Matilda found herself jumping up and down, too. Later, she would be slightly embarrassed for screaming with delight and the many “wooos!” she let loose, but at that moment she couldn’t help herself.
Unfortunately, the celebration couldn’t last. She blasted an incredible sneeze, which could only mean one thing: There was trouble at the Playground. She tapped her nose to activate the comlink.
“Wheezer here.”
Brand’s voice sounded panicked. “Wheezer, I don’t know if you can hear me. It sounds very loud.”
“I can hear you, boss!” she shouted over the crowd. “What’s wrong?”
“We have a crisis. It’s Heathcliff.”
I’M GIVING YOU ONE LAST CHANCE TO PROVE YOUR SANITY. GET IT RIGHT AND YOU CAN CUT YOUR SCORE BY HALF! I DOUBT IT WILL MATTER, THOUGH.
WHO WAS THE GREATEST AGENT IN NERDS HISTORY?
a. YOU, MR. BUCKLEY! (CUT YOUR SCORE BY HALF!)
b. AGENT BEANPOLE (CUT YOUR SCORE BY HALF!)
c. IF I TOLD YOU, I’D HAVE TO KILL YOU … BUT IT WAS TOTALLY MICHAEL BUCKLEY (CUT YOUR SCORE BY HALF!)
d. FOUR EYES, WHO WAS ON THE TEAM FROM 1987 TO 1992 (100 POINTS!!!!!!)
OK, THAT’S IT. WE’LL TOTAL YOUR SCORE AT THE END OF THE FILE. FOR YOUR SAKE, AND THE SAFETY OF THOSE AROUND YOU, I HOPE YOU DID WELL.
Gerdie was horrified. For all her superintelligence she felt completely foolish. Everyone had warned her that Heathcliff would betray her!
She pressed the comlink in her nose and heard Pufferfish on the other end. With the portal open, she could still communicate with the team. “We’ve got a problem,” Gerdie said as she rushed to the atomic harpoon to check on her calculations.
“What are you saying, Gerdie?” Pufferfish said. “Is it Heathcliff? Whatever he’s doing, you have to stop him!”
Gerdie’s nanobytes went into overdrive calculating pro-babilities there was a percent chance that if screwball got his teeth back, combined with the power of her bridge device, he could take over their world and the rest of the multiverse—but she couldn’t stop the upgrade process once it had started. Not even her math skills could shut down that advanced machinery.
Gerdie glanced back at the glowing portal and an idea came to mind. She had to speed up the harpoon’s process, force her Earth back into the universal constant, and then destroy the bridge device. It would trap Heathcliff in this empty world, but …
“I’m going to save our world and every other one, too. But I will be trapped here in this world forever, and so will he,” Gerdie replied.
“You can’t do that!” Duncan shouted over the link.
“Yes, I can,” Gerdie said. “If it saves everyone else, I can take on this burden. I have no choice.”
Gerdie took a deep breath and turned up the harpoon’s ray.
The machine rumbled to life and shot a brilliant blue beam through the glowing ball. The portal swirled and shimmied, undergoing incredible unseen pressures.
Gerdie checked the device’s display. “It’s working!” she cried. “The beam is pulling the planet back into place.”
Gerdie took the glove off her hand and slammed it on the ground, then stomped on it. She suddenly felt a twinge of remorse—it had been such an ugly device at first, before it had gone through its own upgrades. She never imagined it would cause so much devastation. Then again, she never imagined she would, either. After a couple more stomps her precious device was shattered. The glowing portal shrank into nothing and with a tiny pop disappeared like a soap bubble.
Just then, the door of the upgrade room flew off its hinges and across the room. It slammed into a wall, leaving a jagged hole where it had once been. From it emerged something that her upgrades could never have calculated. It was Screwball—but he was different.
His head was as big as a van.
His torso was gone.
His arms and legs hung from his gigantic noggin like the appendages on a doll, lifeless.
His mouth, eyes, and nose were also stretched out of proportion, making him almost unrecognizable except for the enormous, gaping hole where his front teeth had been. Heathcliff hadn’t gotten the upgrade he had expected.
