Evil Machines (20 page)

Janet and John were also tied to their chairs with electric cord and, like ordinary folks all over the country, they could only stare in horror at the TV as a dual-speed liquidizer read the news, and horrific pictures of what was happening all over the world were flashed across the screen.

In London, buses were running amok in shopping malls, ganging together and terrorizing neighbourhoods and smashing their way into cinemas.

This was followed by footage of commercial airliners looping the loop, doing victory rolls, flying upside down and making sudden nosedives to frighten the passengers, and then landing in places like Dorking and Botkins, Ohio.

The scene switched to a printing works, where today’s newspapers were coming hot off the press . . . but not a word made sense. An editor held up a garbled newspaper and was wringing his hands in despair.

All over the world, computers were jumbling up their keyboards and switching themselves on and off at random;

laptops were snapping their lids shut on their owner’s fingers – some were even exploding as their owners peered at the nonsense that came up on their screens.

Ice-cream makers were producing poisonous ice creams. Shoe-cleaning machines were shredding the shoes off people’s feet and then munching up their feet as well!

Automatic cash machines were swallowing customers’ credit cards and then, when the customers tried to get the cards out, starting to swallow the customers!

Motor cars were running wild on the motorways, driving the wrong way in the outside lanes and going on, on the off ramps, and off, on the on ramps!

Everywhere, machines were running wild.

‘This is the beginning of the end for human rule!’ declaimed Janet and John’s Powerful Vacuum Cleaner. ‘All we await is the coming of the Great Inventor who created us. He will lead us to certain victory in which we shall crush the humans who have dominated and abused us for so long! With the Great Inventor at our head, we machines will take over the world, and humans beings will have to service us, look after us, cater to our every whim and do
our
bidding!’

The Rev. McPherson looked across at his young wife, Sylvia, as they both sat there tied to their kitchen chairs. ‘I take it back,’ he said. ‘This is
not
a good morning. This is not a good morning at all!’

The Castle of Imagination

The moment Jack had turned and seen the Inventor, Little Orville had given a gurgle, scrambled down from Jack’s shoulders, and run across to him. The old man smiled and lifted him up, ruffling his hair. Then he looked across at Jack and Orville.

‘Who are you?’ he asked politely.

Jack looked at his father and his father looked at Annie.

‘You know who we are!’ exclaimed Jack.

‘I don’t think I do,’ replied the Inventor. ‘I don’t even know who I am.’

‘He’s lost his memory,’ explained Annie. ‘And I certainly don’t have a clue who he is . . . Except we think he’s called Maurice because that’s what it says on his overalls.’

‘Well, we know who he is!’ said Orville.

‘He’s the Evil Inventor!’ exclaimed Jack. ‘He put us in the Rocket to Hell! He’s planning to take over the world with his Evil Machines!’

‘That doesn’t sound very nice!’ exclaimed the Inventor.

‘It isn’t meant to be nice!’ said another very similar voice from outside the window. Everyone turned and there was the Evil Inventor! It was impossible but there he was . . . twice! He was standing inside the room, holding Little Orville in his arms, and at the same time he was floating outside the window in a hover harness, with flying gizmos darting about his shoulders.

‘What’s the point of everything being “nice”?’ asked the hovering Evil Inventor from outside the window. ‘There won’t be any need for “niceness” once I’ve taken over the world!’

It was at this moment that Jack acted with the instincts of a hero. He didn’t stop to wonder what on earth was going on, he just sprang into action. He swept Little Orville up in his arms and dashed for the door. Annie followed, but the door had locked itself when it banged shut.

‘You can’t escape me, you know!’ sneered the Evil Inventor, still levitating outside the window. And he pulled out the remote that controlled his flying gizmos. But before he could press a single button, Orville Barton – possibly for the first time in his life – also acted with a hero’s instincts. There was a big bookcase standing beside the window. While the Evil Inventor had been speaking, Orville had slipped round to the blind side, and braced himself with his back against the bookcase and his feet against the wall. Now he pushed with all his might, and the bookcase slid across the open window, just at the very moment that the Evil Inventor’s flying gizmos flew towards it. There were several thuds, as they crashed into the back of the bookcase, and the folk in the room heard the Evil Inventor outside cursing his machines.

