Commando Bats Read Online Free Page A

hiring her.
    Since I couldn’t build robots, I’d hoped that toys would
suffice, and I was right. Toys could be my minions, interfaces between my hand
and other sources of electricity, as long as I was careful not to break or burn
out the flimsy toys with too much juice.
    I crash-landed into bed.
    It felt like I’d just fallen asleep when my phone went off
beside my ear. It was Bettina, who said she’d taken a personal day from school,
and wanted to know if I was good for my promise — if so, she’d be right over to
pick me up, as the city hadn’t been able to restore power to their block.
    She lived a couple miles inland in West L.A., on a pleasant
block full of jacaranda trees, currently in brilliant lavender bloom.
    There on the front lawn was a sturdy California oak, a
shocking hole in one side, like a bite from some kind of energy dragon.
    “My nephew works for a contractor,” she said when she took
me into her living room, which like mine, had wall to ceiling bookcases. Scorch
marks scored the ceiling, and there was a hole in the wall between living room
and kitchen, a perfect circle about the size of a baseball, with burn marks
around the edge. “The damage to the house, I can get fixed. I hope the tree
survives.”
    She took me through to a typical back yard except for some
bricks piled up beside the cement-block wall. These were covered with various
types of laser burns. A bunch of red fragments lay scattered, obvious remnants
of explosions.
    Bettina said, “I’m getting there.”
    I’d told her a little about my robot minions on the drive
over, and she’d admitted she was also experimenting. She held up one hand,
fingers poised as if she held something invisible against the length of her
forefinger. “Harry Potter was my model,” she admitted.
    “Wand!” I exclaimed.
    “A knitting needle. At first I actually used one of my metal
number 4s, but it got hot. Now I know the feel of it in my hand, so I see it
there, and aim.”
    She pointed her hand as if she held a wand. A thin beam
sizzled across the yard, and punched into a brick.
    “That’s got to be fun,” I exclaimed and for the first time,
she smiled a little.
    Then she indicated the back wall. “Here’s the fuse box.”
    I carefully placed my hand on the metal plate, and shut my
eyes. There was my schematic of the house, the underground cables, and then the
local power grid.
    This was my first really big challenge. The schematic took
over my entire brain. For a time it felt like I’d fallen into it, and I
couldn’t find my way out. But when I made the mental shift to seeing myself
inside, rather than outside — racing along with the
electrons — well,
the nearest comparison I can think of it playing a 3-D video game, only I was
driving with my brain instead of my fingers on a joystick.
    I stayed there refusing burned lines and straightening
snarls until the whole was clean and crisp again, humming like a hive of a
million contented bees.
    I flexed, and felt the entire block light up.
    Getting back to myself was tougher, a little like pulling
out of a wallow of sucking mud. But I made the shift . . . and
found Bettina hovering anxiously over me, as a faint “Finally!” reached us from
one of the neighboring houses.
    Bettina smiled with relief. “I was debating whether I ought
to call 911.” And at my no-doubt puzzled look, “You have been sitting there for
almost three hours. I held off only because I could see your eyes moving.”
    “Tired,” I admitted.
    “I’ll get you right home.” With a thoughtful look, as she
began to pace beside me, she said, “What did you take away from our discussion
last night?”
    “Robot minions. You?”
    “Until about five minutes ago, I thought someone was setting
us up to fail.”
    “Because we’re old?” I asked.
    “Maybe. It was more that of the three of us, two were given
powers of destruction, and yours was in question until now. Then there was whom
she