20,000 Nerds Under the Sea Read online

  DEDICATION

  For “Aunt” Linda Hall—my second mom

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “NOW, REPRESENTING COLORADO’S ROMARE SMYTHE Junior High School: Neil Andertol!” the announcer boomed to the crowded auditorium. Neil Andertol nervously stepped out from behind a heavy curtain, careful not to get tangled in the banner that read SOUTHWESTERN ROBOTICS INVITATIONAL.

  He slowly walked toward the center of the stage, making sure not to break the robot he cradled in his hands.

  “Good luck!” whispered a girl, Marla, who had just finished her presentation. She lugged her small, malfunctioning robotic poodle backstage. Its bark was supposed to scramble any piece of technology, but its mechanics had gone haywire halfway through.

  “Thanks,” mouthed Neil, his palms clammy.

  He wore a blue polo shirt tucked into khaki pants. He hated tucking in his shirt—almost as much as public speaking—but somehow his family and friends had talked him into doing both.

  With a thud, Neil placed his square hunk of metal on the ground. It was a flying drone, with a rotor at each of the four corners like tiny helicopter blades. Its center was a black metal hub that contained a jungle of wires, batteries, and moving parts.

  The tournament host was dressed in a faded shirt and thin black necktie. His hair was shiny with hair gel, and he wore a white-and-green name tag that read AMEER.

  “Who’s ready for more robo fun?” Ameer asked the crowd.

  The audience clapped as Neil stepped forward. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the bright lights. Through the glare Neil looked for his family—and his friend Tyler—in the audience.

  Tyler had originally meant to compete in the tournament, but his robot had caught on fire days before. With only a pile of melted metal and ash to display, he’d convinced Neil to take his place.

  Neil and his friend had created their robots as a project for their after-school robotics club, but there was one problem: each school was only allowed one slot in the tournament. Neil had insisted that Tyler enter, claiming that his sister had a karate tournament the same day. But really, he just wanted to see his friend succeed; and to be honest, Neil was a master video gamer, but a master with robotics? He wasn’t so sure about that.

  But once Tyler’s robot was out of operation, there was no one to take his place but Neil.

  Now, standing in front of a full auditorium, Neil ran a sweaty palm through his messy black hair. He pushed up his glasses. The lights overhead felt hotter than re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

  “Neil! Over here!” shouted a voice from the crowd. It was his karate-loving younger sister, Janey. “Everyone is watching! Don’t mess this up!”

  “Oh, quiet, Jane. Neil, you’re doing great, honey! And if it helps, I don’t think everyone is watching!” shouted his mother’s voice.

  Oh, great.

  “That’s quite some cheering section you have, Neil,” said the announcer, glancing at a clipboard with Neil’s official entry form. “I see here you’re a pretty good pilot?”

  Pretty good?

  “I, uh, enjoy flying things, yes,” Neil said.

  “Ooh, things!” said Ameer. “Any ‘things’ in particular?”

  Neil thought about telling the truth. How past “things” he enjoyed flying included the Air Force’s undercover jet fighters and NASA’s experimental spacecraft—but he was sworn to secrecy.

  “Just this,” Neil answered, nodding to his creation lying on the stage. He’d built it using an old fan and a broken lawn mower that he’d found in his parents’ garage. Several hours of online DIY-droning video demonstrations had helped with the final touches.

  “Does your machine have a name?”

  “Lieutenant Drones.”

  “I like it, very official,” replied Ameer. “And this is your first time in our tournament, I see. So you are aware of our grand prize, yes?”

  “VIP passes to attend RebootCon, and the chance to meet Reboot Robiskie himself,” Neil answered quickly.

  “And there’s more, folks!” said Ameer. “Don’t forget about the signed photo of your meet and greet.”

  If there was anything that could make Neil speak in public or tuck in his shirt, it was the idea of meeting Reboot Robiskie. He was Neil’s internet hero, a loner who lived on a private yacht and ran his own underground gaming site. Neil would often upload videos of his gaming to the server.

