Free Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts Page A

as she calmed down.
    I flipped off the water knife. As cool as it was, it also scared the dickens out of me.
    “We should make plans. Don’t you want to be the girl with her own sentient supercomputer in the middle of your base?” Ray suggested.
    They were both so excited! I hated to break it to them. I nudged a heating coil from what had been a microchip press with my foot. “I’m a long way from building a traditional supercomputer. The Machine is awesome, but it’s not good at anything but raw materials and repairing clean breaks. Most of the stuff we brought back it spat up in bits. I’ve got the tools for simple metal shaping and macro electronics work, but my superpower’s going to be working crippled until it builds me better machine tools. If I can get it to build me better machine tools. All the cool big machines will require custom shaped metal parts. I really need a miniature smelter with adjustable molds for casting. I’ve almost got the parts for one.” Like that heating coil I’d just kicked over. I’d still need—
    Stop thinking, Penny!

    Ray caught me before I hit the floor. That was so sweet. My own prince charming, my hero. Sure, he wasn’t strong enough to hold me, but, when he landed on his butt, neither of us took much of an impact. Lying in his lap with his arms around me was what counted.
    What was that thing in front of me? Had I fed The Machine? So many tubes and domes.
    That was my metal caster. I put metal into the bin at the top and worked those levers to adjust the prefabricated forms for the molds. With its help, I could make better molds. The whole thing was modular.
    “I have to try it out. I don’t want to forget how the controls work!” I gasped. I was still panting for breath, and sticky with sweat. Ugh. My legs wobbled. They wanted to rest a minute before I stood up again.
    “I don’t think we have time, Penny. Our folks are going to get worried if we don’t get home before it’s fully dark,” Claire corrected me. She still sounded nervous. Or maybe excited.
    Fully dark? “How long did I spend building that?” I asked.
    Ray flipped open my smart phone and pressed the button. A glance at the welcome screen later, he answered, “About four hours.”
    I looked back up at the metal caster. It was huge. It would be so useful. Something I felt told me that and itched to try it out.
    Looking up at Ray, I asked him, “End of the week?”
    “I’d say, yeah,” he chirped back smugly.

    Tuesday.
    “Were your parents suspicious?” Ray asked me as I sat down for lunch.
    “Nope. A little grumbling about how hard it is to put Dad’s junk back together, and they think it’s a phase I’ll get over. I’m going to blow their socks off when I get this under control. What do you think I should build first?” I gushed. It was a little much, but we’d had no chance to talk all morning!
    “It’th not my plathe to thay, Marther,” Ray played Igor back at me.
    “Ho ho ho, mad scientist humor.” I didn’t get to tell him I was serious. He suddenly looked too puzzled.
    “You don’t remember?” Ray asked. Claire slid into the seat next to me, all attentive curiosity and ostentatious lunchbox opening.
    “Not a thing. I go into a world without words when my power turns on. I can’t hold onto it afterward,” I explained to Ray. To both of them, really.
    “Oh, you had words,” Claire corrected me. She and Ray had the same pinched, failing to-control-a-smile expression.
    “They weren’t very good words, so she might be onto something.” Ray tried to juggle being almost serious with dancing around an explanation.
    “Spill it, minions. You’re creeping the mad scientist out,” I ordered.
    “That’s how you acted, like we were minions. Every few minutes you’d surface to shout at us to help you rearrange your tools,” Claire supplied, finally.
    Not that I liked the answer. “Wow. I’m sorry.”
    Ray raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t nasty, just impatient. Maybe