Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

2

I wasn't kidding about the flying-kids part. Or the talking-dog part.

Anyone who's up to speed on the Adventures of Amazing Max and Her Flying, Fun-Loving Cohorts, you can skip this next page or so. Those of you who picked up this book cold, even though it's clearly part three of a series, well, get with the program, people! I can't take two days to get you all caught up on everything! Here's the abbreviated version (which is pretty good, I might add):

A bunch of mad scientists (mad crazy, not mad angry-though a lot of them do seem to have anger-management issues, especially around me) have been playing around with recombinant life-forms, where they graft different species' DNA together.

Most of their experiments failed horribly, or lived horribly for only a short while. A couple kinds survived, including us, bird kids, who are mostly human but with some bird DNA thrown in.

The six of us have been together for years. Fang, Iggy, and I are ancient, at fourteen years old. Nudge the motormouth is eleven, Gazzy is eight, Angel is six.

The other ones who function pretty well and last more than a couple days are human-lupine hybrids, or wolf people. We call them Erasers, and they have an average life span of about six years. The scientists (whitecoats) trained them to hunt and kill, like a personal army. They're strong and bloodthirsty but lousy about impulse control.

The six of us are on the run, trying to thwart the whitecoats' plan to destroy us and most of humanity, which makes the whitecoats crazy. Or crazier. So they have been going to extreme and sometimes pathetic lengths to capture us.

There you have it: our lives in a nutshell. Emphasis on nut.

But if the above whipped your imagination into a frenzy, here's something even more interesting: Fang started a blog (http:maximumride.blogspot.com). Not that he's self-absorbed and trendy or anything. Nope, not him.

We "acquired" a wicked-cool laptop when we escaped from the Itex headquarters, and get this-it has permanent satellite linkup, so we're always online. And because Itex is a world-class, top-secret, paranoid techfest, the linkup has constantly changing codes and passkeys-its signal is completely untraceable. It's our key to every imaginable piece of information in the world.

Not to mention movie times and restaurant reviews. I crack up every time I think about it.

But anyway, with our lovely laptop, Fang is upchucking every bit of info we manage to gather about our past, the School, the Institute, Itex, etc. out onto the Web. Who knows? Maybe someone will contact us and help us solve the mystery of our existence.

In the meantime, we can locate the nearest Dunkin' Donuts in, like, seconds.