The Robotessy
Chapter Two
by Victoria
“Leigh,” said I, drawing said Leigh’s attention away from her precious Goku on T.V. , “I have just realised what my life is missing.” She gazed at me for a moment in stupefied wonder. I would like to say this was an accomplishment, but I have yet to see Leigh gaze in a way that wasn’t stupefied. I drew out the fourth Harry Potter book from behind my back and laid it before us; looking back at Leigh I watched her expression of wonder turn into that of fear.
“Victoria,” she replied to me in an oh so condescending voice, “You know you’re not allowed to read fiction books…. Remember what happened after reading Peter Pan?”
“Ah my sweet dear Leigh,” I said knowingly, “I remember nothing.”
“Well I remember!” she yelled panic stricken back at me. “You become to absorbed into the stories! In the end you can’t tell the difference between real life and fiction! After reading Peter Pan you ended up jumping off a seven story building and-”
Blah blah blah. If Leigh was going to yell at me every time I did stupid things, well...then I just might have to stop doing stupid things! Oh, that was a good one. I should use that on her sometime-
“… all we have to be thankful for is that the mayor didn’t press charges once you gave him back his eye-patch.”
“Leigh,” I replied whilst applying my own equally condescending voice, “That was at least a year ago, stop living in the past.”
Leigh’s face twisted into an expression of pure disbelief... a look I had come to understand meant that she was very proud of me. I crammed the warm fuzzy feelings back inside me like a tofu ice-block, and continued with my plan.
“Let me continue. Harry ‘sometimes the closest thing you can get to beef is turkey’ Potter leads a very exciting life. One,” I said glaring spitefully at the book, “that I have grown to be quite envious of. It’s made me think: What does Harry have in his life that I don’t?”
“Magical powers? A school of witch craft and wizardry? Popularity? He’s good at things?... Glasses?” Leigh replied with flare.
I shook my head. “Leigh, it was rhetorical question. And it was none of the above so I’m deducting 50 flippy points off you, thus making you the hambone! BOOYA!” I basked in a few moments of triumph that some would also call an awkward silence.
“An arch enemy,” I finally said to her. It took Leigh a few moments to register the full impact of what I had said, then she once again put on her proud face. I could tell she was hiding all this admiration she now held for me by the way she donned an angry voice, saying “Why, all mighty mother of earth WHY?! Do you want an arch-enemy?!”
I shook my head once more and tried not to look overly patronising “Oh Leigh, you are young. My how you are young.”
“I’m two years older than you!!” Leigh yelled at me in an obviously false indignant rage. I didn’t have time to play into her little games, and decided it best I continue with my plan.
“It’s quite evident why I need an ach-enemy, Leigh. The question is, why didn’t I get one sooner? All this pent up rage I’ve simply been wasting by yelling at that stupid parrot in the pet store...” I felt a steely coolness wash over myself, just thinking about all the times he had got the better of me. But I had left with the last few words of triumph ‘No, you give mea cracker…’
“Uh Tori,” Leigh interrupted my train of thought, “You just kind of zoned out there.”
“As I was saying, all my efforts have been going towards nothing. For years E games have been telling me to challenge everything... EVERYTHING! I always shout back at the playstaion “I will!” Who knows if I’ve ever fooled it, but I’ve always know Leigh, in my heart of hearts, that I have never truly challenged myself.”
“Not challenged?” queried Leigh, “You get overwhelmed by the simplest of challenges. You freak out when math questions that have the word ‘you’ in them.”
“I’M NOT OVERWHELMED!” I shouted in my defence. Composing myself, I continued “I’d just like to know how the math books keep track of me so easily. But back to my point; Today I have been searching for the archiest of enemies, but alas, to no avail. Someone not only equal in wit, intelligence and cunning, but someone who I can rival against at every opportunity…”
I stopped there, waiting for Leigh’s suspense to build. She stared deep into my eyes and said without the slightest trace of boredom, or sarcasm, “Pray tell, who might that be?”
