Read My Life as a Computer Cockroach Online

Authors: Bill Myers

Tags: #ebook, #book

My Life as a Computer Cockroach (3 page)

Suddenly, our hero grows as pale as a bar of white chocolate. And for good reason. The last time they met, Outrageous Ray held him in a hammerlock so long that he melted into a pathetic puddle of good-guy goo. It took months of physical therapy to shape him back into a respectable piece of milk chocolate.

And now...

The very thought makes him shiver, putting more bumps on his skin than the backside of a Nestle's Crunch bar. But a hero's got to do what a hero's got to do, so our hero does it. Without a moment's hesitation he goes to:

PLAN A

It's a complicated plan where he drops to his knees, starts wailing, and cries for his mommy. But when Mommy doesn't answer he goes to:

PLAN B

He leaps up, races to the Choco-Cave, hops in his Choco-mobile, and squeals out and onto the highway.

Precious seconds tick away. Who knows what damage Outrageous has already wreaked, what wreckage Ray has already reaped, not to mention the horrors of seeing the entire Brady Bunch dressed up as professional wrestlers! What——

Knock-knock-knock

I looked up.

“Wally, sweetheart, I've brought you your dinner . . . if you feel up to eating it.”

It was Mom. I'd almost forgotten, I was supposed to be sick in bed!

“Just a minute,” I cried.

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 “Cockroach
it 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 village 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.”

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