Super Goofballs, Book 6: Battle of the Brain-Sucking Robots

6 BDattle of in theDreamland oomed Brain-sucking Robots Written and Illustrated by

Peter Hannan

This book is dedicated to all the nieces and nephews of the world, but especially the best ones: Celia, Elizabeth, Luke, Rose, Kellen, Jeffrey, Caroline, Alec, Ross, Dustin, Colleen, Kathryn, Logan, Ian, Brian, Matthew, Patrick, Nathan, and Nate. Plus Aly. Plus new baby. Plus all future babies. That should cover it.

Table of

CONTENTS Chapter 1: In the Middle of Nowhere in the Middle of the Night Chapter 2: Super Sardines Chapter 3: Up on the Roof Chapter 4: Let’s Do the Time Loop Again Chapter 5: Up and at ’Em Chapter 6: A Miracle of Bad Planning Chapter 7: Sonny Slick Chapter 8: Every Slick in the Book Chapter 9: The Man of the House Chapter 10: Rage Inside the Machine Chapter 11: Am I Dead? Chapter 12: I, Robot Chapter 13: A Blob by Any Other Name Chapter 14: Blobby One-Note Chapter 15: The Golden Invitation Chapter 16: Essence de Goofball, or Highway Blobbery Chapter 17: The McButt Residence Chapter 18: Industrial Devolution

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Chapter 19: There’s No Badness like Blob Badness Chapter 20: Inviting Disaster Chapter 21: You Know the Drill Chapter 22: Let It Not Be Me Chapter 23: It Had to Be Me Chapter 24: Ready, Set . . . Blob! Chapter 25: The Honored Guests Chapter 26: Backstage Fright Chapter 27: Showtime Chapter 28: Inside Man Chapter 29: It’s a Thin Line Between Slick and Blob Chapter 30: Blobzilla Chapter 31: The Soft Underbelly of Blob Chapter 32: My Blobfriend’s Back Chapter 33: Goofball Against Goofballs Chapter 34: The Perfect Goofball Storm Chapter 35: The Sounds of Silence Chapter 36: Bad Blob Rising Chapter 37: To Heck and Back Chapter 38: Bye-Bye, Blah-Blah Chapter 39: On with the Show, This Is It

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About the Author Other Books by Peter Hannan Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1 In the Middle of Nowhere in the Middle of the Night

an, do I love driving a hundred miles an hour at night . . . backwards. I used to feel nervous when Granny did it, but now that I do the driving, it makes all the difference. Listen, reader: don’t try this at home. I mean on the road.

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First, I’m a professional superhero. And second, I’d recently installed a night-vision camera with a sixtymillimeter optical system that rotates three hundred and sixty degrees and feeds HD video directly into the screen of my helmet, so I see better driving backwards at night than your average Joe sees driving forward during the day. And in that screen I saw a car approaching in darkness—no headlights. Moonlight provided a quick glimpse of the driver’s silhouette. If you wanted to be polite, you’d say this guy was plump, but politeness isn’t always all that accurate. In truth, he was unbelievably fat. Inconceivably obese. More of a blob

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than a man. How he squeezed himself into that car just may have been the greatest unsolved mystery of the universe. His huge, squishy, hot dog–like fingers pushed a handwritten sign up against the glass:

And then he disappeared down the road in a cloud of exhaust. Hmmm. Well, I thought, you can’t please all the people all the time, and that guy in that car is probably crazy but harmless. Anyway, this was an exciting road trip because we were heading off to become rock stars. The band was called Goofballs + Ferret. It’s not the best name,

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because Granny and I are not Goofballs. I mean that’s obvious—when it comes to me, anyway. But it became convenient to call the house the House of Super Goofballs, so I’m just thrown into it, I guess. It used to bother me, but it doesn’t so much anymore. I was as excited about the band as all the other Goofballs were. Speaking of which, they were all asleep, so I was enjoying a little peace and quiet.

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CHAPTER 2 Super Sardines

ell, peace anyway. They were all snoring loudly. Have you ever heard of the Three Stooges, celebrated idiots of stage and screen? When they snore, one snorts, the next whistles, and the third says, “Eeb-eeb-eeb-eeb-eeb.” Well, the Goofballs snore in sequence, too, except the sequence is a lot longer : snort, whistle, eeb-eeb-eeb, tweet, woof, whoosh, knock-knock, boing-boing, boyoboyo, wha-wha, wha-wha . . . and then they start again. What a bunch of goofballs.

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We were packed in the Backwardsmobile like sardines, except not as organized. Just as smelly though. Maybe smellier. Arms and legs and tails and capes and feathers and flippers and heads and double heads and musical instruments were sticking out of every window. Since the fateful day that the Goofballs moved in with Granny and me, their numbers had been growing. In addition to the originals—Blunder Mutt, Super Vacation Man, Mighty Tighty Whitey, the Frankenstein Punster, Pooky the Paranormal Parakeet, SuperSass CuteGirl, Wonder Boulder, and the Impossibly Tough Two-headed Infant—we now also had T-Tex3000, the Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad, Scoodlyboot, the Invisible Superbad Blue-Fanged

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Ferret (who, although invisible, still takes up plenty of space), and now our new roadie, C. P. Wilbur Toady. C. P. stands for Cow Pie, but I promised not to tell anyone that, so forget I said anything. He likes to be called simply Toady. The other thing you should know about Toady, if you don’t already, is that he used to be Dr. Killdream, the evil supervillain who nearly destroyed all our dreams. But he didn’t, and now he has really turned his life around. He happens to be excellent at hauling heavy musical equipment, and we have a lot of it, so we are very happy to have him along.

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CHAPTER 3 Up on the Roof

was trying to find some listenable music on the radio, when Blunder Mutt let out a yelp that was the result of getting poked in the eye by a certain invisible somebody’s invisible guitar. “Owww!” he said. “Watches it! You can bonk me on my noggin wiff jest about anythings— doors, stairs, fishes, trees, fishes in trees, bats, boots, beets, boats, toy boats, toy boits, toy boots, toy beets . . . did I mention boats?—but not guitars, ’cause I muss be allergix to guitars

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because when guitars gets in my eyes they causing redness and itchness!” “Shhhhhhh!” I said. “Everybody else is sleeping!” “Everduddy else isn’t got a guitar in his eye!” “Well then, Blunder,” I replied, “why don’t you just sleep on the roof?” “Good idea!” said Blunder. “I was just kidding!” I called, but he was already climbing out the window. “Blunder!” In about two seconds

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I could hear him up there, snoring louder than the engine. But obviously, kids, unless you also have an overall numbness in the head region and a body that is nearly indestructible, which you don’t, then that’s another thing you should definitely not try. Blunder is like a walking, talking encyclopedia of what not to do. He has survived setting himself on fire, suffocation by marshmallow, maraschino cherry attack, and a multitude of other self-started disasters that I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t come through so well. Sleeping on the roof of a speeding car was dumb even for him.

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CHAPTER 4 Let’s Do the Time Loop Again

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he huge dark car passed us again. This time the fat guy’s sign said:

The car disappeared into the distance but then quickly returned and passed us again. And this time: I MEAN IT! And the car disappeared again. But then I looked behind us (the direction one is facing while driving the Backwardsmobile—in other words, looking through the front windshield) and noticed the same dark car, but now, two red eyes

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glowed like tiny headlights from within the huge blob of a silhouette.

Those eyes jogged my memory. I had seen that same blobby silhouette with the same glowing eyes peering through the living room window at 1313 Thirteenth Street a few nights earlier. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time—I happened to be waking from an extremely freaky nightmare and assumed it was nothing. I sped up, and the dark car sped up, too. Its license plate was BBBB. I wondered what that stood for. I floored it. I was now going almost two hundred and fifty miles per hour, and that blobby guy was still right there, hugging my bumper. I saw a pothole up ahead and wondered if it was a cosmic one. Cosmic potholes are the portals through which Granny travels in time. Anyone can do it, but

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the trick is to find them. She is the only one who can tell a cosmic pothole from a regular one. But Granny was sound asleep. I decided to just go for it and swerved hard to the right. As luck would have it, I drove right in. Kablooie! Cosmic. But unfortunately, the dark car followed me in. Kablammy! Also unfortunately, this method of time travel is ridiculously unpredictable. We traveled exactly one second into the past and then immediately drove back into the same pothole. We got caught in

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a one-second time loop, repeatedly slamming into the same pothole. Kablooie! Kablammy! Kablooie! Kablammy! All that kablooie-ing did two things. First, it caused Blunder Mutt to fly off the roof of the car and disappear into the dark night. Except I didn’t realize that at the time. And second, it woke up the Bodacious Backwards Woman. “Heck the what?!” she said, yanking the wheel hard to the left, aiming for another pothole. Kablooie! This time we traveled a whole two minutes into the future, so we found ourselves further down the road with the dark car in the distance—Kablammy! Kablammy!—still trapped in that tiny time-travel loop. This must have been incredi-

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bly confusing and frustrating for the driver—the fat, glowing-eye guy—because he might not have even realized that he was time traveling. It probably just felt like he was losing his mind.

