Fries Alive

CHAPTER4

Freddy felt himself being pushed down, down, down into the cold grip of the water.

Oh boy, he thought, I’ve really done it now. If I survive this, Dad’s gonna kill me.

Then something grabbed Freddy and propelled him to the surface so fast that it felt like he was on a rocket. He exploded out of the water, and kept going up, up, up… And then he was going down, down, down. And he landed on something very soft and very warm.

“Is he dead?” said a voice.

“Nah, he’s going to be just fine, better than fine, absolutely terrific in fact,” exclaimed a very happy-sounding voice.

“I’m sure he’s dead,” said a gloomy voice.

“Why do you say that?” asked another voice.

“Because nothing good has ever happened to me, that’s why,” replied the gloomy voice.

Freddy finally managed to open his eyes. Now he knew he was dead.

All he could see were colors, swirling colors, right before his eyes. It was pretty, but sort of nauseating at the same time. He sat up, his eyes still not focused. He rubbed them but he still saw rainbows of color.

“I told you he was alive,” chirped the happy voice.

“Hey, what’s going on up there?” bellowed a deep voice.

A very authoritative voice declared, “I believe that the young man will fully recover posthaste. There seems to be no permanent damage done and all neuromuscular systems appear to be functioning normally.”

“Yeah, but is he going to be okay?” asked the deep voice.

Freddy’s eyes finally focused and he gaped.

Five-no, six faces and ten-no, twelve eyeballs looked back at him.

Freddy screamed. And then they screamed. And then Freddy smiled, really, really big. He was excited, not scared. They were his Fries, and they had come to life! There was Ziggy, the yellow Fry, and Theodore, the blue Fry, and Curly, the green Fry, and… He stared at the red Fry. It had two heads and only one body. Freddy started jumping up and down.

“I did it! I did it!” he yelled.

“Hey, that tickles,” said the deep voice.

Freddy looked under his feet and saw that the thing he was standing on was purple. He raced to the side of whatever they were on and looked over.

“Hey, there,” said the deep voice.

Freddy was standing on the purple Fry’s enormous stomach.

“How’d you make yourself into a raft?” asked Freddy.

“I’m not sure. It just seemed like a good idea, and then it just happened.”

Freddy beamed. “Potato-nanotechnology – you just can’t beat it.” Freddy held on tight as the storm passed over them, rocking the purple boat and soaking them with rain.

Freddy rubbed his eyes clear and looked over to shore and saw Howie lying there. “Hey, Howie, are you okay?” he yelled.

Howie slowly came to, looked at the Fries, and promptly fainted again.

Freddy felt a tug on his shirt.

“What were you doing at the bottom of the lake?” asked the small yellow Fry.

“I was trying to bring you to life and got hit by a big wave.” They looked at him in confusion. “You see, you’re my Fries,” said Freddy. “I made you.”

The blue Fry adjusted his thick glasses that made him look very smart. “You created us? How very interesting.”

“And you each have lots of special features,” Freddy continued.

The blue Fry smiled knowingly. “I myself feel quite brilliant.”

“I just feel hungry,” moaned the purple Fry, and the floor moved under their feet. “There, did you hear that rumbling? I have to eat forty-three-and-a-half times a day just to sustain my present figure.”

“But I don’t understand… I thought my experiment failed,” said a confused Freddy. “The million jiggy-watts wasn’t enough -” Just then there was another flash of lightning. And then Freddy realized what had happened.

“The lightning bolt that hit the raft must have had lots more electricity than a million jiggy-watts. That must have brought you to life.”

Wow, thought Freddy. This is the greatest experiment ever. This is history! I’ll be famous! And this might only be the beginning. I’ll be on the cover of every magazine; I’ll be on TV. And if I get really, really famous, I might even have my own cartoon show…

He was lightheaded with the possibilities. Serious and important people would ask him things like, “Now, Dr. Funkhouser, what is your view on the state of the world, sir?” And he’d say something clever like, “Well, Mr. Ambassador, I personally think a ton of chocolate chip cookies in every household would improve the state of the world. That and duct-taping the mouths of every big sister in America.”

“You mean to say,” said the blue Fry, “that the lightning bolt interacted with us, causing a reaction of enormous kinetic energy, and now we have discernible motor and intellectual skills as a result of this spontaneous elemental combustion?”

“Yes,” shouted Freddy gleefully.

“Wow,” said the purple Fry. “And here I thought that big spark that fried my butt had made us come to life.”

“And I named you too,” added Freddy breathlessly.

The little yellow Fry looked up and asked in an excited voice, “What’s my name?”

