Floors #3: The Field of Wacky Inventions Read Online Free

the tree, far enough that much of the world he now found himself in remained a mystery, hidden behind leaves and limbs. He could see some tents and a long, angular building painted with polka dots, and he could see the far edge of the wall in one spot, but that was about it. When he looked straight up, he saw a series of wood slats nailed to the side of the tree, leading to a platform even higher still.
    Leo finished his apple and tossed the core out into the open space below the tree, but before it could hit the ground, not one but four monkeys had either grabbed it or were trying to steal it from one another. They made a lot of noise, which finally woke up Remi.
    “What a racket,” Remi said, stumbling out onto the porch, barely awake. “Any food around here?”
    “In there, on the table,” Leo said as he took an inventory of his maintenance overalls. He couldn’t quite remember all that he’d brought, and it had occurred to him on waking that tools could be very important in a place like this. Remi came alongside, eating an apple.
    “You didn’t by any chance bring a candy bar, did you?” he asked, making a sour face at the tart flavor of the one thing they had to eat. “This thing tastes like monkey food.”
    One of the guiding principles of the universe is that you don’t have to tell a monkey twice that you’re holding monkey food. The words were barely out of Remi’s mouth when the apple was snatched out of his hand and fought over by more squealing monkeys.
    “I have those crazy pliers Mr. Powell threw down to me,” Leo said, starting to pull things out and put them back into his many pockets one by one. “And I brought some other stuff that might be useful: half a roll of duct tape, a Swiss Army knife, a rock hammer, a ball of string, and three pennies. Oh, and some beef jerky, but it’s been in here for about a year. None of that really helps us figure out what to do next, does it?”
    “I only brought a robot,” Remi responded, swiping the beef jerky with noticeable excitement.
    Remi pulled Blop out of his pocket and held him at arm’s length as his eyes opened up.
    “You shouldn’t hold me this way,” Blop said. “I could fall.”
    Blop began to explain what would happen if he were dropped from a high distance — what it could do to his memory chip, how delicate his wiring was, and so on. The best thing to do when Blop talked about something no one cared about was to point his attention toward something else. He was highly distractible.
    “My guess is you were invented here,” Remi said. “Got any memories about that ?”
    Blop’s little head whirled back and forth and he made a lot of goofy beeping sounds. “There are dangerous things down there,” Blop said. “Better stay up here, where it’s safe. But if you must go down there — highly unwise — you can use the zip lines.”
    “Why’d you have to go and say that?” Remi tried to say, for he hated zip lines. But his mouth was full of linty, dry beef jerky, so instead it sounded like fwy chew haffa go a shay sat?
    “This is not a language I know,” Blop said in reply. “Is it Yeti?”
    After that there was no use with Blop. He hated not knowing the answer to things and became highly annoying whenever it happened. Remi rolled his eyes and put Blop back in his jacket pocket.
    “Up there!” Leo said. He’d already spied a long row of tree limbs nailed to the side of the tree leading overhead to a platform. “Come on! We can get down there before anyone wakes up and have a look around.”
    “And why would we want to do that?”
    Remi had managed, with great effort, to swallow the beef jerky. It was wholly unsatisfying.
    “Wait for me!” he yelled up, because Leo knew there was one thing Remi hated more than riding zip lines: getting left behind.
    When the two boys arrived on the platform, they found it considerably less stable than they’d hoped it would be. It wobbled in the soft morning breeze blowing through the