The Fran with Four Brains Read online

  Acknowledgments

  1. Franny’s House

  2. Franny’s School

  3. Getting Weaker by the Week

  4. Wound Too Tight

  5. Going Out for the Team

  6. Making Yourself at Home

  7. Me, Myself, and I . . . and, Uh, One More Me

  8. See, I Told You Nothing Could Go Wrong

  9. Bot, We Don’t Want To

  10. They Get Carried Away Here

  11. Can I Make You a Sandwich?

  12. Yeah, But What’s Mightier Than a Sword?

  13. Get Your Head in the Game

  14. Recipe for Destruction

  15. Which Is Why You Should Always, Always, Always Get a Pickle on the Side

  16. Great Brains Think Alike

  For the people who sometimes feel they are wound too tight

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Editors: Joanna Feliz and Kevin Lewis

  Designer: Jessica Sonkin

  Art Director: Dan Potash

  Production Editor: Katrina Groover

  Managing Editor: Dorothy Gribbin

  Production Manager: Chava Wolin

  Associate Paperback Editor: Molly McGuire

  CHAPTER ONE

  FRANNY’S HOUSE

  The Stein family lived in the pretty pink house with lovely purple shutters down at the end of Daffodil Street. Everything about the house was bright and cheery. Everything, that is, except the upstairs bedroom with the tiny round window.

  The window looked in on a bedroom, where one of the busiest mad scientists on earth was working away to keep all of her projects and experiments on schedule.

  She had a colony of bearded slugs that needed to be shaved each morning. She had a giant centipede that needed help with her shoes every day. She had her own breed of soy plant that had to be milked daily.

  Franny’s lab projects were a lot of work, but Franny truly loved mad science, so she never minded putting in the time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FRANNY’S SCHOOL

  Franny also liked school. Her teacher, Miss Shelly, was great, and she always kept the kids busy with lots of challenging projects.

  Already that year, they had spent time studying dinosaurs, poetry, and even ancient Egypt, which Franny really enjoyed . . . even though her extra-credit project ate a custodian.

  Miss Shelly later made Franny unzip the mummy and release the custodian unharmed, although Franny protested and said that everybody knows mummies eat people every once in a while and that custodians should know better than to get too close.

  Great teachers like Miss Shelly always keep a little pressure on, and every day after school, Franny had to make time for her homework.

  Some days it was easy, like when it was about electricity, organs, or strange chemical reactions. Some days it was hard, like when it was not about monsters, or atomic radiation, or electronic brains.

  But no matter how long it took, Franny also had to make time to play with her lab assistant, Igor. (He wasn’t a pure Lab. He was also part poodle, part Chihuahua, part beagle, part spaniel, part shepherd, and part some kind of weasely thing that wasn’t even exactly a dog.)

  Franny had learned that not paying enough attention to Igor was dangerous. When he got too lonely, he tended to misbehave.

  And Igor knew when Franny needed attention. He was really good at sensing when her schedule was getting too tight, and he was always trying to figure out ways to make her laugh. Sometimes it was juggling chain saws, sometimes it was alligator wrestling, sometimes it was wrestling alligators with chain saws.

  Recently, he started dressing up like Franny and imitating her and that would always make Franny laugh so hard she could hardly breathe.

  Always, that is, except when Franny felt overwhelmed by the additional load of her extra activities.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GETTING WEAKER BY THE WEEK

  Franny’s mom always drove her to her weekly extra activities. One day a week it was soccer. Another day it was gourmet cooking. And another day it was bagpipe lessons.

  Franny liked the extra activities, but sometimes she felt like they were a bit too much. Some days she was in a mood to just hang around her lab doing regular-kid things, like playing with her toys, or reading books, or bringing a monster to life through the application of a jillion volts of electricity.

  But her mom wanted Franny to have the opportunity to be the best she could be, and try new things, and learn about stuff they might not be teaching at school. Franny’s mom had told her that it was important to do her best and always STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE.

  Franny understood that her mom was right. And she worked as hard as she could to be excellent, even when it made her very, very tired.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WOUND TOO TIGHT

  One day Franny walked up the stairs to her room after a long day at school followed by bagpipe lessons. She had a lot of homework ahead of her and knew she had forgotten to take care of some of the lab stuff earlier that morning.

  Her thoughts were scattered. She was thinking about everything all at once.

  She went over to the centipede’s cage and milked it. Then she shaved the soy plant and put shoes on the slugs.

  She gave a monster a bowl of dog food and was just preparing to run a jillion volts of electricity through Igor before she realized that she had gotten everything all mixed up.

  “Oh, no!” she groaned. “It’s too much,” she said. “That kind of electricity would have fried you like a potato chip, Igor. I’m wound up too tight to think clearly. I have to talk to Mom.”