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CHAPTER 5 Up and at ’Em

omehow, the other Goofballs slept through all this—except Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad. He woke up thirsty. “Oim toisty,” he said. He flipped open a can of soda, which—shaken from all the pothole action— exploded all over the car, waking up everyone else. “Hey!” “Hey!!!” “Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!” A battle erupted . . . as always. “Get yer bloomin’ invisible guitar out of me eye!” said Mighty Tighty Whitey to you know who.

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“Well, get your stinking underwear—meaning your you—off my guitar!” Then Ferret made his guitar and himself visible, which got everyone thinking about the band and the reason we were jammed into the car together to begin with, and the screaming and yelling eventually turned into playing and singing. Unfortunately, no one was actually playing the same song or even the same style of music. We were all so different, we couldn’t agree on anything.

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“We’re Goofballs plus Ferret. Crank it up now, c’mon blare it, Drivin’ backwards through the night, Don’t stop singing, or we’ll fight!” “Something’s missing!” said Scoodlyboot. “Something adorable!” “Yes, we need some—zip, bang—percussion,” said

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Super Vacation Man. “Where in the world is Blunder Mutt?!” “Sleeping on the roof,” I said. “Gee, do you think that’s a good idea?” said Mighty Tighty Whitey. “Obviously not,” said Tubesock. “Have we met?” said Mighty. “I was bein’ sarcastic!” Mighty Tighty Whitey called up to Blunder, “Blundah, ol’ chap, c’mon down. We’re ’aving a bloomin’ pahty down here!” But there was no reply. “My Blundy can sleep through anything,” said Scoodlyboot, who, by the way, is desperately in love with Blunder Mutt.

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CHAPTER 6 A Miracle of Bad Planning

o, Amazing Techno Dude,” said Biff. “. . . what’s the first stop on our tour?” said Smiff. That’s when it hit me. “Hmmm . . . we all agreed we were on tour, but did anyone actually bother to plan the tour?” “Blundy had a plan!” said Scoodlyboot. “He said, ‘My planning is that when the peoples be hearing us coming down the road, they’ll think we be sounding so awesomeish they’ll dropping what they

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doing, run outta their housers, and hire Goofballs plus Ferret on the spots!’” “Blimey,” said Mighty Tighty Whitey, “that’s a brilliant plan.” “You call that brilliant?” said Wonder Boulder. “Sarcastic,” said Mighty, “I was being sarcastic. It’s obviously a bloomin’ terrible plan!” “Still wrong,” said his cousin, the Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad. “It’s not a terrible plan, it’s no plan. There’s a difference.”

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“A difference not worth mentionin’!” said Mighty. “Helping not is arguing this all,” said Granny. “Ferret,” said SuperSass Cutegirl, “you’re like supercool. How does one, like, make it in the music business?” “Sorry,” he replied, “I’m all music . . . and no business.” “Well,” I said, “anybody who knows anything knows that in the music business it’s not what you know but who you know. So, the question is . . . who do we know?” “NOBODY!” screamed the Goofballs. Our music career was over before it started. We needed a miracle.

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CHAPTER 7 Sonny Slick

rrrring! “A miracle!” said Wonder Boulder. Rrrrring! “No, a phone,” I said. “Hello. Car of Super Goofballs, Amazing Techno Dude speaking.” Whoever it was spoke in a very high voice and really, really fast. His words ran into each other. “Just-heard-you-passing-by. Sounded-so-awesome . . . I-dropped-what-I-wasdoing . . . and-calledyou!” “Maybe it is a miracle,” I said. “No, you right,”

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said Wonder Boulder. “It just a phone.” “Shhh,” I said, and then to the guy on the phone, “Who is this anyway?” “Sonny-Slick. World-famous-music-promoter-andproducer. I-wanna-make-Goofballs-plus-Ferret . . . the-biggest-band-that-ever-banded-together! You’reall-going-to-be-rock-stars!” I had seen Sonny Slick on a TV talk show. He was very slick, very successful, and very, very rich. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m going to put you on speaker and video phone. Will you say that last sentence again?” “Sure! YOU-ARE-ALL-GOING-TO-BE-ROCKSTARS!” “Blundy’s plan worked!” said Scoodlyboot. “Now that’s the miracle!” I shouted. “YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” screamed Goofballs + Ferret so loudly that the windows of the Backwardsmobile shattered.

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Apparently even that didn’t wake Blunder Mutt. Sonny Slick gave us directions to Sonny Slick Productions, which was located in Sonny Slick County, in Sonny Slick Township, in the village of Sonny Slick, on the grounds of Sonny Slick Estates, overlooking Sonny Slick Lake, in the splendid personal residence of somebody or other. Oh yeah . . . Sonny Slick. I stepped on the gas and we reached the front gates in no time. The gates opened automatically, and we all yelled, “YAYYYYYYYYY!” “I knew we were going to yell that,” said Pooky.

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CHAPTER 8 Every Slick in the Book

p the driveway we went. The yard looked like a small nation. Make that a medium-sized nation, complete with lakes, mountains, and multiple zip codes. “YAYYYYYYYYY!” We came over the top of a hill.

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“It’s the bloomin’ White House!” said Mighty Tighty Whitey. “More like the White House on steroids,” I said. “It’s Sonny Slick’s house.” “YAYYYYYYYYYY!” But then we realized we were seeing only the tip of the iceberg—the top of the mansion. The bottom part was being blocked by another hill. So when we went over that hill, the entire mansion came into sight. It felt like we were looking at the Grand Canyon or into space—it was too big to comprehend. We would have yelled yayyyy again, but we were dumbstruck. The mouths of every single Goofball (plus one ferret) fell open, and what we said was more like guhhhhhhhhhh. You could have fit about a hundred 1313

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Thirteenth Street houses inside that house. This was what people meant by living large. Sonny Slick was definitely not living off trophies and day-old doughnuts like some Goofballs I knew. As we backed up to the front door (about the size of a tennis court), it opened slowly. A robot servant greeted us. A lot more robot servants were standing nearby at attention.

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“Greetings, Goofballs,” they said together in the same high and fast voice. I realized that Sonny Slick had programmed his own voice into them. “Goofballs-plus-Ferret, weare-at-your-service!” We rolled out of the Backwardsmobile. “Good news, Blundy!” Scoodlyboot giggled, scrambling to the roof of the car. But then she immediately cried, “Blundy?! Where’s Blunder Mutt?!” The robot calmed us down. “Not-to-worry, Goofballs-plus-Ferret! Master-Blunder-arrived-aheadof-you!” “Yayyy!” we said, happy again. We walked into the huge foyer, and everywhere I looked there was evidence of lots and lots of money: silver floors, gold chandeliers, platinum flowers in diamond-encrusted vases. The robot servants asked if

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we cared for refreshments and then poured beverages into glittering goblets and offered snacks on gleaming plates. “Like, I can see dozens of myself in these glittering goblets!” said SuperSass. “But I still can’t see one Blundy!” said Scoodlyboot. “You’ll-see-him-soon-enough,” said a robot servant. “But-now . . . here-he-is, the-one, the-only, therich, the-famous, the-famously-rich . . . you-know-him, you-love-him, I-love-him, I-am-him . . . Sonny-Slick!” “YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

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CHAPTER 9 The Man of the House

usic pumped through a sound system, and it thumped bass deep down into our chests. Sonny Slick stepped from behind a gold curtain. Everything about him was slick: slick hair, slick jacket, slick pants, slick tie, and slick sunglasses. You heard me—slick. “Goofballs-plus-Ferret! Goofballs-plus-Ferret! Glad-ta-meet-cha! Glad-ta-meetcha!” he said. He said that he

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would transform us all into superstars and we’d perform a concert tonight for some grand guests in his grand ballroom. “Do ye tink we ’ave what it toiks?” said Tubesock Lad. “Toiks?” he said. “No, I’m-afraid-not.” “He means tikes,” said Mighty Tighty Whitey. Sonny Slick stared blankly. “They both mean takes,” I said. “Do you think we have what it takes to be rock stars?” “Oh! Yes! Absolutelydo! Absolutely-do!” said Sonny Slick, sounding a bit like a slick rooster. “But-listen,” he continued, “I-know-this-biz. It’s-atough-biz. If-you-wanna-make-it, you-gotta-doeverything-I-say!” “Everything!” we screamed. “Everything, sir!” “Sir, yes, sir!” “You-gotta-promise! You-gotta-promise!”

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“He promises, sir!” screamed Biff, pointing at Smiff. “And he promises, sir!” screamed Smiff, pointing at Biff. “Sir, promise also I !” screamed Granny.

