The Gizmos' Party

THE GIZMOS' PARTY

Chapter 1 One day, I was playing a game of football with my friends. Suddenly, the alarm on my hologram phone buzzed. I groaned and clicked it on. A hologram of my mum's face appeared. My friends thought it was amazing. Then my mum began speaking. "Albert Gizmo, come home right now for dinner!" It was no good arguing. I headed home and missed the end of the game. Sometimes life is hard when your mother is an inventor.

The hologram phone was Mum's latest invention. Everyone thought it was brilliant, but I was fed up with Mum's strange gadgets. Sometimes I wished I had normal parents.

My sister, Marie, felt the same way. "Why can't they have normal hobbies like stamp collecting or deep-sea diving?" she asked that evening. "Or ballroom dancing or alligator wrestling?" I said. We both stared at the hologram phone on the coffee table. "I hate this thing," I said as I turned a dial on the machine. It came off in my hand. "Oops."

What should we do? Mum hates it when we touch her inventions. I stuck the dial back on as quickly as possible. I hoped it wasn't broken. Just then, Mum came back in the room. "Your dad's favourite film is on TV tonight," she said. "I must call him and tell him that Invaders from Planet Zed is on." She turned the machine on and punched in Dad's number. Marie and I looked at each other nervously. Would the machine still work? "It's time to come home and watch your favourite film on TV," Mum said into the phone. I let out a sigh of relief. It looked as if the machine still worked.

I was wrong. I had broken the phone. Dad's hologram phone buzzed, but he didn't get Mum's message. Someone else got the message instead. Far, far away, two strange figures were listening. "Interesting," said one. "What is a film?" "And what is TV?" asked the other. "Interesting."