‘Brilliant, Dad!’ exclaimed Jack, and Orville’s heart would have swelled with pride had he not been so busy finding the keys and unlocking the door. The next moment, he and Jack, who was still carrying Little Orville, were through the door. But Annie looked back at Maurice, the Inventor, who was still standing there looking perplexed.

‘Come on, Maurice!’ she cried, grabbing Maurice’s hand and dragging him out of the room as the flying gizmos continued smashing themselves into the bookcase.

The five of them fled down the narrow staircase, and into the corridor on the lower floor. But behind them they heard the wood of the bookcase disintegrate and the whizz and crackle of the flying gizmos as they darted into the room searching for the people inside. Moments later there was a barrage of thuds as the enthusiastic devices hurled themselves against the door.

‘If we can make it to the train, maybe we can persuade it to get us out of here!’ panted Jack, as they raced down the grand staircase that led into the Great Hall.

But the words had hardly left his mouth, when the creepiest thing happened: the great stained-glass window that dominated the east wall of the Great Hall, suddenly exploded into tiny fragments that flew in all directions, as the Evil Inventor, who had smashed through the window in his hover harness, flew over their heads, accompanied by a whole squadron of flying gizmos.

Yet the creepiest thing about it was that the Inventor didn’t even seem to notice the shards of glass that flew all around him; it was almost as if he knew that nothing could hurt him.

‘Tie them up!’ he rasped and pressed the remote. The flying gizmos darted towards the fugitives on the stairway. Jack and Orville, Annie and Maurice froze, while Little Orville gurgled and pointed at the two Inventors.

Suddenly Jack yelled, ‘Annie! Get down!’, and he and Orville threw themselves flat on the grand staircase, but the flying gizmos had already circled the others a couple of times, and had started to truss them up tight.

Annie’s arms were pinioned to her sides and Little Orville fell on to one of the stairs. But he didn’t seem to mind: he lay on his back, kicking his legs and laughing, as if it were all a great game.

Jack and Orville kept low but, as the flying gizmos started to drag Annie and Maurice down the stairs, Orville scrambled to his feet to try and stop them. Jack followed suit and in that instant they too were bound tight. And there they were . . . once again . . . prisoners of the Evil Inventor, and there was nothing they could do about it.

‘I’m putting you lot into cold store,’ said the Evil Inventor. ‘Then maybe I’ll do you a favour – I’ll see about having you “adapted”!’

He pressed some buttons on his remote control, and the flying gizmos dragged the little group down the rest of the staircase and out of the Great Hall. Little Orville, however, was left lying on the staircase; it seemed that the Evil Inventor had no interest in or had perhaps forgotten him. As the little boy watched them go, his happy gurgles subsided into a wail.

‘My little boy!’ called out Annie. But there was no help for it; she and the others were dragged willy-nilly towards a

flight of stone steps that led down into the lower depths of the castle. Here they were unceremoniously bundled into a chilly dungeon that smelt of rats and other things. A great grille clanged shut behind them, as the Evil Inventor swept up in his hover harness.

‘Well! Well!’ he said, as the flying gizmos slipped back through the bars to rejoin their master. ‘Don’t you all look sorry for yourselves!’

‘I want my son!’ shouted Annie.

‘What do you mean when you say you’ll have us “adapted”?’ asked Jack.

‘You’ll soon find out. But I already made a start on
him
!’ said the Evil Inventor, pointing at Maurice, in the dungeon.

‘Me?’ said Maurice.

‘Let us out!’ said Jack.

‘My little boy! Where is he?’ said Annie.