  “I also see here that you are part of a club?”

  “Yeah,” Neil replied, leaning into the microphone. “My friend Tyler started it.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “Drones ’n’ Scones. For people who like robots. Or baking.”

  “Or both!” yelled Tyler from the audience.

  “Or both,” Neil added. A slow laugh crept through the audience, and Neil felt his shoulders relax.

  “That sounds like my kind of club,” said Ameer with a phony smile. “And speaking of food, I don’t want to forget to thank this year’s tournament sponsor, the good people at Rogers Ketchup.”

  The audience gave a round of halfhearted applause.

  “So without further ado, let’s see what you’ve got, Neil,” said Ameer. “Judges, are you ready? Neil, all set?”

  Neil nodded.

  “Neil Andertol, from Drones ’n’ Scones in Colorado, you have five minutes . . . starting now!”

  Neil cleared his throat and flipped a small switch on the back of his remote control. His robot came to life, loudly whirring like a facedown box fan. It slowly lifted off the ground.

  “Hello, everyone,” said Neil. “I’d, um, like to introduce you all to a thing I made.”

  Neil pushed a small remote joystick, and the drone slowly lifted higher, floating with ease. It shot across the stage, then stopped in midair, waiting for Neil’s next command.

  “This machine operates like most hobby drones,” he continued. “While it’s illegal to fly these commercially without a license, mine has a cruising altitude of a few hundred feet. Plus the controls are very responsive.”

  Neil pushed the joystick, and the drone dipped down. It stopped inches above the floor, pausing before it rose out toward the audience. A spotlight followed it over the crowd.

  “While this drone looks simple, it does have a secret. Who here would like a treat?” Neil asked the audience.

  A young girl waved her arms from a few rows back, and Lieutenant Drones soared toward her.

  “A gift from Drones ’n’ Scones. Heads up!” Neil said. He pressed a button on his remote control, and a blueberry scone dropped from the center of the robot. It landed a few seats over from the intended target, but people eagerly passed the pastry to her.

  “Anyone else?”

  More hands were raised throughout the audience, and Neil steered his drone toward the back rows. He guided it smoothly, his tongue darting out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Neil looked at his parents and realized it was their first glimpse at his expert piloting skills.

  Why
was I afraid of this? This is great!

  Before reaching its next target, Neil’s drone began to wobble. He fidgeted with the controls, but the rotor blades began to spin even faster.

  Phoomp! Phoomp!

  Like a T-shirt cannon at a basketball game, Neil’s robot began firing projectile baked goods into the audience. Scone after scone peppered the crowd.

  Uh-oh.

  Neil tried to steer his robot back toward the stage, but it wasn’t responding. He panicked and mashed every button available, but nothing worked. He turned off the power switch on the back, but the drone kept flying. It spun in chaotic loops, unloading its supply of scones.

  “That’s gonna leave a bruise!” yelled a man in an orange T-shirt, rubbing the top of his bald head. Neil heard someone laugh from backstage and glanced in that direction.

  He could only see a girl’s profile, as her face was covered in shadows, and frizzy hair. She laughed once more, a nasal cackle.

  “Land that thing, kid!” hollered a voice. Neil turned back to the audience and saw that the robot had gone haywire.

  He tried to maneuver the robot toward the ground, but he couldn’t control it. It was overheating, and a chocolate scone was turning into a gooey mess. Molten chocolate leaked out from the bottom. People began to duck under their seats.

  “Neil, your robot is pooping!” yelled Janey.

  Neil’s face went red.

  “Sorry, everyone. This isn’t normally how this goes,” he shouted, his voice cracking.

  From the side of the stage, Ameer appeared. Marla was with him, her robot poodle in her hands.

  Woof! Woof!

  With the poodle’s high-pitched bark, Neil’s robot quickly turned off, falling onto the lap of a stranger. The poodle’s radio frequency had scrambled all the electronics in Neil’s drone.