“You’re Ziggy.”

The yellow Fry swelled up and his face contorted into something really frightening. “ZIGGY!” cried the yellow Fry so loudly that the air coming out of his mouth made Freddy’s hair stick straight up.

Freddy looked at the small Fry fearfully. “Don’t you like it?”

The yellow Fry returned to normal size and smiled pleasantly. “Oh, I think it’s really swell, thanks.”

Freddy swallowed nervously. How could Ziggy go from furious to nice so quickly? Had he mis-wired the yellow Fry’s brain?

“And me?” asked the tall blue Fry. “What’s my moniker?”

“You’re Theodore,” said Freddy. “And you’re Wally,” he said, leaning over the side of the purple raft.

Wally smiled and then started drinking part of the lake. “I need lots of liquid in my diet,” he explained. “It guards against, you know, that poop backup thingie.”

“You’re referring to constipation,” said Theodore.

Wally nodded and his eyes grew huge as he said in a low voice, “Right. Constantinople is bad, very, very bad.”

“And us?” said one of the two redheads.

“Hmmm,” said a puzzled Freddy. “I hadn’t given you names. And there used to be only one of you.”

The unhappy-looking redhead’s mouth drooped even more and his eyes were downcast. “Oh, it’s okay. I probably don’t deserve a name anyway.”

The other redhead was smiling broadly and looked ready to laugh at any moment. He smacked his twin on the back. “Hey, I bet he’ll come up with a great name for us. Uh, names, that is.” He looked at Freddy. “You will, won’t you?”

Freddy looked very uncomfortable for a moment, but then it hit him. He had split the wiring on the chip in the red Fry’s head to give it two personalities. When the Fry had separated into two heads, each had taken one of the personalities: sad and happy.

“I’ve got it,” he exclaimed. He pointed to the smiling redhead. “You’re Si.” He pointed to the depressed redhead. “And you’re Meese.” He laughed. “Get it? Sia – meese?”

Si and Meese looked clueless.

“Siamese twins,” said Theodore in his authoritative voice. “The pairing of identical persons within one body. Decidedly rare indeed. Although I believe the more modern term is ‘conjoined.’”

“Hey,” pouted Wally, “I was just about to say that.”

“But con and joined just don’t have the same ring as Si and Meese,” said Freddy.

“Rare, huh?” said Si. “Wow, I told you he’d come up with a great one. That’a boy, Freddy.”

Meese looked even more depressed. “If it’s so rare I bet no one will remember it.”

Freddy looked over at the green Fry that was staring at him from under his ball cap, but then the Fry quickly looked away. Freddy said, “Don’t you want to know what your name is?”

The green Fry shook its head, but he did turn one anxious eyeball in Freddy’s direction. “You’re a curlicue fry, so I named you Curly.”

Curly looked like he wanted to smile but didn’t exactly know how. So instead he blew his nose very loudly and wiggled his enormous ears.

“Good job, Curly,” Freddy said. “You’re a good nose blower and ear wiggler.”

“Thankyouverymuch,” mumbled Curly.

“And what’s your name?” asked Theodore.

“Freddy. Freddy T. Funkhouser.”

“What’s the T stand for?” asked Theodore.

“Tesla. He was a very famous inventor. My dad’s an inventor too.”

“Cool, what does he invent?” said Wally. “Uh, what’s invent mean?”

“To construct something of originality using one’s imagination and know-how,” said Theodore.

“Hey, you’re an inventor, Freddy, because you invented us,” exclaimed Ziggy.

“That’s right!” said Freddy. “In fact, I’m well on my way to being the most famous inventor ever.” A crack of lightning hit near them. “But right now we need to get to shore, fast.”

“No problem, little dude,” said Wally. He turned his mouth to the water and started blowing. The purple raft shot toward land.

Freddy’s mind was going a million miles a minute. He could see now that simply sticking the Fries on the Burger Castle float was kid stuff. Very soon everyone would know them. And he and his dad would be famous together. They wouldn’t need the Burger Castle to make a living.

He turned to the Fries. “I need time to think of the best way to introduce you to the world. So until then, you have to stay hidden.”

The Fries all looked at each other, and finally Theodore said in his deep voice, “You have our solemn word that we will henceforth remain incognito.”

“Yep, incockadoodle,” added Wally.

When they reached land, Freddy poured some water on Howie’s face to revive him. Howie sat up, and Freddy quickly introduced him to the Fries.

“You did it, Freddy!” yelled an excited Howie.

Freddy was beaming. “Yep. The Fries are officially alive.”