There was no way to prepare Leigh for the shock I was about to instill in her, but I could try and soften the blow the best I could by elaborating on my choice.
“As you are aware, I’m reading Harry Potter. And who is Harry’s mortal enemy? None other than Draco Malfoy!-”
“Uh, don’t you mean Lord Voldermort?” She interrupted me. I quickly recovered from the fact she had just used the real name of He Who Must Not Be Named, and continued with my elaboration.
“As I was saying, Draco is Harry’s enemy, but it wasn’t always this way. If you recall back to the first book, they were the best of friends till Draco betrayed him. It was then I realised I must look to one of my own friends to find the right enemy, and the finger pointed to your friend and mine... Courtney. I know the obvious answer looked like Penny, but she is my Ron. I needed someone with a heart as dark as mine, someo-”
“Uh, Tori?” Leigh, one again, interrupted me. “Did you hear one word you just said? It was all wrong! First of all, Harry and Draco were never friends. Not to mention the fact your strange little analogy started out with you as Draco, and by then end of it you were Harry.”
I gave a derisive laugh. I knew Leigh had read the books, I just never guessed how greatly she had misinterpreted them. I had no time to argue with Leigh over matters of literature. Instead I just said “Okay, Leigh,” and made an “I believe you” face.
“Aside from all that,” Leigh continued. “Courtney is in no way your equal! She’s two years older than you - and smarter, she goes to University, she knows martial arts AND she spends all her spare time watching WWF wrestling.” Her voice changed into a frightened whisper, “and I have the bruises to show that she is getting pretty good at it.” Her voice returned to normal, “If you seriously try to take her on, she will crush you like a bug.”
I sighed. Leigh was just too obvious, I could read her like a book. It was almost adorable. “I know what you’re doing ,” I said to her. She pathetically tried to look like she had no idea what I was talking about.
“And it’s just not working Leigh,” I continued. “You haven’t succeeded in putting me off Courtney as an arch enemy, and even if you had, I wouldn’t go for you as my second choice. You’re just too soft.” I realised my words may have been a bit hurtful, so I gave her an encouraging wink.
“That’s not what I was trying to achieve!” she yelled huffily.
“Shhh,” I said soothing her. “Tori’s here.”
***
Now my first task had been accomplished, it became clear to me of how I must proceed; I must commence my first rivalry with Courtney. Easier said than done, Courtney lives like a zillion miles from town, and Leigh refused to drive me out to her house. It was so sad to see Leigh overcome with the green-eyed jealousy bug.
I walked out to the “pool” shed. I knew one day the secret service would put two and two together and realise that no one in my family ever used our pool, this would no doubt lead to them wondering why we owned a pool shed. I swung open the door and wasn’t greeted by the smell of chlorine, but rather the pleasing smell of new machinery. This was my lab, you see. Where I made all my inventions for one purpose or another.
I went in and shut the door and found myself face to face with Courtney, or rather, the Courtney Kill-bot I had made not so long ago. I still felt vaguely offended that she had returned it to me after the many hours I had spent creating it. It was long thankless work, but I knew Penny was up to it. Why did she give back the kill-bot you ask? For some reason Courtney got all offended when Courtney 2.0 tried to kill her and take over her life. Offended means a different thing to Courtney than it does to you or I. I examined the Kill-Bot’s neck, where Courtney had taken great offence. Several fist sized dents. I could easily repair these, I thought to myself, considering all the possibilities of owning an almost life-like replica of your arch enemy.
Without further ado, I grabbed my satellite powered lap top and my hover-scooter. High-ho scooter away! Much to my dismay, it just lay there like a regular scooter, so I started manually scooting in the direction I knew Courtney’s secret base to be in. After a few short hours Leigh picked me up from Fielding. Damn that Gestapo! The were constantly on my ass rearranging town and such-like so I never knew where I was going. Leigh finally agreed to drop me off at Courtney’s once I convinced her I wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
I walked up to Courtney’s front porch, giving all appearance that I was going to knock on the door, and I stayed there until I had waved Leigh off.
