Chapter 8

8 FRANK FINISHES REPAIRING KLANK, TIGHTENS THE LAST SCREW, and closes the big robot's foot- rocket panels. Klank helps, tightening his own bolts with his monkey-wrench hand. Frank stands up and dusts off his lab coat. "OK, back to the Energy drawing board. Let's keep this simple." "Yes," agrees Klink, showing off by blinking

his new light-energy attachment. "As Sir Isaac Newton so simply put his Three Laws of Motion in his book Philosophi. Naturalis Principia Mathematica..." Klink pauses and hums for a second. "Which I have just read. In the original Latin." "Ooh! Ooh!" adds Klank. "I am reading that, too." He blinks his antenna bulb. "And there is a piece of cheese on the basketball court, and if you touch it you get the Cheese Touch. It's like cooties." Klink whirs and searches his memory. "I do not see where Sir Isaac Newton wrote about the Cheese Touch... or the Caseum Tago..." Watson laughs. "It's from the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid." "Yes!" beeps Klank, waving his big duct- hose arms around. "It is amazing! And Sir Isaac Newton is very good at drawing in that book, too."

"No, no, no," protests Klink. Watson nods. "Wait until you get to the end." Klank stops moving. "What? Does something bad happen? Something scary?" Klink hums and speed-reads from his library connection. "Rowley has to—" "Don't tell him!" says Watson. "Why not?" asks Klink. "It's more fun to read it yourself." "It is information. How can it be fun?" "Because. It just is." "Hmmmmmmmmmm," fumes Klink. Frank laughs. "I can't believe you guys are arguing about cheese. Klink, help us out with 'simple machines.'" "Researching 'simple,'" says Klink. "Six simple

machines: the simplest mechanisms that provide mechanical advantage... for you weak humans." Watson eyes Klink. "That last bit doesn't sound like part of the definition." Klink spins his webcam eye. "I added it because it is true. One: the inclined plane." "Like a ramp," says Frank. "Two: the wedge." "An ax," says Frank.

"Three: the lever." "Like a crowbar," says Watson. "Four: the screw." "Like a screw!" guesses Klank.

"Five: the wheel." "Bicycle wheel," says Watson. "And six: the pulley." "Like the pulleys in Grampa Al's