  “Wow, that’s some bark!” Ameer shouted. “It looks like we might have our champion!”

  Ameer proudly raised Marla’s hand as Neil watched an angry group of people pull raisins out of their hair.

  “Better luck next year, kid,” said the tournament emcee. “Or, you know, maybe not. . . .”

  Neil trudged down into the audience to collect his drone, knowing he’d just ruined his only chance at meeting his hero.

  NEIL ANDERTOL WOKE UP SNEEZING.

  He plucked a clump of cat fur from his lips and rubbed his blurry eyes. Every night since the robotics tournament last month, he’d been reliving the fiasco in his dreams. A night spent in his friend Biggs’s basement was no different—his drone disaster haunted him like a stomachache. But Neil shook off his nightmare and promised himself that today would be different. It was a day that he’d been looking forward to for weeks. After many months apart, all eleven of Neil’s friends were finally back under one roof for one weekend.

  “Easy with the claws, Virginia,” said Neil to one of Biggs’s thirteen cats. She ignored him and kept batting at his sleeping bag. Sunlight sneaked in through a tiny window near the ceiling. Biggs’s house was a sun-bleached two-story, right near an ocean cove. Neil spit out cat fur and watched the squadron of cats wind through the row of barely awake kids.

  These kids were some of the best video gamers in the world, and Neil’s closest friends—the US government had recruited them all for top secret missions.

  The two girls on their team, Sam and Corinne, were upstairs, enjoying a slumber party with Biggs’s mom. Ms. Hurbigg had a telescope that was taller than Neil, so Sam was excited to stay up late and look at constellations. Neil figured Corinne was spelling the long, complicated names of distant star systems.

  “Biggs, tell Connecticut to stop hissing at me,” said Jason 2 from his sleeping bag. He wore a faded yellow T-shirt that read SUPER JASON in cursive.

  “That’s not Connecticut—that’s Pennsylvania,” Biggs replied. “That one with the spots on her paws is Connecticut.”

  “I think they all have spots on their paws,” said JP, wrestling his glasses away from a brown-and-white tabby.

  “Yeah, probably,” Biggs said, waving a hand to shoo his cats toward the stairway.

  “Biggs, how many more cats are you planning on getting? Are you going for the full fifty states?” asked JP, putting on his smudged glasses. He’d passed out while working on calculations for his science-fair project. His sleeping bag was covered in small magnets and spiraling blue wires.

  “We’ll see,” Biggs replied, crawling out of his sleeping bag like a lanky caterpillar. He’d really shot up in the few months since he and Neil had saved the solar system, and now he was even taller.

  “Or maybe I’ll name a cat after my hero—Neil Andertol,” joked Biggs.

  “Sir Neil Andertol, the one and only,” said Riley in his signature Renaissance-fair accent. “The fairest video gamer on Earth, and not to mention the top flight pilot and space astronaut.”

  “OK, OK, we get it,” said Neil, blushing.

  “And don’t forget sleep talker,” said Waffles, the Montana native and lasso enthusiast.

  “He makes a good point, Neil,” said Waffle’s twin brother, Dale. “Pretty sure last night you mumbled something about a ‘traveling pirate circus.’”

  “Wait, that’s in town?” said Yuri. “What are we doing going to that gaming convention?”

  “And the title of best gamer on the planet is still up for debate,” said Trevor. Even after a long flight from Boston to California, he was still eager to pick fights. But Neil, who had organized the weekend, was glad to see him anyway.

  After Neil’s embarrassing robo demonstration, his parents had promised they’d make it up to him and offered to send Neil to Reboot Robiskie’s convention. Neil was going to stay at Biggs’s, but he had invited his ten other counterparts along for the adventure. Through some sort of miracle, they were all able to join.

  “It’s not ten yet, right?” said Waffles, folding up his camouflaged bedroll. “We can’t be late for the convention.”