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“Sir, we all promise, sir!” we all screamed. “We are very promising!” screamed Frankenstein Punster. Sonny Slick shouted like a rock-and-roll drill sergeant: “ATTENNNNNNNNN . . . SHUN!” We snapped to attention. “Listen-up, recruits. To-be-a-real-rock-star—” began Slick. “You gotta be real rock!” said Wonder Boulder. “No-interruptions!” barked Slick. He meant business. “Where-was-I? Oh, yes. To-be-a-rock-star, you-have-to-learn-to-flick-your-hair, so . . . FLICK, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” “Flick, two, three, four!” we shouted, flicking our hair.

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When Wonder Boulder flicked, gravel scattered across the room. “ACT-COOL, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” “Brrr, two, three, four!” we shouted, shivering all over. “NO, NO, NO, BITE-YOUR-LOWER-LIP, CLOSE-YOUR-EYES, TILT-YOUR-HEAD, ANDMAKE-A-FACE-LIKE-YOU’RE-IN-PAIN! COOL— TWO, THREE, FOUR!” said Sonny Slick, “Cool—two, three, four!” Pooky bit her lower beak. SuperSass looked over at Ferret. “Like, you were already cool,” she said, “but now you’re a million times cooler!” “Multiply that by like a trillion, put it in a glass with ice, fly it to Antarctica, and serve it to a penguin, and that’s how cool you are!” said Ferret. “Like, brrrrr!” she shrieked. Even Wonder Boulder made a cool face . . . and he doesn’t even have a face.

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“NOW-DANCE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” ordered Slick. We all danced! “DANCE-FASTER, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” We all danced faster! “NOT-FAST-ENOUGH! TWO, THREE, FOUR!” We were dancing faster than I thought possible. Hair and capes and legs and arms were all a blur. T-Tex was dancing so fast that the sparks coming

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off his tongue were causing a trail of light in the air like sparklers on the Fourth of July. “FORM-A-LINE! FORM-A-LINE!” said Sonny Slick. We stopped dancing and formed a line. “NO, NO! DON’T-STOP!” he said. “KEEP-DANCING, FORM-ALINE-AND-FOLLOW-ME! TWO, THREE, FOUR!” Following Sonny Slick we wiggled, spun, jerked, and shrieked like only rock stars can. We wound our way around the fancy furniture. We had visions of superstardom in our heads.

“ D O -Y O U - F E E L - FA N TA S T I C A L LYFABULOUS?!” “Sir, yes, sir!” “DO-YOU-FEEL-ROCK-O-LICIOUS?!” “Sir, yes . . . I think so . . . whatever that means, sir!” We got to a doorway and Sonny Slick waved us through like a supercool traffic cop. We entered a large room, and inside was a huge machine.

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“INTO-THE-STARMAKING-MACHINE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” said Slick. “Sir, the Starmaking Machine, sir?!” I asked. “YOU-HEARD-ME-HUP, TWO, THREE, FOUR! ROCK-AND-ROLL-RIGHT-THROUGHTHE-DOOR!” We rocked and we rolled right into that machine. Looking back, I’m surprised that we weren’t the least bit suspicious. We never even questioned the safety or the sanity of entering such a huge monstrosity. It

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shows just how seductive show business is. We were screaming and yelling and feeling fantastically fabulous! And as soon as we were all in, a heavy metal door slammed shut behind us. Sonny Slick was still outside. He pushed his grinning face up against a window and called to us: “Ready-for-superstardom, SUPERWEIRDOS?! Ready-ready-ready?!” “READY! READY! READY! READY! READY!” Wait . . . superweirdos?

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CHAPTER 10 Rage Inside the Machine

xcuse me, Mr. Slick!” I shouted. “What exactly was that superweirdos remark?” But I couldn’t even hear myself. It was way too loud in there. The Goofballs were incredibly noisy. Their dream was coming true, and they wanted the world to know it. They were all screaming and singing at the tops of their lungs.

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“Rock-o-licious!” shouted Wonder Boulder. They really believed that in a matter of moments they’d be transformed into superstars. “Where’s Blundy?” said Scoodlyboot. “You said that Blundy was here!” The machine turned on with a flash and a clang

and a very loud grinding sound, and then everything went black. I felt around in the darkness, but something grabbed my wrists and then my ankles and squeezed tight. It felt like cold robotic hands. So much for being at our service.

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I sensed robots surrounded us. I heard the sound of a drill. No, lots of drills. The laughing and singing quickly turned into gasping and screaming. What was going on? “Like, is this what becoming a star feels like?” shrieked SuperSass. “Because it definitely does not feel good! And, like, I don’t like it!” “Neither me!” said Granny. “Is it supposed to feel like your brain is getting sucked right out of your head, by any chance?” asked Tubesock. “Even if you don’t have a head?” asked Wonder Boulder. “I didn’t even know it was possible to have a headache all over your—ooch, ouch, yowee— body!” said Super Vacation Man. “This is like a very bad nightmare,” said Toady, “and I oughta know!”

I heard the highpitched screech of a drill on metal. Something was drilling its way through the back of my TV helmet! The helmet rattled and vibrated, and the sound was amplified a hundred times until it seemed like it was coming from inside my head. And that was the last thing I heard.

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CHAPTER 11 Am I Dead?

t first I thought I was. But then I realized that, although I’d never been dead before, dead people don’t hurt all over. Head pain? Check. Foot pain? Check. Eye, ears, nose, and throat pain? Check, check, check, and check. So it was sort of a good news/bad news situation. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was standing in a storage room full of upside-down robots.

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They were completely motionless, but their eyes were blinking slowly. It took me a minute to figure out that I was the one upside down. I was balancing on my TV head. The robots were right side up, hanging by hooks on the wall. I felt strange. My body was achy and stiff, and I could barely move. I rocked on my head from side to side. Bang, bang—back and forth—bang, bang, bang, bang . . . CRASH. Owww. Now I was flat on my back. This was progress. I struggled to my feet . . . and fell down again. Up . . . down. Up . . . down. I fell down ten or twelve more times, and then finally stood uneasily on my feet.

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Where the heck were the Goofballs? I walked out into the hallway and called to them. “Granny? Super Vacation Man? Pooky? Is there a Goofball in the house?” I opened a doorway and walked into a large bathroom. “Yoo-hoo . . . Goofballs?” I passed a window. Ahhhh! One of those freaky robots was staring in at me! It was a robot like all the others—the same lights and dials, the same mechanical arms and legs, the same everything . . . but with a TV head. The TV head looked a lot like mine, except it had more dents, burn marks, and holes. And with my face. Wait a minute! It was me! The window was a mirror! Oh boy. I didn’t look too good.

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CHAPTER 12 I, Robot

guess a cyborg is more like it. Part human, part machine. Yes, technically I was a cyborg already: part human, part TV. But I have always been mostly human. Now I appeared to be mostly machine. I stumbled out of the bathroom and came face-to-face with Sonny Slick. He patted me on the head and talked to me like I was a little kid. “Awww . . . what’s-the-matter, super-wee-erdo?”

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“I think you know, super liar,” I replied. “I-don’t-think-Ilike-your-attitude!” he said. “That’s weird because I don’t care what you think!” I said. “You’re-right-that’s-weird!” he said. “And-I-hateweird! I’m-starting-to-think-that-the-de-weirdificationprocess . . . didn’t-completely-work-on-you!” “De-weirdification?” “Apparently-you-need-a-double-dose!” he said. “You-should-be-talking-more-like-this: Blah, blah, blobbity blah! You-emerged-from-the-machine-withsome-of-your-horrible-differences-in-tact. Perhapsyou-were-shielded-by-that-weeerd-TV-helmet! Thatmakes-me-mad! AND-YOU-DON’T-WANNASEE-ME-MAD!” Boy, was he right about that. Something odd was happening to Sonny Slick. His body started to expand. A button on his shirt popped off and whizzed by me. Then another and another, and they ricocheted

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around the room. His eyes bulged, his cheeks puffed out, and his head started twitching. He wrapped his arms around his body like he was trying to contain himself. But he couldn’t. His tight clothes got tighter. Pasty flesh oozed from his cuffs and collar like rising bread dough. He was transforming into something else altogether— something horrible. But then he just gave up. “Oh, what’s the point,” he said in a voice that was much lower and slower than before. Suddenly, his true self burst forth. His true self was quite disgusting . . . and quite familiar. He was shaping up into a silhouette I’d seen before.

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His clothes ripped to shreds and fell to the floor, but he didn’t really look naked, because he didn’t really look human. He looked something like a gigantic pile of soft-serve ice cream. More like soft-serve fleshcolored mayonnaise, only even less appetizing. This was obviously the same guy I had seen in the dark car. The same glowing red eyes now peered out from deep inside the folds of his fantastically flabby face. “Wow,” I said. “I gotta hand it to you, that was quite the transformation.” “Thanks—I was keeping my true self hidden from you, but it doesn’t really matter anymore.” “Is your license plate BBBB by any chance?” I said. “See, now that’s exactly what I mean,” he said in a voice that was much, much lower now—lower than the lowest note on a piano. “It’s wee-erd that you even know that after going through deweirdification. Very wee-erd.” Then he laughed in his superlow laugh: “Blah-ha, blah-ha, blah-ha-ha-ha-ha . . . ”

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His fat rippled with every blah and with every ha. “Speaking of weird,” I said. “have you ever taken a peek in a mirror?” But he just kept laughing: “Blahha, blah-ha, blah-ha-ha-ha-ha . . . ” He sounded like a recording slowed way down. He was heaving and wheezing, and with every movement he made a horrible squishing sound. “Something tells me that Sonny Slick isn’t your real name,” I said. “I’m sort of afraid to ask, but what does BBBB stand for?”