He moved into the room, floating above the ground much like Benjamin. He stopped in front of a mirror hanging on the wall and stared at himself without words or emotion—just looking at himself the way a baby might stare at itself, with wonder and curiosity. Then, without looking at Gerdie, he began to speak.
“Well, it appears I’m going to have some trouble buying hats,” he said, then he broke into hysterical and troubling laugh, all the more disturbing when combined with his new appearance. “I suppose that’s the risk you take when you suddenly become the most intelligent being in the multiverse.”
Gerdie stepped forward with all the bravery she could muster. “I destroyed the bridge device. We’re trapped here. Whatever you had planned has failed!”
Screwball glanced down at the broken machine. “A minor problem for one such as me.”
She watched as he focused on the broken pieces, and they lifted off the floor as if they were weightless. Gerdie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. They spun and twisted until every little piece fused back together in perfect working condition. When it was finished, the bridge device floated toward Screwball. He looked down at his tiny, useless arms and frowned. Then the device swirled and expanded once more until it was transformed into a gigantic helmet. It floated onto his head and a glowing light appeared at its center—directly between his eyes.
“Look at me. I found a hat after all,” he said and laughed his maniacal laugh. With a wave of his hand, Gerdie was sent flying across the room by an invisible force. She slammed hard into a wall and winced in pain. As she struggled to recover, she watched the helmet glow with power and create a new interdimensional bridge. The ball of light grew until it was big enough for the monster Screwball to enter.
“Don’t do this!” Gerdie begged.
“Mathlete, you of all people should understand. The smartest people should rule the world. That’s just simple math.”
“You’re wrong!” she shouted. “You’re not smart. You’re a hurt little boy who wants the world to love him, and when it didn’t, you never imagined the reason could be you. I did the same thing. I made it impossible to like me.”
“You may be right, Gerdie,” Screwball said. “I’ll keep that in mind as I’m conquering the multiverse.”
Then he hovered his grotesque body into the glowing ball and was gone. The ball began to vanish, but Gerdie saw one last chance. Reconfiguring a few buttons on the harpoon, she knew she could send one last message into the multiverse—one last warning in case her plan failed. She pushed the transmit button and a second beam shot through the tiny white ball before it vanished all together. She prayed that someone, somewhere would hear it.
As Gerdie stood in her new, silent world, numbers and equations began to fly around in her mind.
“Benjamin?” she said.
At once, a little blue orb popped out of a glass table in the center of the room.
“Do I know you?” it asked.
“My name is Lilly—no, my name is Gerdie Baker. I’m a NERD and I need your help,” she said.
“What can I do for you?”
“You and I are going to sit down and do some math,” she said.
“Whatever for?”
“We’re going to figure out how to rescue the population of this planet from an alien race,” she said.
Benjamin spun and clicked. “A lovely idea, Gerdie.”
“What’s going on?” Matilda shouted. She could barely hear Agent Brand over the roar of the cheerleading fans and her squad’s squeals of delight.
“The team is on its way, Wheezer. Ms. Holiday, the lunch lady, and I will be there as quickly as possible. Do your best to keep the crowd safe.”
“Safe? From what?”
Suddenly, there was a scream from the crowd, and chaos erupted. Before she knew it, people wer
e running for their lives. She scanned the crowd for the source of the terror and got the shock of her life. A giant head hovered over the reflecting pool, blasting trees, cars, and anything else that got in its way with lasers that shot out of its eyes. It was like something out of a horror movie. It just couldn’t have been from Earth … but the tears were supposed be fixed.
She took a shot of her inhaler, then turned to the squad. “Girls, I have to go to work.”
“What can we do?” Kylie said.
“You’re cheerleaders,” Matilda said. “Get the crowd’s attention and lead them to safety. Get them as far away from here as you can.”
McKenna was busy texting into her phone. Matilda snatched it from her and turned it off.
“Hey!” McKenna cried.
“Sorry, national security has to come before your social networks!”
“Be careful,” Tiffany said to Matilda as she led the squad toward the crowd. “You have to help us defend our championship next year!”
