Oh my God.
Now as soon as I see what condition the robot is in, I crouch down low on my haunches and arch my tail up in a Threat Display. I snort flamestreams out my nostrils.
Because Fribby’s chrome-flex body is floating inside the upright stasis tank, which is two pods fused together and filled with clear goo. That robot looks like she’s asleep in her pod. I can’t believe what I am seeing. My mind is doling out the reality of the situation to me in bits and pieces, as a survival technique. To protect my scaly green ass.
Not too fast, or your tiny heart’s gonna explode.
And seeing Fribby like this, well this isn’t even the most shocking part of all. Because right next to the robot in the other pod there’s another dragon chick who appears to be asleep. And she looks familiar.
Who is that?
But I can’t place her.
Not at first anyway.
Then I recognize who she is.
Oh my God.
Idrixia.
The dragonette who originally agreed to be my Queen for EggHarvest.
The chick who Dr. Terrible stole away from me and married.
And then divorced.
Fribby the robot and Idrixia the Normal are lined up alongside each other in that stasis tank, each of them in their own pod. They both have their eyes closed. And connected by tubes to their fused pods is a small silver pyramid hovering in the air. The pyramid is pulsing with light, so that the fiendish machine appears to be breathing.
Then the final piece clicks into place.
And with a flash of horror I know exactly what I am looking at.
The Evo-Mach 3000.
Dr. Terrible’s Evolution Machine.
Fribby and Idrixia are hooked up to my grandpa’s Evo-Mach 3000. And you don’t need to be a scientific genius to comprehend what is happening right now at this moment. You can tell by how the pyramid is pulsing with light.
The mind-swap is under way.
[ 59 ]
BUSTING FRIBBY OUT OF THE EVOLUTION MACHINE
My nostrils flare.
My snout detects a familiar scent here in the Dungeon Room. The scent rockets up my nasal passages like a thunderbolt to the brain.
Dr. Terrible.
My shrunken heart starts hammering like a bastard.
Dr. Terrible! That deranged sonuvabitch has been onboard ATHENOS II the whole time! He’s been hiding out here since the RageFest last night. That’s why his Evolution Machine is here. He’s been using the Dungeon as an ad hoc lab!
My toe claws shoot out.
Right then that robot Trenx’s words from earlier on Central Campus come rushing back into my mind: “You’ll never in a million years guess where Dr. Terrible is hiding!”
So I fly over in a rage and start pounding my talons against Fribby’s pod filled with clear goo, aiming to bust the robot out of this psychotic Evolution Machine.
This is yet another one of Dr. Terrible’s diabolical schemes designed to torment me and turn my life into a nightmare from which there is no escape! He’s trying to teach me some sick lesson about robots versus Normals! He’s trying to show me that machines should serve us, enhance our lives. But never be our equals.
He’s using his Evolution Machine to make a point about machines! By taking the mind of this Normal dragonette who dumped me, and sticking it inside my best friend Fribby’s robot body. And by taking Fribby’s robot mind, and sticking it inside the scaly green body of the dragonette who dumped me and caused me so much anguish! And after the mind-swap is complete, Fribby’s robot body won’t want anything to do with me. Because Idrixia will be in Fribby’s silver robot body. And my best friend Fribby’s mind will be housed in Idrixia’s scaly green body.
My grandpa the DataHater is trying to break me once and for all!
He’s trying to drive me insane!
“Fribby, Fribby, wake up!” I roar. “Get out of there, Fribby! Wake up, Fribby! Wake up!”
Then, without really thinking about what I’m doing, I whip my tail back behind me and slam my tail down with all my strength against the Evolution Machine’s stasis tank. Now the tail is the strongest muscle in a dragon’s body. My tail is nine feet long. The average dragon can generate nearly four tons of centrifugal force with their tail. And four tons of centrifugal force is enough to punch a hole in the hull of a spaceship.
So when I slam my tail into the Evolution Machine’s glass stasis tank like that, I expect it to shatter.
But when my tail strikes the tank, the Evolution Machine instantly zaps me with an electrobolt that explodes throughout my tail and sends me flying backward.
I land hard on my scaly green ass. The familiar smell of burnt dragon flesh comes clawing up my nostrils. And the acute fiery pain instantly lets me know my tail is covered in flames. I leap to my webbed feet and quickly smack my tail around on the Dungeon floor to put the fire out.
ATHENOS II’s voice booms, “I really wish you hadn’t done that, sir!”
I look up and see ATHENOS II’s giant hideous mouth on the wall.
The mouth is leering at me.
Oh no.
The mouth grins. “Remember me, sir? It’s been a while.”
I’m seeing yellow dots swimming through the air.
In all the chaos, I hadn’t reckoned on how ATHENOS II’s giant hideous mouth was down here on the Dungeon wall. Like I told you before, her repulsive mouth is about five feet wide and it has fangs. And right now I’m busy trying to remember the last time I came down here and fed this mouth with some alien critter. Because it wouldn’t at all be wise for me to be here in the Dungeon Room if ATHENOS II is hungry.
The giant hideous mouth in the wall says, “Do not touch the Evo-Mach 3000 again, sir! I’m warning you! Because if you keep trying to undo my projects like this then I’m going to have to take the gloves off, sir. And things could get very nasty for you!”
“What gloves, you lying bucket of bolts?”
“This glove,” says the giant mouth in the wall.
Now at that moment a green muscular tentacle shoots out of a different wall and zooms right at me. True to her word, ATHENOS II’s fleshy tentacle is wearing what appears to be an alloy-plated boxing glove, and the bulbous glove is shiny and silver.
And I must still be dazed from getting my tail fried like that because as the silver glove zooms at me I’m thinking:
Move, you idiot, move!
Move! Move!
Here it comes!
But I don’t move quick enough.
[ 60 ]
A CRACK IN THE EVOLUTION MACHINE
It’s a miracle my scaly green head stays attached to my neck.
Because the silver boxing glove zooms in and smashes me square in the beak.
Pow.
My head whips hard to the left just in time to see another gloved tentacle shoot out of a different wall and zoom toward my beak.
Pow.