Once the car Leigh was driving was but a speck on the horizon I decided to put my actual plan into action, and I snuck around the side of the house and stopped once I found Courtney’s room. I could tell it was Courtney’s room by the giant poster of Hitler that hung over her bed, decorated with the occasional love heart with “Adolf 4 Courtney” scribbled inside. She had done some redecorating since I had last been here, which I noticed upon spying the poster for a movie Courtney was working on in her spare time “Hitler vs. Bruce Lee- the fight for the Wild West and Space” and the additional three neck-punch jars sitting on her bedside table. I was overwhelmed with a great sense of pride, it was such an honour to know someone who could accomplish three neck-punch jars in so little time. No, I had to banish those thoughts from my head. I couldn’t let my head be filled with sentiments, I had to do what I came here to do. Then I spied her. She was sitting on her bed and typing something on her dad’s laptop. Perfect! Me thought, and with lightning fast reflexes, and lightning fast dial-up speed I whipped out my laptop and connected to the internet, signing into msn as myself. I saw her screen name in the online group on msn, and decided to engage in a conversation of cat and mouse with her.
I was raised by a cup of coffee: Hi Courtney, it’s Victoria
Bruce Lee’s Ghost: Hi Tori. What are you up to?
I was raised by a cup of coffee: Oh not much, just LOOKING at my options for the rest of the day.
Bruce Lee’s Ghost: Yeah, I’m not up to much today either.
I was raised by a cup of coffee: Yes, I SEE that.
Bruce Lee’s Ghost: Just considering pulling a jumble-word caper on Leigh. What do you think?
I was raised by a cup of coffee: What do I think? Does it matter? I SEE that you like the idea. Don’t LOOK so worried Courtney. *SMILEY FACE*
Bruce Lee’s Ghost: Firstly Victoria, you don’t have to type in smiley face, you can just use the little emoticon. Secondly, I know you’re sitting outside my window. You’ve been there about five minutes.
Ha! Highly dubious. I raised myself a little higher to look in and see if she really was aware. She turned around and waved at me. I lingered for but a split second before ducking back down. No, this couldn’t be! Our first battle of wits and I had lost?!... Or perhaps... perhaps she didn’t really know. That sly dog. Time to call her bluff.
I was raised by a cup of coffee: No I’m not.
“Yes you are,” she said leaning out the window. Damn BLAST! Time to type faster!
I was raised by a cup of coffee: Pay no attention to the girl outside your window!
The next actions happened so fast they were a blur to me; I found myself lying on the ground, hand clutching my neck in pain. I looked up at an angry Courtney, clapping her hands in satisfaction. She closed her window again, and I could swear I heard the clapping after she had stopped moving her hands. She was just THAT satisfied with a well-aimed punch. This wasn’t over. I merely needed to re-group and re-strategise.
***
The next few weeks went by in a motion somewhat resembling the time I got trapped in the clothes dryer; I got really dizzy, but it was still fun. The doctors thought I might have brain damage. The very next day after my humiliating defeat I sought the help of Ron, that is to say, Penny. Together we created a devilish scheme of how to take down Courtney and her enterprise of counterfeit Levi jeans- be damned if I was going to let my arch nemesis live the New Zealand dream of getting rich off big faceless corporations.
We hadn’t quite worked out all the details to our plan, but we knew it would involve an army of Courtney-bots, suitable artillery for them all, and swarms of bees. There must be bees. Oh yes. Every free moment that we had, we spent it together either building robots and weaponry, attempting to breed bees, or arguing over whether the words to that B52s’ song were “Roam if you want to” or “Ohhh bippey one two.”
Another three long weeks passed before Penny and I were gathered for our final day of building. I walked out to the “pool” shed as per usual and discovered Penny had arrived before me. I walked in to see her hot gluing spaghetti to the head of one of our final Courtney-bots.
“PENNY!” I yelled in anger at her. “What do you think you are doing?!”
