Free Attack of the Spider Bots by Robert West Page A

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she gasped. She didn’t hit it all that hard, but a section of buildings was knocked loose.
    Suddenly a light blinked on in Sol’s eyes. “Pick that up,” he said to Ghoulie.
    Ghoulie swallowed and carefully removed the buildings. Beneath them was a miniature tunnel snaking its way along beneath the city. Set within the tunnel, one after the other every few inches as if they were ribs for a snake, were rings. About the size of a girl’s bracelet in the model, one would have been maybe the height of a house in real life.
    Sol wheeled his chair around the table and fingered a switch below. A cylindrical train moved along inside the tunnel rings. The strange thing was it didn’t seem to be touching the ground. In fact, it didn’t look like it was touching anything — just moving along, suspended in the air amid the row of rings.
    â€œI . . . I remember now. This was my . . . effort to build a . . . a transportation system driven by . . . magnetic pulses.”
    Sol hesitated for a moment, then said, “I wanted to own a railroad. Didn’t have enough money, though, so I settled for something smaller — a city trolley company.”
    â€œYeah, we saw the trolley station,” Scilla said.
    â€œOh, it’s still there,” Solomon asked, “after all these years?”
    â€œIt’s seen better times,” Scilla said with a shrug.
    â€œI’m sure it has. It did well for a number of years. We went . . . uh . . . bankrupt, though, back in the early nineteen fifties,” he said more softly. “That was when the city switched to . . . gasoline bus services — no tracks, you see. People were tired of bumping over them in their cars.
    â€œAfter I lost the trolley company, I dreamed of making new transportation systems,” Solomon said as he wheeled over next to Ghoulie. “This is the area of Middleton next to the . . . city monument. I built this model . . . oh . . . fifty years ago, but I couldn’t get the city interested. As you can see, it works, but no one believed what their eyes could see. They thought it was all a . . . trick,” he said with a sound that might have been a grim laugh.
    They uncovered more objects in the room. Scilla got the boys to pull off the plastic cover from the big object with claws she had seen when she first entered the room. As it turned out, whatever were at the end of those two arms weren’t claws or hands or talons or anything else the three could recognize. But when Sol turned the machine on, a powerful electrical pulse arched between them with a loud sizzle.
    â€œDon’t remember what that’s for,” said Sol. “Everything . . . went wrong for . . . a very long time.” Again he seemed to fade from the present. “I had such dreams,” he said with the slightest mocking laugh. “Dreams don’t always come true, you know.” He coughed and turned back toward the window.
    Beamer remembered what Ms. Parker had told them about dreams months ago. She had spoken of all the people on Murphy Street who had gone on to accomplish great things — Nobel Prize winners, writers, musicians, engineers who made spaceships, even great cartoonists. She said she wanted to see if we made our dreams come true. Of course, Beamer’s dreams weren’t all that big yet. Just getting on first base with a hit was a big enough dream for the moment. But Ms. Parker hadn’t said anything about her brother’s lost dreams. Had she been wrong? Did some people on Murphy Street see their dreams come crashing down like Sol’s?
    One thing was for sure: Solomon Parker had given up. That was the only way to explain how he had gotten exiled to this world of cobwebs and discarded projects. Beamer was a little young to understand what it all meant, but it sounded to him like the man had lost faith — faith in the fact that, despite all his troubles and