Betty Jo Schuler

Chapter One: Testing the Ditto Box

Done. Finished. Ready to test.

Randy O'Rourke stood back to admire his latest invention. The black box on his bedroom floor was two feet high and three feet long with a hinged lid. It looked like an ordinary box, but it wasn't.

It was a Ditto Box.

Randy grabbed the receiver off the old crank phone that he'd rescued from the junkyard. The phone was hooked up to Jacob Silverman's house next door. Each crank of the handle made the bell ring in Jake's bedroom. On the third ring, he would answer. Cr-rank.

Randy's three-year-old sister barged through the door. "Play with me," Suzy whined.

"What are you doing in here?" Randy hung up the phone. When he was inventing, no one was allowed in his room. There was a black and yellow sign on his door. Suzy couldn't read, but she knew it said KEEP OUT.

"I can't play. I'm working. I have to test my new invention."

"Bad brother sent old 'vention away!" Suzy stomped her foot. "Brain Man used to play with me."

"I didn't send Brain away. He went to Future World on his own. He wanted to live with other robots. I miss Brain too, but he's happier there."

"I not happy," Suzy said. "I mad."

Suzy had blue eyes and blonde curls. She looked like a skinny version of Shirley Temple, the child movie star that their mother loved. Only Shirley smiled all the time, and Suzy frowned and whimpered most of the time. Mom and Dad said she was going through "the whiny-threes."

"Yo, Randy." Jacob Silverman stuck his head through the door. "Your mom said I'd find you upstairs."

"Go away," Suzy said. "Randy can't play."

"Neither can you," Jake said. "Your mom says it's time for your nap."

"Not sleepy," Suzy said. But she left, crying and dragging her doll by one leg.

"Way to go!" Randy slapped hands with his best friend.

"My phone rang, but only once. The KEEP OUT sign is still up, but your door's open. I'm getting mixed signals," Jake said. "What's happening? Is your new invention finished or not?"

Randy stepped out in the hall and took down the sign. Then he bowed to Jake and waved him toward the black box.

"Ta-dah!"

Jake circled the box, studying it. He opened the lid and looked in. "Empty," he said, looking disappointed. "What is this thing, anyway?"

"A special kind of copying machine. I call it a Ditto Box."

Jake lifted the lid again. "What goes inside?"

"Whatever you want to copy." Randy's homework lay on his desk. His mother made him do it right after school. He chose a paper he'd finished. "Done your math yet?" he asked, waving it under Jake's nose.

"No, but--"

"Watch." Randy hadn't tried the new machine, but he felt sure it would work. Opening the box, he laid the paper inside and shut the lid.

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