Gerdie was horrified. For all her superintelligence she felt completely foolish. Everyone had warned her that Heathcliff would betray her!
She pressed the comlink in her nose and heard Pufferfish on the other end. With the portal open, she could still communicate with the team. “We’ve got a problem,” Gerdie said as she rushed to the atomic harpoon to check on her calculations.
“What are you saying, Gerdie?” Pufferfish said. “Is it Heathcliff? Whatever he’s doing, you have to stop him!”
Gerdie’s nanobytes went into overdrive calculating pro-babilities there was a percent chance that if screwball got his teeth back, combined with the power of her bridge device, he could take over their world and the rest of the multiverse—but she couldn’t stop the upgrade process once it had started. Not even her math skills could shut down that advanced machinery.
Gerdie glanced back at the glowing portal and an idea came to mind. She had to speed up the harpoon’s process, force her Earth back into the universal constant, and then destroy the bridge device. It would trap Heathcliff in this empty world, but …
“I’m going to save our world and every other one, too. But I will be trapped here in this world forever, and so will he,” Gerdie replied.
“You can’t do that!” Duncan shouted over the link.
“Yes, I can,” Gerdie said. “If it saves everyone else, I can take on this burden. I have no choice.”
Gerdie took a deep breath and turned up the harpoon’s ray.
The machine rumbled to life and shot a brilliant blue beam through the glowing ball. The portal swirled and shimmied, undergoing incredible unseen pressures.
Gerdie checked the device’s display. “It’s working!” she cried. “The beam is pulling the planet back into place.”
Gerdie took the glove off her hand and slammed it on the ground, then stomped on it. She suddenly felt a twinge of remorse—it had been such an ugly device at first, before it had gone through its own upgrades. She never imagined it would cause so much devastation. Then again, she never imagined she would, either. After a couple more stomps her precious device was shattered. The glowing portal shrank into nothing and with a tiny pop disappeared like a soap bubble.
Just then, the door of the upgrade room flew off its hinges and across the room. It slammed into a wall, leaving a jagged hole where it had once been. From it emerged something that her upgrades could never have calculated. It was Screwball—but he was different.
His head was as big as a van.
His torso was gone.
His arms and legs hung from his gigantic noggin like the appendages on a doll, lifeless.
His mouth, eyes, and nose were also stretched out of proportion, making him almost unrecognizable except for the enormous, gaping hole where his front teeth had been. Heathcliff hadn’t gotten the upgrade he had expected.
He moved into the room, floating above the ground much like Benjamin. He stopped in front of a mirror hanging on the wall and stared at himself without words or emotion—just looking at himself the way a baby might stare at itself, with wonder and curiosity. Then, without looking at Gerdie, he began to speak.
“Well, it appears I’m going to have some trouble buying hats,” he said, then he broke into hysterical and troubling laugh, all the more disturbing when combined with his new appearance. “I suppose that’s the risk you take when you suddenly become the most intelligent being in the multiverse.”
Gerdie stepped forward with all the bravery she could muster. “I destroyed the bridge device. We’re trapped here. Whatever you had planned has failed!”
Screwball glanced down at the broken machine. “A minor problem for one such as me.”
She watched as he focused on the broken pieces, and they lifted off the floor as if they were weightless. Gerdie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. They spun and twisted until every little piece fused back together in perfect working condition. When it was finished, the bridge device floated toward Screwball. He looked down at his tiny, useless arms and frowned. Then the device swirled and expanded once more until it was transformed into a gigantic helmet. It floated onto his head and a glowing light appeared at its center—directly between his eyes.
“Look at me. I found a hat after all,” he said and laughed his maniacal laugh. With a wave of his hand, Gerdie was sent flying across the room by an invisible force. She slammed hard into a wall and winced in pain. As she struggled to recover, she watched the helmet glow with power and create a new interdimensional bridge. The ball of light grew until it was big enough for the monster Screwball to enter.
“Don’t do this!” Gerdie begged.
“Mathlete, you of all people should understand. The smartest people should rule the world. That’s just simple math.”
“You’re wrong!” she shouted. “You’re not smart. You’re a hurt little boy who wants the world to love him, and when it didn’t, you never imagined the reason could be you. I did the same thing. I made it impossible to like me.”
“You may be right, Gerdie,” Screwball said. “I’ll keep that in mind as I’m conquering the multiverse.”
Then he hovered his grotesque body into the glowing ball and was gone. The ball began to vanish, but Gerdie saw one last chance. Reconfiguring a few buttons on the harpoon, she knew she could send one last message into the multiverse—one last warning in case her plan failed. She pushed the transmit button and a second beam shot through the tiny white ball before it vanished all together. She prayed that someone, somewhere would hear it.
As Gerdie stood in her new, silent world, numbers and equations began to fly around in her mind.
“Benjamin?” she said.
At once, a little blue orb popped out of a glass table in the center of the room.
“Do I know you?” it asked.
“My name is Lilly—no, my name is Gerdie Baker. I’m a NERD and I need your help,” she said.
“What can I do for you?”
“You and I are going to sit down and do some math,” she said.
“Whatever for?”
“We’re going to figure out how to rescue the population of this planet from an alien race,” she said.
Benjamin spun and clicked. “A lovely idea, Gerdie.”
“What’s going on?” Matilda shouted. She could barely hear Agent Brand over the roar of the cheerleading fans and her squad’s squeals of delight.
“The team is on its way, Wheezer. Ms. Holiday, the lunch lady, and I will be there as quickly as possible. Do your best to keep the crowd safe.”
“Safe? From what?”
Suddenly, there was a scream from the crowd, and chaos erupted. Before she knew it, people were running for their lives. She scanned the crowd for the source of the terror and got the shock of her life. A giant head hovered over the reflecting pool, blasting trees, cars, and anything else that got in its way with lasers that shot out of its eyes. It was like something out of a horror movie. It just couldn’t have been from Earth … but the tears were supposed be fixed.
She took a shot of her inhaler, then turned to the squad. “Girls, I have to go to work.”
“What can we do?” Kylie said.
“You’re cheerleaders,” Matilda said. “Get the crowd’s attention and lead them to safety. Get them as far away from here as you can.”
McKenna was busy texting into her phone. Matilda snatched it from her and turned it off.
“Hey!” McKenna cried.
“Sorry, national security has to come before your social networks!”
“Be careful,” Tiffany said to Matilda as she led the squad toward the crowd. “You have to help us defend our championship next year!”
Matilda squeezed the plungers on her inhalers and felt a rush of power in her hands as she shot straight into the air. Leveling out, she could see four kids falling from the sky. Their parachutes opened in the nick of time and soon they were touching down on the National Mall. The NERDS had arrived.