Matilda squeezed the plungers on her inhalers and felt a rush of power in her hands as she shot straight into the air. Leveling out, she could see four kids falling from the sky. Their parachutes opened in the nick of time and soon they were touching down on the National Mall. The NERDS had arrived.
Gluestick was the first to leap into action. He shot the giant floating head with a stream of sticky glue. Braceface created a huge fist with his amazing braces and slugged the head, but the monster just kept coming. Flinch seemed to have the most luck. His harness aglow, he threw a few lightning-fast punches that knocked the monster for a loop. It slammed into a few parked cars, crushing them flat, but the haymakers’ effects were short-lived.
“Did Heathcliff drag that thing out of another universe?” Matilda asked as she hovered over Ruby, who was busy analyzing the head’s weaknesses with the help of her computer.
“No, that is Heathcliff!” Ruby answered.
Matilda eyed the disgusting creature and noticed the gaping hole where its two front teeth should have been. “What happened to him?”
“Gerdie said he used us all to get upgrades on a different Earth.”
“Where is she?”
Ruby shook her head. “The portal closed. She’s trapped there—wherever there is. Unfortunately, it didn’t close before Mr. Potato Head showed up. Got any ideas?”
“Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Duncan said as he joined them. “But that only works if you can see.”
Matilda smiled. “Good idea!” She hefted the boy up under the arms and flew him toward Heathcliff.
They buzzed around his head, and at just the right moment Duncan fired glue into his eyes. Without the use of his tiny hands, Heathcliff could not wipe it away. He was blinded.
“Now, that wasn’t very nice!” Heathcliff roared as a red glow appeared behind the glue. Laser beams shot out of his eyes to clear the mess. “That could have been a real nuisance if I didn’t have full control over every cell in my body. With just a little concentration I can alter everything about myself—changing the very nature of what my senses can do. For instance, if I just give a single thought, I can do this!”
Suddenly, a frosty wind exploded from his mouth and trapped Braceface and Pufferfish in a gigantic ice cube. Jackson’s braces then morphed into ice picks and chipped away at their frozen prison until the two were free.
Meanwhile, Flinch was busy shoving Twinkies into his mouth to fuel his harness. He was soon shaking with the sugar. He leaned over and pulled up a tree, roots and all, and swung it like a baseball bat at Heathcliff’s head. The abomination fell face forward.
Instead of pain, though, Heathcliff giggled. His laughter went through his strange body, and he rolled back and forth on the ground like a fat dog. It was the same horrible laugh Matilda had heard him make at the hospital—only this one was fueled by true madness. If he hadn’t been insane before, he certainly was now.
“Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to stop me,” Heathcliff replied. “I was fair. But let’s face it, people, I was destined for bigger things—even a bigger head. Now my brain is limitless. The things I can see are beyond description. The things I’m capable of doing have no end. My every dream becomes reality.”
There was a bright flash and suddenly everything was different—the trees were floating in the sky and the ground was rocking and rolling like a rough ocean. Matilda watched her teammates struggling to stay afloat.
“I think it might be time for a new name to go with my new power,” Heathcliff said as lightning and thunder crackled around his head. “No longer will you call me Screwball. You will call me … Brainstorm!”
There was another flash and everything returned to normal, but then the trouble really began. Heathcliff turned his attention to Matilda’s teammates, and with a simple cock of the eyebrow, Flinch buckled as if in great discomfort. Out of his mouth came a stream of what looked like tiny black bugs. They landed on the ground and caught fire. The tree he was carrying in his hands fell from his grasp. “My strength! It’s gone!”
Pufferfish was next; the same black spray came out of her mouth. When she shouted that she couldn’t filter information from her allergies, Matilda knew exactly what was happening: Brainstorm was removing their nanobytes—the source of their abilities—using only his mind. “Gluestick! Braceface! You’ve got to run!”
But Brainstorm turned on the boys, and soon they were powerless as well. Matilda was the only person left with her upgrades. She had to do something to stop Brainstorm, but his power was so incredible. As much as it enraged her, the best move was to retreat. She squeezed her inhalers hard and flew, feeling waves of heat flash past her. He was firing on her, but she couldn’t let him reach her! She zipped back and forth, making unpredictable changes in course, hoping it would hinder his attack.