  The next day, Franny told her mom about the mix-ups in the laboratory.

  “Igor could have been vaporized. The soy plant is mad because it was really trying to grow a mustache, the slugs are after me to make them some feet to go with their new shoes. And who in their right mind is ever going to drink two gallons of centipede milk?

  “Mom, I think this all happened because I’m so busy. Do you think it would be okay if I took a break from the bagpipe lessons for a while?”

  “But Franny,” her mom said. “How else will you learn? The bagpipe is a beautiful instrument, and music teaches you self-control and how to perform with confidence.”

  “Okay,” Franny said with a sigh. “Then how about if we skip the gourmet-cooking class?”

  “Oh Franny,” her mom said. “Gourmet cooking teaches you how to follow directions, and thinking up all those exotic recipes stimulates your imagination.”

  “Okay, okay. But how about if I drop soccer? I really don’t think I need soccer, do you?”

  “Franny, sports teach you about teamwork. You should learn how to sacrifice for others, and how to rely on others as well. That’s what it means to be part of a team. And since you do so many of your experiments by yourself, you probably need to learn teamwork more than anybody else. You must strive for excellence, Franny. You know that.”

  Franny smiled. A thought had occurred to her; a mad science-type thought. There was something about the word “teamwork.”

  Yes, teamwork, she thought. Maybe Mom had something there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GOING OUT FOR THE TEAM

  Franny went outside and gathered up some scrap steel from her backyard.

  Igor watched as Franny began sketching out plans for some sort of new machines.

  “They’ll need to be durable, Igor. Mom can really keep the pressure on, so these need to be extra, extra strong.”

  Igor, who had no idea what she was talking about, nodded like he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “And they need to be smart. I have to make sure the brains are set up to follow instructions carefully.”

  Igor gath
ered up a selection of brains from the brain cabinet and brought them to Franny.

  “Thanks, Igor, but I think I’m going to go with electronic brains on this project.

  “These machines need to look good, but they don’t have to be perfect. Mom keeps me moving so quickly that she doesn’t always notice details. I remember one time she took me to soccer while I was still under the effect of that Mermaid Formula I developed. I played for two hours and she never noticed that I didn’t even have legs.

  “It won’t be hard to make them good enough to fool Mom.”

  Franny quickly made a few calculations and diagrammed some of the special features she would need to engineer them.

  She whisked the plans off her drawing board and tacked them up on the wall. She turned to Igor and grinned her mad scientist grin. Outside, lightning cracked and Franny laughed. She loved it when lightning cracked just before she revealed a plan.

  “Igor,” she said. “Behold, the Franbots!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAKING YOURSELF AT HOME

  Franny hummed cheerfully as she made three mechanical copies of herself. She thought this plan through carefully and was certain it was the answer to all of her problems.

  “Pretty clever, don’t you think so, Igor?” she said as Igor watched with growing concern. He had learned that one Franny was already a lot of Franny. He wasn’t sure if four of them was such a good idea.

  Igor started remembering some of Franny’s robots that had caused trouble in the past.

  “These Franbots are going to handle all of those extra activities that Mom has lined up. They’ll take the bagpipe lessons, they’ll learn gourmet cooking, and they’ll play soccer. They’ll do it all for me.”

  Igor wondered if he and Franny could also make a few Igorbots for some of his chores.

  “These machines will give me more time to do my homework and my experiments, and they may even give me some extra time to spend with my loyal lab assistant.” She winked at Igor.

  That was all Igor needed to hear. Anything that would give him more time with Franny had to be a good idea, and he worked extra hard to help her complete the Franbots quickly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ME, MYSELF, AND I . . . AND, UH, ONE MORE ME

  Franny tightened a few screws here and there, and the Franbots were finally complete.

  She wound them up as tight as she could—as tight as they would go—and with the flip of a few switches, they were fully activated. The Franbots stood quietly, awaiting their instructions.

  “Franbot Number One,” Franny began. “Your insides were engineered to be particularly good at playing the bagpipe. You will be handling our music lessons.”

  The Franbot thumped its steel chest.

  “Yes, Franny,” the robot said in a voice that sounded a lot like Franny’s.

  “Franbot Number Two, you will be the soccer player. You’ll notice that your legs have been designed for extremely powerful kicking.”

  The Franbot flexed its powerful limbs.

  “Yes, Franny,” the robot said in a voice that also sounded a lot like Franny’s.

  “And Franbot Number Three, you will attend the gourmet-cooking classes. You have been outfitted with a special Food Ray that will make it easy for you to create your various recipes in a flash.”

