subject. Kyle loathed that tone of voice.
After science class, Mairi approached Kyle. “Are you ready to be friends again?” she asked.
He shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other. “You’re not wearing your cape anymore.”
“Yeah, well …” Mairi looked around the hallway. Kyle did, too. Most of the kids had shed their capes by now, although a few hardy souls still trailed them behind as they made their way from one class to another. “Turns out they might be good for flying, but I kept sitting on mine and wrinkling it. And people keep stepping on it. I figure we should leave the capes to the professionals, you know?”
Kyle laughed and Mairi joined in. It immediately dissolved the remaining tension between them, and soon they were headed down the hall together like nothing had happened.
“Are you ready for some lunch?” she asked. “It’s Thursday.”
Thursday! Perfect! At last something was going his way. This was his first Thursday back at school since “the flu.” Thursdays were always good days.
Every Thursday, the Bouring school system served pizza. It didn’t matter if you went to Bouring Elementary, Bouring Middle, or Bouring High — if you stood in line in the cafeteria, you were getting pizza. Your choice of pepperoni, sausage, or cheese.
And so, every Thursday since the beginning of time (in other words, kindergarten), Kyle and Mairi had shared a pepperoni and a sausage. That way they each got to sample both pizzas.
They split their pizzas as usual, sitting alone at a table in the lunchroom. The cafeteria was less crowded than normal — a bunch of kids had gotten permission to go to the media center and look for live streaming video of Mighty Mike on the Internet. So for the first time in a long time, it was just Kyle and Mairi. He could almost pretend nothing had changed. Almost.
But in reality, everything had changed.
Halfway through gym, Mighty Mike returned from fighting the tornado in Kansas. It took Mr. Rogers a good ten minutes to get everyone settled down when Mike literally swooped in, cruising low over the soccer field and soaring into the locker room. He emerged seconds later in his gym shorts and T-shirt.
After the applause died down, Mike took up his spot on the team opposing Kyle’s.
Kyle’s ambivalence toward sports definitely extended to soccer (it seemed pointless to restrict yourself to just your feet!), but suddenly, he wanted nothing more in the world than for his team to beat Mike’s team. It was the most important thing he could imagine right now.
“No powers, Mike,” Mr. Rogers admonished.
“Of course not!” the alien punk said, all wide-eyed and innocent, as though the thought had never in a million years occurred to him.
Mr. Rogers blew the whistle and the ball went into play. Kyle charged after it. Usually, he just hung back and only touched the ball when he couldn’t avoid it, but now he was going to get that ball and score as many goals as humanly possible.
And if he had a little “assistance” from his powers, well, what would that hurt? He was pretty sure Mike would be secretly using his powers, too. Kyle would just keep the game balanced.
Every time Kyle was ready to go for the goal, though, there was Mighty Mike! It’s like the kid was Kyle’s personal defender. Kyle dribbled down the field; Mike showed up to steal the ball. Kyle lined up for a shot on goal; Mike intercepted. Kyle kicked the ball away from an opposing player; Mike appeared from thin air to take it right back.
At one point, Kyle was driving hard down the field. He had a clear shot on goal. This was it; he was going to score! He drew back his leg to kick, imagining he was kicking Mike’s perfect face instead.
Suddenly, Kyle’s legs went out from under him and he went sprawling in the dirt and grass. The ball spun away and rolled out of bounds.
“Foul!” Mr. Rogers cried. “Foul on Camden!”
Kyle spat out grass and pushed himself up to his knees. What had happened?
“Whiz gee!” Mike said, standing over Kyle. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to trip you.” He held out a hand to help Kyle up.
Kyle ignored it, standing on his own. “It’s not ‘whiz gee.’ It’s — oh, never mind.” He brushed past Mike, shouldering him out of the way.
“Hey.” Mike grabbed Kyle’s wrist, and Kyle felt the incredible strength in those fingers. He forced himself not to spin around and show Mike his own strength.
“I really am sorry,” Mike whispered, pulling Kyle in close. “But you were about to kick the ball and hit the goalie in the head, and the way he was standing, he would have slammed his head on the goalpost.”
Kyle had never been this close to Mighty Mike. Up close, it was truly amazing how utterly human the space alien appeared. Whatever process he (or it?) had used to create this human body, it was a good one.
“That wouldn’t have happened,” Kyle told him. He had planned on hooking the ball so that it would sail right past the goalie, but Mike couldn’t know that. “Just stay out of my way, got it?”
Mike released Kyle’s wrist but did not move. “I won’t let people get hurt.”
“Camden!” Mr. Rogers shouted. “Get your rear in gear! Take your foul shot!”
&n
bsp; Kyle jogged to the sideline and lined up his shot. He could easily kick the ball to a teammate who was open to take a shot on goal.
But he kept looking slightly upfield. Mike stood ready. Kyle knew exactly what was about to happen — he would kick the ball to his teammate, and Mighty Mike would either intercept it or block the goal shot.
No way. Kyle wasn’t going to let Mike humiliate him again.
He ran to the ball as if he were going to kick it downfield, but — at the last possible second — he pretended to stumble. He lashed out with his right foot and kicked the ball as hard as he could without making it explode, upfield. Right at Mighty Mike.
“Oops!” he called out as the ball smashed into Mike’s face and blew up.
“Whoa!” someone called, and an excited babble rose on the field. “Did you see that?”
“Whiz gee!” Kyle said. “I’m sorry. I must have slipped.”
Mr. Rogers quickly called the game a tie. Mike, of course, wasn’t the least bit hurt.
As the teams headed for the locker room, Kyle looked over his shoulder. Mike was lingering on the field, picking up the pieces of the ruptured soccer ball. That’ll teach you to trip me and make me look like a fool, Kyle thought.
CHAPTER
NINE
Kyle’s revenge was sweet but short-lived. Every day, it was something or another from Mike. If he wasn’t disrupting class by leaving all the time to perform some kind of good deed, he was slowing things down by asking idiotic questions. In history class, he just couldn’t understand why the United States ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on Japan.
“If everyone wanted the war to be over, why didn’t they just stop fighting?” he asked.
“It’s not that simple,” Miss Hall said.
“But if the Japanese wanted it over and the Americans wanted it over, why didn’t they just stop?”
In math class, he got “pi” confused with “pie” and couldn’t understand why they were talking about baking. In English, he thought “irony” meant a story could rust. In science, he was just hopeless.