Chapter 1 – Grounded Again
By the time I reached the middle of the tightrope, I knew something was wrong.
On the ground far below, Rumble barked like the world was ending. My dog is super smart. If he thinks the world is ending, it probably is. But I’d walked this tightrope a million times.
Well, never from this high up.
I practiced for weeks on a rope that stretched only a foot off the ground. When I made it all the way across, I knew I was ready for the big time.
I’m eleven, which means I’m old enough for amazing adventures and fantastic feats. But sometimes, like right now, things don’t go as planned.
I had done everything right. This morning, I instructed my hoverBot (my new flying robot) to tie a rope between the two tallest trees over our pond. Believe me, when a robot ties a rope, it’s done correctly.
So, why was my tightrope slipping?
Dad always says, “Marco, choose your adventures wisely.”
I always do. Well, I usually always do. Okay, okay. Maybe not always. But Dad also says the best lessons are the ones we learn ourselves.
Right now, with Rumble barking, my balance teetering, and the rope sagging, I had a feeling I would be learning another lesson.
I glanced down. The pond looked small and far away. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to fall. Maybe I should have chosen shorter trees.
I took a small step forward, wobbled, and then stabilized. Yes. This was working just fine.
I took another step and felt more give in the rope. Oh, no!
The tree ahead of me looked so far away. But the knots were tied well. Something must be wrong on the tree behind me.
In that instant, the rope unraveled right beneath my feet, and I was falling.
Down, down, down.
With a giant splash, I sank to the muddy bottom of our pond.
Struggling against waterlily stems that entangled my arms and legs like an octopus, I fought their hold. I shot to the surface and sucked in a deep breath.
Rumble stood on the edge of the pond. He growled low in his throat and then yelped.
“Settle down, Rumble.” I peeled vines from my head. “The world isn’t ending.”
Rumble bounded into the water. His eyes focused on something behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Whoa!”
A water moccasin was skimming the surface of the pond, headed right for me. It opened its huge white mouth. Sharp fangs glistened.
Rumble yelped and paddled toward the snake.
“Hee-ya!” I smacked the water, struggling to stay afloat. “Hee-ya!”
The snake turned. It swam to the other end of the pond and disappeared into the reeds.
Still treading water, I patted Rumble. “Thanks, buddy! You saved my skin.”
Rumble paddled to the edge of the pond, climbed out, and shook. Water flew from his thick white coat, pelting me in the face.
I glanced up. The frayed rope was still attached to the tree, the same rope I’d practiced with all week long. The one I used with my skateboard.
Hmm. I guess I should have found a new rope. Lesson learned.
A door slammed. I whirled and swam for shore.
My mother rushed down the porch and toward the pond. “Marco? What happened?”
As she surveyed her waterlilies, her eyes popped right out of her head. Or at least it seemed like they did. “Marco Roams! What have you done to my waterlilies?”
I paused to examine the unintended casualties of my fall. Bits and pieces of crushed flowers, broken stems, uprooted tubers, and a lot of sticky mud floated around me. “I was trying to—”
I looked up. The frayed rope still hung from the tree.
Mom’s eyes followed my gaze. She gasped. Her eyebrows sank, making those little wrinkles between her eyes.
My feet touched bottom. I picked up a floating tuber. Its roots hung down. “Maybe it can be replanted?”
“You know how much work it was to get each one of those tubers to grow?”
I winced and nodded. Of course, I knew.
Mom spent months growing waterlilies in a little plastic swimming pool. She had finally transferred them to our pond last month. Not an easy task. None of our robots are designed for underwater work. Mom had to swim to the bottom of the pond herself.
I really wish Dad would stop working on his silly time machine and invent a waterproof robot, I thought.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I slipped and slid closer to the pond’s edge.
My brother and sister watched the show from the window. My twin brother, Khan, gave me a look of sympathy. My little sister Esther wore a huge satisfied smile. Typical.
“Well, young man, you’ve done it again,” Mom scolded. “You are now grounded for the rest of your life.” She stomped away.
Rumble hung his head and whined.
I pulled myself out of the pond and yanked the broken stems off my shoulders. “Well, Rumble, it was almost an epic adventure. Should we try it again?” The door slammed. I watched Mom storm through the house. “We better not.”
