14 Stupider and Stupider

CHAPTER FOURTEEN STUPIDER AND STUPIDER Franny took another dose of her invisibility formula. "It can't smash what it can't see," she said, trying her best to sound optimistic. And she faded from their sight.

Most monstrous fiends, even though they are often horribly destructive, have a plan. Either they want something, they hate something, or they're just trying to escape capture. So it's easy for a scientific mind to figure them out and stop them. This thing is different, Franny thought. This robot is pure stupidness. It has two whole heads full of stupid. Pure stupidness does things for no good reason. What would a pure-stupid creature do in a school? Franny thought.

Franny ran past a door on which the robot had left some graffiti. It was badly spelled, badly drawn, and not at all clever. "In addition," Franny said, "it's probably inaccurate. If the principal really did have a rubber butt, surely by now they would have flown her to consult with a medical expert in Switzerland." Franny ran past gigantic spit wads that the robot had left dangling from the ceiling and dripping down the walls. "Spit wads," she said. "Can you imagine wasting perfectly good spit this way? Spit, like most secretions, is hours of fun for a child with a microscope. Only an idiot would squander it this way." Spitty robot footprints led right up to the library door, and Franny actually felt an unfamiliar wave of fear wash over her. "Not the books," she said.