Zak Raven. Darren G. Davis

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      In shock, Dr. Raine spews out his smoothie all over the monitor. He quickly wipes off the smoothie from the monitor.

      “Can it be! Do my eyes deceive me! Forget getting him at the winter retreat let’s just do it now!” Dr. Raine pushes a button on his console and speaks into it.

      “Warren, I want you to max out your power levels and take out Zak now!” On the monitor Dr. Raine watches as Warren re-allocates power to his eye beam. The eye and hand beam energy indicator now reads that the power is at a hundred and eighty percent.

      Dr. Raine’s robot has now gotten up and broken free of the net. The robot’s eyes flashes a bright crimson red as it raises its arms at Zak. And all the while Zak just stands there.

      Dr. Raine looks curiously at the monitor. He can’t figure out why would Zak just sit on his bike?

      “What could Zak be doing? I’m sure he gets the idea that my robot is about to shoot him. Yet, he just stands there? What am I missing? Oh well, you know what they say, ‘when opportunity knocks, answer it!’”

      Dr. Raine sits there and watches as the robot prepares to fire. Dr. Raine watches with great anticipation as the robot’s targeting circle locks onto Zak. The monitor lights up with a message indicating that the robot is about to ‘commence’ it’s firing sequence.

      And that’s when everything goes wrong. Suddenly time slows to a crawl as Dr. Raine notices that the entire image on the monitor starts to tilt to the right as if the robot was being knocked over. Worst of all, the laser beam misses Zak by a mile! Instead of hitting Zak, it totally demolishes the food court behind him!

      “WHAT! How’s this possible! NO! Not the food court! Drat! I loved that smoothie shop! Come to think of it, that was the only smoothie shop near work! Great, now where am I going to go when I need to satisfy that mid afternoon smoothie craving?”

      Suddenly, another monitor lights up. Torrance’s face shows up on the screen.

      “Dad? You in there?”

      Dr. Raine quickly adjusts his composure to look like the sweet lovable, caring dad that his daughter thinks he is.

      “Yes sweety? What is it?”

      “Sorry to bother you dad, but you promised to take me to your work place so I can make some copies of the flyers for the winter retreat?”

      Dr. Raine looks down at his watch and realizes that he has spent far too much time down in his lab.

      “Sure, I’ll be right there. Just make sure you pack up all your discs and stuff!”

      “Thanks dad! You’re the greatest!”

      Dr. Raine clicks off the monitor with Torrance’s image on it before turning his attention back to the main monitor with Zak’s image on it. Though, now the image is totally tilted to one side.

      “You may have foiled my plans today, but I’ll get you yet Zak, just you wait!” Dr. Raine hits a button on his control console.

      “Warren? Activate ‘stealth-return’ program.”

      With that said Dr. Raine turns off the monitor and the lights while heading out of his lab. After all, he does have a promise to his daughter to keep!

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I sit there looking at Leo hovering a few feet in front of me. He could not have cut it any closer! If he had come a moment later in knocking over the robot, I probably would have more than likely have been blasted instead of the mall! Well, for the most part, at least some good came out of this; at least that lame food court got toasted. Now the city definitely has to rebuild it!

      “Leo, what took you so long?”

      “I had to save the game. If I didn’t save it and let it run it would ruin my chance to get the ‘special’ ending for the game.”

      Why, oh why did I have to get the defective model robot from the society of super heroes? Of all the robots to get; I get a robot that is addicted to video games! Worse yet, he chooses to ‘save’ the video game over ‘saving’ me!

      “Leo, a video game is just that, a GAME!”

      “But, if I didn’t save it the ‘game timer’ would keep on running. If it kept running, I would never be able to see the ‘secret ending’.” Leo then hovers off, probably going back home to load his game from the ‘last saved’ position.

      “Leo! Don’t you float away from me! I’m warning you, I’m going to hide that game console when I get back!” But Leo continues to float away. I definitely need to have his AI chip checked out. I swear, he sometimes behaves more like a two year old than a robotic sidekick!

      Now back to more important matters. I should see if I can pull some kind of remote control transponder code off of this robot. If I’m lucky, Dr. Brady will be able to make some kind of tracking device for me so I can track down the person (or persons) controlling the robot. I get off of my bike and start to walk toward the robot when officer Dent puts his hand on my shoulder.

      “We’ll take it from here Zak, you just stay right here and sit tight.”

      “But, I was the one that took down the robot! Shouldn’t I be the one that...”

      “Sorry, but this is a matter that should be handled by the ‘adults’.”

      And suddenly Officer Dent and a whole slew of police officers and a camera crew rush past me. That’s gratitude for you! I do all of the work and now he gets all of the glory. I watch as the group of police officers cautiously approaches the knocked down robot. And that’s when I notice that the eyes have started to glow!

      “Officer Dent! Look out!” I scream.

      But it’s too late. Suddenly, several panels on the robots body pop open and spew out black smoke! I raise my armband communicator and get ready to fire another net round; but I just can’t see anything in that smoke cloud. Just as the smoke starts to clear, I make out what sounds like a mini-jet engine warming up. And then in a heartbeat, I see the robot blast off into the sky.

      Well, so much for examining the robot up close. In any case I think now would be the best time for me to leave. After all, Officer Dent did say that this was a matter to be handled by ‘the adults’.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      I’m only an hour late. I’m sure Dr. Brady won’t be too ticked off. After all I did save some VIP in that stretch limo, right? Who am I kidding! The man is going to be royally ticked off! Yeah, I saved the day. But I took out the food court in the process, not that he was too crazy about the place either, mind you. But he always frowns when I cause any type of property damage. Especially if it’s that much property damage. Like the time I fought the ‘clay- meister’ and his minions of dough at the ‘Cineplex 30’ (thirty movie theatres inside on convenient location!). Yeah I won the battle all right. But, by the time it was over, I had taken out half of the Cineplex. Until the Cineplex was repaired the running joke in town was “Hey, You wanna go to the Cineplex 15 tomorrow?”

      As I get to his front door I notice that there is a piece of paper taped to it. The paper reads: “I’m in the garage.”

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