Ms. Holiday smiled. “Actually, you’re not on a plane, Spencer.” She pointed out the tiny window to his right. He glanced over, then did a double take. Outside he could see the planet Earth. It was very far away and getting smaller by the second. Still, he would bet that people heard him screaming all the way from space.

“What is going on? Why have you shot me into space?” he said after he finally calmed down.

“Because what we have to tell you is unbelievable,” a voice said from behind him. Spencer swiveled his chair around. Behind him were the dorky kids from the coffee shop. The chubby black kid was speaking. “And we really don’t have time to explain it. Let’s just say we’re secret agents, we work for the government, this is our space jet, and we need your help.”

“You’re a bunch of—”

“Kids?” the little Korean girl with the unibrow asked. “Yeah, we get that a lot. But, again, we’re spies. The rest of it is classified, Spencer, so let us get to the point.”

The girl with the glasses and puffy hair was next. “There’s a very bad man who has invented a machine inspired by your comic book.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Don’t interrupt or I will have my friend toss you out the door,” the puffy-haired girl said, gesturing to the jittery Mexican kid, who did a strongman pose. “Now, this very bad man has already used this device to rob a bank and to damage some very powerful . . . weapons. We believe he is working for an even badder man than himself.”

“What has that got to do with me?” Spencer said. He thought he might hyperventilate at the weirdness of it all. The lady offered him a drink of water.

“You think I helped him?” he asked when he had calmed down a bit.

“No,” the little Korean girl said. “We think he got the idea from you.”

“I can’t be responsible for—”

“Mr. La Peña,” the chubby kid interrupted. “We are not accusing you of being a bad guy. We are just trying to find out how this ray gun you imagined works. The guy who built the real-life version intends to build a much bigger version, which could lead to a very big problem. If he succeeds, he and his employer could easily upset the balance of power in every corner of the world. So, again, I know this is confusing—”

“And freaky,” the Mexican kid said with a laugh.

“You kids are nuts,” Spencer cried, trying to break his restraints. “You can’t pull some silly gadget out of a comic book and make it real.”

The woman pointed at a bank of computer screens. “Benjamin, can you show our guest the footage of Albert’s robbery?”

A moment later the screens showed pictures of an obese man in a costume. His ray gun was pointed directly at the bank manager, who cowered beneath her desk.

“It’s . . . it’s real,” Spencer stammered.

“How does it work?” the girl with the puffy hair asked impatiently.

“If that guy got his ideas from my comics, I want you to be clear that I just made it all up. I’m no scientist. It’s just, well, I was reading this article about nanobyte technology in a science magazine. You know nanobytes? Those tiny microscopic robots?”

The children shared a knowing look. “We’ve heard of them,” the chubby kid said.

“There was a theory that they could use the robots for a variety of different tasks, everything from faster computers to brain surgery. I started wondering if these robots might be susceptible to computer viruses, so I thought that a cool villain might be a guy who manipulates machines by making them sick.”

“How does he do that?” the Korean girl asked.

“Again, I’m not an expert, but I did do a little research. When a computer gets a virus, it’s because it downloaded something designed to make it sick, but you can’t just download things into microwaves and cars and stuff. So how do you get the virus into the machine without the download? You send it through the air. Machine Master’s gun is really just a portable wireless connection that beams viruses into machines. The ray gun turns the virus into a radio wave and fires it. The target machine is bombarded with a virus, new information—whatever. Most machines aren’t designed to fight back. You could use this ray gun to completely reprogram anything with a processor.”

“Like hypnotizing it,” the puffy-haired girl said.

Spencer nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What kind of materials would you need to build one that could take over all the world’s machines at once?” the chubby kid said.

“That would be impossible,” Spencer said.

“Imagine it’s not,” the Mexican kid said. “Imagine you had all the money in the world, all the workers you needed, and a giant brain that could put it all together.”

“One, you would need an infrared crystal to transmit the signal.”

“Can we bring the language down to those who are still in elementary school?” the kid with braces complained from the cockpit.

“What I’m saying is that if you have ever seen a remote control, the part where the beam comes out is usually a piece of glass or plastic that directs the signal. A tiny diamond works even better. If you were going to build a huge machine, you’d probably need a big diamond to keep it stable—actually, a really big diamond. Secondly, you would need an incredible number of computer chips and processors . . . and, lastly, to affect every machine on Earth, you would have to get your ray gun high enough into orbit to hit the whole planet at once.”

“Mr. La Peña, I appreciate your time,” the puffy-haired girl said.

“Can we send him home?” the lovely woman said. “He looks like he’s had a long day.” The girl nodded.

Ms. Holiday smiled and held out her hand. Spencer took it and a tingling feeling raced through him. He’d never been near someone so pretty.

“It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Holiday,” he said. “Perhaps we could get together sometime. You know, I have an extra ticket to Comic Con.”

Ms. Holiday blushed and Spencer felt a jolt. Then he looked down and realized the woman had injected him with something, just like the kids had at the coffee shop.

“Aww man,” he said, but he was asleep before he could say anything else.

The next morning he woke up in his apartment, curled up in bed, feeling as if he had had the best night of sleep of his life. He sat up, rubbed the sand from his eyes, and felt an incredible rush of inspiration roll over him. He darted to his phone and dialed his editor at the comic book company.

“Pete, this is Spencer,” he said excitedly. “Pete, just listen to me. I have the best idea for a comic book ever! It’s about these five kids. They work for the government and they have this very hot woman overseeing them. They ride around in a rocket and . . . what am I calling it? I haven’t figured it out yet, but it’s my next project. What? Forget about the novel. Feudal China can wait!”

Albert had a routine. Every day he woke up at the crack of 2:00 PM. He would eat a breakfast of whatever fast food he had not finished the night before. Then he would take a nap.

At 4:00 he would wake and watch a series of courtroom shows featuring sassy but fair judges. He particularly enjoyed Judge Creole, who was Cajun and had a spicy personality to match. At 6:00 he would stagger out of the basement and head to the comic shop to either buy new books or just hang out. At 10:00 he would head back home to watch whatever science fiction television show he had taped and eat something that came from a can and could be cooked in the microwave.

But his whole routine was turned upside-down now that he had a job. His day started whenever the squirrels began scampering around the trees, snapping and screeching at one another, and knocking pinecones down on his head. This was usually around 5:00 AM. His mama was usually up by then preparing a breakfast of fruit, whole grain bread, and sugar-free oatmeal. It made him gag. Simon and his goon would join them, and they would talk about things in the news, the weather, and their diabolical plans for crushing the spirit of everyone on the planet. Albert found it tedious. He did not feel much like socializing in the morning, let alone eating a wholesome breakfast.