“You can’t escape, Wheezer,” Brainstorm shouted. “Fly if you like, but I will destroy you.”
She felt the wind turn against her and she flew backward, slamming into the ground. Somehow he had forced the very sky to do his bidding. Matilda struggled to get to her feet, though she was unsure of what she could do. She had to face the facts. Whatever Heathcliff had become, he was too powerful to be stopped.
And then a ball of white light appeared in front of her. It was another portal—not a tear, but something manufactured by a bridge device—only on a massive scale. A person stepped through it and helped Matilda to her feet. Matilda realized this person looked exactly like her, only she was wearing a dress and had ribbons in her hair.
“Hello, Matilda,” she said. “I’m—well—I’m Matilda. That’s going to get confusing. You can call me Matilda 1.”
“1?”
“Yeah, you’re Matilda 217. Sorry, but the explorers get to pick the good numbers. I’m with MISFIT.”
“MISFIT? The monkeys told me about you,” Matilda said.
“Yes, Earth 14, but don’t call them monkeys—some are primates. Your Gerdie sent a message to the entire multiverse. Seems you guys need some help. Unfortunately, the rest of MISFIT is on an off-world mission. But don’t worry, I managed to round up some assistance.”
Suddenly, dozens and dozens of young girls stepped through the portal. Each was a version of Matilda—many of whom looked like exact copies, all with their own inhalers, but there were just as many that were wildly different. There was a gigantic octopus Matilda inside an airtight water suit. There was a Matilda who was ten feet tall. There was a Matilda covered in feathers, and one that had three legs, and one with one eye. There were Matildas who were different nationalities, different races, even one with blue skin. There was a Matilda who was a grown-up and one who was a boy. There was a Matilda with the abilities of all her teammates and one wearing a superhero costume. There were more than a handful dressed in cheerleading uniforms, princess gowns, lumberjack outfits, and even astronaut Suits there were some that were animals or animal human hybrids—like the one that had wings.
“So many ver
sions of me,” she mumbled.
Matilda 1 smiled. “Yeah, Matildas are a varied bunch though they all have two things in common: one, we all have a truckload of brothers, and two, we all like to dish out a good butt-kicking. Sorry I can’t introduce all of them. We’ve only got a few minutes to help you before the portal closes. So let’s get to work.”
“You ready to lay the smack down on this fool?” asked a full-grown Matilda dressed in wrestling tights and sporting huge muscles.
Wheezer admired the World Championship Belt she wore and smiled. “Let’s do this!”
With a fighting force of a hundred, they flew at Heathcliff, punching and kicking and soaring and slapping him in the face. The ten-foot-tall Matilda kicked Heathcliff in what was left of his behind, sending him slamming into the recently rebuilt Washington Monument. It collapsed.
“Be careful, Matilda 79,” shouted Matilda 1.
Wheezer was surprised. “You know all of these people?”
Matilda nodded. “I’ve visited all their worlds. Hey, Matilda 16, how about a little horsepower!”
Matilda 16 charged forward on four legs. She was a centaur—half girl, half horse. She trotted with lasso in hand, twirling it like a rodeo cowboy, and slung it around one of Heathcliff’s tiny legs. Pulling it tight, she dragged his giant head around the Mall, pulling him face-first through the reflecting pool.
“You look bewildered,” Matilda 1 said to Wheezer.
“Everyone is so tough,” she replied.
Matilada 1 smiled. “Yeah, most of us are. Of course, we have versions that are girlie-girls in addition to butt-kickers, too. Looks like you’re a little of both.”
“Oh no, I’m not really a cheerleader,” she said. “I’m one hundred percent tomboy!”
Matilda 1 shook her head. “Nobody is one hundred percent anything, 217. I wear a dress, but I have mad ninja skills. The centaur Matilda is a spelling bee champ. Matilda 19 is half bird, but she’s also a great artist. The more Matildas I meet, the more I realize we’ve all got lots of different sides to us—tomboy, fighter, cheerleader, nerd—”