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CHAPTER 13 A Blob by Any Other Name

he Big Bad Blob of Blah,” he said, burping out the words. “Makes sense,” I replied. “Kinda long though. What about a catchy nickname . . . say . . . Blobby Boy?” “No, I don’t need a nickname!” he said. “How about the Blobster?” “No!” he said. “I’m big, I’m bad, and I’m certainly a blob. Plus I’m made entirely of blah, so . . . the name stays!” “Hold on, blobbermouth,” I said. “What do you mean made

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of blah? What the heck is blah?” “What the heck is blah?” snarled the Big Bad Blob of Blah. “Only the vital essence of yours truly, that’s all! Blah is beautiful because blah is me! Worldwide blah means no more wee-erd people with individual, so-called unique personalities and unique ways of dressing and talking and singing and thinking! Worldwide blah means worldwide sameness! One thing to see; one thing to hear; one thing to smell, taste, and think about . . . one beautiful bland thing and that thing is called BLAH!” “Sounds kinda blah,” I said. “Exactly!” he replied. “I hate anything that’s not like me, that’s not blah!” “You must really hate me then, Blobberino, because I am happy to report that I am nothing like you.” “Right you are, wee-erdo,” he said. “You are different. You Goofballs are just about the most different and weeeee-erd group of misfits I’ve ever had the un-pleasure to meet. I’ve been observing your

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behavior for some time, and I’ve grown more and more irritated by your wee-erdness. The idea of a pair of walking, talking jockey shorts walking and talking in a nearby town—within driving distance of my house—is too much! Super Vacation Man is sending my sanity on vacation! All of you are so wee-erd. And lately that wee-erd so-called music coming out of the basement—I could hear it all the way from Gritty City—was breaking my beautiful

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blah-loving eardrums! The Goofballs are the ultimate example of everything that’s not blah in the world! I simply had to put an end to all that . . . and now I have! Blah-ha, blah-ha, blah-ha-ha-ha!” “You put an end to the Goofballs?!” I cried. “No, don’t worry,” he said, pointing to the storage room. “The De-weirdification—I mean, Starmaking— Machine has greatly improved them!”

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And from around the corner came the robots that had been hanging on the wall. No! These couldn’t be the Goofballs! They all looked exactly the same and were all saying the same thing: “Blah . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah.” “Aren’t they just perfect?” The Big Bad Blob of Blah smiled, his red eyes glowing like hot coals. He was obviously proud of his creations. “Unlike you, they’ve all come through my patented de-weirdification process so beautifully!” I ran toward the Goofball robots but was immediately jerked backwards as if my leg was chained. That’s when I realized that my leg was chained, except that it was an invisible, electronic chain controlled by the Big Bad Blob of Blah. I landed on the floor with a crash. “And the beauty is that they’re one hundred percent blah powered!” He cackled.

“What do you mean blah powered?” I asked. “Well, as I said, I’m made of blah, and, as you can see, there’s plenty of me to spread around. And that’s exactly what I intend to do—spread my beautiful blah-ness across the globe!” And then he did something that I’ll never forget, though I am very sure I will try. He took a thumb and forefinger and pinched off a bit of fat from the folds of his neck. He rolled it into a little ball in the palms of his hands, like a little glob of clay. Except it wasn’t clay, it was blah. “Inside the De-weirdification Machine, my robots sucked the Goofball essence from the brains of your friends and replaced it with a little bit of me, a little bit of blah! Isn’t that just about the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard?” “No, it’s creepy, disgusting, and nauseating!” The Big Bad Blob of Blah found this amusing. “Blah-ha. Blah-ha-ha. You are still way too unrobotic

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in your thinking,” he said. “Your mind doesn’t yet match your beautiful robotic shell. You’re too human, too individual, too you. But don’t worry, I’ll take care of that little problem in no time. Blah-ha-ha-ha-haha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” He was laughing so hard that he didn’t notice something that I noticed. I heard some footsteps and a very soft guitar twang. I looked around but didn’t see anyone. Down the hall, a door opened and then gently closed. Someone had just snuck out of the room. Someone invisible. The question was . . . where was Ferret going?

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CHAPTER 14 Blobby One-Note

he Goofball robots were stumbling around the hallway, bumping into walls and one another, and bleating, “Blah, blah, blah . . .” I strained against the electronic chain that bound me. “So, Blobby,” I said, “I guess this means that there’ll be no concert, no band, no fame, and no fortune?” “On the contrary, my dim-witted wee-erdo,” he said, “the concert will go on as planned. The band will no longer be called Goofballs plus Ferret, though. Now you’re the Robots of Blah—you’ll be more like those wonderful animatronic bands at little kids’ pizza restaurants! Don’t you just love those? Boring, bland, no personality whatsoever—just the way I like it! In

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fact, from now on the band will play only one note. Boy, do I love that note.” “Let me guess,” I said. “It’s lower than the lowest note on the piano.” “That’s right, wee-erdo. And you’ll sing only one word. Together it will sound like a blend of a foghorn and a flock of bored sheep with stomachaches: BLAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHH. No more paying songwriters or musicians to write and play complicated words and music, because it’ll always be the same! Do you know how much money that’ll save me? I can get a bigger house, for one thing. I’m tired of living in this tiny shack—I mean I am so cramped in this three hundred thousand square feet! I’ve got no storage! Somebody tell me where I’m supposed to fit

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my fleet of jets and helicopters in here! So, I need a new house, and you and your Goofballs will help me get there, because I’ll control the Robots of Blah! It’s the music that I like and the whole world will like it!” “But, Blobbert,” I said, “we’re talking about one note! How could they possibly like it?” “Will you stop it with all those wee-erd nicknames?!” he screeched. “But, to answer your question, they’ll like it because I’ll make them like it! Blah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” He dragged me back to the Deweirdification Machine.

CHAPTER 15 The Golden Invitation

eanwhile, back in Gritty City, at Gritty City City Hall, a robot messenger delivered a golden invitation to Mayor What’sHis-Name. It was engraved, embossed, covered with ornate hearts and curlicues, and it smelled like jasmine. It was the most beautiful invitation the mayor had ever seen. “Look, Mabel!” said the mayor to his secretary. “The most beautiful invitation I’ve ever seen!”

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Dear V.I.P.! No, make that B.F.T.M.I.P.O.E.! (By Far the Most Important Person on Earth!) Really, I mean it! Your presence is requested at the social event of the season! No, make that the century! The Robots of Blah in concert! At the exclusive home of Sonny Slick World-famous music producer and promoter! Midnight, this very night! at Sonny Slick Productions, located in Sonny Slick County, in Sonny Slick Township, in the village of Sonny Slick, on the grounds of Sonny Slick Estates, overlooking Sonny Slick Lake. It’s a ridiculously huge house. Some say Grand Canyonesque— too big to comprehend— but I’m getting a bigger one soon! Hope to see ya! If you don’t come, I’ll cry for a week!

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Love ya! Sincerely, Sonny Slick!!!!! “So much sincerity!” said the mayor. “So many exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!” said his secretary. “Cancel my meetings! Hold my calls!” said the mayor. “I must make the trek to the ridiculously huge house of Sonny Slick!”

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CHAPTER 16 Essence de Goofball, or Highway Blobbery

lah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ” When we got to the entrance of the De-weirdification Machine, the Blob was still laughing. He held up a huge jar and stared into it gleefully. His red eyes were reflected by the glass, and a cyclone of color and commotion swirled and bubbled inside the jar. “Behold the waste product of the de-weirdification

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process! Distilled Goofball essence!” You could see hints of things floating around in there—a piece of cape; a swatch of underwear; a bit of flickering, sparking blue tongue. “Say good-bye, Amazing Techno Dude!” He laughed. “Good-bye to Granny and her backwardness! Good-bye to talking socks and underwear, two-headed babies, mind-reading birds, super vacation men, and stupid rocks with capes! Say good-bye to all that is goofball!” I realized at that moment that the Goofballs’ weird personalities were exactly what I liked about them— their ridiculous powers, their strengths and weaknesses—the very qualities that made the Goofballs goofballs. And that stinking Blob of Blah stole all that from them, stuck it into a stupid jar, and filled their minds with blah! The horror! “Tonight, during the concert,” he said, “I will toss the jar of Goofball essence into my unbelievably fancy fireplace, and the Goofballs will be gone forever!”