“Well,” said Penny calmly. “We ran out of all things that remotely resembled hair on about C-bot 986, so I started improvising with-”
“No, no, NO!” I interrupted her. “Not THAT, why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”
“I’m wearing contacts,” said Penny , as it that was an explanation. It was infuriating the way she didn’t see the protocol for this.
“Penny,” I said in my least nagging tone of voice, “You are being employed as my scientist.” She looked at me still perplexed and I realised I needed to explain more. “Scientists wear glasses.” For a minute she was lost for words. Who knows what she thought about in the silence? I can only deduce she thinking long and hard about the error of her ways... but perhaps she was thinking that I was on point? Or that I was like the son she never had? Or that my muscles could beat her up? It’s hard to say as all of the above were very likely explanations.
When she finally found her tongue again she said to me “I’m amazed you’re smart enough to dress yourself.”
I smiled, sometimes Penny stutters over her words. What she obviously meant to say was “I’m amazed at how smartly you dress yourself.” I felt it was a little off the topic, but it was a compliment nonetheless.
Penny opened her mouth to say something else, but at that very moment the phone decided to ring. Penny being closest picked it up...
“Hello?” she said into the receiver, then paused. “I’ll just get her for you,” she said into the phone, then she looked up at me with the slightest hint of terror in her eye. “It’s Courtney,” she whispered to me.
This comment immediately spurred me into a fit of terror. “What shall I say?” I yelled at Penny while she made hand signals to be quite. “What shall I do? WHAT SHALL I WEAR?!” I continued in my panicked state. Before I had time to think further on the subject, Penny pushed the phone into my hands and I had no choice but to answer.
“A-hoy hoy?” I said.
“Hello Victoria,” replied the oh so familiar voice of Courtney.
“How are you Courtney? Uh... We were just talking about you- FAVOURABLY of course!”
“I know what you’re up to. I have given you long enough to prepare. Meet me at my house with your little army in one hour, or I will come and find you.” With those last chilling words, the phone went dead.
“Who is this?!” I yelled into the receiver. “WHO IS THIS?!”
Penny came over and put her arm around me, “It’s okay Tori, it was Courtney, remember?”
“The doctors think I might have brain damage.” I said knowingly, knowing that the doctors indeed thought I might have brain damage. I smiled at her, but this was just a façade to hide my insecurities. I had less than an hour to put all my plans into motion, and to add insult to injury, I didn’t think Leigh would drive me and 1000 Courtney-bots to Courtney’s house.
***
Once all the kill-bots were completed, Penny and I managed to persuade a rogue band of truckies to transport them and ourselves to the hill at the bottom of Courtney’s house. We arrived at precisely six O’clock and unloaded our terrifying army.
Oober, the head truckie, approached me once the unpacking had finished and said to me in his unruly New Zealand accent “Okay, we’ve fulfilled our part of the bargain, now you fulfil yours.” I looked at him, and seriously considered shouting “FULFIL THIS!” whilst giving him the neck-punching of a life time, but foolish as I was, I was never foolish enough to break the truckie code of conduct.
“Alright,” I said and reached into my pocket. “Here’s your turtle, live and well.” He gratefully took back Murtle and mounted into his truck. I glanced down at my watch, 6.05 and we were now alone with the kill-bots.
While unloading them we had formed them into ranks. Each of the first four rows had 200 kill-bots, these were armed with swords and axes. The fifth row held 150, some of which held guns, the rest were manning cannons or flame throwers. The last row held 50. These robots I had solely made by myself. They were my pride and joy, and I had fondly dubbed them the bee-bots. I’m sure you can guess what they can do. I gazed on at my army in pure admiration. I had no doubts in my army whatsoever. I knew they would make it to Courtney’s garage, where her “covert” jean counterfeiting operation was taking place, and destroy as they had been programmed to do.
“Tori! Tori!” yelled Penny as she came racing towards me.
“What?” I questioned angrily, watching her do all that running was making feel exhausted.
“I went up the hill to take a closer look, and you’ll never guess what I saw!” She panted breathlessly back to me.
I gasped so loudly I almost choked. “BILLY BOYD IS HERE?!” I screeched frantically while concurrently trying to straighten my hair.