Later that afternoon, Rumble and I gazed longingly out the window as the day dwindled away. I swiped to the next page of the book I was supposed to be reading. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I mumbled, propping my chin on my fist.
“That’s what all criminals say,” Esther replied. “You are officially a plant murderer. Murderers should be locked up. Serves you right.”
I glared at her. She smiled.
Khan looked up from his history video lesson and pulled out an earphone. “Planticide is not a felony.” He squinted one eye as if considering his word choice and said, “It’s probably just a misdemeanor.”
I ground my teeth. Felony? Misdemeanor? Who even knows what that is? “There is no such thing as planticide!”
Khan put on his professor voice. “True. But you are guilty of the destruction of property. Which is a misdemeanor.”
I sighed. Being grounded wasn’t Mom’s only punishment. She also ordered me to study history. Ancient history.
The most boring history of all.
Esther wandered toward me. She leaned over and looked at the book I was reading. “That’s not history.” She crossed her arms, her eyes bright and full of sass. “I’m telling Mom.”
“What? This is history. Look around. Do you see any dinosaurs? No. That’s because they lived way back in . . . history.”
“That’s true,” Khan agreed. “But it’s actually considered prehistory.”
I stared at my twin. “Prehistory? How can anything be before history?”
“It means the history that happened before people wrote down what was going on while it was going on.” He shrugged. “The history of which we have no written records, probably because they were wiped out in the flood.”
Esther crossed her arms. “Mom said to study ancient civilizations.”
“I am. Some dinosaurs were verycivil.”
“I’m pretty sure civilization relates to humans,” Professor Khan professed.
I shrugged. “Dinosaurs are more interesting.”
Rumble and I are the only ones in my family who don’t get excited about history. I mean, I do like learning about explorers, like Marco Polo. In fact, my name is Marco.
Mom and Dad chose historical names for all three of us. Khan is named after Kublai Khan. Esther is named after a queen in the Bible. My middle name is Romulus. That’s the name of a guy who was raised by a wolf. Pretty awesome! I wish I were raised by a wolf.
“Marco, Khannie, Essie!” Dad’s voice echoed from the next room, from inside his time machine. “Come quick! It works!”
Chapter 2 – Tinkering with the Time Machine
I looked at Khan. Khan looked at Esther. Esther looked at me.
“I helped him with his coding yesterday,” Essie said. “If it works, it’s because I fixed the glitch in his time machine.”
I’m not sure how a nine-year-old could fix a time machine. But Mom always says that if I can’t say anything nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all. So, I didn’t say anything. That’s pretty mature of me. I am always very mature.
Most of the time.
We walked toward the living room. I smelled chocolate chip cookies baking in the kitchen. Mom loves to bake. Although she does a lot of nice things, that is my absolute favorite thing about her.
Probably everyone knows this already, but my father is William Roams. Yes, that William Roams. The inventor of the personal homeBot. I don’t know how many homeBots other people own, but we’ve got dozens.
We have cleaningBots, gardenBots, teacherBots—pretty much any kind of bot you can think of. Dad invents them, and we try them out. Sometimes they do strange things. Then Dad has to work the bugs out.
Like the time our chefBot threw eggs at anyone who entered the kitchen. Rumble was its number one victim.
Or like the time the paintingBot was supposed to paint the house but painted Esther instead. She ran around trying to get away, but the bot zoomed after her, slathering her with blue paint.
That was great.
Dad loves inventing things that help people live better lives. Take the instaTranslator, for example. It works on the parts of your brain that control hearing and speech. With it, you hear foreign words in your own language. And your own words come out in a different language.
Dad won the Nobel Peace Prize for the instaTranslator. He’s pretty famous. Dad can make anything . . . except a time machine.
As we approached the monstrous tube in our family room, Dad popped his head out of the capsule. “I did it. I finally did it.”
“Really? Are you sure?” Esther asked.
“Positive. Come and see.”
“Did my coding help?”
“Indeed, it did, Essie girl. Your code fixed the problem.”
Oh, brother. Now, we’ll never hear the end of it.
Essie can program computers like Dad. I know it’s not nice to wish my sister hadn’t helped make the thing work, but Esther already thinks she’s so much smarter than me. She thinks my skills are useless compared to hers.
No one appreciates how important it is to know the stuff I know.
Seriously! How many people know how to build a fire? Or how to climb a mountain? You probably won’t ever need all my knowledge about dinosaurs. But most everything else could be of use—which plants are edible or how to build a shelter.