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“You are an evil, despicable, blob of a blob!” I shouted. “I know,” he said, “aren’t I? Oh, and, by the way, Blunder Mutt’s the worst! Playing drums with his face? Falling down the stairs, setting himself on fire, and still having that horribly positive attitude all the time? What kind of wee-erdo is that?” “Exactly the kind of weirdo I’m proud to call my friend!” I said. “Which reminds me—what have you done with him?!” “Well,” he said, “funny thing about that. Remember back on the road, during that irritating cosmic pothole incident? I mean, for a while I didn’t realize I was stuck in a time-travel loop—I thought I was just going crazy. But, anyway, I saw Blunder Mutt on the roof of your wee-erd car. And all the slamming into that pothole sent Blunder Mutt bouncing onto the road, and I accidentally ran him over twenty or thirty times.Too bad, too, because I was really looking forward to de-weirdifying that puppy!” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed.

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CHAPTER 17 The McButt Residence

eanwhile, back in Gritty City, at the home of Sergeant Bub McButt, the doorbell rang and a robot messenger delivered a golden invitation. It was engraved, embossed, covered with ornate hearts and curlicues, and it smelled like jasmine. It was the most beautiful invitation McButt had ever seen. “Mommy,” he said to his mother, “this is the most beautiful invitation I have ever seen.” “How nice, McButty-wutty.”

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CHAPTER 18 Industrial Devolution

eanwhile, back at the mansion, I was still screaming, “NOOOOOOOOO!” “Don’t you just love me?” the Big Bad Blob of Blah said with a laugh. “I know I do. But enough about me. Let’s talk about you . . . and how you will soon be enslaved by me.” The Big Bad Blob of Blah looked at the De-weirdification Machine’s control panel. “We’d better really rev it up this time, just to make sure,” he said. “Let’s see, we can skip phase one—the fashionable robotic-shell-wrapping process—since, well, you’ve already gone through that. “But the all-important phase

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two, my personal favorite—during which your wee-erd Amazing Techno Dude essence is extracted and deposited into a jar to be disposed of later—that phase needs to be cranked up. Let’s see, which level, hmmm . . . Yes, here it is . . . level ten: Extra-intense De-weirdification for Stubbornly Wee-erd Cases. Or, better yet, let’s make it level one hundred and ten: Way Beyond What’s Necessary Even for Extra-Stubbornly Wee-erd Cases—I Mean This Is Just Plain Nutso, but What the Heck, PLAIN NUTSO IS ME ALL OVER! “I can’t tell you how hard it was to fit the name of that level on that dial! I had to hire a very teeny dial painter with a super-teeny paintbrush to do it, and that costs money, let me tell you. You have to have those paintbrushes specially made for those teeny people, and you have to find even teenier people to make them! And finally, over here, just before the machine’s exit door, is where a

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little pinch of me is added to your little brainy, to give it that fresh blah flavor!” He spun the dial and flipped the switch, and the machine roared and rattled, and smoke billowed from its grinding gears. Blob forced me in and slammed the door and said he’d be back in time to get me and the rest of the Robots of Blah ready for the big concert at midnight. “You know, the usual preshow stuff—hair, makeup, blah-level check, et cetera! Okay then. Toodle-oo!”

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CHAPTER 19 There’s No Badness like Blob Badness

was plunged into total darkness. The grinding and rattling were so loud I thought the entire machine—or at least my head—would explode. I knew that the robotic fingers and whirring drills would soon be bearing down on me. This was bad, very bad. The Goofballs had all been de-weirdified. De-Goofballed! The vital substance that made them who they were was trapped in a jar in a madman’s mansion, soon to be destroyed, leaving the Goofballs dull robots of blah with

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no personalities, no powers—not even the power to think their own thoughts. All except Ferret, but where was Ferret?! And on top of all that, Blunder was a goner, and it was my fault! I was obviously kidding about sleeping on the roof, but I should have known it wouldn’t be obvious to Blunder Mutt! I changed my mind. This wasn’t just very bad, this was the worst thing ever. It was the end of the Goofballs, the end of Granny, and the end of me. And the end was only the beginning. Then we would be used as musical, robotic pawns in the spreading of the Big Bad Blob of Blah’s message of sameness. The world’s population would be made up of billions of cyborgs that were all exactly the same. I needed to think, but I had no time to think because the robotic arms that grabbed me last time were about to grab me again. Not to mention the drills.

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CHAPTER 20 Inviting Disaster

eanwhile, back in Gritty City and in towns all over the tricounty area, at the homes of many people who had always dreamed they’d get invitations to at least one superfancy party, doorbells rang and robot messengers delivered lots of the most beautiful invitations ever seen.

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CHAPTER 21 You Know the Drill

t was totally dark inside that machine, and the pounding and grinding of gears was deafening. Plus, since I was wrapped in a robotic shell, it was hard to move around. A robotic arm grabbed my leg and held tight. I felt the buzzing of a drill near the side of my head. I now knew what those drills were. They weren’t regular metal drills. They were Holographic Microwave De-weirdification Psychosucking Drills—designed to drill virtual holes into your brain; suck out portions of your personality; and, of course, deposit that so-called waste material drop by drop into a jar.

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I was very sure I didn’t want that to happen to me. I dropped to the floor. But then I heard another drill coming up through the floor. And another through the ceiling, and another and another, all inching toward my head. This was not going to be pretty. The idea of having all the qualities that made me me completely sucked out of my head was disturbing, to say the least. But what if there were qualities inside me that I wouldn’t miss? When I was young, before I started superheroing, I dreamed of being an impressionist. I got pretty good at impersonating people. It occurred to me that if I could pretend to be someone else in a superconvincing way—so convincing that for that moment I’d virtually become that person—maybe the psychosucker would suck that part of my personality out of my brain and I could keep the rest of me—hopefully the part that was my true nature— intact. I know that sounds weird and nearly impossible, but weird and nearly impossible is what Goofballs are good at.

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CHAPTER 22 Let It Not Be Me

needed to think of a person with horrible qualities that I could conjure up in my mind, someone whose essence I would be extremely happy to have sucked out. The answer of course, was the Big Bad Blob of Blah. There is no part of that jerk that I wanted in my head. This would require concentration. “Let’s see . . . I’m big, I’m bad, I’m a blob, and I am blah. Big Bad Blob o’ Blah! Blob o’ blah! Blob o’ blah!” I said in his super-deep foghorn-sheep voice. “Everyone must be just like me and blobbity blah, blah, blah!” I shut my eyes tight. I went deep down into my mind and conjured up that big old Blob’s personality. It was working. I could feel myself expanding into mountains and valleys of flesh, pushing up against my robotic shell.

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And somehow, at least in my mind, I became the Big Bad Blob of Blah. I felt the Holographic Microwave De-weirdification Psychosucking Drills entering my head and then I felt the sucking, too. I could feel something being removed from my head. The sucking drills pulled away, satisfied that they’d gotten the essence of Amazing Techno Dude, and then a mechanical syringe came toward me—obviously designed to deposit a dose of blah into my brain—but I deflected that just as I was spit out through the doors of the machine and onto the floor, where I passed out cold.

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CHAPTER 23 It Had to Be Me

woke up. I wasn’t sure if my plan had worked. I definitely did not feel like myself, which was probably not a good sign. I only hoped that my impersonation of the Big Bad Blob of Blah had been good enough to fool the machine and that it hadn’t sucked out the good part of my brain—the me part! I heard someone coming down the hallway. Was it the Ferret? No, the heavy breathing, slobbering, squishing, and burping was pure Blob of Blah. I had to think, but I wasn’t really sure if I still knew how to think. But then I realized that just thinking about thinking required thinking. I struggled to my feet and stood at attention, just as El Blobbo squeezed into the room. I had to act deweirdified. I needed a dead, dull, personality-less

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expression on my face. I rolled my eyes back and let my lower lip droop. I drooled a little. Then I thought maybe that was a mistake . . . so I drooled a lot instead. “Drooling? A lot?” he said in his lower-than-low voice. “Perfect! Welcome to the wonderful world of blah! Are you are finally ready to take your place as the lead singer of—drum roll, please—the Robots of Blah?!” I took a super-deep breath and answered him with one word in the deepest voice I could manage. It probably wasn’t lower than the lowest note on a piano, but I hoped it would do the trick: “BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” “Now that’s more like it,” he burped. Then he snapped his fingers and a robot technician instantly appeared. “Cover up that wee-erd face of his. We can’t have distinguished guests seeing him drool like that. Drooling is frowned upon at big fancy parties.”