  “’Tis only half past eight,” said Riley, looking at the watch on his pudgy arm. He smelled vaguely like hay bales. “And I agree, we mustn’t be late for Sir Reboot’s World’s Fair.”

  “It’s just called RebootCon,” said Neil.

  “And what exactly goes on at such a convention?” asked Yuri. “I’ve never been. Most of the live-action role-playing I go to meets in the woods.”

  “RebootCon is special. There are row after row of video games you’ve never even seen before,” said Jason 1.

  “Even though this is only the third convention, I heard Reboot’s flying in the highest-paid professional gamers from all over: Russia. South Korea. Des Moines,” said Waffles.

  “They have screens that are so large, they’re illegal in certain countries,” added JP. He carefully tucked his science project into a sturdy plastic case.

  “Yuri, you’ll love it. Each one gets better,” explained Dale.

  “Last year, they had a competition over who could play video games the longest without blinking,” added his brother, Waffles. “A kid played for three hours straight, misting his eyeballs with a squirt gun.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get to this Reboot conference,” said Yuri excitedly.

  “It’s RebootCon . . . ,” Neil said.

  Neil and a few others began to pick up the half-eaten bags of chips and pretzels that surrounded Biggs’s television. A cat, maybe Vermont, scratched at a plate of cookies covered in plastic wrap.

  “Let’s get a move on, sleepyheads” came a voice from the top of the stairs.

  “Rise and shine!” It was Samantha Gonzales, Neil’s best friend. She flicked on the fluorescent lights in Biggs’s basement.

  “We’ve risen! Now turn those off!” yelled a squinting Jason 1. His pillow was in the shape of a football, and he used the cushion to shield his eyes.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it. Now get up here,” Sam said.

  Blatttttt.

  From the front yard came the blast of a truck horn and the diesel ro
ar of a huge engine.

  “What’s going on?” asked a confused Biggs. “Is this one of those home makeover shows? They’ve been getting my emails!”

  Neil smiled, his eyes bright. “It’s actually a surprise.”

  Neil sprinted up the stairs and out to the front yard. He rounded the corner to see a giant vehicle, its windows tinted jet black. It looked like a giant party bus. The glow of bouncing neon lights was visible through the windows. The bus had pulled into the driveway diagonally, crushing Biggs’s mom’s flower beds.

  “Did you miss me?” asked a voice as the door swung open.

  “Harris!” yelled Trevor. The rest of the group gathered in front of the rumbling vehicle.

  It was Harris Beed—former evil villain, current video-game designer, and the heir to his family’s Beed Industries fortune. His quick thinking was also responsible for helping Neil’s team find a stolen spaceship on their last mission.

  “Nah, we didn’t miss you,” joked Sam. “And neither did those rosebushes.”

  She pointed to the thorny plants crushed under the bus’s thick tires.

  “Oh,” said Harris. “They’ll be fine—let’s get on the road!”

  “You’re here early!” said Neil. He and his friends were still in pajamas, their hair matted into bed head.

  “I’ve got some fires to put out before the convention starts. All the ostriches for Feather Duster 3 keep yelling Taylor Swift lyrics,” Harris said. “The work of a game designer is never done. Now go get dressed.”

  “Do we need to bring anything else?” asked Sam.

  “Where we’re going we don’t need anything else,” Harris said with a wave. “We’ve got sparkling energy drinks, free T-shirts from my dad, and, like, four hundred donut holes.”

  “Are you kids sure you don’t need a ride? I’m happy to drive,” said Biggs’s mom, joining everyone out front.

  “It’s my treat, honest,” said Harris. He lifted his sunglasses to survey the shrubs he’d just run over. “And my father knows a killer landscape guy. We’ll get this fixed right up.”

  “Groovy. We’ll figure it out,” said Biggs’s mom. She had frizzy blond hair and the same smile as her son. “And don’t forget your tickets!”