“No, Tori,” said an Penny with a very sour face. “Billy Boyd wasn’t there when I asked you to guess who I was going out to dinner with. Billy Boyd wasn’t there when you thought you saw him in the girls’ toilets. Billy Boyd wasn’t the one who threw a piece of paper at you in Chemistry, and Billy Boyd CERTAINLY isn’t here right now!!!”
Sometimes I didn’t understand Penny. I guess I shall never know what makes her want to frequently get my hopes up with false alarms of spying Billy Boyd. But this was hardly the time for guessing games, I needed to find out what was troubling Penny so we could get to the top of the hill before Billy got tired of waiting for us and left.
“Well what then?” I said, trying to hide the impatience in my voice.
“I saw an entire army of robots. Courtney’s own army I can only presume, and they look tough. In fact, they look just like agent Smith off the matrix. I’m worried Tori, there’s lots of them. If I had to make a guess, I’d say they out-numbered our robots in a ratio of 2:1”
Due to the fact I had spent the last 3 years in Maths drawing pictures of Trogdor, I could only assume these were frightening statistics... But something else about what she had said troubled me even greater.
“Agent Smith…?” I muttered under my breath. Then loud enough for Penny to hear I said “Penny we have been double-crossed. Courtney would never make Smith-bots. That’s a Leigh idea. I’ve been betrayed by my own sister. She must have told Courtney how many robots we were building and increased it.”
I looked up at the sky, and as it changed from a sort of salmon colour to a flint grey, I thought of the salmon I had caught earlier that day, and how I had named it Flint.
“Tori,” said Penny interrupting my train of thought. “I think it best we turn back, we’re out-numb-”
“NO!” I shouted, temporarily drunk on my own power, and perhaps also from inhaling too much robot fumes. “Turn the power on and let’s get these robots motoring! AHAHAHA!” I laughed at my own wit.
Reluctantly Penny did so. “Now march forward!” No sooner had I said this, I noticed something very alarming indeed. Only half the robots were moving forward, as for the other half...
“Why are they spinning in circles?!” cried Penny.
No...no...no. This was all wrong! How could this have happened? I checked all the programming on the robots I built- once... twice... three times a lady! This couldn’t have been a mistake I had made.
“Penny,” I said. “How sure are you of your programming?”
She looked a little guilty and said “Mostly sure.”
“Penny... ” I said turning her to face me, and she cracked.
“Alright!” she blubbered. “Alright... It wasn’t my programming okay? I didn’t have time to write the programmes what with my job at the fish-market and all. So I kind of... borrowed them off someone.”
“Who?” I pressed her.
“JONATHAN!” She yelled in sadness and in rage. I looked out at our army of what no longer seemed like kill-bots, but rather a field full of useless Rangi 2.0s. I was ready to admit defeat right then and there, but then suddenly I wasn’t given a chance. I lifted my glance upward and saw trimming the top of the hill a wall of Agent Smiths. They weren’t advancing on us, they were just standing there, awaiting their instructions. I saw Penny tapping at high speed into her laptop, whether she was trying to re-programme the Rangis, or programming in that the Agents Smiths were their enemy, I’m not sure.
I glanced back at the top of the hill and saw her standing there. My arch-enemy, and just as I suspected, Leigh was flanked at her right. It was like being stabbed in the back! Well maybe not stabbed, more like being jabbed repeatedly in the back in an annoying fashion.
“Tori!” whined Penny, and I turned around to see her repeatedly jamming a pen in my back to attain my attention. “Our 500 functional bots against her 2000?”
I wasn’t given the time to so much as respond, for at that moment Courtney yelled “Attack!” and the battle was fast upon us. I spun around in the heat of battle, not knowing exactly where to turn, and then I heard Courtney’s cool voice somewhere close but unseeable. “So you thought you could defeat me with an army that resembled me? A nice touch of evilness, but not exactly a smart idea.”