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The technician covered the screen of my TV helmet with horizontal steel bars. They were spaced so closely together that I could just barely see through. “Better, much better,” said the Big Bad Blob of Blah. “Okay, the guests have arrived, and I gotta go play host as Sonny Slick because fancy guests don’t truly appreciate my true nature—yet. Right now, they’re all excited to see a new hot band . . . the Robots of Blah. Oh, and while you were getting re-de-weirdified, I fixed up the band with some nifty new features. Each of those Robots of Blah has been psychosuckingdrill-and-blah-implanter equipped! It will be the ex-Goofballs who will make the guests like the music,

because it will be the ex-Goofballs who will suck their brains and fill them with blah. Eventually Worldwide Blah will have franchises all over, in a convenient location near you, and there will be many more Robots-of-Blah bands and many more concerts until every man, woman, child, and pet are exactly the same and worshiping me, the Big Bad Blob of Blah! Isn’t this fantastically fabulous?” “Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” said all the Goofball robots, including me. “Music to my ears,” said the Blob.

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CHAPTER 24 Ready, Set . . . Blob!

sing his controller, which looked like a conductor’s baton, the Big Bad Blob of Blah directed the Robots of Blah to the backstage area. He did some last-minute adjustments and then said he needed to prepare himself. Because, of course, the important guests had no idea that Sonny Slick was really the Big Bad Blob of Blah.

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He closed his red, glowing eyes and pushed his five or six fat chins deep into the fungus-filled folds of his neck. He squeezed his huge hot dog fingers into huge hot dog fists and wrapped his arms around himself like he was hugging himself—which made sense, since he was so in love with himself—and then he grunted, groaned, squished, and smooshed his mountains of fat back into his other shape—the slim, trim, superslick Sonny Slick. “Ready-ready-ready!” he said.

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CHAPTER 25 The Honored Guests

he distinguished guests, including Mayor What’s-His-Name and Sergeant Bub McButt, were waiting in the ballroom. A large jar was sitting on the huge mantel of the gigantic fireplace. “Hello,” said the mayor to McButt. “I’m surprised you were invited. I’m sure your invitation didn’t say B.F.T.M.I.P.O.E.: By Far the Most Important Person on Earth.”

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“No,” said McButt. “Mine said M.M.I.P.T.T.M.: Much More Important Person Than the Mayor.” “Probably a misprint. By the way, how do you like this delicious food?” said Mayor What’s-His-Name. “Kind of blah, actually,” whispered Sergeant Bub McButt. “A bit like cardboard.” “Maybe you’re not fancy enough,” whispered the mayor. “Teeny triangular sandwiches with no crust are quite fancy. It probably takes a fancy person with fancy tastes to even taste them.” “Hmm . . . maybe you’re right,” said McButt, trying another bite. “Come to think of it, these sandwiches are absolutely delicious!” “And I can see myself in my sparkling goblet!” said the mayor. “That’s funny,” said McButt. “I see me in my sparkling goblet!” Sonny Slick stepped from behind the curtain. “Welcome-welcomewelcome-welcomewelcome-welcomewelcome!”

CHAPTER 26 Backstage Fright

ackstage with the Goofball robots, I was desperately trying to think of something. I peeked through the bars of my screen, through the curtain, and could barely see Sonny Slick working the crowd—using the same fast-talking, enthusiastic way of speaking he had used on us. “Thisis-by-far-the-greatest, fanciest, most-sophisticatedaudience-I’ve-ever-had-the-pleasure-to-speak-to,” he said. “And-that-is-why-I-have-chosen-youto-be-the-first-to-hearmy-new-band. It’s-areal-privilege . . . I-amprivileged, and-youshould-all-feelprivileged!”

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“We do, we do!” cried the crowd. That Blob was a great salesman and he had them in the palm of his hand. I desperately wanted to make contact with the Goofballs—or what was left of them—but how do you contact someone who has had his brain sucked out by a psychosucking drill? Maybe I was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe I needed to contact their robotic selves. One of my powers is that I am able to transmit video and radio signals. Maybe I could use a radio signal to override the Blob’s control of the robots. I concentrated hard and started sending out radio waves. I ran through a variety of frequencies—shortwave, microwave, FM, AM—hoping I would stumble upon the frequency that BBBB was using to control the robots. I caused some squawking and beeping on Sergeant McButt’s walkie-talkie and on some car radios outside. I’m pretty sure I heard a microwave oven blow up somewhere back in the kitchen, but the radio waves were having absolutely no effect on the Goofball robots. Sonny Slick was finishing his speech. “And-now, ladies-and-gentleman, it-is-my-distinct-pleasure—

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and-obviously-your-pleasure—to-introduce-tonight’sattraction . . . the-one-the-only . . .” The crowd was going totally bonkers. Just then, something odd happened. A mechanical something shot out of the mouth region of one of the robots. I had somehow found the frequency for something: T-Tex’s lasso. It shot around the backstage area like a lightning bolt, turning this way and that, through the legs and over the heads of the other robots. Unfortunately, it retracted just as quickly and disappeared back into the mouth of the robot from which it came, leaving only a trail of sparks and smoke behind. I tried to activate it again but couldn’t, and now it was too late—the curtain was going up. Sonny Slick finished his introduction: “Robots-of-Blah!”

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CHAPTER 27 Showtime

he curtain went up and there we stood, the Robots of Blah. The crowd roared. The Goofball robots appeared to be holding instruments, but the guitars, keyboards, tambourines, maracas, tennis rackets, and other assorted noisemakers were actually bolted to their robotic shells. The Goofballs inside—or what was left of them—were completely unaware of where they were or who they were supposed to be. Sonny Slick held up his conductor’s baton.

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He stabbed the air with it, and the band members suddenly jerked into position and started playing. Playing is an overstatement, because, of course, all they did was hit one note over and over—a note much lower than the lowest note on a piano. How the Frankenstein Punster robot got a note like that out of a pair of maracas I’ll never know. Although Sonny Slick couldn’t control my mind or the rest of my head, he did control my robotic body. He thrust his baton in my direction. My robotic arms and legs jerked and started making stiff dance moves along with the onenote “music.” It was a bizarre sensation to have an outside force moving my

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arms and legs. To keep up appearances I started singing: “Blah . . . blah-blah-blah-blahhhhhhh!” What a song. I had to get out of the robotic shell, but I was riveted in tight. Just then from out of each Goofball robot’s eyes came the same kind of drill used by the robots inside the machine. They aimed their horrible brain suckers at the audience members, who were confused by the music. “This is the music we’ve been waiting around for?” asked the mayor. “It sounds like cardboard tastes,” said McButt. But soon, as their brains got sucked by the Goofball robots—as their personalities were extracted from their heads—they started to think it was the best music they had ever heard. “I’m starting to think

this is the best music I have ever heard,” said Mayor What’s-His-Name. “I’m starting to think it’s even better than that!” said McButt. “Yayyyyyyyyyy!” said everyone else. “Dance! Dance!” They all started dancing! “This is by far the best dancing I have ever done!” said Mayor What’s-His-Name. Dancing is another overstatement because they moved in a slow, robotic fashion.

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CHAPTER 28 Inside Man

n the midst of the dancing and commotion I tried to activate T-Tex’s lasso again, but nothing doing. And I was running out of options. I didn’t have my remote and my helmet was too damaged to offer other options. What about my old standby, the High-Def-Video-Zombie Hypno-Stare? The concept of the hypno-stare is that, just as you can be turned into a video zombie by watching too much TV, I could turn a targeted supervillain into a video zombie by staring really hard into his eyes, while thinking about some particularly bad TV program I’d seen in my life. The afflicted video zombie then would take on the attributes of the show or commercial I’d been thinking about. It just might work, but steel bars covered my face

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and I definitely couldn’t get a clear shot through them. I needed to pry the bars back a bit, except my robotic arms were controlled by the Blob’s remote. I’d have to free my own arms on the inside. I twisted and wiggled and realized I was beginning to jar them loose a bit. After a burst of yanking and squirming and wriggling, I was able to pull my arms out of the robotic sleeves and into the torso of the robotic shell. Then I pushed them upward, past my chest and neck, and to the base of my TV helmet. There’s an access panel there, and I removed it and pushed my hands inside, up in front of my face. I retracted the screen and somehow—maybe it was the adrenaline pumping through me—I pried apart two of the steel bars just enough to create a narrow slit through which I could finally get a better view.

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CHAPTER 29 It’s a Thin Line Between Slick and Blob

stuck the fingers of one hand through the bars and waved to Sonny Slick. “Yoo-hoo! Blobbity Blob, Blob, Blob!” Sonny Slick’s head snapped around in a flash. “WHO SAID THAT?” “It was me-ee,” I said in a singsong, taunting sort of way, “your all-time favorite wee-erdo! How’s it going, Blobber Kanobber?” “WEE-ERDO IS RIGHT! YOU SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO THINK ANY THOUGHTS ANYMORE, MUCH LESS WEE-ERD

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ONES! AND, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU, NO MORE NICKNAMES!” Sonny Slick was furious! His face got tense—very tense. He was trying to contain himself in front of all those fancy guests. But I could see the veins in his neck starting to bulge. Suddenly the neck inflated, exploding his very fashionable collar. His neck was now wider than his head. “Hate to break it to you, Blobba-Robba-DingDong,” I said, “but you are beginning to look—how shall I say this—a little less slick and a little more wee-erd.” “NO I AM NOT!” he yelled, and then grunted under his breath, “Keep-it-together, keepit-together, keep-it-together, keep-it-together!” His tight suit seemed to be getting tighter. Seams were bursting, fabric was ripping, and

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buttons were popping. His elegant fingers puffed out one by one—poof! poof! poof! poof!—becoming the gigantic hot dog hands of the Big Bad Blob of Blah. He wrapped his arms around himself, but that just caused more blah-y flesh to bulge out somewhere else, like when you squeeze one end of a balloon. “Totally blobberiffic!” I said.