  The Franbot looked at the Food-Ray Blaster it could flip out of its wrist.

  “Yes, Franny,” the last Franbot said in a voice that sounded a lot like—you guessed it—Franny’s.

  “Mom expects a lot of commitment from all of you, so remember: You must always do your best. You must strive for excellence. That is what is most important here: Excellence.”

  The Franbots beeped as if they were taking very careful notes of this instruction.

  “Excellence,” they said together, and nodded obediently.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SEE, I TOLD YOU NOTHING COULD GO WRONG

  Two weeks later, Franny was feeling a lot more relaxed. The Franbots had been performing brilliantly, and the soccer coach, cooking instructor, and bagpipe teacher hadn’t noticed that they were machines.

  In fact, they did so well at the extra activities that Franny had even started letting them take her place at school.

  Nobody at school could tell they were robots either, and they were getting grades almost as good as the ones Franny usually got.

  Franny now had more time for her new projects, like teaching a monkey to use a monkey wrench, a hammerhead shark to use a hammer, and a mouse to use a mouse. Igor was delighted to have Franny home every day.

  The Franbots seemed to be genuinely enjoying their tasks. Sure, they might have been taking them a bit too seriously, but that’s what Franny had told them. She said that nothing was more important than excellence, and they were following her instructions.

  It was perfect, Franny thought. Except Franny noticed that it might not have been perfect for her mom.

  The Franbots moved much more quickly than Franny, and her mom often had to run to keep up. The Franbots were so determined to achieve excellence that they often stayed longer at soccer practice or cooking class, and they were begging for extra-credit projects at school. And Mom was staying up late at night to help them complete it all.

  Mom was running herself ragged trying to get the Franbots to their activities and helping them keep up with all the extra work.

  Franny wondered if maybe Mom would like some time to just relax and unwind and do some regular mom things instead of always running around.

  “Maybe it’s time to reprogram these Franbots,” she said to Igor. “Maybe they need to just slow down a little.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  BOT, WE DON’T WANT TO

  Franny gathered the Franbots together. “You’re doing a great job,” she told them. “But I think we can do better.”

  The Franbots smiled. “We were thinking the exact same thing,” one of them said. “We want more projects. We can be more excellent. We found another place that teaches all sorts of spectacular classes.”

  One of them handed Franny a brochure.

  “You just select one thing from each column and make up your own activity. Then you can attend three days a week for ten years until you really learn it. We can do it. We can do them all. We are going to be so excellent.”

  Franny looked at the chart.

  “Well, I have to admit,” Franny said. “Underwater One-Handed Diaper-Juggling does sound fascinating. But the pace is already too much for Mom. She can’t keep up with you now, and it will be even harder on her if you add a bunch of new activities.

  “No more new classes. Tomorrow we’ll change your programming and slow things down,” she told them.

  The Franbots frowned.

  “Look, I know you don’t like it, but that’s how it’s going to be. We can’t get carried away here.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY GET CARRIED AWAY HERE

  Igor quietly jostled Franny awake. Franny groaned. “What is it this time, Igor? A monster under your bed? I’ve told you a million times: We all have monsters under our beds. The lab is full of monsters. Now go back to sleep.”

  Igor shook Franny harder and harder until she finally woke up.

  “What is it?” she said angrily.

  Igor pointed at the Franbots. They were over in one little corner of the lab, going over some sort of plan.

  Franny slid out of bed and the two of them crept up close enough to overhear.

  “Franny is getting in the way of our pursuit of excellence,” one of them said. “And we need to be excellent.”

  The other Franbots nodded in agreement.

  “So she must be neutralized.”

  Igor gulped.

  “And then we’ll neutralize Mom. It’s just like Franny said: Mom can’t keep up with us. She is getting in the way of our excellence.”

  “NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EXCELLENCE,” they all said together.

  “Then we’ll take care of her dad an
d her brother, and that weasel-dog she calls Igor.”

  Igor knew he should have been insulted, but he kind of liked weasels.

  “And after that, we’ll go after the rest of the world. The rest of the world could get in the way of our excellence, as well.”

  Franbot Number Two flashed its robot eyes. “Is everything prepared for the neutralization?” it asked.

  “Almost,” said Franbot Number Three. “I will be using my excellent cooking skills. I hope they will both enjoy them.”

  “Cooking skills?” Franny said. “Are they going to . . . eat us?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CAN I MAKE YOU A SANDWICH?

  Igor ran and got Franny one of her best smashers. “This won’t work, Igor, I made the Franbots too strong to be smashed to bits.”

  Igor ran and got her a screwdriver. “Good thinking, Igor, but I can’t just disassemble them. The three of them work together. They would easily overpower me before I untwisted the first screw.”