As soon as she had said it, I realised the truth to her words. I needed to find Courtney, but that idea was near impossible with 1000 Courtney-bots fighting and spinning around me. How would I ever know which was the real one? I looked around for a little assistance from Penny, but I couldn’t see her anywhere near. Then it hit me, make her talk, and then look for the “robot” that was talking.
“Well,” I said regaining my confidence. “If you thought I was smart then you’re stupider than I thought you were.”
A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I whirled around to face a Courtney, but was it the real one? “I guess so,” she said and I had my answer. I held my head and turned around- I couldn’t face her. “Well met, Courtney, well met. So what are you going to do now?” In an effort to regain my confidence I turned back around to face her “What are you going to do with me and my army?” I looked at her expectantly, but she just kept twirling around in circles.
“ANSWER ME!” I yelled in rage.
“For God sakes Victoria, you’re facing one of your Kill-bots again. Geez, they’re made out of old appliances, I can’t believe you can’t tell the difference between your horrible creations and moi.”
I turned to the nearest kill-bot, determined to prove her wrong, and gazed hard at it. I could just make out where the blender shape of the head, and I could see the seemingly non-existent line where it met with the dishwasher to form a neck. I looked at the top of its head, and realised how obviously the hair looked like spaghetti.
“Of course I can, I just need to stare long enough is all. This one clearly is my own, somewhat bad, creation.”
The kill-bot punched me hard in the neck. “YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE ACTUAL COURTNEY!” she roared at me. I looked up at the sky and noticed that rain was starting to beat down upon us. “What am I going to do with you? Well I have a much more useful... use for you, you will-”
“ZAP!” A startling noise stopped Courtney mid sentence and made us look around. I looked at the nearest Smith-bot and noticed it was melting and sparking, not to mention making a hell of a racket.
“AHAHAHA!” I yelled in triumph once more. “Looks like I win after all! Poor Courtney,” I said with as much fake sarcasm as I could muster. “Looks like SOMEONE forgot to waterproof her robots. GO FORTH COURTNEY-BOTS! GO FORTH AND DESTROY!”
I stood for a few seconds in glory, and then realised nothing was happening. I looked back at the Courtney-bots only to find them behaving just like the Smith-bots. “Damn blast!” I yelled, followed curtly by “PENNY!”
Without a battle waging around us, she was much easier to find and appeared abruptly beside me. All I managed to utter to her was “How?!”
“Well,” she said “I went to get the water-proof paint on your instructions, but when I got there it was $30, and I only had $25.”
“But I gave you $30!” I yelled.
“Well... yeah,” she replied rather sheepishly. “But first I went and brought poky.”
Tried as I may, I just couldn’t stay angry at that valid reason, instead I turned my gaze to our last line of defence.
“RELEASE THE BEES!” I shouted. All of a sudden bees were flying in every which direction and making such a loud humming noise I had to scream the plan, like any normal villain, to my arch nemesis, Courtney.
“You see Courtney, I have been harvesting bees that only eat counterfeit Levi jean material, as you shall shortly find out this means-”
“Actually,” Penny interrupted me. “We never got that far into the bee production stage. These are just regular bees.”
“DAMN BLAST!” I uttered once more, and drew my attentions fully on Courtney.
“Victoria,” she said earnestly. “I can’t do this. I’m not you, I mean, I’m just not cut out for this sort of stuff. All I have is my cunning, breathtaking good looks, and superior intellect, but you... you have that overwhelming nerdiness that would make you chime in “Hey, why not make them water-proof” and that, well, that’s something special.” She punctuated her heart-warming speech with a friendly punch to my neck.
“No, Courtney,” I reassured her. “Your robots were fantastic, ours were the retards that could only spin in circles.”
“Actually, our robots weren’t that great either, Leigh programmed them slightly off, so whenever they moved they would veer off slightly to the left, which of course meant when we gave instructions we had to adjust them slightly to the right.”
“Oh,” I said nodding. “Where is Leigh anyway?”
“I don’t know Victoria, and I’m not going to lie to you, I quite frankly don’t care.” And with that, we headed towards the sunset.
Chapter Three