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CHAPTER 30 Blobzilla

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e could no longer contain his true self and, in a huge explosion of anger, he blew up into the Big Bad Blob of Blah—only much, much bigger. He towered over the crowd.

His blobby head crashed into the chandelier. His blobby flesh forced its way through his collar

and cuffs and buttonholes. In a matter of seconds he had blimped completely out of his clothes, revealing vast mountainous regions and luckily unexplored territories of blah. He roared like a Japanese movie monster: “BLAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! BLAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! BLAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Even though the guests had had their brains sucked, they still had some brain remnants and those remnants knew disgusting and freaky when they saw it. “That Sonny Slick is certainly full of surprises,” said Mayor What’s-His-Name robotically, but knowingly. “Disgusting and freaky surprises,” said Sergeant Bub McButt. Then came the wheezing, squishing, and drooling. “I’m okay with wheezing and squishing,” said the mayor, “but drooling is where I draw the line.” The guests stopped dancing and screamed in horror. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

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They tried to escape, but the doors to the ballroom slammed shut. They ran around in circles, crashing into the fancy furniture. The Blob took the jar of Goofball essence from the mantel and held it above his head. He was about to throw it into the fire! I had to stop him! “Hey, Blobbo-Slobbo,” I said, “do you know what time it is?” “Time to put an end to Goofball weeerdos forever!” “BLAHHHH!” I said, pronoucing the word sound like

a buzzer on a game show. “Wrong! It’s time for my patented High-DefVideo-Zombie Hypno-Stare!” I took a deep breath, tilted my head back, and paused. I counted to three and yelled, “VIDEO ON!” and then stared REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HARD—so hard that I thought my eyeballs would pop out of my head. A gigantic, blue, glowing ray leaped from my eye sockets and shot straight toward the Big Bad Blob of Blah! It took an unbelievable effort to successfully penetrate the deep mountains and valleys of his blah-y face—but Goofballs are known for unbelievable effort—and my ray broke through to his evil red eyes.

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CHAPTER 31 The Soft Underbelly of Blob

he Big Bad Blob of Blah took a direct hit. The unpredictable thing about the videozombie ray is that you never really know exactly how it will affect someone. In this particular case—I guess because of the band and all this talk about weirdos and everything—I happened to be thinking about a show I saw only once. Actually, I didn’t even watch the show—I was just flipping channels and saw two seconds of it—yet I’ve never gotten it out of my mind. I had recurring nightmares about it for years. The show was

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called Sing Along with Little Miss Daffodil, the Belly Dancing Weirdo. This was going to be good. The Big Bad Blob of Blah suddenly got a weirdly cute expression on his face. He scrunched up the massive folds of his multilayered lips into a ridiculous smile. And then he started rotating his gigantic belly, around and around, knocking furniture and distinguished guests about the room. He sang in a teeny little voice, laced with syrupy sweetness: “Little Miss Daffodil, Can’t keep my belly still, Belly dance all day long, Singing my sing-y song! Little Miss me, Misses Little Miss you . . . Little Miss Daf—fodil!”

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CHAPTER 32 My Blobfriend’s Back

he crowd had been screaming all this time, but they found his sing-y song amusing and stopped screaming to laugh for a moment. But unfortunately the hypno-stare’s effects didn’t last long on the Blob of Blah. I guess when you’re dealing with that many thousands of pounds of blah, the hypno-stare’s power is just not that long-lasting. “Little Miss Daffodil,” he said, “can’t keep my belly still? Belly dance all day long? . . . Singing my sing-y song? What the heck?” The Blob of Blah was snapping out of it.

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CHAPTER 33 Goofball Against Goofballs

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ou know, kid,” he growled, “I read about that video zombie ray of yours, and frankly I’m a little disappointed. But even more disappointing is the fact that my psycho-sucking drills still didn’t work on you! I think I need a little help this time.” He looked at the robots that used to be Goofballs. He twirled his baton. He lifted both arms, like a great conductor poised to signal a symphony orchestra, and they instantly jerked to attention. “This is way better anyway.” He chuckled. “Watching your ex-Goofball friends do you in will do my heart

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good. Attention, Robots of Blah! Suck the brain of the one they call Amazing Techno Dude! And fill it with BLAH!” And he stabbed his baton into the air. The Robots of Blah stepped toward me, their arms stretched out in front of them like zombies from a bad movie. The whirring of the psycho-sucking drills protruding from their eye sockets was deafening. I backed to the edge of the stage and fell off onto the floor. I landed with a crash, and the Robots of Blah were descending toward me. “SYNCHRONIZE PSYCHO-SUCKING!” the Blob said, laughing. The guests, half deadened by having their brains psycho-sucked and half terror-stricken, were halfaware of what was going on. “I am very afraid,” said the mayor. “Yet curiously unconcerned,” said McButt. I struggled to my feet, but the robot shell made it

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difficult to move and I fell to the floor again. I crawled frantically, desperately trying to get away, but I came to a corner of the room, with nowhere to go. The robots bore down on me and their drills pushed in on me, spinning and whirring, getting closer and closer to their target: my brain. There were far too many of them to avoid this time. They were all focused on me and were prepared to do what they had been designed to do: remove my very essence and fill my head with blah. I thought about the Goofballs inside those robots. It had taken a while for me to appreciate them, and

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now, ironically, they were the ones who would do me in. “Prepare to drill!” said the Big Bad Blob of Blah. He raised his baton, higher than ever, and counted: “Three, two, one . . . PSYCHO SUCK!” And he thrust the baton toward me, giving the final go-ahead. But to my amazement, although the Blob’s hand came forward, the baton stayed right where it was, hovering in the air. What was holding it up there? Had the Earth suddenly run out of gravity? And then I noticed a small nose and whiskers hanging in the air beside the baton. The Invisible Superbad Blue-Fanged Ferret hadn’t deserted us after all.

He materialized and smiled in my direction. “Sorry it took so long, Amazing Techno Dude,” he said in his supercool voice. “I got totally lost in this huge house. I wandered around inside one huge room for hours. Until it blew up for some unknown reason, I didn’t realize I was actually lost inside a gigantic microwave oven. All’s well that ends well, though.” But just then one of the original robots shot a psycho-sucking drill ray right at Ferret and instantly de-ferreted him. He and his invisible guitar fell to the floor with a whimper and a twang and the baton flew into the air. It turned over

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and over, falling in the direction of the Big Bad Blob of Blah, who smiled and held out one of his fat hot dog hands, ready to catch it. I yelled a huge “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” . . . which must have caused a short inside my head. Electrical accidents had occurred inside that TV head of mine before, but nothing like this one. Sparks shot out of my screen and from my cord and plug and from every hole in my head. Radio waves of all frequencies bounced around the room. Every appliance, amplifier, guitar, keyboard, and robot—activated by the random electronic commands of all these radio waves—crackled and came to life.

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The robots started involuntarily jerking and jumping around the room. They danced so wildly that they started to break down mechanically. Gears were grinding; smoke billowed from their eye sockets; buttons and bolts went flying everywhere, ricocheting off the walls and breaking every expensive object in the house.

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And, most important, T-Tex3000’s mechanical lasso flew out of the mouth of his robot shell. It zigzagged around the room, under furniture, over robots, and through the legs of distinguished guests. It was heading straight for the baton! Well, not exactly straight, because it missed the baton, and unfortunately, the Big Bad Blob of Blah caught it instead. Fortunately, the lasso lassoed the jar that the Big Bad Blob of Blah was holding in his other hand. Fortunately I think.

