Unpopular Science

He felt the heat, and then the rocket was gone. He heard the small burst and turned too slowly to see what was hit, but he knew it was one of the other robots. By the time he had his head turned there was nothing except some collapsing mechanical rabble, enough to fill a bathtub.

Remo didn’t know what the deal was, but he had a pretty good idea that all the rolling, buzzing, whirring doohickeys were of the injury-causing variety. He needed to buy himself some time to get his strength back, then take them on.

“What is all this, Cote?” he demanded loudly, hoping to get the supercriminal wannabe talking again. “I don’t get it.”

“These are my tools of domination, Mr. Annoying.” Cote was now sitting in a throne that looked like a big aluminum champagne glass with a doughnut cushion. The slender stem disappeared into a slot in the floor.

“World domination, I assume.”

Cote was wearing his smuggest look yet. “Perhaps not world domination. I do know, of course, that Remo Annoying is not your real name. What is your real name, pray tell?”

“Hell if I know. So, why not world domination?” Remo could see Cote’s interest was piqued. He had to play this guy’s game for a while—and Cote was more than willing. Cote relaxed against the back of his chair and tried not to reveal the fact that his hands were working a tiny joystick on the side of the doughnut cushion. The chair moved, with a whirring of motors under the floor, carrying him to the front of his banks of obnoxiously bright and flashy controls.

“I don’t know if I am prepared yet to dominate the planet. Someday, perhaps. For now I’ll settle for Europe.”

“With these guys you want to conquer Europe? Mr. U. is cool-looking and well-polished and everything, but does he have what it takes to defeat whole nations?” Remo’s eyesight was restored fully and he turned casually right and left, taking in the vast array of mechanical creatures that surrounded him, all poised as if to strike. The always-smiling Mr. U. adjusted its position by the millimeter to keep the aim of its distended arm- launcher locked on Remo.

Remo had guessed Cote right. He was into his spy-movie super villain role, and the last thing he wanted was for it to be over within a blink of an eye. Cote began explaining the self-replicating properties of the various autonomous vehicles in his menagerie, and Remo put on his best shocked-and-awed expression while he evaluated his body. He felt much better, but he didn’t feel he was back to one hundred percent yet. Maybe it would take hours or days. Maybe he was scarred permanently.

But did he have what it would take to fight off the mysterious Mr. U.?

How good were these contraptions anyway?

“They might be able to replicate themselves in body, but not in mind,” Remo asserted. “You don’t have robots to build Gee-DAMS.”

Cote’s sonorous speech, delivered in a booming stage voice, faltered at the interruption and his face clouded. He advanced on Remo, but the last feet of track was not aligned well and the chair began to shimmy as the mechanics ground together, under the floor. Now Cote was even angrier, his face flushing as he grabbed onto the sides of the seat and held on until the chair managed to come to a halt, tipping a little to one side.

Remo chuckled.

“What is so humorous?”

“What isn’t? Cote, you’re about as much a supervillain as I am George Lazenby. You’re a clown.”

“What?”

“Look at you. You’re a clown. A stupid fake. You’ve got everything wrong. You don’t even know what stupid game you’re trying to pretend at.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what’s with the British accent? Most of the supervillains weren’t British. They were Eastern Europeans or whatever. So what are you trying to do, be the British secret agent and the supervillain at the same time? Can’t play both sides of the fence, Cote.”

“I know what I am doing,” Cote retorted.

“And the accent sucks anyway. I mean, I’ve heard junior high-school kids from Detroit doing Monty Python skits and they’re way more genuine than you.”

“My good man—”

“Also, what’s with the retro look? I mean, okay, if you’ve made the commitment to be a pseudo-supervillain, and you’ve already committed some horrific crimes—and you have—and you’ve got a few million in disposable cash to outfit your new supervillain stronghold, then why in God’s name would you go retro? It makes you look stupider than you already look.”

“You’re wearing my patience, Mr.—”

“Even if you ignore all that, you forgot the most important part of being a supervillain.”

“I forgot nothing!”

Remo shrugged. “Fine.”

“What? What did I forget?”

“You forgot that every supervillain fails,” Remo said.

Cote applied the smug British smile to his sweaty Spanish face. Remo could see, from maybe thirty long paces away, that the man’s respiration was slowing again, his heart rate becoming steady. He was relaxing in a moment of self-confidence. Now was the time to make his move, with Cote’s reflexes slowed. “That is where I have revamped the character, whoever you are,” Cote explained.