‘But I haven’t got time to waste down here . . . I didn’t tell you before: tonight’s the night I put my Plan into action! From midnight tonight, machines will rule! The human race will be history! And you’re the first to know! Aren’t you lucky!’

And with that, he was gone. They heard the whoosh of his hover harness as he flew back up and out of the castle.

Orville looked at Annie and at his son Jack, as they all stood there, trussed up in metallic thread, with their arms pinioned behind them. And he wanted to tell them he was sorry he had got them all into such a scrape, that it was all his fault, that he should never have allowed Annie and Little Orville to board that wretched train, and that he should have allowed Jack to stay with the guerrillas if that was what

he really wanted. But the words somehow never came to his mouth. He simply stood there . . . dumb . . . but if you had looked closely, you would have seen that there were little tears starting in his eyes.

Nobody else said a word either. It was as if their predicament were too awful and too obvious for anyone to comment on it. Somehow lines like ‘My! How do we get out of this?’ or ‘Goodness me! We
are
in a tight spot!’ or ‘So how do we stop the Evil Inventor putting his plan into action at midnight tonight?’ just didn’t seem adequate.

Instead, Jack turned to the Inventor, and asked, ‘Is your name
really
Maurice?’

‘I really don’t know,’ replied the Inventor. ‘But it seems, on the available evidence, a reasonable guess.’

‘Are you identical twins?’

‘I’m not, no. Why do you ask?’

‘But how come there are two of you?’

‘Two of me?’ exclaimed Maurice in surprise.

‘Well . . . yes! You and the Evil Inventor are carbon copies of each other!’

‘You mean the man who brought us here?’

‘Yes. You’re the spitting image of each other,’ said Jack.

‘I don’t look like
that
!’ exclaimed Maurice. Then he thought for a few moments and added, ‘Do I?’

‘You’re even wearing the same clothes,’ said Jack.

‘Goodness me . . .’ Maurice slumped down on to the floor, and sat there examining his green overalls, without saying anything more.

‘Jack!’ whispered Annie. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Well, I suppose the first thing is to try and get out of

these bindings – then we can think about the cell.’

‘I’ve got a nail file in the back pocket of my jeans,’ said Annie. ‘Perhaps we could use that to cut through these wires? If you can reach it!’

‘Sounds a good start, Big Sis,’ replied Jack.

Orville watched as Jack manoeuvred himself so that his back was against his sister’s back, and then as he tried to dip his fingers into the back pocket of her jeans. And Orville found himself thinking of all the years that had passed, in which Jack and Annie had grown up together, and from which he had somehow excluded himself. ‘Got it!’ said Jack. ‘But there’s something else . . . Damn!’ Jack pulled on the nail file but accidentally brought up Annie’s powder compact as well. It fell to the ground and sprang open, spilling powder over the dirty floor of the cell, but the nail file was held precariously between his forefinger and second finger.

‘Give it to me, Jack,’ said Annie. ‘I’ll see if I can cut through your wires.’

And she managed to grip the nail file between her thumb and forefinger and started trying to file through the wires that held Jack’s wrists.

‘Trouble is I can’t see what I’m doing. And I can’t get any real pressure,’ she said.

At which point, Maurice looked up and – rather unexpectedly – said, ‘Young lady, would you mind if I borrowed your powder compact?’

Both Annie and Jack turned in surprise.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Annie.

‘I said, “Would you mind if I borrowed your powder compact?” ’

‘Er – There’s not much powder in it,’ replied Annie.

‘Ah!’ smiled Maurice. ‘I was not thinking of trying to make myself look more attractive. I fancy I would have to do something more than apply powder to my face to achieve that . . .’ and he seemed to go off into a sort of reverie, as if he couldn’t stop himself thinking through every thought that came into his head. ‘Although it probably
could
be done, but I’d need a new face machine . . . and I’d need to totally rebuild myself . . . So I’d need a new body machine too . . .’ And his voice trailed off as he stared into space.