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CHAPTER 34 The Perfect Goofball Storm

es, fortunately. The lasso whipped the jar around the room and finally smashed it against the ceiling. It shattered, creating an explosion of fire and smoke. Multicolored lightning bolts crackled and crashed, and the Goofball essences blasted through the air, releasing a Goofball storm. It swirled around the room like a tornado. Inside that tornado were swirling images of Granny, Super Vacation Man, Mighty Tighty

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Whitey, the Frankenstein Punster, Pooky the Paranormal Parakeet, Wonder Boulder, SuperSass CuteGirl, the Impossibly Tough Two-headed Infant, T-Tex3000, Terrifyin’ Tubesock Lad, and even Scoodlyboot. The Big Bad Blob of Blah looked up and screamed. It was a very long scream that started out low and then rose in pitch, up and up until it was higher than the Sonny Slick voice, then higher than a baby-who-wants-his-mommy voice, and finally too high to be heard by human ears. Since Goofball essence is a very potent weapon against blah, the Blobster shrank while he screamed. Likewise, the blah in the Goofballs’ heads was replaced by Goofball essence

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and their robot shells cracked and fell away like the exoskeletons of insects. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again . . .” said Super Vacation Man, “I . . . NEED . . . A . . . VACATION! I mean, I am—whiz, bam, wacka-wacka SERIOUS THIS TIME!” “I knew it would all work out,” said Pooky. “I wasn’t worried at all. Well, maybe a little.” The servant robot shells also fell to pieces, and from inside stepped a bunch of musicians, artists, writers, kids, and anybody else that

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the Big Bad Blob of Blah considered wee-erd. Then everyone in the room—from Goofballs and mayor to police officer and fancy party guests—did a triumphant dance of celebration that was so spectacularly ridiculous that it was clearly caused in part by an overexposure to essence of Goofball. But then Pooky asked, “By the way, where’s Blundy?”

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CHAPTER 35 The Sounds of Silence

veryone froze in their tracks. “Mutt Blunder is where, yeah?” said Granny. In the excitement, I had forgotten all about it, and now I had to explain the bad news about Blunder. He had never made it to the mansion. He had bounced off the roof of the car way back down the road. And the Big Bad Blob of Blah had run him over . . . twenty or thirty times. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” cried Scoodlyboot. A deep gloom descended on the room. We gathered together and shared

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our misery. We felt awful, terrible, depressed, and also down in the dumps. Blunder had had so many close calls in the line of duty, and now he’d been done in because of a stupid mistake, a misunderstanding. I had suggested he sleep on the roof of a car going two hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he didn’t get that I was kidding. “I only wish,” said Super Vacation Man, “that we had some maraschino cherry juice and rocks—real rocks—to drink a toast to our little buddy, like we always do when we think, you know, that he has finally blundered his last blunder. Only this time, it’s—wham, whimper, weep—real.” “What way to go,” said Wonder Boulder. “Blundy, rest in pieces,” said the Frankenstein Punster. “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” cried everyone.

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CHAPTER 36 Bad Blob Rising

he Big Bad Blob of Blah saw this as an opening. Although he had shrunk a lot, he was still plenty huge. He summoned his remaining strength and rose, preparing to sit on all of us. Not a particularly clever battle technique, but you just can’t argue with sixteen tons of blah. “Goofballs!” I shouted. “Get back in the game. We gotta win this one for the Mutter!!!!!!” But nobody moved a muscle and I was out of ideas. As the shadow of that big butt of Blah passed over us, I knew the end was near in more ways than one.

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CHAPTER 37 To Heck and Back

ust then, I heard a very familiar voice, talking in an even more primitive way than usual: “UGGA-BUGGA-WUGGA! I READY FOR THE TOUR!” I couldn’t believe it. “Blundy,” squealed Scoodlyboot, “is that you?” Blunder Mutt—but a weird caveman version of Blunder Mutt—came crashing up through the floor. He was followed by a couple of people/creatures from different periods of history and the future,

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who worshipped Blunder as a god. It turned out that after being run over by the Big Bad Blob of Blah numerous times, Blunder rolled into a different cosmic pothole, took a multi-hop trip through time, and just now reemerged via cosmic coincidence. The mansion happened to be built over a dense cosmicpothole field. Who knew? Blunder took one look at the Big Bad Blob of Blah and said, “Ugga what the bugga heck-ish is wugga that ?!” “THE BIG BAD BLOB OF BLAH!” screamed everyone else in the room. Blunder didn’t understand the significance of this, but he somehow knew that something was amiss. I mean, when a two-thousand-pound blob of quivering flesh-colored mayonnaise is threatening to sit on your friends, it’s pretty obvious, even for caveman Blunder, that something needs to be done. He leaped high in the air and screamed, “UGGA BUGGA SLUGGA MUGGA BLAH-BLAH WOOF!” Blunder Mutt goofballism is a rare variety—far more powerful than most. The overall weirdness of everything that had just transpired totally stunned the

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Big Bad Blob of Blah. His whole world was falling apart. What he wanted most of all—that every single person on the planet would love him and love blah— was not coming true. He wanted to run, but he didn’t know which way to go, so he just ran around in a circle. The circle got smaller and smaller until he was just spinning like a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. His mouth froze in a wide-open position and he screamed “BLAH” in a voice that sounded like a whistling

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teakettle but which hit every note known to man and dogs and a lot of other creatures, too. He melted like a whirling wicked witch. He shrunk down to almost nothing. “BLAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” “Tah-dah!” we all said.

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CHAPTER 38 Bye-Bye, Blah-Blah

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took out a magnifying glass and found him on the floor. “I’ll call you the Teeny-weeny Glob of Blah,”

I said. “Okay!” he said in an incredibly teeny, squeaky voice. “Just to make sure,” said C. P. Toady, formerly known as Dr. Killdream, “I can clean that worlddomination dream from between his ears for ya. I’ve got some size teeny-tiny pipe cleaners in my toolbox.” “No, not necessary,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the

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world can handle a teeny-weeny glob of blah.” Scoodlyboot approached Blunder Mutt. “You know, Blundy,” said Scoodlyboot, “when I thought you were gone for good, I realized just how much I love you.” “Excuse me,” said the small, prehistoric rodent who had returned with Blunder and obviously worshipped him. “Me love Blundersaurus!” “No, me!” said the tiny alien standing next to her. How or why they both spoke English might just be the second greatest unsolved mystery of the universe.

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CHAPTER 39 On with the Show, This Is It

s long as we were there, we decided to put on a show—a real show this time. Goofballs + Ferret made strange and beautiful music together. We were all playing in our wildly different Goofball ways, but somehow it worked. It was truly a

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grand display of goofballosity. We did a dance called the Goofball Glide and all the distinguished guests did it with us. And they all sang along: “We’re all Goofballs, c’mon and shout it. Crank it up now, no doubt about it, Weird music all night through. I’m a weirdo, and so are you! I’m a weirdo, and so are you! I’m a weirdo, and so are you! I’m a weirdo, and so are you!” They chanted that for a long time. “This is the weirdest music I have ever heard,” said the mayor. “The weirdest . . . and the best,” said McButt.

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The world was saved from global de-weirdification. Mayor What’s-His-Name promised a reward of thousands and thousands of trophies and medals. Sergeant Bub McButt, under the influence of that large dose of Goofball essence, offered to use 100 percent of his salary to pay for a concert tour and recording contract for Goofballs + Ferret, even though he swore he had never met them before. Blunder Mutt was so excited, he pounded his face on the floor, breaking through the floorboards. We looked down in there and discovered yet another cosmic pothole. They really are not that hard to find. “Well,” I said, “I seem to remember Super Vacation Man

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mentioning that he’d like to take a vacation.” “Thanks a—zippety doo-dah—million, boss!” he hollered, flipping off the inflatable trampoline he just happened to bring along and disappearing down the hole. Blunder ran, tripped, and fell in after him, sending his huge prehistoric teeth scattering across the floor. “Waits ugga-bugga . . . I kicks your sides!” Scoodlyboot and Blunder’s worshippers dived in after him. All the other Goofballs bounced, rolled, and flew in after them. C. P. Wilbur Toady gathered up our musical equipment and heave-hoed himself in after them. From the sound of the very loud guitar twang, I’m pretty sure a certain invisible Ferret dived in after him. Someone way down in there screamed, “Get that guitar out of my eye!”

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The Bodacious Backwards Woman did a back flip in. I looked down into the deep darkness. There was no way of knowing where we’d end up or what was waiting for us when we got there. At one point I was sure I’d needed a sidekick, but now I realized I had a whole team of them. What a bunch of goofballs. I did a triple backwards, flipping, twisting, bellyflopping swan dive in.

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About the Author

Peter Hannan is an artist, writer, producer, and professional goofball. He is six feet one inch tall in his bare feet, eight feet three inches tall in his special shoes, and several miles high in his supershoes. He is shockingly handsome. People have been known to faint when they see him. He is the creator of the animated TV series CatDog, which is based on a true story. His writing, illustrations, and single-panel cartoons have appeared in lots of newspapers, magazines, and books. He lives in sunny California with his perfect wife and kids. You can visit him online at www.peterhannan.com. Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

SUPER GOOFBALLS Book One: That Stinking Feeling Book Two: Goofballs in Paradise Book Three: Super Underwear . . . and Beyond! Book Four: Attack of the 50-Foot Alien Creepoids! Book Five: Doomed in Dreamland

Credits

Typography by Joel Tippie Cover art © 2008 by Peter Hannan Cover design by Joel Tippie

Copyright SUPER GOOFBALLS, BOOK 6: BATTLE OF THE BRAINSUCKING ROBOTS. Copyright © 2008 by Peter Hannan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader February 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185574-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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