Even smoke bombs could be useful.
I know, I know. A smoke bomb was another one of my bigger mishaps. But how was I supposed to know that a metal pan and a metal spoon would cause an explosion?
Essie says all my knowledge is archaic, which is just a big word that means “no longer useful.”
Sure, we live in a technology universe. But what if one day the electricity stops working? What then? People would come from miles away to beg for my superior knowledge.
I really should have been raised by wolves.
“It’s time we tried this beauty out, kids.” Dad patted the side of his time capsule. “What do you say?”
I would pretty much agree to anything to get out of being grounded. But traveling to the past where all that history is? No, thanks.
“Can we travel to the future?” I asked.
I would like to meet the future Marco. I bet he would have some good advice.
“Maybe next time, Marco,” Dad replied as he typed on a screen.
A low hum filled the air. Rumble whined and covered his head with his paws.
Dad looked up and listened. “That’s a promising sound.”
Mom peeked into the room from the kitchen door behind us. “Do I hear what I think I hear?”
We all spoke at the same time.
“It works!”
Dad glanced back at Mom from the computer keyboard. “Where do you want to go first?”
“I have to run to the market. Be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Then we can talk about time travel and all that fun stuff.”
I don’t think she believes the machine will work. Can’t blame her. It’s never worked before.
Dad always tells us it works and then . . . nothing.
Khan threw his hands outward. “Let’s go back to 2019.”
“2019?” I groaned. “Why would you want to go back to 2019? People did everything themselves, with no help from robots. They drove themselves on roads inside dangerous boxes with rubber wheels.”
I do know some history, and I needed to discourage this idea fast.
I continued my campaign against 2019. “Did you know that every single day kids got inside a big yellow box that took them to a huge building? They stayed there all day and learned from human teachers. If we went back to that time, they’d probably put us in a yellow box with wheels and cart us off to that building.”
Essie’s eyes grew wide. “Human teachers? People were taught by humans?”
“Yeah,” I added. “And everyone had to learn the exact same thing, as if all the kids were going to end up in the same job as adults.”
Dad turned away from the computer. “That’s true. However, people back then weren’t so different from us. They simply didn’t have the technology we have.”
A servantBot we call Charlie interrupted, “Would you like your coffee now, Mr. Roams?”
“No thanks, Charlie,” Dad said, waving it away.
I smiled at Esther. “I’m pretty sure the only thing we have in common with those ancient people is cockroaches.” My schooling was mostly focused on science, so I studied all about the origin of cockroaches. They’ve been around since forever.
“Eww. That’s gross.” Esther wrinkled her nose.
“Back in ancient history, cockroaches were bigger than your whole head.” Putting my fingers next to my mouth, I opened and closed them like person-sized cockroach mandibles.
“Stop!” Esther hollered. She cringed away from me. “Stop doing that. Don’t even say that word.”
I dropped my fingers. “What word? Cockroach? You don’t want to hear the word cockroach?” I turned to Khan. “What’s wrong with the word cockroach?”
“I don’t know. What’s wrong with cockroaches, Essie?” Khan acted confused. “Cockroaches are people too.”
“Disgusting! They are not people.” Esther clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it! Stop saying it!”
“Boys,” Dad warned.
“What?” I pretended to be innocent of any wrongdoing. Dad didn’t like us to tease our little sister. But sometimes Khan and I couldn’t help ourselves.
Khan held his hands out. “But Dad, cockroaches have historical significance.”
“That’s right,” I added. “They even existed in prehistory.”
I catch on fast.
“Why did God have to make such a ghastly creature?” Essie stuck out her bottom lip in a pout.
“Cockroaches make a high-protein snack for a lot of carnivores,” I told her. “I bet even people ate them.”
“That’s a lie!” Esther yelled.
“All right, all right. That’s enough.” Dad interrupted our discussion on the merits of roaches. He flipped a switch. The machine began making an ear-piercing squeal.
I threw my hands over my ears and winced.
Rumble whined. He jumped up and began growling at the machine.
I patted his head. “Calm down, buddy. It’s just—” I looked at Dad. “What is that sound, anyway?”
Dad looked at me, his eyes wide and excited. “It’s the sound of my dream come true. Who is ready to experience history in living color?”
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